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

Copyright Owner and License

Authors-CC-BY

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0263

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