Ecological Origins of Freedom: Pathogens, Heat Stress, and Frontier Topography Predict More Vertical but Less Horizontal Governmental Restriction

It's (a) Shame: Why Poverty Leads to Support for Authoritarianism

The literature has widely discussed and supported the relationship between poverty and support for authoritarian leaders and regimes. However, there are different claims about the mediating mechanism and a lack of empirical tests. We hypothesize that the effect of poverty on support for authoritarianism is mediated by shame: People living in poverty frequently experience social exclusion and devaluation, which is reflected in feelings of shame. Such shame, in turn, is likely to increase support for authoritarianism, mainly due to the promise of social re-inclusion. We support our hypothesis in two controlled experiments and a large-scale field study while empirically ruling out the two main alternative explanations offered in the literature: stress and anxiety. Finally, we discuss how the present findings can support policymakers in efficiently addressing the negative political consequences of poverty.

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.

We Need Tough Brothers and Sisters in a Tight World: Cultural Tightness Leads to a Preference for Dominant and Muscular Leaders

Cultural tightness is characterized by strong norms and harsh punishments for deviant behaviors. We hypothesized that followers in tight (vs. loose) cultures would more strongly prefer muscular leaders. This hypothesis was confirmed across seven studies (N = 1,615) employing samples from the United States, the United Kingdom, and China. Using actual political leaders, we demonstrated that the tighter the state's culture was, the more muscular the elected governor was (Study 1). Temporarily situating participants in a tight (vs. loose) culture made them select a leader higher on muscularity but not on body fat, and the effects obtained occurred for both male and female leaders (Studies 2-3B). In addition, we demonstrated the mediating role of authoritarianism and a preference for a dominant leadership in this process (Studies 4-5B). These results demonstrate the importance of considering the interface between culture and the physical appearance of leaders.

Is the myth of left-wing authoritarianism itself a myth?

Is left-wing authoritarianism (LWA) closer to a myth or a reality? Twelve studies test the empirical existence and theoretical relevance of LWA. Study 1 reveals that both conservative and liberal Americans identify a large number of left-wing authoritarians in their lives. In Study 2, participants explicitly rate items from a recently-developed LWA measure as valid measurements of authoritarianism. Studies 3-11 show that persons who score high on this same LWA scale possess the traits associated with models of authoritarianism: LWA is positively related to threat sensitivity across multiple areas, including general ecological threats (Study 3), COVID disease threat (Study 4), Belief in a Dangerous World (Study 5), and Trump threat (Study 6). Further, high-LWA persons show more support for restrictive political correctness norms (Study 7), rate African-Americans and Jews more negatively (Studies 8-9), and show more cognitive rigidity (Studies 10 and 11). These effects hold when controlling for political ideology and when looking only within liberals, and further are similar in magnitude to comparable effects for right-wing authoritarianism. Study 12 uses the World Values Survey to provide cross-cultural evidence of Left-Wing Authoritarianism around the globe. Taken in total, this large array of triangulating evidence from 12 studies comprised of over 8,000 participants from the U.S. and over 66,000 participants world-wide strongly suggests that left-wing authoritarianism is much closer to a reality than a myth.

How culturally unique are pandemic effects? Evaluating cultural similarities and differences in effects of age, biological sex, and political beliefs on COVID impacts

Despite being bio-epidemiological phenomena, the causes and effects of pandemics are culturally influenced in ways that go beyond national boundaries. However, they are often studied in isolated pockets, and this fact makes it difficult to parse the unique influence of specific cultural psychologies. To help fill in this gap, the present study applies existing cultural theories via linear mixed modeling to test the influence of unique cultural factors in a multi-national sample (that moves beyond Western nations) on the effects of age, biological sex, and political beliefs on pandemic outcomes that include adverse financial impacts, adverse resource impacts, adverse psychological impacts, and the health impacts of COVID. Our study spanned 19 nations (participant N = 14,133) and involved translations into 9 languages. Linear mixed models revealed similarities across cultures, with both young persons and women reporting worse outcomes from COVID across the multi-national sample. However, these effects were generally qualified by culture-specific variance, and overall more evidence emerged for effects unique to each culture than effects similar across cultures. Follow-up analyses suggested this cultural variability was consistent with models of pre-existing inequalities and socioecological stressors exacerbating the effects of the pandemic. Collectively, this evidence highlights the importance of developing culturally flexible models for understanding the cross-cultural nature of pandemic psychology beyond typical WEIRD approaches.

Mental Balance in 116 Nations: Where It Is Experienced and Valued

Mental balance, defined as a sense of tranquility resulting from inner peace and harmonious interactions with the external environment, is an important but largely overlooked aspect of well-being. Using data from the Gallup World Poll (N = 121,207), this study developed a global index of mental balance and a measure of preference for mental balance (as opposed to excitement) across 116 countries. The study examined the global and regional distribution of these two variables and their intercorrelations with a variety of social, economic, cultural, and well-being variables. The results showed that, whereas national wealth and sociopolitical context were the strongest predictors of experiencing mental balance, these variables were not associated with preference for mental balance.

Does Perceived Governance Quality Improve Toward the North and South Poles for Eco-Cultural Reasons?

Good government is vital to human society. But what proximal and distal factors influence this collective goodness perception? Here, we investigate how and why multi-component evaluations by many institutional observers of public governance vary along the north-south rather than east-west axis of the Earth. Across 190 countries, we show that governance quality improves from the equator toward the North and South Poles in both the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. By contrast, governance quality hardly varies from east to west. National wealth, surfacing as the main driver of good government, is spatially distributed along latitude and longitude in the same striking way. In broader detail, governance quality is psychologically accounted for by cultural, economic, and pathogenic explanations, all nested within a climate-based explanation. Taken in total, the results suggest a chain of increasingly distal explanations of the equator-to-pole improvements in perceived governance quality.

The psychological and socio-political consequences of infectious diseases: Authoritarianism, governance, and nonzoonotic (human-to-human) infection transmission

What are the socio-political consequences of infectious diseases? Humans have evolved to avoid disease and infection, resulting in a set of psychological mechanisms that promote disease-avoidance, referred to as the behavioral immune system (BIS). One manifestation of the BIS is the cautious avoidance of unfamiliar, foreign, or potentially contaminating stimuli. Specifically, when disease infection risk is salient or prevalent, authoritarian attitudes can emerge that seek to avoid and reject foreign outgroups while favoring homogenous, familiar ingroups. In the largest study conducted on the topic to date (N > 240,000), elevated regional levels of infectious pathogens were related to more authoritarian attitudes on three geographical levels: across U.S. metropolitan regions, U.S. states, and cross-culturally across 47 countries. The link between pathogen prevalence and authoritarian psychological dispositions predicted conservative voting behavior in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election and more authoritarian governance and state laws, in which one group of people imposes asymmetrical laws on others in a hierarchical structure. Furthermore, cross-cultural analysis illustrated that the relationship between infectious diseases and authoritarianism was pronounced for infectious diseases that can be acquired from other humans (nonzoonotic), and does not generalize to other infectious diseases that can only be acquired from non-human species (zoonotic diseases). At a time of heightened awareness of infectious diseases, the current findings are important reminders that public health and ecology can have ramifications for socio-political attitudes by shaping how citizens vote and are governed.

A Tale of Peaks and Valleys: Sinusoid Relationship Patterns Between Mountainousness and Basic Human Values

Mountains—mythic and majestic—have fueled widespread speculation about their effects on character. Emerging empirical evidence has begun to show that physical topography is indeed associated with personality traits, especially heightened openness. Here, we extend this work to the domain of personal values, linking novel large-scale individual values data ( n = 32,666) to objective indicators of altitude and mountainousness derived from satellite radar data. Partial correlations and conditional random forest machine-learning algorithms demonstrate that altitude and mountainousness are related to increased conservation values and decreased hedonism. Effect sizes are generally small (| r| < .031) but comparable to other socio-ecological predictors, such as population density and latitude. The findings align with the dual-pressure model of ecological stress, suggesting that it might be most adaptive in the mountains to have an open personality to effectively deal with threats and endorse conservative values that promote a social order that minimizes threats.

Proximal versus distal ecological stress: Socio-ecological influences on political freedom, well-being, and societal confidence in 159 nations

Previous work from a socio-ecological perspective reveals that ecological stress has important effects on political, cultural, and psychological outcomes. However, that work has been limited by (1) a focus on distal forms of ecological stress that are hard for societies to control, and (2) a lack of large-scale conceptual replications. The present study aims to fill in these gaps by simultaneously testing the effects of both more distal ecological stress (e.g., climate) and more proximal ecological stress (e.g., water quality) on political restriction, political freedom, well-being, and societal confidence measurements. In a sample from the Gallup World Poll spanning over one and a half million participants and 159 nations, we found that while both kinds of ecological stress measurements predicted greater vertical political restriction, reduced horizontal political restriction, reduced well-being, and reduced freedom, only proximal forms of ecological stress predicted a loss in societal confidence. These results not only provide key conceptual replications of prior studies on new data, they also add previously unstudied outcomes and new ecological stressors. As a result, they help us better understand contributing factors to key societal issues such as freedom, well-being, and societal confidence.

Why are conservatives less concerned about the coronavirus (COVID-19) than liberals? Comparing political, experiential, and partisan messaging explanations

Given research revealing conservatives are more sensitive to disease threat, it is curious that U.S. conservatives were less concerned than liberals with the COVID-19 pandemic. Across four studies that spanned almost ten months throughout the pandemic, we evaluated three potential reasons why conservatives were less concerned: (1) Motivated Political reasons (conservatives held COVID-specific political beliefs that motivated them to reduce concern), (2) Experiential reasons (conservatives were less directly affected by the outbreak than liberals), and (3) Conservative Messaging reasons (differential exposure to/trust in partisan conservative messaging). All four studies consistently showed evidence that political (and not experiential or partisan messaging) reasons more strongly mediated conservatives' lack of concern for COVID-19. Additional analyses further suggested that while they did not serve as strong mediators, experiential factors provided a boundary condition for the conservatism➔perceived threat relationship. These data on over 3000 participants are consistent with a new model of the ideology-disease outbreak interface that can be applied to both the ongoing pandemic and future disease outbreaks.

Physical topography is associated with human personality

Regional differences in personality are associated with a range of consequential outcomes. But which factors are responsible for these differences? Frontier settlement theory suggests that physical topography is a crucial factor shaping the psychological landscape of regions. Hence, we investigated whether topography is associated with regional variation in personality across the United States (n = 3,387,014). Consistent with frontier settlement theory, results from multilevel modelling revealed that mountainous areas were lower on agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism and conscientiousness but higher on openness to experience. Conditional random forest algorithms confirmed mountainousness as a meaningful predictor of personality when tested against a conservative set of controls. East-west comparisons highlighted potential differences between ecological (driven by physical features) and sociocultural (driven by social norms) effects of mountainous terrain.

The Association Between Threat and Politics Depends on the Type of Threat, the Political Domain, and the Country

Theories link threat with right-wing political beliefs. We use the World Values Survey (60,378 participants) to explore how six types of threat (e.g., economic, violence, and surveillance) are associated with multiple political beliefs (e.g., cultural, economic, and ideological identification) in 56 countries/territories. Multilevel models with individuals nested in countries revealed that the threat-political belief association depends on the type of threat, the type of political belief, and the country. Economic-related threats tended to be associated with more left-wing economic political beliefs and violence-related threats tended to be associated with more cultural right-wing beliefs, but there were exceptions to this pattern. Additional analyses revealed that the associations between threat and political beliefs were different across countries. However, our analyses identified few country characteristics that could account for these cross-country differences. Our findings revealed that political beliefs and perceptions of threat are linked, but that the relationship is not simple.

The global ecology of differentiation between us and them

Humans distinguish between we-groups and they-groups, such as relatives versus strangers and higher-ups versus lower-downs, thereby creating crucial preconditions for favouring their own groups while discriminating against others. Reported here is the finding that the extent of differentiation between us and them varies along latitude rather than longitude. In geographically isolated preindustrial societies, intergroup differentiation already peaked at the equator and tapered off towards the poles, while being negligibly related to longitude (observation study 1). Contemporary societies have evolved even stronger latitudinal gradients of intergroup differentiation (survey study 2 around 1970) and discrimination (mixed-method study 3 around 2010). The geography of contemporary differentiation and discrimination can be partially predicted by tropical climate stress (warm winters, hot summers and irregular rainfall), largely mediated by the interplay of pathogen stress and agricultural subsistence (explanatory study 4). The findings accumulate into an index of intergroup discrimination by inhabitants of 222 countries (integrative study 5).

Population Diversity and Ancestral Diversity As Distinct Contributors to Outgroup Prejudice

Previous research has shown conflicting findings on how population diversity influences outgroup prejudice. In some cases, prejudice is greater when minority groups make up a larger portion of the population, whereas in other cases, prejudice is lower as diversity increases. This article examined how the diversity of a culture's ancestry-or its historical heterogeneity-would be related to outgroup attitudes. Historically heterogeneous populations descend from ancestors who have migrated from many parts of the world over the past 500 years and, as a result, have a longer legacy of contact with diverse groups of people. The results of two cross-cultural studies found that greater heterogeneity predicted lower levels of outgroup prejudice, and some evidence that diversity in the current population was related to increased prejudice. The findings suggest that intergroup attitudes have deeply entrenched roots that cannot be fully understood by looking at current indicators.

Evolutionary psychology meets socio-ecological psychology: the motivational psychologies of disease-avoidance and parental care

Specific features of ancestral ecologies had implications for the evolution of psychological mechanisms that regulate specific aspects of human cognition and behavior within contemporary ecologies. These mechanisms produce predictably different attitudes, judgments and behavioral dispositions under different circumstances. This article summarizes two illustrative programs of research-one that focuses on the evolved psychology of disease-avoidance and its many implications, and the other that focuses on the evolved psychology of parental care-giving and its many implications. These programs of research exemplify the generative utility of evolutionary psychological conceptual methods within the domain of socio-ecological psychology.

Latitudinal gradients as scientific tools for psychologists

It is an unmistakable fact of life that animals and plants function differently at lower and higher latitudes with distinct temperatures and rainfall. No less unmistakable are the opposite directions of these latitudinal gradients above and below the equator. Therefore, it would be surprising if there were no opposite north-south gradients in human functioning in the northern and southern hemispheres. And indeed, recent publications and projects have started to validate, integrate, and explain such north-south gradients in cognitive ability, creativity, ingroup-outgroup dynamics, aggressiveness, life satisfaction, and individualism versus collectivism. Our brief review of these contemporary trends cumulates into a latitudinal-tools matrix for further integration and sophistication of the latitude-related ecology of habitual mindsets and practices.

Autocratic Government Moderates the Relationship Between Culture and Legal Restriction

Laws that restrict citizens exist in every form of government. Although previous research has shown that legal restriction is tied to culture-level variables such as collectivism, we propose and test a novel interactive model specifying that the culture-legal restriction relationship will depend on the level of democracy or autocracy present in the government. Specifically, legal restrictions in democracies should show more consistent relationships with culture-level variables because lawmakers in democracies are more directly accountable to the populace. In contrast, legal restrictions in autocracies should be less subject to influence by culture-level variables because lawmakers are less directly accountable to the populace. In our study, we tested this interactive model by examining if horizontal/vertical legal restrictions predict culture-level variables (wealth, urbanity, collectivism) differently for democracies versus autocracies. Results provide qualified support for the model: Especially for higher power tests with larger samples of nations, we found that the level of democracy/autocracy significantly moderated the relationship between culture-level variables and two different types of legal restriction. Also consistent with our model, the nature of these interactions generally revealed significant culture-legal restriction effects for democracies but not autocracies. Our results suggest that the path between culture and legal systems might take very different routes depending on level of autocracy or democracy in the ruling government.

Got Milk? How Freedoms Evolved From Dairying Climates

The roots and routes of cultural evolution are still a mystery. Here, we aim to lift a corner of that veil by illuminating the deep origins of encultured freedoms, which evolved through centuries-long processes of learning to pursue and transmit values and practices oriented toward autonomous individual choice. Analyzing a multitude of data sources, we unravel for 108 Old World countries a sequence of cultural evolution reaching from (a) ancient climates suitable for dairy farming to (b) lactose tolerance at the eve of the colonial era to (c) resources that empowered people in the early industrial era to (d) encultured freedoms today. Historically, lactose tolerance peaks under two contrasting conditions: cold winters and cool summers with steady rain versus hot summers and warm winters with extensive dry periods (Study 1). However, only the cold/wet variant of these two conditions links lactose tolerance at the eve of the colonial era to empowering resources in early industrial times, and to encultured freedoms today (Study 2). We interpret these findings as a form of gene-culture coevolution within a novel thermo-hydraulic theory of freedoms.