Social mindfulness and prosociality vary across the globe

Abstract

Humans are social animals, but not everyone will be mindful of others to the same extent. Individual differences have been found, but would social mindfulness also be shaped by one’s location in the world? Expecting cross-national differences to exist, we examined if and how social mindfulness differs across countries. At little to no material cost, social mindfulness typically entails small acts of attention or kindness. Even though fairly common, such low-cost cooperation has received little empirical attention. Measuring social mindfulness across 31 samples from industrialized countries and regions (n = 8,354), we found considerable variation. Among selected country-level variables, greater social mindfulness was most strongly associated with countries’ better general performance on environmental protection. Together, our findings contribute to the literature on prosociality by targeting the kind of everyday cooperation that is more focused on communicating benevolence than on providing material benefits.

Social mindfulness for global environmental sustainability?

“…Van Doesum et al. ( 1 ) report a positive correlation between social mindfulness and national environmental performance represented by the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), that is, a higher EPI for countries with higher scores of social mindfulness (SoMi). This result comes at a crucial time, as it highlights the relationship between people’s mindset (culture) and environmental sustainability.…”

“…The first issue is that Van Doesum et al. ( 1 ) fail to consider differences in GDP per capita among countries: The identified correlation between SoMi and EPI might be a statistical artifact. Indeed, we found positive correlations of GDP per capita with both SoMi and EPI for countries with GDP per capita less than $20,000.…”

“…The samples are those used in figure 2 of Van Doesum et al. ( 1 ) and with GDP per capita greater than $20,000. A also includes data for countries with GDP per capita less than $20,000, for comparison (crosses).…”

“…We use 2016 International Monetary Fund GDP per capita data included in SI Appendix of Van Doesum et al. ( 1 ).…”

“…The second issue of Van Doesum et al.’s ( 1 ) analysis is that it uses an environmental index that prioritizes local environmental sustainability over global environmental sustainability (i.e., EPI). A country that performs well according to EPI could have detrimental impacts on global environmental sustainability (e.g., high CO 2 emissions).…”