Responses to political partisans are shaped by a COVID-19-sensitive disease avoidance psychology: A longitudinal investigation of functional flexibility.

How do natural changes in disease avoidance motivation shape thoughts about and behaviors toward ingroup and outgroup members? During the COVID-19 pandemic, political party affiliation has been a strong predictor in the United States of COVID-19-related opinions, attitudes, and behaviors. Using a six-wave longitudinal panel survey of representative Americans (on Prolific, N = 1,124, from April 2020 to February 2021), we explored how naturally occurring changes across time in both risks of COVID-19 infection and people's disease avoidance motivation shaped thoughts about and behaviors toward Republicans and Democrats (e.g., perceived infection threat, feelings of disgust, desires to avoid). We found a significant effect of dispositional level of motivation, over and above powerful effects of in-party favoritism/out-party derogation: Participants with a dispositionally stronger motivation to avoid disease showed greater infection management responses, especially toward Republicans; this held even for Republican participants. More importantly, we also found a significant interactive effect of within-person variability and ecological infection risk: Participants who sensitively upregulated their motivation during the rapid spread of COVID-19 perceived greater infection threat by Republicans and felt less disgust toward and desire to avoid Democrats. This finding, too, held for Republican participants. These results provide evidence of functionally flexible within-person psychological disease avoidance-a theoretically important process long presumed and now demonstrated-and suggest another mechanism contributing to U.S. political polarization. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

When expert predictions fail.

We examine the opportunities and challenges of expert judgment in the social sciences, scrutinizing the way social scientists make predictions. While social scientists show above-chance accuracy in predicting laboratory-based phenomena, they often struggle to predict real-world societal changes. We argue that most causal models used in social sciences are oversimplified, confuse levels of analysis to which a model applies, misalign the nature of the model with the nature of the phenomena, and fail to consider factors beyond the scientist's pet theory. Taking cues from physical sciences and meteorology, we advocate an approach that integrates broad foundational models with context-specific time series data. We call for a shift in the social sciences towards more precise, daring predictions and greater intellectual humility.

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.

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).

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).

Not just a hijack: Imaginary worlds can enhance individual and group-level fitness.

Why has fiction been so successful over time? We make the case that fiction may have properties that enhance both individual and group-level fitness by (a) allowing risk-free simulation of important scenarios, (b) effectively transmitting solutions to common problems, and (c) enhancing group cohesion through shared consumption of fictive worlds.

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.

Expert predictions of societal change: Insights from the world after COVID project.

How do experts in human behavior think the world might change after the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic? What advice do they have for the postpandemic world? Is there a consensus on the most significant psychological and societal changes ahead? To answer these questions, we analyzed interviews from the World After COVID Project-reflections of more than 50 of the world's top behavioral and social science experts, including fellows of National Academies and presidents of major scientific societies. These experts independently shared their thoughts on possible psychological changes in society in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and provided recommendations how to respond to the new challenges and opportunities these shifts may bring. We distilled these predictions and suggestions via human-coded analyses and natural language processing techniques. In general, experts showed little overlap in their predictions, except for convergence on a set of social/societal themes (e.g., greater appreciation for social connection, increasing political conflict). Half of the experts approached their post-COVID predictions dialectically, highlighting both positive and negative features of the same domain of change, and many expressed uncertainty in their predictions. The project offers a time capsule of experts' predictions for the effects of the pandemic on a wide range of outcomes. We discuss the implications of heterogeneity in these predictions, the value of uncertainty and dialecticism in forecasting, and the value of balancing explanation with predictions in expert psychological judgment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The psychology of cultural change: Introduction to the special issue.

Human societies are not static. Attitudes, norms, institutions, behavior, and cultural products shift over time, sometimes with dizzying speed. However psychological science has either largely ignored cultural change or tacitly treated it as a source of noise. These changes in fact have important implications not only for psychological theory and research, but also policy, public health, and daily life. The present special issue draws together cutting-edge research and theory that addresses what one might think of as "the What," the "Why," and the "How" of cultural change. The articles encompass a range of theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches and focus on a diverse set of phenomena and processes ranging from personality to prejudice, to collective memory. Here we provide a brief overview and introduction, laying out our hopes to encourage more psychologists to consider cultural change in their own research and to join us in the emerging field of cultural dynamics. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Increasing population densities predict decreasing fertility rates over time: A 174-nation investigation.

Fertility rates have been declining worldwide over the past 50 years, part of a phenomenon known as "the demographic transition." Prior work suggests that this decline is related to population density. In the present study, we draw on life history theory to examine the relationship between population density and fertility across 174 countries over 69 years (1950 to 2019). We find a robust association between density and fertility over time, both within- and between-countries. That is, increases in population density are associated with declines in fertility rates, controlling for a variety of socioeconomic, socioecological, geographic, population-based, and female empowerment variables. We also tested predictions about environmental boundary conditions. In harsher living conditions (e.g., higher homicide or pathogen rates), the effect of increased population density on fertility rates was attenuated. The density-fertility association was also moderated by religiousness and strength of social norms, where the relationship between density and fertility was attenuated in countries with high religiosity and strong social norms. We discuss why and when changes in population density may influence fertility rates and the broader implications of this work. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Lay Beliefs About Gender and Sexual Behavior: First Evidence for a Pervasive, Robust (but Seemingly Unfounded) Stereotype.

Although casual sex is increasingly socially acceptable, negative stereotypes toward women who pursue casual sex remain pervasive. For example, a common trope in television, film, and other media is that women who engage in casual sex have low self-esteem. Despite robust work on prejudice against women who engage in casual sex, little empirical work has focused on the lay theories individuals hold about them. Across six experiments with U.S. adults (N = 1,469), we found that both men and women stereotype women (but not men) who engage in casual sex as having low self-esteem. This stereotype is held explicitly and semi-implicitly; is not driven by individual differences in religiosity, conservatism, or sexism; and is mediated by inferences that women who have casual sex are unsatisfied with their mating strategy-yet the stereotype persists when women are explicitly described as choosing to have casual sex. Finally, the stereotype appears to be unfounded; across experiments, the same participants' sexual behavior was not significantly correlated with their self-esteem.

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.

Culture, ecology, and grounded procedures.

We propose that grounded procedures may help explain psychological variations across cultures. Here we offer a set of novel predictions based on the interplay between the social and physical ecology, chronic sensorimotor experience, and cultural norms.

Why are song lyrics becoming simpler? a time series analysis of lyrical complexity in six decades of American popular music.

Song lyrics are rich in meaning. In recent years, the lyrical content of popular songs has been used as an index of culture's shifting norms, affect, and values. One particular, newly uncovered, trend is that lyrics of popular songs have become increasingly simple over time. Why might this be? Here, we test the idea that increasing lyrical simplicity is accompanied by a widening array of novel song choices. We do so by using six decades (1958-2016) of popular music in the United States (N = 14,661 songs), controlling for multiple well-studied ecological and cultural factors plausibly linked to shifts in lyrical simplicity (e.g., resource availability, pathogen prevalence, rising individualism). In years when more novel song choices were produced, the average lyrical simplicity of the songs entering U.S. billboard charts was greater. This cross-temporal relationship was robust when controlling for a range of cultural and ecological factors and employing multiverse analyses to control for potentially confounding influence of temporal autocorrelation. Finally, simpler songs entering the charts were more successful, reaching higher chart positions, especially in years when more novel songs were produced. The present results suggest that cultural transmission depends on the amount of novel choices in the information landscape.

Variations in the regulation of affective neural responses across three cultures.

In the present research, we assessed the effects of culture on the ability to regulate affective neural responses. Using an event-related potential design focusing on the centroparietal late positive potential (LPP), we found that cultural groups differed in their ability to intentionally regulate these responses. As a group, European Americans demonstrated successful up-regulation of the LPP in response to positive and negative valence images, as did participants from Mexican cultural backgrounds who also showed successful down-regulation of the LPP in response to positive valence images. As a group, participants from Chinese cultural backgrounds did not show evidence of successful up- or down-regulation of LPP responses. This work confirms and extends preliminary findings of cultural variation in emotion regulation abilities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Family Matters: Rethinking the Psychology of Human Social Motivation.

What motives do people prioritize in their social lives? Historically, social psychologists, especially those adopting an evolutionary perspective, have devoted a great deal of research attention to sexual attraction and romantic-partner choice (mate seeking). Research on long-term familial bonds (mate retention and kin care) has been less thoroughly connected to relevant comparative and evolutionary work on other species, and in the case of kin care, these bonds have been less well researched. Examining varied sources of data from 27 societies around the world, we found that people generally view familial motives as primary in importance and mate-seeking motives as relatively low in importance. Compared with other groups, college students, single people, and men place relatively higher emphasis on mate seeking, but even those samples rated kin-care motives as more important. Furthermore, motives linked to long-term familial bonds are positively associated with psychological well-being, but mate-seeking motives are associated with anxiety and depression. We address theoretical and empirical reasons why there has been extensive research on mate seeking and why people prioritize goals related to long-term familial bonds over mating goals. Reallocating relatively greater research effort toward long-term familial relationships would likely yield many interesting new findings relevant to everyday people's highest social priorities.

Culture and personality revisited: Behavioral profiles and within-person stability in interdependent (vs. independent) social orientation and holistic (vs. analytic) cognitive style.

OBJECTIVE: We test the proposition that both social orientation and cognitive style are constructs consisting of loosely related attributes. Thus, measures of each construct should weakly correlate among themselves, forming intraindividually stable profiles across measures over time. METHOD: Study 1 tested diverse samples of Americans (N = 233) and Japanese (N = 433) with a wide range of measures of social orientation and cognitive style to explore correlations among these measures in a cross-cultural context, using demographically heterogeneous samples. Study 2 recruited a new sample of 485 Americans and Canadians and examined their profiles on measures of social orientation and cognitive style twice, one month apart, to assess the stability of individual profiles using these variables. RESULTS: Despite finding typical cross-cultural differences, Study 1 demonstrated negligible correlations both among measures of social orientation and among measures of cognitive style. Study 2 demonstrated stable intraindividual behavioral profiles across measures capturing idiosyncratic patters of social orientation and cognitive style, despite negligible correlations among the same measures. CONCLUSION: The results provide support for the behavioral profile approach to conceptualizing social orientation and cognitive style, highlighting the need to assess intraindividual stability of psychological constructs in cross-cultural research.

The wealth→life history→innovation account of the Industrial Revolution is largely inconsistent with empirical time series data.

Baumard proposes a model to explain the dramatic rise in innovation that occurred during the Industrial Revolution, whereby rising living standards led to slower life history strategies, which, in turn, fostered innovation. We test his model explicitly using time series data, finding limited support for these proposed linkages. Instead, we find evidence that rising living standards appear to have a time-lagged bidirectional relationship with increasing innovation.

The behavioral ecology of cultural psychological variation.

Recent work has documented a wide range of important psychological differences across societies. Multiple explanations have been offered for why such differences exist, including historical philosophies, subsistence methods, social mobility, social class, climactic stresses, and religion. With the growing body of theory and data, there is an emerging need for an organizing framework. We propose here that a behavioral ecological perspective, particularly the idea of adaptive phenotypic plasticity, can provide an overarching framework for thinking about psychological variation across cultures and societies. We focus on how societies vary as a function of six important ecological dimensions: density, relatedness, sex ratio, mortality likelihood, resources, and disease. This framework can: (a) highlight new areas of research, (b) integrate and ground existing cultural psychological explanations, (c) integrate research on variation across human societies with research on parallel variations in other animal species, (d) provide a way for thinking about multiple levels of culture and cultural change, and (e) facilitate the creation of an ecological taxonomy of societies, from which one can derive specific predictions about cultural differences and similarities. Finally, we discuss the relationships between the current framework and existing perspectives. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).