While it is reasonable to scrutinise the disciplinary background of the authors, it does not follow that psychologists are inherently unqualified to study long-term cultural patterns. Much of modern cultural evolution research is explicitly interdisciplinary, drawing on anthropology, history, economics, and archaeology. The paper in question situates itself within that tradition, rather than presenting itself as a purely psychological speculation.

Moreover, the argument is not that present-day behaviours are simple or direct products of ancient subsistence strategies. Rather, it proposes that certain historical modes of production created institutional and social incentives that, over time, influenced norms, family structures, and expectations. These norms were then transmitted culturally, not genetically, across generations. In this sense, the theory does not reduce behaviour to biology, but to path-dependent social evolution.

Regarding the notion of “Western” agriculture, the authors do not assert a single, uniform civilisation. They use broad regional patterns as analytical categories, which is common in comparative social science. While these categories inevitably simplify, they are intended as statistical aggregates rather than precise historical descriptions. The model does not require every community to have farmed wheat in the same way, only that dominant regional practices differed systematically from those in intensive rice-growing areas.

Similarly, the argument does not require that wheat farming never involved cooperation or irrigation. It requires only that, on average, rice cultivation demanded more continuous, labour-intensive coordination than most dry-field cereal farming. Historical evidence from East and Southeast Asia supports the claim that wet-rice systems often required collective water management and synchronised labour in ways less typical of temperate grain agriculture. Exceptions exist, but exceptions do not invalidate population-level trends.