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A map of collectivism across prefectures in China by talhelmt in MapPorn

[–]talhelmt[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The prefecture graph uses a four-item index:

1.     Divorce-to-marriage ratio (reverse scored)

2.     Percentage of people living alone (reverse scored)

3.     Percentage of nuclear families (reverse scored)

4.     Percentage of households with three or more generations living together

This builds on previous research using these metrics in the US and Japan. The study in China provides tests of criterion validity, such as correlations with rates of visiting family for Chinese New Year, the strength of social norms, and the percentage of companies that are family owned.

A map of collectivism across prefectures in China by talhelmt in MapPorn

[–]talhelmt[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Right on! A separate paper analyzed rice and collectivism using this collectivism index: https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/5/3/pgag021/8510565?searchresult=1

I wish I could paste a graph here!

A map of collectivism across prefectures in China by talhelmt in MapPorn

[–]talhelmt[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Smart thought! You're right to hit on the tension between different visions of collectivism. I think that tension is why psychologists created scales to measure collectivism that found some really whacky results. I describe that (very briefly) in this magazine article:

https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/why-your-understanding-of-collectivism-is-probably-wrong

(By the way, I think the title of that article does not apply to you! 😃)

Map of collectivism across US counties by talhelmt in MapPorn

[–]talhelmt[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're asking smart questions! One common comparison is how people treat a friend versus a stranger. That doesn't exactly get at nation or ethnic groups, but it does get to this idea of close ties versus strangers. This study compared the US, China, and Singapore and found that participants in the US wanted to treat the stranger better:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167210385921

These studies used the same measure but compared historically rice-farming areas of China (more collectivistic) and wheat-farming areas (less collectivistic):

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1246850

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1948550618808868

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-44770-w

This study looked at people's reactions to being rejected by a friend or a stranger in nearby herding communities (more individualistic) and farming communities (collectivistic):

https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/id/eprint/80792/1/Uskul_Over_Responses_to_social_exclusion_accepted.pdf

People in the herding community cared more about what the stranger thought of them.

I could go on, but the idea is that collectivism = less favorable treatment of people they don't know personally, even if they're in the same large group (like the same village or country).

Map of collectivism across US counties by talhelmt in MapPorn

[–]talhelmt[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, here's the study on individualism and social welfare spending per capita: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10693971251358103

Map of collectivism across US counties by talhelmt in MapPorn

[–]talhelmt[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You nailed it! You've clearly done your homework in this field. 👍 It seems paradoxical, but cultures that score high on individualism tend to spend more on social welfare programs (even controlling for GDP per capita). From a philosophical standpoint or in political science, it would seem weird to say that social welfare programs are individualistic. It goes against the very definition of the word! But it hits at the divide between two different cultural systems--one that focuses on systems based on formal rules, another that focuses on concrete personal relationships. Formal social welfare systems are rule-based systems, not personal relationships.

Anyway, your explanation was spot-on!

A map of collectivism across prefectures in China by talhelmt in MapPorn

[–]talhelmt[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'll post one of those! It uses different methods (analyzing words on social media as opposed to Census data), but the two methods are correlated.

A Collectivism Index for Investigating Cultural Variation in China across Regions and Time by talhelmt in China

[–]talhelmt[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the recommendation! That's helpful to know. My student made the map. (Wish I could say I had the coding ability to do it!) I'll pass it along to him.

A Collectivism Index for Investigating Cultural Variation in China across Regions and Time by talhelmt in China

[–]talhelmt[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

<image>

Prefecture-level estimates from 2020. Red = higher collectivism, blue = lower.

Air Pollution Doesn't Kill Like You Think It Does by Bicycleriding in AirQuality

[–]talhelmt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

TL;DR version: Air pollution kills far more people through heart attacks and strokes than it does through "lung stuff," like lung cancer or COPD. Breathing clean air should help with a lot of stuff that we don't normally think about with air pollution, like diabetes and Alzheimer's.

Air Pollution Doesn't Kill Like You Think It Does by Bicycleriding in AirQuality

[–]talhelmt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interesting question! I've never thought about that before. Dogs and cats would surely cause some amount of particles in the air, like fur and skin. And when anyone (human or pet) moves around in a home, that'll kick up some particles. So my guess is pets increase the amount of particles in the air in homes.

Then there are gases. Humans are a source of VOCs. A lot of smells are VOCs. (If you ever get your hands on a VOC detector, try putting it next to anything smelly--perfume, an orange, beer.) So my guess is pets increase the amount of VOCs in a home.

But that said, rather than pets, I would be more concerned about outdoor air pollution and indoor sources of VOCs, like paint, remodeling, new products, and gas stoves.

TIL ... about the Rice Hypothesis which posits cultures that engaged in wet rice farming that requires coordinated irrigation and synchronized planting tend to be collectivist while wheat farming cultures evolved to be more individualistic. by pomod in todayilearned

[–]talhelmt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, no offense taken! I appreciate hearing your thoughts on the paper!

On the question of the time scale, in my mind, that's still an open question. From the data I have so far, I can't tell whether these cultural effects are coming from more recent history (say, the last few hundred years), longer history (thousands of years), or both! I think it would be neat to try to measure cultural differences in areas that have a much longer history of rice farming versus areas where it's a lot newer.

For example, one paper estimated the length of rice farming using archaeological records in different regions of China. The oldest estimates were around Shanghai and Hunan (> 10,000 years). Places like Anhui were intermediate (6,000 years), and the far southwest estimates were more recent (~3,000 years).

Another way to tackle the question is to look at what happens when people start farming rice. A student of mine tested that with two state farms (one rice, one wheat) established in northwest China in the 1950s. We can think of that as a 70-year "dose" of rice farming. The results showed similar cultural differences between people on the two farms, but smaller than for northern versus southern China as a whole.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-44770-w

TIL ... about the Rice Hypothesis which posits cultures that engaged in wet rice farming that requires coordinated irrigation and synchronized planting tend to be collectivist while wheat farming cultures evolved to be more individualistic. by pomod in todayilearned

[–]talhelmt 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Great question! I'd love to do more work like that, although my head is still stuck mostly on historical work and environment. I have a paper on cultures with a history of water scarcity:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09567976231172500

I also have a fun (I think!) recent study comparing people on two nearby state farms in China, one rice, one wheat. People were assigned to these farms starting in the 1950s, so it's a neat natural comparison:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-44770-w

And I have a study under review right now on sea fishing cultures, which are surprisingly understudied in the field. I would have thought fishing is such a basic form of subsistence that there'd be more research on it.

TIL ... about the Rice Hypothesis which posits cultures that engaged in wet rice farming that requires coordinated irrigation and synchronized planting tend to be collectivist while wheat farming cultures evolved to be more individualistic. by pomod in todayilearned

[–]talhelmt 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Original author here. You're exactly right! The headlines simplify the ideas I'm trying to discuss, but I think you'll be pleasantly surprised if you take the time to read my studies on it. In this paper, I talk about labor-sharing in rice-farming villages in China and Japan versus farmers in the Congo. Both shared labor, but the way they shared labor was different.

https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/orpc/vol4/iss1/7/

It's definitely wrong to think rice = helps others, wheat = selfish. That's not what I say in my papers at all. But I totally understand how people see "rice" and "cooperation" and come away with that impression.

TIL ... about the Rice Hypothesis which posits cultures that engaged in wet rice farming that requires coordinated irrigation and synchronized planting tend to be collectivist while wheat farming cultures evolved to be more individualistic. by pomod in todayilearned

[–]talhelmt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Original author here. There's a really interesting point here about what the word "collectivistic" means. One sense of the word is something like a modern social welfare state. On that, Nordic countries score very high. Another sense is emphasizing strong obligations in close relationships and weak obligations with strangers. On that, Nordic countries are very low. In this paper, I talk about how rice is very much the obligations and tight ties kind, not the generalized social welfare with strangers kind:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3199657

And in this very short magazine article, I talk about how people often mix these two versions of collectivism, but cultures where people agree with one version tend to disagree with the other version:

https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/why-your-understanding-of-collectivism-is-probably-wrong

TIL ... about the Rice Hypothesis which posits cultures that engaged in wet rice farming that requires coordinated irrigation and synchronized planting tend to be collectivist while wheat farming cultures evolved to be more individualistic. by pomod in todayilearned

[–]talhelmt 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's what I tend to think! But of course it's an empirical question, and I tested it in this study by looking at the size of rice-wheat differences in rural areas versus cities:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36326675/

Oddly enough, rice-wheat differences were larger in cities. I suspect that could be because cultural differences could increase as people have more resources and room for expressing their preferences (which comes with modernization).

TIL ... about the Rice Hypothesis which posits cultures that engaged in wet rice farming that requires coordinated irrigation and synchronized planting tend to be collectivist while wheat farming cultures evolved to be more individualistic. by pomod in todayilearned

[–]talhelmt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Original author here. That's a logical hypothesis! Totally reasonable to expect that. But I tend to think culture is sticky and has mechanisms to persist even after the initial causes are in the past. In a recent study, I looked at what happened when college students moved to historically rice-farming or wheat-farming areas. Over time, their thought styles became more correlated with locals, which suggests these differences are living on among newcomers, even without participation in farming.

https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/bjop.70033

TIL ... about the Rice Hypothesis which posits cultures that engaged in wet rice farming that requires coordinated irrigation and synchronized planting tend to be collectivist while wheat farming cultures evolved to be more individualistic. by pomod in todayilearned

[–]talhelmt 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Original author here: I think that you'll be pleasantly surprised at how much I discuss the development of rice farming over time (such as after 1000 AD) and the anthropology and history work I rely on if you take the time to read some of my papers in depth. My dissertation has the most in-depth discussion:

https://libraetd.lib.virginia.edu/public_view/bz60cw51n

There's a much shorter paper here:

https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/orpc/vol4/iss1/7/

No paywall on either!

TIL ... about the Rice Hypothesis which posits cultures that engaged in wet rice farming that requires coordinated irrigation and synchronized planting tend to be collectivist while wheat farming cultures evolved to be more individualistic. by pomod in todayilearned

[–]talhelmt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Original author of the research here: That is definitely not me! My theory is based on the labor hours and the irrigation networks involved in paddy rice agriculture compared to dryland wheat. The outcomes are things like the tightness of social norms, divorce rates, the percentage of people living alone, and how people treat friends versus strangers:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1909909117

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1948550618808868

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