Fundamental social motives measured across forty-two cultures in two waves

Abstract

How does psychology vary across human societies? The fundamental social motives framework adopts an evolutionary approach to capture the broad range of human social goals within a taxonomy of ancestrally recurring threats and opportunities. These motives—self-protection, disease avoidance, affiliation, status, mate acquisition, mate retention, and kin care—are high in fitness relevance and everyday salience, yet understudied cross-culturally. Here, we gathered data on these motives in 42 countries (N = 15,915) in two cross-sectional waves, including 19 countries (N = 10,907) for which data were gathered in both waves. Wave 1 was collected from mid-2016 through late 2019 (32 countries, N = 8,998; 3,302 male, 5,585 female; Mage = 24.43, SD = 7.91). Wave 2 was collected from April through November 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic (29 countries, N = 6,917; 2,249 male, 4,218 female; Mage = 28.59, SD = 11.31). These data can be used to assess differences and similarities in people’s fundamental social motives both across and within cultures, at different time points, and in relation to other commonly studied cultural indicators and outcomes.

Family still matters: Human social motivation across 42 countries during a global pandemic

“…We also note that although our data were collected from multiple societies worldwide, varying in culture, language, religion, and wealth, and although our samples included non-university participants within many countries ( Ko et al, 2020 , Pick et al, 2022a ), samples from many countries were collected from a single community within the country or from university undergraduates. Thus, it is possible that the motivational priorities of people outside of large cities or people who were not university undergraduates may have shifted in ways not well-captured in our samples.…”

“…Data were collected in local languages via convenience samples by collaborators around the world. Participants included university students, online survey workers, and community samples (for additional details on translation and data collection procedures by country, see Pick et al, 2022a ). The target sample size per country was 200 participants, although data collection limitations in some countries did not allow the target sample size to be reached (average sample size collected was 239 participants, with a range from 67 to 612 participants) (see Supplemental Material Table S1 for a full list of countries and sample sizes per country).…”

“…Data from 27 societies collected in the pre-pandemic wave were published in Ko et al, 2020 , Perspectives on Psychological Science . All data are published in Pick et al, 2022a , Scientific Data and are available at https://osf.io/p9z2a/ . A previous preprint version of this manuscript is posted on https://psyarxiv.com/z7mjc .…”

“…For the past several years, the Global Fundamental Motives project has been collecting data from societies around the world assessing the relative priority given to the different fundamental social motives ( Ko et al, 2020 , Pick et al, 2022a ). The fundamental social motives are suites of cognitive tools and behaviors for navigating social lives and relationships that appear designed to address recurrent adaptive challenges faced by our ancestors, and still faced by people living in the modern world ( Kenrick, Griskevicius, Neuberg, & Schaller, 2010 ; Neel, Kenrick, White and Neuberg, 2016) .…”

Sociosexuality and Sexual Behavior in Men During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Reproductive strategies are patterns of organized behavior aimed at the reproduction of organisms (Buss & Schmitt, 1993 , 2019 ), even if nowadays not all individuals reproduce, as these strategies were, on average, efficient in producing more descendants in the evolutionary past (Buss & Schmitt, 2019 ; Fawcett et al, 2013 ; McNamara & Houston, 2009 ; Todd & Gigerenzer, 2000 ). Thus, investigating the multiple motivational systems that favored reproduction under ancestral conditions helps us to understand the human behavior nowadays, even in evolutionarily new situations, including those that present uncertainty and risk, such as the current pandemic due to the SARS-CoV-2 (Pick et al, 2022 ; Tooby & Cosmides, 2008 ).…”