Beyond WEIRD Societies: Global Social Identifications Across 45 Countries And Their Socio- Cultural And Economic Predictors

Abstract

In an increasingly globalized world challenged by multi ple social problems, global social identifications (GSIs, e.g., with all humanity) are concepts of growing inter est. Although such identifications can be affected by the cultural contexts in which they are manifested, research on them remains largely confined to Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Using data collected in 45 countries (N = 9807, preregis tered), we compared the strength of three types of GSIs between countries and cultural clusters, and explored the possible role of five cultural dimensions. The results re vealed relatively small cross- national differences in GSIs overall, but African and South- East Asian cultural clus ters reported significantly stronger identifications than those from other regions, with India, South Africa, and Ghana scoring the highest. Contrary to our hypotheses, GSIs were positively associated with in- group collectivism, survival values, and traditional values, while institutional collectivism was unrelated. As expected, humane orienta tion was positively related to most GSIs. Additional ex ploratory analyses showed higher GSIs in countries with a lower quality of life (broadly understood). GSIs were also more pronounced in less globalized, younger socie ties, with a higher proportion of men, fewer immigrants, and stronger diversity. Our study highlights the need to broaden research on GSIs beyond WEIRD contexts.