Growing collectivism: irrigation, group conformity and technological divergence

Buggle, Johannes C.

doi:10.1007/s10887-020-09178-3

“…(i) We control for bio-geographic conditions. Research hast started to link bio-geographic conditions to human psychology (122)(123)(124)(159)(160)(161)(162)(163)(164)(165). Here we control for bio-geographic conditions that may have impacted both kinship intensity and human psychology through various channels (e.g., agricultural practices, parasite prevalence, remoteness, genetic heterogeneity) and that previous research have discussed as important factors for human psychology.…”

Section: Potential Endogeneitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ancestral ethnicity-level characteristics like institutions, or means of subsistence, may have impacted both an ethnicities' intensive kinship and their culturally transmitted psychological characteristics found in the children of immigrants. For example, Buggle (162) demonstrates a robust association between a history of irrigation and individualism. Similarly, societal-level institutions or settlement complexity (which previous research has used as a proxy for prosperity) may impact kinship intensity and psychology.…”

Section: S62 Kinship Intensity Of Ancestral Ethnicity and Psychologimentioning

confidence: 99%

The Origins of WEIRD Psychology

Schulz

¹

,

Barahmi-Rad

²

,

Beauchamp

³

et al. 2018

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Recent research not only confirms the existence of substantial psychological variation around the globe but also highlights the peculiarity of populations that are Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD). We propose that much of this variation arose as people psychologically adapted to differing kin-based institutions-the set of social norms governing descent, marriage, residence and related domains. We further propose that part of the variation in these institutions arose historically from the Catholic Church's marriage and family policies, which contributed to the dissolution of Europe's traditional kin-based institutions, leading eventually to the predominance of nuclear families and impersonal institutions. By combining data on 20 psychological outcomes with historical measures of both kinship and Church exposure, we find support for these ideas in a comprehensive array of analyses across countries, among European regions and between individuals with different cultural backgrounds. A growing body of research suggests that populations around the globe vary substantially along several important psychological dimensions, and that people from societies characterized as Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) are particularly unusual (1-6). Often at the extremes of global distributions, people from WEIRD populations tend to be more individualistic, independent, analytically-minded and impersonally prosocial (e.g., trusting strangers) while revealing less conformity, obedience, in-group loyalty and nepotism (3, 5-13). While these patterns are now well documented, efforts to explain this variation from a cultural evolutionary and historical perspective have just begun (13-20). Here, we develop and test a cultural evolutionary theory that aims to explain a substantial portion of this psychological variation, both within and across nations. Not only does our approach contribute to explaining global variation and address why WEIRD societies so often occupy the tail ends of global distributions, but it also helps explain the psychological variation within Europe-among countries, across regions within countries and between individuals with different cultural backgrounds within the same country and region. Our approach integrates three insights. The first, drawing on anthropology, reveals that the institutions built around kinship and marriage vary greatly across societies (21-23) and that much of this variation developed as societies scaled up in size and complexity, especially after the origins of food production 12,000 years ago (22, 24-29). In forging the tightly-knit communities needed to defend agricultural fields and pastures, cultural evolution gradually wove together social norms governing marriage, post-marital residence and ingroup identity (descent), leading to a diversity of kin-based institutions, including the organizational forms known as clans, lineages and kindreds (21, 27, 30). The second insight, based on work in psychology, is that people's motivations, em...

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“…These concepts differ in whether you emphasize your own individual independence or connections and loyalty to certain social groups. Individualistic cultural values are dominant in Western countries, and they are believed to have played an important role in fostering the technological progress and economic growth of this region (Gorodnichenko and Roland 2017; Buggle 2018). Yet, empirical studies in economic history on these cultural traits are largely nonexistent.…”

Section: Persistence and Change In Long-run Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Summaries of Doctoral Dissertations

2020

J. Econ. Hist.

0

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“…(i) We control for bio-geographic conditions. Research hast started to link bio-geographic conditions to human psychology (122)(123)(124)(159)(160)(161)(162)(163)(164)(165). Here we control for bio-geographic conditions that may have impacted both kinship intensity and human psychology through various channels (e.g., agricultural practices, parasite prevalence, remoteness, genetic heterogeneity) and that previous research have discussed as important factors for human psychology.…”

Section: Potential Endogeneitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Origins of WEIRD Psychology

Schulz¹,

Barahmi-Rad²,

Beauchamp³

et al. 2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Recent research not only confirms the existence of substantial psychological variation around the globe but also highlights the peculiarity of populations that are Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD). We propose that much of this variation arose as people psychologically adapted to differing kin-based institutions—the set of social norms governing descent, marriage, residence and related domains. We further propose that part of the variation in these institutions arose historically from the Catholic Church’s marriage and family policies, which contributed to the dissolution of Europe’s traditional kin-based institutions, leading eventually to the predominance of nuclear families and impersonal institutions. By combining data on 20 psychological outcomes with historical measures of both kinship and Church exposure, we find support for these ideas in a comprehensive array of analyses across countries, among European regions and between individuals with different cultural backgrounds.

show abstract

Growing collectivism: irrigation, group conformity and technological divergence

Cited by 55 publications

References 78 publications

The Origins of WEIRD Psychology

The Origins of WEIRD Psychology

Summaries of Doctoral Dissertations

The Origins of WEIRD Psychology

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