A WEIRD Theory? On the Prevalence of Western Folk Theory of Social Change in the West and Asia

According to Western folk theory of social change, modernization of societies causes them to become less warm but more competent over time. Since WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) societies are often at the forefront of modernization (with some exceptions, most notably China), these societies may also be most prone to internalizing this folk theory. In this research, we test this idea by making a comparison across a sample group of Western and Asian societies, using a self-report measure of perceived societal warmth and competence: The Social Change Perception Scale (SCPS). We found the scale to be metrically invariant among university students from a set of Western and Asian countries (United States, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, The Philippines, China, and Malaysia). In all seven countries, people expected their society to become more competent over time. In most countries, people also expected their society to become colder over time, although this tendency was slight and insignificant among New Zealanders and Americans. The perceived social cooling tended to be more prevalent in Asian countries rather than in Western countries. The countries’ degrees of WEIRDness, as reflected in their country-level indicators of individualism, education, industrialization, wealth, and democracy, did not adequately account for the observed variation. Though there is still much work to be done in applying the SCPS to broader samples and contexts, this study provides a starting point for measuring and understanding how people experience the social implications of modernization around the world.

Gendered Self-Views Across 62 Countries: A Test of Competing Models

Social role theory posits that binary gender gaps in agency and communion should be larger in less egalitarian countries, reflecting these countries’ more pronounced sex-based power divisions. Conversely, evolutionary and self-construal theorists suggest that gender gaps in agency and communion should be larger in more egalitarian countries, reflecting the greater autonomy support and flexible self-construction processes present in these countries. Using data from 62 countries ( N = 28,640), we examine binary gender gaps in agentic and communal self-views as a function of country-level objective gender equality (the Global Gender Gap Index) and subjective distributions of social power (the Power Distance Index). Findings show that in more egalitarian countries, gender gaps in agency are smaller and gender gaps in communality are larger. These patterns are driven primarily by cross-country differences in men’s self-views and by the Power Distance Index (PDI) more robustly than the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI). We consider possible causes and implications of these findings.

Negotiated harms in moralized policies: The case of Duterte’s war on drugs

Viewing a policy as harmful can lead to its moral condemnation. However, this harmfulness can be constructed and negotiated to lead to different moral positions by building upon available, accessible, and relevant discourses. This study examined how individuals constructed and negotiated harm in moral reasoning about a contentious policy, Philippine President Duterte’s war on drugs, locally known as tokhang. We conducted thematic analysis with attention to discourse to analyze interviews with 12 Filipino young adults, using the Theory of Dyadic Morality as a starting point to make sense of constructions of harm. Reasoning about tokhang showed different constructions of intentional agents and vulnerable victims serving as the basis for moral positions. Moral condemnation of the war on drugs emphasized the vulnerability of its victims and the intentionality of the government and police as agents. On the other hand, moral justification of the policy constructed drug war victims as agentic and guilty of crimes, the police as potentially vulnerable victims acting according to protocol to defend themselves, and rogue agents acting independently of the policy. Ambiguous positions were also made possible when the causality of harm is unclear. These constructions and negotiations were built upon broader discourses deployed in the sociopolitical context of urban young adults, with individual contexts and characteristics contributing to variations in the accessibility and relevance of certain discourses and resulting moral positions.

Psychometric Properties and Correlates of Precarious Manhood Beliefs in 62 Nations

Precarious manhood beliefs portray manhood, relative to womanhood, as a social status that is hard to earn, easy to lose, and proven via public action. Here, we present cross-cultural data on a brief measure of precarious manhood beliefs (the Precarious Manhood Beliefs scale [PMB]) that covaries meaningfully with other cross-culturally validated gender ideologies and with country-level indices of gender equality and human development. Using data from university samples in 62 countries across 13 world regions ( N = 33,417), we demonstrate: (1) the psychometric isomorphism of the PMB (i.e., its comparability in meaning and statistical properties across the individual and country levels); (2) the PMB’s distinctness from, and associations with, ambivalent sexism and ambivalence toward men; and (3) associations of the PMB with nation-level gender equality and human development. Findings are discussed in terms of their statistical and theoretical implications for understanding widely-held beliefs about the precariousness of the male gender role.