Local Types
Parenting Culture(s): Ideal-Parent Beliefs Across 37 Countries
Gao-Xian Lin et al.
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, January 2023, Pages 4-24
Abstract:
What is it to be “an ideal parent”? Does the answer differ across countries and social classes? To answer these questions in a way that minimizes bias and ethnocentrism, we used open-ended questions to explore ideal-parent beliefs among 8,357 mothers and 3,517 fathers from 37 countries. Leximancer Semantic Network Analysis was utilized to first determine parenting culture zones (i.e., countries with shared ideal-parent beliefs) and then extract the predominant themes and concepts in each culture zone. The results yielded specific types of ideal-parent beliefs in five parenting culture zones: being “responsible and children/family-focused” for Asian parents, being “responsible and proper demeanor-focused” for African parents, and being “loving and responsible” for Hispanic-Italian parents. Although the most important themes and concepts were the same in the final two zones -- being “loving and patient,” there were subtle differences: English-speaking, European Union, and Russian parents emphasized “being caring,” while French-speaking parents valued “listening” or being “present.” Ideal-parent beliefs also differed by education levels within culture zones, but no general pattern was discerned across culture zones. These findings suggest that the country in which parents were born cannot fully explain their differences in ideal-parent beliefs and that differences arising from social class or education level cannot be dismissed. Future research should consider how these differences affect the validity of the measurements in question and how they can be incorporated into parenting intervention research within and across cultures.
What do evolutionary researchers believe about human psychology and behavior?
Daniel Kruger, Maryanne Fisher & Catherine Salmon
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
We investigated the prevalence of beliefs in several key and contested aspects of human psychology and behavior in a broad sample of evolutionary-informed scholars (N = 581). Nearly all participants believed that developmental environments substantially shape human adult psychology and behavior, that there are differences in human psychology and behavior based on sex differences from sexual selection, and that there are individual differences in human psychology and behavior resulting from different genotypes. About three-quarters of participants believed that there are population differences from dissimilar ancestral ecologies/environments and within-person differences across the menstrual cycle. Three-fifths believed that the human mind consists of domain-specific, context-sensitive modules. About half of participants believed that behavioral and cognitive aspects of human life history vary along a unified fast-slow continuum. Two-fifths of participants believed that group-level selection has substantially contributed to human evolution. Results indicate that there are both shared core beliefs as well as phenomena that are accepted by varying proportions of scholars. Such patterns represent the views of contemporary scholars and the current state of the field. The degree of acceptance for some phenomena may change over time as evolutionary science advances through the accumulation of empirical evidence.
Adherence to emotion norms is greater in individualist cultures than in collectivist cultures
Allon Vishkin et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
It is generally assumed that there is greater pressure to conform to social norms in collectivist cultures than in individualist cultures. However, most research on cultural differences in social norms has examined norms for behaviors. Here, we examine cultural differences in norms for emotions. Relative to members of collectivist cultures, members of individualist cultures are more attuned to internal states and value them more. Therefore, we predicted that adherence to emotion norms would be greater in individualist than in collectivist cultures. In four studies with 119 samples from 69 distinct countries and over 200,000 participants, we estimated adherence to emotion norms in different cultures, and how deviation from emotion norms is associated with life satisfaction. As predicted, in countries higher in individualism, emotional experiences of individuals were more homogenous and more concordant with the emotions of others in their culture. Furthermore, in more individualist countries, deviation from the mean emotional experience was linked to lower life satisfaction. We discuss two complementary mechanisms that may underlie such differences.
Gendered Self-Views Across 62 Countries: A Test of Competing Models
Natasza Kosakowska-Berezecka et al.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
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.
The roots of female emancipation: Initializing role of Cool Water
Manuel Santos Silva et al.
Journal of Comparative Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The Cool Water condition is a climatic configuration that combines periodically frosty winters with mildly warm summers under the ubiquitous accessibility of fresh water. Historically, it embodied opportunity endowments that weakened fertility pressures, resulting in household formation patterns that empowered women and reduced gender inequality. Reviewing the literature on the deep historic roots of gender inequality, this paper theorizes and provides evidence for a trajectory that (1) originates in the Cool Water climatic configuration, (2) leads to late female marriages in preindustrial times, and (3) eventually paves the way for various gender-egalitarian patterns of the present.
The Feminisation U, cultural norms, and the plough
Luca Uberti & Elodie Douarin
Journal of Population Economics, January 2023, Pages 5-35
Abstract:
The Feminisation U describes the tendency of female labour force participation (FLFP) to first decline and then rise in the process of economic development. While the Feminisation U is often presented as a ‘stylised fact’ of development, empirical support for it is mixed. Here, we show that cultural norms inherited from ancestral plough use exert a moderating influence on the shape of the Feminisation U. Specifically, we find a significantly U-shaped path of FLFP only in countries whose ancestors employed a plough-based agricultural technology. The shape of the U-curve becomes progressively more muted as the share of a country's ancestors that practiced plough agriculture decreases. In countries with little or no legacy of historical plough use, the time path of FLFP is effectively flat. This pattern of results is robust to correcting for dynamic panel bias, instrumenting for per-capita income, and controlling for other potential effect modifiers. Our findings are compatible with a nuanced reading of the main theoretical models proposed in the literature to explain the Feminisation U.
Culture and Explicitness of Persuasion: Linguistic Evidence From a 51-Year Corpus-Based Cross-Cultural Comparison of the United Nations General Debate Speeches Across 55 Countries (1970-2020)
Lin Shen
Cross-Cultural Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
The explicitness of expression or persuasion has been a critical subject of study in cross-cultural studies. The majority of cross-cultural comparisons in this respect, however, have been based on questionnaires and surveys. This study seeks to diversify the methods and validate the results with a corpus-based register analytical approach. Based on the United Nations General Debate Corpus (UNGDC) that comprises comparable multi-cultural speeches, a diachronic comparison (1970-2020) is made between the 2518 speeches (altogether 7,090,221 tokens) of 55 cultures from the East (East, South, and Southeast Asia) and the West (European Union, North America, and Australia) on the dimension ‘explicitness of persuasion’, a synthesized variable operationalized with 6 linguistic features, with the register analytical framework of Multi-Dimensional Analysis (MDA). The potential impacts of the political contexts on the cross-cultural gap in persuasion explicitness are tentatively discussed with the case studies on China and the United States. The results reveal significant difference between the exemplars from the East and the West on the overtness of persuasion, and the gap is generally narrowing down over the 51 years. The quantitative results provide political-setting linguistic evidence for the relevant findings of Hall, Hofstede, and Inglehart & Welzel, and the narrowing gap between cultures from the East and the West in the explicitness of expression points to an open and dynamic view of cultures. This study may offer implications for further research on the cultural styles of political persuasion.
Superstition and Risk Taking: Evidence from “Zodiac Year” Beliefs in China
Ray Fisman et al.
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We show that superstitions — beliefs without scientific grounding — impact the investment and risk-taking of Chinese firms. We focus on widely held beliefs in bad luck during one’s “zodiac year,” which occurs on a 12-year cycle around a person’s birth year, to study superstitions and risk taking. We first show a direct correspondence between zodiac year and risk taking via survey data: respondents are two percentage points more likely to favor no-risk investments if queried during their zodiac year. Turning to corporate decision making, we find that return volatility declines in the chairman’s zodiac year, suggesting a reduction in risk taking overall. Focusing on specific types of risk taking, investment in R&D and corporate acquisitions both decline during the chairman’s zodiac year; returns around acquisition announcements are also lower, suggesting real allocative consequences of zodiac year beliefs.
Tracking emotions from song lyrics: Analyzing 30 years of K-pop hits
Wonkwang Jo & Justin Kim
Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Emotions that are shared by a large number of people could broadly impact affective experiences at the individual level. Here, we used text mining on popular song lyrics -- a cultural product that has been suggested to mirror emotions that many members of a society value and prefer -- to track the changes in emotions over time. Morpheme frequency analysis and structural topic modeling on 2,962 hit K-pop songs from 1990 to 2019 showed converging evidence for increased positive emotional content and decreased negative emotional content embedded within the lyrics. This pattern of temporal shift in emotions aligned with rapid changes in South Korea in the past 30 years, notably a rise in individualism and ego orientation in a traditionally collectivistic culture, as well as economic growth. More generally, this study illustrates a strategy for tracking emotions that people value and prefer from large natural language data, supplementing existing methods such as self-reported surveys and laboratory experiments.
Goal Derailment and Goal Persistence in Response to Honor Threats
Ceren Günsoy et al.
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
In honor cultures, maintaining a positive moral reputation (e.g., being known as an honest person) is highly important, whereas in dignity cultures, self-respect (e.g., competence and success) is strongly emphasized. Depending on their cultural background, people respond differently to threats to these two dimensions of honor. In two studies, we examined the effects of morality-focused and competence-focused threats on people’s goal pursuit in two honor cultures (Turkey, Southern United States, and Latinx) and in a dignity culture (Northern United States). In Study 1, Turkish participants were more likely to reject a highly qualified person as a partner in a future task if that person threatened their morality (vs. no-threat), even though this meant letting go of the goal of winning an award. Participants from the U.S. honor and dignity groups, however, were equally likely to choose the people who gave them threatening and neutral feedback. In Study 2, Turkish and U.S. honor participants were more likely to persist in a subsequent goal after receiving a morality threat (vs. no-threat), whereas U.S. dignity participants were more likely to persist in a subsequent goal after receiving a competence threat (vs. no-threat). These results show that people’s responses to honor threats are influenced by the dominant values of their culture and by the tools that are available to them to potentially restore their reputation (e.g., punishing the offender vs. working hard on a different task). This research can have implications for multicultural contexts in which people can have conflicting goals such as diverse work environments.
The Family Consequences of Terrorism: The Effects of the Tokyo Subway Sarin Attack on Marital Formation and Dissolution
Takuma Kamada
Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, November 2022
Abstract:
Research on the effects of disruptive events on family-related decision making provides competing predictions with different channels, and the available evidence is mixed. This study focuses on the Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995, the most disastrous terrorist attack in modern Japanese history. The findings indicate that in the years following the sarin attack, marriage and divorce rates decreased in areas served by the affected subway lines relative to areas not served by them within the Tokyo metropolis. The effects do not appear to be driven by a change in population compositions. The negative effects of the sarin attack on marriage and divorce are weaker in areas with higher social welfare expenditures. The findings are consistent with the perspective that the sarin attack triggered perceived uncertainty, such that people adhered to their status quo; with the availability of social welfare, they perceived the impact as less pervasive.
Conflict and reciprocity: A study with Palestinian youths
Elisa Cavatorta, Daniel John Zizzo & Yousef Daoud
Journal of Development Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper studies how reciprocity in the forms of conditional cooperation and vindictive behavior is affected by differential exposure to conflict. We use experimental games to measure preferences of adolescents living in the West Bank, and their obligation to cross military checkpoints to go to school as a proxy for differential exposure to the conflict. We find that adolescents who have an obligation to cross military checkpoints to go to school engage in more reciprocal behavior: they more frequently cooperate in response to cooperative behavior and retaliate against hostile behavior. Part of the effect is explained by changes in the beliefs about their peers’ behavior. A re-analysis of micro-datasets from other conflict contexts provides evidence of the generalizability of our results.