Why do people in different cultures think and behave differently?

CULTURE AND ECOLOGY

When we talk about culture, we can be thinking of many things. Here’s a list of different types of cultures that have been studied:

• East & West

• Northern & Southern U.S.

• Urban & rural

• Farming & herding

• Religions

• Race

• Political orientation

• Social class

• …and lots more

People from different cultures can be profoundly different in their psychology and behavior. But at the heart of this is the question: why?

My work seeks to understand cultural differences by thinking about the different environments or ecologies each cultural group lives in. And there are many aspects of our ecology that matter, such as whether we live around family relatives, whether there is unpredictable violence and death, and how prevalent infectious diseases are. Uniquely, I draw upon ideas and thinking from non-human animal behavior in exploring these questions.

This paper captures the broad underlying framework. Thinking about culture in this way has a wide variety of implications for social behavior. The table below summarizes some key environmental dimensions and their potential psychological effects.