Too hot to help or too cold to care? On the links between ambient temperature, volunteerism, and civic engagement

We investigated the relationship between ambient temperature and prosocial behaviour in real-life settings. It was guided by two mechanisms of opposite predictions, namely (1) higher temperatures decrease prosociality by harming well-being, and (2) higher temperatures increase prosociality by promoting the embodied cognition of social warmth. In Study 1, U.S. state-level time-series data (2002-2015) supported the first mechanism, with higher temperatures predicting lower volunteer rates through lower well-being. Study 2 furthered the investigation by probing the relationship between neighbourhood temperature and civic engagement of 2268 U.S. citizens. The data partially supported the well-being mechanism and reported findings contradictory to the social embodiment mechanism. Higher temperatures predicted lower interpersonal trust and subsequently lower civic engagement. The unexpected finding hinted at a cognitive effect of heat and a compensatory mechanism in social thermoregulation. We discussed the findings regarding their methodological strengths and weaknesses, with cautions made on ecological fallacies and alternative models.

How Rice Fights Pandemics: Nature-Crop-Human Interactions Shaped COVID-19 Outcomes

Wealthy nations led health preparedness rankings in 2019, yet many poor nations controlled COVID-19 better. We argue that a history of rice farming explains why some societies did better. We outline how traditional rice farming led to tight social norms and low-mobility social networks. These social structures helped coordinate societies against COVID-19. Study 1 compares rice- and wheat-farming prefectures within China. Comparing within China allows for controlled comparisons of regions with the same national government, language family, and other potential confounds. Study 2 tests whether the findings generalize to cultures globally. The data show rice-farming nations have tighter social norms and less-mobile relationships, which predict better COVID outcomes. Rice-farming nations suffered just 3% of the COVID deaths of nonrice nations. These findings suggest that long-run cultural differences influence how rice societies-with over 50% of the world's population-controlled COVID-19. The culture was critical, yet the preparedness rankings mostly ignored it.

Freedom from free will Robert M. Sapolsky Penguin Press, 2023. 528 pp

A scientist presents a case for a predetermined future.

Sense of Meaning and Purpose Making Mitigates the Experience of Stress Among Hawai'i Farmers

Farming is widely acknowledged as being extremely challenging and stressful, yet also potentially very meaningful as farming is an important element of any society and connected to our cultural heritage. Only a few studies have empirically examined the association between sense of purpose in farming and well-being/happiness. This study explored whether a sense of meaning and purpose in being a farmer could mitigate the experience of stress. A cross-sectional survey between November 2021-September 2022 was conducted with a sample of 408 Hawai'i agricultural producers. Descriptive statistics and logistic regressions were conducted to explore factors that predicted farmers' endorsement of high meaning and purpose, and whether meaning and purpose could dampen the impact of stressors on the experience of stress. Results revealed that Hawai'i farmers were highly stressed but also had high sense of meaning and purpose. Predictors of meaning and purpose included operating smaller farms of 1-9 acres and having 51% or greater percentage of income from farming. Meaning and purpose in turn decreased odds of stress, and showed an interaction with stressor intensity such that the stress buffering effect of meaning was more salient for those with lower stressors than those with higher stressors OR = 1.12 (CI = 1.06,1.19). One possible stress management and resilience technique is to highlight and strengthen farmers' sense of meaning and purpose in the farming endeavor.

Enriching Psychology by Zooming Out to General Mindsets and Practices in Natural Habitats

Psychology has been "zooming in" on individuals, dyads, and groups with a narrow lens to the exclusion of "zooming out," which involves placing the targeted phenomena within more distal layers of influential context. Here, we plea for a paradigm shift. Specifically, we showcase largely hidden scientific benefits of zooming out by discussing worldwide evidence on inhabitants' habitual adaptations to colder-than-temperate and hotter-than-temperate habitats. These exhibits reveal two different types of theories. Clement-climate perspectives emphasize that generic common properties of stresses from cold and hot temperatures elicit similar effects on personality traits and psychosocial functioning. Cold-versus-heat perspectives emphasize that specific unique properties of stresses from cold and hot habitats elicit different effects on phenomena, such as speech practices and intergroup discrimination. Both zooming-out perspectives are then integrated into a complementary framework that helps identify explanatory mechanisms and demonstrates the broader added value of embedding zooming-in approaches within zooming-out approaches. Indeed, zooming out enriches psychology.

East-west disparities in safer sex inside China: a sociocultural perspective

BACKGROUND

This study responds to the increasing rate of HIV/AIDS and unplanned pregnancies among Chinese college students from a sociocultural perspective, and investigates the influences of sociocultural factors in shaping sex-related beliefs and acts among Chinese college students.

METHODS

An online survey was conducted on a purposive sample of 1286 female college students in four cities in east and west China.

RESULTS

Significant east-west disparities have emerged in the rate of sexual intercourse experience, rate of safer sex, conservative sexual values, authority sex education, unofficial sex knowledge access and HIV knowledge. A higher rate of sexual activity, but lower rate of safer sex, were found among the students in the west relative to those in the east.

CONCLUSIONS

This study demonstrates that in a large country, such as China, regional disparities in economy, social development and sexual norms are salient to affect individuals' sexual behaviours.

Unraveling controversies over civic honesty measurement: An extended field replication in China

Cohn et al. (2019) conducted a wallet drop experiment in 40 countries to measure "civic honesty around the globe," which has received worldwide attention but also sparked controversies over using the email response rate as the sole metric of civic honesty. Relying on the lone measurement may overlook cultural differences in behaviors that demonstrate civic honesty. To investigate this issue, we conducted an extended replication study in China, utilizing email response and wallet recovery to assess civic honesty. We found a significantly higher level of civic honesty in China, as measured by the wallet recovery rate, than reported in the original study, while email response rates remained similar. To resolve the divergent results, we introduce a cultural dimension, individualism versus collectivism, to study civic honesty across diverse cultures. We hypothesize that cultural differences in individualism and collectivism could influence how individuals prioritize actions when handling a lost wallet, such as contacting the wallet owner or safeguarding the wallet. In reanalyzing Cohn et al.'s data, we found that email response rates were inversely related to collectivism indices at the country level. However, our replication study in China demonstrated that the likelihood of wallet recovery was positively correlated with collectivism indicators at the provincial level. Consequently, relying solely on email response rates to gauge civic honesty in cross-country comparisons may neglect the vital individualism versus collectivism dimension. Our study not only helps reconcile the controversy surrounding Cohn et al.'s influential field experiment but also furnishes a fresh cultural perspective to evaluate civic honesty.

I belong, therefore I am: The role of economic culture in compliance with COVID-19 preventive measures

Cultural orientations in relation to individualism and collectivism produced by subsistence strategies can lead to a wide array of consequences for perception, cognition, and emotion. We predict that, as a result of different economic patterns, farmers with greater collectivism would show more compliance with COVID-19 precautionary behavior than herders with greater individualism. By adopting a "just minimal difference" approach, we compared Chinese farming and herding communities that share a national identity, ethnicity, and residential area but vary in their degree of individualism-collectivism. Consistent with our hypothesis, Study 1 found that farmers reported higher compliance with prevention initiatives than herders in self-report survey. Study 2 provided a behavioral choice confirmation of the observed relationship. The present research provides the empirical evidence that economic activities can have divergent effects on mitigation strategies in the COVID-19 fight, and these results have meaningful implications for socioecological psychology theory and for pandemic prevention and control.

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

How much cultural variation around the globe is explained by ecology?

How much cultural variation is explained by the physical and social ecologies people inhabit? Here, we provide an answer using nine ecological variables and 66 cultural variables (including personality traits, values and norms) drawn from the EcoCultural Dataset. We generate a range of estimates by using different statistical metrics (e.g. current levels, average levels across time, unpredictability across time) of each of the ecological variables. Our results suggest that, on average, ecology explains a substantial amount of human cultural variation above and beyond spatial and cultural autocorrelation. The amount of variation explained depended on the metrics used, with current levels and average levels of ecological conditions explaining the greatest amounts of variance in human culture on average (16% and 20%, respectively).

How we learn social norms: a three-stage model for social norm learning

As social animals, humans are unique to make the world function well by developing, maintaining, and enforcing social norms. As a prerequisite among these norm-related processes, learning social norms can act as a basis that helps us quickly coordinate with others, which is beneficial to social inclusion when people enter into a new environment or experience certain sociocultural changes. Given the positive effects of learning social norms on social order and sociocultural adaptability in daily life, there is an urgent need to understand the underlying mechanisms of social norm learning. In this article, we review a set of works regarding social norms and highlight the specificity of social norm learning. We then propose an integrated model of social norm learning containing three stages, i.e., pre-learning, reinforcement learning, and internalization, map a potential brain network in processing social norm learning, and further discuss the potential influencing factors that modulate social norm learning. Finally, we outline a couple of future directions along this line, including theoretical (i.e., societal and individual differences in social norm learning), methodological (i.e., longitudinal research, experimental methods, neuroimaging studies), and practical issues.

Cultures in Water-Scarce Environments Are More Long-Term Oriented

Why do some cultures invest more for the long term, whereas others emphasize living in the moment? We took advantage of a natural experiment in Iran to test the theory that long-term water scarcity is an important cause of differences in long-term orientation and indulgence. We found that Iranians in a water-scarce province reported more long-term orientation and less indulgence than did Iranians in a nearby water-rich province (Study 1, N = 331). In a field study, Iranians in the water-scarce province sent more résumés for a long-term job ad we posted, whereas Iranians in the water-rich province sent more résumés for a short-term, flexible job (Study 2, N = 182). College students in Iran primed to think about increasing water scarcity in the environment endorsed long-term orientation more and indulgence less (Study 3, N = 211). Across 82 countries, long-run water scarcity predicted long-term orientation (Study 4). In sum, cultures in water-scarce environments value thinking for the long term more and indulgence less.

Cultural evolution needed to complete the Grossmann theory

Grossmann used evolutionary analysis to argue for the adaptive nature of fearfulness. This analysis, however, falls short of addressing why negative affectivity is maladaptive in contemporary Western societies. Here, we fill the gap by documenting the implied cultural variation and considering cultural (rather than biological) evolution over the last 10,000 years to explain the observed cultural variation.

Inferences about interdependence shape cooperation

During social interactions in daily life, people possess imperfect knowledge of their interdependence (i.e., how behaviors affect each person's outcomes), and what people infer about their interdependence can shape their behaviors. We review theory and research that suggests people can infer their interdependence with others along several dimensions, including mutual dependence, power, and corresponding-versus-conflicting interests. We discuss how perceptions of interdependence affect how people cooperate and punish others' defection in everyday life. We propose that people understand their interdependence with others through knowledge of the action space, cues during social interactions (e.g., partner behaviors), and priors based on experience. Finally, we describe how learning interdependence could occur through domain-specific and domain-general mechanisms.

Trust game, survey trust, are they correlated? Evidence from China

Trust Game and survey trust are the two most popular measurements in the field of trust research, but most studies conducted in developing countries have found low or even insignificant correlations between them, we therefore validated this phenomenon in the cultural context of the largest developing country, China. Within-country differences can be of the same magnitude as the between country differences, especially in a culturally diverse China. Thus, we focus on comparing the characteristics of trust in the South and North regions of China. Through zero-order correlation and hierarchical regression analysis, our findings are consistent with those of numerous developing countries: Trust Game is lowly correlated with in-group trust survey and not with out-group trust survey. On the other hand, we found that Chinese individuals exhibit a distinct pattern of in-group trust, and there is no fundamental difference in the characteristics of trust between the South and the North.

Cultural Distance, Classroom Silence and Culturally Responsive and Inclusive Education: Evidences from Migrant College Students in Shanghai

This paper investigated the relationship between cultural distance, classroom silence, and the performance of culturally responsive and inclusive education (CRIE) using a survey of 1051 college students in Shanghai in 2022. We found a significantly positive association between migrant students’ cultural distance and their perceived learning gains in class. Students’ cultural distance increased their classroom silence as a form of protection but had no significant effect on their classroom silence as a sign of power. The classroom silence as protection decreased students’ perceived learning gains. However, classroom silence as power could be used by both local and migrant students as a hold-up strategy to strengthen their influence in class discussions, which could improve their perceived learning gains. Teachers’ CRIE played the most important role in migrant students’ perceived learning gains, while the effectiveness of CRIE was also actually dependent on the different channels and mechanisms of cultural distance and classroom silence. A cautious identification of classroom silence will improve the effectiveness of CRIE. Suggestions are offered to lighten the practice of educators, administrators, and instructors who face classroom silence from subnational migrant students.

Individualism, Collectivism, and Allocation Behavior: Evidence from the Ultimatum Game and Dictator Game

Studies have demonstrated the influence of the cultural values of individualism and collectivism on individuals' economic behavior (e.g., competition and trade). By using individualistic and collectivistic texts to prime participants' minds in a lab experiment, we investigated the impact of the cultural values of individualism and collectivism on allocation behavior in an ultimatum game (UG) and dictator game (DG). In the dictator game, we found that participants in the collectivism-priming condition reported a slightly higher mean offer than in the individualism-priming condition, and participants had an average higher acceptance rate of the proposers' offer in the collectivism-priming (vs. individualism-priming) condition in the ultimatum game. Our findings suggest that participants exhibit more altruistic allocation behavior and are more tolerant of unfair allocation behavior after being primed by the collectivistic (vs. individualistic) texts. In comparison with participants who did not undergo initiation, we also found that Chinese participants who had been influenced by collectivist values for a long time remained unaffected after the initiation of collectivism, but shifted their allocation behavior (i.e., showed decreased altruistic allocation behavior and reduced tolerance of unfair allocation behavior) when individualism was primed.

Having time to oneself in times of extended togetherness: Solitude experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic

This study investigated how time to oneself (solitude) is experienced under conditions of extended togetherness with household members during the pandemic. Both structural (living arrangements) and qualitative characteristics (relationship quality and conflict) were examined for their association with solitude desire and daily solitude-affect links. We expected that people living with others and those with more high-quality as well as those with more conflictual relationships would report better affect quality when experiencing solitude. A Canadian adult lifespan sample (N = 141; M_age  = 38.43 years, SD_age  = 17.51; 81% female; 73% White; data collected from April to August 2020) provided information on household size and relationship characteristics and completed repeated daily life assessments of solitude desire, solitude, and affect. Findings show that living arrangements were not associated with an increased desire for solitude or better affect quality from solitude. Individuals reporting higher relationship quality and individuals reporting more conflict showed more favorable affect quality on days when they had time in solitude than individuals reporting lower quality relationships and lower conflict. Findings add to the growing solitude literature by delineating who seeks and benefits from solitude, and under what conditions.

A Socioecological-Genetic Framework of Culture and Personality: Their Roots, Trends, and Interplay

Culture and personality are two central topics in psychology. Individuals are culturally influenced influencers of culture, yet the research linking culture and personality has been limited and fragmentary. We integrate the literatures on culture and personality with recent advances in socioecology and genetics to formulate the Socioecological-Genetic Framework of Culture and Personality. Our framework not only delineates the mutual constitution of culture and personality but also sheds light on (a) the roots of culture and personality, (b) how socioecological changes partly explain temporal trends in culture and personality, and (c) how genes and culture/socioecology interact to influence personality (i.e., nature × nurture interactions). By spotlighting the roles of socioecology and genetics, our integrative framework advances the understanding of culture and personality.

Sino-India difference in collectivism and its association with cultural heritage concerning argumentation

Cross-cultural studies from a global perspective contend that China and India are both collectivistic cultures. However, it remains unclear whether and why China and India differ in their collectivism. This study examines whether the cultural heritage concerning argumentation explains why Chinese people are more collectivistic than Indians. Convenient samples were taken from online surveys (N _China = 398, N _India = 418), and 186 participants from the United States were included in the contrast group. In multiple methods conducted here, the Chinese respondents scored higher in holistic thought, compatriotism, nepotism, familism, and self-interdependence than the Indian respondents, while scoring lower in assertiveness and argumentativeness. Although China and India were more collectivistic than the United States, these findings support the hypothesis that Chinese people are more collectivistic than Indians. The study extended our knowledge of individualism-collectivism beyond east-west comparison.

Still No Evidence for a Jewish Group Evolutionary Strategy

I recently criticized some key tenets of what I called the “anti-Jewish narrative,” particularly as defended by Kevin MacDonald. According to MacDonald, Judaism is a “group evolutionary strategy” that led Jews to impose liberal multiculturalism on the West in order to advance their evolutionary interests at the expense of gentiles. In light of MacDonald’s reply, in this paper, I refine my previous arguments, address some popular misunderstandings, and discuss the root causes and consequences of anti-Semitism. I conclude that, contra the anti-Jewish narrative, Jews are not particularly ethnocentric, Jewish intellectuals do not typically advocate liberal multiculturalism for gentiles but not for Jews, Jews did not orchestrate the rise of liberalism or blank-slatism in the West, and anti-Semitism is not primarily a response to actual Jewish wrongdoing.

Exploring the impact of Chuangguandong Movement on individualism in China based on Sina Weibo information

The voluntary frontier settlement hypothesis holds that frontier movements can promote the formation of individualism in the frontier area. The Chuangguandong Movement is one of China's voluntary frontier movements that potentially had a positive impact on the formation of high individualism in the northeastern provinces. Previous studies used independent/interdependent measures of self-construal scale, symbolic self-inflation, nepotism tasks, and percentage of most common names, to examine the differences in the independence between Heilongjiang and Shandong residents, which may be related to the Chuangguandong Movement. However, these studies were limited by certain factors such as sample size and objectivity of materials acquisition. In this study, we obtained Sina Weibo big data for period 2010-2020 to overcome the limitation of previous work. Using text feature extraction and keyword word frequency calculation methods based on the individualism/collectivism dictionary, we found that the level of individualism in Northeast China was higher than that in Shandong Province, which was consistent with previous research. Through the discussion of the four representative theoretical frameworks of individualism, the voluntary frontier settlement theory was considered as a potential explanation for the high degree of individualism in Northeast China.

Of Germs and Culture; Parasite Stress as the Origin of Individualism-Collectivism

Among four proposed origins of individualism-collectivism, modernization theory, rice versus wheat theory, climato-economic theory, and pathogen stress theory, the latter has gained more attention in cross-cultural and evolutionary psychology. Since the parasite stress theory of values and sociality makes a connection between infectious diseases and cultural orientations, it gained even more popularity during the COVID pandemic. But despite extensive research on parasite stress theory, it is not still clear what kind of infectious disease contributes more to the emergence of cultures, what are the possible mechanisms through which pathogenic threat gives rise to cultural systems, and how parasite stress might affect vertical vs. horizontal dimensions of individualism-collectivism. This review summarizes and integrates major findings of parasite stress theory related to individualism-collectivism and its closely related variables and discusses future directions that researchers can take to answer the remaining questions.

Diarrheal disease, sanitation, and culture in India

The health burden of childhood diarrhea in India has been a major public health concern. This study examines the role of the individualism-collectivism dichotomy in the prevalence of diarrhea in children under the age of five in India. Using subnational data on rice suitability to measure collectivism, we provide evidence that collectivism is negatively associated with the prevalence of childhood diarrhea across 618 Indian districts. We find that the mechanism works through improvements in water and sanitation. Collectivism propagates values of interdependence, cooperation and collective action which increases safe water and sanitation practices, thereby reducing the prevalence of diarrhea in children.

Consideration of culture in cognition: How we can enrich methodology and theory

In this paper, we argue that adopting an inclusive approach where diverse cultures are represented in research is of prime importance for cognitive psychology. The overrepresentation of participant samples and researchers from WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) cultures limits the generalizability of findings and fails to capture potential sources of variability, impeding understanding of human cognition. In an analysis of articles in representative cognitive psychology journals over the five-year period of 2016-2020, we find that only approximately 7% of articles consider culture, broadly defined. Of these articles, a majority (83%) focus on language or bilingualism, with small numbers of articles considering other aspects of culture. We argue that methodology and theory developed in the last century of cognitive research not only can be leveraged, but will be enriched by greater diversity in both populations and researchers. Such advances pave the way to uncover cognitive processes that may be universal or systematically differ as a function of cultural variations, and the individual differences in relation to cultural variations. To make a case for broadening this scope, we characterize relevant cross-cultural research, sample classic cognitive research that is congruent with such an approach, and discuss compatibility between a cross-cultural perspective and the classic tenets of cognitive psychology. We make recommendations for large and small steps for the field to incorporate greater cultural representation in the study of cognition, while recognizing the challenges associated with these efforts and acknowledging that not every research question calls for a cross-cultural perspective.

Partner choice does not predict prosociality across countries

Why does human prosociality vary around the world? Evolutionary models and laboratory experiments suggest that possibilities for partner choice (i.e. the ability to leave unprofitable relationships and strike up new ones) should promote cooperation across human societies. Leveraging the Global Preferences Survey (n = 27,125; 27 countries) and the World Values Survey (n = 54,728; 32 countries), we test this theory by estimating the associations between relational mobility, a socioecological measure of partner choice, and a wide variety of prosocial attitudes and behaviours, including impersonal altruism, reciprocity, trust, collective action and moral judgements of antisocial behaviour. Contrary to our pre-registered predictions, we found little evidence that partner choice is related to prosociality across countries. After controlling for shared causes of relational mobility and prosociality - environmental harshness, subsistence style and geographic and linguistic proximity - we found that only altruism and trust in people from another religion are positively related to relational mobility. We did not find positive relationships between relational mobility and reciprocity, generalised trust, collective action or moral judgements. These findings challenge evolutionary theories of human cooperation which emphasise partner choice as a key explanatory mechanism, and highlight the need to generalise models and experiments to global samples.

Behavioral economics: who are the investors with the most sustainable stock happiness, and why? Low aspiration, external control, and country domicile may save your lives—monetary wisdom

Slight absolute changes in the Shanghai Stock Exchange Index (SHSE) corresponded to the city’s immediate increases in coronary heart disease deaths and stroke deaths. Significant fluctuations in the Shenzhen Stock Exchange Index (SZSE) corresponded to the country’s minor, delayed death rates. Investors deal with money, greed, stock volatility, and risky decision-making. Happy people live longer and better. We ask the following question: Who are the investors with the highest and most sustainable stock happiness, and why? Monetary wisdom asserts: Investors apply their deep-rooted values (avaricious love-of-money aspiration and locus of control, Level 2) as a lens to frame critical concerns in the proximal-immediate (Shanghai Stock Exchange Index changes, Level 1) and the omnibus-distal contexts (domicile: city vs. country, Level 2) to maximize expected utility (portfolio changes, Level 1) and ultimate serenity (stock happiness, Level 1). We collected multilevel data—the longitudinal SHSE and 227 private investors’ daily stock happiness and portfolio changes for 36 consecutive trading days in four regions of China. Investors had an average liquid asset of $76,747.41 and $54,660.85 in stocks. This study is not a “one-shot” game with “nothing at stake.” We classified Shanghai and Beijing as the city and Shenzhen and Chongqing as the country. Our cross-level 3-D visualization reveals that regardless of SHSE volatility, investors with low aspiration, external control, and country domicile enjoy the highest and most sustainable stock happiness with minimum fluctuations. Independently, investors with low aspiration, external control, and country domicile tend to make fewer portfolio changes than their counterparts. Behaviorally, less is more, debunking the myth—risky decisions excite stock happiness. Our longitudinal study expands prospect theory, incorporates attitude toward money, and makes robust contributions to behavioral economics and business ethics. We help investors and ordinary citizens make happy, healthy, and wealthy decisions. Most importantly, the life you save may be your own.

Peer charity donation, gratitude, and self-esteem among left-behind children

Previous research suggests that receiving a charity donation could induce gratitude but threaten self-esteem. We investigated if peer charity donations from typical children benefit or harm the mental health of their left-behind children (LBC) classmates. We recruited children at a school (i.e., intervened school) that organized peer charity donations every semester and three typical schools (i.e., non-intervened school) without such intervention in China. Participants completed the gratitude, self-esteem, depression, and social anxiety scales. A statistical toolbox, "Matchit", randomly selected 420 children aged 9-13 (220 females, 200 males, 213 LBC, 207 non-LBC); there was no significant difference in left-behind status, age, gender, or family economic status (all p > .10) between the intervened and non-intervened groups (210 per group). Structural equation model analyses revealed that gratitude was associated with higher self-esteem, lower social anxiety, and lower depression. Moreover, the intervention effect on self-esteem was significantly positive among the LBC recipients and non-LBC donors. The interaction between intervention and left-behind status was significant on gratitude and depression. Specifically, the intervention effect was not significant on gratitude or depression among the LBC but was significantly negative on gratitude and depression among the non-LBC. Peer charity donation may increase self-esteem among children (recipients or donors) via increased social connection or satisfaction of basic needs, yet decreased gratitude among the donors due to the "moral licensing effect".

Unity of heaven and humanity: Mediating role of the relational-interdependent self in the relationship between Confucian values and holistic thinking

As the primary value system in Chinese culture for almost 2,000 years, Confucianism has profoundly influenced the mindset of Chinese people. Cultural psychology studies have highlighted that individuals with different cultural backgrounds vary in their preferences for certain personality traits, such as self-construal, and their metacognitive characteristics, such as thinking modes. Compared with Western cultures, Chinese culture shows a preference for the interdependent self and holistic thinking. To investigate the relationship between the relational-interdependent self, holistic thinking, and traditional Chinese values (which are represented by Confucian values), we surveyed 327 Chinese adults using the Confucian Traditional Values Survey, Holistic Thinking Scale, and Relational-Interdependent Self-Construal Scale. The results show that Confucian values positively influence both holistic thinking and the relational-interdependent self, the latter of which partially mediates the positive relationship between Confucian values and holistic thinking. This study deepens the understanding of the psychological features of Chinese culture.

Attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines and vaccine uptake intent in China: The role of collectivism, interpersonal communication, and the use of news and information websites

Vaccines can be an effective way to help prevent COVID-19 infections. However, in the age of "infodemic" and people holding different values, promoting COVID-related prevention can be difficult. Based on a survey of 460 Chinese residents in March 2021, the present analysis aims to provide a detailed understanding of the role of values and information sources on the Chinese's attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines and their vaccination intent. Results revealed that collectivism and the use of mainstream websites were positively associated with value-expressive attitudes, trust toward vaccines, and norms, which in turn predicted vaccination intent. Furthermore, collectivism was negatively associated with attitudes toward inconvenience or minor side effects, whereas interpersonal communication was positively associated with such attitudes. Overall, collectivism appeared to be a much stronger predictor of the Chinese's vaccination intent than the media and interpersonal communication. Although this research was conducted in China, where the pace of mass vaccination was fast, the results can provide insights on what might contribute to the success or failure of a vaccination campaign and be used to compare COVID-19 vaccination campaigns in other countries.

Going beyond heritability: Mechanisms of gene-culture coevolution

The target article offers an important cautionary note on the interpretation of the heritability index. However, it does not directly address how culture and genes might interact. Here, we suggest that one allele of the dopamine D4 receptor gene promotes the acquisition of cultural values and practices and likely has coevolved with the human culture over the last 50,000 years.

The many geographical layers of culture

Uchiyama et al. present a dual inheritance framework for conceptualizing how behavioural genetics and cultural evolution interact and affect heritability. We posit that to achieve a holistic and nuanced representation of the cultural environment and evolution against which genetic effects should be evaluated, it is imperative to consider the multiple geographic cultural layers impacting individuals and genetic heritability.

Holistic thinking and risk-taking perceptions reduce risk-taking intentions: ethical, financial, and health/safety risks across genders and cultures

Holistic thinking involves four subconstructs: causality, contradiction, attention to the whole, and change. This holistic perspective varies across Eastern–Western cultures and genders. We theorize that holistic thinking reduces three domain-specific risk-taking behavioral intentions (ethical, financial, and health/safety) directly and indirectly through enhanced risk-taking attitudes. Our formative theoretical model treats the four subconstructs of holistic thinking as yoked antecedents and frames it in a proximal context of causes and consequences. We simultaneously explore the direct and indirect paths and test our model across cultures, genders, and the combination of the two. For the entire sample (N = 531), holistic thinking negatively relates to risk intentions via enhanced risk perceptions. Across cultures, the indirect paths prevail among Chinese people (n = 284), and both direct and indirect paths triumph for Americans (n = 247). Across genders, the indirect paths exist for females, whereas the negative direct path (risk-raking attitudes → behavioral intentions) succeeds for males. Across cultures and genders, holistic thinking negatively relates to American males’ ethical risks the most but Chinese males’ financial risks the least. Risk-taking perceptions are negatively related to Chinese males’ ethical risks the most, but Chinese people’s (males/females) financial risks the least. Causality and change are vital for all contexts, attention to the whole for all males and Chinese males, and contradiction for Americans and all females. Holistic thinking has limits and is less robust than risk-taking perceptions in reducing risky behavioral intentions. Our practical implications help people make ethical, healthy, and wealthy decisions.

Culture, theory-of-mind, and morality: How independent and interdependent minds make moral judgments

Although the investigation of the neural mechanisms of morality has increased in recent years, the neural underpinnings of cultural variations in judgments of morality is understudied. In this paper, we propose that the well-established cultural differences in two cognitive processes, consideration of mental state and causal attribution, would lead to differences in moral judgment. Specifically, North Americans rely heavily on the mental state of a protagonist and dispositional attributions, whereas East Asians focus more on situational attributions and place less emphasis on the mental state of a protagonist. These differences would be accounted for by activity in brain regions implicated in thinking about others' minds, or theory-of-mind (ToM), which would underlie the cultural shaping of moral judgment. This proposed cultural neuroscience approach may broaden the scope of morality research, better predict moral behavior, and reduce disparities in diverse groups' moral judgment.

Human Personality Is Associated with Geographical Environment in Mainland China

Recent psychological research shown that the places where we live are linked to our personality traits. Geographical aggregation of personalities has been observed in many individualistic nations; notably, the mountainousness is an essential component in understanding regional variances in personality. Could mountainousness therefore also explain the clustering of personality-types in collectivist countries like China? Using a nationwide survey (29,838 participants) in Mainland China, we investigated the relationship between the Big Five personality traits and mountainousness indicators at the provincial level. Multilevel modelling showed significant negative associations between the elevation coefficient of variation (Elevation CV) and the Big Five personality traits, whereas mean elevation (Elevation Mean) and the standard deviation in elevation (Elevation STD) were positively associated with human personalities. Subsequent machine learning analyses showed that, for example, Elevation Mean outperformed other mountainousness indicators regarding correlations with neuroticism, while Elevation CV performed best relative to openness models. Our results mirror some previous findings, such as the positive association between openness and Elevation STD, while also revealing cultural differences, such as the social desirability of people living in China's mountainous areas.

Social norms and dishonesty across societies

Social norms have long been recognized as an important factor in curtailing antisocial behavior, and stricter prosocial norms are commonly associated with increased prosocial behavior. In this study, we provide evidence that very strict prosocial norms can have a perverse negative relationship with prosocial behavior. In laboratory experiments conducted in 10 countries across 5 continents, we measured the level of honest behavior and elicited injunctive norms of honesty. We find that individuals who hold very strict norms (i.e., those who perceive a small lie to be as socially unacceptable as a large lie) are more likely to lie to the maximal extent possible. This finding is consistent with a simple behavioral rationale. If the perceived norm does not differentiate between the severity of a lie, lying to the full extent is optimal for a norm violator since it maximizes the financial gain, while the perceived costs of the norm violation are unchanged. We show that the relation between very strict prosocial norms and high levels of rule violations generalizes to civic norms related to common moral dilemmas, such as tax evasion, cheating on government benefits, and fare dodging on public transportation. Those with very strict attitudes toward civic norms are more likely to lie to the maximal extent possible. A similar relation holds across countries. Countries with a larger fraction of people with very strict attitudes toward civic norms have a higher society-level prevalence of rule violations.

COVID-19 regulations, culture, and the environment

The economic and social disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic are immense. Unexpectedly, a positive outcome of the stringent Covid restrictions has come in the form of air pollution reduction. Pollution reduction, however, has not happened everywhere at equal rates. Why are lockdown measures not producing this positive externality in all countries? Using satellite-based Aerosol Optical Depth data and panel analysis conducted at the country-day level, we find that the countries that have adopted stringent COVID-19 containment policies have experienced better air quality. Nonetheless, this relationship depends on the cultural orientation of a society. Our estimates indicate that the effect of policy stringency is lower in societies imbued with a collectivistic culture. The findings highlight the role of cultural differences in the successful implementation of policies and the realization of their intended outcomes. It implies that pollution mitigation policies are less likely to yield emission reduction in collectivist societies.

The Association between Religious Beliefs and Food Waste: Evidence from Chinese Rural Households

This paper investigates the Chinese rural household food waste issue from the unique perspective of religious beliefs based on 1380 samples in 26 provinces in mainland China. By using the count regression approach model, it is found that about 2.30% of the home meal is wasted on average for Chinese rural households. The empirical results reveal that religion has a significantly negative impact on residents’ food wastage, and religious rural households waste less food than their counterparts. Taking into account the possible omission of variables and selection bias, the above conclusion is still valid. Additionally, male household heads, small household size, young families, bad food storage conditions, and the poorer convenience of buying foods are positively related to the higher food waste rate in rural China. Thus, the study provides evidence that religiosity plays a positive role in reducing food waste in rural China. As most of the world’s population is religious to some extent, the finding may also apply to other countries or regions, and it implies that religion and sustainable food consumption are closely related.

Chief Executive Officer Collectivism and Corporate Pollution Abatement Behavior: Evidence From Industrial Firms in China

This study examines the relationship between chief executive officers (CEOs)' collectivistic cultural background and corporate pollution abatement behavior among industrial firms in China. Using hand-collected data on birthplaces of CEOs of the industrial firms, we provided robust evidence that CEOs born in provinces with a higher level of collectivistic culture promote corporate pollution abatement performance. This study further shows that firms exhibit significant differences in their emission reduction behavior when firms are subjected to environmental regulation shocks: firms with collectivistic CEOs tend to reduce more pollution than firms with individualistic CEOs without sacrificing their firms' production.

Outside the "Cultural Binary": Understanding Why Latin American Collectivist Societies Foster Independent Selves

Cultural psychologists often treat binary contrasts of West versus East, individualism versus collectivism, and independent versus interdependent self-construal as interchangeable, thus assuming that collectivist societies promote interdependent rather than independent models of selfhood. At odds with this assumption, existing data indicate that Latin American societies emphasize collectivist values at least as strongly as Confucian East Asian societies, but they emphasize most forms of independent self-construal at least as strongly as Western societies. We argue that these seemingly "anomalous" findings can be explained by societal differences in modes of subsistence (herding vs. rice farming), colonial histories (frontier settlement), cultural heterogeneity, religious heritage, and societal organization (relational mobility, loose norms, honor logic) and that they cohere with other indices of contemporary psychological culture. We conclude that the common view linking collectivist values with interdependent self-construal needs revision. Global cultures are diverse, and researchers should pay more attention to societies beyond "the West" and East Asia. Our contribution concurrently illustrates the value of learning from unexpected results and the crucial importance of exploratory research in psychological science.

Predictors and consequences of intellectual humility

In a time of societal acrimony, psychological scientists have turned to a possible antidote — intellectual humility. Interest in intellectual humility comes from diverse research areas, including researchers studying leadership and organizational behaviour, personality science, positive psychology, judgement and decision-making, education, culture, and intergroup and interpersonal relationships. In this Review, we synthesize empirical approaches to the study of intellectual humility. We critically examine diverse approaches to defining and measuring intellectual humility and identify the common element: a meta-cognitive ability to recognize the limitations of one’s beliefs and knowledge. After reviewing the validity of different measurement approaches, we highlight factors that influence intellectual humility, from relationship security to social coordination. Furthermore, we review empirical evidence concerning the benefits and drawbacks of intellectual humility for personal decision-making, interpersonal relationships, scientific enterprise and society writ large. We conclude by outlining initial attempts to boost intellectual humility, foreshadowing possible scalable interventions that can turn intellectual humility into a core interpersonal, institutional and cultural value.

Intellectual humility involves acknowledging the limitations of one’s knowledge and that one’s beliefs might be incorrect. In this Review, Porter and colleagues synthesize concepts of intellectual humility across fields and describe the complex interplay between intellectual humility and related individual and societal factors.

You Eat How You Think: A Review on the Impact of Cognitive Styles on Food Perception and Behavior

Sensory perception is understood to be a complex area of research that requires investigations from a variety of different perspectives. Although researchers have tried to better understand consumers’ perception of food, one area that has been minimally explored is how psychological cognitive theories can help them explain consumer perceptions, behaviors, and decisions in food-related experiences. The concept of cognitive styles has existed for nearly a century, with the majority of cognitive style theories existing along a continuum with two bookends. Some of the more common theories such as individualist-collectivist, left-brain-right-brain, and convergent-divergent theories each offered their own unique insight into better understanding consumer behavior. However, these theories often focused only on niche applications or on specific aspects of cognition. More recently, the analytic-holistic cognitive style theory was developed to encompass many of these prior theoretical components and apply them to more general cognitive tendencies of individuals. Through applying the analytic-holistic theory and focusing on modern cultural psychology work, this review may allow researchers to be able to answer one of the paramount questions of sensory and consumer sciences: how and why do consumers perceive and respond to food stimuli the way that they do?

Why Warmth Matters More Than Competence: A New Evolutionary Approach

Multiple lines of evidence suggest that there are two major dimensions of social perception, often called warmth and competence, and that warmth is prioritized over competence in multiple types of social decision-making. Existing explanations for this prioritization argue that warmth is more consequential for an observer's welfare than is competence. We present a new explanation for the prioritization of warmth based on humans' evolutionary history of cooperative partner choice. We argue that the prioritization of warmth evolved because ancestral humans faced greater variance in the warmth of potential cooperative partners than in their competence but greater variance in competence over time within cooperative relationships. These each made warmth more predictive than competence of the future benefits of a relationship, but because of differences in the distributions of these traits, not because of differences in their intrinsic consequentiality. A broad, synthetic review of the anthropological literature suggests that these conditions were characteristic of the ecologies in which human social cognition evolved, and agent-based models demonstrate the plausibility of these selection pressures. We conclude with future directions for the study of preferences and the further integration of social and evolutionary psychology.

Personality impressions predict intergroup trust behaviour of Southern Chinese

This research aimed to investigate whether the personality impressions Southern Chinese formed on people who were from South China or North China predicted intergroup trust. Study 1 adopted the one-shot trust game to measure intergroup trust, in which the participant decided the amounts of money they would like to invest with the members of the ingroup and the members of the outgroup. After that, they assessed the personality traits of the two groups with a set of trait words. Results suggested that participants invested more average amounts of money with the outgroup than with the ingroup, and the investment in the northerners was significantly correlated with the trait impressions of the northerners. Study 2 conducted a survey to specify the positive and negative aspects of personality impressions made on the two groups. Results revealed that some untrustworthy and dislike traits were regarded as the negative traits in the ingroup rather than in the outgroup, though participants distinguished the positive personality traits between the two groups. The complexity-extremity theory was applied to explain the results of preferring to trust the outgroup over the ingroup in relation to the representation of personality impressions of the two groups.

United we stand? Perceived loyalty of dual nationals, multiracial people, and dual state residents

As multiracial children of foreign-born parents, Kamala Harris and Barack Obama embody diversity in politics for many perceivers. Yet some have also questioned their loyalty to their respective groups. We explored perceptions of dual group members’ (DGM; dual nationals, multiracial people, and dual state residents) loyalty among first-party (those who share a group membership with a DGM target) and third-party perceivers (those who do not). Studies 1a–2b showed that first- and third-party perceivers rated DGMs as less loyal than their single group member (SGM) counterparts. However, only first- (Studies 2a–2b) but not third-party (Studies 1a–1b) perceivers preferred SGMs to DGMs for loyalty-dependent roles. Study 3 revealed that perceivers who were higher in patriotism supported DGMs for loyalty-dependent roles less when they were first- (vs. third) party observers. These studies suggest that perceivers readily intuit that DGMs are less loyal than SGMs and, under some conditions, this may lead to discrimination.

Differential Association of Wheat and Rice Consumption With Overweight/Obesity in Chinese Adults: China Health and Nutrition Survey 1991–2015

Wheat and rice are the main staple foods in China and likely have a major influence on health. This analysis examined the potential association between wheat and rice consumption and the risk of overweight/obesity in Chinese adults. We used data collected in the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) from 1991 to 2015. Adults aged 18–80 years old (n = 11,503) were included in the present analysis, for whom questionnaires and anthropometric data were collected during at least two waves. We constructed three-level mixed-effect linear regression models to estimate body mass index (BMI) in relation to wheat and rice intakes and performed three-level mixed-effect logistic regression models to assess the risk of overweight/obesity. Women showed significant BMI increases of 0.14 (95% CI: 0.04, 0.24) from a higher intake of wheat but not from a higher intake of rice when adjusted for all potential confounders. Comparing the highest quartiles of intake of wheat with non-consumers in men and women, odds ratios (ORs; 95% CI) of overweight/obesity were 1.45 (1.15, 1.85) and 1.26 (1.00, 1.60), respectively. In men, there was an inverse association with the risk of overweight/obesity in the comparison of the highest quartiles of intake of rice (OR: 0.73; 95% CI: 0.55, 0.96) and non-consumers when adjusted for all potential confounders. Higher intake of wheat was positively associated with the risk of overweight/obesity among Chinese adults. Further, there was an inverse association between rice intake with overweight/obesity in Chinese men but not in women.

Loving Your Parents and Treating Others Well: The Effect of Filial Piety on Cyberbullying Perpetration and Its Functional Mechanism Among Chinese Graduate Students

Although a few studies have investigated the effect of family factors on cyberbullying perpetration, these studies have mainly focused on the roles of parents. Few studies have examined the roles of children. In traditional Chinese culture, the filial piety belief (FPB) refers to the viewpoint that considers the roles of children in a family context. We suggest that how children consider their roles in a family might also influence cyberbullying perpetration. Based on the dual filial piety model and social information processing model, this study examined the effect of FPB on cyberbullying perpetration and tested its mediation of hostile attribution bias. In total, 588 graduate students participated. The participants completed several questionnaires, including the FPB scale, the social information processing-attribution response questionnaire, and the cyberbullying scale. The results were as follows. First, reciprocal filial piety (RFP) was significantly negatively correlated with hostile attribution bias and cyberbullying perpetration, while authoritarian filial piety (AFP) was significantly positively correlated with hostile attribution bias and cyberbullying perpetration. Second, hostile attribution bias mediated the association between FPB (comprising AFP and RFP) and cyberbullying perpetration; RFP decreased hostile attribution bias, while AFP increased hostile attribution bias; and hostile attribution bias increased cyberbullying perpetration. The current study expands our understanding of the influential factors and formation mechanism of cyberbullying perpetration in Chinese culture.