The link between intuitive thinking and social conservatism is stronger in WEIRD societies

Abstract

While previous studies reveal mixed findings on the relationship between analytic cognitive style (ACS) and right-wing (conservative) political orientation, the correlation is generally negative. However, most of these studies are based on Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societies, and it is not clear whether this relationship is a cross-culturally stable phenomenon. In order to test cross-cultural generalizability of this finding, we re-analyzed the data collected by the Many Labs 2 Project from 30 politically diverse societies (N = 7,263). Social conservatism is measured with the binding foundations scale, comprising of loyalty (patriotism), authority (respect for traditions), and sanctity (respect for the sacred), as proposed by the moral foundations theory, while ACS is measured by the three-item modified cognitive reflection task. The level of WEIRDness of each country was calculated by scoring how much a culture is Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic. Although social conservatism is negatively associated with ACS in the aggregate, analysis indicates that the relationship is significantly stronger among WEIRD and remains negligible among non-WEIRD cultures. These findings show the cross-cultural variability of this relationship and emphasize the limitations of studying only WEIRD cultures.

Revisiting the rigidity-of-the-right hypothesis: A meta-analytic review.

“…We followed procedures described in the Many Labs 2 project (i.e., Klein et al, 2018; see also Yilmaz & Alper, 2019) to quantify sample WEIRDness via the sample country of origin (see https://osf .io/b7qrt/for/ more detailed information).…”

Cultural Bias in Explainable AI Research: A Systematic Analysis

“…But it was typically the only clue of cultural belonging in the papers, and analyses found that alternative social aggregates (e.g., ethnicity) contributed only negligible explained variance to that already captured by nations (Akaliyski et al, 2021). Depending on the sample's country or region, we also labelled a paper as 'WEIRD', 'non-WEIRD', or 'mixed' based on previous studies' geographical categorizations (Klein et al, 2018;Yilmaz & Alper, 2019).…”

Meta-analyses in Economic Psychology: A sustainable approach to cross-cultural differences

“…• meta-analyses of crowd-sourced data (e.g., Yilmaz and Alper (2019); Huber et al (2023)), whereby a core coordination team of researchers invite multiple independent contributors to collaborate on selected research questions. This approach relies on the horizontal distribution of ownership, resources, and expertise, "enabling the conduct of large-scale research projects, democratizing who contributes to science, and assessing the robustness of findings" (Uhlmann et al, 2019);…”

“…What is more, in 19 of these 25 manuscripts the authors only control for geographic differences through dummy variables in meta-regressions and subgroup analyses, meaning that any related findings can hardly be interpreted and lots of research opportunities lie in this area. It is unsurprising that the remaining 6 papers out of 25 (Oosterbeek et al, 2004;Yilmaz and Alper, 2019;Cochard et al, 2021;Markowsky and Beblo, 2022;Im and Chen, 2022;Marini, 2023) mostly implement traditional meta-analyses, given the suitability of the latter for explaining heterogeneity in Böckenholt, 2017) when conclusively summarizing multiple studies in the same manuscript. They are instead called single-project meta-analyses when self-contained and the included studies are published as separate papers.…”