How much cultural variation around the globe is explained by ecology?

How much cultural variation is explained by the physical and social ecologies people inhabit? Here, we provide an answer using nine ecological variables and 66 cultural variables (including personality traits, values and norms) drawn from the EcoCultural Dataset. We generate a range of estimates by using different statistical metrics (e.g. current levels, average levels across time, unpredictability across time) of each of the ecological variables. Our results suggest that, on average, ecology explains a substantial amount of human cultural variation above and beyond spatial and cultural autocorrelation. The amount of variation explained depended on the metrics used, with current levels and average levels of ecological conditions explaining the greatest amounts of variance in human culture on average (16% and 20%, respectively).

Family still matters: Human social motivation across 42 countries during a global pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused drastic social changes for many people, including separation from friends and coworkers, enforced close contact with family, and reductions in mobility. Here we assess the extent to which people's evolutionarily-relevant basic motivations and goals-fundamental social motives such as Affiliation and Kin Care-might have been affected. To address this question, we gathered data on fundamental social motives in 42 countries (N = 15,915) across two waves, including 19 countries (N = 10,907) for which data were gathered both before and during the pandemic (pre-pandemic wave: 32 countries, N = 8998; 3302 male, 5585 female; M age  = 24.43, SD = 7.91; mid-pandemic wave: 29 countries, N = 6917; 2249 male, 4218 female; M age  = 28.59, SD = 11.31). Samples include data collected online (e.g., Prolific, MTurk), at universities, and via community sampling. We found that Disease Avoidance motivation was substantially higher during the pandemic, and that most of the other fundamental social motives showed small, yet significant, differences across waves. Most sensibly, concern with caring for one's children was higher during the pandemic, and concerns with Mate Seeking and Status were lower. Earlier findings showing the prioritization of family motives over mating motives (and even over Disease Avoidance motives) were replicated during the pandemic. Finally, well-being remained positively associated with family-related motives and negatively associated with mating motives during the pandemic, as in the pre-pandemic samples. Our results provide further evidence for the robust primacy of family-related motivations even during this unique disruption of social life.

Homo temporus: Seasonal Cycles as a Fundamental Source of Variation in Human Psychology.

Many animal species exhibit seasonal changes in their physiology and behavior. Yet despite ample evidence that humans are also responsive to seasons, the impact of seasonal changes on human psychology is underappreciated relative to other sources of variation (e.g., personality, culture, development). This is unfortunate because seasonal variation has potentially profound conceptual, empirical, methodological, and practical implications. Here, we encourage a more systematic and comprehensive collective effort to document and understand the many ways in which seasons influence human psychology. We provide an illustrative summary of empirical evidence showing that seasons impact a wide range of affective, cognitive, and behavioral phenomena. We then articulate a conceptual framework that outlines a set of causal mechanisms through which seasons can influence human psychology-mechanisms that reflect seasonal changes not only in meteorological variables but also in ecological and sociocultural variables. This framework may be useful for integrating many different seasonal effects that have already been empirically documented and for generating new hypotheses about additional seasonal effects that have not yet received empirical attention. The article closes with a section that provides practical suggestions to facilitate greater appreciation for, and systematic study of, seasons as a fundamental source of variation in human psychology.

C-H-E-A-T: Wordle Cheating Is Related to Religiosity and Cultural Tightness.

Wordle is a daily, online brainteaser. The widespread popularity of the game in the early months of 2022 has also led to widespread cheating. Here, we use data from Google Trends and Twitter to explore correlates of cheating on Wordle. We find that cheating behavior is negatively related to religiosity and cultural tightness. Although this is a benign example of cheating behavior, we discuss how popular trends can be used as case studies of group-level behavior.

Measuring Morality: An Examination of the Moral Foundation Questionnaire's Factor Structure.

Moral foundations theory proposes five domains of morality-harm, fairness, loyalty, purity, and authority. Endorsement of these moral domains is assessed by the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ), a 30-item scale that has undergone intense measurement scrutiny. Across five samples (N = 464,229), we show greatly improved model fit using a Bifactor model that accounts for two kinds of items in the MFQ: judgment and relevance. We add to this space by demonstrating how using this improved measurement structure changes the strength of correlations of the moral foundations with numerous attitudes, cognitive styles, and moral decision-making. Future research should continue to identify what, if anything, the relevance and judgment factors might substantively capture over and above the substantive domains of moral foundations. In the meantime, we recommend that researchers use the Bifactor model for its improved model structure, rather than dropping the relevant items as some have proposed.

On the accuracy, media representation, and public perception of psychological scientists' judgments of societal change.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, psychological scientists frequently made on-the-record predictions in public media about how individuals and society would change. Such predictions were often made outside these scientists' areas of expertise, with justifications based on intuition, heuristics, and analogical reasoning (Study 1; N = 719 statements). How accurate are these kinds of judgments regarding societal change? In Study 2, we obtained predictions from scientists (N = 717) and lay Americans (N = 394) in Spring 2020 regarding the direction of change for a range of social and psychological phenomena. We compared them to objective data obtained at 6 months and 1 year. To further probe how experience impacts such judgments, 6 months later (Study 3), we obtained retrospective judgments of societal change for the same domains (Nscientists = 270; Nlaypeople = 411). Bayesian analysis suggested greater credibility of the null hypothesis that scientists' judgments were at chance on average for both prospective and retrospective judgments. Moreover, neither domain-general expertise (i.e., judgmental accuracy of scientists compared to laypeople) nor self-identified domain-specific expertise improved accuracy. In a follow-up study on meta-accuracy (Study 4), we show that the public nevertheless expects psychological scientists to make more accurate predictions about individual and societal change compared to most other scientific disciplines, politicians, and nonscientists, and they prefer to follow their recommendations. These findings raise questions about the role psychological scientists could and should play in helping the public and policymakers plan for future events. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Increasing psychological distress among Californians from 2013 to 2020: Race/ethnic differences.

The influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health is of mounting concern to population-health researchers. While early reports indicated increases in mental health problems, noticeably absent from these studies is how mental health has changed in 2020 compared to previous years (2013-2019) and whether such trends vary by race/ethnicity. The present study used repeated cross-sectional data from the California Health Interview Survey (n â€‹= â€‹168,216) to systematically document trends in psychological distress scores (Kessler-6 scale; K6) and severe psychological distress scores (K6; 13+) from 2013 to 2020 and by race/ethnicity over the same period. Among all Californians we find that the reported average psychological distress scores increased by 22% between 2013 and 2020. Reported severe psychological distress scores increased 61% from 2013 to 2020. These increases were largely concentrated in the years 2017-2020. Increases in psychological distress were also especially pronounced among non-Latino/a White Californians (29% increase in K6 from 2013 to 2020), Latino/a Californians (14% increase in K6 from 2013 to 2020), and Asian Californians (35% increase in K6 from 2013 to 2020). Multiple and logistic regression models that accounted for sociodemographic and behavioral health covariates echoed these findings. Future research should continue to investigate secular trends in mental health that coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic and carefully situate the shifts into broader temporal perspective.

The Ecology-Culture Dataset: A new resource for investigating cultural variation.

Scholars interested in cultural diversity have long suggested that similarities and differences across human populations might be understood, at least in part, as stemming from differences in the social and physical ecologies individuals inhabit. Here, we describe the EcoCultural Dataset (ECD), the most comprehensive compilation to date of country-level ecological and cultural variables around the globe. ECD covers 220 countries, 9 ecological variables operationalized by 11 statistical metrics (including measures of variability and predictability), and 72 cultural variables (including values, personality traits, fundamental social motives, subjective well-being, tightness-looseness, indices of corruption, social capital, and gender inequality). This rich dataset can be used to identify novel relationships between ecological and cultural variables, to assess the overall relationship between ecology and culture, to explore the consequences of interactions between different ecological variables, and to construct new indices of cultural distance.

Fundamental social motives measured across forty-two cultures in two waves.

How does psychology vary across human societies? The fundamental social motives framework adopts an evolutionary approach to capture the broad range of human social goals within a taxonomy of ancestrally recurring threats and opportunities. These motives-self-protection, disease avoidance, affiliation, status, mate acquisition, mate retention, and kin care-are high in fitness relevance and everyday salience, yet understudied cross-culturally. Here, we gathered data on these motives in 42 countries (N = 15,915) in two cross-sectional waves, including 19 countries (N = 10,907) for which data were gathered in both waves. Wave 1 was collected from mid-2016 through late 2019 (32 countries, N = 8,998; 3,302 male, 5,585 female; Mage = 24.43, SD = 7.91). Wave 2 was collected from April through November 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic (29 countries, N = 6,917; 2,249 male, 4,218 female; Mage = 28.59, SD = 11.31). These data can be used to assess differences and similarities in people's fundamental social motives both across and within cultures, at different time points, and in relation to other commonly studied cultural indicators and outcomes.

Changing cultures, changing brains: A framework for integrating cultural neuroscience and cultural change research.

Cultural neuroscience research has provided substantial evidence that culture shapes the brain by providing systematically different sets of experiences. However, cultures are ever-changing in response to the physical and social environment. In the present paper, we integrate theories and methods from cultural neuroscience with the emerging body of research on cultural change and suggest several ways in which the two fields can inform each other. First, we propose that the cultural change perspective helps us reexamine what is meant by culturally typical experiences, which are shaped by the dynamic interaction between cultural norms, values, meanings, and other environmental constraints on behavior. It also allows us to make predictions about the variability/stability of cultural neural differences over time. Then, we discuss how methods used in cultural change research may be applied to cultural neuroscience research and vice versa. We end with a "blue sky vision" for a neuroscience of cultural change.