This paper deals with differences in social motives between cultures and with respect to their development. First, social motives are described as complex functional systems. Then aggressiveness and achievement motivation are dealt with as examples. Assumptions about biological factors are discussed and cultural differences are reported. Based on cross-cultural research, variations in early mot...

Economists have heralded the formulation of the expected utility theorem as a universal method of choice under uncertainty. In their seminal paper, Stigler and Becker (Stigler & Becker, 1977) declared that “human behavior can be explained by a generalized calculus of utility-maximizing behavior” (p.76). The universality of the rational choice theory has been widely criticized by psychologists, ...

INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................... 1750 I. THE MODEL: “WORLD POLITY” INSTITUTIONALISM AND THE STATE............. 1753 A. Understanding Social Organization: Sociological Institutionalism .......................................................................... 1754 B. Understanding the State as a Social Organization: ...

Group assortative biases are stronger in regions where pathogen stress has been historically prevalent. Pushing the logic of this approach, extensions should include investigations of how cultural norms related to prosociality and relational striving may also covary with regional pathogen stress. Likewise, the pan-specific observation that diseased animals show decreased motor activity to facil...

Morality and cultural identity emerge during human development in complex ways. We describe the theories and findings that focus on social exclusion and inclusion, social inequalities such as resource allocation inequalities, and intercultural contexts that both bear on and contribute to morality and moral development. This research reveals that individuals view morality as pertaining to fair, ...

We discuss how to use evolutionary game theory (EGT) as a framework for studying how cultural dynamics and structural properties can influence the evolution of norms and behaviors within a society. We provide a brief tutorial on how EGT works, and discuss what kinds of insights it can provide. We then describe three published studies in which we have developed EGT models that help explain how s...

If individuals will cooperate with cooperators, and punish non-cooperators even at a cost to themselves, then this strong reciprocity could minimize the cheating that undermines cooperation. Based upon numerous economic experiments, some have proposed that human cooperation is explained by strong reciprocity and norm enforcement. Second-party punishment is when you punish someone who defected o...

Several IS studies have shown that well-designed websites positively influence users, capturing visitor attention and encouraging return behaviors. However, little attention has been paid to non commercial and cultural websites such as museum websites. This study draws on human-computer interaction literature and sociology of culture to determine the influence of website design on museum visito...

The cultural norms of traditional societies encourage behavior that is consistent with maximizing reproductive success but those of modern post-demographic transition societies do not. Newson et al (2005) proposed that this might be because interaction between kin is relatively less frequent in modern social networks. Assuming that people’s evaluations of reproductive decisions are influenced b...