Cultural capital
The Evolution of Culture and Institutions: Evidence from the Kuba Kingdom
Sara Lowes et al.
NBER Working Paper, December 2015
Abstract:
We use variation in historical state centralization to examine the impact of institutions on cultural norms. The Kuba Kingdom, established in Central Africa in the early 17th century by King Shyaam, had more developed state institutions than the other independent villages and chieftaincies in the region. It had an unwritten constitution, separation of political powers, a judicial system with courts and juries, a police force and military, taxation, and significant public goods provision. Comparing individuals from the Kuba Kingdom to those from just outside the Kingdom, we find that centralized formal institutions are associated with weaker norms of rule-following and a greater propensity to cheat for material gain.
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Norms Regulating Emotional Expressions Relate to National Level Generalized Trust
Joanna Schug, Seung Hee Yoo & Gagan Atreya
Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
A number of evolutionarily inspired theories have proposed that facial expressions of emotion can serve as signals of trustworthiness due to their automatic and uncontrollable nature. However, facial expressions of emotion can be concealed and modified in a number of ways, and the nature of this modification can vary across cultures. In this study, we use national level data to examine the relation between generalized trust and variability in cultural norms, known as display rules, which regulate the emotional expressions of individuals on a societal level. Based on research which suggests that the development of generalized trust requires individuals to be able to make dispositional rather than situational attributions for behavior, we argue that the development of trust is inhibited in countries where individuals are likely to conceal or modify their emotional expressions depending on context, rather than express their emotions consistently across situations. We show that generalized trust is lower in countries where there is more within-individual variability in the cultural norms regulating emotional expressions, and that overall emotional expressiveness tends to be positively related with generalized trust only in countries with lower within-individual variability in norms regulating emotional expression.
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Manthos Delis et al.
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We link genetic diversity in the country of origin of the firms' board members with corporate performance via board members' nationality. We hypothesize that our approach captures deep-rooted differences in cultural, institutional, social, psychological, physiological, and other traits that cannot be captured by other recently measured indices of diversity. Using a panel of firms listed in the North American and UK stock markets, we find that adding board directors from countries with different levels of genetic diversity (either higher or lower) increases firm performance. This effect prevails when we control for a number of cultural, institutional, firm-level, and board member characteristics, as well as for the nationality of the board of directors. To identify the relationship, we use - as instrumental variables for our diversity indices - the migratory distance from East Africa and the level of ultraviolet exposure in the directors' country of nationality.
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A Genetic Component to National Differences in Happiness
Michael Minkov & Michael Harris Bond
Journal of Happiness Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
National differences in subjective well-being (SWB) have been attributed to socioeconomic, climatic, and genetic factors. We focus on one particular facet of SWB - happiness or positive affect - measured by the nationally representative World Values Survey (WVS). We find that national percentages of very happy people across the three latest WVS waves (2000-2004, 2005-2009, 2010-2014) are consistently and highly correlated with national prevalence of the rs324420 A allele in the FAAH gene, involved in the hydrolysis of anandamide, a substance that reportedly enhances sensory pleasure and helps reduce pain. Climatic differences are also significantly associated with national differences in happiness, whereas economic wealth, recent economic growth, rule of law, pathogen prevalence, and the distribution of short versus long alleles in the serotonin transporter gene SLC6A4 are not significant predictors of national happiness.
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Will you remember me? Cultural differences in own-group face recognition biases
Andy Ng, Jennifer Steele & Joni Sasaki
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, May 2016, Pages 21-26
Abstract:
East Asians often define their ingroups based on preexisting social relationships (e.g., friends, family), whereas North Americans define their ingroups largely based on broader social categories (e.g., race, nationality; Brewer & Yuki, 2007). In the present research we examined the consequences of this cultural difference for own-group face recognition biases. In Study 1, European Canadians and first-generation East Asian Canadians were assigned to minimal groups. Consistent with previous findings, European Canadians showed superior memory for own-group faces; however, as expected, first-generation East Asian Canadians did not. In Study 2, using university affiliation as the experimentally manipulated social group, European Canadians again showed superior memory for own-group faces, whereas first-generation East Asian Canadians did not. The results are consistent with current theorizing and suggest that the effect of mere social categorization on face recognition is moderated by culture.
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Collectors and Collections: Critical Recognition of the World's Top Art Collectors
L.E.A. Braden
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study examines differential recognition of top art collectors. Using the population of 617 international art collectors named by ARTnews, ArtReview, and Art+Auction from 1990 to 2011, I examine factors that affect the extent of a collector's recognition through naming on ARTnews's annual list of the world's top collectors. The research draws on both humanities and sociological perspectives to model two sets of characteristics that may affect the amount of critical recognition conferred on a collector. First, conceiving that recognition is based on the art object, status characteristics of art collections are considered. Next, characteristics of the art collection's owner (rather than the art objects themselves) are considered. Findings indicate that the extent of recognition a collector receives is based on both collection and collector attributes, even when holding the other constant. Notably, collections specializing in art originating from both culturally dominant and peripheral regions are favored with extended critical recognition, though only collectors residing in culturally dominant regions are consistently distinguished. Overall, results suggest that important overarching status characteristics of object and owner affect the extent to which elite taste and expertise are critically recognized, with the expectation that the greater the extent of recognition, the greater the validation.
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Peter Smith et al.
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Hypotheses are tested that ways of handling anger and their consequences will differ in student samples drawn from dignity cultures (United Kingdom and Finland), honor cultures (Turkey and Pakistan), and face cultures (Hong Kong and China). In line with our hypotheses, holding anger in and controlling anger correlate positively in face cultures but not in other samples, whereas holding anger in and letting anger out correlate positively in honor cultures but not in other samples. Furthermore, holding anger in and letting anger out are more strongly predictive of high depression and low life satisfaction in honor cultures than in other samples. The results provide support for the cross-cultural validity of Spielberger's Anger Expression Inventory and for the proposition that differences in ways of handling anger can be understood in terms of contrasting cultural contexts.
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Automatic Mechanisms for Social Attention Are Culturally Penetrable
Adam Cohen et al.
Cognitive Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Are mechanisms for social attention influenced by culture? Evidence that social attention is triggered automatically by bottom-up gaze cues and is uninfluenced by top-down verbal instructions may suggest it operates in the same way everywhere. Yet considerations from evolutionary and cultural psychology suggest that specific aspects of one's cultural background may have consequence for the way mechanisms for social attention develop and operate. In more interdependent cultures, the scope of social attention may be broader, focusing on more individuals and relations between those individuals. We administered a multi-gaze cueing task requiring participants to fixate a foreground face flanked by background faces and measured shifts in attention using eye tracking. For European Americans, gaze cueing did not depend on the direction of background gaze cues, suggesting foreground gaze alone drives automatic attention shifting; for East Asians, cueing patterns differed depending on whether the foreground cue matched or mismatched background cues, suggesting foreground and background gaze information were integrated. These results demonstrate that cultural background influences the social attention system by shifting it into a narrow or broad mode of operation and, importantly, provides evidence challenging the assumption that mechanisms underlying automatic social attention are necessarily rigid and impenetrable to culture.