People in Rice-Farming Cultures Perceive Emotions More Accurately

Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology, 4, 100122, 2023

41 Pages Posted: 18 Sep 2023

See all articles by Thomas Talhelm

Thomas Talhelm

University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Sherry Jueyu Wu

University of California Los Angeles

Chuang Lyu

HEUFT Systems Technology

Haotian Zhou

ShanghaiTech University - School of Entrepreneurship and Management

Xuemin Zhang

Beijing Normal University (BNU)

Date Written: May 23, 2023

Abstract

Are people in interdependent cultures more accurate at perceiving people’s emotional expressions? One problem with testing this question is that people tend to be more accurate at perceiving emotions of people of their own ethnic group. That makes it impossible to test East-West cultural differences using the same emotion pictures. We got around this problem by testing for cultural differences between southern and northern China. Southern China traditionally farmed rice, which requires more interdependence than the wheat farming of northern China. Paying more attention to people’s emotions may have been useful in rice cultures because farmers had to manage shared irrigation networks and exchange labor more than wheat farmers. In Study 1, students who had grown up in rice-farming provinces guessed people’s emotions in the Mind in the Eyes test more accurately than people who had grown up in wheat-farming provinces. In Study 2, we tested students from 13 prefectures (similar to US counties) in a single province along China’s rice-wheat border. People from the rice side of the border perceived emotions more accurately than people from the wheat side. These results connect a long-term ecological cause (rice farming) to a modern psychological outcome (emotion perception). These results also offer an explanation for broader cultural differences in emotion perception.

Keywords: empathic accuracy, culture, emotion, mind in the eyes, rice, subsistence style

Suggested Citation

Talhelm, Thomas and Wu, Sherry Jueyu and Lyu, Chuang and Zhou, Haotian and Zhang, Xuemin, People in Rice-Farming Cultures Perceive Emotions More Accurately (May 23, 2023). Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology, 4, 100122, 2023, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4569909

Thomas Talhelm (Contact Author)

University of Chicago Booth School of Business ( email )

5807 South Woodlawn Avenue
Chicago, IL 60637
United States

HOME PAGE: http://www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty/directory/t/thomas-talhelm

Sherry Jueyu Wu

University of California Los Angeles ( email )

405 Hilgard Avenue
Box 951361
Los Angeles, CA 90095
United States
3108252750 (Phone)
90095 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.sherryjwu.com

Chuang Lyu

HEUFT Systems Technology ( email )

China

Haotian Zhou

ShanghaiTech University - School of Entrepreneurship and Management ( email )

100 Haike Rd
Pudong Xinqu, Shanghai
China

Xuemin Zhang

Beijing Normal University (BNU) ( email )

19 Xinjiekou Outer St
Haidian District
Beijing, Guangdong 100875
China

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