Socio-Economic Environment and Human Psychology: Social, Ecological, and Cultural Perspectives 0190492902, 9780190492908

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Socio-​Economic Environment and Human Psychology

 Socio-​Economic Environment and Human Psychology Social, Ecological, and Cultural Perspectives

Edited by

AY Ş E K. ÜSKÜL and Shigehiro OISHI

1

1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2018 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Üskül, Ayşe K., editor. | Oishi, Shigehiro, editor. Title: Socio-economic environment and human psychology : social, ecological, and cultural perspectives / edited by Ayşe K. Üskül, Shigehiro Oishi. Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017046499 | ISBN 9780190492908 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Economics—Sociological aspects. | Economics—Psychological aspects. | BISAC: PSYCHOLOGY / Social Psychology. | BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Economics / Microeconomics. | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural. Classification: LCC HM548 .S6176 2018 | DDC 306.3—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017046499 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

To my family members, including my father, my mother, my sister, my husband and our 7-​year old daughter Mira Ayda whose level of productivity in producing books I don’t even aspire to reach. You all have been the greatest inspiration to me. Ayşe K. Üskül To my undergraduate advisor, the late Professor Tamotsu Fujinaga, whose generosity and wisdom I will never forget. Shigehiro Oishi

CONTENTS

Contributor List  ix Introduction  xi Ayşe K. Üskül and Shigehiro Oishi SECTION 1  



|  Ecology and Economic Activity

­CHAPTER 1 Ecocultural Perspective on Human Behavior  3

John W. Berry



­CHAPTER 2 The Role of Economic Culture in Social

Interdependence: Consequences for Social Exclusion Experiences  33 Ayşe K. Üskül and Harriet Over



­CHAPTER 3 How Rice Farming Shaped Culture in Southern

China  53 Thomas Talhelm and Shigehiro Oishi



­CHAPTER 4 Rationally Irrational? The Ecologies and Economics

of Honor  77 Dov Cohen, Ivan Hernandez, Karl Gruschow, Andrzej Nowak, Michele J. Gelfand, and Wojciech Borkowski SECTION 2  



|  Socio-Economic Status and Inequality

­CHAPTER 5 Decision-​Making Up Against the Wall: A Framework

for Understanding the Behavioral Dimension of Low Socio-Economic Status  105 Jennifer Sheehy-​Skeffington



­CHAPTER 6 Socio-Economic Inequality in Health: Individual-​and

Area-​Level Measures of Socio-Economic Position  129 Nicos Middleton, Panayiota Ellina, George Zannoupas, Demetris Lamnisos, and Christiana Kouta



­CHAPTER 7 Socio-Economic Cultures: How Education Shapes

the Self  171 Rebecca Carey and Lucy Zhang Bencharit



­CHAPTER 8 Context Shapes Human Development: Studies

from Turkey  199 Çiğdem Kağitçibaşi and Zeynep Cemalcilar SECTION 3  



|  Economic Conditions

­CHAPTER 9 Economics of Subjective Well-​Being: Evaluating

the Evidence for the Easterlin Paradox  225 Anke C. Plagnol and Lucia Macchia



­CHAPTER 10 Economic Shifts and Cultural Changes in Individualism:

A Cross-​Temporal Perspective  247 Yuji Ogihara



­CHAPTER 11 Dynamics of Culture Change and Cultural Stability

among the Shuar of Ecuador  271 H. Clark Barrett SECTION 4  



|  Ecological and Economic Threat

­CHAPTER 12 Economic Conditions Cue Evolutionary Challenges:

When a Recession is More Than Just a Recession  299 Jeff Gassen and Sarah E. Hill



­CHAPTER 13 Disasters, Insurance, and Preferences  327

Yasuyuki Sawada Author Biographies  353 Index  363

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CONTRIBUTOR LIST

H. Clark Barrett Department of Anthropology University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA, USA

Dov Cohen Department of Psychology University of Illinois at Urbana-​Champaign Champaign, IL, USA

John W. Berry Department of Psychology Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Panayiota Ellina Department of Nursing Cyprus University of Technology Limassol, Cyprus

Wojciech Borkowski School of Social Sciences and Humanities University of Warsaw Warsaw, Poland

Jeff Gassen Department of Psychology Texas Christian University Fort Worth, TX, USA

Rebecca Carey Department of Psychology Stanford University Stanford, CA, USA Zeynep Cemalcılar Department of Psychology Koç University Istanbul, Turkey

Michele J. Gelfand Department of Psychology University of Maryland College Park, MD, USA Karl Gruschow Department of Psychology University of Illinois at Urbana-​Champaign Champaign, IL, USA

Ivan Hernandez Department of Psychology DePaul University Chicago, IL, USA

Shigehiro Oishi Department of Psychology University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA, USA

Sarah E. Hill Department of Psychology Texas Christian University Fort Worth, TX, USA

Harriet Over Department of Psychology University of York York, England, UK

Çiğdem Kağitçibaşi Department of Psychology Koç University Istanbul, Turkey

Anke C. Plagnol Department of Psychology City, University of London London, England, UK

Christiana Kouta Department of Nursing Cyprus University of Technology Limassol, Cyprus

Yasuyuki Sawada Faculty of Economics University of Tokyo Tokyo, Japan

Demetris Lamnisos Department of Health Science European University Cyprus Nicosia, Cyprus

Jennifer Sheehy-​Skeffington Department of Psychology London School of Economics London, England, UK

Lucia Macchia Department of Psychology City, University of London London, England, UK

Thomas Talhelm Booth School of Business University of Chicago Chicago, IL, USA

Nicos Middleton Department of Nursing Cyprus University of Technology Limassol, Cyprus

Ayşe K. Üskül School of Psychology University of Kent Kent, England, USA

Andrzej Nowak Department of Psychology University of Warsaw Warsaw, Poland

George Zannoupas Department of Nursing Cyprus University of Technology Limassol, Cyprus

Yuji Ogihara Department of Cognitive Psychology Kyoto University Kyoto, Japan

Lucy Zhang Bencharit Department of Psychology Stanford University Stanford, CA, USA

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INTRODUCTION Ayşe K. Üskül and Shigehiro Oishi

S

ocioecological psychology is a relatively new subfield of psychology that investigates humans’ cognitive, emotional, and behavioral adaptation to physical, interpersonal, economic, and political environments. By adopting an objectivist perspective to psychological science and focusing on how objective social and physical environments affect one’s thinking, feeling, and behaviors, as well as how people’s thinking, feeling, and behaviors give rise to social and built environments, it differs from many other subfields of psychology that typically focus on how an individual’s perception and construal of the environment affect one’s thinking, feeling, and behavior (e.g., Dweck, 2006; Wilson, 2011). This way, it moves away from the study of the subjective, intrapsychic phenomenology to elucidate how individuals and different types of ecologies define each other (for reviews, see Oishi, 2010, 2014; Oishi & Graham, 2010). By focusing on the ecology-​psychology interface, socioecological psychology acknowledges the importance of the commonly neglected fact that people most often think, feel emotions, and act in reaction to, and in the presence of, other people and in certain physical, climatic, political, economic, demographic, and cultural conditions. In this book, we focus on one of these environments, namely the socioeconomic environment, which impacts every aspect of individuals’ entire life cycle. By doing so we highlight the importance of situating the individual directly in the everyday realities afforded by economic conditions and settings that provide the material basis of psychological outcomes and

contribute to bridging the psychological with the external circumstances. This approach is important as it highlights the important role that psychology can play in understanding the human experience as embedded in different (economic) ecologies and puts psychology in closer communication with other social sciences, such as sociology and economics, that have a tradition of attending to objective social structural factors. In this edited volume, we underline the value of attending to socioecological approaches in understanding the relationship between the socioeconomic environment and human psychology by including state-​of-​the art research that focuses on the role played by (a) type of ecology and associated economic activity/​structure (e.g., farming, herding), (b) socioeconomic status and inequality (e.g., poverty, educational attainment), (c)  economic conditions (e.g., wealth, urbanization), and (d) ecological and economic threat (e.g., disasters, resource scarcity) in the shaping of different psychological processes including subjective well-​being, construction of the self, endorsement of honor, cognitive styles, responses to social exclusion, food intake, decision-​making, health behaviors, and academic outcomes, among others. We grouped contributions under sections that tap into these topics. However, as it will be apparent, there are cross-​ cutting themes that the readers will come across in different sections. Our decision to prepare an edited volume to focus on the role of different aspects of the socio-economic environment in human psychological processes was motivated by the following theoretical and empirical developments. First, in our view, the amount of accumulated research designed to examine the impact of the socio-economic environment on different psychological processes justifies an edited volume. Research in this area has already produced large evidence on a rich set of connections between economic life and human psychology, linking, for example, on the one hand economic conditions such as wealth, socio-economic status and inequality, and economic change with subjective well-​being, autonomy-​relatedness, and identity, and, on the other hand, economic activities or structures, such as (wheat vs. rice) farming and herding or market economy versus conditions of stable hierarchy, with perceptual and social interdependence, prosociality, coordination, and motivation. The absence of a similar volume in the literature that brings to the reader a collection of different disciplinary approaches to this topic was one of our main motivations to prepare an edited volume that would showcase the rich and diverse set of perspectives researchers take to understand the link between the economic environment and psychological processes. Second, researchers in social science disciplines other than psychology that examine the impact of objective and social structural conditions

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on human reality (e.g., sociology, economics) have limited awareness of the contributions that psychology has made to the study of the association between economic life and human psychological functioning (and vice versa). This book showcases cutting-​edge research from psychology on this topic and helps introduce it to readers in other social science disciplines. Although showcasing psychological research in this area was one of our motivations, our ultimate aim was to bring together perspectives from different social science disciplines. Thus the coverage of this book is not limited to psychology but also includes contributions from researchers in economics, anthropology, epidemiology, and evolutionary science who take a socioecological approach to investigating the link between socioeconomic environment and psychological processes. As will be clear, most chapters also draw links between different disciplines such as social psychology, evolutionary science, and economics, reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of the questions asked in this area of inquiry. Reflecting the different (inter)disciplinary approaches presented across the contributions, this volume also showcases the different methods researchers utilize including archival, experimental (lab-​based and field), correlational, observational, and agent-​based modeling. We hope that the multidisciplinary (and multimethod) nature of this volume will provide a gateway to increasing interdisciplinary communication on the topic in the future and encourage learning from each discipline’s methodological and theoretical strengths to help advance the knowledge in a concerted fashion. Third, research that takes a socioecological approach is becoming increasingly diverse in terms of the location and type of the groups studied in different disciplines. We aimed to bring together contributions that highlights this diversity. Accordingly, the research covered in this volume originates from different parts of the world covering different geographical regions (e.g., Turkey, China, Japan, the United States, Ecuador, the United Kingdom, Cyprus) and kinds of human groups including wheat, rice, tea farmers and herders, rural tribes and metropolitan settlers, working-​class versus middle-​class individuals, low socio-economic groups, and individuals who face recession or disasters. Furthermore, most chapters adopt a comparative socioecological approach that presents evidence for similarities between and variation across the studied economic conditions and activities. By looking beyond single groups and adopting a comparative lens, chapters provide an opportunity to refine, anchor, reinforce, or modify existing arguments and assumptions about human psychology and contribute to the diversity of knowledge in psychological sciences, helping our discipline move away

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from being a study of the WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) societies (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010). Fourth, there are now several groups of researchers in different parts of the world based in different social science departments investigating related research questions that tap into the relationship between socioeconomic environment and human psychology. For the most part, these groups are not connected and are rarely aware of the commonalities and differences in the approaches they take and the conclusions they draw from their research discoveries. We hoped to prepare a volume that would be instrumental in creating a coherent body of knowledge and stimulate collaborative efforts to investigate novel questions at the interface of economic conditions and activities and human psychological processes. Finally, as seen by the Lehman shock, the Eurozone crisis, the yet unknown but feared economic effects of Brexit and other recent booms and busts, economic conditions are constantly changing in many societies. In the middle of economic uncertainties and fast changes, it is timely to focus on the impact of various economic conditions on human psychology that should be of interest to scholars in and outside of psychology and economics, as well as policy makers and the general public.

Overview of the Volume We start this edited volume with contributions from leading researchers in social and (cross)cultural psychology who have significantly advanced our understanding of the association between different forms of economic activities individuals pursue for living and different aspects of human mind and behavior. The first section of the volume, titled “Ecology and Economic Activity” features four chapters that highlight the important role played by ecology, which shapes the type of economic activity in which members of a community engage and the subsequent dominant economic structures in how individuals perceive and act upon their physical and social world. This section starts with a review chapter by John Berry, one of the leading figures who introduced the ecocultural approach to the study of human behavior in the 1960s. In this approach, he emphasizes the role of both ecological and cultural contexts in understanding the development and display of human behavior and highlights the concepts of interaction (reciprocal relationships among elements in the system) and adaptation (change that takes place that may/​may not increase mutual compatibility) in making sense of human behavior in context. In

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this chapter, Berry reviews research that focuses on the dynamic interplay between ecology and human behavior emphasizing consequences for perception, cognition, and social relations. His review of studies (old and new) sheds light into the evolution of ideas that have been examined using the ecocultural approach and highlights the interdisciplinary nature of thinking that cuts across different subfields of anthropology, cognitive science, and psychology. In the following chapter, Ayşe K. Üskül, a social/​cultural psychologist, and Harriet Over, a developmental psychologist, focus on daily requirements induced by pursuing farming or herding for living and the associated consequences for social relationships. Specifically, they discuss how different economies can give rise to different habits and social practices and how these habits and social practices then translate into how individuals relate to others and define their self-​concepts. They review studies conducted with members of tea farming and herding communities in the eastern Black Sea region of Turkey designed to examine the role of social interdependencies individuals build with others in how they respond to social exclusion. This chapter features research conducted with both adults and children with a goal to identify how deep-​rooted the differences between these economic communities might be. In addition to highlighting the role of the economic activity and associated level of social interdependencies in social relationships, this chapter also contributes to a more refined understanding of social exclusion experiences by focusing on the source of social exclusion (by strangers versus close others) and how children respond to social exclusion incidents that they witness and how they morally evaluate those involved in exclusion. In the next chapter, social and cultural psychologists Thomas Talhelm and Shigehiro Oishi focus on even a finer distinction between different types of economic activities and compare wheat farming with rice farming in terms of the likely consequences for coordination and cooperation among individuals that come from communities that earn their livelihood from pursuing these economic activities. Their observations reported in this chapter originate mainly from studies conducted in China based on which they put forward a theory that links southern China’s history of rice farming to its modern-​day culture. They first give a detailed account of how rice farming differs from other forms of farming in terms of labor requirements and need for coordination and how the distinct characteristics of rice farming are expected to shape social relationships and thought styles among individuals from rice farming areas differently compared with those from what farming areas. They then present research evidence

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that demonstrates differences between rice versus wheat farming areas in terms of importance of the self, friend/​stranger distinction, and relational mobility. Finally, they discuss the effects of modernization on changes in rice-​farming and the potential shifts these changes might bring about in human psychology. In the final chapter of the first section of this volume, Dov Cohen and his colleagues discuss a relatively recently introduced distinction between three motivational systems, honor cultures, face cultures, and dignity cultures, and then focus on the ecological (e.g., rough, mountainous terrain) and economic (e.g., presence of portable, stealable wealth) structures that give rise to the emergence of honor cultures. Next, they introduce the distinct characteristics related to honor cultures including short-​term irrationality, which might prove to be a “rational” strategy in the long run. They then test this rationality argument in terms of costs and benefits using agent-​based modeling. Specifically, this chapter draws upon recent work conducted using three agent-​based models that examine when an honor stance proves advantageous and that explore the population dynamics of strategies in the environment. They demonstrate that the long-​term effects of short-​term irrationalities observed in honor cultures may in fact be rational in that they help maximize desired outcomes for the individual and social group at large. The second section of the volume, titled “Socio-economic Status and Inequality,” features four chapters that highlight the role of socio-economic conditions in decision-​making, health, and the self. This section starts with a chapter by the social psychologist Jennifer Sheehy-​Skeffington, who surveys a wide range of evidence for socio-economic status (SES) disparities in health behavior, economic decisions, and educational outcomes. She further examines an intriguing question regarding why low-​SES individuals are more likely than high-​SES individuals to engage in disadvantageous behaviors (e.g., health-​damaging behaviors, suboptimal financial decisions). She offers a new framework for understanding this important phenomenon based on the psychology of resource scarcity (e.g., weakened executive function) and self-​regulation (e.g., less ability to act in line with long-​term goals). In the end, Sheehy-​Skeffington advocates a shift away from the deficit model of poverty to the adaptive, life history theory of poverty. In the second chapter of this section, the epidemiologist Nicos Middleton and his colleagues explore the role of socio-economic posi­ tion in health. The authors focus on the relative position of an individual household and a community in their analyses. At the individual level of

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analysis, Middleton and colleagues examine the role of education, income/​ wealth, and occupational status. At the level of community, they use the census-​ based measure of neighborhood deprivation (e.g., unemployment rate, overcrowding), as well as new multiple indicators that include income, air quality, and crime rate. Besides objective indices of neighborhood deprivation, some researchers use the aggregate of survey responses on concepts such as social capital and collective efficacy. This chapter also provides a useful guideline for indices of community-​level deprivation. The third chapter in this section by social and cultural psychologists Rebecca Carey and Lucy Zhang Bencharit focuses on the role of socioeconomic cultures, defined primarily by level of educational attainment, in human behavior through their impact on one’s experience of self as either independent or interdependent. They first outline how level of educational attainment shapes sociocultural and socio-economic realities through their impact on interactions and social networks; the norms, rules, policies, and practices of formal institutions; and ideas about what is good and normative. They then summarize research illustrating how high school and college-​educated contexts can breed an interdependent self and independent self, respectively, and the consequences these contexts create for cognitive, emotional, and motivational processes. Finally, they focus attention on how parental educational attainment influences children’s educational attainment, further contributing to disparities in our societies and put forward suggestions that are grounded in research for how to overcome these disparities. This chapter contributes to our understanding of how education can have psychological outcomes, going beyond the traditional focus of social sciences on the importance of education for economic outcomes. The fourth and final chapter in this section by Çiğdem Kağitçibaşi and Zeynep Cemalcılar, two social developmental psychologists, first discusses the importance of socio-economic context for human development including topics such as parenting and schooling. The authors then introduce Kağitçibaşi’s theory of family change that takes into account the dynamic interplay between different aspects of social and economic context (e.g., urban-​rural habitat, SES, level of affluence) and how this can lead to the emergence of different types of family models. This approach emphasizes that families and the parenting styles they adopt adapt to the requirements of socio-economic contexts and transform with contextual changes, especially with increasing levels of urbanization and socio-economic development. To highlight the role of socio-economic status in human development, the authors present findings from research conducted in Turkey,

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a cultural context with high levels of social change in recent times, that demonstrates the detrimental effects of low SES on various social (e.g., prosocial behaviors), developmental (e.g., children’s vocabulary), and academic (e.g., school dropout) outcomes. They also present findings from an intervention study aiming to counteract some of the negative consequences of low SES on child development. Their approach not only emphasizes the importance of socio-economic context on human development but also takes into account the changing nature of socio-economic factors. It also situates family as a socializing unit at the core to understand the link between changing environmental conditions and the self. The third section of the volume, titled “Economic Conditions,” brings together three contributions that focus on the role of changes in economic conditions in subjective well-​being, individualism-​collectivism, and culture at large. The economists Anke C. Plagnol and Lucia Macchia tackle a paradoxical finding initially observed by Richard Easterlin, called the Easterlin paradox:  Even though wealthy individuals are happier than poor individuals, economic growth has not increased citizens’ happiness in many countries, including the United States. Recently, however, some researchers have challenged Easterlin’s original observations and shown that economic growth has increased citizens’ happiness in some countries. Plagnol and Macchia review the latest empirical evidence and argue that the Easterlin paradox is still present. Furthermore, the authors explore the factors that contribute to the Easterlin paradox such as social comparison, hedonic adaptation, and consumption norms. The second chapter in this section by the social and cultural psychologist Yuji Ogihara takes a temporal perspective to understand how economic shifts are associated with changes in individualism in the United States, Japan, and China. The author builds on previous research demonstrating that wealth and individualism are positively associated both at the individual and the national level and asks whether this relationship is also present at the temporal level. He first introduces a theoretical account for why economic affluence and level of individualism may be associated. He then presents empirical evidence on economic development in the United States, Japan, and China and temporal changes in individualism focusing on historical shifts in family structure (divorce rate, household size), baby naming practices, and individualistic nature of words in books. He concludes that, over time, as a society becomes more affluent, it becomes more individualistic. He discusses potential underlying mechanisms for this association and makes valuable suggestions for future research in this growing field of inquiry.

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The final chapter in this section by anthropologist H. Clark Barrett examines culture change and culture stability among the Shuar, an indigenous Amazonian society in southeastern Ecuador, a community that is undergoing rapid changes in technology and infrastructure leading to shifts in the economic (e.g., resource sharing, acquisition, and distribution) and social (e.g., marriage and family structures) life. Using a cultural evolutionary perspective, he asks which aspects of the Shuar economic and social life are expected to change and which aspects are expected to remain stable. He also discusses possible processes that shape cultural change and stasis among the Shuar. Through this specific example, Barrett engages with broader questions concerning the dynamics of human cultural history, focusing on the bidirectional feedback between environmental structures and individual behavior. The fourth and final section of the volume, titled “Ecological and Economic Threat,” brings together two contributions that focus on different kinds of threats:  recessions and disasters. Economists, sociologists, and other social scientists have documented the effects of economic crises or threats on various human behaviors, ranging from consumer spending to criminal activities to voting. The links are fairly straightforward—​such as the finding that people do not spend as much money on nonessential items during a recession as they do during an economic boom—​and do not require much psychological analysis. However, recent research emerging from psychology and economics research showed more distal, nonintuitive links between economic conditions and human behaviors. The last two chapters provide us an introduction into psychological responses to ecological and economic threats and how it might be possible to find protection against the damaging consequences of such threats. The chapter by Jeff Gassen, an experimental psychologist, and Sarah Hill, a behavioral ecologist and evolutionary psychologist, reviews research that has approached psychological responses to one particular type of economic threat, namely resource scarcity, from an evolutionary perspective. First, they focus on the effects of economic conditions encountered in childhood on critical developmental outcomes (e.g., thrifty phenotype, eating in the absence of hunger). Next, they review studies that examine how market forces can shape interpersonal relationships (e.g., degree of trust toward and inclusion of others into our in-​groups). Finally, they discuss findings demonstrating the role of recessions in providing information about the local mating market and the benefits and costs associated with investing in mating and parenting (e.g., men’s attitudes toward wealth distribution, use of cosmetics, parental investment). Given the

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damages incurred by modern economic recessions, this chapter provides timely insight into the powerful role played by economic disasters in shaping developmental trajectories and perceptions of our social, physical, and economic environments later in life. The final chapter of the volume by the economist Yasuyuki Sawada starts by highlighting the link between natural or man-​made disasters (including economic disasters as threats) and economic growth and underscores that disasters affect the poor and the vulnerable more negatively than the affluent due to limited physical, financial, and social resources. He then asks how individuals can protect themselves from damaging consequences of disasters. As response to this question, he first reviews several market and nonmarket insurance mechanisms that can help individuals cope with the potential damages caused by disasters, focusing on the linkages between the market, government, and community. Next, he summarizes findings from field experiments conducted to study changes in individual preferences for risk and social preferences (e.g., altruism, fairness) as a function of disasters that can potentially have long-​term negative consequences for development prospects. The identification and the study of the disasters-​preferences link has important policy implications, and accordingly this chapter stresses how this link plays a role in coping, reconstruction, and rehabilitation of a disaster.

Conclusion Through this volume, we aim to introduce the socioecological approach used by an increasing number of social scientists to investigate the interface between the environment and human psychology. Our goal is also to underline the importance of the socio-economic environment as a worthwhile condition to examine when taking into account how individuals think, feel, and behave in context. Since the socioecological psychology is a relatively new subfield of psychology, we hope this volume serves the important goal of contributing to the diversity of approaches taken in psychology and other social sciences.

References Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset. New York: Random House. Oishi, S. (2010). The psychology of residential mobility: Implications for the self, social relationships, and well-​being. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5, 5–​21.

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Oishi, S. (2014). Socio-​ecological psychology. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 581–​609. Oishi, S., & Graham, J. (2010). Social ecology: Lost and found in psychological science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5, 356–​377. Wilson, T. D. (2011). Redirect:  The surprising new science of psychological change. New York: Little, Brown.

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SECTION 1 Ecology and Economic Activity



CHAPTER 1

Ecocultural Perspective on Human Behavior John W. Berry

Introduction: The Ecocultural Approach The ecocultural approach combines the ecological and the cultural approaches to understanding the development and display of human behavior. The ecological approach examines phenomena in their natural contexts and attempts to identify relationships between the phenomena and these contexts. The cultural approach examines behaviors in the cultural contexts in which they develop and are displayed. When these examinations are carried out comparatively, the cross-​cultural approach results. Essential to these approaches are the concepts of interaction and adaptation. Interaction implies reciprocal relationships among elements in the system; adaptation implies changes will take place that may (or may not) increase their mutual fit or compatibility. That is, not all adaptations are positive (in the sense that all members of the group will benefit). For example, Edgerton (1992) claimed that “it has never been demonstrated that all human customs or institutions, or even most of them, have adaptive value (p. 28)” and goes on to show that the opposite (maladaptation) may occur by referring to possible negative reactions to challenges such as depression, schizophrenia, or panic. In addition to this ecological line of thinking (where ecology, culture, and behavior are linked) there is a second line of thinking that originates from contact with other cultures. This second source of influence links the sociopolitical context that brings about contact with other cultures, which in turn shapes both the original culture, the biology, and the behavior of a group. In this case of adaptation to intercultural contact, much research

has shown that groups and individuals adopt various intercultural strategies (Berry, 1980; Sam & Berry, 2016) that may or may not improve their well-​being. Research on these strategies has revealed that there are usually four ways of dealing with these outside cultural influences: assimilation (by giving up one’s heritage culture and becoming absorbed into the larger society); separation (retaining one’s heritage culture and turning away from the larger society); integration (retaining one’s heritage culture while at the same time seeking equitable participation in the larger society); and marginalization (turning away from both one’s heritage culture and the larger society). In most studies, the integration strategy is found to be the most common, probably because individuals find it to be the most adaptive. This may be the case especially in political contexts where the maintenance of one’s own culture and identity are permitted, or even encouraged. Indeed, numerous reviews (e.g., Berry, 1997; Nguyen & Benet-​Martinez, 2013) of the relationship between these various intercultural strategies and adaptation have shown that the most positive adaptations (such as subjective well-​being, positive mental health, and high self-​esteem) are present when individuals adopt the integration strategy. In contrast, those who are marginal to both cultures are least well-​adapted, and those adopting assimilation of separation usually fall in between. By combining the ecological and cultural approaches to how groups and individuals adapt to change, the ecocultural approach to understanding human behavior is generated. Its core claims are that cultural and biological features of human populations interact with, and are adaptive to, both the ecological and sociopolitical contexts in which they develop and live and that the development and display of individual human behavior are adaptive to these ecological, cultural, biological, and sociopolitical contexts. This chapter outlines these contexts and features of groups and the relationships among them and then relates these features to some cognitive and social behaviors in a number of cultures around the world.

The Ecological Perspective The ecological approach to understanding any phenomenon is to examine it in context. These contexts can be naturally occurring or human-​made. The core ideas of the ecological approach have a long history in the natural sciences and have recently become part of understandings and explanations in the social and behavioral sciences.

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Ecology, Culture, and Biology The relationships between ecology and culture have been postulated for a long time in anthropology (see Feldman, 1975). The claim that “culture is adaptive” (see Ember & Ember, 1999, pp. 182–​185) has roots that go back to Forde’s (1934) classic analysis of relationships between physical habitat and societal features in Africa. In that work, Forde examined 16 cultural groups, classifying them as food gatherers, cultivators, or pastoral nomads. In his summary chapters on the relationship between habitat and economy, he was very much aware of the diversity of cultural forms within these broad subsistence categories, but he also wanted to demonstrate that there were “complex relationships between the human habitat and the manifold technical and social devices for its exploitation” (Forde, 1934, p. 460). In a similar vein, Kroeber (1939) demonstrated that cultural areas and natural areas in Aboriginal North America covary. When examining the natural areas of North America on a map and then comparing these with cultural areas, there were remarkable parallels in the overlapping of geographic coverage. For example, the Arctic (above the tree line) had only gathering and hunting subsistence economic activities and was inhabited by only one cultural group (the Inuit). Further south, the Boreal forest and the Plains natural areas also had hunting as a main subsistence activity and were largely inhabited by members of the Athabascan and the Algonkian cultures and language speakers. Both the work of Forde and Kroeber clearly established a link between habitat and culture (including language); they go together spatially in remarkable ways. In biology, the links between habitat and biology go back at least to Darwin (1859) and continue to this day. Species and their individual members adapt through a process of natural selection that allows those traits to that are adaptive to survive and be passed on over generations. This theme of adaptation to habitat has been pervasive in cultural anthropology. It asserts that cultural variations may be understood as adaptations to differing ecological settings or contexts (Boyd & Richardson, 1983). The line of thinking usually is known as cultural ecology (Vayda & Rappaport, 1968), ecological anthropology (Moran, 2006) or environmental anthropology (Townsend, 2009). Note that, unlike earlier simplistic assumptions about how the environment determined human behavior (e.g., the school of “environmental determinism”; Huntington, 1945), the ecological school of thinking has ranged from the notion of possibilism (where the environment sets some constraints on, or limits the range of, possible cultural forms that may emerge) to an emphasis on resource utilization (where

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active and interactive relationships between human populations and their habitats are analyzed in relation to the resources available, such as water, soil, and temperature). A main idea in cultural-​ecology is that of “resource utilization”; this approach has been used in three different ways to understand human adaptation to habitat (Steward, 1955). First is the analysis of the relationship between the physical environment and the economic subsistence system. Second is the examination of shared behavior patterns (cultural customs) associated with a particular subsistence activity. Third is the search for any broader effects of such customs on other aspects of the culture. Of particular interest for psychologists is Steward’s notion of the cognised environment. This concept refers to the “selected features of the environment of greatest relevance to a population’s subsistence.” With this notion, ecological thinking moved away from any links to earlier deterministic views and toward the psychological idea that individuals actively perceive, appraise, and selectively interact with aspects of their environment. As Moran (1990, p. 10) argues, the ecological approach to understanding culture has moved the field in the direction of functionalism: cultural activities are viewed as complex sets of interrelated activities that are collectively adapted to the ecological context in order for societies to manage their subsistence strategies in a particular habitat. In these ecological approaches cultural systems have been viewed as relatively stable or even permanent adaptations (i.e., as a state). Until recently, the study of adaptation as a process (and of adaptability as a system characteristic of cultural populations) has largely been ignored. However, there is now a strongly shared view that cultures evolve over time in response to changing ecological circumstances or as a result of contact with other cultures (e.g., Kottak, 1999; Sutton & Anderson, 2010). This viewpoint has led to a more dynamic conception of ecological adaptation as a continuous interactive process between ecological, cultural, and biological variables. It is from the most recent position that we approach the topic. It is a view that is consistent with more recent general changes in anthropology, away from a “museum” orientation to culture (collecting and organizing static artefacts) to one that emphasizes cultures as constantly changing and that is concerned with creation, metamorphosis, and recreation. This dynamic conception has become linked to the concept of cultural evolution (Boyd, Richerson, & Henrich, 2011; Richerson & Boyd, 2005). The concept of cultural evolution no longer assumes that cultural groups

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advance from lower to higher levels of civilization. Instead, evolution is thought of as a continuous process of mutual adaptation to improve the fit between organisms and societies and their habitat. As argued by Boyd and Richerson (2005): Our ability to successfully adapt to such a diverse range of habitats is often explained in terms of our cognitive ability. Humans have relatively bigger brains and more computing power than other animals, and this allows us to figure out how to live in a wide range of environments. Here we argue that humans may be smarter than other creatures, but none of us is nearly smart enough to acquire all of the information necessary to survive in any single habitat. . . . We owe our success to our uniquely developed ability to learn from others. This capacity enables humans to gradually accumulate information across generations and develop well-​adapted tools, beliefs, and practices that are too complex for any single individual to invent during their lifetime. (p. 82)

In this view, cultural evolution is very much linked to human cognition, and in particular to our abilities to gain the information needed to live successfully in our particular ecosystems. Thus our cognition engages in reciprocal and interactive relationships with ecological contexts and our cultural adaptations.

Ecology and Human Behavior The linking of human behavioral development to cultural and biological adaptation, and thence back to ecology, has an equally long history in psychology (Berry, 1995; Jahoda, 1995). Contemporary thinking about this sequence (ecology-​culture-​behavior) is often traced to the work of Kardiner and colleagues (e.g., Kardiner & Linton, 1939). They proposed that primary institutions (such as subsistence economic and socialization practices) lead to basic personality structures, which in turn lead to secondary institutions (such as art, governance, religion, and play). In this sequence there are ecological beginnings, with cultural and then psychological outcomes. This sequence may form a feedback loop in which the evolved behaviors return to influence the ecological and cultural settings in which they emerged. In the field of psychology, as well as in anthropology, ecological perspectives have become more and more prominent, with the development of the field of environmental (or ecological) psychology. The early work of

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Barker (1968) and Brunswik (1967) attempted to specify the links between ecological context and individual human development and behavior (see also Stokols & Altman, 1987; Werner, 1997). More recent advances (e.g., De Young, 2013; Gifford, 2007)  have developed the field into a highly differentiated set of topics, including the study of behavior settings, place identity, and the impact on behavior of the built environment. These advances in the ecological approach to studying individual behavior have greatly influenced psychological thinking about the development and display of human behavior across cultures. In parallel with environmental psychology, the field of cross-​cultural psychology has generally viewed cultures as differential contexts for development and views behavior as adaptive to these different contexts. In the 1960s there began a series of articles and books more explicitly focused on the psychological outcomes of the process of adapting to ecological, cultural, and biological contexts (Berry, 1966, 1967, 1975, 1976; Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Whiting, 1977; Whiting & Whiting, 1975). There soon followed elaborations of this way of thinking, especially focused on child development (Super & Harkness, 1986, 1997; Weisner, 1984; see also Keller, Poortinga, & Scholmerich, 2002). To elaborate this development, Berry (1966, 1971) originally called his framework an “ecological-​cultural-​behavioral” model (later shortened to “ecocultural” in 1976); Bronfenbrenner (1979) named his approach “ecological”; and the Whitings (Whiting & Whiting, 1975)  referred to their approach as “psychocultural” and also used the concept of “ecological niche.” Super and Harkness (1986, 1997) coined the term “developmental niche,” and Weisner (1984) continued the use of the term “ecocultural.” All of these approaches attempt to understand the development and display of human behavior as a function of the process of group and individual adaptation to ecological, cultural, biological, and sociopolitical (intercultural) settings. Researchers in cross-​ cultural psychology (see Berry, Poortinga, Breugelmans, Chasiotis, & Sam, 2011) have emphasized the analysis of both the natural (ecological) and the cultural (human-​made) features of the environment in order to achieve a complete understanding of human behavior in context. We have argued that ecological and cultural influences operate in tandem (Berry, 1976, 1994). The coining and development of an ecocultural model has been used by Berry in a series of research monographs (Berry, 1976; Berry et  al., 1986; Berry et  al., 2006; Georgas & Berry, 1995; Mishra & Berry, 2016; Mishra, Sinha, & Berry, 1996). Much of this work is reviewed in later sections of this chapter.

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Conceptual and Methodological Issues Universalism The ecocultural approach is rooted in the theoretical perspective known as universalism in cross-​cultural psychology (Berry, Poortinga, Segall, & Dasen, 2002). The universalist perspective asserts that all human societies exhibit commonalities (“cultural universals”) and that all individual human beings possess and share basic psychological processes (“psychological universals”). Cultural universals are those characteristics of societies that are developed and practiced in one way or another in all societies. Psychological universals (Lonner, 1980) are the processes that are shared, species-​common characteristics of all human beings in every culture. Cultural experiences shape the expression of these underlying processes during the course of development and daily activity, resulting in infinite variations in behavioral expression. The methodological advantage of the universalist perspective is that it allows for comparisons of customs and behaviors across cultures and individuals (based on the common underlying process) but makes comparison worthwhile (using the surface variation as basic evidence). There is evidence for the existence of cultural universals in our cognate disciplines of anthropology (e.g., Murdock, 1975), sociology, (e.g., Aberle et  al., 1950), and linguistics (e.g., Chomsky, 2000). In this work, there is substantial evidence that groups everywhere possess shared sociocultural attributes. For example, all peoples have tools, social structures (e.g., norms, roles), social institutions (e.g., marriage, justice), and language. It is also evident that such underlying commonalities are expressed by cultural groups in vastly different ways from one time and place to another. That is, common processes become developed and expressed differentially across groups. This surface variation in customary practices is seen to be the result of differing adaptations to ecological contexts (as portrayed earlier in the discussion of ecological anthropology). With respect to psychological universals, there is parallel evidence for both underlying similarity and surface variation (see Berry et  al., 1997; Triandis et  al., 1980, for overviews of this evidence). For example, all individuals have the basic processes needed to develop, learn, and perform speech; use technology; role-​play, and observe norms. In the field of cross-​ cultural psychology, there are no studies that reveal the absence of any basic psychological process in any cultural group. This point of view was early captured by Cole, Gay, Glick, and Sharp (1971, p. 233): “cultural

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differences in cognition reside more in the situations to which particular cognitive processes are applied than in the existence of a process in one cultural group and its absence in another.” Even with the existence of these common processes, there are obviously vast group and individual differences in the development, and in the way of expressing, these shared underlying processes. These variations in developed competencies and expressed behaviors are interpreted as adaptations to the ecocultural contexts. A classic example of the universalist perspective is from the work of Rivers (1989) who worked in the Torres Strait Islands and administered a variety of psychological tasks. He found that the visual acuity of these people “though superior to that of the normal European, is not so to any marked degree “(p. 45). He went on to make a distinction between “acuity proper, and the power of observation depending on the habit of attending to and discriminating any minute indications which are given by the organ of sense” (p. 12). He concluded that By long continued practice in attending to minute details in surroundings with which he becomes extremely familiar, the savage is able to see and recognize distant objects in a way that appear almost miraculous, but it is doubtful whether his visual powers excell those of the European who has trained his vision to any special end. (p. 43)

Continuing this line of research, Berry (1976) studied the ability to visually discern small elements from a complex background across cultural groups that varied in their degree of hunting versus agriculture subsistence economic activities. All participants were able to perform this disembedding task, and so he considered this process to be universal, common to all human beings. However, the degree to which this ability is developed and used in daily life was found to vary across cultural groups according to the degree to which they engage in gathering and hunting subsistence activities. This combination of underlying similarity with surface expressive variation (i.e., universalism) has been distinguished by Berry and colleagues (Berry, Poortinga, Segall, & Dasen, 1992; 2002; Berry et al., 2011) from two other theoretical views: absolutism denies that there are any important cultural influences on behavioral development and expression, while relativism denies the existence of common underlying psychological processes, even suggesting that cultural experience can alter the basic processes, resulting in changing the very nature of the process. An important

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issue here is to recognize that, while variations in behavioral expression (performances) can be directly observed, underlying commonalities (including both competencies and processes) are theoretical constructions and cannot be observed directly (Troadec, 2001). It may appear paradoxical that this search for our common humanity (our basic similarities) can only be pursued by observing our diversity (our differences). However, this dual task is the essence of cross-​cultural psychology (Berry, 1969, 2000).

Process, Competence, and Performance I now expand on this fundamental distinction in psychology between process, competence, and performance. Processes are those psychological features of individuals that are the fundamental ways in which people deal with their day-​to-​day experiences, such as perception, learning, and categorization. Competencies are those features of individuals that develop with cultural experience, such as abilities, attitudes, and values. They are developed on the basis of the interaction between the basic underlying processes and peoples’ encounters with their daily world. Performances are those activities of individuals that are expressed as behavior, such as skilled work, carrying out projects, or engaging in political action. Performances are those expressions of competencies that are appropriate to, or are triggered by, the need to act in a suitable way in a particular context. The actual performance will depend not only on the competence but also on a host of situational factors (Berland, 1980). For example, all individuals have the basic processes required to learn a language (or multiple languages). Which language(s) will be learned (competencies) depends on the cultural context in which the individual develops. And, in a situation where there is a choice of language, the performance will depend on the language of the interlocutor and the requirement to speak a particular language in any specific situation (such as at work or in one’s cultural community). With respect to competencies, we may distinguish between cognitive and social competencies. Cognitive competencies refer to cultural knowledge about how to carry out daily activities. These can range from some rather mundane abilities (such as those that are useful in carrying out economic roles, knowing how to use the public transport systems) to much more complex sets of knowledge (such as the laws pertaining to taxation or hate speech). Social competencies include such aspects as social sensitivity toward others, attitudes toward one’s own group and other groups, and cultural identities and values.

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With respect to performances, as noted, not everything a person is capable of doing is actually expressed in behavior; the stage needs to be set appropriately for any competence to be performed. Abilities, attitudes, identities, and values may or may not be expressed depending on the social context. Similarly, motivation to acquire a particular competence may be enhance or suppressed. The distinction among process, competence, and performance is important for understanding and interpreting differences in behavior found across cultures. For example, Nisbett (2003, p.  xviii) denies that “everyone has the same basic cognitive processes  . . . or that all rely on the same tools for perception, memory, causal analysis, categorization and inference.” To support the claim, Nisbett and his colleagues have carried out a large number of co-​ordinated experiments by using US American, Chinese or Japanese, and Asian American college students as subjects. Summarizing the findings of these studies Nisbett (2003) concludes: “The research shows that there are indeed dramatic differences in the nature of Asian and European thought processes” (p. xviii). However, Berry et al. (2011) have criticized this claim. They questioned whether these differences in performance were really qualitative differences or only quantitative variations in performance that were all based on a common underlying cognitive process. In summarizing their work, Nisbett (2003, p. 191) claimed that “Most of the time, in fact, Easterners and Westerners were found to behave in ways that were qualitatively distinct” (emphasis added). This conclusion, that there are qualitative differences in basic processes, does not appear to be supported by Nisbett’s own review of the evidence. In our view, the summary provided by Nisbett (2003, pp. 191–​193) of the differences in cognition between East and West all refer to quantitative rather than to qualitative differences in the cognitive performances of participants who represent the “East” and the “West,” rather than to differences in processes. Two issues are important here. First, we see no evidence of qualitative differences in performance: apparently all participants could perform these tasks but to different degrees; hence there can be no claim of a cognitive process being present in one group but absent in the other. Second, even if there were qualitative differences in performance, this would not permit an easy claim of there being differences in underlying basic cognitive processes. The inferences required to go back from performance to process is a complex one, which these researchers seem not to examine. We draw two conclusions from examining the work in this East–​West program of research on culture and cognition. First, we consider that the

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performance differences presented by them are largely a matter of stylistic differences, rather than reflecting qualitative differences in the cognitive life of populations in the East and West. Second, we observe important links between this body of work and the longstanding ecocultural approach to understanding the basis for human cognitive diversity but now using rather novel quasi-​experimental cognitive tasks. Taken together, these comments can be argued to support a view that individuals in cultures develop ways of perceiving and cognizing that allow them to best adapt to the demands that they confront in their daily lives. They develop different competencies, and exhibit different performances, but do not show any evidence of different underlying processes.

Culture: Independent or Organismic? Because the concepts of culture and behavior have been used as distinct concepts in this chapter, one theoretical issue that has been implied is that culture and behavior each have an independent existence. The question whether this is true may be formulated:  Is culture to be conceptualized as an “independent” variable (“out there”) or as an “organismic” variable (“in here”)? Does culture have a separate existence as a quality of groups, or does it reside in the psychological makeup of individuals? In the ecocultural framework, my answer (Berry, 2000) is that it is both. To justify this view, it is helpful to recall the argument (Kroeber, 1917) that culture is “superorganic,” “super” meaning above and beyond and “organic” referring to its individual biological and psychological bases. Two arguments were presented by Kroeber for the independent existence of culture at its own level. First, particular individuals come and go, but cultures remain more or less stable over generations. This is a remarkable phenomenon; despite a large turnover in membership with each new generation, cultures and their institutions remain relatively unchanged. For example, the system of governance or the language generally spoken in a society is recognizably the same over generations, even over centuries. Thus a culture does not depend on particular individuals for its existence but has a life of its own at the collective level of the group. The second argument is that no single individual “possesses” all of the “culture” of the group to which he or she belongs; the culture as a whole is carried by the collectivity and indeed is likely to be beyond the biological or psychological capacity (to know or to do) of any single person in the group. For example, no single person knows all the laws, political institutions, and economic structures that constitute even this limited sector of one’s culture.

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For both these reasons, Kroeber (1917) considered that cultural phenomena are collective phenomena, above the individual person, and hence his use of the term “superorganic.” This superorganic perspective holds that cultures exist prior to any particular individual; we can consider culture as “lying in wait” to pounce on newcomers (be they infants or immigrants) and to draw them into its fold by the processes of cultural transmission (socialization and acculturation; see later discussion). Hence we can claim that culture is, in important ways, an independent variable (or, more accurately, a complex set of interrelated independent variables). However, these same two transmission processes lead to the incorporation of culture into the individual, and hence culture also becomes an organismic variable. It is simultaneously outside and inside the individual. Being both “out there” and “in here” (Berry, 2000) the interactive, mutually influencing character of culture–​behavior relationships becomes manifest. This position is an important one for cross-​cultural psychology since it permits us to employ the group–​individual distinction in attempting to link the information gained by working at these two levels. All attempts to show correlation require independence of conceptualization and operationalization. Having this group–​individual distinction permits the use of correlational methods. And, by using the comparative method, we can design studies that seek variation in cultural contexts and measure variations in behaviors. In this way, we may possibly trace the systematic links across culture between cultural factors and individual psychological development and behavior. When variations in the cultural context are observed to covary with variations in behavior, then such correlations may allow us to claim some influence from culture to behavior and sometimes from behavior to culture. Of course, such correlations do not establish causation; however, systematic patterns of such covariation are difficult to dismiss as mere coincidence. An example of such an approach is in my own work on cognitive style (Berry, 1976; Berry et.al., 1986; Mishra & Berry, 2016; Mishra, Sinha & Berry, 1996). In these studies, different ecological setting was selected (varying from gathering to hunting to agriculture to industrial economic activities) for fieldwork, in which tasks of cognitive style were administered to samples of individuals. As a result of this independence, it was possible to search for systematic score differences between samples and correlations between an ecocultural index and individual scores.

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Methodology There are two methodological issues important here. First, Campbell (1957, 1959) claimed that differences in data obtained from just two cultural groups are inherently uninterpretable. In the studies within the ecocultural framework mentioned earlier (and to be reviewed later), my own work has always sampled from three or more cultures and made comparisons across them. In Berry (1966) there were three cultures; in Berry (1976) there were nine cultures; in Berry et  al. (1986) there were three cultures; in Mishra, Sinha, and Berry (1996) there were five cultures; in Georgas, Berry, van de Vijver, Kağitçibaşi, and Poortinga (2006) there were 30 cultures; and in Mishra and Berry (2016), there were four cultures. This is important because it is not possible to rule out alternative explanations of any psychological difference found between any two cultures. The frequent comparisons between only two samples (such as “Western” and “Eastern”; e.g., Nisbett, 2003) illustrates this problem. A second methodological issues is also relevant to the ecocultural approach. When taking any two cultures to look for psychological differences, the researcher is bound to find some differences. In this case, only post hoc interpretations may be offered. However, when selecting cultural groups based on some ecocultural difference in the group that is theoretically related to (possibly predictive of) some psychological difference, there is a stronger foundation on which to base interpretations of any differences found. In a sense, this design constitutes a “quasi-​experiment” that relies on extant “natural” differences in ecocultural conditions to make predictions about differences in behavior. To illustrate these two methodological issues together, our research in Central Africa (with Biaka hunter-​gatherers, Bagandu forest farmers, and Gbanu savanna farmers) sampled these three groups because they all lived in the same ecosystem but exploited it differently. And our research in Bihar, India (Mishra et al., 1996; Mishra & Berry, 2016) with Adivasi groups (hunter-​gatherer, dry farmer, irrigation farmer, and urban samples) drew samples within the same district from groups that had differential economic exploitative strategies. This kind of research design eliminated one of the confounds that was noted by Üskül, Kitayama, and Nisbett (2008) and that they addressed in their study of farming and fishing peoples living on the coast of the Black Sea. More recently, Talheim et al. (2014) examined the role of rice versus wheat agriculture in regions of China. They examined differences

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in interdependence and dependence between northern wheat farmers and southern rice farmers using a variety of tasks. In one task, they found differences in the degree of analytic versus holistic thinking, with wheat farmers showing relatively more analytic thinking and rice farmers showing more holistic thinking. These differences remained after controlling for some other factors (such as gender, per capita GDP). In addition to using the two-​group contrast between wheat and rice farmers, they employed a gradient of percentage rice farming in more than 25 samples (ranging from 0% to over 80% rice farming). In this way, they were able to deal with the problems noted earlier that plague the two-​group approach. However, they seem to be unaware that this multigroup design has been common in cross-​cultural psychology for many years, claiming that “Cross-​cultural psychologists have mostly contrasted East Asia with the West” (Talhelm et al., 2014, p. 603). More specifically, they are seemingly unaware that cross-​cultural psychologists have worked in many societies for many decades (especially in cognition; see the ecocultural research mentioned earlier in Africa and India, and see Berry & Dasen, 1974; Witkin & Berry, 1975).

The Ecocultural Framework With these issues as background, I now turn to my own work in more detail. For many years, I have advocated an ecocultural approach to cross-​cultural psychology, starting with field work in the Arctic, Sierra Leone and northern Scotland (Berry, 1966). It has evolved through a series of research studies devoted to understanding similarities and differences in cognition and social behavior in relation to ecological and cultural contexts (Berry, 1966, 1967,1976, 1979; Berry et al., 1986; Mishra et al., 1996; Georgas et  al., 2006; Mishra & Berry, 2016). The ecocultural approach has also been used as an organizing framework in a series of books that seek to integrate the vast field of cross-​cultural psychology (Berry et  al., 1992; 2002; Berry et al., 2011; Segall, Dasen, Berry & Poortinga, 1990,1999). Following is an outline of my current thinking about how people adapt culturally (as a group) to their longstanding ecological settings and to the contact with external cultural influences. I continue with a proposal about how people develop psychologically and perform (as individuals) in adaptation to their ecocultural situation. The ecocultural framework (see Figure 1.1) proposes to account for human psychological diversity (both group and individual similarities and

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Ecological Context

Ecological Influences

Biological Adaptation

and

Cultural Adaptation

Genetic Transmission Cultural Transmission

SocioPolitical Context

Observable Behaviors

Inferred Characteristics

Acculturation

Background Variables

Process

Population Level

Variables

Psychological Variables Individual Level

Figure 1.1  An ecocultural framework linking ecology, cultural adaptation, and individual behavior.

differences) by taking into account two fundamental sources of influence (ecological and sociopolitical) and two features of human populations that are adapted to them:  cultural and biological characteristics. These population variables are transmitted to individuals by various “transmission variables” such as enculturation, socialization, genetics, and acculturation. Both cultural and genetic transmission have been strongly advanced by work on culture learning (e.g., Keller, 2002). The essence of both the cultural and biological domains is the fundamental similarity of all members of the human species, combined with variation in the expression of these shared underlying attributes. Work on the impact on cultures and individuals from contact with outside cultures (i.e., through the process of acculturation) has also been advancing in recent years (see Chun, Balls-​Organista, & Marin, 2003; Sam & Berry, 2016) due to the dramatic increases in intercultural contact and culture change. As noted already, the ecocultural framework considers human diversity (both cultural and psychological) to be a set of collective and individual adaptations to context. Within this general perspective, it views cultures as evolving adaptations to ecological and sociopolitical influences and views individual psychological characteristics in a population as adaptive to their cultural context, as well as to the broader ecological and sociopolitical

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influences. And, as noted, it also views (group) culture and (individual) behavior as distinct phenomena that need to be examined independently. This ecocultural framework provides a broad structure within which to examine similarities and differences in human psychological functioning (both at individual and group levels) by taking into account two fundamental sources of influence (ecological and sociopolitical on the left) and a set of variables that link these influences to psychological characteristics. These include cultural and biological adaptations at the population level (also on the left) and four transmission variables in the middle (enculturation, socialization, genetics, and acculturation). These transmission variables are the routes by which the population variables are inculcated into individuals’ behavioral repertoire (on the right). In sum, the framework considers human diversity (both cultural and psychological) to be a set of collective and individual adaptations to context. Within this general perspective, it views cultures as evolving adaptations to ecological and sociopolitical influences and psychological characteristics in a population as adaptive to their cultural context as well as to the broader ecological and sociopolitical influences. In order to conceptualize a number of possible human adaptations to varying habitats, an ecocultural dimension was developed and operationalized (Berry, 1966, 1976) over the range of subsistence economic activities from gatherers to hunters to agriculturalists to urban industrial. This dimension was based on the well-​known views of Marx and Kardiner that the basic economic practices and structures of a group fundamentally influence the cultural and behavioral features of a society and its individual members. This ecological dimension distinguished between forms of subsistence economic activity ranging from hunting and gathering to various forms of agriculture to industrial practices. Linked to this economic range were various demographic and social features of the group. Population size increases linearly from one end (hunting) to the other (industrial), as does a change from nomadic to sedentary settlement style. Political and social structures also vary across this range, with little permanent or structured authority at one end and more intense and hierarchical structures at the other end. Pressures toward social conformity also varied along with such hierarchy. These features of a society were considered to serve as a foundation for both cultural transmission and behavioral development. With respect to cultural transmission, socialization practices vary in a curvilinear way, from an emphasis on assertion in hunting urban societies to an emphasis on compliance in agricultural societies (Barry et  al., 1959)  and again to assertion in urban industrial societies. These

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socialization practices serve to inculcate the cultural features of the society into the behavioral repertoire of individuals growing up in these varying ecological and cultural settings. With respect to the behavioral consequences of the cultural and transmission feature of a society, a number of behavioral domains have been examined across cultures. These are reviewed in the next section. Working at about the same time, Lomax and Berkowitz (1972) found evidence for two independent factors of ecological and cultural variation over the subsistence economic range, from gatherers through hunters to agriculturalists to urban dwellers:  they called these factors “differentiation” and “integration.” The first refers to the number and kinds of role distinctions made in the society, while the second refers to the “groupiness” or degree of cohesion among members of a society, to their solidarity, and to the social coordination of their day-​to-​day activities. While there are two independent dimensions, over the middle range of subsistence strategies the two dimensions are positively correlated. Both increase from hunting to agricultural societies but diverge in societies that are urban/​ industrial: in the latter societies, differentiation continues to increase, but integration drops in industrial (and postindustrial) societies. In our current research (Mishra & Berry, 2016), we examine these two cultural dimensions, calling them societal size and social conformity. These are presented in Figure 1.2, as a function of subsistence strategies.

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Hunter-Gatherer

Dry Agriculture Societal Size

Irrigation Agriculture

Wage Earner

Social Conformity

Figure 1.2  Cultural dimensions of societal size and social conformity in relations to subsistence strategies (from Mishra & Berry, 2016).

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Societal size appears as a linear function of subsistence strategy (increasing from hunter-​gatherer through agricultural to urban/​wage-​earner populations). Social conformity presents a curvilinear relationship (relatively low in gathering, hunting, and industrial societies but higher in rudimentary and irrigation agricultural societies). From these two dimensions, we can predict variations in cognitive and social behaviors for different subsistence strategies of cultural groups. At the second level of the ecocultural framework, the sociopolitical context brings about contact among cultures, so that individuals must now adapt to more than one context. When many cultural contexts are involved (as in situations of multiple culture contacts over years), psychological phenomena can be viewed as attempts to deal simultaneously and successively with two or more (sometimes inconsistent, sometimes conflicting) cultural contexts. Research on these various sociopolitical influences on culture and behavior has come to dominate much of the field of cross-​cultural and intercultural psychology in recent years (Sam & Berry, 2016). This has also taken place with respect to research specifically within the ecocultural framework (Ward & Geeraet, 2016). In many cases there are possible interactions between these ecological and sociopolitical input variables (Berry, 1976). For example, many hunting-​based societies have been readily displaced, with loss of habitat and serious disruption of their social and political structures. Being less structured (lower societal size and social hierarchy), they did not have the customs and institutions to confront or deal with the outside intrusions. In contrast, many agricultural societies had the social and political features (such as larger populations and hierarchical leadership) that permitted some resistance to outside cultural influences. The impact of the experiences stemming from the sociopolitical line of the framework has thus come to the fore. This differential impact of contact with outside cultures was shown by Berry (1976) where the acculturative stress levels (a form of maladaptation) of samples with lower hierarchy was higher than among those with higher social stratification. These differential levels of maladaptation have been found more generally across indigenous and refugee populations, especially in comparison with immigrant and settled populations (Berry, 2006). Finally, it is important to note that the ecocultural approach offers a “value neutral” framework for describing and interpreting similarities and differences in human behavior across cultures (Berry, 1994). As adaptive to context, psychological phenomena can be understood “in their own terms” (as Malinowski insisted), and external evaluations can usually be

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avoided. This is a critical point, since it allows for the conceptualization, assessment, and interpretation of culture and behavior in nonethnocentric ways. It explicitly rejects the idea that some cultures or behaviors are more advanced or more developed than others (Berry, Dasen, & Witkin, 1983; Dasen, Berry, & Witkin, 1979). Any argument about cultural or behavioral differences being ordered hierarchically requires the adoption of some absolute (usually external) standard. But who is so bold, or so wise, to assert and verify such a standard?

Empirical Examples of Research with the Ecocultural Framework Following are some examples of research using the ecocultural framework, distinguishing cognitive and social domains of behavior.

Studies of Cognitive Behaviors Initially (Berry, 1966) the link between ecology, culture, and behavior was elaborated into a framework in order to predict differential development of visual disembedding and analytic and spatial abilities between hunting-​ based and agriculture-​based peoples. The first step was to propose that the “ecological demands” for survival that were placed on hunting peoples were for a high level of these perceptual-​cognitive abilities, in contrast to people employing other (particularly agricultural) subsistence strategies. Second, it was proposed that “cultural aids” (such as socialization practices, linguistic differentiation of spatial information, and the use of arts and crafts) would promote the development of these abilities. As predicted, empirical studies of Inuit (then called Eskimo) in the Canadian Arctic and Temne (in Sierra Leone) revealed marked differences in these abilities. Equivalent research with Scots in Northern Scotland showed that the Inuit were similar in these abilities to this urban sample. Further studies were carried out, and during the course of this program of empirical work, the ideas became further elaborated into the ecocultural framework. In each case, a consideration of ecological and cultural features of the group were taken as a basis for predicting differential psychological outcomes in a variety of domains. For example (Berry, 1967, 1979), differential degrees of reliance on hunting and of social stratification (ranging from “loose” to “tight”; Pelto, 1968) and variations in child socialization practices (ranging from emphases on “assertion” to “compliance”; Barry, Child, & Bacon, 1959) were used to predict variations in the development

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of these functional abilities. Higher levels of social conformity were found among individuals living in agricultural societies than in hunting societies. This finding is an early precursor of later research on independence and interdependence (e.g., Markus & Kitayama, 1994). Central to much of this early work has been the concept of psychological differentiation, particularly to the concept of cognitive style. The concept of cognitive style is rooted in the cognitive processes that underlie any cognitive activity. The most influential conceptualization of cognitive style has been that of Witkin, Dyk, Paterson, Goodenough, and Karp (1962) who developed the dimension of the Field-​Dependent/​Field-​Independent (FDI) cognitive style. Their starting point was a concern with perceptual and orientation abilities (spatial competencies) in air pilot trainees, but they soon noticed that a number of other abilities (including some social competencies) were related to each other in a way that evidenced an underlying pattern. This pattern revealed itself in the tendency to rely primarily on internal (as opposed to external) frames of reference when orienting oneself in space, suggesting an underlying process. At one end of the FDI dimension are those (the relatively Field Independent [FI]) who rely on bodily cues within themselves and are generally less oriented toward social engagement with others; at the other end are those (the relatively Field Dependent [FD]) who rely more on external visual cues and are more socially oriented and competent. As for any psychological dimension, few individuals fall at the extreme ends; most fall in the broad middle range of the dimension. Examples of measures of FDI (the original Embedded Figures Test, and the African version, and the Portable Rod and Frame test) are available on the Internet (see Berry et al., 2011). The FDI cognitive style is referred to by Witkin, Goodenough, and Oltman (1979, p. 1138) as “extent of autonomous functioning.” The FDI construct refers to the extent to which an individual typically relies upon or accepts the physical or social environment as given, in contrast to working on it, for example by analyzing or restructuring it. As the name suggests, those who tend to accept or rely upon the external environment are relatively more field-​dependent, while those who tend to work on it are relatively more field-​independent. The construct is a dimension, the poles of which are defined by the two terms; individuals have a characteristic “place” on this dimension, reflecting their usual degree of independence from the external environment. However, individuals are not “fixed” into their usual place. According to Witkin et al. (1962), the origins of the FDI cognitive style lie in early socialization experiences: those raised to be independent and

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autonomous were found to be relatively FI; those who were controlled more tightly were found to be relatively more FD. When examined across cultures (Witkin & Berry, 1975), many early studies revealed that in societies that emphasize “compliance” in socialization practices (Barry, et al., 1959), and conformity to group norms (Berry, 1967, 1979) tended to develop the FD cognitive style. These are typically those societies that rely on agriculture for their subsistence and that are hierarchical in social structure. In contrast, societies that are based in hunting economic subsistence tend to develop the FI cognitive style, emphasize “assertion” in socialization, and be less conforming to social norms. Subsequent research on perceptual and cognitive abilities (aligned in part to the theory of psychological differentiation, particularly the FD-​FDI cognitive style) resulted in four volumes (Berry, 1976; Berry et al., 1986; Mishra & Berry, 2016; Mishra et al., 1996) reporting results of studies in the Arctic, Africa, Australia, New Guinea, and India. The ecocultural framework has also been used to understand sources of variation in other aspects of perceptual-​cognitive development (Dasen, 1975; Nsamenang, 1992; Zimba, 2002). It has also been used to comprehend the spatial orientation frames of reference used by children in Nepal and elsewhere in Asia (e.g., Dasen & Mishra, 2011; Mishra, Dasen, & Niraula, 2003). These studies have clear relations to an increasing interest in cross-​cultural psychology in indigenous conceptions of cognitive competence and in the cognitive tasks faced by people in daily life (e.g., Allwood & Berry, 2006; Berry & Irvine, 1986; Berry, Irvine, & Hunt, 1988). In these studies, it is argued that the indigenous conceptions of competence need to be uncovered; competencies are to be seen as developments nurtured by activities of daily life (“bricolage”) and as adaptive to ecological context. Understanding the indigenous conceptions, the cognitive values, the daily activities, and the ecological and cultural contexts is an essential prerequisite for valid cognitive assessment. Once again, as for the cross-​cultural and intercultural research strategies, these indigenous (within-​culture) studies need to be carried out from a nonethnocentric stand point (e.g., Berry & Bennett, 1992). Most recently, the ecocultural framework has been used to guide research on the development of cognitive style in Canada, China, Ghana, and India among adults engaged in hunting, agriculture, and industrial activities (Berry, Bennett, Denny, & Mishra, 2002) and among children in hunting-​gathering and agricultural groups in India (Mishra & Berry, 2008, 2016). In this latter study, we examine the distribution of cultural dimensions of societal size and social conformity in different subsistence level

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groups (see Figure 1.2), the development of cognitive style in relation to subsistence strategies of groups, and the relationship between the two cultural dimensions and cognitive style. In the earlier research reviewed already, the cultural dimension involved four variables: degree of political stratification, degree of social stratification, type of family, and socialization emphasis on assertion or compliance. This cultural index was combined with an ecological index to produce an ecocultural index (Berry, 1976), which was used as a unidimensional and bipolar index of ecological and cultural adaptation. However, as noted, two dimensions identified by Lomax and Berkowitz (1972) are now considered to be more appropriate. As noted in the discussion of Figure 1.2, Berry, Bennett, and Denny (1995) proposed and operationalized societal size and social conformity as two cultural dimensions, which tend to vary as a function of subsistence strategies of the groups. Societal size is seen as a linear function of subsistence strategy, while social conformity appears as a curvilinear relationship (relatively low in gathering, hunting, and industrial societies but higher in agricultural societies). A similar distinction has been proposed with respect to cognitive style (Berry, Bennett, & Denny, 1995; Mishra & Berry, 2016). In this view, a cognition consists of certain units and parts. For example, a block design (unit) consists of several blocks (parts). The units and parts may have two basic relations. One, called “distinctiveness,” refers to the recognition of parts and units as distinct from one another. The second, called “connectedness,” refers to the recognition of relationship among parts and units. These relationships may be either intra-​unit (among the parts within an unit) or extra-​unit (among different units). If these notions are combined, we get four cognitive functions. Two of these, intra-​unit distinctiveness and extra-​unit connectedness, have been of main interest in research on cognition in a cross-​cultural perspective. In some research, these dimensions have been referred to as differentiation and contextualization, respectively. The findings of the various studies (reviewed later in this chapter) provide evidence for a curvilinear relationship of differentiation with subsistence economy. The tendency to emphasize distinction among parts of a cognitive unit appears to be low among gatherers, high among hunters, low among rudimentary agriculturists, medium among irrigation agriculturists, and high among urban industrial societies (Berry, 1976; Mishra et al., 1996). On the other hand, the relationship of contextualization with subsistence economy appears to be linear, showing a systematic decrease from gatherers and hunters to industrial society. This conclusion is largely

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based on studies of syllogistic reasoning (Denny & Davis, 1989; Luria, 1976) and mathematical thinking (Denny, 1986; Goody, 1977). Drawing these two domains together, anthropological research suggests the existence of the two dimensions of societal size and social conformity. Cognitive research also provides evidence for two dimensions:  the existence of differentiation and contextualization. Some previous cross-​ cultural research on cognition does suggest the possibility of a predictable relationship between the two cultural and the two cognitive dimensions. In our current research with Adivasi children in India (Mishra & Berry, 2016), we expected that societal size would be low in hunting-​gathering societies and increase over agricultural societies to a high in industrial societies and that social conformity would be low in hunting-​gathering and industrial samples and higher in rudimentary and irrigation agricultural samples. We also expected that differentiation would be relatively higher in hunting-​gathering and urban/​wage-​earning samples than in the agricultural samples. We also expected that there would be a decrease in the level of contextualization from hunting-​gathering to agricultural to urban/​wage-​earning samples. The study was carried out with children belonging to four Adivasi (“Tribal”) groups that varied in subsistence activities (N  =  400). These included hunting-​gathering, dry agriculture, irrigation agriculture, and industrial wage-​earning groups. At each level of subsistence strategy, boys and girls of 9 to 12 years of age were studied. The group variable of societal size was assessed by a number of indicators (e.g., population size and political stratification). Social conformity was assessed by indicators such as the presence of hereditary distinctions, socialization for compliance, and role obligations. The cognitive tests assessed the processes of differentiation and contextualization. Differentiation was assessed by using the Story-​Pictorial E.F.T. (Sinha, 1984). Contextualization was assessed by a syllogistic reasoning test modeled on Luria’s (1976) test using syllogisms that pose familiar and unfamiliar problems for reasoning. Results for the two cultural dimensions show relationships with the subsistence strategy as expected: there is a progressive increase from hunting-​ gathering to wage employment through the two agricultural samples on the measure of societal size, and the relationship of social conformity with subsistence strategies is curvilinear (low in hunting and wage employment but high in the two agricultural groups). It is clear that a group’s subsistence activities do relate in important ways to their cultural features and cognitive characteristics. These results generally support the hypothesis

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regarding the existence of cultural dimensions of societal size and social conformity and their linkages with the subsistence economy of groups.

Studies of Social Behaviors While most use of the ecocultural framework has been in the study of perception and cognition, it has also been useful to explore aspects of social behavior. The notion of social or affective style was introduced by Berry (1973), based on studies of social conformity (Berry, 1967, 1979) and self-​ disclosure. In the theory of psychological differentiation (Witkin et  al., 1962), the FD style was associated with a number of social or affective behaviors such as conformity to social norms and susceptibility to social influence. In the review by Witkin and Berry (1975), studies showed that greater conformity to a suggested group norm is likely in cultures that are structurally tight (with high norm obligation). The relationship is robust, whether examined at the level of individuals or by using the group’s mean score as the variable related to ecology (see Bond & Smith, 1996, for a review). A  further example proposes links between ecocultural indicators and the currently popular concepts of individualism and collectivism (Berry, 1993). He suggested that individualism may be related to the societal size dimension, with greater individualism in a society being predicted by larger, more complex societies. However, collectivism was proposed to be related more to the social conformity dimension, with greater collectivism being related to social conformity: low in hunter-​gatherer and urban/​ wage-​ earning populations and high in agricultural populations. Berry (1994) further suggested that when individualism and collectivism are conceived to be at opposite ends of a single value dimension it is because data are usually obtained in societies (urban/​wage earning) where the two cultural dimensions (societal size and social conformity) are strongly distinguished; if data were to be collected in other types of societies (e.g., hunting or agricultural) where the two dimensions coincide (see Figure 1.2), then this value opposition or incompatibility may not be observed. Research by Georgas and colleagues (Georgas & Berry, 1995; Georgas, van de Vijver, & Berry, 2000) further extends this interest in social aspects of behavior. The first study sought to discover ecological and social indicators that might allow societies to be clustered according to their similarities and differences on six dimensions: ecology, education, economy, mass communications, population, and religion. The second study further examined ecosocial indicators across cultures and then sought evidence of their relationships with a number of psychological variables (such as values).

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Results showed that many of the indicators came together to form a single economic dimension (termed “Affluence”), and this was distinct from “Religion” in the pattern of relationships with the psychological variables. Specifically, across cultures, a high placement on Affluence (along with Protestant Religion) was associated with more emphasis on utilitarianism and personal well-​being. In contrast, for other religions, together with low Affluence, there was an emphasis on power, loyalty, and hierarchy values. Most recently, the ecocultural framework has been used to guide an international study of the structure and function of families (Georgas et  al., 2006). It sought to link ecological and sociopolitical contexts to family structure, family roles, and some related family and personal values. Guided by both the ecocultural framework (Berry, 1976), and a model of family change (Kagitcibasi, 1996), this project sought to understand contemporary families in 30 countries, representing most cultural regions of the world. This study showed that when we examine the relationships between ecological and sociopolitical variables that were drawn from the ecocultural framework and cross-​cultural features of family life, we find that there are predictable patterns, rather than random links. These patterns of relationships that we found among ecological, cultural, and family variables are consistent with the anthropological literature dealing with economic practices and with religious belief systems. They are also consistent with, and were predicted from, previous psychological research carried out within the ecocultural tradition.

Conclusions In this chapter, I have reviewed the early and recent theoretical and empirical work on the ecocultural framework. I  have addressed the question of the origins of similarities and differences in human behavior across cultures and of the relationships between culture and behavior, using the ecocultural framework as a guide. I  have argued that we can go a long way to providing an interpretation of these relationships if we adopt an ecocultural perspective, in which we assume that psychological processes are “universal” in the species and that behaviors are “adaptive” to contexts, both ecological and sociopolitical. Within such a framework, we can conceptualize cultural and individual behavior as separate phenomena:  culture exists apart from particular individuals but becomes incorporated into all individuals through

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two main transmission processes (enculturation and acculturation). Hence culture is both an independent and an organismic variable in such a framework. Given this conception, it is possible to carry out empirical work at the two levels. Analyses can be conducted within levels (the classical ethnographic and individual difference studies). The major advantage, however, exists when cultural-​level data are used to predict individual and group similarities and differences in behavior. No longer do we need to rely on post hoc interpretations of behavioral similarities and differences across cultures. The ecocultural strategy is both “cultural” and “comparative,” allowing for the “cross-​cultural” understanding of human diversity.

Acknowledgment This chapter was prepared within the framework of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics and supported within the framework of a subsidy by the Russian Academic Excellence Project “5-​100.”

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Talhelm, T., Zhang, X., Oishi, S., Shimin, C., Duan, D., Lan, X., & Kitayama, S. (2014). Large-​scale psychological differences within China explained by rive versus wheat agriculture. Science, 344, 603–​608. Troadec, B. (2001). Le modèle écoculturel: Un cadre pour la psychologie culturelle comparative. International Journal of Psychology, 36, 53–​64. Ward, C., & Geeraet, N. (2016). Advancing acculturation theory and research: The acculturation process in its ecological context. Current Opinions in Psychology, 8, 98–​104. Üskül, A. K., Kitayama, S., & Nisbett, R. E. (2008). Ecocultural basis of cognition:  Farmers and fishermen are more holistic than herders. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105, 8552–​8556. Weisner, T. (1984). A cross-​cultural perspective:  Ecocultural niches in middle childhood. In A. Collins (Ed.), The elementary school years (pp. 335–​369). Washington, DC: Academic Press. Whiting, J. W. (1977). A model for psychocultural research. In H. Lieiderman, S. Tulkin, & A. Rosenfeld (Eds.), Culture and infancy: Variations in the human experience (pp. 29–​48). New York: Academic Press. Whiting, B. B., & Whiting, J. W (1975). Children of six cultures: A psychocultural analysis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Witkin, H., & Berry, J. W. (1975). Psychological differentiation in cross-​cultural perspective. Journal of Cross-​Cultural Psychology, 6, 4–​87. Witkin, H. A., Dyk, R. B., Faterson, H. F., & Goodenough, D. R., & Karp, S. A. (1962). Psychological differentiation: Studies of development. New York: John Wiley. Witkin, H., Goodenough, D., & Oltman, P. (1979). Psychological differentiation: Current status. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 1127–​1145. Zimba, R. (2002). Indigenous conceptions of childhood development and social realities in southern Africa. In H. Keller, Y.H. Poortinga, & A. Schomerich (Eds.), Between culture and biology: Perspectives on ontogenetic development (pp. 89–​115). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

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CHAPTER 2

The Role of Economic Culture in Social Interdependence Consequences for Social Exclusion Experiences Ayşe K. Üskül and Harriet Over

Since the rediscovery of cultural psychology as a modern discipline in the 1990s, the field has seen a steady growth in research evidence demonstrating substantial cross-​cultural variation in psychological processes. This evidence has made it clear that psychological processes that were once assumed to operate following universal rules might be linked systematically, and much more closely than had ever before been imagined, to certain aspects of sociocultural contexts (Campbell, 1975). As seen in several recent review articles on culture and psychology (e.g., Gelfand, Erez, & Aycan, 2007; Heine & Buchtel, 2009; Kitayama & Üskül, 2011), we now have findings emerging from studies that employ a variety of different methods showing that some fundamental aspects of basic psychological processes such as cognition, emotion, and motivation are systematically influenced by culture. Cultures vary along multiple dimensions including hierarchical relations (Hofstede, 1980; Shavitt, Torelli, & Riemer, 2010), honor (Üskül, Cross, Gunsoy, & Gul, in press), social norms (Gelfand, 2012; Gelfand, Raver, Nishii, Leslie, & Lun et  al., 2011; Gelfand et  al., 2011; Park & Killen, 2010), and the level of residential (Oishi & Talhelm, 2012)  and relational mobility (Yuki & Schug, 2012)  that is possible. Perhaps the most commonly studied distinction in the literature to date has been between social orientations relating to independence/​individualism versus interdependence/​collectivism (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Triandis, 1989). In this chapter, we review the role of social interdependence in

shaping individuals’ responses to social exclusion experiences in different economic contexts. In agreement with existing theoretical views, we see social interdependence as being shaped by different sets of cultural affordances including demands set by economic requirements. Following from this perspective, we discuss how certain socioecological features in a given economic community shape interactions to affect social interdependence, thereby leading to varying responses to social exclusion experiences.

Culture and Social Interdependence The ways in which culture shapes social interdependence has been at the center of cultural psychological theory for decades. It attracted growing empirical attention after Triandis (1989) and Markus and Kitayama (1991) noted the role of culture and associated degrees of individuality or sociality in the shaping of the self. In this literature two types of self-​views were put forward. One self-​view, typical of Western cultural contexts, was defined as socially independent and as prioritizing the individual over the group and seeking independence, autonomy, and separateness from others. Another self-​view, more typical of east Asian cultural contexts, was defined as socially interdependent and as prioritizing the group over the individual and seeking to fit into the social context and maintaining harmony within the group (for a recent review see Cross, Hardin, & Gercek-​Swing, 2011). These different self-​views have been shown to have a broad range of consequences for cognition, emotion, motivation, and behavior. For example, in terms of cognition, compared with individuals who define themselves independently, individuals who define themselves interdependently are more likely to describe themselves in terms of relationships with others and group membership (e.g., Kanagawa, Cross, & Markus, 2001), pay greater attention to the context in which objects appear (e.g., Masuda & Nisbett, 2001; Morris & Peng, 1994; Üskül, Kitayama, & Nisbett, 2008), and report more group-​focused memories and memories that focus on social interactions when asked to retrieve childhood memories (e.g., Wang & Ross, 2005). In terms of emotions, interdependent self-​views have been shown to be associated more interpersonally (versus intrapersonally) focused emotion experiences (e.g., Chentsova-​Dutton, & Tsai, 2010) and a preference to have a balance between positive and negative emotions and to feel low (versus high) arousal positive states (e.g., Sims et al., 2015; Tsai, Knutson, & Fung, 2006). In terms of interpersonal

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behavior, social interdependence is associated with greater likelihood of imitating others (e.g., van Baaren, Maddux, Chatrand, de Bouter, & van Knippenberg, 2003), choosing to prioritize the group’s welfare over self-​ interest (Gardner, Gabriel, & Dean, 2004), and having concerns for a conversation partner’s feelings during communication (e.g., Gudykunst et al., 1996). Before moving to the main body of our review, we first turn to how a specific aspect of the cultural environment, namely economic affordances, is likely to shape social interdependence.

Economic Affordances of Social Interdependence Different sets of socioecological and cultural affordances have been shown to shape people’s sense of interdependence with other individuals and groups including different aspects of our interpersonal (e.g., population density), political (e.g., access to social welfare), and physical (e.g., availability of green spaces) environment (for recent reviews see Markus & Hamedani, 2007; Oishi, 2014; Oishi & Graham, 2010). Some of these affordances have been linked to the economic circumstances in a given society. Much of this work has focused on how socio-economic status (e.g., Lachman & Weaver, 1998; Snibbe & Markus, 2005; Stephens, Markus, & Townsend, 2007) and the level of economic development (Greenfield, Maynard, & Childs, 2003; Inglehart & Baker, 2000; Loucky, 1976; Kağitçibaşi & Ataca, 2005) or material abundance (Adams, Bruckmüller, & Decker, 2012) within a culture shape social interdependence among its members. As discussed also in ­chapter 1 and ­chapter 3 in this volume, economic differences between groups arise not only from variations in the amount of accumulated wealth or patterns of resource distribution but also from engagement in different types of economic activities that afford different kinds of interpersonal relationships and social interdependencies. In this chapter, we focus on how the economic structure of different groups influences the nature of social relations within those groups and how this, in turn, influences responses to social exclusion. In our research, we have worked with two economic groups, farmers and herders, that are thought to differ in their level of social interdepen­ d­ence as a result of the demands of the economic activities in which they are involved. Broadly speaking, farming tends to require harmo­ nious group collaboration. Moreover, farmers are tied to the land they

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cultivate and, thus, to fixed communities (see c­ hapter 3 by Talhelm and Oishi in this volume for a more nuanced view that takes into account how different types of farming can result in different levels of social interdependence). In contrast, herding activities do not require much cooperation but rely on individual decision-​ making and autonomy. Furthermore, herders are typically not so strongly tied to particular plots of land; their capital can be moved to any location with enough nutrition for their animals. It has been suggested that these characteristics breed interdependence among farmers and independence among herders. As also reviewed by Berry in c­ hapter  1, research has indeed shown that farmers tend to show a high degree of social interdependence resulting in stronger emphasis on conformity (Berry, 1967; Barry, Child, & Bacon, 1959), consultation among members and acting collectivistically (Edgerton, 1965); higher degrees of compliance, conscientiousness, and conservatism in child-​rearing practices (Barry et al., 1959); and a greater tendency to perceive objects as embedded within their surrounding fields (Berry, 1966; Üskül et  al., 2008). Herders, in contrast, tend to show a lesser degree of social interdependence resulting in individualistic social orientations (Edgerton, 1971; Witkin & Berry, 1975), independent decision-​making (Berry, 1967; Barry et  al., 1959), individualism and assertiveness in child-​rearing practices (Barry et al., 1959), and greater tendency to perceive objects as separate from their surrounding fields (Berry, 1966; Üskül et  al., 2008). Thus there is converging evidence, drawn from a number of different communities, indicating that farmers whose work requires cooperation and reliance on others show higher levels of social interdependence compared to herders whose work requires less cooperation and reliance on others. In the next two sections, we focus on emerging research suggesting that cultural differences in social interdependence influence how individuals respond to social exclusion. We focus on social exclusion because its investigation from a cultural point of view is very recent. Moreover, learning about social exclusion as embedded within culturally shaped norms and values can shed light onto cultural differences in important social concepts such as reputation, aggression, prosocial behavior, and bystander intervention. We first discuss research looking at the relationship between social interdependence and ostracism more generally and then move on to discuss our recent findings resulting from research with farming and herding communities demonstrating the role of the economic environment in individuals’ responses to other individuals’ and their own social exclusion experiences.

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Cross-​Cultural Differences in Responses to Ostracism Until recently, it was thought that immediate reactions to ostracism (being excluded or ignored) were unaffected by situational factors and individual difference variables (Williams, 2007). However, a recent meta-​analysis challenged this assumption (Hartgerink, van Beest, Wicherts, & Williams, 2015), and a growing body of research has demonstrated that the cultural background of participants moderates their responses to ostracism. Overall, this research suggests that individuals living within collectivistic cultural contexts find social exclusion to be less distressing than do individuals from more individualistic cultural contexts. For example, Pfundmair and colleagues (Pfundmair, Aydin, et  al., 2015; also see Pfundmair, Graupmann, Frey, & Aydin, 2015)  compared responses to ostracism in adult participants from collectivistic cultural groups (Turkey, China, India) to responses of participants from more individualistic cultural groups (Germany and the United States). They found that participants from the collectivistic social groups were less negatively affected by ostracism than were participants from individualistic cultural groups. The difference in self-​reported distress was replicated at the physiological level; participants from China (a collectivistic cultural group) showed no change in their heart rate following exclusion, whereas participants from a Germany (an individualistic cultural group) showed increased heart rate following social exclusion. Research focusing on individual differences has suggested that the extent to which individuals perceive themselves to be interdependent with others influences their responses to ostracism. For example, in their study conducted with Chinese participants Ren, Wesselmann, and Williams (2013) showed that the more socially interdependent participants considered themselves to be, the better recovery they showed following social exclusion. These findings might seem counterintuitive at first as the more obvious hypothesis would suggest that given the importance of social relationships for individuals who define themselves interdependently, being subjected to social exclusion might mean “social death” (Williams, 2007). Therefore, individuals from cultures that afford high levels of social interdepend­ ence should respond more negatively to the experience of ostracism. The aforementioned findings provide supporting evidence for the less obvious hypothesis that individuals who define themselves interdependently may be able to protect themselves from the negative consequences of social exclusion as a result of defining themselves more socially interdependently

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(Gardner, Knowles & Jefferis, 2017; Gardner, Pickett, & Knowles, 2005). This pattern fits with findings from other fields demonstrating that having strong connections with others has protective value against the pain associated with being excluded by others (e.g., Eisenberger, Taylor, Gable, Hilmert, & Lieberman, 2007; Karremans, Heslenfeld, van Dillen, & Van Lange, 2012; Masten, Telzer, Fuligni, Lieberman, & Eisenberger, 2012) and negative experiences more generally (e.g., threat of disease; see Kim, Sherman, & Updegraff, 2016). Why this is the case has typically been explained via three different but potentially complementary mechanisms. One explanation is based on findings showing that individuals tend to activate the social self in the wake of ostracism either through seeking actual social interaction or by thinking of family members or close friends (e.g., Gardner et al., 2005; Maner, De Wall, Baumeister, & Schaller, 2007). Because individuals who strongly endorse social interdependence define themselves primarily through their social connections, it may be that these individuals have more chronic cognitive accessibility to positive social representations, which works as a buffer against the negative consequences associated with ostracism (Gardner et al., 2005; Knowles, 2013). Support for this explanation was provided by Gardner and colleagues (2017) who showed that the effects of social interdependence on responses to ostracism seem to operate through spontaneous activation of social information—​chronically interdependent participants activate their interdependent self-​construal in the face of rejection. A second explanation posits that individuals with a strong sense of social interdependence might not perceive ostracism as especially threatening. Incidents that target the self as separate from others are expected to be of lower relevance, making socially interdependent individuals less vulnerable to negative experiences such as ostracism directed against themselves alone. Support for this explanation was provided by Pfundmair, Aydin, et al. (2015) and Pfundmair, Graupmann, et al. (2015) who observed that Indian (collectivistic) participants reported lower threat activation than did German and American (individualistic) participants following exclusion and that threat activation mediated the effect of ostracism (versus inclusion) on need fulfillment. Activation of social content following an exclusion experience, however, did not differ as a function of cultural group. A third potential explanation was put forward by Fiske and Yamamoto (2005) based on past research that demonstrated more clear-​cut distinctions made by members of collectivistic cultures between in-​groups and out-​ groups compared with members of individualistic cultures (e.g., Gelfand,

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Bhawuk, Nishii, & Bechtold, 2004). On one hand, individuals from collectivistic cultural backgrounds, who tend to belong more securely to ingroup members and trust them more compared with outgroup members (Yamagishi, 1988), may be less negatively affected by ostracism when it comes from outgroup members. On the other hand, individuals from individualistic cultural backgrounds, who tend to belong more widely and experience generalized trust, may be more negatively affected when let down by others via experiences such as being ostracized members. This is a promising explanation that needs further testing especially given that almost all research focusing on culture and social exclusion has focused on ostracism experiences induced by individuals who are unknown to participants.

Economic Culture and Responses to Social Exclusion in Children We built on this previous research to investigate how children from different economic groups respond to social exclusion (Over & Üskül, 2016). Previous research has shown that young children from Western, individualistic, cultures are extremely sensitive to the threat of social exclusion (Over & Carpenter, 2009; Watson-​Jones, Legare, Whitehouse, & Clegg, 2014) and that they are able to make moral decisions about social exclusion from reasonably early in development (Killen & Rutland, 2011; Will, Crone, Van de Bos, & Güroğlu, 2013). However, the extent to which cultural differences in social interdependence influence children’s responses to social exclusion situations has not been extensively investigated. From a cross-​cultural perspective, this is an important question because it enables us to understand whether it is engaging in particular economic activities that leads to cultural differences in responses to ostracism or whether the economic structure of a particular group influences the patterns of interactions within that group that extend beyond the individuals engaging in those activities to influence even the community’s youngest members. We chose to investigate whether there are cultural differences in how painful children from farming and herding communities perceive ostracism to be and how children from these groups morally evaluate ostracism events. Based on previous work that demonstrates a protective effect of social interdependence in the face of ostracism, we predicted that individuals living in economic communities with high levels of social interdependence would estimate ostracism to be less painful than would individuals

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living in economic communities with lower levels of interdependence. We also hypothesized that if ostracism is associated with less negative consequences for individuals from interdependent communities, these children will sympathize less with victims of ostracism and judge those who ostracize less harshly. The farming and herding communities we studied in this research came from the eastern Black Sea district of Turkey. This comparison provides an ideal natural experiment as farmers and herders (and their children) in this region share the same language, national identity, ethnicity, and religion but differ in how they make their living and thus in social interdependence. Farmers in this region produce tea in small to medium-​sized fields owned by families. They harvest the tea three or four times a year in collaboration with members of immediate and extended families and neighbors. Given their reliance on land cultivation, they are tied to one location and rarely leave their villages for economic purposes. Furthermore, due to the heavy regulation of the tea industry by the state, farmers in this region are primarily producers and hardly ever engage in any business-​related competitive or commercial activity. These high levels of cooperation, lack of mobility, and low levels of commercialism experienced by these tea farmers contribute to high levels of social interdependence in this community (also see Greenfield et al, 2003; Kağitçibaşi & Ataca, 2005; Loucky, 1976; Oishi, 2014; Üskül et al., 2008 for supporting arguments). Herders who reside in the same region but at higher altitudes breed animals to supply meat and dairy products. In some cases, the animals are moved from lowland to highland grazing for several months in the summer, returning to lowlands when temperatures start dropping. Producers sell their products to major factories or commercial enterprises, as well as to local people at weekly markets in neighboring towns. Different family members tend to be responsible for different types of duties (e.g., taking animals to grazing fields, milking the animals, producing dairy products, processing animal skin and hair). Thus communities that engage in herding tend to share workload within the family rather than between families/​ neighbors. The higher levels of mobility and commercialism and lower levels of cooperation between nuclear family units experienced by herders contribute to lower levels of social interdependence in this commu­ nity (also see Loucky, 1976; Greenfield et al., 2003; Kağitçibaşi & Ataca, 2005; Oishi, 2014; Üskül et al., 2008). We recruited farmers’ children from the villages in Rize where residents are primarily engaged in labor-​intensive practices of tea cultivation and herders’ children from villages in Artvin and Erzurum where individuals

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earn their living primarily from animal husbandry. The parents of children recruited from the farming communities identified farming as their main economic activity and source of income and parents of children recruited from the herding communities identified herding as their main economic activity and source of income. Communities were mainly comparable in demographic terms, except for income and level of education. The findings we summarize here remained unchanged when we controlled for these variables statistically. In a sample of farming and herding communities in this region, we asked 3-​to 8-​year-​old children to view situations in which one individual appeared to be excluded from a group and then probed how they thought the ostracized individual would be feeling. Children from the farming community estimated that this individual would be less distressed by the ostracism situation than did children from the herding community. This is compatible with the claim that interdependence provides a protective buffer against the pain of being excluded (Pfundmair, Aydin, et al., 2015). Interestingly, children from the two communities did not differ in their estimates of how painful a physical injury would be, suggesting that the protective nature of interdependence may be specific to social pain. In a follow-​up study, we investigated why cultural interdependence might be associated with differences in children’s estimates of the pain of ostracism. We reasoned that, if interdependence provides a protective buffer against the negative effects of being excluded (Gardner et al., 2017; Pfundmair, Aydin, et al., 2015; Ren et al., 2013), then the relationship between cultural group and the estimated pain of ostracism should be mediated by children’s tendency to anticipate that the ostracized individual would seek social contact following the negative social experience. In support of this hypothesis we found that, when asked what the ostracized individual would do, children from the farming community were significantly more likely to say that they would play with their friend (a social response) than were children from the herding community. Children from the herding community, on the other hand, were more likely to anticipate that the individual would engage in a nonsocial response (playing with their favorite toy). Children’s tendency to predict a social response to ostracism mediated the relationship between cultural group and the estimated pain of ostracism. In a final study, we investigated whether cultural differences also predicted children’s moral responses to ostracism situations. In order to do this, we measured how children distributed resources between the individuals involved in the ostracism situation. We reasoned that if children

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perceived ostracizing someone else to be morally wrong, then they would withhold resources from the ostracizer. We found that the children of farmers punished individuals who ostracized others less harshly than did the children of herders and showed a trend to sympathize less with the ostracized individual. This is compatible with the claim that the children of farmers view ostracism as less painful and so perceive of ostracizing others as a less serious act compared with the children of herders. The results of these studies converge with the findings of Pfundmair, Aydin, et al. (2015) and Gardner et al. (2017) and extend them to third-​ party observation and to a developmental population. They provide weight to the claim that different ecologies give rise to different economies (in this case farming as compared to herding) and these different economies shape individuals’ social relationships and so their responses to social experiences like ostracism. By working with a developmental population, we demonstrated that it is not directly engaging in these economic activities that produces cultural differences. Children in our samples were too young to engage directly in these economic activities. Rather, it is likely that different economics lead to difference skills, attitudes, and orientations, and these different skills, attitudes, and orientations shape children’s social lives and thus their social judgments. Important next steps will be to examine the role of cultural transmission processes in children’s responses to social exclusion and to extend the investigation to children’s responses to incidents in which they are the victims of social exclusion (White et al., in press).

Economic Culture and Responses to Social Exclusion in Adults As summarized in the previous sections, most of the existing psychological research on economic groups has concentrated on how making a living from a specific economic activity (e.g., farming or herding) shapes the degree of social interdependence in a given community, with considerable attention paid to differences in the required level of cooperation to perform the economic activity. However, other aspects of the dominant economic activity may have implications for social interdependence and deserve attention. In another line of research, we focused on the differences between farming and herding communities in the eastern Black Sea region of Turkey in the extent to which these communities relied on interactions with strangers

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for their economic livelihood (Üskül & Over, 2014). How do these differences come about? Tea is a consumer staple in Turkey, hence the government is heavily involved in the regulation of the tea industry. Although competitive transactions have become more common with the establishment of private tea companies in recent years, most tea is still purchased and handled by a state-​owned company, with some transactions being overseen by local cooperatives. As a result, farmers in this region tend to be producers only and do not typically engage in competitive, commercial activity with individuals outside their immediate social circle. In contrast, herders are both producers and commercialists; they sell cattle and dairy products to factories and commercial enterprises, as well as to local people at weekly markets in neighboring towns. Consequently, they regularly interact with strangers or people whom they know only superficially. Given the importance of these interactions for their livelihood, we expected herders (compared with farmers) to feel more motivated to pursue positive relationships with strangers to ensure that they remain respected, recognized, and valued, even after experiencing social problems with them. Thus in the studies we describe next, we were interested in how group differences in the importance of interacting with strangers might shape how adult individuals within these communities respond to being ostracized by unfamiliar (versus close) individuals. In an initial study, we confirmed that herders rely on strangers to a greater extent than do farmers. When we asked to indicate how many strangers they typically interact with over the course of a year, estimates from participants in the herding community were significantly higher than those of participants from the farming community. This provided empirical support for our observation that interacting with individuals outside of their immediate social circle is essential for herders’ livelihood. We predicted that, as a result of these different economic patterns, engaging in positive interactions with strangers would be more important to individuals from the herding community and ostracism by strangers would be more painful for them. In support of this hypothesis, we found that, when asked to relive a previous experience in which they had been ostracized by a stranger, herders reported that they had been more negatively affected by the experience than did farmers. Farmers and herders did not differ in their memory for how painful being ostracized by close others had been. This latter result fits with theorizing suggesting that family and close friends are important in all communities (e.g., Roberts & Dunbar, 2011)  and demonstrates that herders do not report greater emotional responses to stimuli in general. In a second study using a vignette method,

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we conceptually replicated this result in another sample and showed that herders imagined ostracism by a stranger would be more painful than did farmers. In further studies, we investigated the recommendations farmers and herders make to an individual who has been ostracized by someone else. We predicted that, if positive relationships with strangers are more important for herders, then they should be more likely to recommend an affiliative response to someone who has been ostracized by an unfamiliar person as a response of this type is more likely to retain a positive interaction pattern with that person. In support of this prediction, we found that herders were significantly more likely to recommend an affiliative response (e.g., helping the person pick up his chicks that escaped from their cage) following ostracism by a stranger. The tendency to recommend affiliation in the way of ostracism applied both to the individuals involved in ostracism event and toward other individuals who were not involved in the ostracism event. Moreover, the amount of time spent with strangers mediated economic group differences in the extent to which affiliation was recommended following social exclusion by strangers, with greater time spent with strangers mediating herders’ greater endorsement of affiliative responses toward those not involved in the ostracism event. Overall, these findings confirmed our initial field observations and conversations with officials in relevant government offices that strangers mattered more for herders’ economic livelihood than they did for farmers’ and confirmed our hypothesis that this difference would play a role in how farmers and herders respond to being socially excluded by strangers (not by close others). We found that farmers differentiated clearly between their responses to social exclusion by close others versus strangers, whereas for herders the boundaries between close and distant others seemed to be less clear-​cut, as evidenced in their comparable responses to social exclusion by close others versus strangers. Our studies with children and adults from farming and herding communities in the Eastern Black Sea region of Turkey contribute to the growing literature on the role of culture in responses to social exclusion (e.g., Garris, Ohbuchi, Oikawa, & Harris, 2011; Pfundmair, Aydin, et al., 2015, Pfundmair, Graupmann, et  al., 2015; Sato, Yuki, & Norasakkunkit, 2014; Yaakobi & Williams, 2015). They highlight that different aspects of the economic culture (cooperation and reliance on strangers for economic livelihood) shape individuals’ interdependencies with others and in turn play a role in how they respond to social exclusion. This calls attention to the importance of adopting a fine-​grained approach to the roots of social interdependence, a construct that cultural psychologists have paid extensive attention over several decades.

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Conclusion Findings from the studies that we conducted with members of farming and herding communities to examine responses to social exclusion point to the different ways in which economic activity shapes human psychology. Different ecologies can give rise to different economies, and these different economies shape interpersonal relationships and individuals’ psychological responses to these relationships (see also Edgerton, 1971; Kohn & Schooler, 1973; Konner, 2007; Triandis, 1994; Witkin & Berry, 1975). In this work, we have focused on the everyday realities of economic settings that provide the material basis for psychological outcomes rather than emphasizing internal variables such as attitudes or values. Thus our work provides evidence of the role of external practices, a topic largely unexamined in conventional psychological theory and research. At the same time, we contribute to previous research employing cultural-​ecological (e.g., Adams et al., 2012; Berry, 1979; Keller, 2011; Whiting & Edwards, 1988), sociocultural (e.g., Adams, 2005; Maynard & Greenfield, 2003; Plaut, Markus, & Lachman, 2002), socioecological (Oishi, 2014) and ecosystem (e.g., Medin, ojalehto, Marin, & Bang, 2013) approaches. We would like to note that we do not take a universalist position, assuming that living in any farming or herding community will shape human psychology in similar way. The amount of labor and cooperation required to undertake economic tasks (as Talhelm and Oishi highlight in c­ hapter 3 in this volume) and/​or the level of interaction required outside the immediate social circle may shape the psychological dynamics differently in other farming and herding communities and in other types of community more generally. In this research, we have only just started to scratch the surface of the possible patterns of responses to social exclusion as a function of economic demands. For example, in all of our studies we focused on one-​off ostracism incidents and studied individual targets as subjects of ostracism rather than the social groups to which they belong. Thus we cannot extrapolate from this research whether, for example, farmers respond more or less negatively to social exclusion when it is a recurring experience (especially when ostracizers are in-​group members) or when the individual’s social groups (e.g., family, ethnic group) as a whole faces social exclusion. We know from previous research that, compared with members of individualistic societies, members of collectivistic societies make more clear-​cut distinctions between in-​group and out-​group members, feel more concerned about how others treat their social groups, and have lower levels of

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relational mobility, making social bonds more stable and exclusive (e.g., Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Yuki & Schug, 2012). Given these relevant cultural differences, it is possible that the findings observed in recent studies may not hold or may even reverse under different social circumstances. Indeed, several studies have demonstrated that members of collectivistic East Asian cultures such as Japan and Korea exhibit higher levels of rejection sensitivity (anxious expectation of being rejected by others) than do individualistic European Americans (Garris, Ohbuchi, Oikawa, & Harris, 2011; Sato, Yuki, & Norasakkunkit, 2014; Yamaguchi, Kuhlman, & Sugimori, 1995). The discrepancies between these sets of studies and the ones we summarized earlier in this chapter might be due to the differences in how rejection was operationally defined and studied (e.g., measuring general rejection sensitivity using items focusing on potential rejections in interpersonal interactions with a significant other [e.g., by using the Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire by Downey & Feldman,  1996] versus assessing responses to a one-​off ostracism event by strangers [e.g., by employing the Cyberball paradigm by Williams, Cheung, & Choi, 2000]). Varying the conditions under which responses to social exclusion are studied will help provide answers in the future to inconsistent findings that exist in the literature on culture and social exclusion so far. Another limitation is that in our research we have not investigated immediate responses to social exclusion. Given the conflicting findings regarding the role of social interdependence in immediate responses observed in different studies (see Pfundmair, Aydin, et al., 2015; Ren et al., 2013), further research that distinguishes between immediate (reflexive) and later (reflective) responses to social exclusion will be important in understanding the conditions under which cultural groups differences are more or less likely to emerge. Thus the insight gained so far into differences in responses to ostracism as a function of cultural background in general or economic demands in particular gives us a fractional picture of variation in ostracism-​related processes. More research is needed to tackle these unexamined questions. Finally, how individuals respond to ostracism when it targets them is one particular aspect of the ostracism process. So far we know very little about how economic demands shape how individuals in different economic groups engage in ostracism, which ostracism strategies individuals find most effective and painful, and how individuals react to different types of ostracism. Examining ostracism across different economic groups focusing on different aspects of the ostracism experience from both the target’s and the source’s perspective (see Zadro & Gonsalkorale, 2014) will

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provide a more complete understanding into how, when, and why cultural differences, and indeed similarities, emerge.

Authors’ Note Although we use “social exclusion” and “ostracism” interchangeably, we do acknowledge that they are sometimes operationalized in different ways and can lead to different outcomes (see Bernstein & Claypool, 2012). Note that we also use interdependence and collectivism on one hand and independence and individualism on the other hand interchangeably but recognize that the independence/​ interdependence distinction refers to individual level differences while individualism/​collectivism is used to refer to cultural-​level differences.

Acknowledgment The writing of this chapter was supported in part by two British Academy Grants (SG090790, MD130004) to Üskül and an Economic and Social Research Council Grant (ES/​K006702/​1) to Over.

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CHAPTER 3

How Rice Farming Shaped Culture in Southern China Thomas Talhelm and Shigehiro Oishi

Rice Farming and Culture The Yangtze River cuts from west to east across the middle of China (Figure 3.1A). Around the Yangtze and to the south, people have been farming rice for over a thousand years. To the north of the Yangtze River, people have been farming wheat and millet for thousands of years. This chapter argues that these two farming systems shaped cultures in northern and southern China. This chapter is about China, but China is not the only country with a traditional rice/​wheat split. India also has a rice/​wheat split (Figure 3.1B). Many other cultures have farmed rice traditionally—​ Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, parts of Italy, West Africa, and South America to name just a few. Rice is a major staple crop in many parts of the world, and more than half of the top 10 most densely populated cities in the world are in rice areas (Malone & Van Riper, 2007). If rice shapes culture, it has probably influenced cultures in these other areas of the world. This chapter is not about culture in the past. It is about culture now—​ how people think now, how often they get divorced, for example. But if we are trying to understand modern cultures, why should we look to farming? Farming is remote from most people’s lives. But for thousands of years, farming was not remote. Farming was how the vast majority of people in China spent their time, day in, day out. Farming meant the difference between feasting and starving. A system so central to so many people’s lives had plenty of time to shape the culture.

Figure 3.1A  Percentage of farmland devoted to rice paddies per province in China. Statistics are from the 1996 Statistical Yearbook. Southern China has a history of farming rice, and its culture has tighter, more enmeshed relationships compared to the relatively loose culture of China’s wheat-​growing north.

This chapter explains what made rice so different from wheat and why that could shape culture.

How Rice Is Farmed If we want to understand how rice farming affected culture, we need to know how people farmed it. For reasons we will make clear later, we talk mostly about paddy rice farming in China, Korea, and Japan. By “paddy rice,” we mean rice that people farmed (a) in standing water (b) in plots that they built up with soil to hold in water and (c) that they actively drained or filled with water. In this chapter, we explain two of the most important differences between rice farming and wheat farming. That ignores a lot of crops. There are plenty of other important crops in the world—​potatoes, sugar cane, and cotton are a few. There are also plenty of other subsistence styles—​ hunting and gathering, slash and burn farming, and fishing.

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Figure 3.1B  Percentage of food cropland devoted to rice paddies per state in India. Statistics are from 1995 government statistics. India provides an interesting test case in contrast to China because India’s rice production is not correlated with average temperature.

We contrast rice with wheat because these have been two important cereal crops in China. They provided much of the calories for the majority of the population in many areas. In China, we use wheat, corn, and soybeans statistics to represent dryland crops that are grown more or less similarly (and at the very least, very differently from paddy rice). In other areas of the world, crops like millet, barley, sorghum, and potatoes are more common dryland crops (but keep in mind that a single crop can be grown different ways). Although we use wheat to represent farming in northern China, millet was widespread in northern China before wheat (Fuller, Harvey, & Qin, 2007). Around 500 bc, Confucius was probably more familiar with millet than wheat or rice. In the Analects, Confucius mentions broomcorn millet (roughly 500 bc; Elvin, 1982, p. 16). Thus we say “wheat” for simplicity, but this also includes crops like millet and corn.

Irrigation Networks The feature that separates rice most clearly from wheat is that it grows best in standing water (Khush, 1997). This is not true of wheat. There

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are varieties of dryland rice that grow without needing to be flooded (Bray, 1986, p. 11). However, farmers can attain the highest yields with flooded rice, so the rice plant incentivizes people to irrigate their fields (Khush, 1997). How much of an incentive are we talking about? Farmers planting dryland rice produce about 1.2 tons per hectare; irrigated rice yields 5 tons per hectare (Khush, 1997; also see Bray, 1986, p. 15). Back when calories and thereby population size were huge factors in state power (Scott, 2014), nations could increase their size and power by irrigating rice rather than growing dryland rice. Paddy rice was a path to success. We focus on rice that humans actively irrigated, but not everyone needs to irrigate rice. Paddy rice comes from parts of the world that naturally flood with seasonal rainfall or waterway flooding (Tsuruta, n.d.). Parts of China could grow rice without human irrigation if they wanted to. However, even in areas that flood naturally, there are still incentives to putting in human irrigation. For one, irrigation can precisely control the level of water. Natural flooding is irregular. Too much water slows rice growth; too little water lets weeds take over (International Rice Research Institute [IRRI], 2007). Human irrigation also allows farmers to control the timing of flooding and draining. Controlling water also makes it easier to complete the tasks rice requires. For example, if fields are wet when farmers need to harvest, it takes longer to complete the harvest (Hayami, 1978, p. 27). Thus, even in areas that flood naturally, active irrigation can still improve rice yields.

Labor Requirements The second important characteristic of paddy rice is that it requires more work. On average, rice requires about twice the number of man-​hours to grow as wheat (Buck, 1935, p. 302; Fei, 1945, p. 214).1 This is because rice requires tasks that wheat usually does not. One important rice task is transplanting. Many farmers grow rice seedlings in small plots away from the main fields and then transplant them to the main field after they have grown. Growing them first in small plots helps farmers more precisely control the water levels for the young  A savvy reader could argue that it does not make sense to split irrigation and labor. After all, a lot of the extra labor of rice comes from the irrigation. If irrigation is the key variable, why not just talk about irrigated versus nonirrigated agriculture? Irrigation took a lot of work, but labor could also be an important element of crops that do not have to be irrigated. By leaving room for two separate mechanisms, we can distinguish between these two variables in future research. 1

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seedlings (Fei, 1983, p. 74). Transplanting also frees up the main fields to grow other crops. Transplanting has these benefits, but it adds to the labor burden of rice (Elvin, 2006, p. 209). Another task is making the field flat. Flatness is particularly important for rice because it grows in standing water. If a field is uneven, part of the field will have too much water, which slows the growth of the rice. The other part of the field will have too little water, which allows more weeds to grow and compete with the rice. Level fields yield more rice (IRRI, 2007). Another method anthropologists have used to compare rice and wheat labor requirements is to observe farmers in traditional villages. For example, anthropologist Fei Xiaotong embedded in a village in Yunnan and found that rice required about twice as much labor as wheat and barley (Fei, 1945, p. 214). Similarly, American John Buck led a survey team that visited farms in 22 Chinese provinces in the 1930s. They found that rice farmers were spending an average of 50 days per year per crop acre, compared to 25 days for wheat (Buck, 1935). This was true not just of rice farmers in China. For example, anthropologists have found similar differences between rice and millet farmers in West Africa (Richards, 1987). If the labor difference between rice and wheat really is so large, do we need precise social scientists to discover it? In fact, the farmers themselves were well aware of the difference. For example, a Chinese farming guidebook in the 1600s told readers, “If one is short of labor power, it is best to grow wheat” (quoted in Elvin, 1982, p. 30). Fei found that farmers in his village planted corn when they were short of labor (Fei, 1945). This also demonstrates the crops like corn require less labor even when grown on land that can also grow rice.

Why Would Anyone Farm Rice? Rice sounds like a pretty awful crop. It requires twice as much work as wheat? And I have to build an irrigation network to support it? What kind of fool would say yes to that deal? The answer is simple. All that work pays off. Paddy rice produces more tons per hectare than the other major staple crops (Fuller & Qin, 2009, p. 88). For example, Chinese rice farmers in the 1930s were yielding 223 kilograms per mou (666.5 square meters; Buck, 1935). Wheat farmers were yielding about 71 kilograms. Historically, paddy rice yielded three to five times more than wheat (Perkins, 1969, p. 19, 267). The rice plant rewards hard work.

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This extraordinary productivity per acre has implications for the problem of reverse causality. Suppose that all of China had the right environment for rice, but only some areas chose to grow rice. That would mean it is people who already like to work together who chose to grow rice, not rice that made people work together. The productivity of rice provides one piece of evidence that reverse causality is not a problem. Because rice is so productive, people have a strong incentive to grow it. We can see this incentive in the data, which shows that most of the places in China that can grow rice do grow rice. Environmental suitability for rice (according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization) strongly predicts where farmers actually grow rice in China β = 0.85, p < .001. Environmental suitability for rice also consistently predicts cultural differences within China (Talhelm et al., 2014, Table 2).

Other Differences We focus here on irrigation and coordination as the characteristics that most clearly distinguish rice farming from wheat farming. However, we are under no illusion that these are the only things that make rice different from other crops. Rice is an entire system. An entire book could be written explaining the system of rice farming and how it is different from other crops. Our writing elsewhere describes other potential factors, such as population density (Talhelm, 2015).

Why It Matters for Culture Irrigation and Coordination The way people farmed rice was different from the way people farmed wheat, but what does that have to do with culture? Our argument is that these two features of rice—​irrigation and labor—​set out problems that humans could solve by adapting their behavior and social structure. Next we explain the behaviors that humans set up in order to farm rice. Coordinating Tasks. First, irrigation usually requires farmers to coordinate. In fields where many plots are connected to a single irrigation network, farmers have to coordinate when to fill and drain their fields (Bray, 1986, p. 119; Fei, 1946, p. 172). This infrastructure creates an environment wherein rice farmers are more socially enmeshed. In this environment, one person’s behavior influences other people’s outcomes. In this environment, it is hard to be a rogue rice farmer.

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Compare that to a standard wheat village. Many wheat farmers rely on rainfall, and that makes social relationships simpler. It rains on wheat farmers’ fields equally whether they coordinate or not. Wheat farmers’ relative independence gives them more social flexibility. The costs of offending another villager or being a bit eccentric are lower because wheat farmers rely on their neighbors less than rice farmers. This fits with the finding that irrigation farmers in India show more social conformity than dryland farmers (­chapter  1). This could also help explain why northern China is known for being zhishuang (直爽), direct and forthright (even at the cost of hurting people’s feelings). Collective infrastructure building.  Second, irrigation often requires collective action. Many irrigation networks are large projects. It was probably out of the scope of a single family to set up an entire irrigation network. In India, temples coordinated efforts to build irrigation networks (Stargardt, 1983, from Bray, 1986, p. 65). That means the task of setting up the irrigation system would fall across many families. Irrigation commons problems.  Third, irrigation creates commons problems. Over time, dirt will build up in irrigation channels and clog the system. Irrigation walls will fall apart over time and need to be repaired. With big irrigation networks, these maintenance costs are large burdens, and they are spread out over multiple families. This is a classic commons problem. Any one family will benefit from that maintenance work, but no single family will want to do that work on its own. To solve this problem, rice villages had systems for coordinating when they filled and drained their fields and for maintaining the irrigation infrastructure. For example, Fei (1983) documented how rice farmers in a southern Chinese village coordinated tasks, such as pedaling wooden machines to fill or drain their fields (Figures 3.2–​3.3). Farmers set up rotating task assignments with punishments for farmers who failed to show up for their tasks. The economist Masahiko Aoki (2001) took this argument further. He argued that rice villages set up strong systems of social isolation to punish free-​riders.2 He describes a custom wherein Japanese rice farmers would refuse to help free-​riding farmers or invite them to local festivals, called the “80% separation” system (p. 49; Mura-​Hachi-​Bu, 村八部).  We are not arguing that only rice villages punish free-​riders. Surely wheat farmers, herders, and Wall Street bankers punish egregious free-​riders. Instead, the argument here is that paddy rice had more shared tasks and thereby more chances to punish free-​riders. And because rice requires so much labor, it is harder to put food on the table for an outcast rice farmer than for an outcast wheat farmer. 2

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Figure 3.2  A dragon’s backbone tool for irrigation, commonly used in China. It is also known as a square-​pallet chain pump. Pumps like these helped farmers reap more rice, but they also increased the labor requirements.

Another element is preventing flooding. People use irrigation networks to add water to fields, but some systems also function to keep too much water from coming in. If the walls fail, and the rice is flooded with too much water, it will grow more slowly or not at all (IRRI, 2007). For example, some farms near Shanghai sat below the water level (Elvin, 2006). This was not an individual problem. The walls holding the water back stretched across multiple plots. Even if one family built their wall securely, that work would be wasted if their neighbor’s wall collapsed. A Chinese text described how this forced different farmers to work together:

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Figure 3.3  A dragon’s backbone pump in Sichuan, China 1943. Photo by Joseph Needham. Reproduced courtesy of the Needham Research Institute.

[If] the wall of the polder [low-​lying field] for one family’s holding has collapsed, then the wall in sound condition in the rest of the polder is useless. Under these circumstances, the poor and rich will give each other mutual support. (quoted in Elvin, 2006, p. 118)

Water sharing. Finally, because paddy rice is a thirsty plant, farmers have to decide how to divide water resources. That is particularly true in places where rainfall is unreliable from year to year. When water is low, farmers need to coordinate their water usage or risk nasty confrontations. Or, even worse, if farmers refuse to coordinate and draw out all the water early in the season, there may not be enough water in anyone’s field to get a crop that year. Rice villages have found different ways of coordinating water use. Perhaps the most detailed picture we have is of the subak system in Bali (Suarja & Thijssen, 2003). Subaks are a bit like local water committees, deciding how to divide water, when to plant, and when to do maintenance. Farmers in subaks meet to discuss these decisions and then vote to make decisions. In years where rainfall is low, the assemblies can decide to grow crops other than rice—​crops that use less water. Again, compare this to wheat farming (at least wheat that is not irrigated). If farmers in a village are all relying on the rain to water the wheat, they do not need to decide how to distribute that rain. Rain falls on all plots equally. Rain even falls on the plots of farmers that everyone else in the village hates.

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Cooperative Labor Exchanges The high labor demands of rice are important for culture because rice farmers set up cooperative labor exchanges to deal with the labor demands. For example, several farmers in a village would all work together to plant one farmer’s rice plot in exchange for working on their plots later. In the village Fei Xiaotong studied, farmers enlisted relatives and acquaintances in nearby villages (Fei, 1945, p. 65). Under Japanese tradition, only the first son inherited the rice field (Honda, 1996). That meant farmers often had non-​farmer siblings in nearby cities who could come back and help during the planting and harvesting season. This is a feature of rice farming in many cultures. Anthropologists have found similar labor exchanges in West Africa (Richards, 1987), Korea (Reed, 1977), India, Malaysia, and Indonesia (Bray, 1986). The anthropological evidence suggests that many rice cultures hit upon the idea of using labor exchanges to meet the high labor demands. Were rice cultures the  only cultures that shared labor?  The way we have talked about rice so far could make it sound like rice farmers are the only people who share labor. That is obviously wrong. Thomas’s Midwest American wheat farmer ancestors shared labor to build barns; shifting farmers3 help each other clear fields (Suehara, 2006); fishermen in Indonesia work together to kill large whales (Henrich et al., 2005). Rice farmers are not the only people who share labor. However, it is precisely by seeing how rice exchanges were unlike other labor exchanges that we can see what made rice different. For example, among shifting farmers in the Congo, labor sharing was more like a festival (Suehara, 2006). Families came together to clear a plot of land. After the land was cleared, the host would provide banana beer. There are a few key differences between shifting farmer exchanges and rice exchanges. First, the Congolese farmers would repay the favor on the same day in beer. In contrast, anthropologists in China and Japan reported that farmers strictly returned labor with labor (Fei, 1945; Suehara, 2006). In fact, if a farmer received labor but then fell ill and could not return the labor, he would reciprocate by paying for laborers to work the field (Fei, 1945). Second, rice labor exchanges were less of a social nicety and more of an economic necessity. If rice farmers were exchanging labor out of fun or

 The most well-​known form of shifting farming is slash-​and-​burn agriculture. Shifting farmers clear a plot of wild land, farm it, and then move to a new field. 3

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social spirit, they might exchange labor during the less busy time periods, such as during tilling or weeding. Instead, rice farmers exchanged labor at peak labor times—​transplanting and harvesting. In contrast, Suehara reports that Congolese exchanges were designed more to make work fun and exciting—​work that was “otherwise lonely and tedious” (Suehara, 2006, p. 61). Rice labor exchanges may have made rice communities more interdependent, with relationships more focused on reciprocation. For example, recent studies have found that Chinese and Japanese participants are more likely than Americans to feel indebted to others after accepting a favor (Hitokoto, 2016; Oishi & Komiya, 2016) and less likely to ask for emotional support (Taylor, Welch, Kim, & Sherman, 2007).4 This might also explain our anecdotal observation that people in China and Japan are more hesitant to ask for favors—​they are concerned about accumulating “debt.”

Why Rice Cultures Aren’t About Loving Everyone After the rice theory findings in China were published (Talhelm et  al., 2014), several media articles described southern China as more “cooperative.” We have used the word “cooperation” to describe rice farming, so the description is fair. But a reader whose parents grew up in southern China commented on one of the articles saying, “that doesn’t sound like my parents!” We agree. The problem with words like “cooperative” is that they make it sound like people are generally more prosocial. It sounds like, “They are warm. They help people. They like everyone.” In reality, collectivism in East Asian rice areas is more about reciprocal obligations and tight relationships with trusted ties. It is less about being warm and fuzzy and more about navigating an interconnected web of relationships. This is not just a misunderstanding of nonspecialists. For example, one study used a self-​report collectivism scale to measure collectivism across China (Van de Vliert, Yang, Wang, & Ren, 2013). This scale had participants rate broad, warm-​sounding statements such as “What is good for my organization is also good for me” (Van de Vliert et al., 2013, p. 594). On this scale, southern China scored less collectivistic than northern China (Van de Vliert et al., 2013).  This point confuses many people. Shouldn’t people in interdependent cultures be more likely to rely on each other? Describing rice cultures as collectivistic and cooperative easily leads people to have these intuitions. But tight, interdependent ties mean that relationships are bound up with duties. That also means the costs of accidentally damaging those relationships is higher. 4

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Researchers have found this same pattern when they compare East and West. A meta-​analysis found that China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan scored significantly lower than the United States on self-​report scales of collectivism (Oyserman, Coon, & Kemmelmeier, 2002). All of this suggests that the intuition of the reader whose parents were from southern China was correct. People in rice areas are not more likely to endorse vague, socially positive statements. So if collectivism in rice areas is not about warm feelings toward other people or groups, what is it? Here we describe three findings that speak to three specific social styles. Friend/​Stranger Distinction. In China, we tested participants on their friend/​stranger distinction. In this task, participants imagine going into business with a friend or stranger; then they discover the friend or stranger was honest or dishonest; and they can choose to punish or reward the friend and stranger (Wang, Leung, See, & Gao, 2011). Even though the behavior of the friend and the stranger are identical, previous studies have found that participants in Singapore reward the friend much more than they reward the stranger (Wang et al., 2011). Americans also reward the friend more than they reward the stranger, but the difference is much smaller. In China, we found that people from the rice region drew a larger distinction between friends and strangers than people from the wheat region (Talhelm et al., 2014). Rewarding a friend more than a stranger for identical behavior could be described positively as loyalty or negatively as nepotism. In either case, the friend/​stranger task does not measure people’s behavior toward “other people” in general. It more precisely assesses non-​ self-​report differences in how people treat a stranger and a friend. This mirrors findings from a rare natural experiment with rice farmers in Sri Lanka (Aoyagi, Sawada, & Shoji, 2014). As a part of a development project, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation helped fund irrigation infrastructure in southern Sri Lanka. In the interests of fairness, the government used a lottery to randomly assign farmers to new irrigation networks—​a windfall for researchers. Researchers found that being hooked into the same irrigation network increased people’s trust toward other people in the same irrigation network. And as farmers spent more years in the same irrigation network, trust increased. Importantly, trust increased more to people in the same irrigation networks as opposed to people in other nearby irrigation networks or people in general. Importance of the Self. Another variable was the relative importance of the self. We had participants from all over China draw a diagram of

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their social network, with circles to represent the self and friends. A previous study found that Americans, Brits, and Germans draw the self circle bigger than they draw friends, whereas participants in Japan draw the self and friends roughly the same size (Kitayama, Park, Sevincer, Karasawa, & Üskül, 2009). In China, participants from the wheat area drew the self larger than their friends; in the rice area, participants drew the self roughly the same size as friends (Talhelm et al., 2014). Relational Mobility. We also tested whether rice areas in China have lower relational mobility. In cultures with high relational mobility, it is easy to meet new people, form new relationships, and leave unsatisfying relationships (Schug, Yuki, & Maddux, 2010). In cultures with low relational mobility, there are not as many opportunities to meet new people, and it is less acceptable to exit relationships. Unlike self-​report scales, the relational mobility scale asks people not to rate themselves but their social environment—​their school, their neighborhood, their community. Previous studies have found that United States has higher relational mobility than Japan (Schug et al., 2010; Yuki, Thomson, Kito, Yamada, & Schug, 2016). In India, we have found preliminary evidence that people from the wheat areas report higher relational mobility than people in rice areas. This relationship style may fit with the strict labor coordination in rice villages. When people have to work with their neighbors and their cousins to put food on the table, relationships are more entrenched and harder to exit. Note that none of the three differences we describe here involves warm feelings toward other people in general or feeling that “what is good for my organization is also good for me,” like the self-​report collectivism scale mentioned earlier.

How It Got That Way: The Historical Development of Rice One day Thomas (the first author of this chapter) stumbled upon a rice village in southern China. It was summer—​very hot and humid. It was also time to transplant rice seedlings, and the villagers were putting the seedlings into the flooded rice paddies in a group of 11 (Figure 3.4). Standing there on the edge of the rice paddy, it was easy to think, “Wow, we’re witnessing traditional rice farming.” Yet rice farming was not “born” into the world like this. Consider rice farming in the Shanghai region during the Tang Dynasty (618–​906 ad). Rice farmers were burning their fields instead of plowing them, and they

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Figure 3.4  Rice farmers transplanting rice seedlings in Guangdong Province. Photo courtesy of Thomas Talhelm.

even hunted and fished for a large portion of their calories (Elvin, 2006, p.  168). Even in the 1100s, farmers in Guangdong Province were still farming without transplanting (Bray, 1986, p. 44). There are ways to farm rice that are much easier than intensive farming. So why did China eventually develop intensive rice farming? Why not keep using easier methods? To understand the development of rice farming, it is important to understand the tradeoffs. Intensive rice paddies produce some of the most calories per hectare of any grain crop. But that productivity comes at a high labor cost. That means farmers can maximize different resources: 1. Maximize calorie output per unit of labor. 2. Maximize calorie output per unit of land. If the goal is to maximize calories per unit of labor input, then intensive rice paddies are not a smart choice. Instead, dryland rice, potatoes, or slash-​and-​burn agriculture are better choices. The decision comes down to which resource is plentiful and which is scarce. With a small population and lots of plentiful land, it makes sense to plant large plots with low-​ intensity labor input. Yet in a

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densely-​populated area where land per person is scarce, it makes more sense to put more labor into a small plot and achieve incredibly high outputs per acre. There is historical evidence suggesting that farming in China developed from low labor per hectare to high labor per hectare. For example, historical records show that Chinese landowners sued each other over smaller and smaller pieces of land over time (Elvin, 2006, p. 182). This is a likely narrative: As China’s population grew, labor became more plentiful, and free land became scarce. This made intensive paddy rice more attractive. This historical development hits home the point that not all rice is equal. Low-​intensity dryland rice is very different from high-​intensity paddy rice. The intensive rice paddy farming of places like China and Japan probably depended on the preconditions of stable government and population density. These historical antecedents could also explain why other parts of Asia still use rainfed rather than manmade irrigation systems. For example, much rice in Southeast Asia (such as in Thailand) is rainfed rather than irrigated (IRRI, 2009). These areas may have lacked the consistent population pressure or societal infrastructure and stability needed to push toward more intensive manmade irrigation systems. Thus rice output alone may not be the correct predictor of rice culture. Historical rice intensity and the methods of farming may be the more precise predictors of rice culture. Future research comparing intensive rice regions with rainfed and dryland rice regions can answer this question.

Why Rice Is Not Ecological Determinism The rice theory is not the first theory to link culture to subsistence style. Researchers have connected the environment to culture in anthropology (Hallowell, 1949; Harris, 1977), history (Fischer, 1989), economics (Alesina, Giuliano, & Nunn, 2013), and psychology (Barry, Child, & Bacon, 1959; Berry, 1967; Nisbett & Cohen, 1996; Üskül, Kitayama, & Nisbett, 2008). Because subsistence theory has a rich history, we can draw on their experience of criticisms of subsistence theories to help refine the rice theory. Perhaps the most common criticism of subsistence theories is the charge of “ecological determinism.” Ecological determinism reduces culture to the following formula: If a region has X environment, it has Y culture.

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In other words, the environment completely determines the culture. Another reason ecological determinism offends some researchers is that it seems to rob humans of free will. One stream of anthropology focuses on the symbolic meaning of cultural practices. That stream emphasizes how arbitrary certain cultural practices are. Why does Culture X feast around circular tables instead of square tables? Why does China use chopsticks and France use forks? One reason is that humans have the agency to invest arbitrary objects with meaning. But deterministic theories seem to take that agency away. Perhaps the stronger criticism is that cultures are not that simple. Regions with similar environments do not inevitably produce the same cultures. Regions with vastly different environments can produce similar cultures (for examples, see Cohen, 2001). If a good researcher knows everything about the environment of a tribe, it would be foolhardy for that researcher to predict with 100% confidence what that culture will be like. In this section, we build upon these criticisms with two larger points. First, ecology is surely not the only variable that influences culture. Subsistence theory cannot come close to explaining all of culture. Clearly there are historical oddities, powerful individuals, contact with other cultures, and many other factors that influence culture. Second, the environment for rice does not always lead to rice culture. The environment for rice does not always lead to the intensive paddy rice farming of China. The story is more complex. We explain why next.

Why Labor Exchanges Are Not Inevitable The rice theory is not so simple as to say that rice causes collectivism. Instead, the model requires another step. Rice presents a problem:  it requires lots of labor and grows best in standing water.5 This problem calls out of a solution—​there are rewards (calories) to be given to people that can solve this problem. As an analogy, the natural world presents humans with the problem of rain and cold weather. That problem calls out for a solution—​the rewards are warmth, safety, and health. Even though the problem is the same, humans solve it in different ways. People have lived in caves, carried tents,

 And some rice regions have not even faced this problem in the first place. Areas with low population density and plentiful land can get enough calories out of the rice without creating systems to grow it intensively. 5

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built cabins, and erected modern apartment buildings. A single problem does not always lead to identical solutions. Rice presents a problem. Cooperative labor exchanges and irrigation coordination are one way to solve that problem. But this is not the only way. Rice farmers have come up with different solutions for the labor problem. Here we focus on labor exchanges. Labor exchanges are not the only solution to rice’s labor problem. In modern times, farmers use diesel water pumps, tractors, and sometimes even planes to reduce the number of man-​ hours needed to farm rice (Bray, 1986). In coastal Georgia and South Carolina, landowners forced slaves to plant rice (Smith, 1991). Coastal Georgia and southern China had the right natural environment to grow rice, but China ended up with labor exchanges and Georgia ended up with slavery. Labor exchanges are not inevitable. Heartwarming teamwork is not the only solution to rice’s labor problem. Even if we look at cultures that have settled upon labor exchanges, we will still find differences. People in different areas choose different types of people to exchange labor with. For example, in one village in Malaysia, farmers would exchange labor in groups of 10 or 12 families (Bray, 1986, p.  120). In Sierra Leone, a researcher observed families, friends, divorcees, and even groups of children exchange labor on rice plots (Richards, 1987). In China, farmers would sometimes hire laborers depending on the circumstances (Fei, 1945). These different systems could lead to differences in the cultures.

Not All Rice Is Irrigated Another complication to the rice theory is that rice does not have to be irrigated. If we predict which areas of the world will have rice culture by measuring how much rice they grow, we are glossing over different types of farming (although sometimes rice output is the only statistic available). Rice grows best in standing water, but it does not need standing water. The biggest exception is dryland rice. These are varieties of rice that grow on dry land, no irrigation needed. Dryland rice has the advantage that it requires less labor, but it produces far fewer calories per acre (Khush, 1997; also see Bray, 1986, p. 15). Farmers usually grow dryland rice on hilly areas that are hard to irrigate or on land that is simply too dry for paddy rice. Farmers could also decide to plant wet rice one year and dryland rice the next year if they are short of labor.

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Nor is it true to say wheat is never irrigated. Some wheat and millet is irrigated. Now, wheat irrigation is not the same as rice irrigation, particularly because wheat and millet are not grown in standing water. But in very dry areas, farmers do irrigate wheat and millet. For example, an unusual amount of wheat farmland in India is irrigated (Sayre, 2002). Even among rice grown in standing water, irrigation methods are not always the same. Wet rice can be roughly split into human irrigated and rainfed rice. In areas blessed with the right amount of rainfall or flooding at the right time of year, farmers can rely on nature’s flooding and save themselves much of the work required in human irrigation. Much of the rice grown in Southeast Asia is rainfed (IRRI, 2009). Thus rice culture in non-​human-​irrigated rice areas of Southeast Asia may be different from rice culture in China.

Human Agency Here is the kindergarten version of the rice theory: environment for rice = interdependent culture

Here’s the university version: The environment for rice = the ability to grow rice + higher likelihood that the people living there will use one of many different types of strategies that unlock rice’s potential to produce higher calorie output per acre than other major grain crops

This formula is longer, but by adding in these elements, we return human agency to culture. This also forces the theory to accommodate the variability of human culture. It forces the theory to recognize that one type of environment does not mean one type of culture. At the same time, we should not be so naïve as to say that ecological theories brook no human agency. The very foundation of ecological theories is that humans are capable of recognizing payoffs in their environment and strategizing their behavior to fit their environment (even if their decisions do not always lead to the best outcomes). If humans were not doing this, are we not robbing humans of their agency, of their intelligence?

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The Future of Rice Farming Changes in Rice Farming Technology is making it easier to farm rice without cooperation. In 1909, it took a team of rice farmers in Japan 14 full days of work to irrigate a single hectare (Bray, 1986, p. 55). Today, a single person can water several hectares by turning on a diesel water pump. What rice means for culture depends on how people farm it. Technology is also changing where we farm rice. In traditional China, rice was grown in wet, warm areas. Yet it was really the “wet” part that determined most of where rice was grown. As one demonstration, we ran a regression to test whether precipitation or average temperature is a better predictor of how much farmland different provinces in China devoted to rice paddies in 1986 (N = 28). In that regression, temperature was not significant (β = .18, p = .22), but precipitation was (β = .77, p Cooperating > Appeasement met with cooperation > 0 > Appeasement met with cheating > Being cheated > Feud.

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(both high in negative reciprocity), the interaction will escalate into a feud. The Adventitious have no strong predispositions to positively reciprocate or to retaliate. They will cheat if they can, offer cooperation minimally and only when they have to, and will not retaliate. They take advantage of Trusters and attempt to appease Honorables and Vengefuls by offering the minimal amount that it will take to escape punishment. This leads to small gains when they interact with Honorables and small losses when they interact with Vengefuls. Payoffs to cheating (R) exceed payoffs to cooperation (C)—​otherwise why cheat? Punishments (P) exceed payoffs to cheating (R)—​otherwise why not cheat? Appeasement (A) always involve a fraction of what is normally risked or gained in an interaction, so A*R < R and A*C < C. As may thus be seen in Table 4.2, no strategy dominates any other strategy (in the sense of being at least as good and sometimes better in all situations). The final model made allowance for errors (mistaking whether one’s partner offered cooperation or not) as well as gave each agent a small interaction bonus to incentivize finding a partner. The model was initially populated with equal numbers of the four types, meaning that predispositions toward positive and negative reciprocity began uncorrelated in the population. Others details may be found in Hernandez et al. (2016). A number of points should be noted about the results of this model. 1. All strategies have some niche in the population, though some (such as the Vengeful) exist at very low levels. 2. Honorable (high positive reciprocity, high negative reciprocity) becomes the most popular strategy (41% of the population) and its exact opposite, the Adventitious (low positive reciprocity, low negative reciprocity) becomes the second most popular strategy (33% of the population). Trusters are 19% of the population and Vengefuls are 7%. 3. The Honorables exist in symbiosis with the Adventitious. If the Adventitious did not exist, then the Truster strategy would dominate the Honorables (as seen in the skeletal payoff matrix of Table 4.2). Empirically, this is what happened when we removed the Adventitious:  Trusters became the most popular strategy (79%); Vengefuls became the second most popular (17%); and the Honorables fell to very low levels (4%). Conversely, if the Honorable strategy did not exist, the world would temporarily exist with only the Adventitious and the Vengeful; the Trusters would be wiped out (as in fact they were when we ran the simulation). In such a world,

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no agent would be showing any positive reciprocity, and the ultimate prospects for having a thriving society seem quite dim. Just as in Simulation 2, having Honorables is probably necessary for producing a functioning society. 4. Related to this point, just as with Simulation 2, the usefulness of honor for preserving the social group may increase further the rationality of the Honorable strategy because it (a) will bring Honorables additional status as “good” people, leading to benefits we have not modelled here and (b) is consistent with “enlightened self-​interest” or “self-​interest rightly understood” because it preserves the long-​ term viability of the society in which they live (see also Cohen, 2015; Gilmore, 1990; as well as Hawkes & Bliege Bird, 2002, on costly signaling of desired traits). 5. Because in this simulation, Honorables (high on both positive and negative reciprocity) and Adventitious (low on both positive and negative reciprocity) are the most popular strategies, we come to see the peculiar pattern found in honor cultures whereby tendencies toward positive reciprocity and negative reciprocity become correlated. In this model, phi (the association between two dichotomous variables) for positive and negative reciprocity was .50, surprisingly close to the .43 correlation between positive and negative reciprocity found among Honor culture members in Leung & Cohen’s (2011) lab study. 6. A  predisposition toward positive reciprocity is crucial for understanding why Honorables proliferate in the population. The predisposition toward positive reciprocity is what separates the Honorables (the most successful strategy in the environment) from the Vengefuls (the least successful strategy in the environment). Accounting for positive reciprocity may also explain why Honor strategies are not a plurality in Simulation 2 (which does not model positive reciprocity), and they are a plurality in Simulation 3 (which does). Another difference, of course, is that Simulation 3 is also a world of pure self-​ help justice, whereas Simulation 2 allows the strength of the state to vary. 7. The portability—​and hence stealability of wealth—​was not directly modeled in this stimulation. However, there is an indirect analog in this third model, namely the parameter R, indicating what an agent risks if he or she is cheated by another agent. Larger Rs indicate that successful cheaters have much to gain—​and prosocial agents have much to lose—​in any given interaction. When we included the

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parameters from Table 4.2 (R, C, P*Feud, and A) in a regression predicting a type’s prevalence in the population, we found that having a lot at risk hurts the Trusters (who are taken advantage of) and helps the Vengefuls (who prey on others). This much is intuitive. However, theory and a naïve reading of the payoff matrix in Table 4.2 would seem to make contradictory predictions for the Adventitious and the Honorables. As shown in Table 4.2, the Adventitious would seem to benefit from a large R, because they gain R in taking advantage of Trusters and only lose AR when unsuccessfully attempting to appease the Vengeful. On the other hand, R never figures directly in the payoff matrix for the Honorables and hence might naively be supposed to have little effect. The theory outlined in the beginning of this chapter, however, would indicate that high-​risk environments will lead to more Honorables, because a reputation for negative reciprocity will deter would-​be predators. This logic carries the day. Thus, all else equal, a higher value of R (having more at risk) is correlated with a greater prevalence of Honorables in the population, whereas a higher R is correlated with a lower prevalence of the Adventitious. Again, whereas this result is not consistent with a superficial, naïve reading of Table 4.2, it is consistent with theory and empirical observations about where honor cultures will be found. That is, environments where much can be lost to predators give rise to cultures where people cultivate an Honorable stance, taking vengeance on those who have crossed them while engaging in prosocial action toward the relevant ingroup (however idiosyncratically defined). Further, results are consistent with an understanding of agents existing within a cultural ecosystem where any given strategy’s success depends on the success or failure of all the other strategies in the environment. This notion of mutual interdependence is, of course, one of the most basic and profound lessons of evolution, game theoretic thinking, and agent-​based modeling methodologies.

Cultural Evolution—​With Humans There are many ways in which cultural evolution as modeled by agent-​ based models does not resemble actual cultural evolution. However one way many agent-​based models egregiously depart from actual cultural evolution is in the assumption of perfect or near perfect fidelity of cultural transmissions. People are not perfect copies of their parents, or their

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Table 4.3 Parent Strategies, Their Likely Mutants, and the Payoff to the Parents of Interacting with Their Likely Mutants Parent

Honorable Truster Vengeful Adventitious

Mutates into

With probability: m*(1-​m)

With probability: (1-​m)*m

With probability: m*m

Expected payoff from interacting with most likely mutants

Vengeful Honorable Honorable Truster

Truster Adventitious Adventitious Vengeful

Adventitious Vengeful Truster Honorable

–​FP+C ( 3,000 people). The term “smoothing” refers to the standard practice in small-​area mapping studies of employing Bayesian hierarchical spatial models in order to adjust the map for the differing uncertainty in the estimates introduced by the differing underlying population structure (i.e., unreliable estimates in less-​populated areas). There was a clear spatial pattern with 16% (95% Credible Interval (Cr.I) 0%, 38%) higher rates in rural and mountainous areas compared to the national average. A “borrowed” Townsend-​like index was originally considered (replacing “households with no car,” which is not relevant in a Cypriot context with “no access to a PC”) but did not perform well in a Cypriot context. Not only the four components did not share a common geography, but the index did not seem to capture a social gradient in premature mortality (Middleton & Lamnisos, 2012; Zannoupas, Lamnisos, Kolokotroni, Yiallouros, & Middleton, 2013). Principal component analysis with a wider set of 22 census-​based indicators revealed a clear structure of four components. Based on the first component, a composite index of 12 variables was constructed, explaining 40.8% of the variance (Zannoupas et al., 2015). Due to the data-​driven nature of the exercise, it was decided to (a) introduce redundant variables, (b) even though criticized as surrogates rather than direct measures, include “at-​risk” groups, such as retired, those with long-​term disability or large families, and so on, since the level of deprivation experienced by these groups can vary across settings as a result of social welfare policies, and (c) in an encompassing view of disadvantage, purposefully include variables commonly used in indices of wider features of the social environment, such as residential mobility. Interestingly, the other PCA components were also meaningful. The second is reminiscent of the Social Fragmentation score, discussed later on (Congdon, 1996; Middleton et  al., 2004). The third is a Townsend-​like Index, while the fourth reflects features of the built environment. The first index was named “Rurality-​Related Index of Socio-economic Disadvantage,” as it became apparent that it mainly reflected aspects of deprivation or at least demographic groups (retired population, agricultural workers, and single-​person households) more prevalent in rural parts of the country. This was confirmed in cluster analysis, where most defining was the striking distinction between the ageing and resource-​scarce rural communities versus younger more educated populations in metropolitan areas. Thus, in a nationwide comparison, this index appears to largely contrast rural (and more deprived) versus urban (better-​off by comparison),

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making it hard to delineate the effect of deprivation from rurality itself. The impact of rurality itself on health has been a distinct subject of enquiry (Dixon & Welch, 2000). The extent to which the rural disadvantage reflects a continuing decline in rural economy and/​or barriers to health care and services, or is even restricted to certain causes, is not known. It might also reflect a selective migration process out of these areas. In France, the largest increases in premature mortality in a 30-​year period were seen in areas with the largest population decline, more so in socio-economically deprived areas (Ghosn et al., 2013). It was deemed necessary to construct a different index in order to contrast communities within the metropolitan centers. The “Urban-​Specific Index of Socio-economic Disadvantage” is based on a slightly different set of variables, which now include unemployment and not owner-​occupied households, along with seven other indicators common to the previous index. Predictive validity of both indices was assessed in terms of the social gradient in premature mortality. Table 6.4 shows Standardized Mortality Rations (SMRs) across quartiles of areas (nationwide) or quartiles of population in urban areas with increasing levels of disadvantage. Nationwide, there was a stepwise decrease across decreasing levels of rural-​related deprivation. Mortality appeared 18% higher in the most deprived (and rural) areas, even though the confidence interval is wide due to the particularly small size of the population. Similarly, the urban-​specific index captured a stepwise association in premature mortality, with 20% lower rates than the national average among the quartile of population living in the least deprived urban areas. Interestingly, the quartile with the highest levels of deprivation did not appear to be the worst-​off. In recent years,

Table 6.4  Standardized Mortality Ratios (SMRs) and 95% CI of  Premature Adult Mortality across  Quartiles of  Areas (Nationwide) and Quartiles of  Population (Urban Areas Only) with  Increasing Levels of  Socioeconomic Disadvantage SMRs Rurality-​related Socioeconomic disadvantage (nationwide) Urban-​specific Socioeconomic disadvantage (urban areas only)

Q1 Most

Q2

Q3

Q4 Least

1.18 (0.98, 1.41)

1.17 (1.03, 1.31)

1.05 (0.98, 1.13)

0.98 (0.95, 1.00)

1.05 (1.00, 1.10)

1.11 (1.04, 1.19)

1.04 (0.98, 1.10)

0.80 (0.76, 0.86)

Note: CI = confidence interval, in parentheses

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there has been a lot of interest in “resilient places,” a term that refers to areas that have better health outcomes given what would be expected according to levels of socio-economic deprivation (Pearson, Pearce, & Kingham, 2013; Poortinga, 2012). One community aspect that is thought to potentially buffer the effect of deprivation is social capital (“norms and networks that enable collective action,” as defined by the World Bank) and related concepts (Walsh et  al., 2015). In a recent study in Cyprus, while economic circumstances were predictive of the burden of dementia patients’ carers, a negative association was observed between burden and perceived levels of community participation, not as assessed by themselves but by a randomly selected neighbor (Papastavrou, Andreou, Middleton, Tsangari, & Papacostas, 2015).

People and Places: Composition and Context Ecological studies of geographical inequalities in health (such as the previous case study) do not distinguish between (a) the aggregate risk due to concentration of high-​risk individuals (composition); (b) area influences upon a population’s health (contextual effects, which have been further described as potentially endogenous, i.e., a result of social contagion, contextual as a result of residential composition, and exogenous, i.e., pertaining to the environment itself); or (c) a combination of the two phenomena (Diez-​Roux & Mair, 2010). Several authors argue that the decomposition into compositional and contextual effects may underestimate the true effect of place (Cummins, Curtis, Diez-​Roux, & Macintyre, 2007). To quote Macintyre and Ellaway (2003):  “People make places, and places make people.” Voluntary and involuntary social selection processes are at play to form places, commonly as a result of social stratification (i.e., drift of low SEP and high-​risk individuals into certain areas, e.g., due to affordability of housing) and/​or high SEP (low-​risk) individuals out of these areas in search of better opportunities. Similarly, contextual effects may not be restricted to direct effects of adverse exposures in disadvantaged environments, but places themselves have social norms that shape (encourage or discourage) people’s behaviors and/​or increase vulnerability or consequences of ill-​health as a result of lack of material and social resources to cope with environmental stressors. In an encompassing view of the interlink between people and places, Schreier and Chen (2013) reviewed and synthesized the literature with a focus on asthma and obesity in children. While undoubtedly difficult to capture the multiplicity of ways that contextual forces may affect health, it

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is offered as an example of a conceptual socioecological model with factors operating at multiple levels from the individual to the family/​household and neighborhood environment, all of which have been linked to asthma and obesity but have rarely been integrated in a single study. They delineate the potential cross-​level effect of neighborhoods on individuals and families. For example, attributes of the physical and built environment, such as differential exposure to air pollution, low-​quality housing, lack of parks or other features and amenities in socio-economically disadvantaged areas, or similarly attributes of the social environment, such as continuing exposure to stress and violence or lack of civic engagement and positive social exchange, provide the background that shapes both individual-​and family-​level adverse factors associated with asthma or obesity in children, including physical factors (e.g., exposure to tobacco smoke, allergens), social factors (e.g., psychological states, family dynamics, conflict or support), and health behaviors (e.g., lack of physical activity, poor diet). More importantly, they discuss possible reciprocal relationships across levels (e.g., individual behaviors shaping the environment) or across domains (e.g., the interlink between the physical/​built and the social environment) as well as cross-​level interactions (e.g., social factors exacerbating the effect of the physical environments and thus increasing vulnerability). In recent years, multilevel studies (considering the individual and area level simultaneously) have reported area effects over and above individual risk factors and socio-economic circumstances. A systematic review of 40 (and meta-​analysis of 18)  multilevel studies on the association between at least one area-​level indicator of social or economic environment after controlling for individual-​level socio-economic position concluded that all-​cause mortality was higher in areas with higher socioeconomic disadvantage (Meijer et al., 2012). One issue that has started to receive increasing attention is potential cross-​level interactions between individuals and area characteristics (Diez Roux & Mair, 2010). In a multilevel study among more than 10,000 people in 200 neighborhoods in Brisbane, Australia, neighborhood disadvantage amplified the relationship between individual socio-economic position and self-​rated health (Badland et al., 2013). Characteristically, the likelihood of reporting good health was comparable between people with the highest SEP in disadvantaged neighborhoods and people at the lowest SEP in the most advantaged neighborhoods. Nevertheless, it has been suggested that such findings may also arise by selection processes, since groups of people otherwise assumed to be of similar SEP but living in distinct contexts may actually differ by some unobservable characteristic (Diez Roux & Mair, 2010).

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Furthermore, synergistic effects, and specifically aspects of the psychosocial environment involved in potentially mediating and/​or moderating the effects of socio-economic disadvantage are receiving attention (Vyncke et al., 2013). While several studies have shown independent associations between health and both “economic” and “social” capital, Ahnquist et al. (2012) found synergistic effects in a random representative sample of over 50,000 people in Sweden, whereby a combination of economic hardship (indexed as low household income, inability to meet expenses, lack of cash reserves) with low social capital (measured by three self-​reported items on social participation, interpersonal, and institutional trust) was associated with poorer self-​rated health and psychological distress than if each was considered alone. Similarly, interaction effects of economic and social aspects of a person’s environment were reported in Stafford et  al. (2008), who found associations between social capital (measured in this study at the neighborhood level) and common mental disorders, particularly for individuals living in deprived circumstances. Focusing on the concept of social capital, Uphoff et al. (2013) systematically reviewed the literature for evidence of possible interaction between SEP and social capital. While inferences are limited by the cross-​sectional design of most studies, the fact that the majority focused on self-​rated health and, more importantly, the lack of comparability of measures (e.g., different theoretical and operational definitions of social capital, either at the level of individual or the area level, as well as different indicators of SEP), they found that 19 studies (of 60 reviewed) specifically tested for interaction. They concluded that there was evidence that social capital or some aspect of it (social support and participation) may act as a buffer against the negative health effects of socio-economic disadvantage.

Beyond Indicators of Socio-economic Disadvantage Other than social capital (commonly operationalized based on survey responses aggregated at community level), a number of indices, not based on residents’ perceptions, intend to tap on aspects of a community’s environment other than deprivation. One such census-​derived index is the Social Fragmentation score (Congdon, 1996). Based on the premise that people with families, homeowners, and long-​term residents have more commitment, intentions, and plans to improve their neighborhood, it combines single-​person households, unmarried population, residential mobility, and households privately renting to capture a reduced sense of community or belonging. In the lines of Durkheim’s theory, it was shown to be associated

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with suicide mortality, more strongly than deprivation (Middleton et al., 2004; Middleton, Sterne, & Gunnell, 2006). In a national sample of over 10,000 people in New Zealand, there was an association between higher neighborhood social fragmentation and reduced Mental Health-​Related Quality of Life over and above individual characteristics (gender, age, nationality, education) and neighborhood socio-economic deprivation (Ivory, Collings, Blakely, & Dew, 2011). Furthermore, it has been shown that longitudinally the smaller health improvements in the UK, particularly in mental health, were observed in areas with high levels of social fragmentation, especially among long-​term residents (Stafford, De Silva, Stansfeld, & Marmot, 2008). Such associations are not restricted to mental health. In a case-​control study in Sweden, Stjärne, de Leon, and Hallqvist (2004) showed associations between myocardial infraction and both the Townsend Index and the Social Fragmentation score after controlling for individual factors. Of particular interest is residential mobility (a component of the social fragmentation score). While residential mobility has been linked with lower levels of well-​being at the individual level (potentially through a reduced sense of belonging and collective self as well as size and type of social relationships), such epidemiological findings also support that residentially unstable communities may be harmful to those who stay behind. These environments may discourage or at least not promote collective efficacy and procommunity action as a result of a weaker psychological attachment to community and reduced opportunities for establishing meaningful long-​term ties and benefitting from social support (Oishi, 2010; Oishi et al., 2007). In deprived neighbourhoods in Glasgow, feelings of loneliness and poor mental health were related both with the frequency as well as the type of social relations (i.e., active acquaintance versus mere familiarity; Kearns, Whitley, Tannahill, & Ellaway, 2015), which residential instability is less likely to encourage. As also mentioned, one major drawback of all these indices, whether they intend to capture socio-economic disadvantage or some other aspect of a communities social environment, is that are heavily based on the demographical composition of these areas (i.e., they describe the environment based on who lives there). A number of indices have been proposed that are truly ecological in nature. One example is the Neighborhood Psychosocial Hazards score (Glass et al., 2006) based on factor analysis of a final set of 12 (out of 20)  features that may relate to a heightened state of vigilance, alarm, or fear amongst residents, such as public safety (911 calls) and physical disorder (vacant houses, complaints about street conditions). Others focus on the physical environment using GIS or remote sensing

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data, such as land use, and green space (Li & Weng 2007). Richardson et al. (2010) and Pearce et al. (2011) describe the development of MEDIx (Multiple Environmental Deprivation Index) in the UK and New Zealand, respectively, an ordinal measure of five health-​ related environmental characteristics (air pollution, industrial facilities, climate, UV, and green space). Finally, some studies focus on the built and service environment to assess the unequal distribution of community resources or absence of health-​promoting features. For example, a study in the UK has found a linear association between increasing levels of area deprivation, where obesity rates are much higher, and the mean number of McDonald’s outlets per capita (Cummins, McKay, & Macintyre, 2005). Similarly, Witten et al. (2011) describe a GIS-​based index of infrastructure features that may promote physical activity. Another such example is a New Zealand index of recreational, shopping, and educational and health care facilities (Pearce, Witten, Hiscock, & Blakely, 2007). In fact, in this study access appeared better in deprived communities. Other than the fact that this finding might be context-​specific, locational accessibility does not reflect actual utilization patterns or potential differential quality of the available resources. For example, across 28 parks in Montreal neighborhoods selected to represent different levels on the health gradient, quality of the facilities was worse in poorer health areas (Coen & Ross, 2006).

Beyond Routine Data Free from the need of nationwide coverage, other approaches to explore features or aspects of local environments have been described. Most widespread is the often opportunistic use of survey data to measure contextual aspects of a neighborhood. Most characteristic is indeed the example of social capital or related concepts. Studies often aggregate the perceptions of study participants on structural aspects (e.g., social networks and ties with friends, family, and neighbors) and/​or cognitive aspects (e.g., trust and reciprocity) at the community level (Murayama, Fujiwara, & Kawachi, 2012). There are also purposefully designed survey tools for aspects or features in the neighborhood environment, either generic (De Lima Friche et al., 2013; Mujahid, Roux, Morenoff, & Raghunathan, 2007) or feature-​ specific (e.g., walkability; Sallis et al., 2011). A different approach is Systematic Social Observation tools or checklists (also called environmental scan or field audits). The Chicago

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Neighborhood project (Raudenbush & Sampson, 1999) was a pioneering example of combining survey methods to measure the psychosocial environment, such as collective efficacy and social control, with observation methods to rate neighborhoods in terms of physical disorder (e.g., graffiti, litter, housing conditions, etc.). One such feature is “broken windows,” which carries a long history as an indicator but also a metaphor of urban decay and social disorder (Welsh, Braga, & Bruinsma, 2015). A number of checklists are not restricted to features of the built, service, or physical environment but also include an assessment of safety and people activity (Nickelson, Wang, Mitchell, Hendricks, & Paschal, 2013; Schaefer-​ McDaniel, Caughy, O’Campo, & Gearey, 2010). While traditionally this involved walking or driving through a neighborhood, there is increased use of geospatial tools (e.g., Google Street View; Charreire et al., 2014). Finally, studies use qualitative or mixed-​methods approaches to understand the lived experience of the residents in terms of their neighborhood environment and how it relates to health or health-​threatening behaviors (Stead, MacAskill, MacKintosh, Reece, & Eadie, 2001; Cairns-​Nagi & Bambra, 2013). These can shed further light on the possible pathways between socio-economic disadvantage and health. For instance, other than poor community resources and limited opportunities in disadvantaged communities in Glasgow, psychosocial aspects of the community such as the generally stressful environment, or even a “dark side” of close social ties (that may not always be favorable depending on community norms), were identified as important in promoting smoking or discouraging cessation (Stead et al., 2001). Various methods of assessing aspects of the environment, beyond the use of routine data, have been categorized according to type and common use in Table 6.5.

Conclusion: Policy Starts from Observation A fundamental principle for action is acknowledging, measuring, and understanding the problem then evaluating action through setting up routine data monitoring systems, expanding the knowledge base, and developing a workforce trained in the Social Determinants of Health (Marmot, Friel, Bell, Houweling, & Taylor, 2008). Lack of good monitoring systems and/​ or lack of political awareness have been significant barriers, even in countries with much longer traditions (Baum, Laris, Fisher, Newman, & MacDougall, 2013; Brassolotto, Raphael, & Baldeo, 2014; Pega, Valentine, Matheson, & Rasanathan, 2014). Mackenbach (2006)

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Table 6.5 Summary of Different Types of Indicators or Measures of Socio-economic Characteristics or Features of Areas Type

Measure

Census-​or other administrative-​based indices

Socio-economic deprivation or income inequality or other aspects of an area’s social and economic environment, expressed as the sociodemographic composition of an area (i.e., characteristics of people that live there). They may include some ecological-​level variables, such as proportion of vacant houses, crime statistics, or election turnout.

Aggregate indicators from specially designed surveys or opportunistic use of survey data

Based on person-​based perceptions of the feature under study aggregated to the community level. Most commonly features of psychosocial environment using single indicators (e.g., levels of trust, reciprocity) or composite indices (e.g., social cohesion, social control, collective efficacy). Also, more general features, such as physical disorder, safety, quality of services, etc.

Truly ecological measures

Characteristics of the community itself: either based on routine sources, for example, percentage deserted houses, number of local organizations in an area, crime statistics, etc. or based on GIS and/​or remote sensing for features of the built environment (e.g. land use), physical environment (e.g. air pollution) or service environment (e.g. availability of facilities).

Community assessment/​ audit measures

Observer-​based ratings based on checklists either on foot/​car (“windshield” surveys) and/​or use of geospatial tools to record features of areas (e.g., rubbish, gardens, fences) and/​or public behaviors (e.g., social exchange).

Qualitative methods

Lived experience of residents with regards to health-​related aspects of their physical, built, or social environment with the use of interviews/​ focus groups with residents purposefully selected from areas of interest (e.g., deprived communities).

commented “many countries do not have valid nationally representative data on socio-economic inequalities in mortality by cause of death. Not all countries have good survey data on inequalities in self-​reported morbidity, health-​related behaviors, and other determinants of health problems.” In the case of Cyprus, this is certainly true, since evidence of the social patterning of health is limited to the data presented in the case study here (at the spatial level) while at the individual level, one may have to fit together the pieces of the puzzle through a series of fragmented findings from studies whose main focus is not SEP and less often survey data that explicitly set out to explore the SEP–​health association (Heraclides, Kolokotroni, & Charalambous, 2015). The importance of socio-economic indicators in monitoring systems is best expressed by Marmot et al. (2008): “Experience 158 

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shows that countries without basic data on mortality and morbidity stratified by socio-economic indicators have difficulties in moving forward on health equity.” At the local level, the WHO Healthy Cities project has been influential in setting up systems across a network of European cities in order to produce or improve locally-​generated data to profile a city’s social groups and neighborhoods in terms of socially determined inequalities in health, with an increasing integration of methodological approaches (De Leeuw, Tsouros, Dyakova, & Green, 2014).

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CHAPTER 7

Socio-Economic Cultures How Education Shapes the Self Rebecca Carey and Lucy Zhang Bencharit

Education . . . beyond all other divides of human origin, is a great equalizer of conditions of men—​the balance wheel of the social machinery. —​​Horace Mann

Education is on the rise. Since the 1950s, the number of people accessing education, the total number of years spent on education, and even the average years of tertiary education have increased across the globe (Barro & Lee, 2013). In the United States, this trend has been particularly visible in higher education, with the proportion of US citizens achieving a bachelor’s degree rising from 6% in 1950 to 32% in 2015 (US Census Bureau, 2015). With education more accessible than ever before, it is important to understand its consequences on individuals. Horace Mann, quoted at the beginning of this chapter, believed that education was the means by which a society could promote equality. A US congressional representative in the 18th century, Mann championed increasing equal access to education as a means to enable social mobility (Brick, 2005). Indeed, in the United States, there are many positive consequences of education. As Figure 7.1 shows, higher levels of education allow for higher status occupations, such as managerial, professional, and teaching positions. These jobs, in turn, offer higher incomes (see Figure 7.2)—​ earning a four-​year college degree nearly doubles a person’s expected annual wages compared to earning a high school degree (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2013). Thus education is an important lever in improving the

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BA or More Required

Figure 7.1  Percentage of occupations requiring specific levels of educational attainment by industry type (Carnevale, Smith, & Strohl, 2013). Legend depicts required educational attainment: HS or less = high school degree or less education, BA = bachelor’s degree or more education.

socio-economic conditions of a person’s world (Day & Newburger, 2002; Geyer & Peter, 2000; Kraus & Stephens, 2012; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1995; Stephens, Markus, & Townsend, 2007). However, the historical importance attached to education lies not only in societal economic outcomes but also in psychological outcomes. Horace Mann’s appreciation for education, for example, went beyond the purely academic. He wrote “[e]‌ducation derives arguments for its support from a comprehensive range of considerations . . . Health, freedom, wisdom, virtue, time, eternity plead its behalf” (Mann & Pecant, 1891, p. 48). He thus believed education could improve society by shaping the best citizens. This model of learning sees education as a path to self-​perfection, personal virtue, and moral character (Li, 2005). This perspective suggests that education is capable of shaping more than just cognitive skills, abilities, and intelligence but also how people experience self and how they understand the world around them. Indeed, it is important to understand the mechanisms underlying the effects of education, as with increasing education

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Percentage of Occupations with Salary

60 50 40 30 20 10 0 less than $25,000

$25,000– $35,000

$35,000– $55,000– $55,000 $75,000 Median Salary < HS

HS

more than $75,000

BA

Figure 7.2  Median salary for occupations given the typical level of education that most workers need to enter the occupation (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2016). Legend depicts typical educational attainment: < HS = less than a high school degree, HS = high school degree, BA = bachelor’s degree.

people are also more likely to experience better health, greater well-​being, and increased levels of happiness (e.g., Cutler & Lleras-​Muney, 2006; Michalos, 2008). In the current chapter, we take a sociocultural perspective on education and explore how it can shape one’s experience and construal of self.1 The experience of self includes all the thoughts and beliefs people have about themselves (Leary & Tangney, 2011). For example, when people consider the question “Who am I?” they can draw answers from physical traits (e.g., I am tall), social relationships and roles (e.g., I am a brother, I am a teammate, etc.), preferences (e.g., I like movies), goals (e.g., I want to travel), activities (e.g., I collect stamps), psychological traits (e.g., I am outgoing) or skills and abilities (e.g., I  am good at math; Kanagawa, Cross, & Markus, 2001). Here, we focus on self as the intermediary between a person’s external world and his or her internal thoughts, feelings, and actions. We focus specifically on education in this chapter, although many researchers use education in conjunction with income and occupation to broadly describe a person’s socio-economic status (SES). Because education is strongly tied to income and occupation, any discussion of education effects will include, to some extent, a discussion of income and occupation. Nevertheless, here we strive to consider influences on views of self, understandings of the world, and societal outcomes that are unique to education (Kraus & Stephens, 2012). 1

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In other words, we take the perspective that how people understand themselves is pivotal to how they understand and act in the world around them. In this way, the self acts as a schema or interpretive framework through which people can evaluate, organize, and ultimately make sense of their experiences (Stephens, Brannon, Markus, & Nelson, 2015; Stephens, Fryberg, & Markus, 2012; Stephens, Markus, & Fryberg, 2012; Stephens, Markus, & Phillips, 2014). We specifically show that people inhabiting college-​educated contexts tend to prioritize independent selves that are separate and distinct from others. In contrast, those inhabiting less-​ educated (e.g., high school or fewer years of education) contexts tend to emphasize interdependent selves that are inherently connected to others. We propose that these divergent views of self are constructed in the social, cultural, and economic realities created by education. Focusing largely on US contexts, we first explore how educational attainment shapes the external realities of a person’s world, before we focus on individual outcomes and consider how education shapes internal psychological tendencies. Then, using the unique case of first-​generation college students—​those who are the first in their families to go to college—​we examine the consequences of a mismatch between one’s interdependent self and the independent values that predominate college settings. In navigating the effects of having (or not having) a college education, we address the biggest educational divide in the United States (i.e., whereas 57% of Americans have at most a high school degree, there are 32% of Americans who have at least a bachelor’s degree; Ryan & Bauman, 2016). Lastly, based on the research we outline throughout the chapter, we provide recommendations for how policymakers, educators, and researchers can intervene on these processes to make education more equitable for all groups.

Level of Educational Attainment Shapes Sociocultural Contexts We explore how education influences sociocultural contexts by analyzing how educational attainment shapes culture cycles (see Figure 7.3). A culture cycle perspective considers how daily interactions (e.g., with family, coworkers), formal institutions (e.g., government, media, education), and abstract ideas (e.g., what is right, what is good) give meaning to self and shape how people think, feel, and act (Markus & Conner, 2014; Markus & Kitayama, 2010). Interactions, institutions, and ideas within the culture cycle shape each other, as well as individuals and their psychological

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The Culture Cycle

(d) Ideas

what is good, what is right

(c) Institutions norms, rules, policies, and practices of formal institutions

(b) Interactions

everyday exchanges with people and products

(a) Individuals thoughts, feelings, beliefs, actions CE Contexts: • Self is construed as independent from others • Analytic cognition • Choice is personal • Motivation stems from within HSE Contexts: • Self is construed as interdependent with others • Holistic cognition • Choice is relational • Emotional “tuning in” • Motivation reflects others

CE Contexts: • Social networks are loosely connected • Parenting socializes “unique flowers” HSE Contexts: • Social networks are strongly connected • Parenting socializes “tough fortresses”

CE Contexts: • Universities emphasize independence • Educational curriculam emphasizes selfexpression • Jobs require creativity

CE Contexts: • Equality and personal freedom are moral ideals HSE Contexts: • In addition to equality and freedom, loyalty and respect for authority are moral ideas

HSE Contexts: • Educational curriculum emphasizes following rules • Jobs require cooperation and deference

Figure 7.3  Culture cycles of college-​educated (CE) and high school-​educated (HSE) contexts.

tendencies; individuals, in turn, shape the world around them in a process of mutual constitution (Markus & Kitayama, 2010; Shweder, 1990). We delve deeper into psychological tendencies (e.g., cognition, emotion, and behavior) later in this chapter. First we consider how educational attainment shapes economic and social realities by analyzing the interactions, institutions, and ideas that characterize high school or less-​educated (HSE) worlds and college-​educated (CE) worlds.

Interactions At the interaction level of the culture cycle (Figure  7.3b), everyday exchanges with others in homes, schools, and workplaces powerfully

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influence how people think about the world. Personal social networks provide one source of daily interactions that are useful to consider in the context of education. Educational attainment is tightly linked to occupation, income, and geographic mobility and as such plays an important role in affording and constraining social networks. With higher levels of education, people are more likely to leave their homes for college, relocate for career purposes, and travel for work and leisure (Urry, 2012). As a result, they are likely to make a large number of dispersed connections that are relatively “weak” in that they do not require high commitments of time, intimacy, and support (Granovetter, 1973; Williams, 2012). People navigating CE worlds report larger networks than their HSE counterparts as well as fewer connections between the people in their networks (Carey & Markus, 2017). In these loosely connected networks, people navigate their relationships with relative freedom, beginning and ending relationships based largely on personal choice (Yuki & Schug, 2012). Social networks in HSE contexts are more likely to be constrained by the geographic immobility that is tied to limited economic and social capital. Staying in close proximity to family and the places they grew up, people with less education have networks that are often smaller, less diverse, and more strongly interconnected than those of their CE counterparts (Campbell, Marsden, & Hurlbert, 1986; Granovetter, 1973; Lamont, 2000). These connections are more likely to be strengthened by time, intimacy, and mutual support (Granovetter, 1973). These environments are characterized by risks, unpredictability, and constraints, which encourage and require that people rely on and support each other (Lachman & Weaver, 1998; Lamont, 2000; Reay, Davies, David, & Ball, 2001). Compared to CE individuals, HSE individuals are more likely to report receiving and providing practical and financial support to close others (Carey & Markus, 2017). Constrained by mutual need, relationships are less likely to afford freedom and personal choice and are more likely to be stable and enduring products of the environment (Adams, 2005; Yuki & Schug, 2012). Families are another powerful source of interactions since parents act as socialization agents, teaching their children how to think about and act in the world. Those with higher levels of education (and correspondingly greater incomes and higher status occupations) are likely to approach their children as delicate and unique “flowers” in need of careful cultivation (Kusserow, 2004, p. 171). They encourage their children to explore creative hobbies, develop their preferences, choose for themselves, and influence others (Kusserow, 2004). CE parents expect that their children will achieve academic success and ultimately attend college. As such they are

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likely to prepare their children by talking with them about school, engaging in reading outside of the classroom, and conveying praise and positive feelings related to achievement (Davis-​Kean, 1995). The relative security of these middle and upper middle class contexts leads parents to believe that their children will enter a safe and welcoming world (Kusserow, 2004). In these contexts, being a successful member of society involves expressing one’s unique talent, influencing the world, and achieving academic excellence. Parents with lower levels of education and less income, however, approach their children like they are building a fortress (Kusserow, 2004, p. 79). They prepare their children for a more unpredictable world by encouraging tough, resilient selves that recognize social hierarchy and are attentive to the people and constraints in their environment (Kusserow, 2004; Lamont, 2000; Markus & Conner, 2014). Using direct commands and strict punishment, many HSE parents enforce adherence and adjustment to rules rather than expression of individual goals and desires (Davis-​ Kean, 2005; Kusserow, 2004; Lareau, 2003; Stephens et  al., 2014). In these contexts, being a successful member of society involves following rules, adjusting to others, and resilience in the face of adversity.

Institutions The institutional level of the culture cycle encompasses the norms, rules, policies, and practices of formal institutions (see Figure 7.3c). Two prominent institutions that hold a powerful influence in a person’s life are educational institutions and occupational institutions. As the current chapter largely focuses on how institutions of higher education can shape selves and worldviews that diverge from those of people in HSE contexts, it is essential to understand how the experience of college can reinforce particular ways of being. When university administrators in the United States were asked about the most important expectations at their institutions, they overwhelmingly chose those that highlighted independence, such as learning to express oneself, learning to be a leader, and learning to solve problems on one’s own (Stephens, Fryberg, Markus, Johnson, & Covarrubias, 2012). When asked to choose which statements best described the cultural norms of their university, administrators again emphasized independence, focusing on personal autonomy and internal characteristics. Students were expected to be independently motivated (92% of administrators) rather than motivated by other’s expectations (8%), to pave their own pathways (86%) rather than follow in the footsteps of accomplished others (14%), and to challenge norms and rules (71%) rather than consider them (29%).

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Even in primary and secondary educational institutions—​which are often compulsory and thus more widely accessed—​curricular practices in schools that primarily serve middle-​class communities diverge from those that primarily serve working-​class communities. Schools serving CE contexts stress the development and expression of children’s unique selves. Teachers expect these students to enter higher education and prepare them to do so by asking questions that allow students to express their personal thoughts and develop their individual voices (Kusserow, 2004; Lareau, 2003; Stephens et  al., 2014). In comparison, schools serving HSE contexts often encourage mechanical or rote practices and emphasize learning to follow rules (Anyon, 1980; Kusserow, 2004; Stephens et al., 2014). These practices limit individual freedom and prepare students for jobs that require routine, supervision, and fewer opportunities for control and choice (Kohn & Schooler, 1973). When educational experiences have largely concluded, occupational institutions take prominent roles in daily life. As discussed, occupation is tightly linked to educational attainment. Figure 7.1 shows that the majority of blue-​collar and service jobs are made up of HSE individuals. The structure of these working-​class jobs typically require adjusting to and cooperating with others, strict adherence to rules, and deference to demands through discipline and close monitoring by superiors (Berg, Wrzesniewski, & Dutton, 2010; Lareau & Conley, 2008; Leana & Meuris, 2015, Stephens et  al., 2014). Emphasizing routine and often involving monotonous practices, these jobs offer few opportunities to explore new skills or exert personal control (Ross & Van Willigen, 1997). Obtaining a bachelor’s degree and more advanced degrees allows for more diverse and higher status occupations—​the majority of managerial, professional, education, STEM, and social science jobs are occupied by people with these degrees. These jobs typically require creativity, expressing personal ideas and thoughts, personal development, and the learning of new skills (Berg et al., 2010; Kohn & Schooler, 1978; Ross & Van Willigen, 1997; Stephens et  al., 2014). In employment settings, those already equipped with CE skills and practices, like presenting oneself as excited and enthusiastic, are more likely to be hired over those who are not (Bencharit et al., 2017). Although these jobs can be demanding, they are more likely to offer personal freedom and control in how people pursue and achieve goals. Briefly, we touch on two other institutions that are not often mentioned in discussions of educational attainment but are nevertheless worth consideration. The first is the military, whose enlistment is 79% HSE individuals (Department of Defense, 2014). Service in the military requires

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that members work well with others, obey orders, and meticulously follow rules and procedures (Fiedler, Oltmanns, & Turkheimer, 2004; Hollingshead, 1946). The second institution is that of religion. While most people in the United States report being religious, education shapes how people engage with their religious institutions. Compared to those in CE contexts, HSE practitioners report higher rates of religious activities that reduce autonomy by emphasizing routine and strict adherence to convention (Pew Research Center, 2014). For example, they are more likely to attend religious services once a week, pray daily, participate in prayer groups, use religion as a source of right and wrong, read scriptures, and interpret scriptures literally. For those with lower levels of education, participation in military and religious institutions may increase cooperation and conformity in daily life, encouraging HSE individuals to develop elaborated interdependent selves.

Ideas The most abstract layer of the culture cycle is made up of the often invisible ideas about what is good and normative that inform our institutions, interactions, and psychological processes (see Figure 7.3d). Morality provides a convenient tool for analyzing the important ideas that characterize a culture cycle, as moral values capture what is considered “good” or “right.” Morality can also reflect the divide between focusing on the individual and focusing on others and social relationships. For example, Graham and colleagues (2011) identify several basic moral foundations and draw a distinction between individualizing morals and binding morals. Individualizing morals are rooted in individual rights and reinforce the autonomous independent self. They include concerns about harm, freedom, fairness, and equality. Binding morals are rooted in social roles and reinforce the relational interdependent self. They include concerns about in-​group loyalty, respect for authority, and respect for what is socially deemed as holy and sacred. Carey and Markus (2017) found that CE Americans and HSE Americans equally endorse individualizing morals. Pervading across education levels, equality, freedom, and pursuing individual happiness outline the moral ideal for American respondents (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, & Tipton, 1985; Fiske, Kitayama, Markus & Nisbett, 1998; Triandis, 1995). HSE Americans, however, also endorsed binding morals, rating them as more important than their CE counterparts (Carey & Markus, 2017). In particular, loyalty to close others, or providing firm and constant support

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to close others even at personal cost, was a prevalent idea in HSE worlds. For those with less education, ideas around personhood include social ties and obligations. This sentiment is captured in Lamont’s (2000) ethnography on working-​class men, in which blue-​collar workers saw moral dimensions in working hard, being responsible, and providing for their family.

The Interdependent Self in High School–​Educated Contexts and the Independent Self in College-​Educated Contexts Our culture cycle analysis suggests that education shapes social and economic realities, from personal networks, to parental socialization, to classroom methods, to occupational practices. In the current section, we demonstrate that these realities shape different understandings of self, which in turn organize and regulate different patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (Markus & Kitayama, 1991, 2010; Stephens, Markus, et al., 2012). CE contexts promote independent selves, in which the self is experienced as separate and distinct from others and is primarily a collection of personal traits and attributes. Expressing and promoting personal interests, choices, and goals and influencing social interactions is normative and ideal for the CE independent self. Consequent psychological processes are grounded in the needs, desires, and goals of the individual. In contrast, HSE contexts foster interdependent selves, in which the self is connected to others and more likely to be defined by relationships, social roles and memberships, and other’s judgments. Being responsive to the goals, emotions, and needs of others and adjusting and deferring to others during interactions is normative and ideal for the HSE interdependent self. As such, psychological processes are less likely to be tied to individuals’ needs and goals and more likely to reflect social situations and external constraints. Next, we review how education shapes cognitive, emotional, and motivational processes.

Cognition and the Meaning of Choice Independent and interdependent selves shape the way people attend to and reason about the world. Independent selves tend to foster analytic cognitive styles in which attention is focused on the individual and on focal objects independent from their contexts (Nisbett & Miyamoto, 2005). This cognitive tendency reflects an understanding of the self as independ­ ent and free from constraint. Interdependent selves tend to foster holistic

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cognitive styles in which attention is shared between both focal objects in the foreground and contextual information in the background (Nisbett & Miyamoto, 2005). This cognitive tendency reflects the understanding of individuals as fundamentally rooted and connected to others (Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, 2001), and, we predict, more common among HSE individuals and less common among CE individuals. Demonstrating that education shapes how people attend to their world, Grossmann and Varnum (2010) asked participants to identify changes between two highly similar scenes. Those with higher levels of education more often noticed changes to the central objects of the scenes. In contrast, those with lower levels of education noticed changes to images in the background such as buildings and clouds (Grossmann & Varnum, 2010). In another study, participants completed a categorization task in which they saw three words—​for example, “dog,” “seagull,” and “sky”—​ and choose the two that were most closely related (Miyamoto & Ji, 2011). Participants with higher levels of education demonstrated analytic cognition and grouped dog and seagull together—​they focused on the words as individual objects with shared features. Participants who had fewer years of education demonstrated holistic cognition and grouped seagull and sky together—​they focused on the relationship between an object and its background. In an extensive exploration of cognitive styles, Na et al. (2010) found the CE individuals were more analytic and HSE individuals were more holistic on several measures of cognition. How people attend to and reason about the stimuli they encounter in the world has implications for how they understand social outcomes. When wielding a holistic cognitive style, people are likely to explain behavior and outcomes as dependent on contextual factors—​a pattern of psychological processing that emphasizes connections between objects and their backgrounds (Nisbett et al., 2001). When Kraus, Piff, and Keltner (2009) asked participants to explain the cause of social outcomes like obesity, they found that, with higher levels of education, participants saw these outcomes as the responsibility of individuals. At lower levels of education, however, participants saw the outcomes as the consequence of situational forces outside of the individual’s control. These inferences about the causes of behavior can be so fast, that they are virtually automatic (Varnum, Na, Murata, & Kitayama, 2011). Consistent with analytic thinking styles that emphasize central objects that are independent from their context, obtaining a college education also leads people to feel they have a greater sense of control—​that their personal choices and actions alone can shape their future (McFarland, Wagner,

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& Marklin, 2016). Indeed, choice takes on divergent meanings for people with different educational backgrounds and experiences. With greater education, choice often serves to express personal needs, goals, and desires and to affirm the self. Demonstrating this, Snibbe and Markus (2005) had CE and HSE participants rank how much they liked a list of CDs, but afterwards they only offered them a choice between the two CDs they liked the least. Classically, this paradigm leads to spreading alternatives, in which people like objects they choose more than objects they reject (Brehm, 1956). Thus, it would be expected that the simple act of choosing a CD (even one that was originally given a poor rating) would lead participants to like it more. However, such an outcome depends on people seeing their choices as reflective of their internal traits and self-​expressive. Indeed, when evaluating the CDs a second time, CE participants, but not HSE participants, increased their ratings for the CDs they chose. In other words, they came to like the CD simply because they chose it, confirming that college education leads people to see choices as personal and to see their choices as good. A second study showed that CE participants also came to like a pen less simply because they did not choose it (Snibbe & Markus, 2005). Across these studies, HSE participants did not show the same bias for the products they chose (Snibbe & Markus, 2005). Rather than expressing and reflecting the self, choice for those with less education often reflects social situations and their connections to others (Hoshino-​Browne et al., 2005). Choice is more likely to serve relational goals—​responding to the needs of others, conforming to social norms, or strengthening relationships and social connections. For example, when Stephens, Fryberg et al. (2011) offered participants a gift, HSE participants preferred accepting the gift that was chosen by the experimenter more than CE participants who wanted to choose for themselves. Similarly, education influences whether choice ideally allows one to be unique and different from others or to be similar and connected to others. In one experiment, students were exposed to the choices of a supposed previous respondent before being asked to make their own choices. While students with CE parents were reluctant to make the same choice as a previous person, those with HSE parents were more likely to choose the images they believed other participants had already chosen (Stephens et al., 2007). Similarly, Na, McDonough, Chan, and Park (2016) explored consumer choices and found that college students with HSE parents were more likely to change their preferences to match the opinions of others than students with CE parents. Whereas the meaning of choice in CE contexts reflects individual goals

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and preferences, choice in HSE contexts often supports social connections and is contingent on influences other than one’s own preferences.

Emotion and “Tuning In” Independent and interdependent selves also support and organize different emotional processes and experiences (Kitayama, Markus, & Kurokawa, 2000; Markus & Kitayama, 2001). When the independent self is active, emotional processes are likely to reflect individual states and internal attributes and reactions. However, when the interdependent self is active, emotional processes are more likely to be influenced by social information and the feelings of others (e.g., Masuda et al., 2008). Although there is a relative dearth of research on the effects of educational attainment on emotions, there is some evidence that empathy and social information play different roles in how people feel depending on their education. For example, a study by Kraus, Côté, and Keltner (2010) explored empathy by having participants look at faces, watch eye muscle movements, and interact with strangers. Regardless of the medium, HSE participants were more accurately able to identify the emotions of another person than CE participants. Not only are they better at identifying another’s emotional experience, but they are also more likely to experience emotional states as a response to the emotions of others. After watching a video about chil­ dren suffering from cancer, participants with less education experienced greater heart rate deceleration, indicating increased social engagement and compassion, than did participants with higher levels of education (Stellar, Manzo, Kraus, & Keltner, 2012). Furthermore, for HSE groups, emotional processes are more closely tied to social information and other people, as illustrated by studies on “tuning in.” In interpersonal interactions, people with less education are more likely to attend to and engage with their social partners (e.g., laugh with, nod) than those with more education, who instead fidget, doodle, and self-​ groom during conversations (Kraus et al., 2009). Findings in neuroimaging have captured this increased level of attention at the neurological level. In response to the emotional expressions of other people, adolescents with HSE parents, compared to those with CE parents, showed greater activation in parts of the brain associated with mentalizing (i.e., thinking about the thoughts and feelings of others) and emotional processing (Muscatell et al., 2012). Another study highlights the role of mirror neuron systems, which are theorized to activate when observing the actions of others. With less parental education, participants showed more activation of the mirror

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neuron system while watching videos of other people (Varnum, Blais, & Brewer, 2016). For HSE individuals, attending to how others are feeling can be an adaptive as it allows one to learn from others and strengthen social relations (Chen, Langer, Raphaelson, & Matthews, 2004; Piff, Stancato, Martinez, Kraus, & Keltner, 2012). Together these studies show that “tuning in” during emotional interactions are reflected in both observable behaviors and neural pathways of HSE groups.

Motivational Processes How people understand themselves and the world around them is key in shaping what motivates them. In independent contexts, internal sources of motivation are often believed to be the most effective. For example, in American contexts, intrinsic motivation, or motivation stemming from a person’s personal enjoyment or interest, is largely more valued than extrinsic motivation stemming from the world external to the individual (Ryan & Deci, 2000). However, motivation from others and the environment outside the individual is a relatively more prevalent source of action in interdependent contexts (Fu & Markus, 2014; Iyengar & Lepper, 2000). For example, Asian American students were equally motivated to solve difficult anagrams when thinking about themselves and thinking about their mothers (Fu & Markus, 2014). European American students, in contrast, were significantly less motivated when thinking about their mothers. Most colleges and universities are largely independent institutions that reinforce the independent selves of middle-​class, CE groups. As discussed in the culture cycle analyses earlier in this chapter, these institutions embody mainstream American beliefs about motivation. In these settings, motives for attending college often focus on qualities within the individual, such as exploring new personal interests, becoming an independent thinker, or realizing one’s potential (Stephens, Fryberg et al., 2012). For students from HSE backgrounds, however, interdependent motives are likely to take precedence over independent ones. For example, students who were the first in their family to attend college reported attending in order to help their families after finishing their studies, to give back to their community, and to provide better lives for their own children (Stephens, Fryberg et al., 2012). Independent motives around individual growth and personal interests are less important than outcomes that help achieve relational goals. Understanding what motivates a person is important because it is tightly linked to behavior. For example, Stephens, Fryberg and colleagues

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(2012) invited first-​generation college students—​the first in their families to attend college—​to evaluate their university’s welcoming materials for freshman. Half of these participants viewed materials with a focus on independence—​the letter from the president, brochure, and flyers portrayed the university as a place to explore one’s personal interests. The other half viewed a welcome package with a focus on interdependence—​ these materials presented the university as a place where students can collaborate with others and become part of a community. Students with HSE parents who read that the university was a place to become part of a community performed significantly better on spatial and verbal tasks than those who read that the university was a place to explore personal interests (CE participants performed equally well; Stephens, Fryberg et al., 2012). Interventions that imparted the positive ways in which interdependence can influence first-​generation students’ academic experience succeeded in improving their academic scores and underscore the role of interdependence in motivational processes (Stephens, Hamedani, & Destin, 2014). Motivational processes can also be relevant in understanding the things people do not do. As we discuss later, the first-​generation college students who read welcome letters that focused on independence experienced sharp increases in cortisol levels, indicating that they experienced more stress than continuing-​ generation students (Stephens, Townsend, Markus, & Phillips, 2012). Similarly, for students from CE contexts, interdependence can conflict with the expression of personal needs and desires. For example, American college students primed with interdependent behaviors like “adjust” and “accommodate” performed worse on physical (i.e., squeezing a handgrip) and mental tasks (i.e., solving anagrams) compared to when they were exposed to independent behaviors like “influence” and “control” (Hamedani, Markus, & Fu, 2013). For these independent students, interdependence was demotivating. Overall these findings show that the educational attainment, through shaping sociocultural and socio-economic realities, influence how people experience themselves and understand their world. We argue that views of self, in turn, organize psychological processes, or how people attend to, make sense of, and react to their environment. CE individuals are likely to have processes that are shaped by a self that is fundamentally autonomous, distinct, and unique. Those with a high school degree or fewer years of education are likely to have processes that are shaped by a self that is fundamentally connected to others, resilient, and adjusting to situational forces. These cycles are important to understand, in part because they are self-​perpetuating. In the next section, we explore how

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culturally shaped selves can either facilitate or hinder the realization of higher education.

Educational Attainment Influences Educational Attainment The literature on disparities in educational attainment overwhelmingly finds that low SES households produce fewer CE students than high SES households (Walpole, 2003). In the United States, the discrepancy between high-​income and low-​income groups in enrollment and completion of college remains the same today as it was in 1975. Recent data shows 81% of high-​income high school students enrolled in college while only 51% of low-​income students enrolled (DeSilver, 2014). While educational discrepancies have traditionally been viewed through the lens of income and SES, examining the culture cycle of HSE and CE households can shed new light as to why these disparities persist. In many Western countries parental educational attainment is strongly and positively linked to child educational attainment (Davis-​ Kean, 2005, Hertz et  al., 2007; Organisation for Economic Co-​operation and Development [OECD], 2014; the more years of education parents have, the more their children have.2 For example, in the United States, students from CE households are two to six times more likely to get a college education than students from HSE households (OECD, 2014). Why does such a strong positive correlation exist between parent and child educational attainment? Researchers point to cultural capital, or the transmission of ideas, knowledge, and behaviors that communicate and instantiate one’s status and wealth (Bourdieu, 1986). One way CE parents can transmit cultural capital is through enrichment activities like sports, art, theater, and museums (Haveman & Wolfe, 1995). These activities prepare youth for collegiate tasks (e.g. reading outside of the classroom) and engender belonging (e.g., feeling one will be a good fit for college settings). We suggest that cultural capital also serves the important function of passing along independent selves that make students a better fit for independent college settings. For example, cultural experiences prevalent in CE households enable students to elaborate on their preferences and tastes (e.g., I  like art), make choices based on these personal attributes (e.g., I  prefer art over music), and express these preferences outwardly

 In this and subsequent studies, household educational attainment or parent educational attainment refers to the caregiver who has completed the highest level of education. 2

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(e.g., I often go to museums), thereby creating independent members of society. Alternatively, children of HSE households less often have these experiences and are consequently disadvantaged because of the mismatch between their interdependent selves and their independent college spaces. In the next section, we elaborate on the consequences of such cultural mismatches by examining outcomes of first-​generation college students versus those of continuing-​generation college students.3

First-​Generation College Students While it is less likely for students from HSE households than those from CE households to enter college, an estimated 38% (attending four-​year institutions) to 50% (attending two-​year institutions) of US college students had parents with a high school diploma or less in 2007–​2008 (US Department of Education, 2010). However, because of the cultural mismatch between their independent higher-​education settings and their interdependent family backgrounds, these students often have very different academic, social, and psychological outcomes compared to their peers from CE backgrounds. Research finds that continuing-​generation students receive better grades and graduate at higher rates than first-​generation students (Chen, 2005; DeFreitas & Rinn, 2013; Martinez, Sher, Krull, & Wood, 2009). In fact, whereas only 24% of first-​generation students completed a bachelor of arts degree (BA), up to 68% of continuing-​generation students completed a BA (Chen, 2005). In addition, first-​generation students were more likely to have periods of nonenrollment, consequently prolonging their time to completion (Martinez et al., 2009). Finally, those from HSE backgrounds have worse academic (e.g., keeping up with academic work, doing well on exams), social (e.g., involvment in social activities, making new friends at college), and adjustment (e.g., feelings of belonging) outcomes and are more cognitively depleted after academic performance than those from CE backgrounds (Johnson, Richeson, & Finkel, 2011; Ostrove & Long, 2007). Why do these differences in academic outcomes persist? Once again, we suggest first-​generation college students’ cultural mismatch with the independent values of college settings can directly and indirectly influence academic outcomes. For first-​generation students who have been

 In this chapter, we refer to first-​generation college students as those whose caregivers have not received college-​or university-​level tertiary education. This term does not denote immigrant background or status. 3

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prepared for unpredictable worlds with scarce resources, college is a place to do: one needs to accomplish tasks, learn materials, and take tests. However, for continuing-​generation students who have been prepared for a safe and welcoming worlds in which they can control their experiences and their paths in life, college is a place to be: one needs to develop one’s individual preferences, ideas, and intuitions (Lareau & Weininger, 2003). Indeed, as noted earlier, first-​generation college students often report attending college for interdependent reasons (e.g., helping my family after college, giving back to my community), while continuing-​generation students often do so for independent reasons (e.g., expanding my knowledge of the world, becoming an independent thinker). Interdependent motivations, in turn, predict lower grades while independent motivation predicts higher grades (Stephens, Fryberg, et al., 2012). These differences in motivation to attend college are also instantiated in one’s approach to learning in college. Some research shows that first-​ generation students do not hold the traditional approach to “deep learning” that is rewarded in college settings. Instead, those from HSE backgrounds showed lower intrinsic interest in the material and less use of strategies that maximize meaning (e.g., analyzing and synthesizing information, integration of information outside the classroom; Ribera, 2012), possibly due to holistic rather than analytic cognitive styles. In Western cultural contexts, these independent practices characterize success in higher education. However, first-​generation students, who have little prior knowledge of independent college settings, engage in these practices less. Thus we propose that the college educational systems themselves may perpetuate differences through evaluations that are often based on the values of middle-​class CE contexts. Finally, first-​generation students lack specific knowledge about independent higher educational processes and norms—​ a form of cultural capital that can optimize one’s academic performance. For example, first-​ generation students may not know where and how to get academic help or when it is appropriate to do so. One study finds that first-​generation college students report fewer interactions with faculty inside and outside of the classroom and lower satisfaction with faculty interactions (Kim & Sax, 2009). These interactions can foster academic success, enhance students’ sense of belonging, and serve as a pipeline for entering post-​baccalaureate education. Because first-​generation college students may not know how, when, and why to engage with faculty, they do not receive these benefits.

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In addition, first-​generation students are less likely to select into arts, sciences, and engineering majors (33% first-​ generation versus 50.5% continuing-​generation) and instead choose majors in traditional fields, like law, medicine, and business (Cross & Vick, 2001; Eismann, 2016; Engle & Tinto, 2008; Goyette & Mullen, 2006). Because majors in arts and sciences prepare students for jobs in a variety of fields, first-​generation college students may be less prepared to apply to jobs across diverse fields. In addition, increased competition, saturation in traditional sectors, and required post-​baccalaureate education make traditional fields like law and medicine particularly difficult to enter. Consequently, first-​generation students majoring in these disciplines as undergraduates may be disadvantaged in the workplace (Wright, 2014). As discussed previously, first-​generation students may experience negative physiological and psychological outcomes, such as elevated cortisol levels—​a physiological indicator of stress—​when reminded of the independent values of the university compared to their continuing-​generation peers (Stephens, Townsend et al., 2012). In contrast, for first-​generation students, being reminded of the interdependent values of the university buffers these effects and reduces stress levels to those comparable with continuing-​generation students. For example, first-​generation students who participated in an “assessing excellence” task performed worse than those in a “success for everyone” task (Jury, Smeding, & Darnon, 2015). Taken together, these studies demonstrate that use of independent messages, like individual success and excellence, leads to worse outcomes for first-​generation students. Instead, interdependent messages, such as those promoting group success, are more relevant for these students, and using these messages as motivation can contribute to closing the achievement gap. In summary, first-​generation college students experience a cultural mismatch between their independent college settings and their interdependent family backgrounds, which lead to a number of negative academic, social, and psychological outcomes that make it difficult for them to succeed in college. While this chapter focuses on college education, it is important to note that disparities in educational achievement between students from HSE households and those from CE households start in kindergarten, grow through elementary and middle school, and peak in high school and college, manifesting across a number of academic domains (Sirin, 2005; Stephens, Hamedani, & Destin, 2014).

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Interventions and Practical Recommendations Throughout this chapter we have championed the importance of self. We propose that self and understandings of self can shape cognitive, emotional, and motivational processes, which can have consequences on health, relationship, and academic outcomes. The interventions we reviewed, in particular, sought to attenuate gaps in educational and academic outcomes between those with independent selves and those with interdependent selves. We hope educators and policymakers will implement these interventions to effect large-​scale change in the experiences of students today. To summarize, one line of research shows that interdependent messages are useful to motivate, increase belonging, and enhance the performance of interdependent first-​generation and racial minority groups (Cross & Vick, 2001; Fu & Markus, 2014; Stephens, Hamedani, Markus, Bergsieker, & Eloul, 2009; Stephens, Markus, et al., 2012). In addition, seeing one’s own identity modeled and represented in positions of success increases belonging and fosters positive academic and psychological outcomes in HSE and first-​generation groups (Covarrubias, Gallimore, & Okagaki, in press). Finally, receiving social support and thinking of close others may buffer the effects of belonging uncertainty and close the achievement gap between groups (Covarrubias, Herrmann, & Fryberg, 2016; Cross & Vick, 2001). At the classroom level, educators can subsidize independent behaviors so that students from all backgrounds develop their independent self at early ages. For example, “warm calling” students, or giving students advanced notice that they will be asked to respond to a question in class, gently encourages independent behaviors like speaking out. In addition, scientists, educators, and policymakers should consider leveraging interdependent cultural values in education at all levels to facilitate positive outcomes for all groups. We recommend using families, friends, and communities to motivate students to do well on test and quizzes. Another way to do this is to change assignments from “free writing” (e.g., expressions of self and agency) to writing about close others (e.g., expressions of connection with others). At the institutional level, we recommend that schools of all levels provide students with cultural capital in the form of art, music, literature, sports, and world cultures to enhance students’ independent selves; participating in these events collectively may also enhance students’ interdependent selves. In addition, institutions should hire educators, staff, and administrators from all backgrounds to increase numeric representation of underrepresented identities and enhance belonging in educational

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settings. Thus increasing numeric representation, highlighting family and commu­nity, and affirming one’s interdependent identity are all paths to creating more equitable and successful classrooms. Workplaces should acknowledge and reward the unique contributions that HSE and first-​ generation college students’ interdependent selves may bring. Employers should screen not only for individual achievement but also for involvement in the larger community. These candidates can become invested, loyal employees and create more bonded, complementary teams within an organization.

Future Directions The literature on socio-economic status, educational attainment, and first-​generation students has done a remarkable job at highlighting the ideas, institutions, and interactions that perpetuate current intergenerational trends in educational attainment. However, there are still many unanswered questions. One prominent question is: How does educational attainment function for different racial, ethnic, and gender groups? One study finds that for European Americans, parental educational attainment is an even stronger predictor of child educational outcomes than for African Americans, for whom parental educational attainment and income both influence child educational outcomes (Davis-​Kean, 2005). In contrast, compared to Hispanic groups, Asian students are more likely to be proficient in math and science at eighth grade, have parental expectations of earning at least a college degree, and enroll in a postsecondary education at a four-​year institution (Kaufman, Chavez, & Lauen, 1998). In addition, each groups’s educational outcomes may depend on the group’s acculturation—​or adjustment—​to American values and norms (Zhang & Tsai, 2014). Thus educational outcomes differ by racial group—​and these identities may interact in surprising ways. Another important consideration is how national contexts shape the educational outcomes we have described. Many of the studies we have reviewed are based on US contexts that are not globally representative in that they are Western, highly educated, industrialized, relatively wealthy, and democratic (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010). In fact, even low SES and HSE groups in US contexts are relatively advantaged compared to those in many other parts of the world. The important ideas that define the United States (e.g., freedom, equality, individualism, etc.) do not necessarily reflect the important ideas that define other national contexts. Careful

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consideration should be given to the ways in which education—​and the ideas underlying this institution—​is realized in other national contexts.

Conclusion In this chapter our goal was to outline research and theory on education, how it can shape sociocultural and socio-economic realities, and how it can impart particular understandings of self and the world. We find it important to note that every individual is constituted by a number of overlapping identities (e.g., race, gender, class), roles (e.g., mother, caretaker, brother, supervisor), and domains (e.g., home, school, work). As such, it is likely that people are exposed to both independent and interdependent values and ideas as they navigate these various contexts. These findings are also situated in the larger social context of Western cultural contexts, which often foster and support greater independence than other cultural contexts. Taking this into consideration, we caution that these outcomes are unlikely to characterize everyone—​or anyone in particular. Instead, they describe systems and processes that are constantly changing and subject to immense variation. While educational attainment is tied to desirable opportunities in life, not everyone has an equal chance at education. We have demonstrated that educational attainment shapes and is shaped by psychology tendencies—​ or how people understand themselves and the world around them—​in ways that guide emotion, cognition, and behavior. Research shows that CE contexts produce and are produced by independent views of self and the world. These values may be misaligned with the interdependent selves and values students from HSE backgrounds are well-​versed in. Although we have given a cursory explanation of how these processes might unfold, more work needs to examine the boundary conditions of these findings and unpack how education and class might work in other cultural contexts.

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Stephens, N. M., Hamedani, M. G., & Destin, M. (2014). Closing the social-​class achievement gap a difference-​education intervention improves first-​generation students’ academic performance and all students’ college transition. Psychological Science, 25, 943–​953. Stephens, N. M., Hamedani, M. G., Markus, H. R., Bergsieker, H. B., & Eloul, L. (2009). Why did they “choose” to stay? Perspectives of Hurricane Katrina observers and survivors. Psychological Science, 20, 878–​886. Stephens, N. M., Markus, H. R., & Fryberg, S. A. (2012). Social class disparities in health and education: Reducing inequality by applying a sociocultural self model of behavior. Psychological Review, 119, 723–​744. Stephens, N. M., Markus, H. R., & Phillips, L. T. (2014). Social class culture cycles: How three gateway contexts shape selves and fuel inequality. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 611–​634. Stephens, N. M., Markus, H. R. & Townsend, S. (2007). Choice as an act of meaning: The case of social class. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 814–​830. Stephens, N. M., Townsend, S. S., Markus, H. R., & Phillips, L. T. (2012). A cultural mismatch: Independent cultural norms produce greater increases in cortisol and more negative emotions among first-​generation college students. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 1389–​1393. Triandis H. C. (1995). Individualism and collectivism. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Urry, J. (2012). Social networks, mobile lives and social inequalities. Journal of Transport Geography, 21, 24–​30. US Census Bureau. (2015). Years of school completed by people 25 years and over, by age and sex: Selected years 1940 to 2015. Retrieved from https://​www.census.gov/​ data/​tables/​time-​series/​demo/​educational-​attainment/​cps-​historical-​time-​series.html US Department of Education. (2010, September). National Center for Education Statistics. Web tables: Profile of undergraduate Students 2007–​2008. Retrieved from http://​nces.ed.gov/​pubs2010/​2010205.pdf Varnum, M. E., Blais, C., & Brewer, G. A. (2016). Social class affects Mu-​suppression during action observation. Social Neuroscience, 11, 449–​454. Varnum, M. E., Na, J., Murata, A., & Kitayama, S. (2011). Social class differences in N400 indicate differences in spontaneous trait inference. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 141, 518–​526. Walpole, M. (2003). Socioeconomic status and college: How SES affects college experiences and outcomes. The Review of Higher Education, 27, 45–​73. Williams, J.C. (2012). The class culture gap. In S. T. Fiske & H. R. Markus (Eds.), Facing social class: How societal rank influences interaction (pp. 39–​58). New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Wright, J. (2014). The oversaturated job market for lawyers continues, and on-​the-​side legal work grows. Retrieved from http://​www.economicmodeling.com/​2014/​01/​10/​ the-​oversatured-​job-​market-​for-​lawyers-​continues/​ Yuki, M., & Schug, J. (2012). A socio-​ecological approach to personal relationships. In O. Gillath, G. E. Adams, & A. D. Kunkel (Eds.), New directions in close relationships: Integrating across disciplines and theoretical approaches (pp. 137–​151). Washington DC: American Psychological Association. Zhang, L., & Tsai J. L. (2014). The assessment of acculturation in Asian American samples. In L. T. Benuto, N. S. Thaler, & B. D. Leany (Eds.), Guide to psychological assessment with Asian Americans (pp. 75–​101). New York, NY: Springer.

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CHAPTER 8

Context Shapes Human Development Studies from Turkey Çiğdem KağItçIbaşI and Zeynep CemalcIlar

The All-​Encompassing Context All human behavior occurs in context. This statement, though obvious, needs to be reinstated at times, as mainstream academic psychological research, even social psychological studies, can neglect this fact. Experimental social psychological orientations to the study of human behavior indeed have tended to take a rather limited view of the “context,” often confined to the nearby proximal environment (e.g., home), ignoring the distal environment (e.g., cultural norms; Kağitçibaşi, 2007, p. 41; Oishi, 2014). To a large extent this somewhat narrow perspective has been due to the understanding that the individual is the unit of analysis in psychological inquiry. Therefore, unlike other social sciences such as sociology, the larger context of human behavior has been less stressed in social psychology. Historically, developmental psychology has also been framed to some extent by the “culture eliminating” mechanistic (behaviorist) and organismic perspectives (Lightfoot & Valsiner, 1992), criticized with humor by Bronfenbrenner (1977) as “The science of the strange behavior of children in strange situations with strange adults for the briefest possible periods of time” (p. 513). Behaviorist conceptualization of context was limited mainly to the proximal environment. Cognitive perspectives that replaced behaviorism also focus on the individual. Even in social learning theory, it is the cognitive structuring of the environment by the individual that is emphasized (Bandura, 1977, 1986). Thus the distal environment, the all-​encompassing context, has been assigned a secondary role in much of academic psychology.

This chapter aims to provide a more comprehensive perspective on human development and behavior, in line with the contextual and ecological theories proposed over several decades in psychological and sociological studies (e.g., Bronfenbrenner, 1977, 1979, 1999; Bronfenbrenner & Evans, 2000; Elder, 1985, 1994; Kağitçibaşi , 1973, 1982, 1990, 2007; Kohn & Schooler, 1969; Oishi, 2014; Oishi & Graham, 2010). It also addresses contextual change, informed by Kağitçibaşi’s “family change theory,” and presents three studies conducted in Turkey as cases in point, demonstrating the significant impact of the context and contextual change on behavior.

Social Class as Context An important example of the neglect of context in academic psychological literature is the concept of social class. Beyond the general insensitivity to context mentioned already, there has also been at least an implicit ideological reason for avoiding the use of social class, as noted by Kağitçibaşi (2007, p. 48). It is not politically correct to talk about social class in the largely “middle-​class” democratic societies of the Western world. Yet, social class, or more specifically socio-economic status (SES), has great significance in engulfing human phenomena, especially human development. In this section, reviewing the relevant literature, we note the deleterious effects of low social class, mediating factors, and efforts to improve outcomes. Notwithstanding the general neglect of the distal environment in academic psychology, diverse research has focused on social class standing. For example, in his classic study of British parental values and goals for children Kohn (1969) pointed to social class differences. In 1980s studies from several countries showed that ethnic and cultural differences among parental groups tended to disappear when social class was controlled (Cashmore & Goodnow, 1986; Lambert, 1987; Laosa, 1980). Indeed, a great deal of research has been carried out since then on the harmful effects of low social class standing and poverty, involving multiple risks. Psychological outcomes, particularly effects on children, are studied. Findings converge on the deleterious effects of poverty, especially persistent poverty, on health, educational performance, and problem behavior outcomes (e.g., Brooks-​Gunn & Duncan, 1997; Duncan & Brooks-​Gunn, 2000; Yeung, Linver, & Brooks-​Gunn, 2002; McLoyd, 1998). Classic work by Elder (1985, 1994)  on the effects of economic depression pointed to differential effects based on children’s age during adversity. Specifically, familial economic hardship was found to have a

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more enduring detrimental effect on the individual when experienced during early childhood than in later ages. Similarly, Brooks-​Gunn and Duncan (1997) noted that poverty resulted in lower rates of schooling when faced during the preschool and early school years, compared to adolescence. Furthermore, the detrimental effects were more profound for ability and achievement than for emotional outcomes. Bolger, Patterson, Thompson, and Kupersmidt (1995) and Huston, Niehuis, and Smith (2001), on the other hand, pointed at children’s gender as an important factor in that low household income was found to have a greater negative impact on boys than on girls. Finally, neighborhood characteristics and their effects have been studied extensively. For example, a study by Kohen, Brooks-​Gunn, Leventhal, and Hertzman (2002) found effects of neighborhood characteristics (such as neighborhood affluence and cohesion) on preschoolers’ verbal and behavioral competence even after controlling for family SES. Similarly, Ceballo and McLoyd (2002) pointed to the moderating role of the neighborhood between social support and parenting behaviors, suggesting an attenuated association in poorer conditions. Theoretical models relating context to human development have been proposed, focusing on risk factors. For example, Sameroff and Fiese (1992) posited a model where the number of environmental risk factors, rather than their nature, matter. Studying risk factors such as unskilled occupation of the household head, mother’s (low level of) education, maternal mental illness, and low level of mother–​infant interaction, it was shown that children with no environmental risk scored 30 intelligence points higher than children with eight or nine risk factors (Sameroff & Fiese, 1992, p. 349). Subsequently, similar views were put forward by other researchers (e.g., Conger, Rueter, & Conger, 2000; Evans, 2004) regarding the harmful effects of accumulated multiple environmental risks in the context of childhood poverty. Some of these models have influenced problem-​oriented applied research to a considerable degree, leading to efforts to decrease the number of risk factors. Studies showed that there can be fast improvement when objective conditions improve. For example, Huston et al. (2001), assessing the impact of the New Hope anti-​poverty program, and Gennetian and Miller (2002), studying the specific effects of the Minnesota Family Investment Program on children, reported significant gains following these social and economic policies. These gains ranged from reduced problem behaviors to better school performance and school engagement. Models relating distal contextual factors to human development tend to identify mediating variables and attempt to explain how they mediate, that

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is, to identify the processes involved (e.g., Linver, Brooks-​Gunn, & Kohen, 2002; Masten & Coatsworth, 1998; Yeung et al., 2002). In most cases parenting and the family emerge as the major mediating factors. Typically, given financial strain and inadequate social and instrumental support in low social class contexts, high levels of maternal stress are seen, reflected in low-​quality parenting, which is associated with negative child outcomes such as behavior problems and low school performance (e.g., Coll, 1990; Harrison, Wilson, Pine, Chan, & Buriel, 1990; McLoyd, 1990; Mistry, Vandewater, Huston, & McLoyd, 2002; Patterson & Dishion, 1988; Taylor & Roberts, 1995). These studies provide a selective background of work on the context of human phenomena mainly in problem-​oriented research rather than basic research. There have been other contextual orientations in the study of human development, though they have had rather limited intersection with academic mainstream psychology. Kağitçibaşi (2007) delineated numerous contextual models and research traditions in the study of human development (see the appendix). These perspectives have been in line with a socioecological perspective, posited by Oishi (2014; Oishi & Graham, 2010), bringing in an objectivist outlook to psychological inquiry, and studying how objective social and natural contexts affect human mind and behavior. Such an outlook has significant applied implications. Indeed, it appears that there is a growing realization of the importance of the socioecological context on human behavior. This is seen also in academic psychology. The American Psychological Association’s Task Force on Social Status and its 2007 report (http://​www.apa.org/​pi/​ses/​) is a case in point.

Culture, Social Change, and the Family The context of human phenomena comprises several levels of interrelated and embedded environmental factors, as clearly delineated in Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological perspective. Here we present Kağitçibaşi’s (1990) theory of family change as an example of a conceptual linking of the family, socio-economic environment, and culture. From early on Kağitçibaşi’s research addressed culture, social change, and the family as important aspects of the context of human development. In one of the very first cross-​cultural studies conducted, she compared American and Turkish youth’s attitudes and values that were influenced by different sociocultural norms (Kağitçibaşi, 1970). Subsequently she studied social change in Turkey and its psychological correlates, again as

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manifest in youth’s attitudes and worldviews (Kağitçibaşi, 1973). In both studies the family emerged as the key mediating factor (the link) between the distal environment and the individual. This is the “meso” level in Bronfenbrenner’s (1979, 1999) ecological systems theory. A third study further examined these associations as a part of a major nine-​country cross-​ cultural project on the value of children (VOC) for parents (Kağitçibaşi, 1982). The findings revealed patterns of family change influenced by social change and socio-economic development, of relevance not only in Turkey but in the other developing countries that participated in the study (Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, and Singapore; Kağitçibaşi, 1982, 2007; Mayer, 2013). Deriving from the findings of the VOC study, Kağitçibaşi (1990) proposed a theory of family change. This is a contextual theory of the family with a global perspective. The two aspects of the context are culture and living conditions, the latter indicated by urban–​rural habitat, SES, and level of affluence. Three prototypical models are proposed: the family model of interdependence, typical in rural, agrarian, less socio-­economically developed contexts with a collectivistic culture of relatedness; the family model of independence, typical in urban, industrial, economically developed contexts with an individualistic culture; and a synthesis family model of emotional interdependence, typical in the more economically developed urbanizing contexts with a continuing culture of relatedness. The main idea behind the theory is that the family is adaptive to the context and accordingly changes in line with contextual change, in particular urbanization and socio-economic development. The main stance of the theory is that in the majority (non-​Western) world urbanization and socio-economic development involve changes in objective living conditions; however, collectivistic “culture of relatedness” continues. Therefore, the traditional interdependent family changes in some respects but not in others. Specifically, intergenerational material dependencies decrease, but emotional dependencies are sustained, resulting in a different pattern than the individualistic Western independent family. A  great deal of recent research provides support for the theory (for reviews see Kağitçibaşi, 2007, 2011; Mayer, 2013). Parenting directly reflects family characteristics. Thus in the family model of (total) interdependence obedience-​oriented parenting is common and together with closely knit family ties leads to the development of the related self in the growing child, whose autonomy is not encouraged. In the independent family, on the other hand, the child is socialized toward autonomy and individualistic separateness (from parents). In

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the family model of emotional interdependence, an integrative synthesis, the autonomous-​related self develops (Kağitçibaşi, 2005, 2007, 2011; Kağitçibaşi & Yalin, 2015). Thus family change theory has led to a theory of the autonomous-​related self. There are at least two reasons for autonomy to emerge in the child socialization of the emotionally interdependent family, both directly concerned with the socio-economic environment. First, autonomy becomes more adaptive with changing lifestyles, especially as an asset in higher education and specialized jobs. Second, with increased affluence and social security systems, the autonomy of the growing child is no longer seen as a threat to family livelihood when material dependence on the grown-​up offspring for old age security decreases. Clearly, Kağitçibaşi’s (2007) family change theory is a good example of a contextual theory. In dealing with human behavior, such a conceptualization goes beyond a “what” question, such as “What type of self manifests what type of behavior?” to a “how” question, such as “How do variations in self emerge?” and a “why” question, such as “Why does a certain type of socialization occur in a certain type of context?” (Kağitçibaşi, 2007, p. 40).

Studies from Turkey: A Natural Laboratory Next we present recent research illustrating the impact of the objective environment and in particular the detrimental effects of low SES on various developmental, social, and academic outcomes of Turkish samples with varying age groups. We also present a longitudinal intervention project that helped thwart such negative effects. In these studies, family, parenting, SES, school environment, and migration constitute significant aspects of context. The literature review in the first part of the chapter included mainly Western research. This is the common pattern, thus we think bringing in studies from Turkey would address a gap in the literature and further our understanding of context in diverse settings. Also, Turkish society can be seen as a social laboratory demonstrating significant social change over the past half century. The economy of Turkey is defined as an emerging market economy by the International Monetary Fund.1 With a population close to 80 million,2 Turkey has a low per capita GDP of $10.515 and sharp income

1 2

 http://​www.imf.org/​external/​pubs/​ft/​weo/​2011/​01/​pdf/​text.pdf  http://​www.turkstat.gov.tr/​HbGetirHTML.do?id=21507

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inequality (Gini coefficient  =  .41, compared to a mean of European Union countries: .31)3. While in 1950, 80% of the population was rural, today rural population has decreased to almost 20%. Such urbanization has involved marked transformations in lifestyles with concomitant changes in human behavior in general. Together with such dynamic social change, large social class differences prevail. For example, Göncü, Özer, and Ahioğlu (2009) note social class differences in families’ provisions of support for different areas of children’s development; mid-​to high-​income families providing more stimulating environments and educational opportunities for their children than low-​income families. Children in low-​income urban and rural contexts are more likely to engage in paid labor in order to support their families. When they grow up, they are the main providers of old-​age security for their parents, thus the family model of interdependence prevails. Among the more educated urban groups, there is a shift to the family model of emotional interdependence, with decreased material interdependencies between generations, but emotional dependencies involving close-​knit ties are sustained (Kağitçibaşi, 1990, 2007). In terms of cultural characteristics (as measured by Hofstede & Minkov, 2010), Turkey is a collectivistic society and more feminine than masculine. This profile also suggests that, for the Turkish people, family life and in-​groups are important, and people are likely to care for each other. For the majority, the Turkish family can be characterized as “functionally extended” with much social support and interaction among close relatives, who also tend to live close to each other (Ataca & Kağitçibaşi, 2005). Güngör, Karasawa, Boiger, Dincer, and Mesquita (2014) also note that Turkish collectivism is characterized by close-​knit ties and “relatedness” rather than conformity, which is, for example, typical of Japanese collectivism. Social ecology comprises the social and physical environments that constitute people’s habitats (Oishi & Graham, 2010). Low levels of financial and human capital have potential detrimental effects on developmental outcomes for children by limiting a family’s access to high-​quality physical, developmental, and educational environments, as suggested by the investment model, and by burdening the family’s coping resources, as suggested by the family stress model (e.g., Baydar & Akçınar, 2015; Mistry et  al., 2002; Patterson & Dishion, 1988). Additionally, low-​SES families tend to live in low-​SES neighborhoods. Such contexts afford  http://​data.worldbank.org/​indicator/​NY.GDP.PCAP.CD

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limited structural physical resources, such as parks, community centers, and health clinics; may not be safe; and lack social capital in the form of role models and support from neighbors. The studies described next provide such examples in which the detrimental effects of disadvantaged environments and the compensating role of social factors in these context on developmental and academic outcomes are summarized.

Effects of SES on Three-​Year-​Olds’ Developmental Outcomes: Early Childhood Developmental Ecologies in Turkey The ECDET study is a large-​scale, longitudinal study that followed a Turkish representative sample of three-​year old children and their families for four years, conducted between the years 2008 and 2012. SES is investigated as one of the major contextual factors associated with the developmental outcomes of three-​year-​olds (Baydar & Akçınar, 2015). In this study, SES is not conceptualized simply as the economic resources and human capital but also as signifying social stratification in the form of power and prestige. In the ECDET study, family SES and neighborhood resources have been measured as context-​related independent variables. The child-​related developmental outcomes were vocabulary knowledge, externalizing behaviors, and prosocial behaviors. Families were categorized as having low, middle, or high SES based on maternal education and an index of family economic well-​being indicators such as income, physical resources, and wealth in the family. Family economic well-​being was considered high when it provided a stimulating environment for learning, opportunities for variations in experience, and maternal responsiveness. Physical resources of the neighborhood were assessed in terms of availability of public services and facilities, such as playgrounds, schools, community centers, and so on. When focused specifically on contextual/​material factors, a comparison across the families indicated that almost all of the family resources available for children significantly differed by SES. Children from higher SES enjoyed more learning materials and more stimulation, and their parents were more responsive, compared to children from lower SES families. Similarly, families with high SES lived in neighborhoods with higher amenities than low-​SES families, though mothers from low-​ SES families reported more support from their neighbors. Availability of learning materials and the presence of a stimulating learning environment

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at home emerged as the mediators influencing the effect of SES on children’s vocabulary scores and prosocial behaviors. One other important finding of this study is that maternal education and family economic well-​being were not strongly associated with each other except for the lowest SES families, and they had differential effects on children’s developmental outcomes. These two SES indicators were dissimilarly associated with other family and neighborhood resources. Maternal education had a linearly decreasing diminishing effect on children’s vocabulary knowledge, externalizing behaviors, and prosocial behaviors from high to low SES. On the other hand, a significant effect of family economic well-​being on the same child outcomes was only observed between low-​and middle-​SES groups but not between middle-​ and high-​SES groups. This finding points to a possible “threshold” effect in that beyond a certain threshold of economic well-​being in the family, additional material benefits do not contribute to additional well-​being (similar to what economists call “diminishing returns”). On the positive side, mother responsiveness and social support from the neighborhood compensated for the detrimental effects of low levels of SES (Baydar & Akçınar, 2015). These findings support the role of family and neighborhood as mediating the effect of distal contextual factors on developmental outcomes.

Socio-economic Context and Academic Behaviors: School as a Socialization Context This study investigated the structural and social aspects of schools as predictors of school belonging among Turkish high school students (Cemalcılar, 2010). School belonging is an important determinant of academic achievement and school attainment. An approach from the socioecological perspective affords the inclusion of environmental variables, such as the physical features of the educational setting and the presence or absence of supporting materials, in studying the specifics of learning-​ efficient environments. However, reviews of extant research demonstrated inconsistent effects of a variety of environmental factors such as building characteristics and school size on students’ school engagement (e.g., Anderson, 1982; Weinstein, 1979). Consequently, in subsequent studies, school belonging has been mostly operationalized in terms of satisfaction with social relations, and any reference to the ecological settings of the schools has been mostly disregarded. In the most frequently cited school

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belonging scales (e.g., Brand, Felner, Shim, Seitsinger, & Dumas, 2003; Goodenow, 1993)  schools’ physical characteristics or amenities present are not even assessed. However, earlier studies in the United States carried out after World War II had revealed negative effects of the inadequacy of physical qualities of schools on students’ motivation (see Sarason & Klaber, 1985, for a review). One reason for the inconsistencies regarding the effects of the physical characteristics of the schools in later studies may be the relative homogeneity of school settings in the samples that have been studied. As has been suggested by Murdock (2000) following the economic and educational reforms in industrialized societies in recent decades, the physical quality of schools has greatly improved, at least to the extent that it does not impede student performance. However, in economically less developed societies, the quality of the physical environment may still be an obstacle. There are schools that lack sanitation, comfortable classrooms, space for extracurricular activities, or other supporting resources like labs or books in their libraries. Research with disadvantaged populations does show that scarcity of the environmental amenities negatively predicts student motivation and achievement (Battistich, Solomon, Kim, Watson, & Schaps, 1995). Hence, it is unreasonable to expect schools to promote belonging when they cannot even meet the bare minimum in terms of providing an acceptable learning environment. Here again a possible threshold effect (as explained in the previous section) may be seen in that below a certain level, poor physical conditions have a deleterious effect, but once that level is reached, additional improvements may be inconsequential. The resources and conditions of schools in Turkey are more disadvantageous compared to those in Western countries where the bulk of educational research is conducted but is likely to be more representative of the majority of other less affluent societies in the world, including those within middle-​income countries. In this study by Cemalcılar (2010), data were collected from 799 middle school students from 13 public schools in Istanbul, Turkey. Satisfaction with social relationships (with teachers, peers, and administrators) emerged as a stronger predictor of sense of school belonging than satisfaction with the school environment. However, a comparison using the same conceptual model for schools with low and high socio-economic conditions yielded different associations among the study variables. Schools’ SES was determined by the Istanbul Provincial Ministry of Education. This categorization was confirmed by data provided by the students in terms of their ratings of the structural/​contextual environment of their schools. Students attending schools with limited

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economic conditions indicated significantly less satisfaction with all three aspects of their schools, namely, quality of the physical environment, quality of supporting resources, and perceptions of a safe, nonviolent school environment. In the Turkish educational system, by law, students who go to public schools attend schools that are closest to their home. This results in the student body of a school being rather homogeneous in terms of the students’ family backgrounds and SES. On the other hand, all public schools function under equal terms; the academic rules and the curriculum are regulated centrally by the Ministry of Education. What makes public schools have different economic conditions is mostly the monetary support they receive from the parents and the community (about 35% of their budgets; Köse & Şaşmaz, 2015). In a developing country like Turkey, large income gaps among different groups exist, which is reflected in the SES of the schools children attend. Thus most low-​SES schools were limited in terms of their physical amenities (such as lack of a safe environment, a classroom setting that supports learning, running water in the lavatories, restricted number of books in the library, and language and/​or science labs), as also has been reflected in their school ratings. In contrast, most of the high-​SES public schools participating in this study had physical conditions quite comparable to those in the more affluent Western societies, in which most empirical educational research is conducted. As can be seen from Figure 8.1, satisfaction with structural aspects of the school emerged as a significant predictor of sense of school belonging only for the low SES group. This finding demonstrates the impact of the environment, when it is of low quality. Only in disadvantageous environments did the conditions of the school interfere with students’ feelings toward their schools. In schools with favorable conditions, satisfaction with the physical context (such as the recreational areas, comfort in the classrooms), in general, had no specific effect on the students. Thus what we see here is a greater downward range of environmental quality and the deleterious effects of very low levels. On the other hand, perceived violence in the school had a direct association with sense of school belonging only for the high-​SES group but not for the low-​SES group. For high-​SES students who grow up in safer neighborhoods, any act of violence in the school environment is likely to have an impact on their sense of school belonging. However, in the low-​SES conditions, students are likely to be desensitized to violence in their environments in general and are therefore less likely to be specifically affected by it in the school context, perceiving school violence as “normal” (Tarabah, Badr, Usta, & Doyle, 2015).

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Studentteacher relations

Studentadmin. relations

Studentstudent relations

Satisfaction with social relations in the school

Sense of school belonging

. Satisfaction with structural aspects of the school

Physical features

Supporting resources

Perceived violence

Figure 8.1A  Significant standardized path coefficients for the LOW SES schools.

Studentteacher relations

Studentadmin. relations

Studentstudent relations

Satisfaction with social relations in the school

Sense of school belonging

. Satisfaction with structural aspects of the school

Physical features

Supporting resources

Perceived violence

Figure 8.1B  Significant standardized path coefficients for the HIGH SES schools.

Socio-economic Risk Factors as Predictors of Early School Leave Poverty, gender, ethnicity, race, and migration status are established social risk factors that increase the likelihood of students’ dropping out of the educational system. In a study in six different cities in Turkey with 415 adolescents who had dropped out of compulsory education and 349 adolescents who were attending school, Cemalcılar and Gökşen (2014) aimed to understand which structural (socio-economic) factors place adolescents at risk of dropping out and then to identify social capital resources potentially within their reach that might mitigate this risk. A comparison of socio-economic characteristics of dropouts and current students is summarized in Table 8.1. There were more females than males in the dropout group. Dropouts were more likely to be from larger households and from migrant families with lower SES standing where a minority language was spoken at home. Compared to current students, dropouts’ mothers were more likely to be illiterate, and fathers were less likely to have stable jobs with permanent income. Even though the monthly household expenditures of the two groups did not differ significantly, since dropouts came from more crowded households compared to current students, per person expenditure was significantly lower in the dropout group. While less than 13% of current students worked during school time or as seasonal workers, 30% of the dropouts reported having worked at the time when they were attending school. Six social risk factors emerged as significant predictors that increased the odds of dropping out: being female, mother’s being illiterate, mother’s not having social security, father’s having an unstable job, child’s working to earn money during school time, and migration during child’s school age. Moreover, when looked at separately, the effect of each single social risk factor emerged to be more profound for girls compared with boys. A further analysis investigated the cumulative effects of these social risk factors on dropping out, regardless of their content (e.g., mother’s being illiterate, mother’s not having social security, father’s having an unstable job, child’s working to earn money during school time, and migration during child’s school age). The analysis suggested that a combination of any three risk factors, regardless of their type, is a precondition for dropping out for both boys and girls. When any of the three risk factors were present, the probability of dropping out is 0.60 for girls and 0.42 for boys. This finding confirms existing models stressing the harmful effects of

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Table 8.1 Comparisons of Dropouts and Current Students across Social Risk Factors

Females % Intact family % * Household size (mean) Number of children at home (mean) Household belongings (mean) Mother is literate % Father is literate % Father is at least high school graduate % Father has a stable job % Turkish spoken at home % Monthly household expenditure (mean) * Monthly expenditure per person (mean) Child works(ed) as a seasonal worker % Child works(ed) at school time to earn money % Migrated during school age %

Dropouts

Current students

65.3 95.7 7.36 5.37 1.78 28.0 79.8 13.0 51.3 48.4 510.70 TL ($425) 75.66 TL ($63) 20.7 30.1

50.1 94.6 6.01 3.87 2.53 62.2 89.4 25.8 71.3 64.5 505.37 TL ($425) 97.08 TL ($80.9) 8.3 4.9

15.7

4.6

Note: TL = Turkey lira. All comparisons except those marked with the superscript (*) are significant at p < .001. Currency conversions are based on the year of data collection (2007).

accumulated risk factors, rather than their content (e.g., Conger, Rueter, & Conger, 2000; Evans, 2004; Sameroff & Fiese, 1992). It is to be noted that most (if not all) social risk factors are typically viewed as not easily modifiable through interventions, at least not during a child’s basic education years. However, interventions at the school level are feasible. This study demonstrated that social capital deriving from school-​related resources and interactions successfully alleviates the negative experiences of at-​risk students coming from very disadvantaged social classes. In the presence of the aforementioned social risk factors, the odds of dropping out decreased by 45% and 77% for each standard deviation of increase in positive relations with teachers and parents’ involvement in school, respectively. A second study investigated the effect of migration on children’s academic outcomes (Gökşen & Cemalcılar, 2010). What is notable in this research is the finding that when children migrate when they are at school age (5–​15 years old), if they migrate to a metropolitan center (i.e., İstanbul), migration emerges as a significant predictor of dropping out. However, no such effect is observed if they migrate to a less developed city. Even though the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the migrants to Istanbul versus other (nearby) cities are not significantly different from each

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other, the characteristics of the host culture they migrate to are severely different. Istanbul is a metropolitan city in the western region of Turkey. It is densely populated, ranks the highest in Turkey on the development index, and is geographically and culturally distant from the native towns of the immigrants. The other five cities to which the participants had immigrated are in the eastern regions of Turkey, neighboring the native towns of the immigrants, are much less populated, and rank lower in the development index. Hence, they are more similar to the immigrants’ home towns in terms of the socio-economic and cultural milieu (Gökşen & Cemalcılar, 2010). An investigation of the impact of migration on academic outcomes suggests that migrating to Istanbul creates a higher risk compared to migrating to other nearby cities. Specifically, 93.8% of the children migrating to Istanbul but 60.6% of the children migrating to other cities had dropped out from compulsory education. When none of the other social risk factors (such as gender, parents’ income) were present, just migrating to Istanbul resulted in a 57% probability of dropping out from compulsory education. One possible explanation to this drastic difference in academic perseverance may be the relative difference between the immigrants’ home culture and the host culture, as outlined earlier.

Long-​Term Effects of an Intervention Study: Turkish Early Enrichment Project The Turkish Early Enrichment Project (TEEP) is a 22-​year longitudinal intervention study that began in 1982–​1986 with three-​to five-​year-​old children and their mothers from deprived backgrounds. It was extended by two follow-​up studies (Kağitçibaşi, et  al., 2001, 2009). The children included in TEEP were at risk for low educational achievement and failure to develop to their full potential because of poverty and their families’ low educational level. The intervention program aimed to counteract social class differentials in educational achievement and other social and developmental outcomes by exposing the children and their mothers to enriching environments. Children, at preschool ages, experienced one of three alternative care environments:  those who attended an educational day care center, those who attended a custodial day care center, and those who stayed home. Furthermore, in each care environment, mothers of approximately half of the children were randomly assigned to receive mother training, teaching them to carry out cognitively stimulating structured activities with their children. Mothers were also supported and empowered

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in biweekly group discussions particularly in developing better communication skills and parenting, including more stimulating and attentive child rearing orientations. Hence the treatment groups were composed of chil­ dren who attended an educational day care and whose mothers had some form of training. Children who attended custodial day care or stayed home and whose mothers did not receive any form of training constituted the control group. The children were assessed at four different time points—​preprogram, immediately post-​program (fourth year), seven years after the end of the program, and 19  years after the end of the program (Kağitçibaşi et  al., 2009). Both short-​and long-​term benefits accrued. Concerning only the long-​term follow-​up evaluation, 61% of the original participants (N = 131) were located and interviewed. The mean age of the participants was 25.7. The main finding of the 19-​year follow-​up was that high-​quality early childhood enrichment for children in deprived environments, whether provided through mother training, educational preschool education, or both, has positive effects on the overall development of the child that carry over into young adulthood. Participants who had been exposed to either type of early enrichment (educational care center and/​or mother training), compared to those in the control who had not, exhibited higher school attainment, began their working lives at a later age and had higher occupational status. As mostly second-​or third-​generation rural-​to-​urban migrants, participants of this intervention constituted a group of socio-economically disadvantaged children. However, in their adulthood, those in the enrichment group indeed fared better than the control group in terms of their educational attainment, occupational standing, and participation in modern society, as indicated by their higher computer and credit card ownership.

Conclusion Early social thinkers searched for an answer to the basic question, “How is social order possible?” in an attempt to understand individual–​society dynamics (see Allport, 1968, p. 9). This question formed the intellectual background of social psychology, nevertheless it has not been asked genuinely for a long time. This has been due to an overall reconceptualization of social psychology in more micro terms to the neglect of the macro context. We started this chapter by underlining the significance of the all-​ encompassing context for human phenomena. We noted that while the powerful impact of context on human behavior is an indisputable fact, it

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has been rather ignored in academic mainstream psychological inquiry, using an individual level of analysis. Social class was taken up as a case in point. We consider it essential to understand context in order to understand human behavior, especially given the complexities of our globalized world. In particular, culture and living conditions (socio-economic factors) as well as changes in these need to be taken into consideration. We proposed family change theory of Kağitçibaşi (1990, 2007) as a promising conceptual tool for such an understanding, where the family plays a key role in linking (changing) environmental conditions and the (changing) self. We then took up several studies carried out in Turkey as cases in point demonstrating the significant impact of the objective contextual factors on human outcomes, especially on children and youth. These studies are carried out in contexts that show great diversity and dynamic social change. In particular there are findings pointing to the detrimental effects of lower social class standing on child outcomes. School contexts, as shaped by SES, are also found to be of key significance for student adjustment. Rural–​urban migration is studied as a dynamic contextual change with profound effects on the growing child, particularly as a risk factor for school dropout. Finally, a longitudinal intervention study is presented which demonstrates that by supporting and improving the human and educational environment of the young child, the deleterious effects of low social class standing can be reduced, even eliminated. On the basis of the research and thinking discussed in this chapter, we may conclude that context has indeed a key role in human phenomena. Accordingly, it should be given its due share in the study of these phenomena. Social and developmental psychology would benefit from a more thorough consideration and study of objective contextual conditions toward a better understanding of human development and human behavior.

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Appendix 1  Some Contextual Models and Research Traditions of Relevance to Human Developmenta • Early comparative anthropological research (Barry et al., 1959; Levine, 1974; Whiting, 1963; Whiting & Child, 1953) • Vygotsky’s sociohistorical school of thought (1962, 1978) • Systemic models of person–​environment interaction (Von Bertalanffy, 1968) • Berry’s ecocultural theory in cross-​cultural psychology (Berry, 1976, 1980; Berry et al., 2002) • Ecological and bioecological model of Bronfenbrenner (1979, 1999) • Lifespan development theory (Baltes & Brim, 1979; Baltes, Reese, & Lipsitt, 1980; Elder, 1985, 1998; Lerner, 1989) • Problem and policy-​ oriented family research, informed by ecological theory (Bronfenbrenner & Weiss, 1983; Dym, 1988; Sameroff & Fiese, 1992; Weiss & Jacobs, 1988) • Kağitçibaşi’s family change model (1985, 1990, 1996a, 1996b) • Developmental contextualism (Featherman & Lerner, 1985; Lerner, 1989) • Super and Harkness’ developmental niche (1986, 1999) • Valsiner’s co-​constructionism (1989, 1994) • Ethnic minority research from an ecological perspective (Coll, 1990; Harrison, Wilson, Pine, Chan, & Buriel, 1990; McLoyd, 1990; Ogbu, 1981; Szapocznik & Kurtines, 1993) • “Everyday cognition and informal education” approaches of cultural psychologists and anthropologists (Cole, 1992; Greenfield & Lave, 1982; Nunes, Schliemann, & Carraher, 1993; Rogoff, 1981, 1990, 2003; Scribner & Cole, 1981; Serpell, 1976), informed by Vygotsky • Time and sociohistorical change as context (Bronfenbrenner & Evans, 2000; Crockett & Silbereisen, 2000; Elder, 1994; Kağitçibaşi & Ataca, 2005; Keller & Lamm, 2005) Adapted from Kağitçibaşi (2007, p. 32).

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SECTION 3 Economic Conditions



CHAPTER 9

Economics of Subjective Well-​Being Evaluating the Evidence for the Easterlin Paradox Anke C. Plagnol and Lucia Macchia

Introduction In 1974 economist Richard A.  Easterlin asked in his seminal article “Does economic growth improve the human lot?” His answer to this question was a resounding “no” based on data from the Gallup World poll and Cantril’s (1965) worldwide surveys on the best and worst of possible worlds. The paper described what was later to be known as the Easterlin paradox, which is the observation that, within countries, rich individuals are on average happier than poor individuals, but over time there is no relationship between happiness and income. Similarly, at the country level, increases in per capita gross domestic product (GDP) over time are not significantly positively associated with citizens’ subjective well-​being (SWB).1 In order for a paradox to exist, one needs to consider two seemingly contradictory statements. In the case of the Easterlin paradox, the first statement concerns the cross-​sectional happiness–​income relationship, which appears to be positive and significant (at one point in time). Thus we would assume that, over time, as a country becomes richer, its citizens also become happier. However, this

 In this chapter we use the terms “happiness” and “subjective well-​being” fairly interchangeably. Although happiness is just one measure of subjective well-​being, the Easterlin paradox is often described as an income–​happiness paradox, and we therefore also occasionally describe it this way. Similarly, income may denote both individual income or per capita GDP in this chapter. Other measures of subjective well-​being, such as life satisfaction and quality life, are also used fairly interchangeably. 1

relationship does not hold when we look at the time-​series evidence (across time) of the association between happiness and income (see also Easterlin, 1995), and the second statement therefore seemingly contradicts the first. When Easterlin (1974) conducted his seminal study, national time series data were “in short supply” (p. 108), as he asserted himself, especially for data where the question wording did not change over time. Easterlin therefore only presented time series data for the United States from 1946 to 1970, which showed the association between income and happiness to be much weaker than for within-​country comparisons. The Easterlin study also found limited evidence that rich countries are on average happier than poor countries, but as the collection of SWB data has considerably improved over the years, more recent studies provide convincing evidence that the citizens of countries with high per capita GDP display, on average, higher levels of SWB than those residing in poorer nations (see, e.g., country SWB rankings in: Helliwell, Layard, & Sachs, 2013).

The Easterlin Paradox Today Easterlin’s 1974 paper is often described as starting the field of the “economics of subjective well-​being,” although its publication was followed by almost two decades of little progress in this field, at least by economists (Sirgy et al., 2006). In the 1990s, economists started to increasingly use indicators of SWB, first mainly to investigate topics such as income and SWB (e.g., Oswald, 1997) and employment and SWB (e.g., Clark & Oswald, 1994). In the meantime, psychologists had already used SWB indicators extensively in order to study well-​being as opposed to psychology’s traditional focus on poor mental health (Diener, 1984). One of the early SWB studies in psychology was the now famous study by Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-​Bulman (1978) on the happiness of lottery winners and accident victims. The Easterlin paradox itself has been the topic of many published articles, with numerous studies supporting the original findings (e.g., Bartolini & Sarracino, 2014; Beja, 2014; De Neve et al., 2014; Easterlin, 1995; Easterlin, McVey, Switek, Sawangfa, & Zweig, 2010; Easterlin & Sawangfa, 2010) and some refuting them (e.g., Hagerty & Veenhoven, 2003; Sacks, Stevenson, & Wolfers, 2010; Stevenson & Wolfers, 2008; Veenhoven & Vergunst, 2014). Critics of the Easterlin paradox tend to

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assert that the second statement about the nil time-​series happiness–​ income relationship is incorrect and that more recent evidence proves that well-​being actually does increase with economic growth. One early critic was Veenhoven (1991), who asserted that absolute income matters because income lets people meet universal needs, such as health, nutrition, and housing. Therefore, increases in absolute income should improve well-​being, but Veenhoven did also point out that above a certain level of income, basic needs are met and income should therefore have a diminishing influence on SWB. Later studies by Veenhoven and colleagues found evidence for a positive income-​happiness association over time (Hagerty & Veenhoven, 2003; Veenhoven & Vergunst, 2014)  but were criticized by Easterlin on methodological grounds (Easterlin, 2005, 2016), which we further discuss later. Similarly, Sacks, Stevenson, and Wolfers (2010) stated that economic growth and increases in well-​being are clearly related and that they did not find evidence for a satiation point above which increases in income no longer matter for SWB. Easterlin countered their findings by asserting that Sacks et  al.’s analysis estimated merely the short-​term relationship between life satisfaction and GDP, rather than long-​term trends (Easterlin & Sawangfa, 2010). In a recent paper, Easterlin (2016) argues that a positive income–​ happiness time-​series relationship can often be observed in the short run, but, to evaluate whether the Easterlin paradox exists, one must observe long-​term trends in SWB and income. He furthermore attributes differences between his findings and those of researchers who assert a positive time-​series happiness–​income relationship to the following shortcomings in their analyses: lack of comparability of SWB indicators over time, the consideration of short-​term changes instead of long-​term trends, and small numbers of country-​year observations. He asserts that country time series should cover at least one GDP cycle in order to avoid that high fluctuations in SWB during contraction or expansion periods bias the results (Easterlin, 2016). Oishi and Kesebir (2015) attribute the nil GDP growth–​happiness association to the fact that economic growth is often accompanied by growing income inequality—​an observation that also calls for the analysis of long-​term trends. In his most recent paper Easterlin asks “Paradox Lost?” but concludes that, based on the long-​ term time-​series evidence available for numerous countries today, one must conclude that the Easterlin paradox does indeed exist. Before we look at possible reasons for its existence, we first briefly discuss SWB measures in general.

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Measuring Subjective Well-​Being SWB encompasses individuals’ own evaluations of their well-​being. In survey research this is usually assessed with measures of happiness, life satisfaction, quality of life, and, less frequently, eudaimonic well-​being. Most of the large, nationally representative surveys that underpin much of the current research on the determinants of SWB include single-​item measures of SWB, for instance a question that asks respondents to rate their life satisfaction on a scale from 0 to 10, with 0 denoting completely dissatisfied and 10 completely satisfied. SWB can also be assessed using multi-​item measures, such as the five-​item Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985)  or the eight-​item flourishing scale (Diener et al., 2010), a measure of eudaimonic well-​being. To date, eudaimonic well-​being measures are rarely found in large, nationally representative surveys. One notable exception can be found in the 2006 and 2012 personal and social well-​being modules in the European Social Survey, which included several eudaimonic well-​being measures (Huppert et al., 2009) and can be used to assess flourishing across Europe (Huppert & So, 2013). Overall, SWB measures have been found to be reliable and valid (e.g., Diener, Inglehart, & Tay, 2013; Kahneman & Krueger, 2006). However, concerns have been voiced about the comparability of SWB measures within and across countries. Survey respondents may interpret questions on well-​being differently and have their own internal scales; if respondent A rates her happiness to be 8, is her happiness indeed greater than that of respondent B who reports a happiness level of 6? This question is of concern if an analysis does not merely consider within-​person changes, as can be done in longitudinal research, but rather looks at differences between persons or countries. Some researchers have attempted to overcome these potential restrictions of cardinal measures; one example is the U-​index proposed by Kahneman and Krueger (2006), which assesses the proportion of time respondents report spending on unpleasant activities. Moreover, cross-​cultural differences in SWB may merely reflect linguistic differences or cultural response bias, which results in different SWB ratings in some societies due to the respondents’ cultural background, rather than true SWB differences across nations. Indeed, such a cultural response bias has been found in comparisons between Western and Asian samples (Lai, Cummins, & Lau, 2013). On the other hand, Veenhoven (1996) reported that comparisons of happiness and life satisfaction questions in two bilingual countries did not show biases based on language.

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What do people actually think about when they are asked to rate their own well-​being? In 1965 Hadley Cantril published a book based on a worldwide survey that he conducted to investigate people’s concerns and definitions of best and worst possible lives. The domains of life that were most frequently mentioned by respondents across countries concerned economic circumstances, family, and health (Cantril, 1965). A  more recent study that analyzed data from an open-​ended question in the British Household Panel Study about how people define quality of life similarly found that individuals frequently mention health, family, and finances (Plagnol & Scott, 2011). Concerns about macroeconomic indicators, such as the unemployment rate or inflation, are seldom expressed in such studies. Let us now return to our discussion of the Easterlin paradox.

Why Does the Easterlin Paradox Exist? To better understand why the Easterlin paradox exists, we discuss psychological processes that may mediate the impact of income on SWB over time, namely: social comparison, hedonic adaptation, and changing aspirations. Social comparison is “the process of thinking about information about one or more other people in relation to the self” (Wood, 1996, pp. 520–​ 521). According to social comparison theory (Festinger, 1954), people need an external standard against which to judge their abilities. Social comparison, sometimes referred to as “interdependent preferences” in economics (Pollak, 1976), therefore allows people to evaluate themselves by comparing themselves to relevant others, that is, their peers or a specific reference group. One result stemming from such comparisons may be that relative standing matters more for one’s well-​being than absolute standing. Easterlin postulated in the original 1974 article, based on Duesenberry’s (1952) relative income explanation, that relative income may be more important for happiness than absolute income. According to this view, utility (happiness) does not depend on one’s absolute consumption (income) but on the ratio of one’s consumption to that of relevant other people. In other words, the well-​being derived from owning a certain good depends partly on the amount that relevant others have of that good. SWB therefore varies directly with one’s own income and inversely with the incomes of others. Social comparison can explain both happiness–​income observations that make up the Easterlin paradox. The rich are happier than the poor

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in cross-​sectional analyses because of their higher relative standing in society and also their ability to afford good health, education, and other factors that are associated with high well-​being. On the other hand, economic growth does not improve average SWB in a society because if everyone’s income increases while people’s relevant positions remain unchanged, their happiness will remain constant (see also Easterlin, 1995, 2001). However, social comparison does not operate equally across all domains of life: people compare themselves less to others in nonpecuniary domains, including family life and health where current circumstances are less easily observed and absolute standing thus matters more for one’s well-​being (Easterlin, 2003). On the other hand, positional goods and income (pecuniary domain) are associated with a considerable degree of social comparison. The second psychological mechanism that may explain economic growth’s failure to increase SWB in the long term is hedonic adaptation, which is sometimes denoted as habituation (Brickman et al., 1978; Diener, Lucas, & Scollon, 2006). Hedonic adaptation is “the psychological process by which people become accustomed to a positive or negative stimulus, such that the emotional effects of that stimulus are attenuated over time” (Lyubomirsky, 2011, p. 201). A stimulus can be a single event (e.g., an accident), a change in life circumstances (e.g., moving to a new house), or a recurring event (going to the gym every week). If the stimulus is constant or repeated, then adaptation may occur. We can further distinguish between complete and incomplete hedonic adaptation. Complete adaptation occurs when people temporarily experience a change in SWB but eventually completely revert to their previous level of SWB. It is usually observed in relation to material goods, and people who are not aware of the effects of hedonic adaptation might overinvest in acquiring new material possessions. It is thought that hedonic adaptation occurs because it allows people to retain the ability to react to novel stimuli and to disengage from goals that have little chance of success (Frederick & Loewenstein, 1999). With respect to the Easterlin paradox, it is possible that people adapt to (i.e., they get used to) the new goods that economic growth and higher incomes allow them to acquire. Last, we discuss changes in aspirations as a further explanation of the Easterlin paradox. Easterlin observed that consumption norms increase in lockstep with economic development, such that once a society has developed certain consumption standards, its citizens demand further

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goods to feel happy (Easterlin, 1974). Increasing aspirations, caused by social comparison and hedonic adaptation, can therefore easily counteract a short-​term positive impact of increased incomes (Plagnol & Easterlin, 2008; Stutzer, 2004). Aspirations have been found to depend positively on past outcomes, the outcomes of others in one’s reference group, and expected outcomes (McBride, 2010). For instance, an improvement in others’ incomes decreases one’s own SWB (McBride, 2001; Stutzer, 2004).

Policy Implications If we accept the existence of the Easterlin paradox, then what are the policy implications that we can derive from these findings? Improving citizens’ well-​being is the core function of public policy, and indicators such as GDP are used to assess society’s well-​being. However, if economic growth does not necessarily lead to greater well-​being, should nations still pursue GDP growth as a goal? After all, GDP merely reflects the monetary value of goods and services produced in a country in a given year and therefore, to quote from Robert Kennedy (1968), does not “allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play . . . the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages  .  .  .  it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” (cited in New Economics Foundation, 2009)

Traditionally, most countries relied on GDP as a measure of societal well-​ being, but fairly recently several countries, international organizations, and researchers have recognized its shortcomings as a measure of societal welfare and therefore proposed to measure societal well-​being differently, for instance in the form of SWB (Adler & Seligman, 2016; Diener, 2000; Dolan & White, 2007). In 2013, the Organisation of Economic Co-​ operation and Development (OECD) published guidelines in which SWB was defined as “Good mental states, including all of the various evaluations, positive and negative, that people make of their lives, and the affective reactions of people to their experiences” (OECD, 2013, p. 29). More specifically, the OECD guidelines describe that SWB encompasses three elements, namely (a)  life evaluation (hedonic well-​being), (b)  affect (a person’s feelings), and (c) eudaimonia (a feeling of sense and purpose in life, flourishing).

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First calls for national well-​being indicators by economists and psychologists were published fairly recently (Diener, 2000; Diener, Oishi, & Lucas, 2015; Diener & Seligman, 2004; Dolan & White, 2007). Consequently, several national governments announced efforts to consider SWB measures to inform public policy. In France, the Sarkozy report (Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress) aims to detect the limitations that commonly used statistical measures, such as GDP, demonstrate in capturing economic performance and social progress (Stiglitz, Sen, & Fitoussi, 2010). For instance, traffic jams may be associated with an improvement in GDP due to an increase in the consumption of gasoline, but at the same time they usually affect people’s quality of life negatively (Stiglitz et al., 2010). In addition, the authors of the Sarkozy report emphasize the gap between actual economic measures and individuals’ perceptions. Among other things, they argue that growth in per capita GDP might not capture the effect of income inequality on SWB adequately as economic growth is not directly associated with a fair income distribution. However, income inequality does indeed affect people’s perceived well-​being. Moreover, standard economic measures do not capture environmental issues, which may affect both future economic growth and citizens’ well-​being. In 2010, the British government launched the National Well-​being Programme, which aims to measure social progress based on citizens’ quality of life instead of on classical economic indicators alone. Similar to the Sarkozy report, the British National Well-​being Programme focuses on how people feel about and perceive actual circumstances. The Office for National Statistics in the UK now regularly includes four well-​being questions in a number of its surveys, such as the Annual Population Survey. The personal well-​being questions that are often referred to as the ONS4 include a question on life satisfaction (“Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?”), one on eudaimonic well-​being (“Overall, to what extent do you feel that the things you do in your life are worthwhile?”), a happiness question (“Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?”), and a question on anxiety (“On a scale where nought is ‘not at all anxious’ and 10 is ‘completely anxious,’ overall, how anxious did you feel yesterday?”), all of which ask respondents to rate their perceived well-​being on a scale from 0 to 10 (Office for National Statistics, 2016). So what does actually increase citizens’ well-​being? Economists, sociologists, and psychologists have been looking at the determinants of individual SWB for several decades. We look at some of their findings in the following section.

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If Not GDP, Then What? Other Determinants of Subjective Well-​Being A number of factors can impact SWB although the effect of objective circumstances on SWB is often mediated by hedonic adaptation and social comparison. Lasting changes in SWB typically occur due to changes in the nonpecuniary domains, such as health and family, because individuals are less likely to compare themselves to others in these domains and aspirations increase less with attainments (Plagnol & Easterlin, 2008). In the following, we briefly describe various economic and noneconomic covariates of SWB, including personal income, income inequality, labor force participation, work hours, health, and social relationships. The studies discussed are based on longitudinal as well as cross-​sectional data from a number of countries and do therefore not always allow to infer the direction of causality.

Personal Income The association between personal income and SWB has been extensively studied, with many studies emphasizing the importance of relative income as compared to absolute income (e.g., Blanchflower & Oswald, 2004b; Easterlin, 1974; McBride, 2001). Studies usually find small correlations between SWB and pretax income (e.g., 0.17–​0.20 in Lucas & Schimmack, 2009), but absolute income has been found to have a positive effect on SWB when it helps people meet their basic needs (Diener & Biswas-​Diener, 2002; Oswald, 1997). In general, rich people are happier than poor individuals, but after a certain level additional income is not associated with increased SWB (Frey & Stutzer, 2002). Estimates of the income threshold after which additional income is not associated with a further increase in SWB vary between studies, ranging from $10,000 (Frey & Stutzer, 2002), to $15,000 (Layard, 2005), to $75,000 (Kahneman & Deaton, 2010) as beyond these amounts basic needs are met and additional money no longer improves individuals’ ability to do what may improve their emotional well-​being in the long-​run. Furthermore, as already mentioned, additional income is often accompanied by an increase in material aspirations that become increasingly more difficult to fulfill (Diener & Biswas-​Diener, 2002; Stutzer, 2004), and individuals tend to compare their incomes to that of their peers (Ferrer-​i-​Carbonell, 2005). Therefore, people feel worse off if their income is lower than that of the members of their comparison group (Luttmer, 2005). Moreover, additional income

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does not have any effect on SWB if the income of those in the relevant reference group is also increased (Weinzierl, 2005). It has been repeatedly shown that people adapt quickly to changes in income (Easterlin, 1995), possibly because of more frequent social comparison in the economic than in the noneconomic domains. Studies have further shown that the direction of causality in the happiness–​income relationship might in fact run both ways; that is, money does not necessarily make people happier but happier people may be more likely to make more money (Graham, Eggers, & Sukhtankar, 2004; Schyns, 2001). For instance, psychological distress and poor mental health may diminish people’s employment options and lead to marital breakdown and social exclusion. Happy people may also benefit from better social capital (especially bridging social capital), which could provide them with more career opportunities. It has also been found that happy people tend to make more money later (Diener, Nickerson, Lucas, & Sandvik, 2002), though Oishi, Diener, and Lucas (2007) found that moderately satisfied, rather than the most satisfied, people made the most. Finally, at the national level, current and lagged GDP per capita are positively associated with SWB, although some of these associations may wear off over time; that is, SWB may be associated with changes in GDP rather than just the level of GDP (Di Tella, MacCulloch, & Oswald 2003).

Income Inequality Another economic measure that displays an association with SWB is the unequal distribution of income in a society. Evidence for the relationship between income inequality and SWB is, however, mixed: whereas a number of studies find that income inequality is negatively associated with SWB (Clark, 2003; Fahey & Smyth, 2004; Hagerty, 2000; Schwarze & Härpfer, 2003), some studies suggest a positive association between income inequality and SWB at the macro level. For instance a study by Haller and Hadler (2006), which attributes this finding to the fact that income inequality is high in South American countries, which typically display high levels of happiness, while it is low in postcommunist countries in which lower levels of happiness are usually found. Similarly, O’Connell (2004) highlights a positive relationship between income equality and SWB. Alesina, Di Tella, and MacCulloch (2004) find that income inequality is negatively associated with happiness. Specifically, they suggest that in Europe the poor and those who lean more left politically are more affected by inequality; this finding is contrary to findings from the United States

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where the rich are more affected. In Latin American countries, income inequality is positively associated with the happiness of the rich and negatively associated with the happiness of the poor (Graham & Felton, 2006). In addition, the effect of income inequality on SWB in Europe and the United States is associated with social mobility whereas in Latin America it is seen as a sign of unfairness as it provides an advantage for the rich and a disadvantage for the poor (Graham & Felton, 2006). In general, cross-​ national studies tend to find no correlation between income inequality and SWB (Berg & Veenhoven, 2010), whereas within-​nation cross-​temporal research finds a negative correlation (Alesina et  al., 2004), even in the United States (Oishi, Kesebir, & Diener, 2011).

Labor Force Participation Paid employment is important for SWB but can have a negative impact if people are underemployed or working too many hours (Wooden, Warren, & Drago 2009). Unemployment in particular is usually found to have a negative effect on SWB (Lucas et al., 2004; Winkelmann & Winkelmann, 1998), but how much of it can be attributed to the direct, pecuniary costs of unemployment (i.e., the loss of income) rather to its indirect, psychological costs? Winkelmann and Winkelmann found that the pecuniary costs of unemployment are small compared to the nonpecuniary costs (i.e., reduced well-​being). Moreover, people do not appear to fully adapt to being unemployed, and those with past spells of unemployment still react as negatively to new unemployment as those who become unemployed for the first time (Lucas, Clark, Georgellis, & Diener, 2004). Unemployment has also been found to have a scarring effect, with those who were unemployed in the past being less satisfied than those who have never been unemployed (Clark, Georgellis, & Sanfey, 2001). However, the impact of unemployment on individual SWB may depend on the societal context. For instance, unemployment appears to be more socially accepted in regions where unemployment is high (Clark, 2003). In general, unemployed individuals report lower levels of SWB than those in paid employment, and the effect of unemployment on individuals’ perceived well-​being is quite large (Frey & Stutzer, 2000). Using data from the British Household Panel Study, Clark and Oswald (1994) find the well-​being loss associated with unemployment to be larger than the one generated by divorce or marital separation. Moreover, the long-​term unemployed are happier than people who recently lost their job. Similarly, in Latin America, unemployment shows a negative association with individuals’ SWB. However, contrary to

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advanced industrialized regions in which self-​employment is often found to be associated with higher SWB, those who are self-​employed in Latin America report, on average, lower SWB, which is likely due to the prevalence of precarious, informal sector jobs (Graham & Pettinato, 2001). People appear to partially adapt to unemployment, as shown by an analysis of German Socio Economic Panel data, spanning 15 years, by Lucas and colleagues (2004). The authors suggest that people react strongly to unemployment in terms of SWB but that they do not completely revert to their baseline level of life satisfaction, even once they are reemployed. The negative effect of unemployment on SWB is larger for men (Clark, 2003; Lucas et al., 2004), middle-​aged individuals (Winkelmann & Winkelmann, 1998), people with higher education (Clark & Oswald, 1994), and those located on the right side of the political inclination spectrum (Alesina et al., 2004).

Work Hours Findings on the association between the hours worked at a job and various measures of SWB are mixed. Women have higher job satisfaction if they work part-​time, while men are the most satisfied with their hours of work if they work full-​time but without overtime (Booth & Van Ours, 2008). In contrast, Blanchflower and Oswald (2004a) do not find a difference between part-​time and full-​time work and SWB. However, in the UK, Estonia and Finland full-​time work is associated with higher levels of life satisfaction for men and divorced women (Schoon, Hansson, & Salmela-​ Aro, 2005). Other studies found a negative relationship between the number of hours worked and well-​being (Luttmer, 2005; Oishi, Chan, Wang, & Kim 2015). Bardasi and Francesconi (2004) measured individual well-​ being as a set of subjective indicators: mental health, general health status, life satisfaction, and job satisfaction. They found that although atypical employment is not negatively associated with health, people with seasonal or temporary work display lower levels of job satisfaction than part-​time workers. Meier and Stutzer (2008) studied the effect of voluntary work on life satisfaction and found a positive association between hours worked and SWB, which might be attributed to the fact that volunteering work is generally associated with higher SWB (Plagnol & Huppert, 2010). However, Meier and Stutzer (2007) also found an inverse U-​shaped relationship between hours worked and life satisfaction: as hours worked increase, life satisfaction initially improves but declines after a certain point. Regardless of the

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hours worked, well-​being at work is particularly high when employees are completely absorbed in their tasks; that is when they find what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow” (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi & LeFevre, 1989).

Health The relationship between health and SWB can be seen from two different perspectives:  health can affect SWB and vice versa. Ill health has been shown to affect SWB negatively (e.g., Shields & Price, 2005). However, Diener and Chan (2011) suggest that high SWB (measured as life satisfaction, positive affect, etc.) has a positive impact on health and longevity. Studies suggest partial hedonic adaptation in the health domain (e.g., Oswald & Powdthavee, 2008)  as people who become disabled often exhibit increases in SWB following an initial sharp drop in well-​being. In a German sample adaptation to disability was often not complete and depended on the severity of the disability (Lucas, 2007). Probably the most famous study on the topic, based on an analysis of 11 paraplegic and 18 quadriplegic respondents (as well as a number of lottery winners and controls) by Brickman and colleagues (1978), is often cited as evidence for adaptation-​level theory/​hedonic adaptation. However, in fact, the authors found that these accident victims reported significantly lower levels of happiness than the controls. It has further been found that people can adapt to serious chronic health conditions and show high levels of happiness although they would prefer to be healthy (Loewenstein & Ubel, 2008). Finally, disability is positively correlated with satisfaction with amount of leisure time but negatively associated with satisfaction with income and social life—​ domains in which adaptation takes place although only partially in serious cases (Powdthavee, 2009b). The association between health and SWB at the individual level further confirms the validity of measures of SWB. Moreover, at the macro level SWB has been found to be associated with the prevalence of depression, anxiety, and suicide (Diener et al., 2013).

Partnerships: Marriage and Divorce Marriage is usually associated with higher levels of SWB in cross-​ sectional studies, compared to being separated, divorced, or widowed (e.g., Blanchflower & Oswald, 2004a; Helliwell, 2003). However, cross-​ sectional studies do not allow us to determine the direction of causality with certainty—​does marriage indeed increase well-​being, or are happier

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people more likely to get married? A longitudinal analysis by Lucas, Clark, Georgellis, and Diener (2003) suggests that there is just a short honeymoon period of increased SWB around the time of the wedding after which individuals fully revert back to their original levels of SWB. However, using the same German data and considering that cohabitation is common in Germany before marriage, Zimmermann and Easterlin (2006) found that married individuals do not fully adapt to marriage but rather revert to the level of SWB they experienced during premarital cohabitation. Brown (2000) found that people who cohabit with their partner report higher levels of depression than married people, possibly due to the instability in the relationship that cohabitation might reflect compared to marriage. However, unmarried people who cohabit and perceive their relationship as stable display a similar level of SWB as that of married people. The effect of marriage on life satisfaction may be mediated by personality traits and has been found to be greater for conscientious and introverted women as well as extraverted men (Boyce, Wood, & Ferguson, 2016). On average, people do not recover completely from divorce with respect to SWB (Lucas, 2005), and those who will eventually divorce are already less satisfied with their lives before they get married than those who remain married. Interestingly, SWB seems to spill over from one partner to the other, and subsequent divorce or separation can usually be seen in the satisfaction scores of both partners the year before partnership dissolution (Powdthavee, 2009a). This spousal similarity in life satisfaction declines considerably after divorce, implying that the shared living environment may contribute to SWB (Wortman & Lucas, 2016).

Children The evidence on the impact of children on SWB is mixed, with a number of studies showing that children lower SWB (Herbst & Ifcher, 2012), especially among young parents (Margolis & Myrskylä, 2011). In contrast, a study using a twin design (Kohler, Behrman, & Skytthe, 2005)  found a positive effect of children on SWB. Having children is not always positively associated with happiness, possibly due to the high level of attention children demand and the resulting effect on daily positive affect, but children exert a positive and significant effect on overall well-​being (Haller & Hadler, 2006). In general, the effect of having children on SWB depends on family circumstances. For instance, having children is negatively associated with SWB if a parent is single (Frey & Stutzer, 2000), the mother is divorced (Schoon et al., 2005), the children are over three

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years of age (Shields and Price, 2005), or the children are sick and demand more attention and care (Marks, Lambert, & Choi, 2002; Sola-​Carmona, Lopez-​Liria, Padilla-​Gongora, Daza, & Aguilar-​Parra, 2016). At the family level, the effect is negative if the family is poor and the current income does not help to meet the new basic needs (Alesina et al., 2004). Di Tella et al. (2003) show that in Europe a higher number of children is negatively associated with life satisfaction. However, parents report more meaning in life than non-​parents (Nelson et al., 2013), implying that children may positively affect eudaimonic well-​being whereas most studies focus on hedonic well-​being.

Social Capital: Friends and Family Social capital, defined here as participating in social networks (family, friends, colleagues, clubs) and social activities with norms of reciprocity and trust, has been found to be very beneficial for well-​being (e.g., Helliwell & Putnam, 2004). In general, the relationship between social relations, including friends and family, and SWB is positive (e.g., Pichler, 2006). After controlling for income, housing, age, and marital status, Lelkes (2006) found that having friends and interacting with people was positively associated with life satisfaction. Powdthavee (2008) attempted to quantify the impact of social interactions on SWB and found that a high level of social involvement with friends, relatives, and neighbors is equivalent to an extra income of £85,000 a year in terms of life satisfaction. The positive association between social relationships and SWB can also be seen in older people (Adams & Blieszner, 1995; Sherman, De Vries, & Lansford, 2000) and when the family lives far away (Şener, Oztop, Doğan, & Guven 2008). Analyzing data from the Framingham Heart Study, Fowler and Christakis (2008) found that happy people tend to be connected to other happy people in happiness clusters, suggesting that people may catch emotional states from others in the form of “social contagion.” Studies on the associations between SWB and social capital usually refer to the bonding aspect of social capital (friends and family, social networks between homogenous groups). However, bridging social capital (social networks between heterogeneous groups; see Putnam, 2000) is certainly also relevant for SWB. A number of the determinants of SWB discussed here, though often investigated at the individual level, also operate at the macro level. For instance, societal trends in marital breakdown or diminishing social capital may confound to some extent the association between economic growth and SWB at the population level.

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Conclusion Easterlin’s (1974) study started the field of SWB research in economics, with psychologists and sociologists investigating the determinants of SWB from different perspectives (Sirgy et al., 2006). The existence of the Easterlin paradox has been repeatedly confirmed in recent studies. The observations of a nil relationship between economic growth and happiness should prompt policymakers to consider measures other than GDP to assess societal well-​being. Indeed, the attention that subjective measures received from various social science disciplines now culminates in the development of measures to complement or replace GDP as a measure of societal progress. Policymakers should be aware that lasting changes in SWB typically occur due to changes in the nonpecuniary domains, such as health and family, because individuals are less likely to compare themselves to others in these domains and aspirations increase less with attainments (Plagnol & Easterlin, 2008). In contrast, changes in SWB due to material attainments are often only temporary. Policies that aim to increase SWB in a society should therefore target life domains in which long-​term improvements in well-​being can be achieved. For instance, as described earlier, individuals only partly adapt to unemployment, and one of governments’ main concerns could therefore be to lower the unemployment rate in order to improve citizens’ well-​being (Oswald, 1997). According to Winkelmann (2014), getting people back to work makes a larger contribution to people’s happiness than a compensation for unemployment. Other policies that would target the nonpecuniary domain and might therefore affect long-​term well-​being more efficiently could include policies that aim to improve health, provide cultural goods that equip people with positive experiences, or try to enhance social ties in communities to increase social capital. We believe that the initiatives of several European governments to systematically collect data on and consider their citizens’ SWB are a step in the right direction.

References Adams, R. G., & Blieszner R (1995) Aging well with friends and family. American Behavioral Scientist, 39, 209–​224. Adler, A., & Seligman, M. E. (2016). Using wellbeing for public policy: Theory, measurement, and recommendations. International Journal of Wellbeing, 6, 1–​35. Alesina, A., Di Tella, R., & MacCulloch, R. (2004). Inequality and happiness:  Are Europeans and Americans different? Journal of Public Economics, 88, 2009–​2042.

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CHAPTER 10 Economic Shifts and Cultural Changes in Individualism A Cross-​Temporal Perspective Yuji Ogihara

This chapter discusses the relationship between economic wealth and individualism from a cross-​temporal perspective. The chapter consists of three sections. The first section addresses a theory about the relationship between economic affluence and individualism. The second section reviews empirical studies that examine the link between economic wealth and individualism at the temporal level. The third section summarizes the chapter and addresses its limitations and offers directions for future research. Before addressing the relationship between wealth and individualism-​ collectivism, it is important to define what I mean by “individualism” and “collectivism.” I  follow one of the most frequently used definitions by Triandis (1995). Triandis defined individualism as a social pattern that consists of loosely linked individuals who view themselves as independent of collectives; are primarily motivated by their own preferences, needs, rights, and the contracts they have established with others; give priority to their personal goals over the goals of others; and emphasize rational analyses of the advantages and disadvantages to associating with others. (p. 2)

Importantly, “[t]‌ he core element of individualism is the assumption that individuals are independent of one another” (Oyserman, Coon,

& Kemmelmeier, 2002, p.  4). In contrast, Triandis (1995) defined collectivism as a social pattern consisting of closely linked individuals who see themselves as parts of one or more collectives (family, co-​workers, tribe, nation); are primarily motivated by the norms of, and duties imposed by, those collectives; are willing to give priority to the goals of these collectives over their own personal goals; and emphasize their connectedness to members of these collectives. (p. 2)

Notably, “[t]‌he core element of collectivism is the assumption that groups bind and mutually obligate individuals” (Oyserman et al., 2002, p. 5).

Theory about the Relationship between the Economic Environment and Individualism The economic environment has a remarkable effect on human psychology and behavior. Having abundant resources allows individuals more freedom and lets them focus on their own goals, which reduces their dependence on others. Thus wealth affords separation from others (e.g., Kraus, Piff, Mendoza-​Denton, Rheinschmidt, & Keltner, 2012; Kraus, Piff, & Keltner, 2011; Triandis, 1995; also see other chapters in this volume). In contrast, it is relatively difficult to reach one’s goals by oneself in an environment that has few resources, making it more necessary to depend on others. In this situation, rejection by other people has a significant impact on one’s ability to survive and should be avoided. Thus people with less wealth need to pay more attention to others and their surrounding contexts. Indeed, the association between wealth and individualistic tendency at the individual level has been found in many countries, including the United States (e.g., Grossmann & Varnum, 2011; Snibbe & Markus, 2005; Stephens, Markus, & Townsend, 2007), Japan (e.g., Kameda, Takezawa, & Hastie, 2005), China (e.g., Hamamura, Xu, & Du, 2013), and others (e.g., Guthrie, 1977; Inkeles, 1975; Ma & Schoeneman, 1997; Marshall, 1997; for reviews see Hamamura, 2012; Kraus et al., 2012). Thus wealthy people tend to be individualistic across cultures. Moreover, this positive relationship between economic affluence and individualism has also been found at the national level (e.g., Diener, Diener, & Diener, 1995; Hofstede, 1980; Inglehart & Baker, 2000; Kashima & Kashima, 2003), the state level in the United States (Vandello & Cohen,

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1999), and the prefecture1 level in Japan (Yamawaki, 2012). Thus the linkage between economic affluence and individualism is robust.

The Link between Affluence and Individualism in the Context of Sociocultural Change Based on these findings, the relationship between wealth and individualistic tendency should be observed not only at the individual and national levels but at the temporal level as well. Greenfield (2009, 2016) suggested that increases in wealth, urbanization, formal education, and high technology drive cultures from being collectivistic toward being more individualistic. According to this theory, as the world becomes richer, more urban, formally educated, and technological, cultural values and human behavior shift in predictable ways to adapt to the new conditions (i.e., from collectivism to individualism; also see Inglehart & Baker, 2000). It should be noted that the socio-economic trend is bidirectional. Although the globally dominant direction is toward increased wealth, urbanization, and advancement of formal education and technology, this is not always the case. Societies can also become relatively poorer. Indeed, due to economic decline stemming from the collapse of the economic (and social, political) systems of the Soviet Union in 1990–​1991, individuals in postcommunist countries (Russia, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) placed less value on self-​expression in 1996 relative to in 1990 (Inglehart & Baker, 2000). However, among other ex-​communist countries that experienced economic growth, the patterns were different. In Slovenia, self-​ expression was more pronounced in 1995 than in 1990, while in China (comparing 1990 and 1995), Hungary (comparing 1981 and 1990), and Poland (comparing 1990 and 1997), the value of self-​expression remained about the same. Further, American high school students expressed greater concern for others and the environment during the Great Recession in the United States between 2008 and 2010 than they did before the Great Recession2 (Park, Twenge, & Greenfield, 2014).

 Prefectures are subnational jurisdictions in Japan that are bigger than cities and towns. A prefecture is similar to a state in the United States. 2 Their long-​term analysis between 1976 and 2010 showed a negative correlation between economically comfortable situations (a high median income adjusted for inflation and employment rate) and concern for others/​environment, which is consistent with Greenfield’s theory (2009, 2016). 1

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30,000 25,000 20,000 15,000 10,000 5,000 2010 2015

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Figure 10.1  Inflation-​adjusted per capita GDP in the United States, 1800–​2015. Note: Data between 1800 and 1949 are from the Maddison Project (2013) and data after 1950 are from The Conference Board (2016). This indicator is expressed in 1990 US dollars and purchasing power parity.

The important point is that these factors (wealth, urbanization, formal education, and technology) are interrelated (Greenfield, 2009, 2016), but each can change society independently of the others. Among them, wealth can be a central socio-economic factor that contributes to the shift from relative collectivism to greater individualism. Further, the link between economic affluence and individualism has been relatively well examined. Therefore, this chapter focuses on the relationship between wealth and individualism from a temporal perspective.

Empirical Evidence Research has empirically investigated cultural changes over time and the relationship between the economic environment and individualism at the annual level. Here I  focus on studies that examine both points in three cultures: the United States, Japan, and China.

The United States The United States has experienced economic growth over time. As shown in Figure 10.1, per capita gross domestic product (GDP; adjusted for inflation) increased steadily between 1800 and 2015, from $1,296 in 1800 to $32,900 in 2015 (in 1990 US dollars; Maddison Project, 2013; The Conference Board, 2016). Along with this change, American culture has become more individualistic (for reviews, see Greenfield, 2016; Twenge, 2015). Here I summarize

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temporal changes in individualism in the United States by introducing separate indicators of individualism and the links between economic wealth and individualism at the temporal level. Divorce rates.  The divorce rate is a sociodemographic variable that reflects individualistic tendency. In individualistic societies, family relationships are more likely to be free and loose compared to those in collectivistic societies (e.g., Georgas et al., 2001; Triandis, 1995), which leads to more divorces. Indeed, the divorce rate was positively correlated at the national level with the individualism scores developed by Hofstede (1980, 2001) through the analysis of the values of IBM employees in more than 70 countries (e.g., Diener et  al., 1995; Hamamura, 2012; Lester, 1995; Toth & Kemmelmeier, 2009).3 The divorce rate was also positively correlated with another indicator of individualism at the national level. This national-​level indicator was rated by Harry Triandis, who is a leading expert in the area of individualism-​collectivism. Triandis rated 55 countries on a 10-​point scale where 1 was the most collectivistic and 10 was the most individualistic. On this scale, the ratings for the United States, Japan, and China were 10, 4, and 2, respectively. This indicator was positively correlated with Hofstede’s index (Diener et al., 1995). Moreover, divorce rate was related to variables conceptually and empirically associated with individualism, such as the rate of pronoun drop and pathogen prevalence at the national level (Hamamura, 2012). Cultures with pronoun drop languages are more likely to be collectivistic because pronoun drop reduces the psychological differentiation between the speaker and the context of speech (Kashima & Kashima, 1998). Cultures that have historically suffered from high levels of infectious diseases tend to be more collectivistic because collectivistic tendencies, such as a reluctance to interact with out-​group members and a tendency to adhere to social norms of in-​groups, can decrease the possibility of suffering from infections and thus work as an effective defense against them (Murray & Schaller, 2010). Thus the divorce rate has frequently been used as an indicator of individualism in previous studies (e.g., Diener et al., 1995; Grossmann & Varnum, 2015; Hamamura, 2012; Yamawaki, 2012).

 In addition, Yamawaki (2012) confirmed that the prefecture-​level aggregated index of these social indicators (divorce to marriage ratio, percentage of elderly living alone, percentage of nuclear family households, percentage of people living alone, percentage of three-​generation households; these five indicators were moderately to highly intercorrelated in the predicted directions) was significantly correlated with collectivistic values obtained by the Japanese General Social Survey. 3

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Divorce to Marriage Ratio (%)

The divorce rate increased between 1900 and 2009 in the United States (Figure 10.2; e.g., Grossmann & Varnum, 2015; Hamamura, 2012). Specifically, in 1900, only 7.5 out of 100 couples divorced, but in 2009, 51.9 out of 100 couples experienced divorce. This rise in the divorce rate is indicative of an increase in individualism in the United States. Grossmann and Varnum (2015) systematically investigated why American culture shifted toward greater individualism over time. They examined the relationships between 5 socioecological factors (socio-­ economic status, urbanization, prevalence of pathogens, prevalence of disasters, and religion) and 10 indicators of individualism-​collectivism. The 10 indicators were classified into three indices: interpersonal structure, naming practice, and word usage in books. The index of interpersonal structure included six indicators (divorce rate, household size, proportion of adults living alone, proportion of older adults living alone, ratio of three-​generation households relative to single-​generation households, ratio of single-​child families relative to multi-​child families). The index of naming practice was comprised of the rates of common names for boys and girls. The index of word usage in books was comprised of the rates of individualistic words and collectivistic words in books. Their cross-​temporal analyses indicated that socio-economic status was moderately and positively correlated with divorce rate to the highest degree among five socioecological indicators (the correlation of divorce rate with urbanization, disease prevalence, and disaster prevalence was moderate, but the correlation with secularism was almost null). These are consistent with the theory outlined previously. Household size.  Similar to divorce rates, household size is also a sociodemographic variable that is seen as an indicator of individualism. 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1900

1910

1920

1930

1940

1950 1960 Year

1970

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Figure 10.2  Divorce rate in the United States, 1900–​2009. Note: Data are from Grossmann and Varnum (2015).

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1990

2000

2010

Average Household Size

6 5 4 3 2 1 2010

2000

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1970

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1890

1880

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0 Year

Figure 10.3  Average household size in the United States, 1860–​2012. Note: Data are from Grossmann and Varnum (2015).

As mentioned, in individualistic societies, family relationships tend to be looser and freer compared to those in collectivistic societies. This allows people to live separately and independently from other family members (e.g., Georgas et al., 2001; Triandis, 1995), contributing to smaller household sizes. Indeed, household size is correlated with another individualism index (index developed by Hofstede, 1980, 2001)4 and variables related to individualism, such as the rate of pronoun drop (Kashima & Kashima, 1998) and pathogen prevalence (Murray & Schaller, 2010) at the national level (e.g., Hamamura, 2012). Hence, this indicator has often been used as representing individualism in prior research (e.g., Grossmann & Varnum, 2015; Hamamura, 2012). Household size shrank between 1860 and 2012 in the United States (e.g., Hamamura, 2012; Grossmann & Varnum, 2015). Specifically, the average household size decreased from 5.6 people in 1860 to 3.1 people in 2012. This change in household size shows a rise in individualism. The temporal analysis conducted in Grossmann and Varnum (2015) revealed that socio-economic status has a moderate and negative correlation with household size in the United States to almost same extent of

 Vandello and Cohen (1999) also showed that these social indicators are linked to individualistic-​ collectivistic values. In their study, other similar indicators were used (e.g., the percentage of people living alone, percentage of elderly people living alone, percentage of households with grandchildren in them) instead of household size. But the aggregated index of these social indicators was significantly correlated in the expected direction with collectivistic values, which were captured by the value items used in the one of the most popular national social surveys (National Election Study). This link was still found even when other significant variables such as age, education level, and income level were statistically controlled for. Thus these social indicators are usable as an index of individualism-​collectivism values. 4

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secularism and disease prevalence (urbanization and disaster prevalence showed lower correlations with household size). Moreover, they investigated the relative contributions of socioecological factors to the increase in individualism reflected in interpersonal structure. For this analysis, not only divorce rate and household size but also rate of adults living alone, rate of older adults (over 59 years of age) living alone, ratio of single-​ child families relative to multi-​child families, and ratio of three-​generation households relative to single-​generation households were standardized and averaged. Because socio-economic status was highly correlated with urbanization and disease prevalence at the temporal level, they conducted separate sets of analyses in which partial correlations of interpersonal structure with secularism, disaster prevalence, and one of three factors (socio-economic status, urbanization, disease prevalence) were calculated. Results showed that, compared to two other indices of socioecological indices (i.e., secularism, disaster prevalence), socio-economic status was most strongly related to individualism index of interpersonal structure (secularism was moderately and disaster prevalence was weakly correlated with the index of interpersonal structure). This was also the case for urbanization and disease prevalence, but the model fit was largest when socio-economic status was used instead of urbanization and disease prevalence. These analyses strongly support the theory that economic affluence encourages higher individualism.5 Baby names. Giving unique names to babies is an indicator of individualism. Seeking uniqueness is one of the most important components of individualism (e.g., Kim & Markus, 1999; Kim & Sherman, 2008; Oyserman et al., 2002; Taras et al., 2014). Indeed, Varnum and Kitayama (2011) showed that the rate of common names was negatively correlated with another index of individualism (Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov, 2010)  at the national level. In other words, in more individualistic  One may think that the changes in these sociodemographic indicators (e.g., divorce rate, household size) are explained solely by shifts in economic conditions. However, this is not the case. In Grossmann and Varnum’s (2015) analyses, the rank-​order correlations between socioeconomic status and sociodemographic indicators were between |.52| and |.75|. Further, even if the effect of socio-economic status on the aggregated index of sociodemographic indicators was controlled for, the effects of other socioecological factors (secularism, disaster prevalence) still held. Similarly, in state-​level analyses in the United States conducted by Vandello and Cohen (1999), even after economic level (in addition to age and education level) was controlled for, the aggregated score of sociodemographic indicators was significantly linked to collectivistic values. In Japan, the rank-​order correlations between sociodemographic indicators were between |.33| and |.96| (Ogihara, 2017b). Additionally, even if the effect of economic affluence was partialed out, the shifts in these indicators remained prevalent. Thus the effect of economic wealth on these indicators is relatively large but cannot fully explain the shifts in the sociodemographic indicators. 5

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countries, people tend to give uncommon names to their babies compared to people in less individualistic countries. Moreover, they showed that in recently settled states in the United States and in Canada, people are less likely to give common names to their babies. Previous research has shown that voluntary settlement promotes individualism (e.g., Kitayama, Conway, Pietromonaco, Park, & Plaut, 2010). Thus this relationship also suggests that giving uncommon names is associated with individualistic tendency. Utilizing baby names as an index of individualism, Twenge, Abebe, and Campbell (2010) investigated whether American society became more individualistic between 1880 and 2007. They calculated the rates of common names (the most popular name, the top 10, 25, and 50 most common names) for each year in the United States and examined historical shifts in those rates. The results showed that the rates of common names decreased over that 120-​year period, indicating an increase in individualism in the United States. Two additional analyses showed that the rise in relatively unique names was not explained by an increase in immigrants who might tend to employ different naming practices in the United States. First, even after they statistically controlled for the rates of legal and estimated illegal immigration at the time level, there remained clear decreases in the rates of common names. Second, they looked at trends in the rates of common names separately in the six states where the proportion of Hispanics (the fastest-​growing and largest ethnic group with a non-​English based naming tradition) was the smallest in the United States (five of these states had the largest percentage of Whites in the United States; in 2007, the percentages were between 88% and 97%). In these mostly Whites states, the trends were same. The correlation between the rates of common names and socio-­economic status was moderately negative for both boys and girls (secularism, disease prevalence, and disaster prevalence were moderately to highly correlated to the rates of common names in expected directions, but the correlations between urbanization and the rate of common names were almost null both for boys and girls). Moreover, even if the effect of secularism and disaster prevalence were statistically controlled for, the link between socio-economic status and the rates of common names remained (in this analysis, secularism and disaster prevalence were more related to naming practices). The model fit using socio-economic status was almost same as that using disease prevalence but was higher than that using urbanization (in this analysis, the partial correlation between urbanization and naming practices were almost null). These results indicate that economic wealth

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is positively connected to higher individualism (Grossmann & Varnum, 2015). Words in books. Books are tangible and public representations of culture, so cultural changes can be examined by analyzing them (see Kashima, 2014; Morling & Lamoreaux, 2008). Researchers investigating temporal changes via books have focused on two indicators: (a) pronoun use and (b) the use of words and phrases that express individualistic or collectivistic values or behaviors. The first indicator is pronoun use. Prior research has indicated that the use of first-​person singular pronouns (I, my, me, mine) reflects individualistic tendency while the use of first-​person plural pronouns (we, our, us, ours) reflects collectivistic tendency (for a review, see Oyserman & Lee, 2008). Twenge, Campbell, and Gentile (2013) investigated the frequency of first-​person singular/​plural pronouns in American English books published between 1960 and 2008. They utilized Google Books Ngram Viewer, a database including millions of published books in various languages. They found that the use of first-​person singular pronouns increased while the use of first-​person plural pronouns decreased over that period. These results indicate an increase in individualism and a decline in collectivism in the United States over the 50 years.6 Another indicator that has been used in linguistic analysis to chart changes in individualism-​collectivism is words that reflect individualistic/​collectivistic values or behaviors. Twenge, Campbell, and Gentile (2012) investigated the relative frequency of words (e.g., “independent,” “individual,” “unique,” “standout”) and phrases (e.g., “focus on the self,” “I am special,” “I am the best”) reflecting individualism in American English books published between 1960 and 2008. They found that both words and phrases indicating individualistic values/​behaviors increased over that period, which suggests a rise in individualism. Moreover, Greenfield (2013) showed that words associated with adaptation to urban environments (e.g., “choose,” “unique,” “self,” “individual”) became more prevalent in American English books published between 1800 and 2000, along with urbanization and increases in wealth.7 This increase in individualistic words in books8 was positively associated with socio-economic status, and the decrease in collectivistic words  A similar pattern was also found in other languages such as French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Chinese, and Hebrew between 1949 and 2008 (Yu et al., 2016). 7  These trends were found not only in American English books but also in British English books between 1800 and 2000 (Greenfield, 2013). 8  A similar analysis of popular song lyrics in the United States also revealed a rise in individualism and decline in collectivism between 1980 and 2007 (DeWall, Pond, Campbell, & Twenge, 2011). 6

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was negatively associated with socio-economic status at the annual level (Grossmann & Varnum, 2015). Another three socioecological factors (urbanization, disease prevalence, disaster prevalence) were also moderately related to individualistic/​collectivistic words. But secularism was associated with individualistic/​collectivistic words in unexpected directions. Even when the effects of secularism and disaster prevalence were controlled for, the association between socio-economic status and words in books was strong (the other two partial correlations were moderate, but the direction of the correlation between disaster prevalence and individualistic words in books was negative). Moreover, the model fit was highest when socio-economic status (compared to urbanization and disease prevalence) was used in the analyses. Thus the link between economic affluence and individualism was also confirmed. Summary.  The indices of family structure, naming practice, and word use in books (these indices were interrelated in a coherent fashion; Grossmann & Varnum, 2015) suggest that American culture has become more individualistic over time. Further, the rise in wealth was correlated with this increase in individualism in the United States (Grossmann & Varnum, 2015), which is consistent with the theory that wealth increases individualism (Greenfield, 2009, 2016; Inglehart & Baker, 2000). This link was coherent among three indicators of individualism (interpersonal structure, naming practice, and words in books) and strongest when including another four socioecological variables (urbanization, prevalence of diseases, secularism, and prevalence of disasters).

Japan Japan has become wealthier over time. For example, per capita GDP (adjusted for inflation) increased significantly between 1945 and 2015 (Figure 10.4). Specifically, inflation-​adjusted per capita GDP increased from $1,346 in 1945 to $22,791 in 2015 (in 1990 US dollars; Maddison Project, 2013; The Conference Board, 2016). In accordance with the changes in the economic environment, Japanese culture has also experienced changes toward greater individualism at least in some respects. Here I review how Japanese culture has become more individualistic and the link between the economic environment and individualism at the annual level. Divorce rate.  The historical change in the divorce rate in Japan between 1947 and 2015 is shown in Figure 10.5. As shown, the divorce rate increased over this 70-​year period. In 1947, 8.5 out of 100 couples

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Per Capita GDP (Inflation Adjusted)

25,000 20,000 15,000 10,000 5,000 0 1945 1950

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Figure 10.4  Inflation-​adjusted per capita GDP in Japan, 1945–​2015. Note: Data between 1945 and 1989 are from the Maddison Project (2013) and data after 1990 are from The Conference Board (2016). This indicator is expressed in 1990 US dollars and purchasing power parity.

Divorce to Marriage Ratio (%)

45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 1945 1950

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Figure 10.5  Divorce rate in Japan, 1947–​2015. Note: Data are from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (2016a).

experienced divorce, whereas in 2015, 35.6 out of 100 couples divorced. This shift in the divorce rate indicates a rise in individualism in Japan (Hamamura, 2012; Ogihara, 2017b). The correlation between the divorce rate and per capita GDP (adjusted for inflation) at the annual level was positive (Ogihara, 2017b), consistent with the theory that wealth and individualism are positively linked to each other. Household size.  The temporal change in household size in Japan between 1953 and 2015 is shown in Figure 10.6. As Figure 10.6 indicates, household size decreased over this 60-​year period. Specifically, in 1953

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Average Household Size

6 5 4 3 2 1 0 1950

1960

1970

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1990

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Figure 10.6  Average household size in Japan, 1953–​2015. Note: Data are from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (2016b).

the average family consisted of five people, but in 2015 the average was 2.5 people. This trend in household size is indicative of an increase in individualism in Japan (Hamamura, 2012; Ogihara, 2017b). The correlation between household size and per capita GDP (adjusted for inflation) at the annual level was negative (Ogihara, 2017b).9 This result is consistent with the idea that wealth and individualism are positively associated with each other. Baby names.  Ogihara et  al. (2015) examined temporal changes in the rate of common names (the most popular name, the top 10, 20, and 50 most common names) in Japan between 2004 and 2013. They found that the rates of top common names both for boys and girls decreased over the years, suggesting an increase in individualism. These changes in the rates of common names were positively correlated with the Japanese Collectivism Index (JCI; Yamawaki, 2012)  at the annual level. The JCI consists of five indicators (divorce to marriage ratio, percentage of elderly living alone, percentage of nuclear family households, percentage of people living alone, percentage of three-​generation households) and has  These patterns were also found when other sociodemographic variables (percentages of people living alone by sex, percentages of elderly people aged more than 65 living alone by sex, percentage of households with three generations living together, percentage of nuclear family households; these variables were moderately to strongly correlated with household size at the annual level) were used instead of household size. Specifically, the percentage of people living alone increased both for the total population and for the elderly aged over 65, regardless of sex. Moreover, the rate of households with three generations living together decreased and the rate of nuclear family households increased over time. These shifts were correlated with the economic changes in the predicted directions (for details, see Ogihara, 2017b). 9

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been validated as an index of individualism at the area level in Japan. Thus this result shows that the name index is a valid indicator of individualism-​ collectivism. Moreover, these trends were still found even when controlling for per capita GDP and birth rate, which might have been alternate explanations to increases in individualism. Therefore, these changes in uncommon names were not explained solely by the possible alternative factors other than individualism. Furthermore, Ogihara (2016b) investigated changes in baby names published in birth announcements in municipal newspapers between 1984 and 2015, which found the same trend.10 Thus this trend is not specific to the 2000s but rather consistently found over a longer period, at least for the three decades prior to 2015 in Japan. Ogihara et al. (2015).investigated the relationship between per capita GDP (adjusted for inflation) and the rate of common names at the annual level, which showed a negative correlation both for boys and girls These results also suggested that economic affluence and individualism are positively linked to each other. Summary.  The indices of family structure (divorce rate and household size) and naming practice showed that Japanese culture has changed toward greater individualism.11 Moreover, those changes were positively associated with the change in economic environment.

China Chinese culture has also experienced rapid economic growth. For instance, per capita GDP (adjusted for inflation) increased remarkably between 1952 and 2015 (Figure 10.7). Inflation-​adjusted per capita GDP increased from $217 in 1952 to $12,781 in 2015 (in 1990 US dollars; The Conference Board, 2016). Along with economic change, Chinese culture has become more individualistic (for a review, see Sun & Ryder, 2016). Divorce rates. The temporal change in the divorce rate in China between 1978 and 2015 is shown in Figure 10.8. The divorce rate increased over

 Moreover, these trends were also found in dog names both for males and females in Japan between 2006 and 2014 (Ogihara, Uchida, & Kusumi, 2015), indicating a rise in individualism in Japan. 11  This does not mean that Japan is an individualistic culture but rather that Japanese culture has gradually become more individualistic over time. Indeed, researchers still find cultural differences between Japan and European American countries. This is also the case in China. 10

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Per Capita GDP (Inflation Adjusted)

14,000 12,000 10,000 8,000 6,000 4,000 2,000 0 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 Year

Figure 10.7  Inflation-​adjusted per capita GDP in China, 1952–​2015. Note: Data are from The Conference Board (2016). The scores are based on National Bureau of Statistics of China. This indicator is expressed in 1990 US dollars and purchasing power parity.

Divorce to Marriage Ratio (%)

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 1975

1980

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Figure 10.8  Divorce rate in China, 1978–​2015. Note: Data are from the National Bureau of Statistics of China (2017).

this 30-​year period. In 1978, 4.8 out of 100 couples divorced, whereas in 2015, 31.4 out of 100 couples experienced divorce. This change in the divorce rate indicates a rise in individualism in China (Ogihara, 2017a). The correlation between the divorce rate and per capita GDP (adjusted for inflation) at the annual level was positive (Ogihara, 2017a), which is consistent with the idea that economic affluence and individualism are positively correlated. Household size.  The historical change in household size in China between 1953 and 2015 is indicated in Figure 10.9. Household size decreased for this 60-​year period. Specifically, the average family consisted of 4.3 people in 1953, but in 2015 the average was 3.2 people. This

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Average Household Size

5 4 3 2 1 0 1950

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Figure 10.9  Average household size in China, 1953–​2015. Note: Data are from the National Bureau of Statistics of China (2017).

trend in household size is indicative of an increase in individualism in China (Ogihara, 2017a). The correlation between household size and per capita GDP (adjusted for inflation) at the annual level was negative (Ogihara, 2017a). This result is consistent with the theory that economic affluence and individualism are positively linked to each other. Words in  books.  Hamamura and Xu (2015) examined historical changes in individualism-​collectivism in China between 1950 and 2008. They analyzed changes in the frequency of first-​person singular/​plural pronouns used in Chinese published books over that period by utilizing Google Books Ngram Viewer, as in prior research (e.g., Twenge et  al., 2013). They found that the rate of first-​person singular pronouns increased and the rate of first-​person plural pronouns decreased. These results suggest an increase in individualism and a decrease in collectivism in China between 1950 and 2008 (also see Yu et al., 2016). Moreover, Zeng and Greenfield (2015) investigated temporal changes in individualism in China between 1970 and 2008. They analyzed changes in the frequency of words reflecting individualistic values or behaviors (e.g., “choose,” “autonomy,” “compete”) used in Chinese published books changed for the period by using Google Books Ngram Viewer as in the previous studies (e.g., Greenfield, 2013; Twenge et al., 2012). The result showed an increase in individualism in China. In addition, they examined the relationship between individualism (the relative frequency of individualistic words) and the economic environment (household final consumption expenditure per capita) at the annual level. The analysis showed

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positive correlations between them, which is consistent with the theory of cultural change (Greenfield, 2009, 2016). Summary. The indices of family structure (divorce rate and household size) and words use in books suggested that Chinese culture has become more individualistic. Further, those changes were positively related to the rise in wealth in China.

Conclusion Over time, as a society becomes wealthier, it becomes more individualistic. This temporal relationship is consistent with the relationship between economic affluence and individualism at the individual, area, and national levels. Thus the association is found in the context of social/​cultural change as well. Wealth affords people more freedom and less dependence on others, leading to higher individualism from a cross-​temporal perspective as well.

Limitations and Future Directions The amount of research examining cultural changes in East Asia is relatively small compared to that in America. Culture gradually changes by interacting with its historical background (e.g., religion; Inglehart & Baker, 2000). Thus patterns of cultural change may differ across cultures. Therefore it is necessary to investigate cultural changes and the relationship between wealth and individualism not only in the United States but also in East Asia in greater detail. It should be noted that not all aspects of these cultures have necessarily become more individualistic in the same way. For example, although behavioral measures (divorce rate, household size, giving unique names) have consistently indicated that American, Japanese, and Chinese cultures have become more individualistic, in some social values or beliefs, increases in individualism were not found in the United States (Hamamura, 2012), Japan (Hamamura, 2012) or China (Zeng & Greenfield, 2015). Thus the speed of change may be different in the types of indicators (behaviors and practices or values and beliefs). Inglehart and Baker (2000) proposed that the effect of wealth on social values is moderated by cultural heritage (e.g., religion). Economic development tends to push societies in a common direction, but the process and path may not be uniform across cultures. It is important to be aware that cultures are affected simultaneously

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by many other socioecological factors. The economic environment is one of the major factors, but it is not the sole one. There are other important socioecological factors such as educational environments (e.g., Greenfield, 2009; Snibbe & Markus, 2005; also see other chapters in this volume), subsistence styles (e.g., Nisbett & Cohen, 1996; Talhelm et al., 2014; Üskül, Kitayama, & Nisbett, 2008; also see other chapters in this volume), residential mobility (e.g., Oishi, 2010; Oishi & Talhelm, 2012), relational mobility (e.g., Yuki & Schug, 2012), voluntary settlement (e.g., Kitayama et al., 2010), religion (e.g., Inglehart & Baker, 2000; Triandis, 1995), pathogen prevalence (e.g., Fincher, Thornhill, Murray, & Schaller, 2008; Schaller & Murray, 2008), climate (e.g., Kashima & Kashima, 2003; Van de Vliert, 2009), as well as others (for reviews, see Oishi, 2014; Oishi & Graham, 2010). Thus, it is understandable that some aspects may be more affected by and malleable to economic environments, while this might be less so for other aspects. Moreover, it seems that the way of change differs not only in the types of indicators but also across domains of individualism-​collectivism (e.g., Oyserman et  al., 2002; Taras et  al., 2014; Triandis, 1995). For example, giving uncommon names to one’s babies (seeking uniqueness) does not always require wealth. In contrast, divorce and living separately from other family members (seeking independence) mostly require some basic level of economic affluence. Thus wealth may be associated more highly with divorce rates or household sizes, while the rate of uncommon names may be associated less with wealth but more with other socioecological factors. Indeed, this was the case in the historical changes in the United States (secularism, disease prevalence, and disaster prevalence were more highly correlated with naming practices; Grossmann & Varnum, 2015) and state differences in the United States (voluntary settlement explained naming practices more; Varnum & Kitayama, 2011), as well as nation-​level comparisons among nine European countries and four frontier countries (voluntary settlement was more strongly associated with naming practices; Varnum & Kitayama, 2011). Therefore, it is desirable to explore how these factors influence each other and which factor explains the changes in some aspects (e.g., type of indicator, domain) more than other factors (Grossmann & Varnum, 2015). Revealing these associations would surely lead to a more systematic and sophisticated understanding of the relationships between socioecological environments and human psychology/​behavior. This chapter focused on individualism-​collectivism, as it is one of the most researched psychological dimensions. Yet, needless to say, there are other important psychological concepts and dimensions. For example,

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self-​esteem is one of the most basic and well-​researched psychological concepts (e.g., Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger, & Vohs, 2003; Ogihara, 2016a). Previous research has indicated that in the United States, self-​ esteem rose over time (Gentile, Twenge, & Campbell, 2010; Twenge & Campbell, 2001). In contrast, self-​esteem decreased in Japan (Ogihara, 2016c; Ogihara, Uchida, & Kusumi, 2016; Oshio, Okada, Mogaki, Namikawa, & Wakita, 2014) and China (Liu & Xin, 2015; Xin, Niu, & Chi, 2012). Thus, unlike in the United States., both Japan and China saw decreases in self-​esteem despite experiencing steady economic growth. Revealing the relationships that the economic environment has with other psychological processes would also contribute to a better understanding of how humans are affected by socioecological environments.

Acknowledgment I thank Ayse K.  Üskül, Shigehiro Oishi, Takeshi Hamamura, Patricia Greenfield, Pamela Taylor, and the members of Greenfield’s lab for their helpful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. Yuji Ogihara was supported by the Kyoto University Foundation and special funding for the promotion of internationalization of research activities by the Japanese Group Dynamics Association.

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CHAPTER 11 Dynamics of Culture Change and Cultural Stability among the Shuar of Ecuador H. Clark Barrett

Why do some things change rapidly and some things slowly? In contemporary American culture, it is easy to think of cases of such mosaic temporal dynamics. The appearance of certain forms of social media such as Facebook, online dating, and texting immediately changes the material possibilities of interpersonal interaction, but some aspects of people’s beliefs and behavior change much more slowly than the technology itself. To take a particularly vivid example, the career of the early 21st-​century political star Anthony Weiner was cut short by the (repeated) mismatch between his expectations of privacy—​apparently tailored to a presocial-​ media world—​and the realities of Twitter and text messaging. In hindsight, one might have expected an astute politician to have known better than to engage in what he believed were sensitive and potentially embarrassing private transactions in a public forum. What is politics, after all, if not the skilled curation of one’s own public image? Arguably, Weiner was taken down by the mismatch between what he thought was private behavior and the public nature of an extremely new medium with unprecedented capacities for virality. Pre-​Twitter, behavior such as his would have been subject to the principle of plausible deniability. Post-​Twitter, his error is laughably obvious. The incident can be seen as a reflection of what in evolutionary theory is sometimes called disequilibrium, mismatch, or adaptive lag. In this case, the mismatch was between Weiner’s landline-​era expectations and the forms of proof made possible in the age of electronic reproduction. More generally, it is an example of the environment changing faster than the individuals who inhabit it.

A system at equilibrium is a system that will not change unless something happens to disrupt it. Some equilibria are stable, such that the system will return to the equilibrium if slightly displaced from it, like a marble at the bottom of a bowl. Other equilibria are unstable, such that certain perturbations will send the system reeling away, like a marble balanced at the top of the hill. In evolutionary systems and dynamical systems more generally, stable equilibria can result from processes of negative feedback, as in the phenomenon of negative frequency dependence or rare-​type advantage: if variants become more successful as they become rarer and less so as they become common, they are maintained stably at intermediate frequencies. Unstable equilibria can result from cases of positive feedback such as runaway processes, in which extreme values of traits lead to greater success, driving the distribution of traits to more and more extreme values. And other kinds of dynamics are possible, such as the boom-​and-​bust predator-​ prey cycles described by the Lotka-​Volterra equations in ecology. What does this have to do with the case of mistaken expectations about social media? The system composed of people’s beliefs and behaviors and the environments in which those beliefs and behaviors operate (virtual environments, social environments, physical environments) can be thought of as a complex, multipart dynamical system. Within this system, the psychologies of individuals (including their beliefs, motivations, and social norms) influence the psychologies of other individuals, which in turn both shape the environment and are shaped by it. Cultural evolutionary theory seeks to understand and describe the dynamics of such systems. Importantly, it can help us to understand cases of belief-​environment mismatch, as seen in the Weiner case, as well as many other kinds of dynamics of stability and instability. As part of evolutionary theory more broadly, cultural evolutionary theory embraces dynamics at many levels, from processes of genetic evolution that shape species’ psychologies over long swaths of time, to processes on historical timescales such as cultural evolution and niche construction, to subgenerational processes like individual learning, norm acquisition, and decision-​making (Aoki, 2001; Arthur, 1990; Barrett, 2015; Jablonka & Lamb, 2005; Krugman, 1991; Mesoudi, 2011; Richerson & Boyd, 2005). In this chapter I apply this cultural evolutionary framework to a particular case: the case of culture change and cultural stability among the Shuar, an indigenous Amazonian society in southeastern Ecuador. Many (but not all) Shuar communities have until recently been small, rural, and relatively distant from roads and markets, with economic activities centered around hunting, fishing, and small-​scale horticulture. While transactions

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and flows to and from global markets have always been a part of Shuar life, circumstances in many communities are now changing rapidly with the arrival of roads, electricity, the Internet, and daily intensive market commerce. These all can drastically alter natural, social, and economic environments, shifting cultural equilibria away from previously stable configurations (Jensen, 2007). Accelerating global and local change suggests that cultural changes in Shuar society and its intersections are inevitable, but exactly what trajectories these will follow is unclear. In complex dynamical systems, the course of history is not at all obvious or easily predictable, but it is useful to ask what we can understand about how and why historical changes occur from a dynamical systems point of view. This chapter considers what insights might be gained from thinking about the causal feedback loops that govern dynamics of change in different cultural domains among the Shuar, with particular attention to the economic environment. The ideas in this chapter are exploratory, presented without formal modeling, and based on qualitative observations drawn from fieldwork among the Shuar over the past two decades. The goal of the chapter is to explore how thinking about cultural evolutionary dynamics might help us to understand the changes that occur as a previously hunter-​horticulturalist society experiences accelerating intersections with the global economy.

Cultural Evolutionary Theory Evolutionary processes can be thought of as processes of descent with modification within populations. Usually this means populations of living things, but it can also apply to things they do, make, say, and think. For example, in cultural evolutionary theory one can talk about the evolution of computer technology, musical styles, and languages. Of course, the evolution of ideas and artifacts is not identical to the evolution of bacteria and butterflies, and a growing technical literature concerns itself with the similarities and differences between different kinds of evolutionary processes (Claidière, Scott-​Phillips, & Sperber, 2014; Godfrey-​Smith, 2009; Mesoudi, 2011). However, when reproduction-​like phenomena occur—​ reproduction of genes but also of ideas, attitudes, environment structures, modes of interaction—​then so, in principle, can evolution. In cultural terms, descent is easy to understand: culture reproduces itself, in many ways, both within organisms and outside them (Bourdieu, 1984). However, these processes of descent can lead to either stasis or change,

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depending on the circumstances. Within evolutionary theory, long-​term stasis is generally expected either when there some kind of external constraint holding the system where it is, as in a population that has reached its environmental carrying capacity, or an internal equilibrium maintaining stasis, as in the frequency-​dependent processes that can maintain stable sex ratios in a population. Change is the opposite of stasis and can in principle occur in several ways. Change can occur by chance, as in the process of genetic drift. Genetic drift has cultural analogs, which can be used to model, for example, the divergence in two languages over time due to random changes in each language since they split from a common ancestral language (Gray & Atkinson, 2003; Perrault & Mathew, 2012). Importantly, random processes such as drift are influenced by population size, which has implications for processes such as language change and extinction, as well as other forms of cultural change (Amano et al., 2014; Collard, Ruttle, Buchanan, & O’Brien, 2013; Henrich, 2004; Kline & Boyd, 2010). The primary source of change due to processes other than chance is selection. Classically, of course, selection refers to the natural selection of genetic variants in populations due to their phenotypic effects on survival and reproduction. However, there are also cultural analogs of natural selection in which cultural variants, such as norms, beliefs, and practices, increase or decrease in frequency because of their success in spreading themselves and their effects on the survival and reproduction of the individuals that hold them (Aoki, 2001; Boyd & Richerson, 1985; Mesoudi, 2011). Processes of genetic evolution acting over the long term shape the evolved design of human brains and bodies. In particular, long-​term evolutionary processes shape the developmental reaction norms that build the brain and that may respond plastically to environmental conditions, or not (Barrett, 2015). Importantly, genetic evolution gives rise to our basic psychological capacities and inherited predispositions, including the brain networks that are involved in economic decision-​making (Tooby & Cosmides, 1992). These evolved capacities and predispositions interact with processes of individual learning and cultural transmission in diverse ways. Ultimately, genetic evolution is what is responsible for our ability to learn culturally, and to adjust via individual and social learning to our environments; these abilities are part of human biology (Boyd & Richerson, 2005). Over the long run, however, processes of cultural and genetic evolution feed back on each other. The human-​constructed environment can,

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in principle, shape genetic evolution, as seen in selection on the human genome caused by human agricultural activities (Novembre & Di Rienzo, 2009; Tishkoff et al., 2007). In addition, gene-​culture coevolution shapes learning mechanisms and biases, leading to predispositions such as the tendency to copy successful individuals (prestige bias) and common cultural variants (conformity bias; Boyd & Richerson, 1985). Finally, processes of genetic evolution can create cultural attractors, configurations of practices, representations, and norms that more easily fit human evolved psychology than other configurations (Claidière et al., 2014; Sperber, 1996). Cultural evolution occurs on historical timescales and is the primary process whereby suites of cultural practices adjust to local environments and vice versa. Importantly, like genetic evolutionary dynamics, cultural evolutionary dynamics can result from the spread or loss of practices within populations as a result of their success, where success generally means the success of individuals who practice them. This is an important scale for considering the feedback relationships between individual psychology and the economic environment. For example, there is evidence that subsistence practices spread or decline as a function of their material impact on individual survival and reproduction, mediated by the fit of those practices with local ecologies. Frequently cited are cases in which people living in harsh environments such as desert or tundra come to have suites of cultural practices that enable them to thrive in those environments, while newcomers in the same environment fail. This is true even in some cases in which newcomers are able to witness these practices, suggesting that generations of cultural accumulation plus lifetimes of acculturation, rather than rapid individual learning, best account for the fit between practices and environment (Henrich, 2015; Richerson & Boyd, 2005). Such cases are also good examples of culture-​environment equilibria. These equilibria can be maintained by a variety of processes including conformity (doing what everyone else does), prestige bias (learning from successful individuals), culturally transmitted and individually learned expectations, and historical dynamics (Krugman, 1991). The individual-​ level psychological processes that determine what beliefs, attitudes, and propensities people acquire play an important role in the evolutionary dynamics of cultural systems. For example, the dynamics of positive frequency-​dependent processes such as conformist learning tend to stabilize common variants (e.g., common norms) in populations. Negative frequency-​dependent processes such as anti-​conformism or the cultural valuation of innovation as an end in itself result in unstable cultural dynamics, with new variants constantly appearing. Prestige-​biased

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learning can also result in unstable runaway processes if the features that lead to cultural success no longer depend on aspects of the physical, nonsocial environment, as in the spread of clothing fashions (Bourdieu, 1984). Finally, when environmental change is extremely rapid and cultural practices are in disequilibrium with the environment, other individual-​level psychological processes such as experimentation and individual learning might play an important role in how the population responds (Perrault, Moya, & Boyd, 2012). Important to these processes is feedback, or reciprocal causal relationships between different components of the dynamical system, such as bidirectional feedback between environment structure and individual behavior. A vivid example is market bubbles, which can be seen as a kind of self-​reinforcing positive feedback loop driven by the feedback between individual investment decisions and market behavior (Arthur, 1990; Shiller, 1990). The cultural evolution of agricultural practices is another example in which the environment (land, livestock, etc.) is shaped by individual farming practices, which in turn evolve because of the differential success or failure of slight variations in practice (Richerson & Boyd, 2005). Situated within these feedback loops are individual psychological processes of learning, decision-​making, and motivations to conform or to compete. Feedback can produce either unstable dynamics, such as market booms and busts, or stable equilibria, such as the stability produced by conformist biases in stable environments. The shape of the dynamics in any given case depends entirely on the specifics of the feedback processes involved.

Social Norms and the Economic Environment among the Shuar The Shuar are an indigenous Amazonian society living in southeastern Ecuador and northern Peru. They are part of a larger cultural-​linguistic group that includes the Achuar, Shiwiar, Awajún, and Wampís, and are situated within the complex social landscape of the postcolonial Oriente region of Ecuador (Rubenstein, 2001). Traditionally and in many communities today the Shuar have practiced a mix of horticulture, fishing, hunting, and foraging, though individuals in some communities also engage in other commercial practices such as raising livestock, as well as pursuing careers in education, medicine, and politics (Rudel, Bates, & Machinguiashi, 2002). Like many other Amazonian societies, the

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Shuar have an ensemble of cultural norms and practices related to their hunter-​horticulturalist lifeways, including strong sharing norms regarding hunted foods and a nonhierarchical political organization centered around extended families. The Shuar are egalitarian and communal in some ways but also highly value autonomy in others. The right to self-​determination of male heads of households is paramount. Shuar cosmology is heavily oriented around spiritual and magical practices related to hunting, horticulture, warriorship, shamanism, visions, dreams, and the use of psychoactive plants and practices such as fasting. The Shuar are patrilineal and arranged marriage has been common until recently and practices of cross-​ cousin marriage and sororal polygyny. The Shuar have a long history of resistance to colonial hegemony and are major participants in indigenous rights movements and political organizations in Ecuador, including the national indigenous federation CONAIE and many other smaller organizations (Barrett & Haley, 2014; Blackwell et al., 2009; Descola, 1986, 1996; Harner, 1984; Karsten, 1935; Mader, 1999; Pillsworth, 2008; Rubenstein, 2001; Sawyer, 2004; Taylor, 1993; Walker et al., 2013). For the Shuar as for any society, the domain of the “economic” is not independent from other aspects of physical and social life. The cultural traditions and norms mentioned previously are all relevant to economic activity in various ways and to various degrees bidirectionally. Cultural norms, beliefs, and practices structure the economic environment and vice versa. Variation among Shuar communities over space and time potentially offers useful insight into the dynamics of these interactions. All Shuar communities have some level of engagement with the Ecuadorian market economy but to different degrees and with different histories. A major factor is the presence of roads, with more remote communities relying very little on cash for interpersonal transactions and with Shuar communities in more urban areas having a long tradition of market-​ based entrepreneurship. To the extent that “the economy” means money and market transactions, variation across communities in degree of market integration potentially provides a useful window into the relationship between economic environments and individual psychology and behavior (Blackwell, Pryor, Pozo, Tiwia, & Sugiyama, 2009; Henrich et al., 2010; Lu, 2007). Moreover, there are many ways that transactions between local and global economic forces may shape the dynamics of cultural evolution (see, e.g., Acemoglu, Johnson, & Robinson, 2001). There are several kinds of processes shaping cultural stasis and culture change among the Shuar and multiple dimensions of the economic environment. A good place to start is the “natural” environment. I put “natural”

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in quotes here because it is tempting to think that in traditional Shuar subsistence economies, hunter-​ horticulturalist practices extract resources from the abundant Amazonian environment without, for the most part, modifying it. This was indeed a long-​standing view in anthropology and archaeology of human-​ environment relationships in the Amazon, but recent work suggests that the nature of human adaptation to the natural environment is far from unidirectional. Instead, much of the Amazonian rainforest appears to be deeply human-​shaped—​domesticated by humans for the purpose of resource extraction and management, to a degree that might not be obvious at first glance. For example, the practice of swidden or slash-​and-​burn horticulture has strong impacts on rainforest environments, and rotation of garden plots on a timescale of decades creates a deeply mosaic environment that may be far from the ecological equilibrium that it would reach in the absence of human intervention. Even in areas of relatively low population density, the aggressive nature of Shuar hunting and fishing practices is likely to have an effect on the distribution of animal species (Descola, 1986; Gomez-​Pompa & Kaus, 1992; Peres, 2000; Raffles, 2002). Population densities have increased rapidly in many Shuar communities, with noticeable effects on the natural environment. For example, traditional fishing practices using plant-​based piscicides are sustainable if fish communities in streams and rivers are allowed to replenish but less so in places where streams are fished with piscicide more regularly. In more densely populated communities, this process is accelerated by the depletion of game mammals and birds, which leads to more heavy reliance on fishing. The same is true for wood. Timber is necessary for all aspects of traditional Shuar life and infrastructure, and the Shuar built environment is made almost entirely of wood. This means that increased population densities lead to reduced densities of ecologically important rainforest trees, especially hardwoods but also, for example, certain species of palms that are important for house construction. In turn, this influences the availability and distribution of prey species that thrive in ecosystems with intact canopies of tall hardwood trees. By themselves, one would expect processes such as these to lead to negative feedback dynamics between humans and the resources they exploit. Increased human population densities reduce the density of resources available for human consumption, leading in turn to declining population densities. Indeed, the Shuar do move their homes, villages, gardens, and hunting grounds periodically precisely because of these processes of

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resource depletion (Descola, 1986). One might expect, then, something like stable oscillations in the local relationships between human population densities and natural resource densities under equilibrium conditions, similar to Lotka-​Volterra predator-​prey dynamics. Several kinds of processes, however, might disrupt such self-​regulation, leading to instability and potentially to runaway dynamics. The first is the potential for migration, or lack thereof. As population densities in lowland Ecuador have increased and as migrants and urban populations have encroached from the west, the traditional Shuar custom of moving the household when resources become depleted has become less and less possible, and in many places it is now illegal as land becomes partitioned into private plots and allocated to particular communities. Second, the arrival of roads accelerates processes of resource depletion, especially because of logging. Here there seems to be an especially unfortunate cultural disequilibrium, because the traditional Shuar practice is to cut down trees as they are needed. While there is growing recognition in many communities that this norm needs to change for conservation reasons, this recognition may not override the strong tradition of autonomy that allows people free use of the forest near their homes. The arrival of roads means a growing need for cash, creating incentives to sell one’s trees relatively cheaply. This could lead to positive runaway feedback effects in which people deplete resources ever-​more rapidly in an unfortunate tragedy of the commons (see Bremner & Lu, 2006, for discussion). Indeed, a recent study by Rudel et al. (2002) suggests that, prior to the 1980s, Shuar landholders tended to exploit their land much as surrounding Euro-​Ecuadorian colonists did, without regard to deforestation. Post-​1980s, however, this trend toward convergence in land-​use practices has begun to reverse, with Shuar landholders adopting practices that lead to greater reforestation and biological diversity than their colonist neighbors. The reasons for and cultural dynamics of this divergence, which suggests some form of resistance toward homogenization due to cultural flows, is an important topic of further exploration. Cultural norms related to resource sharing, acquisition, and distribution are critical for understanding the dynamics of individual and commu­nity interactions with the economic environment. Among the Shuar, norms of sharing are centered primarily on the sharing of food, particularly hunted and foraged food items. Sharing norms are well-​documented in Amazonian cultures and in foraging societies more generally (Bird, Bird, Smith, & Kushnick, 2002; Gurven, 2004; Gurven, Hill, & Kaplan, 2002; Kaplan, Gurven, Hill, & Hurtado, 2005). Several kinds of functions have

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been proposed for such norms (“function,” in an evolutionary context, typically refers to features of the practice that render it adaptive and/​or stable in local environments). Risk reduction or risk pooling is one proposed function of sharing norms, tied to the inherent unpredictability or variance in hunting returns (Bird et  al., 2002; Gurven, 2004; Hames, 1990; Winterhalder, 1986). If the returns from any given hunt are uncertain and involve an element of luck or chance, then group members can benefit from a norm that requires successful hunters to share some of their catch with others. If everyone abides by this rule, variation across group members in how much they have to eat on a given day is reduced. Any kind of subsistence activity, be it hunting, fishing, foraging, or farming, involves elements of both skill and luck. Anthropologists have proposed that the specific blend of effort, skill, and luck that matters for success in a given practice, along with how much variance there is in success, influences whether norms of sharing are stable or not. In cases of high variance, high-​luck practices like hunting large game, strong sharing norms may be favored because even successful hunters benefit from having others share with them on unsuccessful days. At the opposite extreme, however, where returns are determined mostly by effort (e.g., how much time one spends cutting down trees to plant a garden and maintaining it), sharing norms may not be as stable because the only reason to be unsuccessful, barring illness or incapacity, is lack of effort. This distinction has been proposed to explain why, among Amazonian cultures, meats and foraged foods are more widely shared than gardened foods (Hames, 1990). Of course, the logic of need does apply, and Shuar people, as in most societies, share even easy-​to-​obtain foods with people who are sick, injured, or old. Many factors may stabilize such sharing practices, including kin selection. Among the Shuar, norms of sharing of high-​variance foods are not explicitly restricted to kin, though traditional villages structures are centered around extended families of genetic and affinal kin, which may help to stabilize the practice (Chapais, 2009). The sharing norms that are stable in traditional village contexts, then, might not be as stable in urban contexts, or when patterns of accelerated migration due to roads destabilize traditional village structures. The Shuar also have strong norms of autonomy, which might seem at first glance to be at odds with norms of sharing. However, sharing and autonomy norms can stably coexist because each is tied to particular domains or contexts. Sharing of food, for example, is obligatory between village members, and cases of selfishness are grounds for shaming and other kinds of social sanction. However, there are also many contexts in

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which it is difficult to oblige one’s neighbors to do or not to do something, except through more indirect kinds of persuasion. In particular, the decision-​making power of heads of households—​particularly fathers but also mothers—​is generally regarded as inviolable, except in cases where extreme social costs are being imposed on others. Like many Amazonian groups, families move from time to time for various reasons—​the two most common of which are resource depletion and disputes. There is a kind of homesteading principle in which, if one claims unoccupied land and develops it (or even begins to hunt there), it becomes a kind of private property, though with some limits (Bremner & Lu, 2006; Descola, 1986, 1996; Gray, Bilsborrow, Bremner, & Lu, 2008). Inside the boundaries of one’s land, and certainly the region of the household and gardens, it is very difficult for others to tell the owner what to do. For example, a head of household is free to cut down all his trees or to have loud parties that prevent his neighbors from sleeping. Others might be annoyed by such behavior, but there is generally no formal mechanism to prevent a family from doing what they want with their property. This norm has limits, however, with regard to public goods. For example, if one pollutes a stream that runs through one’s property, downstream members may begin to exert pressure. In order to be effective, such pressure generally requires collective action, with the various difficulties involved in getting such actions off the ground (Ostrom, 2002). In disputes between one man and another man, it can easily be a standoff, and because Shuar society is strongly nonhierarchical there is traditionally no institutional mechanism for resolving these disputes except interpersonally. The biggest coalition generally prevails. There are many cases today, even in places where people have recourse to the Ecuadorian state legal system, where one family prevails over another family because of, in effect, intimidation. Most Shuar villages have now adopted the democratic practice of electing a village president, who has limited power to attempt to enforce resolutions agreed upon in village meetings (and is authorized to call the police and speak on behalf of the village). However, the old norm of autonomy competes with this practice, and it can be difficult for even a village president to resolve disputes if individuals dig in their heels and refuse to budge. The norms of sharing and autonomy described here seem to work fairly well in traditional contexts of Shuar subsistence and social life. An exception is the vendetta cycles that can result from murder, witchcraft accusations, and other extreme grievances between families (Boster, 2003; Harner, 1984; Karsten, 1935; Rubenstein, 2002, 2012; Steel, 1999).

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Because of the norm of autonomy and the lack of formal institutions for resolving conflicts between family units, these cycles may persist for some time, even generations, as seen in other societies with blood feuds (Beckerman et  al., 2009; Chagnon, 1988). At the timescale of multiple generations individual vendetta cycles eventually extinguish as people move or die and the original sources of conflict are forgotten. However, the constellation of norms that continuously regenerates them (autonomy, the right of revenge) do not. Also relevant to economic life are norms of marriage and family structure. Traditionally, the Shuar have practiced arranged marriage, though this tradition is rapidly changing (Pillsworth, 2008). Much of this change stems from the increasing influence of Euro-​Ecuadorian culture and global flows of practices and ideas accelerated by social media and television. Traditional norms of marriage and family structure were centered around the extended family homesteading model of Shuar subsistence:  early arranged marriage to promote good social alliances and to begin reproducing early, large family sizes to provide labor for hunting and gardening and strongly gendered division of labor and social roles, with men hunting and clearing gardens and women planting and tending the gardens and preparing food. Many aspects of this suite of practices appear to be well-​equilibrated to the hunter-​horticulturalist economic environment, but perhaps not as well in the changing economic environments of today. In particular, the large-​family homesteading ideal appears to be becoming less sustainable because of factors like population pressure, which leads to smaller and smaller plots of land for families as fixed plots are assigned and subdivided among children, and because of the increasing necessity of money to survive. Typical Shuar garden products such as manioc and plantains do not fetch high market prices, and the shift to new crops (to the extent that it is possible in the Amazonian environment) has been slow. Cattle ranching, popular in some areas, requires vast expanses of cleared land, which may be ultimately incompatible with the land squeeze caused by the population boom (though see Rudel et al., 2002, for signs that Shuar farming practices may be trending toward sustainability compared to those of colonist neighbors). All of these factors are turning the Shuar ideal of large productive families into a potential recipe for poverty as the economic environment changes. A final set of norms and beliefs relevant to the economic domain, though indirectly, are beliefs about magic, luck, and witchcraft. Generally, unexpected events are scrutinized for significance via several means, including the personal use of hallucinogens such as maikua (Brugmansia suaveolens)

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or the consultation of an uwishin (shaman) who performs divination using natém (ayahuasca, Banisteriopsis caapi; Bennett, 1992). Both techniques are also viewed as powerful means of foreseeing the future, as are dreams (Harner, 1984; Mader, 1999; Rubenstein, 2002, 2012). These practices and beliefs may be relevant to economic behavior in several ways. There are strong beliefs about luck and power, and certain kinds of dreams, hallucinogenic visions, or advice from uwishins may encourage excess confidence in one’s own decisions, or the opposite. Moreover, the fact that many random events are not seen as random can have strong effects on economic decisions. This is true even in more market-​oriented societies, where perceptions of nonrandomness can have serious economic consequences, as in gambling behavior (Wilke, Scheibehenne, Gaissmaier, McCanney, & Barrett, 2014; see also Banerjee & Duflo, 2011). Interestingly, so-​called superstitious or magical beliefs appear to be among the most resistant to change, which could produce various kinds of disequilibria between individual decision-​making and the economic environment. As in other domains, causation may be bidirectional, with individual psychology shaping the economic environment itself, as seen in the unstable dynamics of market phenomena such as bubbles and crashes (Shiller, 1990).

Change and Stability in the Age of Global Flows The present state and future state of Shuar culture are much discussed by the Shuar themselves and by others concerned for their future. Key to this discussion is the question of economic survival. The Shuar have traditionally considered themselves a hunter-​horticulturalist society, with identity and traditions deeply entwined with a forest-​based way of life, centered on individual autonomous households. Now that deforestation is a reality on the western edge of Shuar territory and relentlessly creeping east, what will happen? And how will the encroachment of global media and Euro-​ Ecuadorian practices influence the stability of Shuar culture? It is not yet possible to offer a definitive answer to these questions, precisely because of the potentially unpredictable nature of cultural dynamics. Some processes lead to stability and new equilibria and others to instability and chaos. However, it is possible to entertain various possibilities in light of cultural evolutionary theory and to ask what we might expect in light of what we know about the current state of affairs. Based on how recent history has unfolded elsewhere in Amazonia, it seems that the physical environment may support a limited range of

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possibilities for sustainable economic life, and this places boundary conditions on how things can unfold (of course, the massive and seemingly accelerating changes sweeping the entire Amazon region make predictions about sustainable lifeways even more difficult). A  first question is whether it will be possible to maintain any stable degree of forest coverage as roads and other infrastructure reach deeper toward the Peruvian border and beyond. Even if some mix of private and state-​sponsored protection of rainforest is made possible via ecotourism and other economic incentivization (e.g., debt-​for-​nature swaps), it seems unlikely that traditional lifeways will be able to sustain the kinds of population growth that are being seen among the Shuar. Deforestation, overhunting, overfishing, and the attractiveness of selling lumber once roads arrive all contribute to self-​ feeding processes that make traditional Shuar economic lifeways less and less feasible. The equilibrium mix of Shuar subsistence practices probably requires large swaths of relatively undisturbed primary forest and a stable mix of prey animals, especially larger game species. As large animals such as peccaries and tapirs disappear from the diet, hunting strategies shift towards smaller and smaller prey species, leading to a downward spiral. A question, then, regards what will come next. Will it take the form of a relatively rapid, smooth approach to an equilibrium mix of economic practices, or will the Shuar enter an unstable regime of practices flaring up and dying out across the economic landscape? Reasons to expect the former include diffusion of economic practices from other, ecologically similar areas of South America that have gone through the deforestation transition before and that have converged on a relatively stable mix of practices, including land-​use practices that are viable (if not long-​term sustainable) once deforestation has occurred. Indeed, well-​meaning government officials and nongovernmental organizations attempt to diffuse these ideas, such as new kinds of crops unfamiliar to traditional Shuar horticulture, via subsidized training programs. However, these efforts run up against two factors: a general property of cultural systems to be resistant to change from tradition (i.e., conformity), coupled with the specifically Shuar values of autonomy and resistance to hierarchical hegemonic influence (as such efforts are often perceived). The latter are reasons to expect at least temporary instability and failure to converge on a new stable mix of economic practices in the expanding zone of population growth and deforestation. Other features of Shuar culture might compound this instability, at least in the short run. Perhaps ironically, sharing norms sometimes appear to disrupt start-​up efforts to enter the market-​based agricultural economy,

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because they make it difficult to accumulate the capital necessary to switch to nontraditional but economically more attractive crops like sugar cane. On larger scales, attempts to start up small businesses or cooperatives with multiple partners can be hampered by some of the family-​centered norms described previously, such as norms against hierarchy. In one Shuar village, the World Bank financed a small sugar cane mill and helped to establish a sugar cane growing cooperative (Barrett & Haley, 2014; Price, 2006). Because the mill would not be a sustainable business without a steady supply of sugar cane, stable operation required a fairly large cooperative of multiple growers who would agree to dedicate portions of their land to growing cane. Much of the start-​up cost devolved to the individual landowners (they received the seeds for free but the cost of clearing and planting the land was entirely borne by them), who had to wait for the returns. This arrangement was unstable for several reasons. One was the large up-​front investment and long time horizon for returns, inconsistent with traditional Shuar subsistence practices. Another was that the co-​op members were all village members and mostly relatives by either kinship or marriage. Thus the norms of the business were essentially the informal norms of family interaction. The head of the co-​op therefore had formal but not informal social authority. Moreover, members faced no real sanctions to change their minds, eroding confidence that the enterprise would be sustainable and that members would see returns from their investments. While many of the members planted sugar cane, there was only one harvest, and the enterprise collapsed. Eventually the mill became an operating business but only by leasing it to an external (non-​Shuar) investor who then contracted village members as participants. Of course, the factors influencing the dynamics of a case such as this are complex, and it is possible that kinship could, in certain circumstances, stabilize rather than destabilize such a venture. In any case, economic literature suggests that when norms, expectations, and incentives from different domains are mixed—​for example, norms of family interaction and norms of market transaction—​complex and unpredictable dynamics can occur, as in the phenomenon of “crowding out” (Bowles, 2008). This case does not bode well for entry of new Shuar participants into the Ecuadorian economy—​or at least, not for those who have not grown up steeped in the norms and practices of market capitalism. It would seem that many Shuar cultural norms and practices are not in equilibrium with the practices of neoliberal market economies and, indeed, might interact in unstable ways with them. For example, traditional norms of sharing

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make it difficult to accumulate wealth, especially for forms of wealth that are easily divisible, like money. In many ways, cash maps with conceptual ease onto the traditional idea of a hunting windfall. Accumulation of it requires some skill but also luck (e.g., the luck of managing to secure a bank loan), and it is a resource that is easily partitioned among multiple individuals. In Shuar villages, information travels fast, and family members quickly find out when one has secured a loan or been paid from the sale of lumber, sugar cane, or some other commodity. Quickly, friends and family arrive asking for loans. The idea of a monetary loan is itself a culturally imported concept among the Shuar, at least in the sense of formal debt (Graeber, 2011). Among the Shuar, loans appear to be conceptualized largely as part of a web of informal exchange and are thus not usually expected to be paid back exactly or in kind, if at all, though forms of informal, non-​in-​kind reciprocity are of course common as they are in most societies (Fafchamps & Gubert, 2007). The neoliberal market concept of a precise amount of debt is, of course, understandable without particular difficulty by anyone, but it does not map onto a strong local system of norms that allows enforcement. The consequence in many (but not all) cases is that money loaned to family members quickly trickles away, and people who attempt to enforce repayment are fighting against a tradition where such complaints are easily shrugged off. In the case of wealth accumulation there is, however, a cultural workaround that makes use of the domain specificity of Shuar sharing norms:  namely, turning cash into something that is not easily divisible, like land, improvements to one’s property, or remittances to distant family members (notably, livestock are not a particularly wise investment here because they can be given away, though large livestock like cattle are better investments than small ones like chickens that easily change hands in time of need). In the village with the sugar cane mill—​where cultural institutions conducive to wealth accumulation clearly did not exist—​one enterprising (single/​divorced) female head of household hit on exactly this solution, investing in her children’s migration overseas, as well as improvements to her property. Her prosperity has been noticed, and people seek to emulate what she has done, exactly what one would predict from evolutionary models of prestige-​biased cultural transmission (Boyd & Richerson, 1985). Successful role models like this might serve as seeds that alter cultural micro-​dynamics in ways that could, in principle, catalyze shifts to new, stable sets of economic practices that can be reached from the starting state of traditional Shuar sharing norms. Of course, the details matter greatly for the dynamics of such transitions. One would

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expect long-​standing stable norm equilibria to form basins of attraction that are difficult to escape. The possibility of catalytic escape routes in the form of influencers who hit upon equilibrium-​disrupting strategies is an interesting one to explore. In addition to practices and norms that are clearly economic, such as norms regarding sharing, debt, and accumulation of wealth, there are many other aspects of culture and cultural flows that are likely to affect the dynamics of interaction between individuals and economic environments. Norms of marriage and family structure described earlier are another obvious case. Shuar traditions of early, arranged marriage and large family sizes might not be particularly well-​suited to global market economies. In addition to economic pressures, phenomena such as prestige-​biased imitation might lead to change in these norms; many Shuar people remark on the smaller family sizes they observe among wealthy Ecuadorians and among apparently successful foreigners on television. Here, as elsewhere, the feedback dynamics between norms and the economic environment are likely complex. There are many other domains of complex dynamical interaction as well. Are there domains of stability? I began this chapter with a discussion of mosaic dynamics, and I briefly return to that topic again before closing. It seems clear that much is changing and likely to continue to change in contemporary Shuar culture. What aspects of Shuar culture are likely to be resistant to change? There are several reasons to expect stability in some domains of Shuar culture. One reason is that the Shuar are a large and thriving cultural group, on the order of 100,000 people or more depending on how expansively one defines the group (e.g., Shuar alone or including the culturally and linguistically related Achuar, Shiwiar, Wampís, and Awajún). The Shuar also maintain a strong sense of ethnic identity, are bounded only on one side by the larger Euro-​Ecuadorian population, and have strong norms of resistance to hegemony. While the practice of marriage to non-​Shuar partners is accepted, endogamous marriage remains the norm. All of these features bode well for the persistence, at least for the time being, of the Shuar language and many other features of Shuar culture (Amano et al., 2014). Which cultural domains are likely to be relatively stable? The Shuar language continues to thrive, for reasons mentioned earlier as well as the Ecuadorian government’s mandatory bilingual education program. There is also a thriving Shuar music scene, which is a fusion of traditional Shuar, Ecuadorian national, and international styles. However, the stability of the Shuar language may be eroding at the margins due to the spread of

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Spanish as a first language and the unfortunate stigma associated with Native American languages in some sectors of Euro-​Ecuadorian society. Much here depends on the dynamics at the zone of intersection between Shuar with non-​Shuar speakers at the western edge of Shuar territory. Another domain of stability may be found in Shuar lifestyle ideologies that do not directly conflict with the realities of living in urban and exurban market environments. Shuar people have strong and explicit notions of living well, or penker pujustin, that structure daily activities of social and family life. These include strong extended family ties and deep bonds of support for the elderly, as well as the practice of visiting family and friends on a daily basis for conversation, sports, shared chores (cooking, washing clothes), and other activities such as bathing, hunting, and fishing. So strong are these norms, and norms of hospitality toward visitors, that it is virtually impossible not to welcome visitors into one’s home for extended conversation, food, and drink at almost any time of day or night—​provided they arrive and shout greetings from outside the house for long enough. These strong norms may serve to buffer against the many forces of family fragmentation imposed by urban life. Indeed, many Shuar people living in urban areas form barrios or communal neighborhoods that allow them to maintain a village-​like social structure in an urban context. Finally, there is a large constellation of Shuar beliefs about the nature of the world—​nature, society, causation, magic, destiny, and so on—​and their cosmology, sometimes called by the Shuar their cosmovisión, with its attendant ontological assumptions about the nature of reality (Descola, 1996; Harner, 1984; Karsten, 1935; Mader, 1999; Rubenstein, 2002, 2012; Viveiros de Castro, 2014). The long-​term stability of Shuar cosmological concepts might appear to be threatened by their conflict with Judeo-​ Christian ideas and ideas from Western science, and, indeed, the influence of Christian ideology due to the efforts of missionaries and mainstream Ecuadorian society is strong. It is questionable whether the Shuar could traditionally be said to have a “religion,” and to the extent there is one it is certainly not monotheistic. Christian missionaries have appropriated traditional Shuar concepts like arutam (a power-​bestowing spiritual ally) and iwianch (an ominous forest-​dwelling entity) to stand for monotheistic concepts like God and devils, and to some degree these appropriations have penetrated Shuar culture. However, the concepts and practices of Shuar cosmology, including shamanism, have so far proven extremely stable to external forces. Many Shuar people who go to church and take their children to the hospital when they are sick also believe deeply in magic and practices of access to the spiritual world, such as the use of

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hallucinogens and spiritual healing by uwishin (shamans) that are frowned upon by (some) missionaries and doctors. Although the beliefs and practices of Shuar cosmology might be argued to be of little relevance to interactions with the economic environment, they are part of a constellation of beliefs and norms that may serve to stabilize many aspects of Shuar culture—​including norms of sharing, autonomy, and others that are directly economically relevant—​against the otherwise irresistible flows of global culture.

Conclusion If human brains are among the most complex objects we know, then the system composed of those brains, their bodies, and the cultures and environments they create, embody, consume, and inhabit must be more complex still. Arguably, any attempt to capture or describe the dynamics of such a system faces formidable barriers. This chapter has attempted to crack open the door on such a project by asking what, if anything, the theoretical tools of evolutionary cultural dynamics might offer for thinking about a particular case, the case of the Shuar in early 21st-​century Amazonia. As such, what I have offered is mostly conjecture, and a promissory note. I  conclude with some thoughts on how we might begin to realize such a project. The key to a genuine understanding of any dynamical system is causality. Where dynamical systems theory began was in the attempt to describe the motions of the planets, and the key problem was capturing the dynamics of a system of many bodies where each body causally influences the other’s motion. For a society like the Shuar, the dynamics of even a small portion of the system, and even in a putatively well-​defined domain such as economic behavior and decision-​making, are likely to equal or surpass in complexity the n-​body problems of physics. Particularly difficult is capturing causality, because psychology does not yet have theories of causation as elegant or simple as those of physics. However, there is hope both for using cultural evolutionary theory to understand cases like culture change among the Shuar and for the results to at least potentially offer something to psychology’s search for laws of behavioral causation. Models of cultural evolutionary dynamics embody causal hypotheses in the form of posited mechanisms that map between environment structure and agents’ behavior via the feedback relationships between them. These models are growing in sophistication and explanatory

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power as they begin to incorporate insights from theoretical and laboratory psychology and neuroscience. Examples include models of the evolution of social learning that treat learners as Bayesian agents evolving priors that are fit to parameters of the social and physical environments in which they evolve (Perrault et al., 2012) and models of cultural attraction that formalize hypotheses about the epidemiology of representations as a function of mechanistic properties of learning and memory (Claidière et al., 2014). In principle, such models—​and, one hopes, the many more to come in this burgeoning field—​can be applied to specific cases such as the transmission of norms and beliefs relevant to economic behavior among the Shuar and the dynamics that ensue. To do this, of course, there must be empirical data and a proper match between the form and nature of the data and the models used to test hypotheses about them. Currently, much of the empirical side of cultural evolutionary theory comes in the form of laboratory experiments, which attempt to model cultural evolution in microcosm (Derex, Beugin, Godelle, & Raymond, 2013; Mesoudi, Whiten, & Dunbar, 2006; Scott-​Phillips & Kirby, 2010; Xu, Dowman, & Griffiths, 2013). Field experiments add to this picture, though they often share certain problems of external validity in cases where laboratory methods, such as economic games, are simply transported to a field context (Henrich et al., 2006; Levitt & List, 2009). There have been many projects that use cultural evolutionary theory to model historical data sets, such as data on the evolution of languages, artifacts, and behavior (Collard et al., 2013; Gray & Atkinson, 2003; Kline & Boyd, 2010; Mace & Holden, 2005; Mathew & Perrault, 2015; Perrault & Mathew, 2012). However, what is needed to properly tackle the Shuar case described here lies on a scale somewhere between carefully controlled lab studies of cultural transmission and field studies of preferences and decisions (micro) and the modeling of long-​term historical data (macro). We need observations of individual learning and decision-​making in real life, carried out longitudinally to capture temporal dynamics of changes in the cultural system, along with measures of key variables of the physical and social environment (e.g., measures of network structure, economic and demographic variables, etc.), and models tailored to the dynamics produced to the specific mechanisms being observed. Needless to say, this is a daunting task, and there is probably a reason why studies of cultural evolutionary dynamics tend to be bimodal, clustered on micro and macro ends of the scale (lab experiments/​observations of individual behavior and historical data sets, respectively). In all likelihood, properly tackling the cultural evolutionary dynamics of a real-​world case, as it unfolds, is

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the kind of project that will require new methods and multidisciplinary collaboration. The potential dividends of such a project, however, are large. Most directly, the opportunity to understand the actual causal processes driving culture change (as opposed to, e.g., simply measuring correlations and outcomes) brings with it the possibility of insight into how to maintain global cultural diversity—​a hugely ambitious goal, of course, and fraught with its own kinds of perils but well worth pursuing. Second, the data and findings from such a project could have important implications for the understanding of social causation in psychology and anthropology, tied in principle to individual psychological mechanisms such as mechanisms of learning and decision-​making. There is certainly plenty of work on this from laboratory studies in psychology but very few cases bridging between individual psychology and behavior and real-​world temporal dynamics in a rigorous way. Finally, the findings of a project of this kind could have important implications for our understanding of human evolution. Many anthropologists, psychologists, and biologists suspect that cultural dynamics have played an important role in the evolution and shaping of the human mind. If so, then properly and thoroughly understanding the dynamics of even a single real-​world case could have important implications for our understanding of ourselves as a cultural species.

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SECTION 4 Ecological and Economic Threat

CHAPTER 12 Economic Conditions Cue Evolutionary Challenges When a Recession is More Than Just a Recession Jeff Gassen and Sarah E. Hill

For as far and wide as market economies can be found, they seem to share a common feature: all of these markets go through periodic recessions. Even with the world’s largest economy, the United States, has gone through 33 cycles of economic expansion and contraction since 1854 (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2012). During times of economic expansion, the unemployment rate drops, industry flourishes, and the average household income increases. On the other hand, when the recession hits, there is rampant job loss, plummeting stock market prices, and a fall in household income (Hurd & Rohwedder, 2010). Following the burst of the housing bubble and subsequent recession of 2007–​2009 in the United States, for example, 10% of the workforce was unemployed, more than 14 million Americans owed more on their houses than they were worth, and families in every income bracket saw their bank accounts shrink, leaving the American people understandably pessimistic about their financial futures (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012; Hurd & Rohwedder, 2010; Moody Analytics Special Report, 2011). Fluctuations in prosperity and resource availability are not phenomena unique to market economies, however. Periodic resource scarcity has been a troubling aspect of human life since the time of our distant ancestors (Chakravarthy & Booth, 2004). Our ancestors were not at risk of economic losses caused by subprime mortgages or predatory lending, but restricted access to food, water, and other resources critical to survival was a reality of the uncertainty inherent to ancestral life. Anthropological research on

modern hunter-​gather groups, for example, finds that hunting success can be as low as 4% during an average hunting season (Hawkes, O’Connell, & Blurton Jones, 1991). Even with the difficulty of procuring food, however, periods of abundance were also likely to occur in our past, much like cycling market economies today (Chakravarthy & Booth, 2004). That our ancestors had to endure regular cycles of feast and famine—​and were able to survive and reproduce in these conditions—​makes it likely that modern humans have inherited from these successful predecessors a few tricks for dealing with these fluctuations in functionally adaptive ways. In the following, we review research that has approached the psychological response to scarcity from an evolutionary perspective. Broadly speaking, research done using this perspective suggests that changes in economic markets, although evolutionarily novel, should play an important role in cuing developmental programs, cognitions, and social behaviors that would have helped promote survival and reproductive success during times of resource scarcity throughout human evolutionary history. Although the utility of addressing the issue of recessions from an evolutionary perspective may not seem obvious at first, it is our hope that its usefulness will reveal itself as we consider many of the psychological and behavioral consequences of harsh economic conditions. Many of these responses to the modern economic climate appear to be irrational when looked at using more traditional approaches to economics and decision-​ making. However, when we consider these behaviors in their evolutionary context—​that is, in terms of the role that they would have played in helping our ancestors transmit their genes from one generation to the next—​they tell the story of a mind that has been selected for its ability to persevere when resources were scarce (Tooby & Cosmides, 1989, 1990). First, we review research demonstrating that economic conditions encountered in childhood impact development in ways that would have promoted survivability in resource-​scarce environments encountered in our evolutionary past. Next, we talk about how market forces can influence interpersonal relationships and the degree to which we trust and include others in our in-​groups. Last, we review literature examining the role of the economy in providing information about the local mating market and the benefits associated with investing in mating and parenting. Together, this research suggests that economic recessions may tap into deep-​rooted psychological processes that have helped our ancestors successfully navigate their way through resource-​scarce conditions. Further, it opens new directions for future research investigating responses to changes in modern economic markets.

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Building the Perfect Scarcity Bunker: Our “Befores” Impact Our “Right Nows” The 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, Mexico, offered numerous events worthy of note both within and outside the games. Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their gloved fists during the American National Anthem as a civil rights protest; Dick Fosbury became the first person to jump backwards over the high jump bar; and 1968 marked the first Games in which East and West Germany fielded separate teams, adding an exciting dose of cold war tension to each of the game’s events. In addition to being the site of much political intrigue and home of the “Fosbury Flop,” the 1968 Olympic Games was also noteworthy because of the incredible performance of male distance runners from Africa. African runners that year won medals in every running event over 800 meters, an unprecedented feat that would mark the first of many Games in which the continent’s competitors would dominate the sport. Why did the African runners leave all of their competitors in the proverbial Olympic dust in the 1968 Olympic Games? The first part of this equation has to do with the runners. Most of these successful African Olympians came from the high-​altitude countries of Kenya and Ethiopia. This means that they had spent their lives up until that point eating, sleeping, and training under the pressure of a high altitude. The increased lung capacity and hypoxia tolerance found in those living within the crucible of a high-​altitude environment likely would have provided these runners with a competitive advantage over their lowland dwelling peers under any performance conditions (Rupert & Hochachka, 2001). However, these 1968 Olympic games were not held in just “any conditions.” This particular installment of the games was held at the highest elevation in history: 2,240 meters above sea level. While the thin air at this altitude left many of the runners from low-​lying countries gasping for air, those from higher altitude countries—​ including the medal-​sweeping Kenyans and Ethiopians—​could sail their way to the medals ceremony with relative ease. Although distance runners from high-​altitude African countries continue to dominate their sport at any sea level, their remarkable performance at the 1968 Games illustrates two important features of human beings. First, it illustrates the idea of developmental plasticity. The concept of developmental plasticity simply refers to the fact that humans develop in ways that help better “match” them to their expected adult environments. Growing up in high altitude conditions, for example, leads to the development of a respiratory system that is able to effectively do its job in such a

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setting. This means larger lungs, higher concentrations of hemoglobin, and increased blood flow (Beall, 2006). Making such developmental tweaks in response to early life environments helps to ensure that individuals will be able to successfully survive and reproduce in the type of environment that they will likely inhabit in the future. Second, this example illustrates the profound impact our developmental environments (our “befores”) have on our adult outcomes (our “right nows”). The African runners hailing from high altitude countries—​although they certainly were not aware of it at the time—​spent the majority of their development in an environment that shaped their adult bodies to maximally exploit the thin air present at the Mexico City games. Those from lower-​lying countries, on the other hand, were developing in environments that were mismatched from the conditions in which they would be competing, making it more challenging for them to perform at high altitudes. In summary, the environment runners encountered during childhood set the stage for how their adult bodies would react to the suffocating conditions of the Olympic Games in Mexico City. The idea that people might adjust their development in ways that help match them to their ecologies is one that is well-​articulated in the biological framework of life history theory (Chisholm, 1993; Kaplan & Gangestad, 2005; Roff, 2002; Stearns, 1992). Life history theory predicts that people—​throughout their development—​will invest effort in the various subtasks required for survival and reproduction in ways that will maximize their ability to survive and reproduce in their local environment. Because conditions in early life serve as a blueprint for the environments they are likely to encounter in adulthood (Belsky, Steinberg, & Draper, 1991; Ellis, Figueredo, Brumbach, & Schlomer, 2009), life history theory predicts that a person’s childhood environment will play an important role in shaping an individual’s developmental pathway. Because the African distance runners spent their childhoods in environments very similar to those present in the 1968, they were well-​suited to compete and sweep the medals ceremonies in the 1968 Olympic Games. So what does any of this have to do with resource scarcity, recessions, or anything else that we promised at the outset of this chapter? It turns out that exposure to resource scarcity in childhood—​similar to the rarified airs of the Ethiopian highlands–​can play an important role in fine-​tuning one’s development in ways that will promote survival and reproduction in these types of environments. In particular, exposure to resource scarcity typical of low socio-economic status (SES)—​especially when experienced in early life—​is hypothesized to play an important role in cuing people

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to the types of environments that they can reasonably expect to encounter in adulthood. If a person grows up in an impoverished, chaotic home, this is believed to signal that the world that they can expect to inhabit is a relatively uncertain, untrusting place. If a person grows up in a resource-​ abundant home with investing, nurturing parents, he or she can expect to inhabit a relatively stable environment, characterized by trust and predictability. Life history theory therefore predicts that exposure to resource scarcity in childhood should influence a number of critical developmental outcomes. In the following, we review research examining the impact of low childhood SES on the processes that influence food regulation and energy balance, as well as how a person responds to stressful environments in adulthood.

Resource Scarcity and Thrifty Phenotypes Throughout human history, a number of factors in the environment could make it difficult to access the resources necessary for survival and reproduction (Chakravarthy & Booth, 2004; Hawkes, O’Connell, & Blurton Jones, 1991). Some of these factors were recurrent and relatively predictable, like seasonal changes in plants and animals. Others of these factors were sporadic and unpredictable, such as climactic fluctuations, disputes with other groups, and changes in one’s own group memberships. These stochastic properties of the environment required that our ancestors be versatile in their approach to resource acquisition and conservation (Maslin, Shultz, & Trauth, 2015; Potts, 1998). Accordingly, we should expect to find an accumulation of biological and psychological adaptations useful in managing the problem of subsistence in harsh and unpredictable conditions. One of the adaptations that humans have to help promote survivability in resource-​scarce environments is the strong preference for sweet, fatty foods. Although vexing in our modern environmental context, the desire for calorie-​dense items would have been of great functional value throughout our ancestral history (Nesse, Williams, & Mysterud, 1995). High-​fat animals are difficult to find and kill, and high-​sugar fruits tend to be ripe for only a limited time each year. Those individuals who derived pleasure from consuming fats and sugar, and therefore would have been more inclined to eat foods containing these nutrients when available, would have been more likely to survive times of food scarcity than those who were indifferent to them. This trait would have

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increased the probability that they passed on their genes (including those underlying their fat and sweet preferences) into subsequent generations. Over a long period of time, this differential reproductive success led to a species-​typical preference for fats and sweets, especially under circumstances of food scarcity (Briers, Pandelaere, Dewitte, & Warlop, 2006). Enhanced consumption of sweet and fatty foods can thus be viewed as an evolved strategy for addressing the challenge of food insecurity (Nesse & Williams, 1995). Another type of adaptation that humans have to promote survival in resource-​scarce environments is the ability to undergo developmental “fine-​ tuning” to better match themselves to their expected adult ecology. Specifically, individuals growing up in the context of resource scarcity should fine tune their development in ways that promote the development of an adult body that is equipped to for survival and reproduction under the threat of resource scarcity (Bateson et al., 2004; Gluckman, Hanson, & Beedle, 2007; Hales, 1997; Kuzawa, 2005). Consistent with this hypothesis, research finds that exposure to resource scarcity in utero and early childhood encourages the development of a thrifty phenotype, characterized by a smaller body size, a slower metabolism, and a reduced level of behavioral activity (see, e.g., Bateson et  al., 2004; Gluckman et  al., 2007; Hales, 1997; Kuzawa, 2005). These types of developmental changes—​although they are linked with obesity in our modern, food-​rich environments—​would help promote survival in those that are resource scarce (Fisher & Birch, 2002; Herman & Polivy, 1984). In addition to providing a caloric buffer against future food scarcity, added bodily fat also provides a visible cue to others that one has the ability to acquire calories. This is an important skill in resource-​scarce environments, particularly for women, whose fertility depends on a positive energy balance (e.g., Frisch, 1985; Jasienska, 2013). Consistent with this idea, research experimentally manipulating perceptions of environmental insecurity increases the extent to which men prefer heavier women (Hill, DelPriore, Rodeheffer, & Butterfield, 2014; Reeve, Kelly, & Welling, 2016), as well as the degree to which women idealize a heavier body size (Hill, Rodeheffer, DelPriore, & Butterfield, 2013). Indeed, heavy young women in Black and Hispanic communities in the United States—​women who are more likely to live in resource-​deprived, unpredictable communities—​are less stigmatized than are heavy White women (Latner, Stunkard, & Wilson, 2005; Schieman, Pudrovska, & Eccles, 2007).

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Scarcity and Eating in the Absence of Hunger More recently, research in our own laboratory (Hill, Prokosch, DelPriore, Griskevicius, & Kramer, 2016)  examined whether low childhood SES might also play a role in calibrating the mechanisms that guide food intake. Mechanisms of homeostatic energy regulation typically develop such that current energy need plays an important role in regulating food intake (Havel, 1999; Woods, Seeley, Porte, & Schwartz, 1998). Very simply, hunger sets in when energy need is high and, in turn, a person eats more when hungry than when full. However, in low SES environments—​ where there is diminished access to resources that have historically provided a buffer from food shortages (Gurven & Kaplan, 2007)—​it makes adaptive sense to eat when food is available, even if current energy need is low. That is, hunger no longer acts as a cue to the most opportune time to eat. Developmental exposure to the conditions typical of low SES may therefore undermine the role that bodily signals of hunger and satiety play in guiding food regulation, promoting the eating in the absence of bodily need. This hypothesis was tested in three studies. In the set of studies, participants were screened so that none were obese, diabetic, or had any food allergies. The sample in the first study included 31 female university students who were told that they were participating in a consumer study about how much they liked certain brands of cookies and pretzels. After being given the food, the amount each participant ate was measured, and they were also surveyed on how hungry they were before they ate. Additionally, information was gathered on their SES as children and as adults. The result for those who were well-​off in childhood was predictable: they ate more when hungry than full. For those with low childhood SES, however, those who were not hungry ate nearly as much of the snacks as those who said they were very hungry. Expanding upon this finding, a second study included 55 female university students who did not drink or eat for five hours before they were randomly assigned to consume either a soft drink or sparkling water. They all were again given the opportunity to eat cookies and pretzels, this time after finishing their assigned drink. As before, information was gathered on their childhood and adult SES. We found that those who were well-​off when they were children and who drank the soft drink consumed fewer calories than those who drank the water. This finding demonstrated that those individuals regulated feeding behavior by eating less after consuming the soft drink, as energy need was low. It was a different story for those who had grown up poor, however.

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They consumed about the same number of calories no matter whether they drank the water or the soft drink, which revealed that the additional calories from the soft drink, lowering energy need, did not impact feeding behavior in these individuals. The last study involved 77 college men and women. This time, the participants’ blood glucose levels were measured after some had consumed the soft drink and others the water. This was done to directly measure each person’s need for energy. It was found that for people whose blood glucose was high, indicating energy need was low, growing up in less advantaged circumstances led to the consumption of a greater number of calories compared to those from a higher SES during childhood. These results were not found at low levels of blood glucose, suggesting that everyone ate similar amounts when energy need was high. Thus those from a higher childhood SES reduced eating behavior when they did not immediately require the extra calories (i.e., current energy need was low), while a lower childhood SES predicted eating similar amounts regardless of current energy need. Together, the results of these three studies suggest that experiencing resource scarcity, specifically during childhood, may play a key role in people’s relationship with food and energy regulation. The caloric opportunism displayed by less advantaged individuals makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. In our past, when a person inhabited an environment where food access was insecure, it would have been adaptive to maximize consumption whenever calories were available, as future availability was uncertain. An alternative explanation of our findings might be that there is a quality of status itself that influences eating behavior. Of particular importance in this series of studies was that the results were not replicated using current SES as a moderator. This supports the life history narrative that early life marks a pivotal period for changes in psychology and biology involved in the regulation of eating. These childhood-​based differences in people’s approach to food may play an important role in the increased vulnerability to unhealthy weight gain and the myriad of health and psychological consequences associated with it observed among individuals from low SES environments (Evans, Gonnella, Marcynyszyn, Gentile, & Salpekar, 2005; Laitinen, Power, & Jarvelin, 2001; Poulton et al., 2002).

The Resources You Take and the Resources You Make Easter Island is a small 63-​square-​mile patch of land—​more than a thousand miles from the next inhabited spot in the Pacific Ocean. Sometime

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around 1200 ad or before, a small group of Polynesians made their way there, settled in, and began to farm. When they arrived, the place was a pristine island paradise, decorated with enormous trees ideal for building tools, boats, and homes (Diamond, 2005; Jones, 2007; Pakandam, 2009). Such an abundance of resources must have seemed inexhaustible. What ultimately happened to the Polynesian settlers on the island has been disputed over the years (Hunt & Lipo, 2011). However, a cautionary tale in resource management has been presented by many scholars. As often happens when resources seem limitless, on the island trees were cut to provide lumber for housing, wood for fires, and eventually to make the instruments that were used to move and erect the moai—​the famous head-​ like statues that remain on the island to this day. Pretty soon the island had too many people, too few trees, and then, in only a few generations, no trees at all. With the loss of the forests, the land began to erode. The small amount of topsoil quickly washed into the sea. The crops began to fail, and the clans turned on one another in a battle for the scarce resources. The symbols of the islanders’ power and success, the moai, were toppled and their eyes were smashed out. The violence grew worse and worse, with friend turning against friend—​sometimes in acts of cannibalism—​as all tried to ensure that they had enough resources to take care of themselves and their families (Diamond, 2005; Pakandam, 2009). Although resource competitions rarely turn cannibalistic as they did in this tale of the fall of Easter Island, resource competition between humans can get ugly, leading people to narrow the size of in-​groups and distrust their neighbors. This is because many of the resources that are necessary for survival and reproduction exist in limited supply, and when resources are scarce, people focus on maintaining the survival of themselves and their genetic relatives (Gurven, 2004; Kaplan, Hooper, & Gurven, 2009; Kelly, 2013; Rodeheffer, Hill, & Lord, 2012). During times of resource scarcity, it has been critical for our ancestors to be able to quickly determine who is an ally (someone who will help buffer one from resource shortages) and who is foe (someone who will freeride or is unlikely to share resources). When the energetic going got tough, how did our ancestors know who was on their side? How do the mental programs involved in solving this problem affect us today?

Resource Scarcity and In-​Groups Hunting and foraging were fickle endeavors, necessitating cooperation between groups of relatives and non-​relatives alike (Hawkes, Oconnell, &

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Jones, 1991). Although cooperation with other groups could buffer a band of humans from the unforgiving elements, humans have had to be careful when forming groups with nonrelatives to avoid the pitfalls of exploitation (Kaplan et  al., 2009; Gurven, 2004; Pietraszewski, Cosmides, & Tooby, 2014). Other species display methods of solving the problems of detecting freeriders and choosing allies. For example, vampire bats are more likely to share blood with bats who have shared with them in the past (Wilkinson, 1984). Given the high costs associated with being taken advantage of, especially when resources were scarce, humans should also have a set of cognitive tools to accomplish this task of alliance detection (Pietraszewsk et al., 2014). In humans, the alliance detection system encodes information regarding members of a particular group and computes the probability that these individuals possess shared or competing interests. One sign that someone has shared interests with oneself is similarity, as similarity to another is an ancestral cue of relatedness. Due to shared genetic and environmental factors, we are more behaviorally and physically similar to those who are related to us than those we are not (e.g., Kruuk & Hadfield, 2007). At a minimum, similarity to another person suggests that the other person is likely to share similar interests with oneself. For example, people who share a love of basketball are likely to be equally in favor of pooling money to build a new basketball arena on campus and to agree to shortening the length of the workday during the playoffs. Because similarity provides a cue to overlapping genetic and personal interests, humans tend to play favorites when it comes to people who are and are not like them. Those who are similar are able to curry favor with us and become part of our “in-​groups.” Those who are dissimilar to us, on the contrary, tend to be relegated to “out-​group” status and are not privy to the special treatment that we give to those wo are like us (e.g., Brewer, 1979; Halevy, Bornstein, & Sagiv, 2008; Mullen, Dovidio, Johnson, & Copper, 1992; Pietraszewski et al., 2014; Tajfel, 1982)., Indeed, research using minimal intergroup paradigms find that we are willing to treat preferentially people who share such arbitrary similarities with us as art preference or ability to estimate the number of dots on display (Tajfel, Billig, Bundy, & Flament, 1971). Although the idea of who does and does not belong in our in-​groups seems relatively straightforward (after all, designating someone as similar or dissimilar to the self seems fairly unambiguous and objective), it is less so than first meets the eye. This is because the degree to which another is perceived as having overlapping interests with the self depends on the threats and opportunities that an individual offers in light of the current

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environmental context. In an environmental context that has abundant resources, for example, maintaining an extended alliance network might endow a group with additional protection and opportunities to exchange materials without significantly depleting personal stores. In this context, the opportunities afforded by having a large in-​group outweigh the resource competition threats posed by others, making the interests of all group members relatively closely aligned. The advantage of an inclusive in-​group extends only as far as the availability of resources, however. When scarcity threatens the resource holdings possessed by oneself and one’s relatives, the resource competition threat posed by others outweighs the benefits that come from having an extended in-​group. In these conditions, one’s own interests and the interests of others begin to diverge, setting the stage for the development of increasingly stringent criteria for who is like me and who is not. Indeed, resource competition between groups is a key predictor of in-​group biases and hostility toward outgroup members (e.g., Kurzban & Neuberg, 2005; Schaller, Park, & Faulkner, 2003; Sherif, 1966; Takemura & Yuki, 2007; Wildschut, Pinter, Vevea, Insko, & Schopler, 2003). The economic climate is therefore expected to play an important role in modulating the inclusiveness of one’s in-​group and one’s tolerance of those who may not have overlapping fitness interests with oneself. During times of scarcity, individuals may narrow their definition of belongingness to include only those whose group membership is unambiguous (Maner et al., 2012).

Resource Scarcity and Biracial Faces Guided by these insights, research in our lab recently examined how resource scarcity might impact people’s willingness to include ambiguous others into their in-​groups (Rodeheffer et al., 2012). In the first study, a sample of White participants viewed either a slide show depicting economic hardship resulting from the latest recession or a slide show featuring images of economic prosperity. After being exposed to the prime, participants were shown a series of biracial faces generated by facial merging software. Participants then categorized each face as either White or Black. This paradigm was employed because humans have been demonstrated to use race as a means of evaluating alliance (Pietraszewski et al., 2014). Given that all of the participants were White, our prediction was that resource concern would lead participants to narrow in-​group membership to include only those whose interests were unambiguously aligned using available heuristics, in this case, skin color. Supporting the prediction,

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after seeing the scarcity prime, a significantly greater number of biracial faces were categorized as Black instead of White. The next study differed only in the priming procedure. White participants completed one of three sets of analogies. One group finished analogies dealing with words related to scarcity, another group was given words related to abundance, and the final group’s analogies contained neither words of scarcity nor abundance as a control. After completing the same biracial face task as the first study, participants in in the scarcity condition again categorized more faces as Black than both the abundance and control groups, which did not differ from each other. The results further demonstrated that scarcity cues can lead individuals to categorize more racially ambiguous faces as belonging to a race different from their own. Economic misery today, a modern parallel to the afflictions of our ancestors, in this way alters the lens through which we see and evaluate our social world. This research was recently followed up on by a research group at New  York University (Krosch & Amodio, 2014). In addition to replicating the effect that economic recession cues led people to perceive mixed race faces as being Black, these researchers found evidence that economic recession cues can change perceptions and behaviors in ways that can further promote wealth disparities. They found that when people were under financial strain, when asked to generate images of African Americans, they generated images that exaggerated differences between White faces. Specifically, they created the faces to have darker skin and stronger “Afrocentric” features than people without tight budgets. This finding offers further evidence that individuals seek to solidify a distinction between themselves and those unlike them when under financial distress. Last, these researchers found that when economic resource scarcity was made salient, participants allocated less money to faces that were perceived as “more Black” than they did when resources were abundant.

Scarcity, Welfare, and Trust Researchers have also recently examined the impact of bodily resource availability—​manipulated using a fasting paradigm—​on people’s beliefs about resource redistribution. The researchers were interested in looking at whether, in addition to changing people’s definitions of who is part of their group or not, resource scarcity might change people’s beliefs about the wisdom of resource sharing in general. They did this by measuring people’s support of the welfare state. Although humans’ evolutionary

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past was characterized by sharing in relatively small groups, the welfare state can be thought of as a mechanism for sharing resources with a large, extended in-​group (Aarøe & Petersen, 2013). Accordingly, if resource scarcity increases people’s desire to acquire and maintain resources for their (increasingly exclusive) in-​group, low levels of blood glucose might promote self-​favoring attitudes and behaviors. To test this possibility, Lene Aarøe and Michael Bang Petersen (2013) conducted studies to assess the impact of current energy need on support for the welfare state. They found that after drinking a no-​calorie beverage, which maintained lower blood glucose levels, participants expressed stronger support for social welfare than those who had consumed a drink that raised blood glucose. Participants with lower blood glucose, however, did not end up sharing more resources when given the chance in a dictator game despite their more charitable attitudes. More recently, this same research team examined the impact of resource scarcity experienced in utero on people’s social trust. The idea with this study was similar to those that preceded it, with a couple of novel twists. The first twist was the focus on resource scarcity experienced in utero—​ measured indirectly in their study via birthweight—​as their predictor. As described in our review of factors influencing food regulation in adulthood, one’s early life exposure to resource scarcity—​even that which is experienced in utero—​is expected to promote the development of a phenotype that is well adapted to survive in resource scarce environments. The second novel twist in this line of research was that they looked at people’s trust of others. The idea here is that in conditions where access to resources is scarce, people—​being aware of the impact that resource scarcity has on sharing and the inclusiveness of one’s in-​groups—​will be less trusting of others. Decreased trust in the context of resource scarcity would help an individual better ensure that he or she is not taken advantage of in a context in which sharing is less likely to occur. What these researchers found when they examined the relationship between birthweight and social trust found was that—​even after controlling for the multitude of other factors known to be related to both birthweight and trust—​low birthweight maintained its association with lower levels social trust (Petersen & Aarøe, 2015). Together, these lines of research suggest that whether someone is perceived as being with us or against us is not always determined by the behaviors of the individual. Instead, whether we perceive another person as being part of our in-​group, worth sharing with, or likely to share with us, are all influenced by resource availability in the environment. So robust are the associations between resource availability and our perceptions of

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others being “with us” or “against us” that researchers have proposed that many commonly observed racial stereotypes may actually be a byproduct of stereotypes about people based on the ecologies in which they live (Williams, Sng, & Neuberg, 2016). In America, race is confounded with disproportionate representation in resource-​scarce environments. Accordingly, it is possible that negative racial stereotypes that persist in American may be driven less by beliefs about certain racial groups per se and more by beliefs about the types of environments certain racial groups are presumed to inhabit. To test this possibility, researchers at Arizona State University sought to establish that people draw conclusions about another person’s behavior based solely upon the type of environment in which that person lives (Williams et al., 2016). Participants were asked to imagine two different individuals: one rich and one poor. Those who thought about the more disadvantaged individual imagined this person was more impulsive, less invested in education, less invested in children, and less sexually restricted than the person imagined being wealthy. The next study revealed that stereotypes of individuals living in these two different types of environments include a racial element. Wealthy ecologies were perceived as predominantly White. Poor ecologies, on the other hand, were in one case stereotyped as mostly Black and in another mostly White. Regardless of perceived racial composition, however, participants again stereotyped individuals in disadvantaged environments as expressing unfavorable traits, such as impulsivity and unrestricted sexual attitudes. Study 3 found that a person’s wealth status did not overshadow beliefs about the environment that person inhabited. When presented with individuals who were rich or poor in the opposite type of ecology (e.g., a wealthy person living in a poor neighborhood), stereotypes formed about the target were based only on that person’s environment, not wealth status. Ultimately, these studies demonstrated that stereotypes about Blacks were confirmed to be the same as stereotypes about harsh environments, and stereotypes about Whites were also consistent with beliefs about safe, more stable ecologies. These results provide evidence that the content of racial stereotypes is in many ways derived from assumptions about the impact of socio-­ economic conditions on human behavior. This concept is explored further in ­chapter 5 of this volume, in which Jennifer Sheehy-​Skeffington presents research regarding behavioral outcomes in low SES environments and how these behaviors shape stereotypes of individuals living within impoverished circumstances. Together, this body of work suggests that resource

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availability in the environment—​whether actual or perceived and whether occurring internally or externally—​has important implications for how we perceive others. Although it is rare that these outcomes end up as stark and grisly as the cannibalism and infighting on Easter Island, their effects are important nonetheless, making this a ripe area for future research on interpersonal relationships.

Sex, Scarcity, and Spending: Recessions and the Mating Market The story of Cinderella is a folktale famed and celebrated in every corner of the world. It has led to numerous film adaptations, each of which has been a glorious financial success. Variants of the Cinderella story exist in cultures all over the world. For example, China, Great Britain, and the Philippines each boast their own version of this time-​honored tale. Although the story of Cinderella has independently arisen in several different geographical regions and has been told in myriad languages, the central plot and motif remains the same. There is a beautiful, afflicted maiden who is mistreated by wicked actors, typically relatives of her or her father. There is also a famously wealthy prince or king who just happens to be in the market for a beautiful maiden whom she meets, enchants, and gets to track her down to propose marriage and (in some versions) to return some lost footwear. The fact that this idealized account of romance has independently popped up all over the world is very telling of certain aspects of human mating psychology that are well-​documented in the literature. Due to the different adaptive problems faced by men and women throughout our evolutionary history, men more often desire women who are physically attractive, or are “fair maidens,” and women desire men who own or have access to resources, or “princes” (Buss, 1989, 1994; Buss & Schmitt, 1993). Men and women seeking to attract mates—​as a means of giving themselves a leg up in the competition for mates—​compete fiercely amongst one another to be the fairest or richest of them all (Buss, 1988a, 1988b; Buss & Shackelford, 1997; Durante, Griskevicius, Hill, Perilloux, & Li, 2011; Hill & Durante, 2009, 2011; Sabini & Silver, 2005; Schmitt & Buss, 2001). Because environmental resource scarcity hinders men’s ability to successfully acquire resources—​and hinders women’s access to the mates who have them—​one would expect seismic shifts in the mating pool during tough economic times. Following from this logic, researchers have linked

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economic threats to enhanced mate competition for both men and women. We turn now to this research.

Competition and Consumption There are a number of ways in which men can compete for mates. For example, increased mate competition leads men to seek more immediate financial rewards and to take larger financial risks (Griskevicius, Tybur, Delton, & Robertson, 2011). Moreover, men experimentally placed in a mating frame of mind (relative to a control condition) become particularly focused on monetary gains rather than losses (Li, Kenrick, Griskevicius, & Neuberg, 2012). Mate competition also leads men to become more risk-​seeking in nonfinancial domains and to become more aggressive (Kruger & Nesse, 2006, 2007; Kruger & Polanski, 2011). Finally, mating-​ minded men tend to engage in conspicuous displays of their financial resources, becoming increasingly wasteful and likely to flaunt their wealth (Griskevicius et al., 2007; Sundie et al., 2011). Recently, researchers have built on this research, examining whether economic conditions might impact men’s attitudes toward wealth redistribution and whether these effects might depend on their mate value. Specifically, it was predicted that when resources are scarce, men of a high mate value should seek to protect their resources, and men of lower mate value should support policies that would enable them to acquire more. Across five studies, White, Kenrick, Neel, and Neuberg (2013) examined whether economic threats would impact men’s attitudes toward wealth redistribution and whether these attitudes would depend on their mate value. In Study 1, they found that an economic threat inspired low mate–​value men to become more prosocial, but the same threat led high mate–​value men to become less prosocial. In Studies 2a and 2b, economic threat manipulations led low mate-​value men to adopt more favorable attitudes toward redistribution policies but led high mate–​value men to adopt less favorable attitudes. In Study 3, researchers replicated these findings using real-​world data on the voting behavior of members of the US Congress. In Study 4, they found that cues indicating a high rate of male–​ male resource competition, relative to female–​female competition, led low mate–​value men to adopt more favorable attitudes toward redistribution but led high mate–​value men to adopt less favorable attitudes. In Study 5, they found that these different attitudes toward redistribution policies led to differences in cooperative versus individualistic competition strategies. Specifically, they showed that economic threats interact with male mate

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value to affect social value orientation, which, in turn, predicts attitudes toward redistribution policies. Together, the results of this research suggest that economic threats may play an important role in shaping attitudes toward wealth distribution, particularly for men, whose access to resources plays an important role in their ability to compete for mates. Because men’s resource access plays such an integral role in mate attraction, resource availability in the environment also informs women of the availability of high-​quality men in their mating pool. Recessions are associated with higher unemployment and minimal (or negative) returns on savings and investment. News of an economic recession therefore sends a cue to women about the degree to which they will need to compete to attract a suitable mate.

Scarcity and Cosmetics To explore this possibility, research in our lab recently examined the relationship between economic recession cues and women’s intrasexual competitiveness by examining the so-​called lipstick effect. The lipstick effect describes the notion that women may spend relatively more money on attractiveness-​enhancing products during times of economic recession (Koehn, 2001; Nelson, 2001). Given that the most frequent and effective tactic women use to attract or retain mates is enhancing their physical attractiveness (e.g., Buss, 1988a, 1988b; Buss & Shackelford, 1997; Durante et al., 2011; Hill & Durante, 2009, 2011; Sabini & Silver, 2005; Schmitt & Buss, 2001), we looked at whether the lipstick effect might emerge from a process where women increase their mating effort in response to cues that suggest that there may be fewer high-​quality mates available to them. To assess whether the lipstick effect is supported by consumer spending priorities, we first gathered data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the average monthly unemployment rate in the United States for the past 20 years (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011). We then gathered data for monthly retail spending from January 1992 to April 2011 for five different product categories reported in the US Census (US Census: Economic Indicators, 2011). Two of these product categories—​personal care and cosmetics products and clothing and accessories—​can be used to enhance physical appearance. The other three categories—​ furniture, electronics, and leisure/​hobby products—​are unlikely to be used for enhancing appearance. Combining the unemployment data with the retail spending data provided 232 months—​almost 20 years—​of continuous data.

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We first calculated the percentage of total retail sales devoted to each product category by dividing the total amount spent in each product category by the total amount spent across all product categories for that period. This provided us with a measure of relative spending for each of the five product categories, allowing us to capture consumption spending priorities in the face of budgetary constraints (Bertola, Guiso, & Pistaferri, 2005; Petev, Pistaferri, & Eksten, 2011). We then examined zero-​order correlations between monthly unemployment rate and the percentage of money spent on each of the five product categories. The results of our analysis revealed that a dire economic forecast may lead people to reallocate money that would normally be spent on products that cannot be used to enhance appearance—​such as electronics and furniture—​toward purchasing products that could enhance appearance, such as cosmetics and clothing. We followed up on this study with a series of experiments in which we had participants read a fictitious news article about the severity of the ongoing economic recession or a comparably unpleasant control article and then rate their desire to purchase products that can and cannot be used to augment attractiveness. The results of these experiments each found that economic recession cues led women—​but not men—​to report a heightened desire to purchase attractiveness enhancement products but not other categories of items. Moreover, these results were driven by women most motivated to attract a long-​term romantic partner and were mediated by the value placed upon financial resources when seeking a mate (Hill et  al., 2012). Together, these results suggest that the economic environment may play an important role in shaping the mating ecology, with women’s mate attraction behaviors increasing when access to mates with resources declines. From an evolutionary perspective, strategic spending shifts in an economic decline should not be restricted to women. As was introduced earlier with the studies examining male mate value and support for redistribution, the economic forecast has implications for men and their ability to attract partners too. During times of economic recession, financially stable men are rarer than they are in conditions of economic prosperity. Accordingly, men with resources are in a good position to attract high-​quality mates during recessions, particularly since women’s preference for resource access in their mate increases in these conditions (Hill et al., 2012). The benefits available to men from signaling their wealth is therefore greater during times of economic recession than during times of economic abundance. How might men go about signaling their access to wealth in times of economic decline? One possibility raised by research done by Griskevicius

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and colleagues (2007) is that men may strategically signal their wealth in the service of mate attraction via conspicuous consumption—​which is behavior comprised of purchasing luxury goods for the purpose of communicating social status (Nelissen & Meijers, 2011; Veblen, 1899)—​during recessions. Their research demonstrated that when men are thinking about trying to attract mates, this increases their desire to spend more than necessary on products that will be seen by others. Others have followed up on this work by showing that the men who do this are generally those who are most interested in attracting short-​term sex partners (Sundie, Kenrick, Griskevicius, & Tybur, 2011). Together this research suggests that men—​ particularly when they are trying to attract short-​term mates—​may flash their cash by overspending on products that demonstrate that they have access to resources. So what does this mean for spending during recessions? Given that women are attracted to resource cues from partners, particularly during recessions, the mating-​related return on investment from conspicuous consumption is likely to be greater in recessionary periods than in nonrecessionary periods. Although the jury is still out on whether this type of strategic spending shift is characteristic of men’s spending in response to recession cues, research from our lab suggests it may be. We have evidence from three studies (with more underway) demonstrating that men may strategically conspicuously consume in times of recession and that this strategy shift may be an effective one (Rodeheffer, Bradshaw, & Hill, in prep).

Parental Investment In addition to having implications for men’s and women’s mating behaviors, the economic climate also plays a role in shaping how we invest in the products of sex:  children. The Trivers-​Willard hypothesis suggests that men and women may strategically invest in male or female children, depending on cues from the environment that impact the expected return on investment associated with having male or female child (Trivers, 1972). In mammalian reproduction, males and females, on average, have similar numbers of children. However, because women are more selective in mate choice due to obligatory parental investment, there is more variance in male reproduction. This makes daughters a low-​risk, lower-​yield bet for future reproduction and males with high risk but higher yield. When the environment becomes scarce, the number of males carrying the resources increasingly desirable to the opposite sex declines. As a consequence,

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male reproductive variability grows wider and the chance of a male producing no offspring at all becomes more probable (Clutton-​Brock, Albon, & Guinness, 1985; Trivers & Willard, 1973). This makes daughters an even safer bet for grandchildren when the environment becomes harsh. Kristina Durante and her colleagues (2015) aimed to assess the impact recessions might have on parental consumer behavior. Specifically, they thought that when resources are low and male reproductive variability is high, individuals might prefer investing in daughters over sons. In the first study, participants read articles outlining the threat of the recession or one of three controls. They were then instructed to imagine bequeathing a series of assets to either a daughter or son. Participants having viewed the recession prime chose to invest more in daughters compared to the control primes, which did not differ from each other. Later studies then verified that this finding was mediated by the perceived reproductive value of girls over boys during an economic downturn, and the effect is more robust as the child approaches reproductive age, supporting the idea that this asymmetry in asset allocation favors the safer reproductive bet of female children and grandchildren. These results demonstrate that the long reach of the recession does not end at one’s own reproduction but extends to a parent’s efforts to facilitate reproductive success in future generations.

Conclusion Many of the damages done by modern economic recessions are highly visible. Businesses collapse, houses are abandoned, unemployment lines lengthen, and politicians point fingers. However, a recession’s blast radius is much wider than the naked eye can see. Economic conditions encountered in childhood—​and even before birth—​adjust developmental trajectories and perceptions of our environments later in life. Economic conditions in adulthood can also powerfully affect how we interact with our environment and each other. Our brains are so crafted to deal with the strain of resource variability that the psychological and biological consequences of scarcity covertly pull the strings on our thoughts and behavior in ways we are still learning about. To better understand how childhood socio-economic conditions influence adult behavior and outcomes, future attention is necessary to delineate the biological mechanisms mediating the role of childhood environments on adult phenotypes. In c­hapter  6 on socio-economic inequalities and health, a number of problems stemming from deprivation are presented.

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Some research suggests that stress experienced in childhood can become embedded through modified glucocorticoid signaling and systemic inflammation, which may contribute to many of these effects (Lupien, King, Meaney, & McEwen, 2001; Miller, Chen, & Parker, 2011). Mechanistic insights into developmental processes also provides empiricists with novel ways to explore how altering physiology can simulate internal conditions people experience outside of the lab. This knowledge allows for a more nuanced, interesting, and ecologically valid exploration of psychological phenomena. Much work is needed on deciphering the complexity at the nexus of psychology, immunology, and neuroscience undoubtedly involved in the role childhood environments play in calibrating life histories and developmental trajectories. The study of the impact of socio-economic conditions in childhood on eating behavior has only scratched the surface. Many questions remain about how signals of satiety and feeding might become decoupled. First, it appears that developmental exposure to scarcity may lead to changes in the physiology of eating. Several candidate hormones, such as ghrelin, leptin, and insulin, may be involved in this process, but the interaction between these critical hormones (and others) demands further analysis (Fisher & Birch, 2002; Havel, 1999; Herman & Polivy, 1984; Hill et al., 2016; Kuzawa, 2005). Second, the psychology surrounding eating and satiety also requires attention. For example, it is uncertain whether individuals with a low childhood SES are unaware of satiety signals, or if they merely ignore them. Learning processes are also likely at work. An example of this might be that there is a learned irrelevance between internal, regulatory cues and food rewards. As obesity and metabolic disorders continue to strain global health care systems, it cannot be understated how important it is to answer some of these lingering questions. Further effort is required to explore how changes in risk preference and impulsivity engendered by childhood SES might affect consumer behavior (Griskevicius et al., 2013). Many of the findings connecting psychological shifts to resource scarcity might have useful applications in predicting micro-​and even macro-​economic trends. For example, just as recession cues lead to a more constricted racial in-​group definition for individuals, economic fluctuations may similarly sway the political landscape, particularly as it pertains to perceptions of immigrants or racial minorities. Historically, harsh economic conditions have been one antecedent of xenophobic sentiment and genocide. For example, the rise of Nazi ideology in Europe was preceded by hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic (Laidler & Stadler, 1998).

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Finally, predictions derived from evolutionary theory should continue to be applied to psychological research. Evolution by natural selection serves as a causal force in shaping the mechanisms employed to deal with our environment. Thus when examining the quirks and foibles of humanity, revisiting the setting in which our brains spent the most time evolving can be useful in deriving ultimate explanations. Advances in the field of psychology require the integration of techniques and revelations from other fields, which evolutionary psychology has emphasized since its inception. Continued collaboration between the fields of anthropology, biology, immunology, neuroscience, and many others is essential to progress.

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CHAPTER 13 Disasters, Insurance, and Preferences Yasuyuki Sawada

Introduction In recent times, there has been a significant rise globally in the number of natural and man-​made disasters. Although we are witnessing continuous poverty reduction worldwide, it is important to note that both developing and developed countries are equally susceptible to the serious risks of disasters, which could undermine the sustainable development of the global economy (Aldrich, Oum, & Sawada, 2014; Cavallo & Noy, 2009; Kellenberg & Mobarak, 2011; Strömberg, 2007). Natural and man-​made disasters, whether they occur in advanced or developing nations, can destroy people’s lives. For example, the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that occurred in Tohoku, Japan, was accompanied by a high-​level technological disaster involving a nuclear power plant leaking radioactive matter. From the international perspective, we see that the global economies are still in the midst of recovery from the 2008 global financial crisis, nations in Africa are still at war and involved in conflicts, and terrorist attacks are having a serious impact on countries worldwide. In this chapter, we discuss the behavioral foundations of the impacts of natural and man-​made disasters by reviewing the existing studies on the nexus between a disaster and people’s preferences. To capture the significance of natural and man-​made disasters, the disasters can be classified into four major groups (Sawada, 2007): natural, technological, economic, and violence-​related disasters, wherein the latter three are man-​made.1 Figure 13.1 shows the average occurrence of each of the four types of disaster per country and per year. While natural and  Natural disasters include hydrological (floods), meteorological (storms or typhoons), climatological (droughts), geophysical (earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions), and 1

4

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0 1940

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Economic crisis Technological disasters

1980 Year

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Figure 13.1  Worldwide frequency of four types of major disasters. Note: These figures indicate the average occurrence of the four types of disasters in each country per year in the world.

technological disasters are increasing rapidly, financial crises and wars continue to maintain stable patterns, without showing any trends toward declining in frequency. Hence, exposure to a variety of natural and man-​made disasters is likely to undermine the socio-economic well-​being of people directly and indirectly. Indeed, several existing studies show the nexus between disasters and economic growth (Barro, 2006, 2009; Cavallo, Galiani, Noy, & Pantano, 2013; Cavallo & Noy, 2011; Kellenberg & Mobarak, 2011; Noy, 2009; Skidmore & Toya, 2002; Toya & Skidmore, 2007). To quantify the overall impact of disasters, Sawada, Bhattacharyay, and Kotera (2011) use cross-​country panel data, showing that the effects of disasters on a given country’s economy differ depending on factors such as the length of time post-​disaster, disaster type, and the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). For short-​term periods of one to three years, natural disasters produce the largest downside impacts on the per capita GDP. As such, a single natural disaster can lower the per capita GDP by an annual rate of around 1%.

biological (epidemics and insect infestations) disasters. Technological disasters include industrial accidents (chemical spills, collapses of industrial infrastructure) and transport accidents (by air, rail, road, or water transport). Economic disasters or crises include hyperinflation, banking crisis, and currency crisis. Violence-​related disasters include terrorism, civil strife, riots, and wars.

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Conflicts and wars cause the second-​largest effect on per capita GDP, both lowering the figure by an annual rate of 0.4% to 0.5%. Economic crises follow conflicts and wars, but their downward effect on the per capita GDP is limited to 0.2% per year. Specifically, disasters will affect the poor and the vulnerable disproportionately because they live in disaster-​prone areas, do not have access to formal insurance mechanisms, have less savings and financial assets to dampen the impact, and are often the last to receive any kind of public and private support (World Bank, 2014). How should we protect ourselves from these catastrophes? Natural hazards such as earthquakes, tsunamis, or hurricanes cannot be prevented. However, it is possible to prevent or at least mitigate the damage resulting from these disasters, both in terms of the number of human casualties and economic impacts and the preparedness, which makes a key difference. In preparation for or in the aftermath of a disaster, various indispensable market and nonmarket mechanisms are available for people to maintain their livelihood. The complementarity among the market, government, and community is pivotal to develop a successful disaster management and reconstruction system. To strengthen such mechanisms, we need to grasp the roles of individual risk and time preference parameters and social preferences, that is, a set of structural parameters of a utility function involving utility interdependency or other related preferences such as altruism, fairness, envy, guilt, trust, trustworthiness, reciprocity, and inequality aversion, in a rigorous manner. This is simply because these preferences constitute the basis for an individual’s and society’s response toward market price changes for damages goods such as houses, policy interventions, and changes in interpersonal relationships. Particularly, social preference parameters are fundamental ones, generating social capital, which is defined as the structure of social relationships and networks, or the resulting outcomes of such structures, that is, mutual trust, solidarity, implicit rules, and social norms. Socioecological psychology, a subfield in psychology, investigates how the mind and behaviors are shaped in part by their natural and social habitats, that is, social ecology, and how these natural and social habitats are in turn shaped partly by the mind and behavior (Oishi, 2014). This line of research focuses on a large environmental change affecting the preferences. Recent economic studies on individual risk attitudes have also started to show that the socio-economic environment determines individual and social preferences at least partially (Outreville, 2014). As natural and man-​made disasters are substantial traumatic events, they are

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more likely to affect an individual’s preference parameters (Chuang & Schechter, 2015; Sawada, 2015). In this chapter, we review the existing evidence on disasters, individual preferences for risk and time delays, and social preferences based on diverse field experiments as well as quasi-​experimental studies. In socioecological psychology, several studies have attempted to uncover the causal effects of physical environments on humans’ cognitive, emotional, and behavioral patterns (Oishi, 2014). However, most previous studies so far rely on simple correlational design, and evidence from natural experiments is scarce. In addition, the mediators linking the environments and behavior are not well covered. Hence, the field experimental approach reviewed in this chapter should be considered an effective research strategy to bridge these gaps in the existing studies. The rest of this chapter is organized as follows. First, we illustrate various market and nonmarket insurance mechanisms available for people to diversify the potential damages caused by disasters, by postulating an integrated framework of community, market, and state in the economic system. Then we discuss the field experimental methods to quantify social capital as deviations from the Nash equilibrium in trust and public goods games where social capital typically refers to the structure of social relationships and networks, or the resulting outcomes of such a structure, that is, mutual trust, solidarity, implicit rules, and social norms. In the next section, we show how disasters affect individual and social preferences, which are critical in determining risk management and coping behaviors. The final section concludes with remarks based on our review of the related evidence. Data sources include natural and technological disasters from the Emergency Events Database (Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Natural Disasters, 2016), economic crisis from Reinhart and Rogoff (2009, 2010)  and International Monetary Fund (2015), and violence-​ related disasters relating to wars and conflicts from the Global Terrorism Database (National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, 2015)  and the Correlates of War database (Sarkees & Wayman, 2010).

The Market, Government, and Community Trinity There are several market and nonmarket insurance mechanisms available for people to diversify the potential damages caused by the aforementioned

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four types of disasters and to maintain their livelihood according to consumption and production decisions. To illustrate such mechanisms, a framework of community, market, and state in the economic system, similar to Hayami (2009), could be adopted. According to Hayami, the market represents a mechanism, which coordinates between profit-​seeking individuals and firms through competition under the price signals. Naturally, the market has an advantage in matching the demand and supply of private tradable goods. The state constitutes a mechanism that forces people to adjust their resource allocations by the command or legal enforcement of the government. Typically, the state plays an important role in supplying global or pure public goods.2 In contrast, the community is a mechanism that guides community members toward voluntary cooperation based on intensive social interactions, facilitating supply of local public goods such as the provision of reciprocal social safety nets, conservation of commons, and the enforcement of informal transactions.

Market Mechanisms Various market-​based insurance mechanisms are available for the affected people to cope with disasters. These mechanisms range from credit transactions through formal financial institutions to formal financial instruments, such as disaster insurance and catastrophe bonds.3 The labor market can also function as insurance, if extra labor participation and wage earnings can fulfill the economic losses caused by a disaster. Nonetheless, the availability of formal market–​based insurance mechanisms globally is limited, especially for disasters. According to Figure 13.2, the proportion of insurance coverage against the economic losses caused by natural disasters was only 32% in the past decade. Also, we should note that the insurability against disasters is heterogeneous worldwide. The Cabinet Office (2011) reported that the total property losses from the Great East Japan earthquake in March 2011 could amount to more than US$200 billion, but, according to Munich Re (2012), only 20% of the overall damage was covered by market-​based insurance. In the case of the Great Hanshin-​Awaji earthquake of Japan in January 1995, the insurance coverage rate was even lower (Sawada & Shimizutani, 2008). These figures can be compared with the US$13 billion out of the US$16 billion in  Public goods are characterized by nonexcludability and nonrivalry in individual consumption.  Catastrophe bonds, or bonds, are a type of securities linked to insurance against risks of disasters such as an earthquake or a hurricane. 2 3

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2,500 2,000 1,500 1,000 500 0 1975–1984

1985–1994

Insured losses

1995–2004

2005–2014

Uninsured losses

Figure 13.2  Worldwide insurance coverage for economic losses caused by disasters, 1970–​2015 in USD billion in 2015 prices. Data Source: Sigma Data, Swiss Re Economic Research & Consulting and Cat Perils.

total property losses covered by private insurance for the February 2011 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand. However, the lack of insurance market transactions against disasters is not necessarily a puzzle. In addition to the general problems of indemnity-​ based insurance products such as adverse selection and moral hazards,4 a disaster is characterized by an unforeseen rare event, thereby making the adoption of the law of large numbers to pool the risks to design and transact insurance products fundamentally difficult. Hence, disaster insurance market mechanisms are incomplete by nature, leading to the remaining undiversifiable risks and uncertainties arising from the missing markets of trade disaster risks. This is a type of market failure, which is rampant in the real world due to legitimate reasons.5 In order to overcome these fundamental constraints on indemnity-​ based disaster insurance products, an innovative form of natural disaster insurance, called index-​based or parametric insurance products, has been developed. Unlike indemnity-​based insurance, these types of insurance

 Adverse selection and moral hazard both occur in a situation where the insured have superior information about their risk to the insurer. Under such asymmetric information, insurance market mechanisms increase overall riskiness of the insured because potential insurees with lower risk are less incentivized to subscribe insurance. This is the adverse selection problem. Moral hazard is a situation where, after participating in insurance, the insured will exert less efforts to diversify risk, enhancing overall damage risk. 5  Other factors behind market failures include public goods, information imperfection, convex technologies (or increasing returns to scale) and the resulting noncompetitive markets, and externalities. 4

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pay out, for example, on storms that exceed a predesignated wind speed, droughts with rainfall that falls short of a threshold level, and earthquakes that exceed a certain seismic intensity. As such, index insurance involves several positive aspects; it can cover the aggregate events including disasters, is easy to implement, and is privately managed, reducing the time and costs required for indemnity verification. Hence, the premiums can be kept low with divisibility, making the product affordable and accessible even to the poor. More importantly, since these indices are beyond human control and manipulations, index insurance products are free from moral hazards, adverse selection, and high transaction costs that generally plague indemnity-​based insurance systems. Index insurance products have been developed during the past couple of decades in two levels, micro and macro. Regarding the index-​based microinsurance products, several weather-​based index insurance contracts have been sold to individuals, especially low-​income people who were previously excluded from standard insurance markets. Some products target extreme weather events, that is, natural disasters. Since natural disasters typically constitute an aggregate event, index insurance is considered an appropriate instrument to combat them. Accordingly, index-​based microinsurance has been expected to become the next “revolution” in developing countries (Morduch, 2006). Despite this initial enthusiasm, microinsurance products have only achieved low levels of market penetration, especially in developing countries (Clarke & Grenham, 2013). The empirical evidence to date shows an unexpectedly low uptake, rarely above 30% of the intended population, causing many to rethink the attractiveness of the product or to suggest ways to improve it (Takahashi et al., 2016). In fact, there are major constraints to designing the index-​type insurance against natural disasters. First, natural disasters are often characterized by a rare event, which makes it difficult to design actuarially fair insurance by setting appropriate premiums. Second, demand for insurance against natural disasters may be fundamentally low due to the “basis risk,” that is, people’s psychological bias in assessing disaster probabilities due to the fundamental discrepancy between the risk assessment location such as a weather station and the insurer’s location such as a farmland and the trust on the insurers. Country-​or regional-​level macro-​index insurance systems also play an important role in diversifying disaster risks because natural disasters are highly covariate risks, which often cannot be diversified within a country. A notable example is the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF), a parametric, multinational hazard insurance fund for coping

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with the aftereffects of hurricanes and earthquakes, which works with the international reinsurance market and was established as the first of its kind in the world. Haiti was a member of the Facility, and after the Haiti earthquake in January 2010, the government received US$7.75 million in earthquake insurance—​around 20 times its premium—​as soon as two weeks after the quake. This proves the importance of preparing a new insurance system such as the CCRIF. While the CCRIF utilizes international reinsurance markets, it is known that reinsurance markets and trades of catastrophe bonds are still thin with limited capacity. Also, as an overall effectiveness of mutual insurance across national borders, recent studies show that the extent of international risk-​sharing remains surprisingly small (Flood, Marion, & Matsumoto, 2012; Kose, Prasad, & Terrones, 2009; Lewis, 1996; Obstfed & Rogoff, 2001), especially against disasters (Sawada, 2017). After all, despite innovations in market trades of disaster risks, we can safely say that disaster insurance markets are still far from being complete. These narrow or broad insurance markets at the micro or macro level for natural disasters are far from being comprehensive, and therefore the market often fails to cover all losses from a disaster.

Role of the Government These market failures are corrected at least partially by nonmarket programs and institutions often established by the government. For example, the government can help disaster victims by providing various transfers, such as cash transfers, food and other in-​kind transfers, and free primary health care. Regarding natural disasters, the government also plays an important role in large-​scale disaster management and rehabilitation through a set of disaster risk management policies, such as strengthening protective infrastructure, building early warning and emergency management systems, and designing and implementing overall recovery and reconstruction programs. In fact, Kahn (2005) highlights the importance of the government. According to the paper, natural disasters occur in advanced and developing nations alike, but when a nation is democratized and has better governance, the number of casualties is drastically reduced due to the communication and sharing of disaster risk information, development of early warning systems, and a well-​developed infrastructure to prevent or mitigate the impact of disasters. For example, the World Bank and the United Nations (2010) point out that Bangladesh, where frequent cyclones

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have affected several hundred thousand people, has significantly reduced the number of casualties by investing in emergency infrastructure such as improving its early warning system, which operates via radio, and building numerous cyclone shelters. Even for technological disasters, Kahn finds that the extent of casualties due to industrial accidents depends on the level of democratization and governance of the nation. Kahn supports the importance of ex ante governmental actions for technological disasters. However, the market and government do not function effectively in isolation. The market is an institution, which should be supported by legal enforcement framework for transactions set by the government. In turn, the public resource allocation mechanism can be inefficient if economic incentives and price adjustment mechanisms are not considered. For example, the government can provide reinsurance for privately sold insurance products. An example of this kind of reinsurance policy is the Japanese earthquake insurance sold by private insurance companies in which the government provides a reinsurance scheme. This system is based on a somewhat innovative idea, the aggregate disaster shocks are diversified intertemporally, rather than spatially. We also need to balance publicly provided emergency information systems and infrastructure that prevent damage at the macro and/​or grassroots level with market-​based insurance systems that prevent economy-​wide damage. Elaborating on the idea of index insurance, publicly supported insurance mechanisms against man-​made disasters have also been proposed. Finding the causal relationship between droughts and conflicts in Africa, Miguel, Satyanath, and Sergenti (2004) suggest that preventative action taken against natural disasters could also prevent conflicts and wars. To materialize this idea, Miguel (2009) proposed a new type of foreign aid—​ the Rapid Conflict Prevention Support, which would reduce the risk of conflicts induced by droughts by using rainfall measurements and vegetation indices obtained from satellite images to estimate the occurrence of droughts and natural disasters and by transferring aid immediately. Yet we need to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of government interventions aimed at correcting market failures (Stiglitz, 1989). The government also fails due to reasons such as corruption and weak administrative capacities.

Community Mechanisms Based on Social Capital In this respect, community enforcement mechanisms are supposed to fill the gaps regarding market and government failures, at least partially.

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The importance of complementarities of the market, government, and community mechanisms have been emphasized by Hayami (2009) and Mansuri and Rao (2013, chap 2). Indeed, several empirical studies support the strong complementarities between market and community mechanisms (Feigenberg, Field, & Pande, 2013; Karlan, 2005; Mobarak & Rosenzweig, 2013). For example, according to Angelucci and Giorgi (2009), publicly provided cash transfers to eligible households in Mexico indirectly increase the consumption of ineligible households living in the same villages, operating through insurance and credit markets; ineligible households benefit from the informal transfers by receiving more gifts and loans and by reducing their savings. This is an example of market failure corrected by a government program working through community-​based informal resource allocation mechanisms. As a result, the public transfers benefit the local economy at large by complementarities among the market, government, and community. The resource allocation process through community mechanisms is based on the social capital. These include not only community-​based ties, such as those observed within rural villages and companies or among school alumni, but also relationships formed via social network sites. In the context of disasters, a risk that affects a specific individual can be traded with other people in the same social network through informal mutual insurance based on social capital as well as a well-​functioning formal insurance or credit market. The community-​based mutual insurance mechanism can be effective, provided that all the members contribute to informal insurance premiums according to the principle of reciprocity dictated by customs and norms (Hayami, 2009). The community can enforce the collection of due contributions from community members by means of the reputation, opprobrium, or ostracism mechanisms. In short, community social capital can play an important role in weathering losses caused by natural disasters if such losses are largely idiosyncratic. Aldrich (2013) closely analyzed data on the Great Kanto earthquake in 1923, the Great Hanshin-​Awaji earthquake in 1995, the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and found that the level of social capital determined the speed of postdisaster recovery as a common feature observed in all of them; that is, social capital plays a critical role in the reconstruction of disaster-​hit areas. As such, we may be able to accelerate a postdisaster recovery process by facilitating social capital accumulation. The presence of high-​level social capital is also the key to realizing a better and more assuring postdisaster society. Even at the aggregate level, using global data on hurricane exposure, Yang (2008) found that migrants’ international

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remittances, that is, a form of informal transfers, play an effective role in coping with damages caused by hurricanes, complementing other public and market-​based international capital flows.

Field Experiments to Quantify Social Capital Social capital is a very broad concept and has been studied through various approaches not only in economics (Loury, 1977) but also in sociology (Coleman, 1988), political science (Putnam, 1993, 2000), and public health (Kawachi, Kennedy, Lochner, & Prothrow-​Stith, 1997).6 While subjective survey questions on trust, also known as the General Social Survey (GSS) questions, have been employed widely to quantify social capital,7 Glaeser, Laibson, Scheinkman, and Soutter (2000) showed the limitation of such subjective survey question as a tool to measure trust, in which the authors closely examined problems with data based on such questions by using an experimental economics approach. Specifically, they conducted an economic experiment called the “trust game,” wherein they measured trust as a deviation from the Nash equilibrium, a concept of game theory.8 When a laboratory economic experiment is played by non-​student subjects in the field, such an experiment is called an artefactual field experiment (Harrison & List, 2004; Levitt & List, 2009). Among such experiments to quantify social capital, the trust game developed by Berg, Dickhaut, and McCabe (1995) is a popular experiment, which involves two mutually anonymous players. First, the experimenter pays an initial sum of money to Player A and asks him or her to split it with Player B. Next, the experimenter gives Player B an amount equal to three times the amount Player A has given to Player B and asks Player B to return part of the money to Player A.  Since the optimum

 These research works have shown that social capital contributes significantly to the economy and society. Yet, social capital could have a negative impact on society as it works to strengthen the solidarity within interest groups and may eventually turn into a bondage and curse to further promote rent-​seeking activities (Olson, 1971). 7  Using cross-​country GSS survey data, Knack and Keefer (1997) find that an indicator of trust is positively related to the rate of economic growth. 8  Nash equilibrium refers to a stable outcome or a state of “equilibrium” under strategic interactions among players without cooperation mechanisms as is the case in an arms race. The Nash equilibrium is defined as a situation where a player cannot expect any better results by changing its strategy unilaterally, and, as such, all the other players have no incentive to change theirs. In other words, each player involved in the strategic interactions is maximizing his or her benefits unilaterally. This equilibrium, however, is not necessarily the optimum situation for the society as a whole. 6

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strategy for Player B in this situation is not to return any money to Player A, the optimum strategy for Player A should have been not to give any money to Player B in the first place. This is a subgame perfect Nash equilibrium. Therefore, the amount of money Player A gives to Player B can be interpreted as the degree of trust and the amount returned from Player B to Player A as the degree of trustworthiness; deviation from the Nash equilibrium of zero transfers of a sender and receiver can be interpreted as trust and trustworthiness, respectively (Levitt & List, 2009). As Andersen, Harrison, Lau, and Rutström (2008) discussed, another popular game to quantify social capital is a public goods game in which a decision is made within each anonymous group (Camerer & Fehr, 2004; Cardenas & Carpenter, 2008; Levitt & List, 2009). At the beginning of the game, the players are each given an endowment and are informed about their contribution amount to the group project, keeping the rest for themselves. The group’s total contribution is doubled and redistributed equally among all members. Since the dominant strategy of an egoistic individual is to contribute nothing to the group project, a set of zero contributions by all comprises a Nash equilibrium. According to the usual interpretation of the standard experimental games used to measure social preferences, contributions in public goods games reflect the reciprocal expected cooperation (Camerer & Fehr, 2004; Cardenas & Carpenter, 2008; Levitt & List, 2009). Finally, in the dictator game, the sender, called the “dictator,” is provided with an initial endowment that he or she can either keep or allocate to the receiver. Since there is no self-​interested reason for the sender to transfer money, the actual positive amount of transfer is interpreted as the level of altruism (Camerer & Fehr, 2004; Levitt & List, 2009). In fact, the complementarity between the market and social capital can be well understood by the trust and public goods games because these games are a version of the prisoner’s dilemma game, in which the profit-​ seeking behavior of self-​interested group members leads to a socially suboptimal outcome or non-​Pareto efficient.9 Nash equilibrium. This is a canonical example of market failure where laissez-​faire cannot achieve the efficient outcome. In the trust and public goods games, seemingly nonegoistic actions, that is, transfer amounts in the trust game, and the level of voluntary transfer to public goods in the public goods game, are defined as the extent to which the observed outcome deviates away from  Pareto efficiency is a socially optimal situation where making an individual’s well-​being better worsens another person’s welfare level. 9

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the socially inefficient Nash equilibrium and toward the social optimal. In other words, the transfer or contribution level quantified by these games captures complementarity between market mechanisms and social capital. Various experimental or empirical research findings on the role of social capital have emerged in recent years to support this perspective. For example, Karlan (2005) examined how the repayment behavior of borrowers in a Peruvian microcredit program is related with social capital, finding that the more trustworthy individuals, that is, those who are more likely to respond to being trusted, are good borrowers in reality, repaying their loans properly.10

Disasters and Preferences To handle the damages caused by disasters, individuals and households have adopted insurance market mechanisms as well as nonmarket insurance mechanisms via the government and community. To strengthen the complementarity among the market, government, and community mechanisms, we need to grasp the roles of individual and social preferences in a rigorous manner because these preferences are the basis for individuals’ and society’s response toward market price changes for damages goods such as houses,11 policy interventions, and interpersonal relationships. From people’s behavioral viewpoints, these mechanisms can generate responses that can be classified largely into ex ante risk management and ex post risk-​coping (Sawada, 2007, 2016). First, household risk management strategies mitigate the risk and reducing income instability before exogenous shocks. These strategies include investments in disaster-​proof housing, an insurance contract subscription, and access to an early-​warning system. While these ex ante management strategies cost-​effectively mitigate losses due to disasters (World Bank & United Nations, 2010), these mechanisms are largely missing in developing countries.

 Ishise and Sawada (2009) found that social capital’s contribution to the GDP, that is, the aggregate return on social capital, has a strong negative correlation with the level of income per capita and that such return is particularly high in developing countries, thereby suggesting the role of social capital in complementing market failures in low-​income countries where formal economic transactions are underdeveloped. 11  For example, ex ante and ex post disaster risks can make property price decline (Kellenberg & Mobarak, 2011), potentially stimulating prosocial behavior in the form of private transfers, for example, to amend such losses especially after a disaster. 10

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Second, even when these ex ante strategies are unavailable, households can also protect their consumption from income shortfalls caused by disasters using a wide variety of risk-​coping strategies, which are defined as ex post strategies to reduce consumption fluctuations, provided that the income fluctuations are due to these ex post risks. In general, the existing literature identifies the following six different ways of employing risk-​coping mechanisms through self-​insurance and/​or mutual insurance schemes (Sawada, 2007):  (a) households can reduce durable, luxury, or other unnecessary consumption expenditure, while maintaining a necessary consumption level, such as a minimum calorie or nutritional intake; (b) households can dissave accumulated financial and physical assets as a precautionary device against unexpected income shortfalls; (c) households can use credit to smoothen consumption by reallocating future resources to today’s consumption; (d)  receiving emergency public (government) transfers is a form of risk coping; (e) private transfers through an extended family network, friends, and neighbors can be used as a risk-​coping strategy; and (f) additional adult or child labor incomes through labor market participation are often used as a risk-​coping device. In other words, returns to human capital can be adopted to cope with shocks. Sawada (2016) summarizes the existing empirical studies on ex post risk-​coping for natural disasters and financial crises, especially in Asia. For the natural disasters, consumption reallocation, borrowing, dissaving, and transfers play fair roles in coping with damage, regardless of the disaster type, especially as seen in the multiple case studies by Heltberg, Oviedo, and Talukdar (2015). In particular, borrowing seems to function effectively in most cases reported by Sawada (2016). In contrast, a financial crisis disabled the role of borrowing as an effective ex post coping measure, although consumption reallocation, labor adjustments, and transfers continue to function effectively (Sawada, 2017). This would be a natural consequence of the financial crisis because a credit crunch can reinforce credit constraints. In fact, Kang and Sawada (2008) and Sawada et al. (2011), using data from Korea and Japan, respectively, find the negative welfare effects of the financial crisis especially among the poor in each country. In these risk management and coping strategies (behaviors), individual and social preferences provide behavioral foundations. For example, the standard theoretical model of insurance demand in economics pertains to an individual’s expected utility maximization problem (Schlesinger, 2000). As a solution to such theories, insurance demand has been described as a function of wealth, the expected rate of returns on alternative choices, and

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individual preferences for risk and time delays such as subjective discount rates and the degree of risk aversion (Outreville, 2014). Hence, individual preferences for risk captured by risk aversion as well as exponential and hyperbolic time discounts should play a critical role in determining the insurance demand. In addition, considering the informal risk-​sharing arrangement as a prisoner’s dilemma game (Coate & Ravallion, 1993), cooperation based on social capital created by people’s social preference is one of the critical determinants of overall insurance effectiveness. The social preference is a formulation of a utility function, which involves utility interdependency, or simply, other regarding preferences. Such social preferences include altruism, fairness, envy, guilt, trust, reciprocity, and inequality aversion (Cooper & Kagel, 2014).

Changes in Individual Preferences for Risk and Time Delays While there have been advancements in quantifying individual preference parameters for risk and time delays such as risk aversion, exponential and hyperbolic time discount parameters adopting laboratory and artefactual field experiments (Cardenas & Carpenter, 2008; Chuang & Schechter, 2015), in economics, individual preference parameters for risk and time delays have long been treated as exogenously given and time-​unchanging “deep parameters.” Yet, in reality, we observe substantial variations in such parameters (Chung & Schechter, 2015; Outreville, 2014). We can attribute such variations to both genetic and nongenetic psychosocial factors. Studies on endogenous formation of individual preferences for risk have only recently started to emerge, finding that they are not constant over time and change under some circumstances (Fehr & Hoff, 2011). Knüpfer, Rantapuska, and Sarvimäki (2016) focus on the genetic factor and, using Finnish data, find that stock investment behaviors of identical twins are more similar than that of fraternal ones. Recent economic studies on individual risk attitudes started to show that nongenetic personal characteristics as well as the socio-economic environment also can explain the variations in preferences (Outreville, 2014). In the existing studies, acquired factors, which affect the individual risk attitude, include gender (Booth & Nolen, 2012; Croson & Gneezy, 2009; Eckel & Grossman, 2008), age (Cohen & Einav, 2007; Harrison, Lau, & Rutström, 2007), and experiences (Malmendier & Nagel, 2011). As natural and man-​made disasters are substantial traumatic events, they are more likely to affect an individual’s behavior in the short term, and possibly in the long term (Chuang and Schechter, 2015; Sawada, 2015).

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In general, natural disasters can change the risk attitude, making people more risk averse. Examples of such findings include Cameron and Shah (2015) on earthquakes and floods in Indonesia; Cassar, Healy, and von Kessler (2011) on the 2004 tsunami in Thailand; Chantarat et al. (2015) on the 2011 flood in Cambodia; and Samphantharak and Chantarat (2015) on the 2011 flood in Thailand. Two notable examples of such studies are on the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004; first, Cameron and Shah find that, in Indonesia, individuals who suffered from a flood or earthquake in the past three years are more risk averse than those who did not. Second, Cassar et al. (2016) show that after the tsunami in Thailand, individuals affected by the disaster were substantially more risk averse. In contrast, several studies show that a natural disaster can make individuals more risk tolerant, including studies on Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (Eckel, El-​Gamal, & Wilson, 2009)  and the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake (Hanaoka, Shigeoka, & Watanabe, 2015). Regarding the time preference parameters, while Cassar et al. (2016) found an increased time discount rate due to the 2004 tsunami in Thailand, the opposite impact has been found in studies on the tsunami in Sri Lanka among wage workers (Callen, 2015) and on the 2011 flood in Cambodia among rice farmers (Chantarat et al., 2015). Some studies investigate the impacts of man-​made disasters such as economic crises and civil conflicts. Knüpfer et al. (2016) employ Finnish data to find that a severe recession in the early 1990s made people risk averse irrespective of their personal financial losses. Using microdata on individuals’ exposure to the Korean War, Kim and Lee (2014) examine the nexus between past emotional trauma and individual risk aversion. They found that individuals who were four to eight years old during the peak of the war are more risk averse about five decades later. Furthermore, within the affected cohorts, those who resided in more severely damaged provinces were more risk averse. Adopting a series of field experiments in rural Burundi, Voors et  al. (2012) found that individuals exposed to temporal violence display more risk-​seeking behavior and have higher discount rates in the long term. Callen, Isaqzadeh, Long, and Sprenger, (2014) investigated the relationship between violence and economic risk preferences in Afghanistan, finding a strong preference for certainty and violation of the expected utility framework. These existing studies reveal that natural disasters can alter individual utility parameters. A  natural question arises regarding its underlying mechanisms. In fact, there are several possible ways to explain these empirical tendencies. Experiencing a disaster can affect “risk-​vulnerable”

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people’s risk attitude by adding a “background risk” through changing perceptions of the riskiness of their environment (Cameron & Shah, 2015). This is likely to be caused by people’s belief updating on disaster probabilities because disaster-​affected individuals perceive the world to be a much riskier place. Also, people may change their risk attitudes because the experience of disasters changed their reference points (Iwasaki & Sawada, 2015). Regarding the time preference parameters, Becker and Mulligan (1997) construct an endogenous preference model with a consumer’s efforts to reduce the discount on future utilities in which wealth, mortality, addictions, uncertainty, and other variables affect the degree of time preference. In order to reconcile the mixed results of estimated risk and time preference parameters in the aforementioned existing studies, Sawada and Kuroishi (2015a, 2015b) adopted the Convex Time Budget experiment developed by Andreoni and Sprenger (2012) and Andreoni, Kuhn, and Sprenger (2015), with three structural parameters of utility function, that is, the coefficient of relative risk aversion, exponential time discounting rate, and quasi-​hyperbolic discounting parameter, with two unique experimental data sets, one collected from a village (Habagat) in the Philippines, which was hit by strong floods in 2012, and the other from the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami that affected Iwanuma city in Japan. They find that witnessing a natural disaster makes individuals significantly more present-​based than those unaffected by the disaster. In contrast, risk attitude and exponential discounting parameters are unchanged due to the disasters. Moreover, Sawada and Kuroishi (2016) found that people are identified to be more risk averse after a disaster when the double multiple price list (DMPL) experiment is adopted.12 To interpret their findings in terms of theories, the empirical results are largely consistent with a theorem proved by Saito (2015), which shows that the belief updating on higher mortality risk makes people’s time discounting to be more hyperbolic. This suggests that the mixed empirical evidence in the existing studies is an artifact due to the lack of an integrated and consistent dynamic framework. For example, our interpretation is consistent with the empirical results derived by Cameron and Shah (2015) and Cassar et al. (2016), which show that disaster victims become more risk averse. Since Saito (2015) proved the logical relationship between the Allais paradox and hyperbolic discounting in a

 The DMPL experiment is a method to identify the risk and time preference parameters jointly using two multiple price list games, one for risk and the other for time preference (Andersen et al., 2008; Andreoni & Sprenger, 2012). 12

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consistent manner, their interpretation based on the hyperbolic discounting can accommodate the Allais paradox as well.

Changes in Social Preference Here we review the existing studies on how disasters affect social preference, which is a set of structural parameters of a utility function involving utility interdependency or other related preferences. Such social preference parameters include altruism, fairness, envy, guilt, trust, trustworthiness, reciprocity, and inequality aversion (Cooper et al., 2014). These parameters are fundamental ones, generating social capital, that is, the structure of social relationships and networks, or the resulting outcomes of such structures, that is, mutual trust, solidarity, implicit rules, and social norms. There is no doubt that informal insurance based on social preferences plays an important role in people’s coping behavior with disasters. Yet there are very few micro empirical works on the demand for disaster insurance, especially informal insurance arrangements.13 Moreover, there are only few existing experimental findings on the impact of disasters on social preference. Cassar et al. (2016) show that after the tsunami in Thailand, individuals affected by the disaster were substantially more trusting and trustworthy. By analyzing the public goods game data collected from victims of the Great East Japan earthquake, Sawada and Kuroishi (2016) found that exposure to damages make people more cooperative in the public goods game. In contrast, Chantarat et al. (2015) and Fleming et al. (2014) found that disasters make people less trusting and trustworthy, respectively. In fact, studies on conflict (Cassar, Grosjean, & Whitt, 2013) and economic crisis (Alesina & La Ferrara, 2002; Malmendier & Nagel, 2011) found that shocks make people less trusting. These findings suggest the existence of a nonlinear relationship between shocks and social preferences. In fact, Castillo and Carter (2011) find that small shocks enhance both trust and trustworthiness but larger shocks may decrease both. This is not necessarily puzzling because the overall derivative of social preference with respect to a disaster shock may be determined by the products of complementarities among the market, government, and community and the extent of their failure. Regarding the degree of altruism as well, we can find mixed empirical results. Using data from Thai farmers during and

 Most existing studies only use macro data, finding that formal insurance is a luxury good; that is, the income elasticity of insurance demand is greater than unity, for instance, Beenstock et al. (1988), Enz (2000), and Outreville (1990). 13

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after the 2011 mega flood, Samphantharak and Chantarat (2015) found that exposure to the shock decreased the degree of altruism. A  similar result is found among the middle school students affected by the 2008 Great Sichuan earthquake (Park, Sawada, Shen, Wang, & Wang, 2016). Using a series of field experiments in rural Burundi, Voors et al. (2012) found that individuals exposed to temporal violence display more altruistic behavior toward their neighbors.

Conclusion In this chapter, we reviewed the existing evidence, which shows the impact of disasters on individual and social preferences based on various field experimental methods. Several important issues were identified from our review. First, we illustrated the importance of market and nonmarket mechanisms in the coping, reconstruction, and rehabilitation process of a disaster. In this respect, it is imperative to strengthen the complementarity among the market, government, and community by which people could diversify the potential damages caused by disasters. Second, individual and social preferences play an important role in strengthening this complementarity. Field experimental methods can provide a powerful tool to grasp such preferences by quantifying social capital as deviations from the Nash equilibrium in trust and public goods games, facilitating evidence-​ based policymaking to strengthen the effectiveness of market and nonmarket mechanisms. Third, the existing empirical results reviewed in this chapter indicate that large temporal shocks alter the preference parameter, potentially leading to long-​term adverse consequences for development prospects, poverty situations, and insurance mechanisms by changing various investment decisions. These studies are also consistent with the emerging literature on the psychological poverty trap, which suggests that stress can make people poor, and, in turn, poverty can make people stressed (Haushofer & Fehr, 2014; Shah, Mullainathan, & Shafir, 2012). In fact, these lines of research focusing on a large environmental change affecting the preferences can be found not only in the literature on economics but also in socioecological psychology (Oishi, 2014). Since most previous studies in socioecological psychology so far rely on simple correlational design as Oishi (2014) pointed out, the field experimental approach reviewed in this chapter should be considered an effective research strategy to bridge these gaps in the existing studies. In addition, uncovering underling mechanisms behind each causal relationship in a reduced form

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model will be an important task in future studies in order to achieve better external validation of the existing studies in both socioecological psychology and economics.

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Cassar, A., Healy, A., & Von Kessler, C. (2011). Trust, risk, and time preferences after a natural disaster: Experimental evidence from Thailand. Unpublished manuscript. Castillo, M., & Carter, M. (2011). Behavioral responses to natural disasters. Unpublished manuscript, Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science, George Mason University. Cavallo, E. A., & Noy, I. (2009). The economics of natural disasters:  A survey. International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics, 5, 63–​102. Cavallo, E., Galiani, S., Noy, I., & Pantano, J. (2013). Catastrophic natural disasters and economic growth. Review of Economics and Statistics, 95, 1549–​1561. Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Natural Disasters. (2016). Emergency events database (EM-​DAT). Brussels: Author. Chantarat, S., Chheng, K., Minea, K., Oum, S., Samphantharak, K., & Sann, V. (2015). The effects of natural disasters on households preferences and behaviours: Evidence from Cambodian rice farmers after the 2011 mega flood. In Y. Sawada, & S. Oum (Eds.), Disaster risks, social preferences, and policy effects:  Field experiments in selected ASEAN and East Asian countries (pp. 85–​130). (ERIA Research Project Report 2013–​34). Jakarta, Indonesia: ERIA. Chuang, Y., & Schechter, L. (2015). Stability of social, risk, and time preference over multiple years. Journal of Development Economics, 117, 151–​170. Clarke, D. J., & Grenham, D. (2013). Microinsurance and natural disasters: Challenges and options. Environmental Science & Policy, 27, S89–​S98. Coate, S., & Ravallion, M. (1993). Reciprocity without commitment: Characterization and performance of informal insurance arrangements. Journal of Development Economics, 40, 1–​24. Cohen, A., & Einav, L. (2007). Estimating risk preferences from deductible choice. The American Economic Review, 97, 745–​788. Coleman, J. S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology, 94, S95–​S120. Cooper, D. J., & Kagel, J. H. (2014). Other-​regarding preferences: A selective survey of experimental results. In J. H Kagel & A. E Roth. (Eds.), Handbook of experimental economics (Vol. 2) (pp. 217–282). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Croson, R., & Gneezy, U. (2009). Gender differences in preferences. Journal of Economic Literature, 47, 448–​474. Eckel, C. C., El-​Gamal, M. A., & Wilson, R. K. (2009). Risk loving after the storm: A Bayesian-​ Network study of Hurricane Katrina evacuees. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 69, 110–​124. Eckel, C., & Grossman, P. (2008). Differences in the economic decisions of men and women: Experimental evidence. In C. Plott & V. Smith (Eds.), Handbook of results in experimental economics (pp. 509–519). Amsterdam: Elsevier. Enz, R. (2000). The S-​curve relation between per-​capita income and insurance penetration. The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance Issues and Practice, 25, 396–​406. Fehr, E., & Hoff, K. (2011). Introduction: Tastes, castes and culture: The influence of society on preferences. The Economic Journal, 121, F396–​F412. Feigenberg, B., Field, E., & Pande, R. (2013). The economic returns to social interaction:  Experimental evidence from microfinance. The Review of Economic Studies, 80, 1459–​1483.

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Fleming, D. A., Chong, A., & Bejarano, H. D. (2014). Trust and reciprocity in the aftermath of natural disasters. The Journal of Development Studies, 50, 1482–​1493. Flood, R. P., Marion, N. P., & Matsumoto, A. (2012). International risk sharing during the globalization era. Canadian Journal of Economics/​Revue canadienne d’économique, 45, 394–​416. Glaeser, E. L., Laibson, D. I., Scheinkman, J. A., & Soutter, C. L. (2000). Measuring trust. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115, 811–​846. Hanaoka, C., Shigeoka, H., & Watanabe, Y. (2015). Do risk preferences change? Evidence from panel data before and after the great east Japan earthquake (No. w21400). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. Harrison, G. W., Lau, M. I., & Rutström, E. E. (2007). Estimating risk attitudes in Denmark:  A field experiment. The Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 109, 341–​368. Harrison, G. W., & List, J. A. (2004). Field experiments. Journal of Economic Literature, 42, 1009–​1055. Haushofer, J., & Fehr, E. (2014). On the psychology of poverty. Science, 344, 862–​867. Hayami, Y. (2009). Social capital, human capital and the community mechanism: Toward a conceptual framework for economists. The Journal of Development Studies, 45, 96–​123. Heltberg, R., Oviedo, A. M., & Talukdar, F. (2015). What do household surveys really tell us about risk, shocks, and risk management in the developing world? The Journal of Development Studies, 51, 209–​225. Ishise, H., & Sawada, Y. (2009). Aggregate returns to social capital: Estimates based on the augmented augmented-​Solow model. Journal of Macroeconomics, 31, 376–​393. Iwasaki, K., & Sawada, Y. (2015). Evacuation and psychological distress: New evidence of reference-​dependent utility and loss aversion. Journal of Behavioral Economics and Finance, 8, 77–​80. Kahn, M. E. (2005). The death toll from natural disasters: The role of income, geography, and institutions. Review of Economics and Statistics, 87, 271–​284. Kang, S. J., & Sawada, Y. (2008). Credit crunch and household welfare, the case of the Korean financial crisis. Japanese Economic Review, 59, 438–​458. Karlan, D. S. (2005). Using experimental economics to measure social capital and predict financial decisions. The American Economic Review, 95, 1688–​1699. Kawachi, I., Kennedy, B. P., Lochner, K., & Prothrow-​Stith, D. (1997). Social capital, income inequality, and mortality. American Journal of Public Health, 87, 1491–​1498. Kellenberg, D., & Mobarak, A. M. (2011). The economics of natural disasters. Annual Review of Resource Economics, 3, 297–​312. Kim, Y. I., & Lee, J. (2014). The long-​run impact of a traumatic experience on risk aversion. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 108, 174–​186. Knack, S., & Keefer, P. (1997). Does social capital have an economic payoff? A cross-​ country investigation. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112, 1251–​1288. Knüpfer, S., Rantapuska, E., & Sarvimäki, M. (2016). Formative experiences and portfolio choice: Evidence from the Finnish great depression. The Journal of Finance, 72, 133–​166. Kose, M. A., Prasad, E. S., & Terrones, M. E. (2009). Does financial globalization promote risk sharing? Journal of Development Economics, 89, 258–​270.

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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES

H. Clark Barrett is an evolutionary anthropologist who studies the evolution of cognition. For the past 15 years he has conducted field work in the Amazon region of Ecuador, and he uses experimental cognitive tasks across cultures to test hypotheses about the evolution of the mind. He is now a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. John W. Berry is professor emeritus of psychology at Queen’s University, Canada, and research professor, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia. He received his PhD from the University of Edinburgh and Honorary Doctorates from the University of Athens and Université de Geneve. He has published over 30 books in the areas of cross-​cultural, intercultural, social, and cognitive psychology with various colleagues. These include Cross-​Cultural Psychology:  Research and Applications (third edition, Cambridge University Press, 2011), and Handbook of Acculturation Psychology (second edition, Cambridge University Press, 2016). He is a Fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, the International Association for Cross-​Cultural Psychology, and the International Academy for Intercultural Research. His main research interests are in the areas of ecological and cultural influences on behavioral development and acculturation and intercultural relations, with an emphasis on applications to immigration, multiculturalism, and educational and health policy. Wojciech Borkowski is a biologist by education. He received his doctorate at the Institute of Botany, University of Warsaw in 2001. Since 1991 he deals with the programming of applications for scientific purposes,

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especially data mining and processing (Genetic Algorithm, Artificial Neural Networks, Rought Sets, Fuzzy Logic and Expert Systems). Since 1994, he has been developing simulation models of biological and social systems. He is an author or coauthor on nearly 50 scientific publications and several significant scientific and commercial software applications. As a specialist in computer modeling, he taught at the University of Warsaw and in the Warsaw School of Social Science and Humanities. He was involved in numerous grants in the United States (National Science Foundation, McDonnell, MURI, DOD MINERVA) and in Europe (Polish governmental and European Union grants). His personal research interests mainly concern the dynamics of evolutionary biology and evolution of culture, especially in macro scale (macroevolution and “macro-​memetics”). Rebecca Carey is a doctoral student in social psychology at Stanford University. Rebecca is broadly interested in taking a sociocultural perspective on social class. She seeks to understand how social, material, and economic resources shape the interplay between a person’s external reality and the way he or she thinks, feels, and acts in the world. Her current research focuses on how social class shapes the meaning of relationships. She is particularly interested in the moral values people tie to their relationships, exploring the role of loyalty in working-​class relationships, and the role of individual rights and preferences in middle-​class relationships. Rebecca advocates for understanding the psychology of social class, believing that it is essential in addressing issues of inequality, such as mitigating barriers to class migration and reducing disparities in health and education. Zeynep Cemalcilar is an associate professor of social psychology at Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey. She is interested in studying social psychological theories and issues as processes applied to real-​world situations, particularly understanding the daily lives of “youth.” Her most recent research focuses on youth autonomy and self-​sufficiency, subjective socioeconomic status, brief social psychological interventions, culture, prosocial behavior, and the role of technology in social life. She has served as a primary investigator and researcher in several international and national large-​scale studies and published in numerous psychology and sociology journals. She is the co-​founder of the Social Interactions and Media Lab at Koç University. Cemalcılar works closely with various nongovernmental organizations, like the Mother Child Education Foundation and the Education Reform Initiative in Turkey.

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Author Biographies

Dov Cohen has been on faculty at the University of Waterloo in Canada and the University of Illinois in the United States. He is currently a professor of psychology at Illinois, with additional appointments in the College of Law and the Information Trust Institute. He is a co-​author of Culture of Honor and the co-​editor of Culture and Social Behaviour and the Handbook of Cultural Psychology (first edition published in 2007; second edition upcoming). Panayiota Ellina is a PhD candidate at the Department of Nursing and research assistant at the GeoHealth project, Cyprus University of Technology. As part of her MSc thesis, supervised by Dr. Nicos Middleton and Dr. Christiana Kouta, she developed a census-​based area-​level index of socio-economic disadvantage for Cypriot communities. For her PhD thesis, she is investigating the social gradient in health-​related quality of life and adverse health behaviors by individual and area-​level measures of socio-economic position in a community-​based survey of residents across a socio-economically diverse sample of neighbourhoods in the city of Limassol, Cyprus. Jeff Gassen is an experimental psychology graduate student and teaching assistant at Texas Christian University studying under the mentorship of Dr. Sarah E. Hill. He grew up in Nebraska and received a bachelor of arts degree in psychology from the University of Nebraska–​Omaha. Jeff’s primary area of interest includes the role of childhood ecological factors in impacting adult outcomes through changes in the immune system, the physiology surrounding food intake, and behavior, on which he presents research regularly. He has a specific interest in the action of unpredicta­ bility, in regulating stress reactivity, temporal focus, and reliance on environmental cues. Michele J. Gelfand is Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland. She uses field, experimental, neuroscience, and computational methods to understand the evolution of cultural differences and their consequences for human groups, with a focus on the strength of social norms. She is the co-​editor of the annual series Advances in Culture and Psychology (Oxford University Press) and her work can be found at www. gelfand.umd.edu. Karl Gruschow has worked with multiple human services organizations in the US, Canada, and India since completing his doctorate at the University of Illinois, most frequently as a consultant on data collection

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and interpretation. His research interests are altruism, cultural identity, and social justice. Ivan Hernandez is a Professional Lecturer in the Industrial and Organizational division of the Psychology Department at DePaul University. He completed his doctorate degree in Social and Organizational Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-​Champaign, and post-​ doctoral training at Northwestern University. His research incorporates computational approaches to both collecting and analyzing data to address questions about both individual-​and group-​level phenomena such as the spatial dependence of job satisfaction, regional variation in absenteeism, and weekly variation in work stress. His research applies computational methods and models, such as Monte Carlo simulations, agent-​based models, and machine learning, to evaluate and develop new research methodologies. Sarah E. Hill is an evolutionary social psychologist whose research integrates theoretical principles from evolutionary biology, social psychology, and behavioral ecology. She is interested in all matter of human social behavior but spends a lot of her time examining how people respond to challenging environments. For example, she is interested in how resource scarcity and pathogen density influence behaviors ranging from mate choice and mating strategies to impulsivity and eating behavior. Her research has received steady funding from the National Science Foundation and has been reported in journals such as Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychological Science, and Evolution and Human Behavior. Sarah is currently an associate professor of social psychology at Texas Christian University. Çiğdem Kağitçibaşi sadly passed away during the processing of this edited volume. We are very honored to have been able to include her contribution in this collection. Kağitçibaşi was a recipient of the TUBİTAK Science Award and a member of the Science Academy. She is among the founders of AÇEV (Mother Child Education Foundation). She served as the first female president and honorary member of the International Association for Cross-​Cultural Psychology and the vice president of International Union of Psychological Science and the International Social Science Council. She received the Award for Distinguished Contributions to the International Advancement of Psychology from the International Applied Psychology Association and the American Psychology Association. Her theoretical and applied research focuses on

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human development in sociocultural context, education, women, and the family. She published 33 books and 222 articles. Her last affiliation was with the Psychology Department at Koç University, where she was the director of KOCKAM (Center for Gender Studies at Koç University) and the chair holder of UNESCO Chair on Gender Equality and Sustainable Development. Christiana Kouta is an associate professor of community nursing in the Department of Nursing at the Cyprus University of Technology. She is the director of the MSc program in Advanced Community Nursing and Health Care Practice. Her research interests combine community and transcultural health. She has been involved in several multipartner multinational research projects as the principal investigator or co-​ investigator. She has been president of the Community Nursing Division of the Cyprus Nurses and Midwifery Association since 2008, secretary of the European Transcultural Nurses Association since 2013, and member of the Board of Directors of the Research Unit in Behaviour and Social Issues since 2005. Together with Dr. Nicos Middleton, she supervises a number of MSc and PhD students on community health and community needs assessment projects. Demetris Lamnisos is an assistant professor of biostatistics and coordinator of the masters and PhD programs in public health at the European University Cyprus. His research interests are in multivariate spatial statistics, Bayesian hierarchical models and geographic information Systems (GIS) with applications in public health and epidemiology. As part of the Cyprus GeoHealth project, he has developed spatial factor models for summarizing area-​level deprivation indices from census data and clustering methods for profiling the Cypriot communities in terms of their sociodemographic characteristics. Work he authored/​co-​authored has been published in high-​impact journals and disseminated widely at European and international conferences. Lucia Macchia is a PhD student in psychology at City, University of London. For her PhD dissertation, she studies the influence of macroeconomic and political circumstances on subjective well-​being in Latin American cultures. She has an MSc in behavioral economics from City, University of London and a bachelor’s degree in business management from Universidad Nacional de La Plata. For her MSc dissertation she conducted cross-​cultural experimental research in order to investigate how people discount future rewards depending on their experience with inflation.

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Nicos Middleton in statistics and operational research (University College London [UCL], 1997), MSc in health care decision analysis (London School of Economics and Political Science [LSE] and The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine [LSHTM], 1998), and PhD in epidemiology (Department of Social Medicine, University of Bristol, 2004), is an associate professor in health sciences research methodology and biostatistics at the Cyprus International Institute for Environmental and Public Health, Cyprus University of Technology (CUT). His research interests lie at the intersection of social and geographical epidemiology, with a focus on health inequalities and the socioenvironmental determinants of health. He has done extensive work on the small-​area geographical patterning of suicide as a quantifiable outcome indicator of mental health inequalities in Britain. He has been involved in several research projects as principal investigator or co-​investigator, funded by European or national grants. Currently, he is the director/​principal investigator of the Cyprus GeoHealth project. Set up by internal CUT start-​up funds, this is a policy-​ driven capacity-​building and research exercise project introducing GIS in the public health arena in Cyprus with the aim of promoting “spatial thinking” among local researcher and decision-​makers. He is a member of the Society for Social Medicine, UK, and the International Epidemiologic Association. Andrzej Nowak is a permanent half-​time member of the Psychology Department at Florida Atlantic University. He is also director of the Center for Complex Systems at University of Warsaw and he holds faculty positions at University of Warsaw and the Professional School of Social Psychology in Warsaw. Professor Nowak is one of the world’s leading experts on the modeling and computer simulation of social processes. Using cellular automata, he has modeled the emergence of public opinion in society and linear versus nonlinear societal transitions. At Florida Atlantic University, he conducts both simulation and experimental research in the Dynamical Social Psychology Lab in collaboration with Robin Vallacher. Current research projects include the use of cellular automata to simulate the emergence and maintenance of self-​concept and linear and nonlinear scenarios of societal change, the use of attractor neural networks to model interpersonal and group dynamics, and the use of coupled dynamical systems to simulate the emergence of personality through social coordination. Dr. Nowak is also developing software for identifying attractors (equilibrium states) in the temporal patterns of thought and emotion on the part of people diagnosed with various forms of mental illness.

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Yuji Ogihara is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Kyoto University and the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his PhD from Kyoto University in 2015. He is interested in how cultures change over time and how cultural changes affect human psychology and behavior. Shigehiro Oishi is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. He has published over 150 articles and chapters on culture, social ecology, and well-​being, and two books: 「幸せを科学する」Doing The Science of Happiness (Shinyosha, Tokyo, 2009) and The Psychological Wealth of Nations: Do Happy People Make a Happy Society? (Wiley-​ Blackwell, 2012). Oishi was named one of the most cited social psychologists in North America in 2010 (22nd out of 611 social psychologists in the career-​stage adjusted impact factor). He is an elected fellow of American Psychological Association, Association for Psychological Science, Society of Personality and Social Psychology, and Society of Experimental Social Psychology. He served as an associate editor for Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin from 2008 to 2010, an associate editor for the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Personality and Individual Differences between 2011 and 2015. Harriet Over received her PhD from Cardiff University in 2010. She is currently a senior lecturer at the University of York where she holds an European Research Council Starting Grant. Prior to this, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. Her research focuses on the development of social learning, social motivation, and intergroup interaction. Anke C. Plagnol is a lecturer in psychology (behavioral economics) at City, University of London. She is interested in the choices that individuals make and how these affect their subjective well-​being, for instance: to what extent a woman’s decision to return (or not to return) to work after childbirth influences her overall satisfaction with life. Her recent research projects focused on female labor force participation, work-​life conflict, financial satisfaction, and aspirations. She has a PhD in economics from the University of Southern California. After her PhD, she spent several years at the University of Cambridge in the Department of Sociology where she focused on well-​being and gender equality. At Cambridge, Dr. Plagnol had an Early Career Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust and the Isaac Newton Trust, Cambridge. Yasuyuki Sawada is chief economist of Asian Development Bank, on leave from his professorship at the University of Tokyo’s Faculty of Economics.

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He is a leading scholar in development economics and has conducted a number of field studies and field experiments on various issues such as education, health, poverty, and governance reform in a variety of Asian and African countries. He was a visiting researcher of the JICA Research Institute from 2008 to 2017, a visiting professor at Stanford University in 2012, and a visiting fellow at the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (2012–​2013) and BRAC (2011–​2012). He is also a recipient of the 2013 Nikkei Book Award; the 2011 Ishikawa Prize of the Japanese Economic Association; the 2010 Kiyoshi Kojima Prize of the Japanese International Economic Association; and the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize. Dr. Sawada earned a PhD in economics at Stanford University. Jennifer Sheehy-​Skeffington is an assistant professor of social psychology at London School of Economics and Political Science. She received her PhD from Harvard University. She held postdoctoral fellowship positions at the University of Oslo and Brunel University (funded by the British Academy) and currently holds visiting researcher positions at the Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, and the Department of Political Science and Government, Aarhus University. She studies the mechanisms underlying our human sensitivity to power, status, and group membership:  their origins, interactions, and manifestation in societal context. Thomas Talhelm is an assistant professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Thomas has lived in China for five years as a Princeton in Asia fellow, as a freelance journalist in Beijing, and most recently as a Fulbright scholar. He has researched how rice farming gave southern China a very different culture from wheat-​ farming in northern China. Thomas also founded Smart Air, a social enterprise that makes low-​cost DIY air purifiers to help people in China protect themselves from air pollution. Ayşe K. Üskül is a professor of social psychology at the School of Psychology, University of Kent in Canterbury, UK. She received her degrees from Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey (BA in psychology), Vrije University of Amsterdam (MA in social psychology), and York University, Canada (PhD in social/​personality psychology). She held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Research Center for Group Dynamics, University of Michigan funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Canada. Her research on socio-economic basis of interdependence and cultural conceptions of honor has been funded by

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Author Biographies

grants from the National Science Foundation, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust and the Economic and Social Science Council, among others. She is an elected fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and Society of Experimental Social Psychology and serves as Associate Editor for Psychological Science, the European Journal of Social Psychology, and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Intergroup Relations and Group Processes. George Zannoupas is a PhD candidate in the Department of Nursing and research assistant at the GeoHealth project, Cyprus University of Technology. His PhD thesis, with Dr. Nicos Middleton as main advisor, is focused on developing the first small-​area maps of mortality and cancer registry data in order to explore the geographical patterning of inequalities across Cypriot communities and its association with area socio-economic characteristics, as indexed by a set of single census-​based indicators and newly developed composite indices of socio-economic disadvantage. He has presented this work at European and international conferences, including the annual conference of the European Public Health Association and the IEA World Congress of Epidemiology. Lucy Zhang Bencharit is a doctoral candidate in affective science in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University. Lucy is interested in culture, emotion, identity, intergroup contact, and belonging. Her cross-​ cultural research examines how to leverage independent and interdependent values to promote positive individual outcomes and foster multicultural work and class settings. Specifically, Lucy investigates the way individuals from different cultural contexts present themselves and how they are perceived and judged by others. Lucy’s research identifies how one’s values might lead to biased social judgments and highlights ways in which we can intervene on these processes to increase diversity and belonging for underrepresented groups.

Author Biographies 

| 361

INDEX

Note: Page numbers followed by f and t refer to figures and tables, respectively. Aarøe, Lene, 311 Aboriginal North America, 5 Absolutism, 10 Achuar, 276 ACORN (A Classification of Residential Neighborhoods), 147 Adaptation, hedonic, 230, 237 Adaptations, 3–​4, 6–​7, 10, 18, 27, 303–​4 Adaptive lag, 271 Adivasi children, 25 Adults; and food scarcity, 306; social exclusion response in, 42–​44 Adventitious, 93–​96, 98–​99 Affective style, 26 Affiliations, 44 “Affluence” (economic dimension), 27, 249, 250 Afghanistan, 342 Africa, 5, 15, 23, 327, 335 Africa, North, 81 Africa, West, 53, 57, 62 African Americans, 81–​82, 191, 310 Agent-​based models, honor cultures, 84, 85t–​86t, 87–​96 Aggressive agents, 88–​90 Agriculture, 10, 15 Ahioğlu, N., 205 Ahnquist, J., 154

Aldrich, D. P, 336 Alesina, A., 234 Algonkian culture, 5 Allais paradox, 343–​44 Alliance detection system, 308 Allik, M., 142 Altruism, 345 Amazon (forest), 278 America, colonial, 92 American National Anthem, 301 American Psychological Association, 202 Analects (Confucius), 55 Analytic, holistic vs., 16 Anderson, S., 338 Andreoni, J., 343 Annual Population Survey, 232 Aoki, Masahiko, 59 Arctic, 5, 16, 23 Area-​level measures; of deprivation in Europe, 143, 144t, 145t, 146; of deprivation in United Kingdom, 140, 141t, 142; of deprivation in United States, 142–​43; of socioeconomic disadvantage, 138–​48 Arizona State University, 312 Arutam, 288 Asia, 16, 23, 34, 46, 63, 70, 78, 191, 263, 340

363

Asian Americans, 184 Assertion, on hunting urban societies, 18 Assimilation, 4 Asthma, 153 Athabascan culture, 5 Australia, 23, 153 Autonomy, 204, 277, 279, 280–​81 Awajún, 276 Aydin, N., 38, 42 Baby names, and individualism, 254–​55, 259–​60 Background risk, 343 Bagandu forest, 15 Baker, W. E., 263 Bali, Indonesia, 61 Bangladesh, 334–​35 Barrios, 288 Basic personality structures, 7 Bayesian agents, 290 Behavior(s); cognitive, studies of, in ecocultural framework, 21–​26; human, linking of ecology and, in ecocultural framework, 7–​8; social, ecocultural framework in, 26–​27 Belarus, 249 Belongingness, 309 Berg, J., 337 Berkowitz, W., 19, 24 Berry, John W., 3, 10, 12, 15, 20 Bhattacharyay, R., 328 Biaka, 15 Bihar, India, 15 Biology, and ecocultural framework, 5–​7 Biracial faces, resource scarcity and reaction to, 309–​10 Birthweight, 311 Black Sea, 40, 42–​44 Blanchflower, D. G., 236 Blood glucose, 306 Bolger, K. E., 201 Books, and individualism, 256, 262–​63 Boreal forests, 5 Borkowski, W., 88–​89

364 

| 

Index

Boyd, R., 7 Braveman, P. A., 132 Brazil, 83 Brickman, P., 226, 237 Brisbane, Australia, 153 British Household Panel Study, 229, 235 British National Well-​being Programme, 232 British Whitehall II, 133 “Broken windows,” 157 Bronfenbrenner, U., 8, 203 Brooks-​Gunn, J., 201 Buck, John, 57 Bureau of Labor Statistics, 315 Cabinet Office, 331 Callen, M., 342 Calories, 66, 304 Cambodia, 342 Cameron, L., 342, 343 Campbell, D. T, 15 Campbell, W. K., 255, 256 Canada, 21, 23, 78, 136, 146–​47, 255 Cannibalism, 307 Cantril, Hadley, 225, 229 Capitalism, in Shuar culture, 283–​87 CARDIA (study), 139 Carey, R. M., 179 Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF), 333–​34 Carlos, John, 301 Carstairs Index, 140 Carter, M., 344 Cassar, A., 342, 343–​44 Castillo, M., 344 Casualties, 329 CCRIF (Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility), 333–​34 CE (college-​educated), 175–​92 Ceballo, R., 201 Cemalcilar, Z., 208, 209 Census-​based indices, 140 Chagnon, N., 83–​84 Change (subject), 274 Chantarat, S., 342, 344–​45

Chapman, Tracy, 130 Chen, E., 152 Children; and food scarcity, 305; human development human development, 206–​7; impact of socioeconomic conditions on, 319; parental educational attainment vs. that of, 186–​89; and poverty, 109; in poverty and human development, 200–​201; and resource scarcity, 302–​3, 317; social exclusion response in, 39–​42; and subjective well-​being, 238–​39 China, 15–​16, 23, 37, 113, 249, 313; individualism in, 251, 260–​63, 261f, 262f; rice farming in, 53–​73 Choice, 180–​83 Christakis, N. A., 239 Christchurch, New Zealand, 332 Christianity, 288 Chronic health conditions, 237 Cinderella, 313 Civil rights, 301 Clark, A. E., 235, 238 A Classification of Residential Neighborhoods (ACORN), 147 Coates, D., 226 Cognition, 6, 34, 38, 180–​81 Cognitive behaviors, ecocultural framework in studies of, 21–​26 Cognitive development, and low socioeconomic status, 108–​13 Cognitive pitfalls, 110–​11 Cognitive specialization, 119 Cognitive style, 22 Cohabitation, and subjective well-​being, 238 Cohen, D., 72, 88–​89 Collectivism, 26, 37, 203; individualism vs., 248–​63; in rice farming, 63–​64, 68, 71; in Shuar culture, 281; in Turkey, 205 College, 176–​79 College-​educated (CE), 175–​92 College students, first generation vs. continuing generation, 187–​89 Colonial America, 92

Colonization, 106 Commercialism, 40, 43 Community-​based mutual insurance, 336 Community enforcement mechanisms, and disasters, 335–​37 Competencies, 10, 11, 12 Competitions; for mates, 313–​18; for resources, 307, 309 Compliance, in agricultural societies, 18 CONAIE (federation), 277 Confucius, 55 Congo, 62 Contextualization, 24–​25 Convex Time Budget experiment, 343 Coordination, in rice farming, 58–​59 Coronary heart disease, 139 Cortisol levels, 185, 189 Cosmetics, 315–​17 Cosmology, 277 Cosmovisión, 288 Country-​level macro-​index insurance systems, 333–​34 Crampton, P., 139 Crops, 54–​55 Cross-​cultural differences, in response to social exclusion, 37–​39 “Crowding out,” 285 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 237 Cultural aids, 21 Cultural ecology, 5 Cultural evolution, 275; in ecocultural perspective, 6–​7; and honor cultures, 96, 97t, 98–​99 Cultural evolutionary theory, 272, 273–​76, 283, 289–​90 Cultural norms, 277 Cultural psychology, 9 Cultural transmission, 14 Culture; in ecocultural framework, 13–​14; and individualism, 251; and rice farming, 53, 54f, 55f, 63–​65; and social interdependence, 34–​35 Culture cycles, 174, 175–​80, 175f “Culture-​eliminating,” 199 Cyclones, 334–​35

Index 

| 365

Cypriot communities; development of area-​level census-​based index in, 149t; and socioeconomic disadvantage, 148–​52 Cyprus, 152, 158 Daly, Martin, 84, 87 Darwin, C., 5 Decision-​making; driven by cognitive heuristics and biases, 111–​13; and executive functioning, 114; low socioeconomic status and evolutionary perspectives on, 117–​19; slow vs. fast, 118 Deforestation, in Shuar territory, 283 De Leon, A. P., 155 Democracy, in Shuar culture, 281 Deprivation; area-​level measures of, 140, 141t, 142–​43, 144t, 145t, 146; indices of, 142; indices of, used as measure of socioeconomic area environments, 139 Development, cognitive, 108–​13 Developmental “fine-​tuning,” 304 Developmental niche, 8 Developmental plasticity, 301–​2 Dickhaut, J., 337 Diderichsen, F., 132 Diener, E., 238 Diez-​Roux, A. V., 139 Differential contexts, 8 Differential exposure, in health, 132 Differentiation, 24–​25 Dignity cultures, honor cultures vs., 79–​80 Diminishing returns, 207 DiPCare-​Q, 136 Disabilities, and subjective well-​being, 237 Disasters, 327–​46; classification of, 327–​29, 328f; and community enforcement mechanisms, 335–​37; and market-​based insurance mechanisms, 331–​34, 332f; and preferences, 339–​45; rise in number of, 327; and role of government, 334–​35; and social capital, 335–​39; and social preference parameters, 329–​30

366 

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Index

Discrimination, of poor, 106 Diseases, and individualism, 251, 254–​55, 257 Disequilibrium, 271, 276 Di Tella, R., 234 Diversity, 11, 16–​21 Divorce; and individualism, 251–​52, 257, 260, 261; and subjective well-​being, 237–​38 DMPL (double multiple price list), 343 Double multiple price list (DMPL), 343 Dropouts. See Early school leave Dryland rice, 69 Duesenberry, J. S., 229 “Dumb” change, 98 Duncan, G. J., 201 Durante, Kristina, 318 Durkheim, E., 154–​55 Dyk, R. B., 22–​23 Early Childhood Development Ecologies in Turkey (ECDET) study, 206 Early school leave, and human development, 211–​13 Easter Island, 306–​7 Easterlin, Richard A., 225–​26, 229, 238 Easterlin paradox; policy implications of, 231–​32; reasons for creation of, 229–​31; and subjective well-​being, 225–​31 Eating, resource scarcity and, in absence of hunger, 305–​6 ECDET (Early Childhood Development Ecologies in Turkey) study, 206 Ecocultural framework, 3–​28; biology’s role in, 5–​7; competencies in, 11, 12; core claims of, 4; culture in, 13–​14; and human psychological diversity, 16–​21, 17f, 19f; linking of ecology and human behavior in, 7–​8; methodological issues in, 15–​16; performances in, 11–​13; processes in, 11, 12; in studies of cognitive behaviors, 21–​26; in studies of social behaviors, 26–​27; and universalism, 9–​11

Ecocultural model, 8 Ecological anthropology, 5 Ecological determinism, and rice farming, 67–​68 Ecological niche, 8 Ecology, 45, 100; linking of human behavior and, in ecocultural framework, 7–​8 Economic affordances, of social interdependence, 35–​36 Economic culture, 44 Economic environment, xi–​xii; and individualism, 248–​49; in Shuar culture, 276–​83 Economic framework, 77 Economic growth, 328 Economic misery, 310 Economics; of Shuar culture, 277–​78, 284; of subjective well-​being, 225–​26 Ecuador, 272, 276–​77, 285, 287 Edgerton, R. B., 3–​4 Education, 171–​92; and child vs. parental educational attainment, 186–​89; effect of, on sociocultural contexts, 174–​80; effects of, on health, 134; and emotions in independent and interdependent selves, 183–​84; and ideas level of culture cycle, 179–​80; and institutional level of culture cycle, 177–​79; and interaction level of culture cycle, 175–​77; and interdependent self, 180–​86; link to health, 132; maternal, and low socioeconomic status families, 207; psychological outcomes of, 172–​73; and socioeconomic status, 109 Educational attainment, 185; function for different racial, ethnic, and gender groups, 191; occupations by, 172f, 173f Egalitarianism, 79–​80, 277 Ellaway, A., 152 Emotions, 34; in independent and interdependent selves, 183–​84; and socioeconomic position, 139 Empathy, 183 Energy regulation, 306

Environmental anthropology, 5 Environmental determinism, 5 Equilibrium, 272, 275, 283–​84 Eskimos, 21 Estonia, 249 Ethiopia, 301 Eudaimonia, 231 Europe, 72, 78, 92, 131, 134, 148, 239, 319; composite area-​level indices of deprivation in, 143, 144t, 145t, 146; income inequality in, 234–​35; social well-​being in, 228 European Americans, 184, 191 European Social Survey, 228 Evans, T., 132 Evolution, 320; cultural, 96, 97t, 98–​99, 275; genetic, 274–​75; perspectives on decision making and low socioeconomic status, 117–​19 Ex ante risk management, 339–​41 Exclusion, social. See Social exclusion Executive functioning, 114, 116, 118–​19 Ex post risk-​coping, 339 Facebook, 271 Face cultures, honor cultures vs., 79–​80 Families; income of, 205; in Shuar culture, 281–​82, 287; and socioeconomic status, 206–​7; and subjective well-​being, 239 Family, nuclear, 40 Family change theory, 202–​4, 215 Farming, 35–​36, 39–​44 “Fast Car” (song), 130 Faterson, H. F., 22–​23 Fats, 303–​4 FDI (Field-​Dependent/​Field Independent), 22–​23 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 77 Feedback, 276, 278, 287 Fei Xiatong, 57, 59, 62 Felonies, 77 Fengh, T., 113 FICO, 92 Field-​Dependent/​Field Independent (FDI), 22–​23

Index 

| 367

Finland, 341 Fishing, in Shuar culture, 278 Fiske, S. T., 38–​39 Fleming, D. A., 344 Foraging, 307–​8 Forde, D., 5 Forest and Gordon’s indices, 140 Fosbury, Dick, 301 Fosbury Flop, 301 Fowler, J. H., 239 Framingham Heart Study, 239 France, 146, 151, 232 Frank, Robert, 78 Friends, and subjective well-​being, 239 Friend/​stranger distinction, 64 Fryberg, S. A., 182–​83, 184–​85 Functionalism, 6 Gallup World, 225 Gardner, W. L., 42 Gathering, 18–​19, 26 GAZEL cohort, 133 Gbanu, 15 GDP. See Gross domestic product Gelfand, M., 88–​89 General Practitioners (GPs), 140 General Social Survey (GSS), 337 Genes, 304 Genetic evolution, 272, 274–​75 Gennetian, L. A., 201 Genomes, 275 Geographic mobility, 176 GeoHealth, 148 Georgas, J., 26 Georgellis, Y., 238 Georgia (state), 69 German Socio Economic Panel, 236 Germany, 37–​38, 65, 237, 238, 301 Ghana, 23 Ghrelin, 319 GIS, 155–​56 Glaesar, E. L., 337 Glasgow, 155 Glucorticoid signaling, 319 God, 288 Gökşen, F., 209

368 

| 

Index

Göncü, A., 205 Goodenough, D. R., 22–​23 Google Books Ngram Viewer, 256, 262 Government; and disasters, 334–​35; and resource allocations, 331 GPs (General Practitioners), 140 Graham, J., 179 Great Britain, 200, 313 Great East Japan earthquake, 342, 344 Great Hanshin-​Awaji earthquake, 331, 336 Great Kanto earthquake, 336 Great Recession, 249 Great Sichuan earthquake, 345 Greenfield, P. M., 249, 256, 262 Griskevicius, V., 316–​17 Gross domestic product (GDP), 225–​26, 234; and disasters, 328–​29; and individualism, 258, 260, 262; in Japan, 257; and societal well-​being, 240; and subjective well-​being, 231–​32 Grossmann, I., 181, 252, 253 GSS (General Social Survey), 337 Habituation, 230 Hadler, M., 234 Haiti, 334 Haller, M., 234 Hallqvist, J., 155 Hallucinogens, 282–​83, 289 Happiness; and chronic health conditions, 237; and education, 172; and income, 227, 234–​35 Harkness, S., 8 Harrison, G. W, 338 Hayami, Y., 331, 336 Health, 129–​59; and area-​level indicators of socioeconomic disadvantage, 138–​48; ecological studies of geographical inequalities in, 152–​54; and education, 134; and measures of socioeconomic position, 133–​38; non-​ social-​capital indicators of, 154–​56; social determinants of, 131–​33; and socioeconomic status, 109–​10; and subjective well-​being, 237; subjective

well-​being and mental, 226; Systemic Social Observation tools/​checklists for evaluating, 156–​57 Healy, A., 342 Hedonic adaptation, 230, 237 Heltberg, R., 340 Herding, 35–​36, 39–​44, 81 Hernandez, I., 88–​89 Hertzman, C., 201 Hierarchal spatial models, 150 Hierarchies, 79–​80, 100, 119, 132 High school educated or less educated (HSE), 175–​92 Hispanic groups, 191 Hofstede, G., 251 Holistic, analytic vs., 16 Holistic cognition, 180–​81 Homicide (Daly and Wilson), 84 Homogeneity, in school settings, 208–​9 Hong Kong, 64 Honorables, 93–​96, 98–​99 Honor agents, 88–​90 Honor cultures, 77–​100; agent-​based models, 84, 85t–​86t, 87–​96; and cultural evolution, 96, 97t, 98–​99; dignity cultures vs., 79–​80; effectiveness of law in, 88–​91; and irrationality, 82–​84; order and worth in, 78–​81; reciprocity in, 91–​96, 93t; remoteness of law enforcement in, 81–​82; risk and variance in, 84, 87–​88 Household size, and individualism, 252, 253, 258, 259, 261, 262 HSE (high school educated or less educated), 175–​92 Human agency, role of, in rice farming, 69–​70 Human development, 199–​215; and early school leave, 211–​13; effects on socioeconomic status on three-​year-​ olds’ developmental outcomes, 206–​7; in family change theory, 202–​4; and school as socialization context, 207–​9, 212t; and social class, 200–​202; in Turkish context, 204–​9, 212t, 211–​15; Turkish Early Enrichment Project (TEEP), 213–​14

Humility, in face cultures and honor cultures, 80–​81 Hungary, 249 Hunger, absence of, and resource scarcity, 305–​6 Hunting, 10, 18–​19, 21, 26, 307–​8 Hurricane Katrina, 336, 342 Huston, T. L., 201 Hyperbolic discounting, 343–​44 IBM, 251 Ideas, and education, 179–​80 Ideas level (culture cycle), 179–​80 IMD (Index of Multiple Deprivation), 142 Immigrants, 255, 319 Impulse control, 114–​15 Income(s), 176; of families, 205; gaps in Turkey, 209; and happiness, 225–​26, 227, 234–​35; and health, 134–​35; inequality effects on subjective well-​being, 232; and subjective well-​being, 226, 229–​30, 233–​35; in United States, 186 Independent culture, 13–​14 Independent self, 174, 177, 190, 192 Index-​based insurance products, 332–​33 Index insurance, 335 Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD), 142 India, 23, 25, 37–​38, 62, 65 Indian Ocean tsunami, 336, 342 Individualism, 26, 37, 247, 265; and affluence, 249, 250; in China, 260–​63, 261f, 262f; collectivism vs., 248; defined, 247; and economic environment, 248–​49; in Japan, 257–​60, 258f, 259f; in United States, 250–​57, 250f, 252f–​253f Indonesia, 53, 62, 342 Industrialized nations, 106, 208, 236 Inequalities, 120; geographical, in health, 152–​54; in health, 129–​59; income, and social well-​being, 234–​35 Inflammation, systemic, 319 Infrastructure, in rice farming, 59 Inglehart, R., 263 In-​groups, 307–​9, 311 Institutional level (culture cycle), 177–​79

Index 

| 369

Institutions, and education, 177–​79 Insulin, 319 Integration, 4 Interaction level (culture cycle), 175–​77 Interactions, 3, 11; cross-​level, and health, 153; and education, 175–​77; education effects on, 176–​77; with strangers effects on social exclusion in adults, 42–​43 Intercultural strategies, 4 Interdependence, 203, 344 Interdependent preferences, 229 Interdependent self, 174, 180–​86, 188, 190, 192 Interest agents, 88–​90 International Monetary Fund, 204 Interventions; amd practical recommendations in education, 190–​91; in early school leave, 212–​14, 215 Introversion, 238 Inuit, 5, 21 Irrationality, 82–​84, 117–​18 Irrigation; problems with, in rice farming, 59; and rice farming, 55–​56, 58–​63, 60f, 61f, 69–​70; in wheat farming, 70 Isaqzadeh, M., 342 Istanbul, Turkey, 208, 213 Istanbul Provincial Ministry of Education, 208–​9 Italy, 53 Iwianch, 288 Janoff-​Bulman, R., 226 Japan, 46, 53–​54, 62–​63, 65, 71–​73, 331, 335, 343; collectivism in, 205; individualism in, 257–​60, 258f, 259f; individualism rating in, 251 Japan Bank for International Cooperation, 64 Jarman Score, 140 Judeo-​Christianity, 288 Justices, self-​help, 79–​80, 82 Kağitςibaşi, C., 200, 202, 215 Kahn, M. E., 334–​35 Kahneman, D., 228

370 

| 

Index

Kang, S. J., 340 Kardiner, A., 7, 18 Karlan, D. S., 339 Karp, S. A., 22–​23 Keltner, D., 181 Kennedy, Robert, 231–​32 Kenrick, D. T., 314 Kenya, 301 Kim, Y. I., 342 Kingston. C., 92 Kitayama, S., 34, 254, 264 Knüpfer, S., 341, 342 Kohen, D. E., 201 Kohn, M., 200 Korea, 46, 54, 62 Kotera, T., 328 Kraus, M. W., 181 Kroeber, A., 5 Kroeber, A. L., 13–​14 Kruger, A. B., 228 Kuhn, M. A., 343 Kupersmidt, J. B., 201 Kuroishi, Y., 343–​44 Labor; exchanges in rice farming, 62, 69; force participation and subjective well-​being, 235–​36; issues in rice farming, 68–​69; requirements for rice farming, 56–​57; in Shuar culture, 282 Laboratory experiments, for cultural evolutionary theory, 290 Laibson, D. I, 337 Languages, 11 Latin America, 235–​36 Latvia, 249 Lau, M. I., 338 Law, effectiveness of, in honor cultures, 88–​91 Law enforcement, remoteness of, in honor cultures, 81–​82 Lee, J., 342 Lee, K., 113 Lelkes, O., 239 Leptin, 319 Leventhal, T., 201 Li, H., 113

Life history theory, 302 Lipstick effect, 315 Lithuania, 249 Liu, L., 113 Loans, in Shuar culture, 286 Lomax, A., 19, 24 London, United Kingdom, 138 London Health Observatory Tube, 138 Long, J. D., 342 Loss aversion, in poor, 111 Lotka-​Volterra equations, 272 Low socioeconomic status, 105–​22, 302–​3, 305, 312; and cognitive development, 108–​13; evolutionary perspectives on decision making and, 117–​19; mechanistic approach to studying, 113–​17 Low subjective social status, 115–​16, 119 Lucas, R. E., 236, 238 Luck, Shuar culture beliefs about, 282–​83 MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status, 136 MacCulloch, R., 234 Macintyre, S., 152 Madman Theory, 82–​83 Magic, Shuar culture beliefs about, 282–​83 Maikua (Brugmansia suaveolens), 282 Maladaptation, 20 Malaysia, 62, 69 Mani, A., 112, 114 Mann, Horace, 171 Mansuri, G., 336 Marginalization, 4 Market, 338 Market-​based insurance mechanisms, and disasters, 331–​34, 332f Market failure, 336 Market insurance, 330 Markus, H. R., 34, 179, 182 Marriage(s); norms in Shuar culture, 282; in Shuar culture, 277, 287; and subjective well-​beings, 237–​38 Marx, K., 18

Masculinity, in honor cultures, 92 MatDep (index), 140 Maternal education, and low socioeconomic status families, 207 Maternal stress, 202 McCabe, K., 337 McDonald’s, 156 McLoyd, V. C., 201 Measured agents, 88–​90 Media, poverty portrayal in, 107 Mediterranean, 78 MEDIx (Multiple Environmental Deprivation Index), 156 Meier, S., 236 Mental disorders, 154 Mental health, and subjective well-​being, 226 Mental Health-​Related Quality of Life, 155 MESA study, 132 Methodological issues, in ecocultural frameworks, 15–​16 Mexico, 92, 336 Mexico City, Mexico, 301–​2 Microsimulations, spatial, 147 Migration, 212–​13, 279 Miguel, E., 335 Military, 178–​79 Miller, C., 201 Millet, 55 Minnesota Family Investment Program, 201 Minorities, 319 Mischel, Walter, 115 Mismatch (theory), 271 Moai (statues), 307 Mobility, 40; geographic, 176; residential, 155; social, 106, 171 Montreal, Quebec, 156 Morality, 41–​42, 172, 179 Moran, E., 6 Mortality; premature, 151; and socioeconomic factors, 133 Motivations, 34, 188; and education, 184–​85; of students, 208 Mullainathan, S., 111–​12, 115

Index 

| 371

Multiple Environmental Deprivation Index (MEDIx), 156 Munich Re, 331 Music, in Shuar culture, 287 Mutual constitution, 175 Næs, Ø, 136 Names, baby, 254–​55, 259–​60 Nash equilibrium, 337–​39 Natém, 283 National Statistics Socioeconomic Classification, 135 National Survey of Health and Development, 133 Natural disasters, 333–​34 Natural selection, 5, 274, 320 Navy Seals, 92 Neel, R., 314 Neighborhood Psychosocial Hazards score, 155 Nepal, 23 Neuberg, S. L., 314 New Guinea, 23 New Hope anti-​poverty program, 201 New Jersey, 112 New York University, 310 New Zealand, 139, 147, 155–​56 Niehuis, S., 201 Nisbett, R. E., 12, 72 Nixon, Richard, 82–​83 Non-​market insurance, 330 Non-​social-​capital indicators, of health, 154–​56 Norms, cultural, 277 Norms, sharing, 277 North Africa, 81 North America, 5, 78 Norway, 135 Nowak, A., 88–​89 Nuclear family, 40 NZDep Index, 147 Obesity, 153, 304, 319 Occupations, 176; educational attainment linked to, 178; by educational attainments, 172f, 173f; and health, 135

372 

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Index

O’Connell, M., 234 OECD (Organization for Economic Co-​ operation and Development), 186, 231 Office for National Statistics, 232 Ogihara, Y., 260 Oishi, S., 202 Olympic Games (1968), 301–​2 ONS 4 (survey question), 232 Order, in honor cultures, 78–​81 Organismic culture, 13–​14, 199 Organization for Economic Co-​operation and Development (OECD), 186, 231 Oriente (region), 276 Oslo, 133 Ostracism. See Social exclusion Oswald, A. J., 235, 236 Oviedo, A. M., 340 Özer, S., 205 Pacific Ocean, 306 Paddy rice 54 Pain; and cultural interdependence in adults, 43; and cultural interdependence in children, 41 Parametric insurance products, 332–​33 Parenting, 203–​4; and resource scarcity, 317; and subjective-​wellbeing, 238–​39 Pareto efficiency, 338 Partnerships, and subjective well-​being, 237–​38 Patterson, G. R., 201 PCA (principle component analysis), 143, 146, 147, 150 Pearce, J. R., 156 Penker pujustin, 288 Performances, in ecocultural framework, 11–​13 Personal control, 109, 113–​14, 118, 134 Peru, 276, 284, 339 Petersen, Michael Bang, 311 Pfundmair, M., 37–​38, 42 Phillipines, 313, 343 Piff, P. K., 181 Pineo, P. O., 135–​36 Pitfalls, cognitive, 110–​11 Pitt-​Rivers, Julian, 79

Plains, 5 Polynesians, 307 Pornet, C., 146 Portable wealth, 79, 82 Porter, J. A., 135–​36 Possibilism, 5 Poverty, 105–​6, 345; in children, 109; and human development, 200–​201; impacts on cognitive resources and personal control, 110; and perception of low subjective social status, 115–​16 Powdthavee, N., 239 Power groups, 107–​8 Pratto, Felicia, 107 Preparedness, 329 Primary institutions, 7 Principle component analysis (PCA), 143, 147, 150 Prisons, 82 Processes, in ecocultural framework, 11, 12 Productivity, of rice farming, 57–​58 Pronoun use; in books, as indicator of individualism, 256; and individualism, 262 Psychological differentiation, 22–​23 Psychological diversity, and ecocultural framework, 16–​21 Psychological outcomes, of education, 172, 173 Psychological universals, 9 Public Health Disparities Geocoding project, 142 Qualitative differences, 12 Racial stereotypes, and resource scarcity, 312 Rantapuska, E., 341, 342 Rao, V., 336 Rapid Conflict Prevention Support, 335 Rationality, in honor cultures, 82–​84 Recessions, 299–​300, 315–​18, 319 Reciprocity, in honor cultures, 91–​96, 93t Regional-​level macro-​index insurance systems, 333–​34

Registrar General’s Social Class, 135 Relative spending, 316 Relativism, 10 Religion, 179; as indicator, 27; in Shuar culture, 288 Remoteness, of law enforcement in honor cultures, 81–​82 Ren, D., 37 Reproduction, 273, 304, 317–​18 Residential mobility, 155 Resource competitions, 307, 309 Resources, 35, 188, 278–​79, 336; in health, 132; and individualism, 248; and poverty, 111–​12; of schools in Turkey, 208 Resource scarcity, 117, 118–​19, 299–​320; and competition for mates, 313–​18; on Easter Island, 306–​7; and eating in absence of hunger, 305–​6; exposure to, 302–​3; and in-​groups, 307–​9; and reaction to biracial faces, 309–​10; and social trust, 310–​13; and thrifty phenotypes, 303–​6 Resource sharing, 310–​11 Resource utilization, 5–​6 Rice, dryland, 69 Rice farming, 15–​16, 53–​73; and culture, 53, 54f, 55f, 63–​65; and ecological determinism, 67–​68; future of, 71–​73; historical development of, 65–​67, 66f; human agency’s role in, 70; and irrigation, 55–​56, 58–​63, 60f, 61f, 69–​70; labor issues in, 68–​69; labor requirements for, 56–​57; methods of, 54–​58; productivity of, 57–​58 Rice theory, 67, 70 Richardson, E. A., 156 Richerson, P., 7 Risk, 341–​44; aversion to, 341; and variance in honor cultures, 84, 87–​88 Risk-​coping strategies, 340 Risk factors, 131–​32; in early school leave, 209, 212; in health, 129–​30; in human development, 201 Risk management, 339–​41 Risk reduction, 280

Index 

| 373

Rudel, T. K., 279 Rurality, deprivation effects from, 151 “Rurality-​Related Index of Socioeconomic Disadvantage,” 150 Russia, 249 Rutström, E. E., 338 Sacks, D. W., 227 Saito, K., 343 Salaries, of occupations by educational attainment, 173f Salmond, C. E., 139 Samphantharak, K., 342, 345 Sarkozy report, 232 Sarvimäki, M., 341, 342 Satisfaction with Life Scale, 228 Satyanath, S., 335 “Saving Lives: Our Healthier Nation,” 129 Sawada, Y., 328, 340, 343–​44 Scarcity, of resources, 299–​320 Scheinkman, J. A, 337 Schelling, Thomas, 78, 82 School belonging, and human development, 207–​9 Schreier, H., 152 Scotland, 16, 21 SDH. See Social Determinants of Health Secondary institutions, 7 Secularism, and individualism, 254–​55, 257 Self, 34, 38, 64–​65, 172, 174, 182, 190, 203–​4, 215 Self, interdependent, and education, 180–​86 Self-​efficacy, 109–​10, 134 Self-​esteem, 264–​65 Self-​help justice, 79–​80, 82, 92 Self-​regulation, 115, 118 SEP. See Socioeconomic position Separation, 4 Sergenti, E., 335 SES. See Socioeconomic status Shafir, E., 112, 115 Shah, A., 114 Shah, M., 342, 343 Shamanism, 288

374 

| 

Index

Shanghai, China, 65 Sharing, of resources, 310–​11 Sharing norms, 277, 279–​80 Sheehy-​Skeffington, J., 116, 312 Shiwiar, 276 Shuar culture, 271–​73, 276–​91; about, 272–​73, 276; autonomy norms, 280–​81; beliefs about magic, luck, and witchcraft, 282–​83; cosmological concepts, 288–​89; and Ecuadorian market economy, 277; and encroachment of market capitalism, 283–​87; marriage and family structure norms, 282; population densities among, 278–​79; resistance of, to change, 287–​88; sharing norms, 279–​80; social norms and economic environment among, 276–​83 Sidanius, Jim, 107, 116 Sierra Leone, 16, 21, 69 Slovenia, 249 “Smart” change, 98 Smith, S. E., 201 Smith, Tommie, 301 SMRs (Standardized Mortality Rations), 151 Snibbe, A. C., 182 SocDep (index), 140 Social behaviors, ecocultural framework in studies of, 26–​27 Social capital, 154, 239, 335–​39 Social class, 200–​202, 215 Social comparison, 229 Social conformity, 23–​24 Social contagion, 239 “Social death,” 37 Social Determinants of Health (SDH), 131–​32, 133, 157 Social dominance theory, 107 Social exclusion, 36; adults’ response to, 42–​44; children’s response to, 39–​42; cross-​cultural differences in, 37–​39; and morality in children, 41–​42 Social Fragmentation score, 154 Social gradient, 130–​31 Social independence, 34–​35

Social interdependence, 33–​36; and culture, 34–​35; economic affordances of, 35–​36 Socialization, 18; in children, 21–​22, 98–​99; human development and, in schools, 207, 209, 210f Social mobility, 106, 171 Social networks, 176 Social norms, in Shuar culture, 276–​83 Social preference parameters, and disasters, 329–​30, 344 Social science departments, xiv Social stratification, 130, 206 Social style, 26 Social trust, 310–​11 Societal size, 23–​24 Sociocultural contexts, effect of education on, 174–​80 Socioecological framework, 131 Socioecological psychology, xi, 329 Socioeconomic Index (Duncan), 135 Socioeconomic position (SEP), 108, 129–​59, 152, 153; area-​level indicators of, 138–​48; development of area-​ level census-​based index in Cypriot communities, 148–​52, 149t; and health, 130–​33; person-​and household-​ based indicators of, 133–​38; subjective measures of, 136–​37 Socioeconomic status (SES), 34, 186, 200–​201, 204, 215. See also Low socioeconomic status Sociopolitical context, 3 South America, 53, 234, 284 South Carolina, 69 Soutter, C. L., 337 Soviet Union, 249 Spain, 146 Spatial microsimulations, 147 Sprenger, C., 342, 343 Sri Lanka, 64, 342 Stability, of Shuar culture, 287–​88 Stafford, M., 154 Standardized Mortality Rations (SMRs), 151, 151t Statistics on Income and Living Conditions Survey (Europe), 146

STEM, 178 Stephens, N. M, 182–​83, 184–​85 Stereotypes; of poor, 106–​7; resource scarcity and racial, 312 Stevenson, B., 227 Steward, J., 6 Stimuli, 230 Stjärne, M. K., 155 Story-​Pictorial E.F.T, 25 Strutzer, A., 236 Subak system, 61 Subjective well-​being (SWB), 225–​27; and children, 238–​39; and Easterlin Paradox, 225–​31; and friends/​family, 239; and health, 237; and income, 229–​30; and income inequality, 234–​35; and labor force participation, 235–​36; and marriage and divorce, 237–​38; measuring, 228–​29; and parenting, 238–​39; and personal income, 233–​34; and policy, 231–​32; and work hours, 236–​37 Sugar cane, 285 Sugars, 303–​4 Suo, T., 113 Super, C., 8 “Superorganic,” 14 Supreme Court, 92 Sustainability, in Shuar culture, 284 SWB. See Subjective well-​being Sweden, 139, 155 Switzerland, 143 Syllogistic reasoning test, 25 Systemic inflammation, 319 Systemic Social Observation tools, 156–​57, 158t Taiwan, 64 Talheim, T., 15 Talukdar, F., 340 Tang Dynasty, 65–​66 Task Force on Social Status (American Psychological Association), 202 Tea, 40, 43 Technology, in rice farming, 71–​72

Index 

| 375

TEEP (Turkish Early Enrichment Project), 213–​14 Temporal discounting, 113, 114–​15, 117 Thailand, 53, 342, 344–​45 Theory of cultural change, 263 Thompson, W. W., 201 Three agent-​based models, for honor cultures, 84–​96, 85t–​86t Threshold effect, 207–​8 Thrifty phenotypes, 304 Time preference parameters, and disasters, 343–​44 Tohoku, Japan, 327 Torres Strait Islands, 10 Townsend Index, 140, 155 Transmission variables, 17–​19 Transplanting (rice farming), 56–​57 Trauma, in children, 109 Triandis, H. C, 34, 247–​48, 251 Trivers-​Willard hypothesis, 317 Trusters, 93–​96, 99 Trust game (experiment), 337–​38 Turkey, 37, 40, 42–​44, 207; human development in, 204, 209, 210f, 211–​15; sociocultural norms in, 202–​3 Turkish Early Enrichment Project (TEEP), 213–​14 Twenge, J. M., 255, 256 Twitter, 271 U-​index, 228 Unemployment, 235, 315–​16 United Kingdom, 65, 138, 155–​5 6; area-​l evel measures of deprivation in, 140, 142, 141t; poverty in, 106–​7 United Nations, 334 United States, 37–​38, 64, 65, 72, 77, 78–​79, 81, 116, 248, 249, 263, 304, 312; area-​based level measures of deprivation in, 142–​43; Easterlin Paradox in, 226; educational attainment in, 174; education in, 171; income groups in, 186; income inequality in, 234–​35; individualism in, 250–​57, 250f, 252f–​253f; MESA

376 

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Index

study in, 132; occupation categories in, 135; poverty in, 106–​7; recessions in, 299; school belonging in, 208; sociocultural norms in, 202–​3 Universalism, 9–​11, 27, 45 Uphoff, E. P., 154 Urbanization, 203, 205, 254–​55, 257 “Urban-​Specific Index of Socioeconomic Disadvantage,” 151 US Census, 315 US Congress, 314 Utero, resource scarcity in, 311 Utility interdependence, 329 Uwishin (shaman), 283 Value of children (VOC), 203 Variance, and risk in honor cultures, 84, 87–​88 Varnum, M. E., 181, 252, 253, 254, 264 Veenhoven, R., 227, 228 Venezuela, 83 Vengefuls, 93–​96, 99 Victim-​blaming, in health, 129–​30 Vietnam, 53 Vietnam war, 82–​83 Violence, 100; in honor cultures, 81–​82; in schools, 209; as a tool for control, 99 Virtue, 91, 172 Visual acuity, 10 VOC (value of children), 203 Von Kessler, C., 342 Voors, M. J., 342 Vulnerability, in health, 132–​33 Wampís, 276 Wardle, J., 136 Wars, 329 Water, for rice farming, 61 Wealth; in competition for mates, 316–​17; and individualism, 257, 263; and racial stereotypes, 312; in Shuar culture, 286 Wealth inequality, 106 Weimar Republic, 319 Weiner, Anthony, 271–​72 WEIRD societies, xiv Weisner, T., 8 Welfare, 310–​11

Wesselmann, E. D., 37 West, 12–​13 West Africa, 53, 57, 62 Wheat farming, 15–​16, 53; irrigation in, 70; rice farming vs., 55–​59, 61–​62 White, A. E., 314 Whitehead, M., 132 Whiting, B. B., 8 Whiting, J. W., 8 WHO Healthy Cities, 159 Williams, K. D., 37 Wilson, Margo, 84, 87 Winkelmann, L., 235 Winkelmann, R., 235 Witchcraft, Shuar culture beliefs about, 282–​83 Witkin, H., 22–​23

Wolfers, J., 227 Work, and subjective well-​being, 236–​37 World Bank, 285, 334 World War II, 208 Worth, in honor cultures, 78–​81 Wright, R., 92 Yamamoto, M., 38–​39 Yang, D., 336 Yangtze River, 53 Yanomamo tribe, 83 Yunnan, China, 57 Zeng, R., 262 Zhao, J., 112 Zhishuang, 59 Zimmerman, A. C., 238

Index 

| 377

INDEX

Note: Page numbers followed by f and t refer to figures and tables, respectively. Aarøe, Lene, 311 Aboriginal North America, 5 Absolutism, 10 Achuar, 276 ACORN (A Classification of Residential Neighborhoods), 147 Adaptation, hedonic, 230, 237 Adaptations, 3–​4, 6–​7, 10, 18, 27, 303–​4 Adaptive lag, 271 Adivasi children, 25 Adults; and food scarcity, 306; social exclusion response in, 42–​44 Adventitious, 93–​96, 98–​99 Affective style, 26 Affiliations, 44 “Affluence” (economic dimension), 27, 249, 250 Afghanistan, 342 Africa, 5, 15, 23, 327, 335 Africa, North, 81 Africa, West, 53, 57, 62 African Americans, 81–​82, 191, 310 Agent-​based models, honor cultures, 84, 85t–​86t, 87–​96 Aggressive agents, 88–​90 Agriculture, 10, 15 Ahioğlu, N., 205 Ahnquist, J., 154

Aldrich, D. P, 336 Alesina, A., 234 Algonkian culture, 5 Allais paradox, 343–​44 Alliance detection system, 308 Allik, M., 142 Altruism, 345 Amazon (forest), 278 America, colonial, 92 American National Anthem, 301 American Psychological Association, 202 Analects (Confucius), 55 Analytic, holistic vs., 16 Anderson, S., 338 Andreoni, J., 343 Annual Population Survey, 232 Aoki, Masahiko, 59 Arctic, 5, 16, 23 Area-​level measures; of deprivation in Europe, 143, 144t, 145t, 146; of deprivation in United Kingdom, 140, 141t, 142; of deprivation in United States, 142–​43; of socioeconomic disadvantage, 138–​48 Arizona State University, 312 Arutam, 288 Asia, 16, 23, 34, 46, 63, 70, 78, 191, 263, 340

363

Asian Americans, 184 Assertion, on hunting urban societies, 18 Assimilation, 4 Asthma, 153 Athabascan culture, 5 Australia, 23, 153 Autonomy, 204, 277, 279, 280–​81 Awajún, 276 Aydin, N., 38, 42 Baby names, and individualism, 254–​55, 259–​60 Background risk, 343 Bagandu forest, 15 Baker, W. E., 263 Bali, Indonesia, 61 Bangladesh, 334–​35 Barrios, 288 Basic personality structures, 7 Bayesian agents, 290 Behavior(s); cognitive, studies of, in ecocultural framework, 21–​26; human, linking of ecology and, in ecocultural framework, 7–​8; social, ecocultural framework in, 26–​27 Belarus, 249 Belongingness, 309 Berg, J., 337 Berkowitz, W., 19, 24 Berry, John W., 3, 10, 12, 15, 20 Bhattacharyay, R., 328 Biaka, 15 Bihar, India, 15 Biology, and ecocultural framework, 5–​7 Biracial faces, resource scarcity and reaction to, 309–​10 Birthweight, 311 Black Sea, 40, 42–​44 Blanchflower, D. G., 236 Blood glucose, 306 Bolger, K. E., 201 Books, and individualism, 256, 262–​63 Boreal forests, 5 Borkowski, W., 88–​89

364 

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Index

Boyd, R., 7 Braveman, P. A., 132 Brazil, 83 Brickman, P., 226, 237 Brisbane, Australia, 153 British Household Panel Study, 229, 235 British National Well-​being Programme, 232 British Whitehall II, 133 “Broken windows,” 157 Bronfenbrenner, U., 8, 203 Brooks-​Gunn, J., 201 Buck, John, 57 Bureau of Labor Statistics, 315 Cabinet Office, 331 Callen, M., 342 Calories, 66, 304 Cambodia, 342 Cameron, L., 342, 343 Campbell, D. T, 15 Campbell, W. K., 255, 256 Canada, 21, 23, 78, 136, 146–​47, 255 Cannibalism, 307 Cantril, Hadley, 225, 229 Capitalism, in Shuar culture, 283–​87 CARDIA (study), 139 Carey, R. M., 179 Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF), 333–​34 Carlos, John, 301 Carstairs Index, 140 Carter, M., 344 Cassar, A., 342, 343–​44 Castillo, M., 344 Casualties, 329 CCRIF (Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility), 333–​34 CE (college-​educated), 175–​92 Ceballo, R., 201 Cemalcilar, Z., 208, 209 Census-​based indices, 140 Chagnon, N., 83–​84 Change (subject), 274 Chantarat, S., 342, 344–​45

Chapman, Tracy, 130 Chen, E., 152 Children; and food scarcity, 305; human development human development, 206–​7; impact of socioeconomic conditions on, 319; parental educational attainment vs. that of, 186–​89; and poverty, 109; in poverty and human development, 200–​201; and resource scarcity, 302–​3, 317; social exclusion response in, 39–​42; and subjective well-​being, 238–​39 China, 15–​16, 23, 37, 113, 249, 313; individualism in, 251, 260–​63, 261f, 262f; rice farming in, 53–​73 Choice, 180–​83 Christakis, N. A., 239 Christchurch, New Zealand, 332 Christianity, 288 Chronic health conditions, 237 Cinderella, 313 Civil rights, 301 Clark, A. E., 235, 238 A Classification of Residential Neighborhoods (ACORN), 147 Coates, D., 226 Cognition, 6, 34, 38, 180–​81 Cognitive behaviors, ecocultural framework in studies of, 21–​26 Cognitive development, and low socioeconomic status, 108–​13 Cognitive pitfalls, 110–​11 Cognitive specialization, 119 Cognitive style, 22 Cohabitation, and subjective well-​being, 238 Cohen, D., 72, 88–​89 Collectivism, 26, 37, 203; individualism vs., 248–​63; in rice farming, 63–​64, 68, 71; in Shuar culture, 281; in Turkey, 205 College, 176–​79 College-​educated (CE), 175–​92 College students, first generation vs. continuing generation, 187–​89 Colonial America, 92

Colonization, 106 Commercialism, 40, 43 Community-​based mutual insurance, 336 Community enforcement mechanisms, and disasters, 335–​37 Competencies, 10, 11, 12 Competitions; for mates, 313–​18; for resources, 307, 309 Compliance, in agricultural societies, 18 CONAIE (federation), 277 Confucius, 55 Congo, 62 Contextualization, 24–​25 Convex Time Budget experiment, 343 Coordination, in rice farming, 58–​59 Coronary heart disease, 139 Cortisol levels, 185, 189 Cosmetics, 315–​17 Cosmology, 277 Cosmovisión, 288 Country-​level macro-​index insurance systems, 333–​34 Crampton, P., 139 Crops, 54–​55 Cross-​cultural differences, in response to social exclusion, 37–​39 “Crowding out,” 285 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 237 Cultural aids, 21 Cultural ecology, 5 Cultural evolution, 275; in ecocultural perspective, 6–​7; and honor cultures, 96, 97t, 98–​99 Cultural evolutionary theory, 272, 273–​76, 283, 289–​90 Cultural norms, 277 Cultural psychology, 9 Cultural transmission, 14 Culture; in ecocultural framework, 13–​14; and individualism, 251; and rice farming, 53, 54f, 55f, 63–​65; and social interdependence, 34–​35 Culture cycles, 174, 175–​80, 175f “Culture-​eliminating,” 199 Cyclones, 334–​35

Index 

| 365

Cypriot communities; development of area-​level census-​based index in, 149t; and socioeconomic disadvantage, 148–​52 Cyprus, 152, 158 Daly, Martin, 84, 87 Darwin, C., 5 Decision-​making; driven by cognitive heuristics and biases, 111–​13; and executive functioning, 114; low socioeconomic status and evolutionary perspectives on, 117–​19; slow vs. fast, 118 Deforestation, in Shuar territory, 283 De Leon, A. P., 155 Democracy, in Shuar culture, 281 Deprivation; area-​level measures of, 140, 141t, 142–​43, 144t, 145t, 146; indices of, 142; indices of, used as measure of socioeconomic area environments, 139 Development, cognitive, 108–​13 Developmental “fine-​tuning,” 304 Developmental niche, 8 Developmental plasticity, 301–​2 Dickhaut, J., 337 Diderichsen, F., 132 Diener, E., 238 Diez-​Roux, A. V., 139 Differential contexts, 8 Differential exposure, in health, 132 Differentiation, 24–​25 Dignity cultures, honor cultures vs., 79–​80 Diminishing returns, 207 DiPCare-​Q, 136 Disabilities, and subjective well-​being, 237 Disasters, 327–​46; classification of, 327–​29, 328f; and community enforcement mechanisms, 335–​37; and market-​based insurance mechanisms, 331–​34, 332f; and preferences, 339–​45; rise in number of, 327; and role of government, 334–​35; and social capital, 335–​39; and social preference parameters, 329–​30

366 

| 

Index

Discrimination, of poor, 106 Diseases, and individualism, 251, 254–​55, 257 Disequilibrium, 271, 276 Di Tella, R., 234 Diversity, 11, 16–​21 Divorce; and individualism, 251–​52, 257, 260, 261; and subjective well-​being, 237–​38 DMPL (double multiple price list), 343 Double multiple price list (DMPL), 343 Dropouts. See Early school leave Dryland rice, 69 Duesenberry, J. S., 229 “Dumb” change, 98 Duncan, G. J., 201 Durante, Kristina, 318 Durkheim, E., 154–​55 Dyk, R. B., 22–​23 Early Childhood Development Ecologies in Turkey (ECDET) study, 206 Early school leave, and human development, 211–​13 Easter Island, 306–​7 Easterlin, Richard A., 225–​26, 229, 238 Easterlin paradox; policy implications of, 231–​32; reasons for creation of, 229–​31; and subjective well-​being, 225–​31 Eating, resource scarcity and, in absence of hunger, 305–​6 ECDET (Early Childhood Development Ecologies in Turkey) study, 206 Ecocultural framework, 3–​28; biology’s role in, 5–​7; competencies in, 11, 12; core claims of, 4; culture in, 13–​14; and human psychological diversity, 16–​21, 17f, 19f; linking of ecology and human behavior in, 7–​8; methodological issues in, 15–​16; performances in, 11–​13; processes in, 11, 12; in studies of cognitive behaviors, 21–​26; in studies of social behaviors, 26–​27; and universalism, 9–​11

Ecocultural model, 8 Ecological anthropology, 5 Ecological determinism, and rice farming, 67–​68 Ecological niche, 8 Ecology, 45, 100; linking of human behavior and, in ecocultural framework, 7–​8 Economic affordances, of social interdependence, 35–​36 Economic culture, 44 Economic environment, xi–​xii; and individualism, 248–​49; in Shuar culture, 276–​83 Economic framework, 77 Economic growth, 328 Economic misery, 310 Economics; of Shuar culture, 277–​78, 284; of subjective well-​being, 225–​26 Ecuador, 272, 276–​77, 285, 287 Edgerton, R. B., 3–​4 Education, 171–​92; and child vs. parental educational attainment, 186–​89; effect of, on sociocultural contexts, 174–​80; effects of, on health, 134; and emotions in independent and interdependent selves, 183–​84; and ideas level of culture cycle, 179–​80; and institutional level of culture cycle, 177–​79; and interaction level of culture cycle, 175–​77; and interdependent self, 180–​86; link to health, 132; maternal, and low socioeconomic status families, 207; psychological outcomes of, 172–​73; and socioeconomic status, 109 Educational attainment, 185; function for different racial, ethnic, and gender groups, 191; occupations by, 172f, 173f Egalitarianism, 79–​80, 277 Ellaway, A., 152 Emotions, 34; in independent and interdependent selves, 183–​84; and socioeconomic position, 139 Empathy, 183 Energy regulation, 306

Environmental anthropology, 5 Environmental determinism, 5 Equilibrium, 272, 275, 283–​84 Eskimos, 21 Estonia, 249 Ethiopia, 301 Eudaimonia, 231 Europe, 72, 78, 92, 131, 134, 148, 239, 319; composite area-​level indices of deprivation in, 143, 144t, 145t, 146; income inequality in, 234–​35; social well-​being in, 228 European Americans, 184, 191 European Social Survey, 228 Evans, T., 132 Evolution, 320; cultural, 96, 97t, 98–​99, 275; genetic, 274–​75; perspectives on decision making and low socioeconomic status, 117–​19 Ex ante risk management, 339–​41 Exclusion, social. See Social exclusion Executive functioning, 114, 116, 118–​19 Ex post risk-​coping, 339 Facebook, 271 Face cultures, honor cultures vs., 79–​80 Families; income of, 205; in Shuar culture, 281–​82, 287; and socioeconomic status, 206–​7; and subjective well-​being, 239 Family, nuclear, 40 Family change theory, 202–​4, 215 Farming, 35–​36, 39–​44 “Fast Car” (song), 130 Faterson, H. F., 22–​23 Fats, 303–​4 FDI (Field-​Dependent/​Field Independent), 22–​23 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 77 Feedback, 276, 278, 287 Fei Xiatong, 57, 59, 62 Felonies, 77 Fengh, T., 113 FICO, 92 Field-​Dependent/​Field Independent (FDI), 22–​23

Index 

| 367

Finland, 341 Fishing, in Shuar culture, 278 Fiske, S. T., 38–​39 Fleming, D. A., 344 Foraging, 307–​8 Forde, D., 5 Forest and Gordon’s indices, 140 Fosbury, Dick, 301 Fosbury Flop, 301 Fowler, J. H., 239 Framingham Heart Study, 239 France, 146, 151, 232 Frank, Robert, 78 Friends, and subjective well-​being, 239 Friend/​stranger distinction, 64 Fryberg, S. A., 182–​83, 184–​85 Functionalism, 6 Gallup World, 225 Gardner, W. L., 42 Gathering, 18–​19, 26 GAZEL cohort, 133 Gbanu, 15 GDP. See Gross domestic product Gelfand, M., 88–​89 General Practitioners (GPs), 140 General Social Survey (GSS), 337 Genes, 304 Genetic evolution, 272, 274–​75 Gennetian, L. A., 201 Genomes, 275 Geographic mobility, 176 GeoHealth, 148 Georgas, J., 26 Georgellis, Y., 238 Georgia (state), 69 German Socio Economic Panel, 236 Germany, 37–​38, 65, 237, 238, 301 Ghana, 23 Ghrelin, 319 GIS, 155–​56 Glaesar, E. L., 337 Glasgow, 155 Glucorticoid signaling, 319 God, 288 Gökşen, F., 209

368 

| 

Index

Göncü, A., 205 Goodenough, D. R., 22–​23 Google Books Ngram Viewer, 256, 262 Government; and disasters, 334–​35; and resource allocations, 331 GPs (General Practitioners), 140 Graham, J., 179 Great Britain, 200, 313 Great East Japan earthquake, 342, 344 Great Hanshin-​Awaji earthquake, 331, 336 Great Kanto earthquake, 336 Great Recession, 249 Great Sichuan earthquake, 345 Greenfield, P. M., 249, 256, 262 Griskevicius, V., 316–​17 Gross domestic product (GDP), 225–​26, 234; and disasters, 328–​29; and individualism, 258, 260, 262; in Japan, 257; and societal well-​being, 240; and subjective well-​being, 231–​32 Grossmann, I., 181, 252, 253 GSS (General Social Survey), 337 Habituation, 230 Hadler, M., 234 Haiti, 334 Haller, M., 234 Hallqvist, J., 155 Hallucinogens, 282–​83, 289 Happiness; and chronic health conditions, 237; and education, 172; and income, 227, 234–​35 Harkness, S., 8 Harrison, G. W, 338 Hayami, Y., 331, 336 Health, 129–​59; and area-​level indicators of socioeconomic disadvantage, 138–​48; ecological studies of geographical inequalities in, 152–​54; and education, 134; and measures of socioeconomic position, 133–​38; non-​ social-​capital indicators of, 154–​56; social determinants of, 131–​33; and socioeconomic status, 109–​10; and subjective well-​being, 237; subjective

well-​being and mental, 226; Systemic Social Observation tools/​checklists for evaluating, 156–​57 Healy, A., 342 Hedonic adaptation, 230, 237 Heltberg, R., 340 Herding, 35–​36, 39–​44, 81 Hernandez, I., 88–​89 Hertzman, C., 201 Hierarchal spatial models, 150 Hierarchies, 79–​80, 100, 119, 132 High school educated or less educated (HSE), 175–​92 Hispanic groups, 191 Hofstede, G., 251 Holistic, analytic vs., 16 Holistic cognition, 180–​81 Homicide (Daly and Wilson), 84 Homogeneity, in school settings, 208–​9 Hong Kong, 64 Honorables, 93–​96, 98–​99 Honor agents, 88–​90 Honor cultures, 77–​100; agent-​based models, 84, 85t–​86t, 87–​96; and cultural evolution, 96, 97t, 98–​99; dignity cultures vs., 79–​80; effectiveness of law in, 88–​91; and irrationality, 82–​84; order and worth in, 78–​81; reciprocity in, 91–​96, 93t; remoteness of law enforcement in, 81–​82; risk and variance in, 84, 87–​88 Household size, and individualism, 252, 253, 258, 259, 261, 262 HSE (high school educated or less educated), 175–​92 Human agency, role of, in rice farming, 69–​70 Human development, 199–​215; and early school leave, 211–​13; effects on socioeconomic status on three-​year-​ olds’ developmental outcomes, 206–​7; in family change theory, 202–​4; and school as socialization context, 207–​9, 212t; and social class, 200–​202; in Turkish context, 204–​9, 212t, 211–​15; Turkish Early Enrichment Project (TEEP), 213–​14

Humility, in face cultures and honor cultures, 80–​81 Hungary, 249 Hunger, absence of, and resource scarcity, 305–​6 Hunting, 10, 18–​19, 21, 26, 307–​8 Hurricane Katrina, 336, 342 Huston, T. L., 201 Hyperbolic discounting, 343–​44 IBM, 251 Ideas, and education, 179–​80 Ideas level (culture cycle), 179–​80 IMD (Index of Multiple Deprivation), 142 Immigrants, 255, 319 Impulse control, 114–​15 Income(s), 176; of families, 205; gaps in Turkey, 209; and happiness, 225–​26, 227, 234–​35; and health, 134–​35; inequality effects on subjective well-​being, 232; and subjective well-​being, 226, 229–​30, 233–​35; in United States, 186 Independent culture, 13–​14 Independent self, 174, 177, 190, 192 Index-​based insurance products, 332–​33 Index insurance, 335 Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD), 142 India, 23, 25, 37–​38, 62, 65 Indian Ocean tsunami, 336, 342 Individualism, 26, 37, 247, 265; and affluence, 249, 250; in China, 260–​63, 261f, 262f; collectivism vs., 248; defined, 247; and economic environment, 248–​49; in Japan, 257–​60, 258f, 259f; in United States, 250–​57, 250f, 252f–​253f Indonesia, 53, 62, 342 Industrialized nations, 106, 208, 236 Inequalities, 120; geographical, in health, 152–​54; in health, 129–​59; income, and social well-​being, 234–​35 Inflammation, systemic, 319 Infrastructure, in rice farming, 59 Inglehart, R., 263 In-​groups, 307–​9, 311 Institutional level (culture cycle), 177–​79

Index 

| 369

Institutions, and education, 177–​79 Insulin, 319 Integration, 4 Interaction level (culture cycle), 175–​77 Interactions, 3, 11; cross-​level, and health, 153; and education, 175–​77; education effects on, 176–​77; with strangers effects on social exclusion in adults, 42–​43 Intercultural strategies, 4 Interdependence, 203, 344 Interdependent preferences, 229 Interdependent self, 174, 180–​86, 188, 190, 192 Interest agents, 88–​90 International Monetary Fund, 204 Interventions; amd practical recommendations in education, 190–​91; in early school leave, 212–​14, 215 Introversion, 238 Inuit, 5, 21 Irrationality, 82–​84, 117–​18 Irrigation; problems with, in rice farming, 59; and rice farming, 55–​56, 58–​63, 60f, 61f, 69–​70; in wheat farming, 70 Isaqzadeh, M., 342 Istanbul, Turkey, 208, 213 Istanbul Provincial Ministry of Education, 208–​9 Italy, 53 Iwianch, 288 Janoff-​Bulman, R., 226 Japan, 46, 53–​54, 62–​63, 65, 71–​73, 331, 335, 343; collectivism in, 205; individualism in, 257–​60, 258f, 259f; individualism rating in, 251 Japan Bank for International Cooperation, 64 Jarman Score, 140 Judeo-​Christianity, 288 Justices, self-​help, 79–​80, 82 Kağitςibaşi, C., 200, 202, 215 Kahn, M. E., 334–​35 Kahneman, D., 228

370 

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Index

Kang, S. J., 340 Kardiner, A., 7, 18 Karlan, D. S., 339 Karp, S. A., 22–​23 Keltner, D., 181 Kennedy, Robert, 231–​32 Kenrick, D. T., 314 Kenya, 301 Kim, Y. I., 342 Kingston. C., 92 Kitayama, S., 34, 254, 264 Knüpfer, S., 341, 342 Kohen, D. E., 201 Kohn, M., 200 Korea, 46, 54, 62 Kotera, T., 328 Kraus, M. W., 181 Kroeber, A., 5 Kroeber, A. L., 13–​14 Kruger, A. B., 228 Kuhn, M. A., 343 Kupersmidt, J. B., 201 Kuroishi, Y., 343–​44 Labor; exchanges in rice farming, 62, 69; force participation and subjective well-​being, 235–​36; issues in rice farming, 68–​69; requirements for rice farming, 56–​57; in Shuar culture, 282 Laboratory experiments, for cultural evolutionary theory, 290 Laibson, D. I, 337 Languages, 11 Latin America, 235–​36 Latvia, 249 Lau, M. I., 338 Law, effectiveness of, in honor cultures, 88–​91 Law enforcement, remoteness of, in honor cultures, 81–​82 Lee, J., 342 Lee, K., 113 Lelkes, O., 239 Leptin, 319 Leventhal, T., 201 Li, H., 113

Life history theory, 302 Lipstick effect, 315 Lithuania, 249 Liu, L., 113 Loans, in Shuar culture, 286 Lomax, A., 19, 24 London, United Kingdom, 138 London Health Observatory Tube, 138 Long, J. D., 342 Loss aversion, in poor, 111 Lotka-​Volterra equations, 272 Low socioeconomic status, 105–​22, 302–​3, 305, 312; and cognitive development, 108–​13; evolutionary perspectives on decision making and, 117–​19; mechanistic approach to studying, 113–​17 Low subjective social status, 115–​16, 119 Lucas, R. E., 236, 238 Luck, Shuar culture beliefs about, 282–​83 MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status, 136 MacCulloch, R., 234 Macintyre, S., 152 Madman Theory, 82–​83 Magic, Shuar culture beliefs about, 282–​83 Maikua (Brugmansia suaveolens), 282 Maladaptation, 20 Malaysia, 62, 69 Mani, A., 112, 114 Mann, Horace, 171 Mansuri, G., 336 Marginalization, 4 Market, 338 Market-​based insurance mechanisms, and disasters, 331–​34, 332f Market failure, 336 Market insurance, 330 Markus, H. R., 34, 179, 182 Marriage(s); norms in Shuar culture, 282; in Shuar culture, 277, 287; and subjective well-​beings, 237–​38 Marx, K., 18

Masculinity, in honor cultures, 92 MatDep (index), 140 Maternal education, and low socioeconomic status families, 207 Maternal stress, 202 McCabe, K., 337 McDonald’s, 156 McLoyd, V. C., 201 Measured agents, 88–​90 Media, poverty portrayal in, 107 Mediterranean, 78 MEDIx (Multiple Environmental Deprivation Index), 156 Meier, S., 236 Mental disorders, 154 Mental health, and subjective well-​being, 226 Mental Health-​Related Quality of Life, 155 MESA study, 132 Methodological issues, in ecocultural frameworks, 15–​16 Mexico, 92, 336 Mexico City, Mexico, 301–​2 Microsimulations, spatial, 147 Migration, 212–​13, 279 Miguel, E., 335 Military, 178–​79 Miller, C., 201 Millet, 55 Minnesota Family Investment Program, 201 Minorities, 319 Mischel, Walter, 115 Mismatch (theory), 271 Moai (statues), 307 Mobility, 40; geographic, 176; residential, 155; social, 106, 171 Montreal, Quebec, 156 Morality, 41–​42, 172, 179 Moran, E., 6 Mortality; premature, 151; and socioeconomic factors, 133 Motivations, 34, 188; and education, 184–​85; of students, 208 Mullainathan, S., 111–​12, 115

Index 

| 371

Multiple Environmental Deprivation Index (MEDIx), 156 Munich Re, 331 Music, in Shuar culture, 287 Mutual constitution, 175 Næs, Ø, 136 Names, baby, 254–​55, 259–​60 Nash equilibrium, 337–​39 Natém, 283 National Statistics Socioeconomic Classification, 135 National Survey of Health and Development, 133 Natural disasters, 333–​34 Natural selection, 5, 274, 320 Navy Seals, 92 Neel, R., 314 Neighborhood Psychosocial Hazards score, 155 Nepal, 23 Neuberg, S. L., 314 New Guinea, 23 New Hope anti-​poverty program, 201 New Jersey, 112 New York University, 310 New Zealand, 139, 147, 155–​56 Niehuis, S., 201 Nisbett, R. E., 12, 72 Nixon, Richard, 82–​83 Non-​market insurance, 330 Non-​social-​capital indicators, of health, 154–​56 Norms, cultural, 277 Norms, sharing, 277 North Africa, 81 North America, 5, 78 Norway, 135 Nowak, A., 88–​89 Nuclear family, 40 NZDep Index, 147 Obesity, 153, 304, 319 Occupations, 176; educational attainment linked to, 178; by educational attainments, 172f, 173f; and health, 135

372 

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Index

O’Connell, M., 234 OECD (Organization for Economic Co-​ operation and Development), 186, 231 Office for National Statistics, 232 Ogihara, Y., 260 Oishi, S., 202 Olympic Games (1968), 301–​2 ONS 4 (survey question), 232 Order, in honor cultures, 78–​81 Organismic culture, 13–​14, 199 Organization for Economic Co-​operation and Development (OECD), 186, 231 Oriente (region), 276 Oslo, 133 Ostracism. See Social exclusion Oswald, A. J., 235, 236 Oviedo, A. M., 340 Özer, S., 205 Pacific Ocean, 306 Paddy rice 54 Pain; and cultural interdependence in adults, 43; and cultural interdependence in children, 41 Parametric insurance products, 332–​33 Parenting, 203–​4; and resource scarcity, 317; and subjective-​wellbeing, 238–​39 Pareto efficiency, 338 Partnerships, and subjective well-​being, 237–​38 Patterson, G. R., 201 PCA (principle component analysis), 143, 146, 147, 150 Pearce, J. R., 156 Penker pujustin, 288 Performances, in ecocultural framework, 11–​13 Personal control, 109, 113–​14, 118, 134 Peru, 276, 284, 339 Petersen, Michael Bang, 311 Pfundmair, M., 37–​38, 42 Phillipines, 313, 343 Piff, P. K., 181 Pineo, P. O., 135–​36 Pitfalls, cognitive, 110–​11 Pitt-​Rivers, Julian, 79

Plains, 5 Polynesians, 307 Pornet, C., 146 Portable wealth, 79, 82 Porter, J. A., 135–​36 Possibilism, 5 Poverty, 105–​6, 345; in children, 109; and human development, 200–​201; impacts on cognitive resources and personal control, 110; and perception of low subjective social status, 115–​16 Powdthavee, N., 239 Power groups, 107–​8 Pratto, Felicia, 107 Preparedness, 329 Primary institutions, 7 Principle component analysis (PCA), 143, 147, 150 Prisons, 82 Processes, in ecocultural framework, 11, 12 Productivity, of rice farming, 57–​58 Pronoun use; in books, as indicator of individualism, 256; and individualism, 262 Psychological differentiation, 22–​23 Psychological diversity, and ecocultural framework, 16–​21 Psychological outcomes, of education, 172, 173 Psychological universals, 9 Public Health Disparities Geocoding project, 142 Qualitative differences, 12 Racial stereotypes, and resource scarcity, 312 Rantapuska, E., 341, 342 Rao, V., 336 Rapid Conflict Prevention Support, 335 Rationality, in honor cultures, 82–​84 Recessions, 299–​300, 315–​18, 319 Reciprocity, in honor cultures, 91–​96, 93t Regional-​level macro-​index insurance systems, 333–​34

Registrar General’s Social Class, 135 Relative spending, 316 Relativism, 10 Religion, 179; as indicator, 27; in Shuar culture, 288 Remoteness, of law enforcement in honor cultures, 81–​82 Ren, D., 37 Reproduction, 273, 304, 317–​18 Residential mobility, 155 Resource competitions, 307, 309 Resources, 35, 188, 278–​79, 336; in health, 132; and individualism, 248; and poverty, 111–​12; of schools in Turkey, 208 Resource scarcity, 117, 118–​19, 299–​320; and competition for mates, 313–​18; on Easter Island, 306–​7; and eating in absence of hunger, 305–​6; exposure to, 302–​3; and in-​groups, 307–​9; and reaction to biracial faces, 309–​10; and social trust, 310–​13; and thrifty phenotypes, 303–​6 Resource sharing, 310–​11 Resource utilization, 5–​6 Rice, dryland, 69 Rice farming, 15–​16, 53–​73; and culture, 53, 54f, 55f, 63–​65; and ecological determinism, 67–​68; future of, 71–​73; historical development of, 65–​67, 66f; human agency’s role in, 70; and irrigation, 55–​56, 58–​63, 60f, 61f, 69–​70; labor issues in, 68–​69; labor requirements for, 56–​57; methods of, 54–​58; productivity of, 57–​58 Rice theory, 67, 70 Richardson, E. A., 156 Richerson, P., 7 Risk, 341–​44; aversion to, 341; and variance in honor cultures, 84, 87–​88 Risk-​coping strategies, 340 Risk factors, 131–​32; in early school leave, 209, 212; in health, 129–​30; in human development, 201 Risk management, 339–​41 Risk reduction, 280

Index 

| 373

Rudel, T. K., 279 Rurality, deprivation effects from, 151 “Rurality-​Related Index of Socioeconomic Disadvantage,” 150 Russia, 249 Rutström, E. E., 338 Sacks, D. W., 227 Saito, K., 343 Salaries, of occupations by educational attainment, 173f Salmond, C. E., 139 Samphantharak, K., 342, 345 Sarkozy report, 232 Sarvimäki, M., 341, 342 Satisfaction with Life Scale, 228 Satyanath, S., 335 “Saving Lives: Our Healthier Nation,” 129 Sawada, Y., 328, 340, 343–​44 Scarcity, of resources, 299–​320 Scheinkman, J. A, 337 Schelling, Thomas, 78, 82 School belonging, and human development, 207–​9 Schreier, H., 152 Scotland, 16, 21 SDH. See Social Determinants of Health Secondary institutions, 7 Secularism, and individualism, 254–​55, 257 Self, 34, 38, 64–​65, 172, 174, 182, 190, 203–​4, 215 Self, interdependent, and education, 180–​86 Self-​efficacy, 109–​10, 134 Self-​esteem, 264–​65 Self-​help justice, 79–​80, 82, 92 Self-​regulation, 115, 118 SEP. See Socioeconomic position Separation, 4 Sergenti, E., 335 SES. See Socioeconomic status Shafir, E., 112, 115 Shah, A., 114 Shah, M., 342, 343 Shamanism, 288

374 

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Index

Shanghai, China, 65 Sharing, of resources, 310–​11 Sharing norms, 277, 279–​80 Sheehy-​Skeffington, J., 116, 312 Shiwiar, 276 Shuar culture, 271–​73, 276–​91; about, 272–​73, 276; autonomy norms, 280–​81; beliefs about magic, luck, and witchcraft, 282–​83; cosmological concepts, 288–​89; and Ecuadorian market economy, 277; and encroachment of market capitalism, 283–​87; marriage and family structure norms, 282; population densities among, 278–​79; resistance of, to change, 287–​88; sharing norms, 279–​80; social norms and economic environment among, 276–​83 Sidanius, Jim, 107, 116 Sierra Leone, 16, 21, 69 Slovenia, 249 “Smart” change, 98 Smith, S. E., 201 Smith, Tommie, 301 SMRs (Standardized Mortality Rations), 151 Snibbe, A. C., 182 SocDep (index), 140 Social behaviors, ecocultural framework in studies of, 26–​27 Social capital, 154, 239, 335–​39 Social class, 200–​202, 215 Social comparison, 229 Social conformity, 23–​24 Social contagion, 239 “Social death,” 37 Social Determinants of Health (SDH), 131–​32, 133, 157 Social dominance theory, 107 Social exclusion, 36; adults’ response to, 42–​44; children’s response to, 39–​42; cross-​cultural differences in, 37–​39; and morality in children, 41–​42 Social Fragmentation score, 154 Social gradient, 130–​31 Social independence, 34–​35

Social interdependence, 33–​36; and culture, 34–​35; economic affordances of, 35–​36 Socialization, 18; in children, 21–​22, 98–​99; human development and, in schools, 207, 209, 210f Social mobility, 106, 171 Social networks, 176 Social norms, in Shuar culture, 276–​83 Social preference parameters, and disasters, 329–​30, 344 Social science departments, xiv Social stratification, 130, 206 Social style, 26 Social trust, 310–​11 Societal size, 23–​24 Sociocultural contexts, effect of education on, 174–​80 Socioecological framework, 131 Socioecological psychology, xi, 329 Socioeconomic Index (Duncan), 135 Socioeconomic position (SEP), 108, 129–​59, 152, 153; area-​level indicators of, 138–​48; development of area-​ level census-​based index in Cypriot communities, 148–​52, 149t; and health, 130–​33; person-​and household-​ based indicators of, 133–​38; subjective measures of, 136–​37 Socioeconomic status (SES), 34, 186, 200–​201, 204, 215. See also Low socioeconomic status Sociopolitical context, 3 South America, 53, 234, 284 South Carolina, 69 Soutter, C. L., 337 Soviet Union, 249 Spain, 146 Spatial microsimulations, 147 Sprenger, C., 342, 343 Sri Lanka, 64, 342 Stability, of Shuar culture, 287–​88 Stafford, M., 154 Standardized Mortality Rations (SMRs), 151, 151t Statistics on Income and Living Conditions Survey (Europe), 146

STEM, 178 Stephens, N. M, 182–​83, 184–​85 Stereotypes; of poor, 106–​7; resource scarcity and racial, 312 Stevenson, B., 227 Steward, J., 6 Stimuli, 230 Stjärne, M. K., 155 Story-​Pictorial E.F.T, 25 Strutzer, A., 236 Subak system, 61 Subjective well-​being (SWB), 225–​27; and children, 238–​39; and Easterlin Paradox, 225–​31; and friends/​family, 239; and health, 237; and income, 229–​30; and income inequality, 234–​35; and labor force participation, 235–​36; and marriage and divorce, 237–​38; measuring, 228–​29; and parenting, 238–​39; and personal income, 233–​34; and policy, 231–​32; and work hours, 236–​37 Sugar cane, 285 Sugars, 303–​4 Suo, T., 113 Super, C., 8 “Superorganic,” 14 Supreme Court, 92 Sustainability, in Shuar culture, 284 SWB. See Subjective well-​being Sweden, 139, 155 Switzerland, 143 Syllogistic reasoning test, 25 Systemic inflammation, 319 Systemic Social Observation tools, 156–​57, 158t Taiwan, 64 Talheim, T., 15 Talukdar, F., 340 Tang Dynasty, 65–​66 Task Force on Social Status (American Psychological Association), 202 Tea, 40, 43 Technology, in rice farming, 71–​72

Index 

| 375

TEEP (Turkish Early Enrichment Project), 213–​14 Temporal discounting, 113, 114–​15, 117 Thailand, 53, 342, 344–​45 Theory of cultural change, 263 Thompson, W. W., 201 Three agent-​based models, for honor cultures, 84–​96, 85t–​86t Threshold effect, 207–​8 Thrifty phenotypes, 304 Time preference parameters, and disasters, 343–​44 Tohoku, Japan, 327 Torres Strait Islands, 10 Townsend Index, 140, 155 Transmission variables, 17–​19 Transplanting (rice farming), 56–​57 Trauma, in children, 109 Triandis, H. C, 34, 247–​48, 251 Trivers-​Willard hypothesis, 317 Trusters, 93–​96, 99 Trust game (experiment), 337–​38 Turkey, 37, 40, 42–​44, 207; human development in, 204, 209, 210f, 211–​15; sociocultural norms in, 202–​3 Turkish Early Enrichment Project (TEEP), 213–​14 Twenge, J. M., 255, 256 Twitter, 271 U-​index, 228 Unemployment, 235, 315–​16 United Kingdom, 65, 138, 155–​5 6; area-​l evel measures of deprivation in, 140, 142, 141t; poverty in, 106–​7 United Nations, 334 United States, 37–​38, 64, 65, 72, 77, 78–​79, 81, 116, 248, 249, 263, 304, 312; area-​based level measures of deprivation in, 142–​43; Easterlin Paradox in, 226; educational attainment in, 174; education in, 171; income groups in, 186; income inequality in, 234–​35; individualism in, 250–​57, 250f, 252f–​253f; MESA

376 

| 

Index

study in, 132; occupation categories in, 135; poverty in, 106–​7; recessions in, 299; school belonging in, 208; sociocultural norms in, 202–​3 Universalism, 9–​11, 27, 45 Uphoff, E. P., 154 Urbanization, 203, 205, 254–​55, 257 “Urban-​Specific Index of Socioeconomic Disadvantage,” 151 US Census, 315 US Congress, 314 Utero, resource scarcity in, 311 Utility interdependence, 329 Uwishin (shaman), 283 Value of children (VOC), 203 Variance, and risk in honor cultures, 84, 87–​88 Varnum, M. E., 181, 252, 253, 254, 264 Veenhoven, R., 227, 228 Venezuela, 83 Vengefuls, 93–​96, 99 Victim-​blaming, in health, 129–​30 Vietnam, 53 Vietnam war, 82–​83 Violence, 100; in honor cultures, 81–​82; in schools, 209; as a tool for control, 99 Virtue, 91, 172 Visual acuity, 10 VOC (value of children), 203 Von Kessler, C., 342 Voors, M. J., 342 Vulnerability, in health, 132–​33 Wampís, 276 Wardle, J., 136 Wars, 329 Water, for rice farming, 61 Wealth; in competition for mates, 316–​17; and individualism, 257, 263; and racial stereotypes, 312; in Shuar culture, 286 Wealth inequality, 106 Weimar Republic, 319 Weiner, Anthony, 271–​72 WEIRD societies, xiv Weisner, T., 8 Welfare, 310–​11

Wesselmann, E. D., 37 West, 12–​13 West Africa, 53, 57, 62 Wheat farming, 15–​16, 53; irrigation in, 70; rice farming vs., 55–​59, 61–​62 White, A. E., 314 Whitehead, M., 132 Whiting, B. B., 8 Whiting, J. W., 8 WHO Healthy Cities, 159 Williams, K. D., 37 Wilson, Margo, 84, 87 Winkelmann, L., 235 Winkelmann, R., 235 Witchcraft, Shuar culture beliefs about, 282–​83 Witkin, H., 22–​23

Wolfers, J., 227 Work, and subjective well-​being, 236–​37 World Bank, 285, 334 World War II, 208 Worth, in honor cultures, 78–​81 Wright, R., 92 Yamamoto, M., 38–​39 Yang, D., 336 Yangtze River, 53 Yanomamo tribe, 83 Yunnan, China, 57 Zeng, R., 262 Zhao, J., 112 Zhishuang, 59 Zimmerman, A. C., 238

Index 

| 377