Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
7-2023
Abstract
Global consciousness (GC), encompassing cosmopolitan orientation, global orientations (i.e. openness to multicultural experiences) and identification with all humanity, is a relatively stable individual difference that is strongly associated with pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours, less ingroup favouritism and prejudice, and greater pandemic prevention safety behaviours. Little is known about how it is socialized in everyday life. Using stratified samples from six societies, socializing institution factors correlating positively with GC were education, white collar work (and its higher income) and religiosity. However, GC also decreased with increasing age, contradicting a 'wisdom of elders' transmission of social learning, and not replicating typical findings that general prosociality increases with age. Longitudinal findings were that empathy-building, network-enhancing elements like getting married or welcoming a new infant, increased GC the most across a three-month interval. Instrumental gains like receiving a promotion (or getting a better job) also showed positive effects. Less intuitively, death of a close-other enhanced rather than reduced GC. Perhaps this was achieved through the ritualized management of meaning where a sense of the smallness of self is associated with growth of empathy for the human condition, as a more discontinuous or opportunistic form of culture-based learning. This article is part of the theme issue 'Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis'.
Keywords
cosmopolitanism, cultural evolution, death, global consciousness, identification with all humanity, social learning
Discipline
Multicultural Psychology | Personality and Social Contexts | Social Psychology
Research Areas
Psychology
Publication
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Volume
379
Issue
1893
First Page
1
Last Page
10
ISSN
0962-8436
Identifier
10.1098/rstb.2022.0263
Publisher
The Royal Society
Citation
Zhang, R. J., Liu, J. H., Lee, M., Lin, M. H., Xie, T., Chen, S, LEUNG, Angela K. Y., Lee, I-Ching, Hodgetts, D., Valdes, E., & Choi, S..(2023). Continuities and discontinuities in the cultural evolution of global consciousness. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 379(1893), 1-10.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3843
Copyright Owner and License
Authors-CC-BY
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0263
Included in
Multicultural Psychology Commons, Personality and Social Contexts Commons, Social Psychology Commons