Previous research reveals that individual differences in parental caregiving motives have implications (among both parents and nonparents) for a wide range of psychological outcomes. Here we report reanalyses of existing data sets to examine the extent to which these outcomes are uniquely predicted by two conceptually distinct factors underlying the parental caregiving motive: protection and nurturance. In doing so, we also psychometrically validate a brief self-report measure designed to efficiently assess individual differences in protection and nurturance. Results reveal that individual differences in parental protection uniquely predict a specific subset of attitudes and judgments (e.g., endorsement of restrictive parenting practices, harsher moral judgments of adults who violate social norms), whereas individual differences in parental nurturance uniquely predict a different subset of attitudes and judgments (e.g., nonparents desire to have children, preferences for committed romantic partners, more lenient moral judgments of children who violate social norms).

Karmic beliefs, centered on the expectation of ethical causation within and across lifetimes, appear in major world religions as well as spiritual movements around the world, yet they remain an underexplored topic in psychology. In three studies, we assessed the psychological predictors of Karmic beliefs among participants from culturally and religiously diverse backgrounds, including ethnically and religiously diverse students in Canada, and broad national samples of adults from Canada, India, and the United States (total N = 8,996). Belief in Karma is associated with, but not reducible to, theoretically related constructs including belief in a just world, belief in a moralizing God, religious participation, and cultural context. Belief in Karma also uniquely predicts causal attributions for misfortune. Together, these results show the value of measuring explicit belief in Karma in cross-cultural studies of justice, religion, and social cognition.

No abstract

No abstract

Cultural evolutionary theories suggest that world religions have consolidated beliefs, values, and practices within a superethnic cultural identity. It follows that affiliation with religious traditions would be reliably associated with global variation in cultural traits. To test this hypothesis, we measured cultural distance between religious groups within and between countries, using the Cultural Fixation Index (CFST) applied to the World Values Survey (88 countries, n = 243,118). Individuals who shared a religious tradition and level of commitment to religion were more culturally similar, both within and across countries, than those with different affiliations and levels of religiosity, even after excluding overtly religious values. Moreover, distances between denominations within a world religion echoed shared historical descent. Nonreligious individuals across countries also shared cultural values, offering evidence for the cultural evolution of secularization. While nation-states were a stronger predictor of cultural traits than religious traditions, the cultural similarity of coreligionists remained robust, controlling for demographic characteristics, geographic and linguistic distances between groups, and government restriction on religion. Together, results reveal the pervasive cultural signature of religion and support the role of world religions in sustaining superordinate identities that transcend geographical boundaries.