Joshua Conrad Jackson

University of Chicago | UC · Behavioral Science

The diverse way that languages convey emotion It is unclear whether emotion terms have the same meaning across cultures. Jackson et al. examined nearly 2500 languages to determine the degree of similarity in linguistic networks of 24 emotion terms across cultures (see the Perspective by Majid). There were low levels of similarity, and thus high var...

Human groups have long faced ecological threats such as resource stress and warfare, and must also overcome strains on coordination and cooperation that are imposed by growing social complexity. Tightness-looseness (TL) theory suggests that societies react to these challenges by becoming culturally tighter, with stronger norms and harsher punishmen...

Significance Amid the present COVID-19 pandemic, we find that many citizens around the world “rally ‘round the flag” and increase their support for their respective political leaders. We observe these findings among countries that are culturally and geographically diverse, and even among leaders who are strongly disliked by citizens prior to the pa...

Billions of people from around the world believe in vengeful gods who punish immoral behavior. These punitive religious beliefs may foster prosociality and contribute to large-scale cooperation, but little is known about how these beliefs emerge and why people adopt them in the first place. We present a cultural-psychological model suggesting that...

Humans have been using language for millennia, but we have only just begun to scratch the surface of what natural language can tell us about the mind. Here we propose that language offers a unique window into psychology. After briefly summarizing the legacy of language analyses in psychological science, we show how methodological advances have made...

Why do people assume that a generous person should also be honest? Why do we even use words like “moral” and “immoral”? We explore these questions with a new model of how people perceive moral character. We propose that people vary in the extent to which they perceive moral character as “localized” (varying along many contextually embedded dimensio...

Although research in cultural psychology has established that virtually all human behaviors and cognitions are in some ways shaped by culture, culture has been surprisingly absent from the emerging literature on the psychology of technology. In this perspective article, we first review recent findings on machine aversion versus appreciation. We the...

The global decline of religiosity represents one of the most significant societal shifts in recent history. After millennia of near-universal religious identification, the world is experiencing a regionally uneven trend toward secularization. We propose an explanation of this decline, which claims that automation-the development of robots and artif...

Human social learning is increasingly occurring on online social platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok. On these platforms, algorithms exploit existing social-learning biases (i.e., towards prestigious, ingroup, moral, and emotional information, or 'PRIME' information) to sustain users' attention and maximize engagement. Here, we synthes...

Over the last decade, robots continue to infiltrate the workforce, permeating occupations that once seemed immune to automation. This process seems to be inevitable because robots have ever-expanding capabilities. However, drawing from theories of cultural evolution and social learning, we propose that robots may have limited influence in domains t...

Humans across the globe use supernatural beliefs to explain the world around them. This article explores whether cultural groups invoke the supernatural more to explain natural phenomena (for example, storms, disease outbreaks) or social phenomena (for example, murder, warfare). Quantitative analysis of ethnographic text across 114 geographically a...

Why do people assume that a generous person should also be honest? Why do we even use words like “moral” and “immoral”? We explore these questions with a new model of how people perceive moral character. We propose that people vary in the extent that they perceive moral character as “localized” (varying along many contextually embedded dimensions)...

A new wave of research on psychology and culture uses longitudinal models and time series analyses to test questions about the relationship between culture and human behavior. In 2019, we contributed to this new literature with a paper titled “The loosening of American norms is associated with a creativity-order tradeoff” in which we found that the...

Humans rely heavily on social learning to navigate the social and physical world. For the first time in history, we are interacting in online social networks where content algorithms filter social information, yet little is known about how these algorithms influence our social learning. In this review, we synthesize emerging insights into this ‘alg...

Countless social problems demand solutions, from climate change and gun control to poverty and systemic racism. But while some of these problems inspire action (e.g., “Black Lives Matter” and “Me Too” movements), most fail to gain traction or inspire new policy. Why do some problems garner more attention and response? We suggest that the relative t...

A central goal of linguistics is to understand how words evolve. Past research has found that macro-level factors such as frequency of word usage and population size explain the pace of lexical evolution. Here we focus on cognitive and affective factors, testing whether valence (positivity–negativity) explains lexical evolution rates. Using estimat...

Robots are transforming the nature of human work. Although human-robot collaborations can create new jobs and increase productivity, pundits often warn about how robots might replace humans at work and create mass unemployment. Despite these warnings, relatively little research has directly assessed how laypeople react to robots in the workplace. D...

Robots are transforming the nature of human work. Although human–robot collaborations can create newjobs and increase productivity, pundits often warn about how robots might replace humans at work andcreate mass unemployment. Despite these warnings, relatively little research has directly assessed howlaypeople react to robots in the workplace. Draw...

Scholarly debates about the nature of human emotion traditionally pit biological and cultural influences against one another. Although many existing theories acknowledge the role of culture, they mostly treat emotion categories such as ‘anger’ as biological products. In this Perspective, we summarize traditional assumptions about the roles of biolo...

Social norms can coordinate individuals and groups during collective threats. Pandemic-related social norms (e.g., wearing masks, social distancing) emerged to curb the spread of COVID-19. However, little is known about the psychological consequences of the emerging norms. We conducted three experiments cross-culturally, during the early period of...

Many people practiced COVID-19-related safety measures in the first year of the pandemic, but Republicans were less likely to engage in behaviors such as wearing masks or face coverings than Democrats, suggesting radical disparities in health practices split along political fault lines. We developed an “intervention tournament” which aimed to ident...

Quantitative cross-cultural databases can help uncover structure and diversity across human populations. These databases have been constructed using a variety of methodologies and have been instrumental for building and testing theories in the social sciences. The processes and assumptions behind the construction of cross-cultural databases are not...

Many people practiced COVID-19-related safety measures in the first year of the pandemic, but Republicans were less likely to engage in behaviors such as wearing masks or face coverings than Democrats, suggesting radical disparities in health practices split along political fault lines. We developed an “intervention tournament” which aimed to ident...

A central goal of linguistics is to understand how words evolve over time, and how geographic, demographic, and cognitive variables have influenced this process of evolution. Whereas past research has focused on how macro-level factors like frequency of word usage and borrowing impact lexical evolution, we draw on insights from cognitive and affect...

Supernatural beliefs are common in every human society, and people frequently invoke the supernatural to explain natural (e.g., storms, disease outbreaks) and social (e.g., murder, warfare) events. However, evolutionary and psychological theories of religion raise competing hypotheses about whether supernatural explanations should more commonly foc...

The prevalence of depression varies widely across nations, but we do not yet understand what underlies this variation. Here we use estimates from the Global Burden of Disease study to analyze the correlates of depression across 195 countries and territories. We begin by identifying potential cross-correlates of depression using past clinical and cu...

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic is a global health crisis, yet certain countries have had far more success in limiting COVID-19 cases and deaths. We suggest that collective threats require a tremendous amount of coordination, and that strict adherence to social norms is a key mechanism that enables groups to do so. Here we examine how the strengt...

Humans have believed in gods and spirits since the earliest days of our species, and many people still believe in them today. Although the existence of religious belief has been a human constant, the nature and prevalence of religion has changed dramatically throughout human history. Here we describe the emerging science of religious change. We fir...

Objective To investigate the association between popular football games played in Europe and the incidence of traffic accidents in Asia. Design Study based on 41 538 traffic accidents involving taxis in Singapore and 1 814 320 traffic accidents in Taiwan, combined with 12 788 European club football games over a seven year period. Setting Singapor...

Religion is an enduring part of human culture, but religious belief is declining in some societies. What explains which regions secularize and which individuals leave their faiths? We propose that secularization is inversely related to the “moralization of religion:” the belief that religion is essential to morality. Moralization of religiosity lik...

Does religion make people good or bad? We suggest that there are at least three distinct profiles of religious morality: the Cooperator, the Crusader, and the Complicit. Cooperators forego selfishness to benefit others, crusaders harm outgroups to bolster their own religious community, and the complicit use religion to justify selfish behavior and...

Purpose: In this paper we examine and test alternative models for explaining the relationships between resource stress, beliefs that gods and spirits influence weather (to help or harm food supply or punish for norm violations), and customary beyond-household sharing behavior. Our model, the resource stress model, suggests that resource stress affe...

Religion and science are two major sources of knowledge. Some accounts suggest that religious belief inhibits people from trusting scientific information, and encourages conflict between religion and science. We draw from theories of human motivation to challenge this claim, instead suggesting that religious people perceive less conflict between sc...

Theories differ over whether religious and secular worldviews are in competition or represent overlapping and compatible frameworks. Here we test these theories by examining homogeneity and overlap in Christian and non-religious people's explanations of the world. Christian and non-religious participants produced free text explanations of 54 natura...

A review of “Cultural Evolution in the Digital Age” by Alberto Acerbi (Oxford University Press, 2019)

Humans have been using language for thousands of years, but psychologists seldom consider what natural language can tell us about the mind. Here we propose that language offers a unique window into human cognition. After briefly summarizing the legacy of language analyses in psychological science, we show how methodological advances have made these...

Humans have been using language for thousands of years, but psychologists seldom consider what natural language can tell us about the mind. Here we propose that language offers a unique window into human cognition. After briefly summarizing the legacy of language analyses in psychological science, we show how methodological advances have made these...

Billions of people from around the world believe in vengeful gods who punish immoral behavior. These punitive religious beliefs may foster prosociality and contribute to large-scale cooperation, but little is known about how these beliefs emerge and why people adopt them in the first place. We present a cultural-psychological model suggesting that...

From Australia to the Arctic, human groups engage in synchronous behaviour during communal rituals. Because ritualistic synchrony is widespread, many argue that it is functional for human groups, encouraging large-scale cooperation and group cohesion. Here, we offer a more nuanced perspective on synchrony's function. We review research on synchrony...

Objectives: Investigate the association between popular football games played in Europe and the incidence of traffic accidents in Asia. Design: A study based on 41,538 taxi traffic accidents in Singapore and 1,814,320 traffic accidents in Taiwan, combined with 12,788 European club football games over a seven-year period. Setting: Singapore; Taiw...

As economic inequality grows, more people stand to benefit from wealth redistribution. Yet in many countries, increasing inequality has not produced growing support for redistribution, and people often appear to vote against their economic interest. Here we suggest that two cognitive tendencies contribute to these paradoxical voting patterns. First...

COVID-19 has emerged as one of the deadliest and most disruptive global pandemics in recent human history. Drawing from political science and psychological theory, we examine the effects of daily confirmed cases in a country on citizens’ support for the nation’s leader through first 120 days of 2020. Using two unique datasets which comprises daily...

Automation is becoming ever more prevalent, with robot workers replacing many human employees. Many perspectives have examined the economic impact of a robot workforce, but here we consider its social impact: how will the rise of robot workers affect intergroup relations? Whereas some past research suggests that more robots will lead to more interg...

Religion shapes the nature of intergroup conflict, but conflict may also shape religion. Four multi-method studies reveal the impact of conflict on religious belief: The threat of warfare and intergroup tensions increase the psychological need for order and rule-following, which leads people to view God as more punitive. Studies 1 (N = 372) and 2 (...

Human groups have long faced ecological threats such as resource stress and warfare, and must also overcome strains on coordination and cooperation that are imposed by growing social complexity. How do societies adapt to these challenges? Tightness-looseness (TL) theory suggests that ecological threat and social complexity both lead societies to be...

Prejudiced attitudes and political nationalism vary widely around the world, but there has been little research on what predicts this variation. Here we examine the ecological and cultural factors underlying the worldwide distribution of prejudice. We suggest that cultures grow more prejudiced when they tighten cultural norms in response to destabi...

It is often unclear how to apportion praise after a group's success and blame after a group's failure. Should all members share responsibility or only a select few? In this paper, we examine how people do solve this apportionment problem, and how they should solve this problem. Seven empirical studies (total N = 1,052) reveal that people frequently...

In the version of this article initially published, errors appeared in three sentences. In the abstract, the sentence beginning “We next examine” should have read “adolescent pregnancies, crime, and high school attendance”; in the main text, the sentence beginning “More recently, the 1964 Civil Rights Act” should have read “directly challenged the...

For many years, scientists have studied culture by comparing societies, regions or social groups within a single point in time. However, culture is always changing, and this change affects the evolution of cognitive processes and behavioural practices across and within societies. Studies have now documented historical changes in sexism, individuali...

Why do people take revenge? This question can be difficult to answer. Vengeance seems interpersonally destructive and antithetical to many of the most basic human instincts. However, an emerging body of social scientific research has begun to illustrate a logic to revenge, demonstrating why revenge evolved in humans and when and how people take rev...

Bringing groups into direct contact is a popular way to break down negative stereotypes but is logistically challenging when groups are geographically distant or otherwise isolated. To address this issue, we present the diary contact technique (DCT), a methodology designed to improve relations between such groups via positive contact. In the DCT, i...

Whitehouse's theory on fusion can explain why suicide terrorists are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their groups, but the following questions on violent extremism remain: (a) Why are victims of suicide terrorism often innocent bystanders? (b) Why do terrorists seem motivated by ancient conflicts? We incorporate findings from the entitat...

The minimal group paradigm has consistently shown that people will discriminate to favor their own group over an out-group, even when both groups are created arbitrarily by an experimenter. But will people actually form groups that are so arbitrary? And could something as trivial as a randomly assigned nametag color serve as a fault-line during gro...

Literature and art have long depicted God as a stern and elderly white man, but do people actually see Him this way? We use reverse correlation to understand how a representative sample of American Christians visualize the face of God, which we argue is indicative of how believers think about God's mind. In contrast to historical depictions, Americ...

Caucasians’ and African Americans’ perceptions of God. Aggregates of the images that Caucasian (left panel) and African American (right panel) participants associated with how they viewed God. (PDF)

Women’s and men’s perceptions of God. Aggregates of the images that women (left panel) and men (right panel) associated with how they viewed God. (PDF)

Description of study procedure. A detailed description of the measures, procedure, and recruitment strategy of our reverse correlation study. (DOCX)

Coefficients for ratings of God versus anti-God. Coefficients for ratings of God versus anti-God. (DOCX)

Attractive and unattractive people’s perceptions of God. Aggregates of the images that attractive people (left panel) and unattractive people (right panel) associated with how they viewed God. (PDF)

Coefficients for egocentrism ratings. Coefficients for egocentrism ratings. (DOCX)

Coefficients for ratings of conservative versus liberal God. Coefficients for ratings of conservative versus liberal god. (DOCX)

When might religious belief lower ethical standards? We propose a theory of religion and immorality that makes three central predictions. First, people will judge immoral acts as more permissible when they make divine attributions for these acts, seeing them as enabled by an intervening God. Second, people will be more likely to make divine attribu...

Many people believe in immortality, but who is perceived to live on and how exactly do they live on? Seven studies reveal that good- and evil-doers are perceived to possess more immortality—albeit different kinds. Good-doers have “transcendent” immortality, with their souls persisting beyond space and time; evil-doers have “trapped” immortality, wi...

Separate research streams have identified synchrony and arousal as two factors that might contribute to the effects of human rituals on social cohesion and cooperation. But no research has manipulated these variables in the field to investigate their causal-and potentially interactive-effects on prosocial behaviour. Across four experimental session...

Religion has long been speculated to function as a strategy to ameliorate our fear of death. Terror management theory provides two possible causal pathways through which religious beliefs can fulfil this function. According to the “worldview defence” account of terror management, worldviews reduce death anxiety by offering symbolic immortality: on...

Social norms are a defining feature of human psychology, yet our understanding of them is still underdeveloped. In this article, we present our own cross-cultural research program on tightness-looseness (TL)—which draws on field, experimental, computational, and neuroscience methods—to illustrate how going beyond Western borders is critical for und...

Social group dynamics are a defining topic of psychological science, yet the field still lacks methods of tracking groups with precision and control. Previous methods have been hampered by limitations either to external validity (e.g., ecologically deficient environments) or to internal validity (e.g., quasi-experimental designs), but a new techniq...

The founding members of the Cultural Evolution Society were surveyed to identify the major scientific questions and 'grand challenges' currently facing the study of cultural evolution. We present the results and discuss the implications for an emergent synthesis in the study of culture based on Darwinian principles.

Agent-based modeling is a longstanding but under-used method that allows researchers to simulate artificial worlds for hypothesis testing and theory building. Agent-based models (ABMs) offer unprecedented control and statistical power by allowing researchers to precisely specify the behavior of any number of agents and observe their interactions ov...

Social psychology is fundamentally the study of individuals in groups, yet there remain basic unanswered questions about group formation, structure, and change. We argue that the problem is methodological. Until recently, there was no way to track who was interacting with whom with anything approximating valid resolution and scale. In the current s...

As scholars have rushed to either prove or refute cultural group selection (CGS) the debate lacks sufficient consideration of CGS's potential moderators. We argue that pressures for CGS are particularly strong when groups face ecological and human-made threat. Field experimental computational and genetic evidence are presented to substantiate this...

Two studies tested the hypothesis that religious homogamy—assortative mating on the basis of religion—can be partly explained by inferences about religious individuals’ openness to experience, rather than attitudes toward religion per se. Results of Study 1 indicated that non-religious participants perceived non-religious targets to be higher in op...

Trying to remember something now typically improves your ability to remember it later. However, after watching a video of a simulated bank robbery, participants who verbally described the robber were 25% worse at identifying the robber in a lineup than were participants who instead listed U.S. states and capitals—this has been termed the “verbal ov...

We theorized that interpersonal relationships can provide structures for experience. In particular, we tested whether primes of same-sex versus mixed-sex relationships could foster cognitive-perceptual processing styles known to be associated with independence versus interdependence respectively. Seventy-two participants visualized either a same-se...

Trying to remember something now typically improves your ability to remember it later. However, after watching a video of a simulated bank robbery, participants who verbally described the robber were 25% worse at identifying the robber in a lineup than were participants who instead listed U.S. states and capitals—this has been termed the “verbal ov...