People in relationally mobile cultures report higher well-being.

In cultures with high relational mobility, relationships are free and flexible. People can make new friends easily, and they have the freedom to leave unsatisfying relationships. In cultures with low relational mobility, relationships are more fixed, and people have less freedom to leave relationships.

People quasi-randomly assigned to farm rice are more collectivistic than people assigned to farm wheat.

The rice theory of culture argues that the high labor demands and interdependent irrigation networks of paddy rice farming makes cultures more collectivistic than wheat-farming cultures. Despite prior evidence, proving causality is difficult because people are not randomly assigned to farm rice. In this study, we take advantage of a unique time when the Chinese government quasi-randomly assigned people to farm rice or wheat in two state farms that are otherwise nearly identical.

Psychological well-being in Europe after the outbreak of war in Ukraine.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, has had devastating effects on the Ukrainian population and the global economy, environment, and political order. However, little is known about the psychological states surrounding the outbreak of war, particularly the mental well-being of individuals outside Ukraine. Here, we present a longitudinal experience-sampling study of a convenience sample from 17 European countries (total participants = 1,341, total assessments = 44,894, countries with >100 participants = 5) that allows us to track well-being levels across countries during the weeks surrounding the outbreak of war.

The motivating effect of monetary over psychological incentives is stronger in WEIRD cultures.

Motivating effortful behaviour is a problem employers, governments and nonprofits face globally. However, most studies on motivation are done in Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic (WEIRD) cultures. We compared how hard people in six countries worked in response to monetary incentives versus psychological motivators, such as competing with or helping others.

People in Tight Cultures and Tight Situations Wear Masks More: Evidence From Three Large-Scale Studies in China.

Studies have found large differences in masks use during the pandemic. We found evidence that cultural tightness explains mask use differences and this association was more robust in tight situations like subways. In Study 1, we observed 23,551 people's actual mask use in public places around China.

Cultures in Water-Scarce Environments Are More Long-Term Oriented.

Why do some cultures invest more for the long term, whereas others emphasize living in the moment? We took advantage of a natural experiment in Iran to test the theory that long-term water scarcity is an important cause of differences in long-term orientation and indulgence. We found that Iranians in a water-scarce province reported more long-term orientation and less indulgence than did Iranians in a nearby water-rich province (Study 1, = 331). In a field study, Iranians in the water-scarce province sent more résumés for a long-term job ad we posted, whereas Iranians in the water-rich province sent more résumés for a short-term, flexible job (Study 2, = 182).

When Interdependence Backfires: The Coronavirus Infected Three Times More People in Rice-Farming Areas During Chinese New Year.

Interdependent cultures around the world have generally controlled COVID-19 better. We tested this pattern in China based on the rice theory, which argues that historically rice-farming regions of China are more interdependent than wheat-farming areas. Unlike earlier findings, rice-farming areas suffered more COVID-19 cases in the early days of the outbreak.

People in historically rice-farming areas are less happy and socially compare more than people in wheat-farming areas.

Using two nationally representative surveys, we find that people in China's historically rice-farming areas are less happy than people in wheat areas. This is a puzzle because the rice area is more interdependent, and relationships are an important predictor of happiness. We explore how the interdependence of historical rice farming may have paradoxically undermined happiness by creating more social comparison than wheat farming.

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 ( = 15,915) across two waves, including 19 countries (  10,907) for which data were gathered both before and during the pandemic (pre-pandemic wave: 32 countries,  = 8998; 3302 male, 5585 female;   24.

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.

People from the U.S. and China think about their personal and collective future differently.

We investigated how people think about their personal life and their country by testing how participants in the U.S. and China think about personal and collective events in the past and future.

How Rice Fights Pandemics: Nature-Crop-Human Interactions Shaped COVID-19 Outcomes.

Wealthy nations led health preparedness rankings in 2019, yet many poor nations controlled COVID-19 better. We argue that a history of rice farming explains why some societies did better. We outline how traditional rice farming led to tight social norms and low-mobility social networks.

Historical rice farming explains faster mask use during early days of China's COVID-19 outbreak.

In the early days of the coronavirus outbreak, we observed mask use in public among 1,330 people across China. People in regions with a history of farming rice wore masks more often than people in wheat regions. Cultural differences persisted after taking into account objective risk factors such as local COVID cases.

How do humans group non-rigid objects in multiple object tracking?: Evidence from grouping by self-rotation.

Previous studies on perceptual grouping found that people can use spatiotemporal and featural information to group spatially separated rigid objects into a unit while tracking moving objects. However, few studies have tested the role of objects' self-motion information in perceptual grouping, although it is of great significance to the motion perception in the three-dimensional space. In natural environments, objects always move in translation and rotation at the same time.

Relationship between rice farming and polygenic scores potentially linked to agriculture in China.

Following domestication in the lower Yangtze River valley 9400 years ago, rice farming spread throughout China and changed lifestyle patterns among Neolithic populations. Here, we report evidence that the advent of rice domestication and cultivation may have shaped humans not only culturally but also genetically. Leveraging recent findings from molecular genetics, we construct a number of polygenic scores (PGSs) of behavioural traits and examine their associations with rice cultivation based on a sample of 4101 individuals recently collected from mainland China.

Distinguishing the neural mechanism of attentional control and working memory in feature-based attentive tracking.

Surface features are an important component in attentive tracking. However, the neural mechanisms underlying how features affect attentive tracking remain unknown. The present fMRI study addressed this issue by manipulating the intragroup feature complexity and intergroup feature similarity.

Historically rice-farming societies have tighter social norms in China and worldwide.

Data recently published in PNAS mapped out regional differences in the tightness of social norms across China [R. Y. J.

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.

Emerging evidence of cultural differences linked to rice versus wheat agriculture.

Roughly four billion people live in cultures with a legacy of rice farm. Recent studies find that rice cultures are more interdependent than herding cultures and wheat-farming cultures. In China, people from rice-farming areas think more holistically and show less implicit individualism than people from wheat-farming areas.

Ingroup vigilance in collectivistic cultures.

Collectivistic cultures have been characterized as having harmonious, cooperative ingroup relationships. However, we find evidence that people in collectivistic cultures are more vigilant toward ingroup members, mindful of their possible unethical intentions. Study 1 found that Chinese participants were more vigilant than Americans in within-group competitions, anticipating more unethical behaviors from their peers.

The effects of colour complexity and similarity on multiple object tracking performance.

Surface features can be used during multiple object tracking (MOT). Previous studies suggested that surface features might be stored in visual working memory to assist object tracking, and attentive tracking and visual working memory share common attentional resources. However, it is still unknown whether features of both the target and distractor sets will be stored, or features of the target and distractor sets are processed differently.

Who smiles while alone? Rates of smiling lower in China than U.S.

Previous studies have found that Westerners value high intensity positive emotions more than people in China and Japan, yet few studies have compared actual rates of smiling across cultures. Particularly rare are observational studies of real-time smiling (as opposed to smiling in photos). In Study 1, raters coded student ID photos of European American and East Asian students in the U.