Around the world
Do Markets Erode Social Responsibility?
Björn Bartling, Roberto Weber & Lan Yao
Quarterly Journal of Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper studies socially responsible behavior in markets. We develop a laboratory product market in which low-cost production creates a negative externality for third parties, but where alternative production with higher costs mitigates the externality. Our first study, conducted in Switzerland, reveals a persistent preference among many consumers and firms for avoiding negative social impact in the market, reflected both in the composition of product types and in a price premium for socially responsible products. Socially responsible behavior is generally robust to varying market characteristics, such as increased seller competition and limited consumer information, and it responds to prices in a manner consistent with a model in which positive social impact is a utility-enhancing feature of a consumer product. In a second study, we investigate whether market social responsibility varies across societies by comparing market behavior in Switzerland and China. While subjects in Switzerland and China do not differ in their degree of social concern in non-market contexts, we find that low-cost production that creates negative externalities is significantly more prevalent in markets in China. Across both studies, consumers in markets exhibit less social concern than subjects in a comparable individual choice context.
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Roy Chua, Yannig Roth & Jean-François Lemoine
Administrative Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper advances a new theoretical model to understand the effect of culture on creativity in a global context. We theorize that creativity engagement and success depend on the cultural tightness—the extent to which a country is characterized by strong social norms and low tolerance for deviant behaviors — of both an innovator’s country and the audience’s country, as well as the cultural distance between these two countries. Using field data from a global online crowdsourcing platform that organizes creative contests for consumer-product brands, supplemented by interviews with marketing experts, we found that individuals from tight cultures are less likely than counterparts from loose cultures to engage in and succeed at foreign creative tasks; this effect is intensified as the cultural distance between the innovator’s and the audience’s country increases. Additionally, tight cultures are less receptive to foreign creative ideas. But we also found that in certain circumstances — when members of a tight culture do creative work in their own or culturally close countries—cultural tightness can actually promote creativity success. This finding implies that some degree of convergent thinking as engendered by tight cultures could be beneficial for creativity, challenging the dominant view in creativity research that divergent thinking is a prerequisite for creative performance.
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Peter Bull & Karolis Miskinis
Journal of Language and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the context of Hofstede’s distinction between collectivist and individualist societies, an analysis was conducted of rhetorical devices utilized to invite affiliative audience responses in 11 speeches delivered by the two principal candidates in the 2012 American presidential election (Barrack Obama and Mitt Romney). Results were compared with preexisting data on Japanese and British political speeches. Whereas Anglo American politicians principally utilized implicit rhetorical devices, the Japanese principally utilized explicit devices. Whereas individualized audience responses (isolated applause and individual remarks) occurred throughout the American speeches, Japanese audiences invariably responded together. Collective audience responses also occurred in the American speeches, but showed a greater diversity than those for the British or Japanese, with chanting and booing, as well as cheering, applause, and laughter. In the American speeches, a significant positive correlation was found between affiliative response rate and electoral success; this is the first study to demonstrate such a significant relationship.
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Does mother tongue make for women's work? Linguistics, household labor, and gender identity
Daniel Hicks, Estefania Santacreu-Vasut & Amir Shoham
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, February 2015, Pages 19–44
Abstract:
This paper studies the formation and persistence of gender identity in a sample of U.S. immigrants. We show that gender roles are acquired early in life, and once established, persist regardless of how long an individual has lived in the U.S. We use a novel approach relying on linguistic variation and document that households with individuals whose native language emphasizes gender in its grammatical structure are significantly more likely to allocate household tasks on the basis of sex and to do so more intensively. We present evidence of two mechanisms for our observed associations – that languages serve as cultural markers for origin country norms or that features of language directly influence cognition and behavior. Our findings do not appear to be driven by plausible alternatives such as selection in migration and marriage markets, as gender norms of behavior are evident even in the behavior of single person households.
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Alex Mesoudi et al.
Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 7 January 2015
Abstract:
Cultural evolutionary models have identified a range of conditions under which social learning (copying others) is predicted to be adaptive relative to asocial learning (learning on one's own), particularly in humans where socially learned information can accumulate over successive generations. However, cultural evolution and behavioural economics experiments have consistently shown apparently maladaptive under-utilization of social information in Western populations. Here we provide experimental evidence of cultural variation in people's use of social learning, potentially explaining this mismatch. People in mainland China showed significantly more social learning than British people in an artefact-design task designed to assess the adaptiveness of social information use. People in Hong Kong, and Chinese immigrants in the UK, resembled British people in their social information use, suggesting a recent shift in these groups from social to asocial learning due to exposure to Western culture. Finally, Chinese mainland participants responded less than other participants to increased environmental change within the task. Our results suggest that learning strategies in humans are culturally variable and not genetically fixed, necessitating the study of the ‘social learning of social learning strategies' whereby the dynamics of cultural evolution are responsive to social processes, such as migration, education and globalization.
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Culture and state boredom: A comparison between European Canadians and Chinese
Andy Ng et al.
Personality and Individual Differences, March 2015, Pages 13–18
Abstract:
The primary goal of the present research was to examine cross-cultural validity of the Multidimensional State Boredom Scale (MSBS) by comparing a European Canadian sample and a Chinese sample. The secondary goal was to explore cross-cultural differences in the actual experience of boredom between European Canadian and Chinese participants when they completed a psychological survey. After establishing cross-cultural validity of the MSBS by eliminating items that functioned differentially across the two cultural groups, we found that European Canadians scored higher on the MSBS than did Chinese. Results are consistent with the literature on cultural differences in ideal affect, such that European North Americans (vs. East Asians) tend to value high-arousal positive affects (e.g., excitement) more, and low-arousal positive affect less (Tsai, Knutson, & Fung, 2006).
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Improving Research in the Emerging Field of Cross-Cultural Sociogenetics: The Case of Serotonin
Michael Minkov, Vesselin Blagoev & Michael Harris Bond
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
We offer a critical overview of studies associating genetic differences in the 5-HTTLPR VNTR in the serotonin-transporter gene with societal differences. We also highlight recent findings from individual-level research on 5-HTTLPR generating new hypotheses concerning the effect of genes on culture. We provide an expanded national index reflecting 5-HTTLPR S-allele prevalence as an improved tool for future research. Our preliminary tests of this tool suggest that national S-allele prevalence is not associated with individualism as has been claimed, but with national neuroticism, IQ and school achievement, Hofstede’s fifth dimension of long-term orientation, and Minkov’s societal hypometropia — a measure of risk acceptance and short-term vision in life history strategy. We encourage detailed research of these associations in future studies.
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Cultural Integration: Experimental Evidence of Convergence in Immigrants’ Preferences
Lisa Cameron et al.
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Cultural traits play a significant role in the determination of economic outcomes and institutions. This paper presents evidence from laboratory experiments on the cultural integration of individuals of Chinese ethnicity in Australia, focusing on social preferences, risk attitudes, and preferences for competition. We find that greater exposure to Western culture is in general associated with a convergence to Western norms of behavior. Specifically, the share of education an individual receives in the West has a strong negative impact on altruism, trust towards individuals of Chinese ethnicity, and trustworthiness, while it has a significant and positive impact on trust towards Australians. For risk and competitive preferences, our results are gender-specific. These findings have important implications for policy making and institution building in multi-cultural societies.
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Jinkyung Na, Michal Kosinski & David Stillwell
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
What will happen if a new tool is introduced to different cultures? What if the tool can potentially bridge those cultures? Will it be used in the same way across cultures and contribute to a decrease in cultural differences? Or will it be used in culturally appropriate ways and eventually integrated into preexisting cultural practices? To answer these questions, we predicted and examined cultural differences in the use of Facebook focusing on social networks. In support of the prediction, the present work found that users in individualistic cultures had more ego-centric networks (i.e., members of networks were connected via the self) than users in collectivistic cultures. The results were consistent across a two-culture comparison and a multicultural analysis across 49 nations. Additional findings suggest that (a) living in individualistic/collectivistic cultures are closely linked to these differences in social networks and (b) the individualism–collectivism may have stronger influences than ecological factors that gave rise to it.
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Benjamin Hebblethwaite
Journal of Black Studies, January 2015, Pages 3-22
Abstract:
Shortly after the catastrophic earthquake that crushed Port-au-Prince and the surrounding towns on January 12, 2010, The New York Times published an article in which columnist David Brooks claimed that “voodoo” is a “progress-resistant” cultural influence because it spreads the message that “life is capricious and planning futile.” Alongside Brooks, many authors promote similar views, especially Christians. I argue that Vodou does not negatively affect progress in Haiti. Rather, there are historical, linguistic, and governmental policies that limit progress. In reality, Vodou practitioners enhance progress in their attention to the planning and giving of ceremonies, in the hierarchical organization they establish in communities, in their ritual and language, and in the education imparted through inheritance, teaching, and initiation. The scapegoating of Vodou by Brooks and others perpetuates a racist colonial legacy, and it betrays an ignorance of the community and the abundant research about it.
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Blaine Robbins
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, February 2015, Pages 277-289
Abstract:
Recent theory predicts that climatic demands in conjunction with wealth-based resources serve to enhance socio-psychological functioning and facilitate the development of cognitive processes such as generalized trust. Past research, however, has provided only cross-sectional evidence to support this theory. In this study, I analyzed a repeated cross-sectional data set that included representative data from 123 societies spread over a 29-year time period. Unbalanced random-effects models and ordinary least squares regression showed that thermal climate and wealth-based resources interacted in their influence on generalized trust. Although the observed associations were robust to potential sources of bias, conditional marginal effect sizes for thermal climate were significantly reduced with the inclusion of confounding control variables. The findings support climatic demands–resource theory of generalized trust, invite new research directions, and yield important implications for trust research and theory.
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Why Chinese discount future financial and environmental gains but not losses more than Americans
Min Gong, David Krantz & Elke Weber
Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, October 2014, Pages 103-124
Abstract:
Understanding country differences in temporal discounting is critical for extending incentive-based environmental policies successfully from developed countries to developing countries. We examined differences between Chinese and Americans in discounting of future financial and environmental gains and losses. In general, environmental use value was discounted significantly more than the monetary values, but environmental existence value was discounted similarly to the monetary values. Confirming previous research, we found that participants discounted gains significantly more than losses. Furthermore, there was a significant interaction between culture and gain/loss outcome: Chinese discounted gains but not losses in both outcome categories more than Americans. Open-ended comments suggest that respondents focused on the uncertainty and foregone returns associated with waiting for future rewards when discounting gains, but focused on the magnitude of the losses and the psychology cost of carrying debts when discounting losses.