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Rice, Psychology, and InnovationBy the late 18th century, the earliest tremors of the industrial revolution were beginning to shake England. Fueled by a stream of innovations related to textiles, transportation, and steel manufacturing, this eruption of economic growth would soon engulf northern Europe, spread to Britain's former colonies, and eventually transform the globe. For the first time, humanity would be sprung from the Malthusian trap. The question of why this revolution first emerged in northern Europe remains one of history's great questions. If you stood overlooking the globe in 1000 CE, the most obvious candidates for igniting this engine were perhaps in China or the Middle East, but certainly not in Europe. Addressing this question, researchers have pointed to differences in geography, institutions, religions, and even genes (1, 2). On page 603 of this issue, Talhelm et al. (3) take an important step forward by fingering psychological differences in analytical thinking and individualism as an explanation for differences in innovation, and then linking these differences to culturally transmitted institutions, and ultimately to environmental differences that influence the feasibility of rice agriculture.
Large-Scale Psychological Differences Within China Explained by Rice Versus Wheat Agriculture"Cross-cultural psychologists have mostly contrasted East Asia with the West. However, this study shows that there are major psychological differences within China. We propose that a history of farming rice makes cultures more interdependent, whereas farming wheat makes cultures more independent, and these agricultural legacies continue to affect people in the modern world. We tested 1162 Han Chinese participants in six sites and found that rice-growing southern China is more interdependent and holistic-thinking than the wheat-growing north. To control for confounds like climate, we tested people from neighboring counties along the rice-wheat border and found differences that were just as large. We also find that modernization and pathogen prevalence theories do not fit the data."