Two studies on cultural closeness found that people in culturally close U.S. states were more likely to support racial stereotypes and right-wing authoritarianism, and had a higher desire for certainty. This study also reported associations between cultural closeness and personality traits such as openness, extraversion, and conscientiousness, but these relationships depended on how cultural closeness was assessed. The paper is Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Cultural closeness refers to the degree to which a society has strong social norms and expects people to adhere to them. Rigid cultures typically have strict rules about acceptable behavior and relatively little tolerance for people who deviate from those expectations. In contrast, loose cultures have weaker norms and allow for a wider range of behaviors, lifestyles, and personal expression.
Cultural tensions are observed in everyday areas such as dress, manners, punctuality, behavior in public, and family roles. This trend tends to be stronger in societies that have historically faced threats such as war, natural disasters, disease, lack of resources, and high population density. In such situations, strict coordination and adaptation can help groups maintain order and respond effectively to danger.
Close-knit cultures tend to provide greater predictability, discipline, and social cooperation. However, it also tends to limit personal freedom, creativity, and acceptance of unconventional people and ideas. A loose culture is more likely to encourage innovation, flexibility, and individual autonomy, but it can also be more disruptive and less coordinating.
Researchers Liz Wilson and Jimmy Caranchini investigated the association between cultural closeness and groups of sociopolitical ideologies, beliefs, and personality traits. Scientists conducted two studies. The first study investigated the association between cultural closeness and groups of ideological traits, beliefs, and personality traits in different U.S. states. The second study looked at the relationship between cultural closeness and personality traits in 56 countries.
In the first study, researchers analyzed data from three independent sources. They used established archival indicators of cultural tightness for each U.S. state, self-report data on sociopolitical beliefs and personality traits from a large online database called Project Implicit, and an original survey that estimates self-reported cultural tightness. A total of 1,290 participants from 45 U.S. states participated in this study. The authors aggregated individual-level responses to create state-level measures of psychological characteristics and self-reported tension.
Data for the second study came from the Metanorm International Study, which examined perceptions of norm violations across 57 countries, and the International Affairs Project, a multinational study conducted across 56 countries. The first dataset included 22,863 participants, including university students and non-students, and the second dataset included 13,278 undergraduate students. Both of these datasets assessed cultural closeness using the same measures used in the first study, and the second dataset also included ratings of the Big 5 personality traits.
Results from the first study showed that across U.S. states, more salient cultural tension was associated with higher social dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism, belief in a just world, Protestant ethics, and Bayesian racism. Researchers defined Bayesian racism as the belief that it is rational to discriminate against people based on pre-existing racial stereotypes. People from closer-knit cultures tended to endorse less egalitarianism, but this association was only found with archival measures of cultural closeness.
People from culturally demanding states also tended to have higher personal needs for structure, self-monitoring, ambiguity avoidance, and order and predictability. They tended to report lower cognitive needs, which is the tendency to engage in and enjoy complex thinking. Furthermore, cultural closeness, assessed using the archival index, was associated with lower self-deception, better impression management, and decisiveness.
People from culturally demanding states tend to be more conscientious and extroverted, but less open to experiences. The association between conscientiousness and extraversion existed only when using the archival index as an estimate of cultural closeness, but not when closeness was estimated from survey data. The opposite was true for openness to experience. A relationship with openness existed when cultural closeness was estimated from survey data, but not when using archival indexes.
Similar to the first study, the second study also found that people from culturally demanding countries tend to be less open to experience, especially in the area of creativity. However, in somewhat contrast to the results of the first study, people from culturally strict countries tended to be less extroverted. No consistent association was found between global cultural closeness and personality traits such as conscientiousness, agreeableness, or negative emotionality.
“Taken together, we find that cultural tension is a parsimonious predictor of regional psychological differences in many concepts within the United States and between countries,” the study authors concluded.
This study contributes to the scientific understanding of the association between cultural assets and psychological characteristics. However, findings regarding associations with personality traits were highly dependent on how cultural closeness was assessed. This raises questions about the equivalence and validity of the various state- and national-level estimates of cultural closeness and character used in the study.
The paper, “Cultural Urgency Predicts Local Sociopolitical Ideology, Beliefs, and Personality Traits,” was authored by Liz Wilson and Jimmy Caranchini.
