Ara Norenzayan’s research while affiliated with University of British Columbia and other places

Environmental issues are becoming increasingly politically polarized, making common ground essential. This research investigated the political common ground of environmental motives—the reasons why nature is worth preserving. Natural language processing of liberals’ and conservatives’ open text responses (Study 1: N = 1,544) identified 12 central motives. Political common ground was shared on the most cited motives: Human survival, moral obligations to future generations, and appreciation for nature’s beauty. Political differences emerged on motives related to climate change risks and religious stewardship. Study 2 ( N = 796) replicated these findings using a validated self-report questionnaire based on participant responses in Study 1. Factor analysis indicated motives belonged to four categories: Responsibility to nature, instrumental benefits, childhood experiences, and religious stewardship. These motives explained substantial variance in environmental attitudes and partially accounted for political differences in attitudes. The studies used mixed methods and direct/conceptual replication to build confidence in key findings and longstanding theoretical frameworks.

As a cultural species, humans show marked global diversity in preferences, beliefs, and behaviors (cultural traits). Of the many types of cultural traits, which ones generate the most global diversity across countries? We address this question by analyzing data for 640,110 individuals from 117 countries, 2,333 sub-national districts worldwide, and 13 birth cohorts surveyed in the World Values Survey (WVS) and the European Values Study (EVS). We measure cultural diversity using the standard Cultural Fixation Index (CFst). Across multiple sets of comparable cultural traits, we find that religious cultural traits are globally most diverse. In personal values, the emphasis on religion differs 5-10 times more than the emphasis on family, politics, or work effort across countries. Similarly, in qualities important for raising children, religion showed the most cultural divergence. Diversity in religious membership is also significantly higher, compared to memberships in political, environmental or sports organizations. This global divergence had two distinct sources: it was partly the result of differences among particular religious groups, namely Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus; but in large part it was due to individual differences in the strength of religious engagement, irrespective of religious tradition. The results reveal the pervasive role of religion and secularization in the cultural evolution of societies.

The multi-site replication study, Many Labs 2, concluded that sample location and setting did not substantially affect the replicability of findings. Here, we examine theoretical and methodological considerations for a subset of the analyses, namely exploratory tests of heterogeneity in the replicability of studies between “WEIRD and less-WEIRD cultures”. We conducted a review of literature citing the study, a re-examination of the existing cultural variability, a power stimulation for detecting cultural heterogeneity, and re-analyses of the original exploratory tests. Findings indicate little cultural variability and low power to detect cultural heterogeneity effects in the Many Labs 2 data, yet the literature review indicates the study is cited regarding the moderating role of culture. Our reanalysis of the data found that using different operationalizations of culture slightly increased effect sizes but did not substantially alter the conclusions of Many Labs 2. Future studies of cultural heterogeneity can be improved with theoretical consideration of which effects and which cultures are likely to show variation as well as a priori methodological planning for appropriate operationalizations of culture and sufficient power to detect effects.

How can psychology transform itself into an inclusive science that engages with the rich cultural diversity of humanity? How can we strive towards a broader and deeper understanding of human behavior that is both generalizable across populations and attentive to its diversity? To address these major questions of our field, relying on scholars from different world regions, we outline first the opportunities associated with conducting psychological research in these and other majority world regions, highlighting international collaborations. Cross-cutting research themes in psychological research in the majority world are presented along with the urgent need to adopt a more critical lens to research and knowledge production within psychology. Indigenization, critical, transformative and liberatory approaches to understanding psychological phenomena framed within the decolonial imperative are presented as future options for a more diverse and equitable psychological science. Next, we address challenges, including limited institutional research infrastructure, limited national investment in research, political and social challenges these regions face, and the impact of imported (rather than locally produced) psychological knowledge. We conclude by offering recommendations to enable psychological science to be more representative of the world’s population. Our aim is to facilitate a broader, better-informed, and more empathic conversation among psychological scientists worldwide about ways to make psychological science more representative, culturally informed and inclusive.

Religious sermons are a powerful cultural vehicle that reach about one third ofAmericans every week at church. Sermons convey a religion’s teachings, worldviews,and moral codes, yet little is known about the contents of American sermons and howthey vary across churches, denominations, and geographic space. We analyzed 20,624sermons delivered between 2019-2020 across 3,143 American counties and 6 Christiandenominations using a tripartite approach. First, topic modeling provided a descriptiveprofile of the textual, topical, and liturgical components of sermons, highlighting thedominant role of moral instruction, including advice on living a rich life. Second, variancedecomposition indicated that sermon content varied widely across individual churchesand denominations, but less so across geographical space. As such, denominationswere most distinctive in their liturgical components (e.g., Catholic Mass versuscharismatic preaching), but were highly similar in their prioritization of specific morals,values, and emotions. Third, cross-validated elastic net models demonstrated thatsermon content predicted substantial out-of-sample variance in regional political, social,health, and economic outcomes, such as voting behavior, firearm fatalities, and lifeexpectancy. These associations were robust to a series of robustness checks,suggesting that sermons contain unique information about local socio-political context.This is the most comprehensive study of sermons to date and provides a portrait of themany faces of the American church.

People across time and cultures have often conceived of humanity’s connection to the natural world as essentially spiritual. This article presents the results of a high-powered preregistered ecospirituality intervention on a sample of Canadian university students (N=779), in which participants either photographed the spiritual qualities of nature, the instrumental qualities of nature, or the spiritual qualities of architecture. Results showed that the intervention was inconclusive, as participants in all three conditions reported similar increases in ecospirituality, environmental concern, and well-being. Exploratory results suggest that increases in ecospirituality across conditions correlated with increases in environmental concern and well-being. Correlations at time one before the manipulation replicated the finding that ecospirituality independently predicts concern for nature and extends previous work by showing that ecospirituality independently predicts greater well-being. The correlational results suggest ecospirituality may offer benefits to nature and to oneself, but future research is needed to establish causal evidence for this contention.