Thermal demands and its interactions with environmental factors account for national-level variation in aggression

Abstract

Literature shows that psychological phenomena, including values (e.g., individualism vs. collectivism), personality, and behaviors (e.g., prosocial and aggressive behavior), are geographically clustered. The effects of temperature on interpersonal and intergroup aggression have been studied by many social psychologists. To date the interactions between temperature and other geographical factors have not been addressed. This study is aiming to examine the effects of thermal demands and the moderating effects of natural geographical factors on aggressive behavior at national level. Data for 156 societies was obtained from publicly available databases. Consistent with the life-history theory, results of this study showed that aggressive behavior has a positive relationship with heat demands, and a negative relationship with cold demands. Aggressive behavior is also positively correlated with sunlight and altitude, and negatively correlated with coastline vicinity. Forest, coastline vicinity, and rainfall moderated the effect of thermal demands on aggressive behavior. In societies with more forests, with more rainfall, and closer to coastline, the negative effects of cold demands on aggressive behavior are stronger.

Enriching Psychology by Zooming Out to General Mindsets and Practices in Natural Habitats

“…A major reason to do so is that zooming out to habitual gestalts is of life-and-death importance for managing global crises such as climate change and pandemics. Although habitat-habit associations have become an underexposed research field, a paradigm shift may be looming now that several psychologists have recently rediscovered general habits used by inhabitants to thrive naturally in their natural habitats around the Earth (Conway et al, 2017(Conway et al, , 2020(Conway et al, , 2022Guo et al, 2022;Kong, 2013Kong, , 2016Kusano & Kemmelmeier, 2018;MacLachlan & McVeigh, 2020;Oishi, 2014;Oishi & Graham, 2010;Rentfrow, 2014Rentfrow, , 2020Schaller, 2020;Talhelm, 2020;Tatarko et al, 2021;Uskul & Oishi, 2018;Van de Vliert & Van Lange, 2019Van Lange et al, 2017;Wei et al, 2017).…”