Worldwide divergence of values.

Social scientists have long debated the nature of cultural change in a modernizing and globalizing world. Some scholars predicted that national cultures would converge by adopting social values typical of Western democracies. Others predicted that cultural differences in values would persist or even increase over time. We test these competing predictions by analyzing survey data from 1981 to 2022 (n = 406,185) from 76 national cultures. We find evidence of global value divergence. Values emphasizing tolerance and self-expression have diverged most sharply, especially between high-income Western countries and the rest of the world. We also find that countries with similar per-capita GDP levels have held similar values over the last 40 years. Over time, however, geographic proximity has emerged as an increasingly strong correlate of value similarity, indicating that values have diverged globally but converged regionally.

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

Motivating effortful behaviour is a problem employers, governments and nonprofits face globally. However, most studies on motivation are done in Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic (WEIRD) cultures. We compared how hard people in six countries worked in response to monetary incentives versus psychological motivators, such as competing with or helping others. The advantage money had over psychological interventions was larger in the United States and the United Kingdom than in China, India, Mexico and South Africa (N = 8,133). In our last study, we randomly assigned cultural frames through language in bilingual Facebook users in India (N = 2,065). Money increased effort over a psychological treatment by 27% in Hindi and 52% in English. These findings contradict the standard economic intuition that people from poorer countries should be more driven by money. Instead, they suggest that the market mentality of exchanging time and effort for material benefits is most prominent in WEIRD cultures.

Resisting Temptation: Tracking How Self-Control Conflicts Are Successfully Resolved in Real Time.

Across four studies, we used mouse tracking to identify the dynamic, on-line cognitive processes that underlie successful self-control decisions. First, we showed that individuals display real-time conflict when choosing options consistent with their long-term goal over short-term temptations. Second, we found that individuals who are more successful at self-control-whether measured or manipulated-show significantly less real-time conflict in only self-control-relevant choices. Third, we demonstrated that successful individuals who choose a long-term goal over a short-term temptation display movements that are smooth rather than abrupt, which suggests dynamic rather than stage-based resolution of self-control conflicts. These findings have important implications for contemporary theories of self-control.