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Cultures and Persons: Characterizing National and Other Types of Cultural Difference Can Also Aid Our Understanding and Prediction of Individual Variability

Peter bevington smith.

1 School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom

Michael Harris Bond

2 Department of Management and Marketing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Valid understanding of the relationship between cultures and persons requires an adequate conceptualization of the many contexts within which individuals work and live. These contexts include the more distal features of the individual’s birth ecology and ethno-national group history. These features converge more proximally upon individual experience as “process” variables, through the institutional–normative constraints and affordances encountered through socialization into a diverse set of cultural groupings. This enculturation is then revealed in the individual’s response profile of values, beliefs, choices, and behaviors at any given time. Cross-cultural psychologists have typically compared these encultured responses cross-nationally by averaging the scores of equivalent groups of persons across national groups, terming these average differences “cultural differences.” This procedure has generated considerable resistance, primarily due to careless over-generalization of results to all members of a given cultural group. Critics of nation-based characterizations have challenged their methodological and conceptual inadequacies, but we now know better how to address the measurement-related aspects of culture-level “psychological” variables, such as individualism–collectivism. In challenging the accuracy of these measures, critics have also neglected to acknowledge the continuing predictive and discriminant validity of these dimensions of national culture. We here review the utility of more recent measurements. We then show how nation-level comparisons can be used by psychologists to improve our understanding of individual, rather than group, outcomes. Nations are heterogeneous amalgams of ethnicities, social classes, organizations, school systems, and families. Individuals’ socialization into these groups affects their functioning at any given point in life. These enculturations are further dependent on their gender, age, and education. Assessment of culture’s relation with individual functioning requires adequate measurement of both personality and normative aspects of situations in which behavior is enacted. Once this integration of cultural influences is achieved, the logic and methodology for integrating national culture into psychological models of individual behavior can be applied within any nation where research focuses on how within-nation cultural variation affects individual functioning. Culture, conceptualized as normative group constraints, becomes more widely amenable to study, and the hard lessons learned from cross-national research can be used to guide the practice of more locally sensitive research.

Introduction

“Two primary goals of psychological science should be to understand what aspects of human psychology are universal and the way that context and culture produce variability. This requires that we take into account the importance of culture and context in the way that we write our papers and in the types of populations that we sample.”

- Rad et al., 2018 , p. 1.

We argue in this paper that a valid understanding of the relation between persons and cultures requires an adequate conceptualization of the many different contexts within which individuals work and live. In particular, we explore the interrelation between the attributes of large cultural groups and the factors acting upon the specific experiences of individuals located within such groups. Relevant contexts include the more distal features of the individual’s birth ecology and ethno-national group history that are treated as “background” variables in Berry’s (2018) eco-cultural framework. These distal features give impetus over time toward individual experience through the constraints and affordances encountered by each individual during his or her socialization into membership of multiple cultural groupings. These extend across the lifespan from one’s family, varyingly constituted and embedded within a local community of caregivers ( Keller, 2007 ), through schooling to various levels and associated peer group influences ( Harris, 1995 ), to occupational settings ( Lodi-Smith and Roberts, 2007 ), and vocational groupings ( Pozzebon et al., 2010 ).

Over the course of this developmental process, the individual becomes less dependent on others for survival and better able to exercise greater agency in choosing his or her proximal cultural groupings and the micro-cultures of relationships within these proximal cultures ( Bandura, 2001 ). This general process is individualized and sorted ( Fowler et al., 2011 ) at each stage by the genetic profile of temperaments, intelligence, proclivities, and skills with which each person is endowed at birth ( Thomas and Chess, 1977 ; Deary et al., 2010 ). These genetic givens are then infused into the normative cultural realities of the specific cultural groupings encountered by the individual. Successive enculturation experiences then channel the individual’s genetic profile into a behavioral repertoire which interacts with the fortuities of life ( Bandura, 1998 ) to further refine the individual’s motivations and beliefs about the perceived world ( Sasaki and Kim, 2017 ). These emergent structures finally channel individual choices and skill enhancements, leading to individual personality developments compatible with the constraints and affordances of the proximal cultural systems encountered as embedded within the distal birth culture of each individual.

This progressive “fitting in” across the life course may thus be construed in terms of a Bronfenbrennerian bio-ecological model of development across the lifespan ( Bronfenbrenner and Ceci, 1994 ). This model recognizes the importance of individual genetic heritage and the epigenesis of interaction between the genetic “stuff” an individual brings into the world and the enculturation environments progressively faced by the individual throughout the life course. To understand and predict an individual’s responses at any stage in his or her life story or drama-in-the-world requires an appreciation of the cultural contexts with which he or she is interfacing.

What are these cultural contexts, and how can they best be conceptualized and measured? How are social scientists to deal with the interweaving of cultural contexts at different levels of immediacy to the living person ( Bronfenbrenner and Morris, 2006 )? How to incorporate the emerging polyculturalism of the individual ( Morris et al., 2015a ) across the lifespan into our models for behavior? What follows is our attempt to address these questions regarding culture. We first revisit conceptualizations and measurements of cultural variation. In subsequent sections we propose how such analyses of culture can be integrated with research on personality in ways that can explain the range of individual behavior more fully. Our lofty intent is to explain why an individual does what he or she does in a given cultural context at a given stage of life. Such precision of understanding and prediction is not currently available, but we hope to set an agenda for such studies.

Cultural Variations

In developing a conceptual framework for the study of culture, psychologists have faced a series of problems. Firstly, the traditional focus of psychology has been upon understanding the behavior of individuals, and the behavior of these individuals has mostly been studied in a highly restricted set of national–cultural circumstances ( Henrich et al., 2010 ). Consequently, it is perhaps understandable that initial attempts to understand the differences between groups of individuals from different parts of the world was often undertaken by drawing on concepts of personality ( Piker, 1998 ). In order to move beyond such a perspective, it was necessary to take note of the way in which a given group is not only an aggregation of individuals but also a shared context moderating the manner in which a range of individual dispositions becomes expressed. A major step in this direction was accomplished by Hofstede (1980) , when he proposed that variation between nations could best be summarized by defining nations as distinctive units, based on the way that they varied from one another , and discounting the variation between individuals within each nation. As we shall see, this procedure is not without limitations, but the recognition that in order to study culture and persons we need to differentiate levels of analysis was a critical achievement.

A second problem that has had to be faced is the question of how culture is to be defined. Everyday observation reveals a diversity of values, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors between different groups. Each of these attributes has been included in some or all of the more than 300 definitions of culture that have been proposed ( Faulkner et al., 2006 ). A major challenge in choosing how one can best define culture is to find a way that does not entail circularity. If variations in values or behaviors are to be considered as consequent upon cultural differences, then those same values and behaviors cannot also contribute to a definition of culture as a cause of such variations.

Two perspectives have helped toward a resolution of this conundrum. Firstly, Triandis (1995) proposed that cultural differences be examined in terms of syndromes. This concept refers to the way that cultures may be characterized not just along some single dimension, but along a series of interrelated dimensions reflecting different aspects of the social context. He differentiated five aspects of the much-discussed cultural dimension of individualism–collectivism: beliefs, attitudes, norms, roles, and values. Thus, his focus was less upon causal relationships between these attributes and more upon observing the way in which they correlated and interacted with one another at a given point in time.

A second helpful perspective is complementary to that of Triandis. Researchers have increasingly sought out variables whose measurement can contribute to the understanding of ways in which cultures evolve over time. These are the “distal” eco-social variables referred to in Berry’s (2018) model of cultural evolution, for instance measures of climate, environmental hazard, health risks, and so forth. If indices of such variables can be shown to precede contemporary expressions of cultural variations in ways that can be plausibly argued to have influenced their evolution over time, then we can begin to escape the problems of circular definition. In the following sections, we first examine the classic studies of culture-level variation, and then consider the extent to which more recent studies have overcome the criticisms that have been made of the classic studies.

The Classic Studies of Cultural Variation

The classic studies of cultural differences have all focused upon comparisons between national cultures. As we insist, cultural differences can be studied at all levels of analysis. It is for purely pragmatic reasons that national differences have been highlighted: survey data from individuals are frequently summarized by averaging the within-nation individual responses to produce nation-level indices, and other forms of data, such as indices of wealth and inequality, are also readily available for use as tests of concurrent validity.

The three classic studies of cultural dimensions ( Hofstede, 1980 ; Schwartz, 1994 , 2009 ; House et al., 2004 ) each employed broadly similar methods. Individual-level survey items were administered to samples from a broad range of nations, with the mean score for each item then being aggregated for each nation sampled. Sample-level means were then factor analyzed, yielding a set of dimensions summarizing culture-level variation in national means. In further analyses, controls are introduced to guard against the effects of cultural variations in survey response style ( Smith, 2004 ), and to determine the independence of the identified dimensions from variations in national wealth.

The question for consideration is what these dimension scores mean. They are based on individual-level scores, but they do not represent individuals. The scores for nations from different studies are drawn from different types of sample and have been collected at different times over the past few decades, but scores on conceptually related dimensions (for instance, individualism–collectivism and autonomy–embeddedness) are nonetheless shown to correlate substantially with one another ( Smith et al., 2013 ). Nation-level scores have been argued to represent a collectively shared perspective on ways in which social relationships and personality are understood in a given cultural context. Thus, for instance, nations scoring high or low on power distance as a relational dynamic or on power as a value could be thought to be characterized by a particular shared understanding of the nature of hierarchy and authority ( Fiske, 1991 ; Bond, 1996 ).

However, this view has become increasingly difficult to sustain. Analyses of the Schwartz database have shown that variation in values between individuals is very much greater than variation between national samples ( Fischer and Schwartz, 2011 ), with nation-level variance for individual value-types ranging from 6 to 26%. A similar contrast between individual variance and nation-level variance is found for personality dimensions ( Poortinga and van Hemert, 2001 ). Schwartz (2014) has addressed these results most directly, arguing that:

“Societal culture is a latent hypothetical construct. It cannot be observed directly, but can be inferred from its manifestations. The rich complex of meanings, beliefs, practices, symbols, norms and values prevalent among people in a society are among the manifestations of the underlying culture. They are not culture itself.” (p. 6).

Thus, nation-level scores can better be considered as an indicator of an underlying structure that will have been molded over time by multiple factors, and which may entail institutional structures, such as family relations, schooling, work organizations, laws, and languages spoken. They do not necessarily require value consensus. The strongest argument for retaining an interest in nation-level dimension scores is that they are found to consistently predict relevant nation-level indices derived from independent sources. The meta-analysis of relevant studies by Taras et al. (2010) found 87 significant nation-level effects for individualism–collectivism with a mean effect size of 0.46. In a similar way, Schwartz (2009) has summarized significant independent correlates of each of his dimensions. These results help to clarify what can be usefully derived from nation-level scores and what cannot. Dimension scores can give approximations of particular cultural contexts. Dimension scores do not enable predictions about the behaviors of individuals within a given sample. By adhering to this distinction, we can avoid the ecological fallacy ( Robinson, 1950 ; Hofstede, 1980 ) of assuming that relations between variables at one level of analysis will be the same at a different level of analysis.

If we accept the coherence and predictive utility of some of the dimensions identified in the classic cross-national surveys, there remain numerous questions as to whether and how more recent studies can add value to what we already have. We consider first whether researchers have devised better measures and whether these have identified additional dimensions of variance.

Improved and More Diverse Measures of Cultural Variation

The dimensions of nation-level variation that have been most fully explored are those that stem from Hofstede’s (1980) pioneering study, particularly individualism–collectivism and its associated correlate, power distance. The items used to define his dimensions were not selected on the basis of explicit theory but rather opportunistically, using an in-house morale survey conducted at IBM in the 1960s; there can be no certainty that they define the most important dimensions of variance. The classic studies have also focused principally though not exclusively on defining dimensions on the basis of items measuring personal values. Given the emphasis of Triandis (1995) on cultural variations as complex entities, there is a need to tap other syndrome components.

Using a more specifically targeted design, Owe et al. (2013) developed a measure of contextualism explicitly intended to measure the belief component of individualism–collectivism. Contextualism is defined as a belief that one can understand an individual through a knowledge of his or her context. Data from adults in 35 nations yielded contextualism scores on a six-item scale with metric invariance across national samples. Their nation-level scores were positively correlated with nation-level measures of collectivism based on values, but nation-level contextualism could also explain variance in dependent measures that was additional to that explained by values, suggesting the incremental validity of contextualism.

In a related study using the same dataset of adults from 35 nations, Vignoles et al. (2016) identified sample-level dimensions that were based on new and improved individual-level measures of self-construal. The intention of this study was to overcome the methodological weaknesses of earlier measures of self-construal and to differentiate the varying components of the global concept of collectivism. Aggregated to the sample-level, factoring of the means for self-construal items yielded seven dimensions referred to as “cultures of self,” which also achieved metric invariance. Four of these dimensions correlated significantly with earlier measures of collectivism, but the other three did not. These results underline the limitations of earlier stereotyping of Western nations as individualistic and Eastern nations as collectivistic.

Another aspect of cultural syndromes, namely the existence of cultural norms has been addressed by several projects. Some authors have tested for the prevalence of specific norms across samples. For example, Matsumoto et al. (2008) surveyed norms regulating emotional expressiveness across 32 nations. Recognizing that the relevance of norms may be context-specific, Gelfand et al. (2011) examined instead the extent to which norms in general were tightly enforced within a given cultural group. Across students in 33 nations, their six-item measure of perceived tightness–looseness was found to correlate modestly with individualism–collectivism, but to also predict aspects of cultural difference (for instance a history of social conflict) that are unrelated to collectivism. The items in the measure of Gelfand et al. (2011) emphasize perceptions of how people should behave, and thus provide a measure of injunctive rather than descriptive norms ( Cialdini et al., 1991 ). A measure of the tightness–looseness of 68 nations based on descriptive norms has been created by Uz (2015) . This was constructed by summarizing the variance in response to each item across a set of items drawn from the World Values Survey 1 . This index shows similar correlations with dependent measures to those obtained by Gelfand et al. (2011) . Both descriptive and injunctive indices of tightness–looseness norms have potential in broadening the predictive potential of nation-level measures of cultural difference, taking the study of national culture beyond the thrall of individualism–collectivism.

The inclusion of an increasingly large number of nations within successive waves of the World Values Survey has also provided the basis for identification of further dimensions of variation. Nation-level factor analysis of selected attitude items initially identified two dimensions of variation named as rational–legal authority versus traditional authority and well-being versus survival ( Inglehart and Baker, 2000 ). Scores on both of these dimensions were found to correlate at an average of 0.66 with Hofstede’s scores for individualism–collectivism and Schwartz’s (2009) scores for autonomy–embeddedness ( Inglehart and Oyserman, 2004 ). Bond and Lun (2014) drew on survey items concerning the values that parents consider that their children should learn, which have been included in more recent waves of the World Values Survey. Across 55 nations, these goals were found to vary in terms of emphasis on self-directedness versus other-directedness and civility versus practicality in socializing children. The first of these dimensions was also strongly correlated with Schwartz’s (2009) dimension of autonomy–embeddedness, while the second was related to his dimension of hierarchy versus egalitarianism.

Most recently, Minkov et al. (2017) have designed survey items intended to provide a new measure of individualism–collectivism, sampling adults within 56 nations, and using a three-point response format intended to obviate variations in response style. The seven items used to define their new measure of collectivism included value statements and self-descriptions. Means were found to correlate between 0.70 and 0.89 with earlier measures. Minkov et al. (2018) have used further data from the same 56 nation survey to propose a revised conceptualization of the cultural dimension previously defined by Hofstede (2001) as long-term orientation. Minkov et al. (2018) used seven survey items to rename this dimension as monumentalism versus flexibility. Scores on this dimension of national culture correlate at no >0.32 with individualism–collectivism but correlate strongly with Hofstede’s (2001) measure of long-term orientation and with nation-level indices of school mathematics achievement. Again, national-level cultural variation extends beyond individualism–collectivism.

The more recent studies detailed in this section are notable for substantial improvements in the use of theory-driven item selection, controls for measurement error, and the sophistication of the analyses used to test for measurement equivalence. They provide some diversification away from the prior emphasis on values as the sole basis for identifying dimensions of variance. However, they continue for the most part to examine variance that is related to individualism–collectivism. Where evidence is obtained for nation-level variance along more than this single dimension, possibilities are opened up for an examination of their interactive relation to relevant dependent measures. For instance, Smith (2017) showed that across 49 nations the relationship between autonomy–embeddedness values and levels of prosocial behaviors was stronger in nations with a loose rather than a tight culture, both when using the measure of Gelfand et al. (2011) and that of Uz (2015) . These types of moderation effect can be examined more thoroughly when individual-level variability is also taken into account, as we argue in detail later in this paper.

The Search for Causal Relations

The studies outlined in the preceding section have revealed a substantial consistency in the dimensions along which nations vary, even despite variations in the measures used and the types and range of samples that have been examined. We now consider evidence of what might explain these consistencies. There are two ways in which this issue can be addressed. Firstly, if we can identify ecological circumstances that are correlated with cultural differences, but which existed prior to the emergence of these cultural differences, we shall know that it is much more plausible that the circumstances influenced the emergence of the cultural differences than vice versa ( Talhelm and Oishi, 2019 ). Secondly, if we can detect contemporary changes in cultural differences, we can seek out circumstances that preceded those changes and are plausibly linked to them.

An example of a circumstance preceding the development of cultural differences is provided by the pathogen prevalence theory of Fincher et al. (2008) and Fincher and Thornhill (2012) . These authors provided evidence that life-threatening pathogens are more frequent in some regions of the world. They reasoned that groups who developed a collective culture would be better able to survive, as they could reduce the risk of infections due to contacts with out-groups. Nations that are more collectivistic are indeed found in the hotter regions of the world where pathogens are more numerous and more dangerous.

Climate is another pre-existing circumstance, which will influence the adaptation of human populations in numerous ways, including levels of mobility and the facilitation of different types of agriculture. Talhelm et al. (2014) compared inhabitants of rice growing regions and of wheat-growing regions in China. Rice growing requires much greater hours of labor and more coordinated activity for success than does wheat growing. These authors selected samples for comparison that were closely adjacent, in order to discount regional variations. Respondents from rice-growing areas described themselves and their relations with others in more collectivistic ways.

A more complex eco-cultural theory has been advanced by Van de Vliert (2009 , 2013) , who reasoned that the climatic challenges posed to populations living in different regions could be moderated by the wealth that is available to contain these challenges. Levels of wealth would initially be dependent on available natural resources. Van de Vliert postulated that populations in climates with a mean annual temperature of 22°C experienced optimal “liveability.” Those living in climates that were hotter or colder than this baseline would experience increasing challenges unless these could be offset by the availability of wealth. Comparing mean scores for 15 Chinese provinces, van de Vliert et al. (2013) found collectivist responses to a survey to be correlated with level of climatic challenge. Using a similar method, involving data from more than 100 nations, Van de Vliert (2011) found three separate indicators of collectivism to be associated with climatic challenge.

Gelfand et al. (2011) were also able to provide evidence of environmental precursors across nations for the development of their dimension of tightness–looseness. They found support for their predictions that the frequencies of risks such as earthquakes, floods, food shortages, and population density during historical periods would favor the development of tight cultures. Their hypotheses were also supported on the basis of comparisons between states within the United States ( Harrington and Gelfand, 2014 ).

Several eco-cultural explanations for the causes of cultural differences have thus been advanced. Where samples overlap to a sufficient degree, their predictions can be tested competitively against one another. For instance, Van de Vliert and Postmes (2012) showed that climate challenge predicted collectivism even after pathogen prevalence had been controlled, whereas pathogen prevalence was no longer predictive of collectivism after climatic challenge had been controlled. Thus, we can determine which are the most basic causes of cultural differences and which are more peripheral.

The second way to test for causal effects is to examine changes in scores on cultural dimensions over time. The World Values Survey has provided extensive opportunities to do so, due to repeated administrations of relevant survey items over the past several decades. A model of global cultural change was first proposed by Inglehart (1990) and has been further developed by Inglehart and Welzel (2005) and by Welzel and Inglehart (2010) . We here consider the most recent formulation ( Welzel, 2013 ). Cultural change within any particular national culture is seen as following a sequential series of stages. The first stage is cognitive mobilization, which entails an increase in availability of information and participation in educational opportunities, which can open up understandings of the ways in which culture members can utilize available resources. The experience of cognitive mobilization is predicted to lead to the development of emancipative values. These are values that favor equality, liberty, autonomy, and voice. They are measured within Welzel’s analysis by 14 value items which are factor analyzed at the individual level and then aggregated to the nation level. Where these values are experienced as fulfilled, levels of life satisfaction are predicted to become more focused on intrinsic well-being and less on material circumstances.

Welzel’s (2013) analyses showed increasing levels of emancipative values over time in almost all nations sampled. However, the rate of increase varies, with it being highest in knowledge economies and lowest in traditional economies; Li and Bond’s (2010) analysis of World Values Survey data found a similar moderation of increase in secular values by a nation’s Human Development Index (HDI) with nations at lower HDI levels showing slower increases over time. The number of nations sampled in the World Values Survey has increased greatly over time, so that for many nations data are not available for the earlier waves. By extrapolating the rates of change for a given nation for the periods where data are available to the earlier periods where it is not, Welzel was able to create scores for each nation for value change for some of the periods where data were absent. With this input accomplished, across 49 nations, he was able to test the relationship between increases in national wealth and increases in emancipative values. Controlling for wealth at Time 1, wealth at Time 2 predicts increase in emancipative values. However, controlling for values at Time 1, values at Time 2 predict increased national wealth. Thus, Welzel finds evidence for a reciprocal influence between wealth and emancipative values. Increased wealth facilitates cognitive mobilization which elicits a move to emancipative values. Enactment of emancipative values facilitates economic growth.

In a subsequent analysis, Beugelsdijk and Welzel (2018) have used World Values Survey data from 68 nations to define three dimensions of national level variance: (individualism–collectivism; duty versus joy; trust versus distrust). They judge these dimensions to be equivalent to Hofstede et al.’s (2010) dimensions of individualism–collectivism, restraint versus indulgence, and uncertainty avoidance, respectively. For these dimensions also, Beugelsdijk and Welzel (2018) found evidence for mutual influence between change in wealth and value change over time. Schwartz (2007 , 2009) has conducted similar analyses, in which he shows reciprocal relations between increased national wealth and increased autonomy values, across a 10-year interval. These analyses all reinforce the conclusion that nation-level cultural values can be both a cause and a consequence of the social contexts in which they are embedded.

How Can We Explain Nation-Level Effects?

In the preceding sections we have shown that there is some convergence in the knowledge of how the cultures of nations can usefully be described, and that there is evidence of the network of causal effects in which they may be involved. However, we have left to one side the question of just how such effects may occur. Early discussions of national culture favored defining it as a unitary state, for instance in the phrase coined by Hofstede (1980) , a “collective programming of the mind.” Such definitions are no longer tenable, in light of the finding that variance in values between individuals is much greater than between nations ( Fischer and Schwartz, 2011 ) and that there is a substantial global consensus as to which values are the most desirable ( Schwartz and Bardi, 2001 ; Hanel et al., 2019 ). Furthermore, most nations comprise numerous self-evident subcultures, defined by region, religion, social class, occupation, and so forth. We need to think more clearly about the factors that may mediate nation-level effects.

Welzel (2013) proposes that while individual values denote preferences, nation-level measures indicate the relative prevalence of different values. On this view, nation-level effects are a simple averaging of individual-level effects. However, simple averaging takes no account of social inequalities within nations. Higher status individuals and groups within nations are characterized by different values from those of lower status ( Kohn et al., 1990 ; Miyamoto et al., 2018 ). The greater influence of higher status groups in a nation makes it likely that their values will be better able than simple averages for the whole nation to predict nation-level effects.

We noted earlier Schwartz’s (2014) contrasting view that nation-level effects are not directly due to the prevalence of values but are due to the procedures and norms of the institutional structures embodied within nations, of which values are a reflection. An instance of such a structure that would be salient in most nations is the language used in everyday use. Kashima and Kashima (1998) found that languages used in nations that are individualistic more frequently require the use of the personal pronoun “I.” Verbs are used more frequently in collectivist nations, while nouns and adjectives are used more frequently in individualist nations ( Kashima et al., 2006 ; Maass et al., 2006 ). Nouns and adjectives less frequently imply a relationship with the speaker (e.g., “He is a friendly person”), whereas verbs more often do so (e.g., “I like him”). Thus, language use may repeatedly prime individuals to think in ways that are more individualistic or more collectivistic.

A second possible way in which nation-level effects may occur is that they may be mediated by one’s day-to-day involvement in organizations, whose cultures may parallel that of the nation in which they are located. We lack sufficient studies that have concurrently sampled both national culture and organizational culture. One project in which such measures were included was the GLOBE project of House et al. (2004) . The organizations from which managers provided data were within the electronics, food processing, and financial services industries. Brodbeck et al. (2004) found strong associations between national culture and organizational culture in the data from the electronics and food processing industries. However, within financial services there was stronger evidence for a global organizational culture that was unrelated to national context. Thus, there is some evidence for the view that nation-level cultural effects may be achieved by their replication within specific organizational cultures. However, in some circumstances, there is no such replication, in this case no doubt due to the international nature of the financial services sector. We also have indicative evidence that the culture of families varies in relation to national culture ( Georgas et al., 2006 ; Kağıtçıbaşı, 2007 ; Keller, 2007 ).

Dimensions Need to Be Understood as Dynamic Systems

In this section, we have discussed evidence relating to nation-level variability. In doing so we have retained the usage pioneered by Hofstede (1980) that refers to this variability in terms of stable value dimensions. We shall continue to do so in later sections of this paper, but in moving to the levels of analysis examined in the succeeding sections, it is important to acknowledge that we now know much more about the processes of social cognition than was the case a few decades ago. Throughout the day of an average individual, events will occur that cause a person to think of him or herself as a member of various social groups and entities, but sometimes also as an autonomous individual (e.g., Turner et al., 1987 ). Except in rare circumstances, they will not often think of themselves as a member of a nation. Each of these momentary identifications are likely to influence the individual’s perceptions and actions, thus creating and recreating various types of cultural influence, some of them dependent on relevant values, others more dependent on relevant norms applicable to the role they are instantiating ( McAuley et al., 2002 ) or other features of the situation they are encountering ( Reis, 2008 ). Recent studies have illustrated the way in which these momentary identifications can be manipulated experimentally ( Hong et al., 2000 ; Leung and Morris, 2015 ; Morris et al., 2015b ). Our focus here is on the way in which everyday life can prime one’s identifications in a similar manner. In this respect, the distinction between norms and values is not critical: awareness of the values endorsed by one’s peers can provide the basis for knowledge of descriptive norms (e.g., House et al., 2004 ; Wan et al., 2007a ). Equally, the injunctive norms that characterize major institutions are likely to be reflective of the values endorsed by key groups within those institutions. National culture can be thought of as a fluid amalgam of innumerable momentary events, constantly open to change but sustained by the continuities of everyday life events in particular contexts. We seek next to tease apart some of its components.

Reclaiming the Individual

How does culture relate to its members’ individual functioning.

As shown in the previous section, any functioning group of relating humans – dyads, families, classrooms, school districts, universities, professional associations, companies, types of organizations, ethnic communities, nations, supra-national bodies, and so forth – “has” a culture. Any group culture defines and regulates the interactions of it group members by systematizing and legitimating member exchanges to coordinate their actions for group survival and flourishing within the scope of ambient constraints and affordances. These groupings vary in their immediacy to the individual actor in daily life and may be characterized in a varying number of ways. So, for example, Lee et al. (2012) defined a family’s relationship culture using a single dimension, termed concord; Bond and Ng (2004) defined a team’s culture in terms of two dimensions of member interaction dynamics, viz., task focus and shared exchange; Hofstede et al. (1993) defined organizational practices as perceived by their members across six dimensions, like professionalism, hostility, trust, and so forth. Over the course of time, different constructs have been identified for each type of culture grouping, often without linking one set of such constructs to others previously researched in the same type of culture grouping. In consequence, the field of “culturology” is beset by a plethora of unrelated constructs.

These dimensionalizations of functioning groups constitute an unpackaging of the culture characterizing that type of grouping. So, a social scientist studying family culture may be called a “familyologist,” exploring the nomological network surrounding the cultural dimension of families being examined, as with the construct and measure of concord ( Lee et al., 2012 ). Similarly, a social scientist may be described as a “teamologist,” an “organizationologist,” a “nationologist,” and so forth, as long as their analysis remains focused on that particular type of social grouping.

But, if social scientists wish to study individuals as individuals, how shall the researcher include the individual person’s embeddedness within an on-going cultural group in the analysis? That agenda is, after all, the fundamental role for a cross-cultural psychologist to assume. We propose here, as elsewhere ( Bond, 2004 , 2013 ) that culture may be productively treated as the context for action in any group setting, however large the group and however distal the cultural group’s influence on the individual. So, the personality–social psychologist could be trying to explain the behavioral response of an individual in a dyadic role relationship as defined in terms of its associated norms ( McAuley et al., 2002 ), in an organizational setting as defined in terms of its norms of practice ( Hofstede et al., 1990 ), or the behavioral response of an individual member of a nation as defined in terms of its norms of value or belief (see e.g., Wan et al., 2007a ).

Context is thus defined as the normative structure for the group in which the individual is embedded and is acting in conjunction with other members of that group. Using these norms rather than the individual’s personal norms can yield better prediction of certain outcomes ( Wan et al., 2007b ). Using a person–context interaction to model behavior, we can deploy constructs and their associated measures that combine group norms in relation to the individual’s personality dispositions. A fuller understanding and prediction of individual behavior may be achieved in consequence.

A Closer Look at Norms

Norms are statements about behavioral regularities or social expectations for desirable or proscribed behaviors, i.e., norms are either descriptive, comprising statements about what happens, or injunctive, comprising statements about what should happen ( Cialdini et al., 1991 ; Morris et al., 2015b ). Injunctive norms may refer either to behaviors that are to be done or are not to be done. The behavior in question may be concrete and specific, as in closing one’s eyes when being addressed by one’s boss, or general and wide-ranging, as in cooperation with others.

As usual in social science, norms may be specified by referring to statistical averages of the relevant constructs as reported by a sample of respondents, e.g., a value, an emotion complex, a general belief, a cognitive style, or a behavior. This average is then treated as the cultural-group descriptive norm. Alternatively, a subjective norm may be measured at the individual level by asking each individual to report his or her perception of the norm characterizing the cultural group in question. Whether and how either or both these types of norm are used will depend on the model for behavioral response being proposed by the researcher – it may be a group-level, individual-level, or cross-level model. At the group level, we have evidence that subjective norms aggregated to the nation level can account for differences in effects as well as or better than measures based on personal values ( Fischer et al., 2009 ; Shteynberg et al., 2009 ). In the present case, we will discuss cross-level models where group-level norms can be related to an individual’s response across many cultural groups. In order to address this issue cross-culturally, we first examine the literature concerning personality and situation more generally.

Situations as Normative Contexts

Given the preceding, it becomes apparent just how complex, scattered, and difficult-to-integrate is the literature on norms. The challenge is how best to include the concept of norms-as-context within a social–personality psychology that attempts to understand and predict individual responding. One approach is to acknowledge that individual responses are always situated, i.e., they apply to situations of varying specificity or generality. For instance, we may consider when a father is at home conversing with his son, or when one is in public settings with unfamiliar fellow citizens, respectively (for a cross-national example, see Matsumoto et al., 2008 ). Similarly, one could consider the normative constraints induced by different types of group tasks and other types of activities ( Kerr, 2017 ). The difficulty to be addressed with this approach is that any use of norms as constructs for describing such contexts for individual responses needs to indicate both the specificity of the behaviors in question and the nature or type of situations or tasks in which each behavior is being enacted or inhibited.

Concerning situations, Lewin (1936) proposed the general formula, Behavior = f (Personality.Situation), i.e., B = f (P.S), for integrating personality factors with situational features in predicting an individual’s behavior. Norms exercise their force upon an individual’s situated behavior by suggesting or specifying the reinforcement contingencies likely to be applied should the individual behave or not behave in a normatively prescribed or proscribed way. So, some situations may be characterized as strong, others as weak depending on the intensity of reward and punishments regarded by the individual as likely to arise given certain behaviors ( Kammrath et al., 2005 ). These reward and punishments could be applied intra-psychically or socially, alone or face-to-face ( Clark et al., 2018 ), and be more or less effective depending on the personality of the situated individual whose response is to be understood.

The power of situations has been a longstanding assumption in social psychology based on many of the field’s dramatic early demonstrations of human responsiveness to unusual interpersonal arrangements, such as the classic Asch study on distortion of line judgments ( Funder and Ozer, 1983 ). Using the Lewinian framework, researchers moved on to demonstrate the joint action of both personality and situation but made an ad hoc selection of specific situations to demonstrate the impact of both personality and situation in predicting individual responding (e.g., Funder and Colvin, 1991 ). Calls were eventually raised for a more analytic approach to distinguishing among situations as factors influencing behavior, especially in drawing a clear distinction between personality and situations as predictors in the response equation [see Reis (2008) for a historical summary].

An early taxonomy for analyzing social–interpersonal situations was provided by Mischel and Shoda (1995) with their CAPS system, which grouped situations from the perspective of the individual, based upon the individual’s cognitive–affective reactions to the situation encountered. The problem with this system was that the situation was defined by the intra-psychic responses of the individual actor and made no reference to the nature of the social situation independent of the actor’s response to that situation. A situation-referenced typology of situations independent of the individual perceiver was needed ( Funder, 2009 ).

That gap was filled by Rauthmann et al. (2014) who developed a variety of typologies, e.g., the DIAMONDS taxonomy, which they have striven to integrate with other situation typologies in order to identify cross-study commonalities ( Rauthmann and Sherman, 2018 ). Ziegler et al. (2019) have shown that one of these typologies, the Situation Five, shows considerable independence from a Big Five measure of personality. This enables the separation of personality measures from those of the situation, and provides evidence that the situation measures add predictive power to personality measures, supporting the original Lewinian distinction between P and S ( Funder, 2006 ).

Situations as Interpersonal Interdependencies

Clark et al. (2018) have argued that relationships and the relational context within which any cognition, emotion, attitude, or behavior occurs is of fundamental importance in social–personality psychology:

“… pursuing understandings of human behavior without taking its relationship context into account runs the risk of omitting a central – if not the most central – determinant of that behavior and one that interacts in important ways with other determinants of that behavior (like personality) … of all the situational factors that might be considered in helping us to understand psychological phenomena, the relational context in which a person finds him- or herself is not only one of the most important contexts, it is probably the most important context.” (pp. 1–2, brackets added).

These authors proceed to make their case by examining the research data supporting the importance of variations in relationship type, relational character, and the developmental history of a relationship for their impact on a wide range of psychological outcomes – “prosocial behavior, social influence, person perception, self-concept, self-regulation, and judgments of pain, taste, beauty, and risk.” (ibid, p. 27). They conclude their review by claiming that, “… relationship contexts are one of the most powerful and pervasive situational influences fundamentally shaping human behavior.” (ibid, p. 1).

Clark et al. (2018) point out, however, that the studies in their analysis “have contrasted what occurs within close, intimate, safe, relational contexts relative to other types of relational contexts.” (p. 28). They note that other dimensions of relationship, like power differentials, are needed to supplement any analysis of relationship context. Such a broadening of relationship typology has been provided by Gerpott et al. (2018) , who focused their analysis upon the interdependencies that actors perceive to vary across the breadth of various interpersonal interactions. These researchers isolated five dimensions that US and Dutch respondents use to make sense of their interpersonal interactions: “We find that people ( in situ and ex situ ) can reliably differentiate situations according to 5 … dimensions of interdependence: (a) mutual dependence, (b) power, (c) conflict, (d) future interdependence, and (e) information certainty.” (p. 716).

In predicting individual cooperation, Gerpott et al. (2018) showed that two of their dimensions of perceived interdependency had significant effects. The situation dimension of mutual dependence and the situation dimension of conflict increased variance explained over and above that provided by the HEXACO model of personality ( Lee and Ashton, 2006 ) and the DIAMONDS typology for profiling situations. In future studies, other broad interpersonal outcomes, such as associative and dissociative behaviors or superordinate–subordinate behaviors, could be explored to extend this type of analysis; so, too, could more narrowly focused outcomes, like specific emotions, attributional judgments of character, or imitation of a model’s behavior. Whatever the psychological outcome of interest, using a model of perceived situational interdependency holds promise in extending research in social psychology beyond its intra-psychic, personality focus.

Cultures as Recurring Types of Interpersonal Situations

Having identified a general line of approach, we can now explore how it could find application to the study of cultural differences. As Clark et al. (2018) claim, “Understanding how relational contexts themselves vary by culture and influence psychological phenomena is itself an important issue to address.” (p. 6). Given that cultures are systems for organizing human interaction within and between groups of interacting persons, it seems sensible to conclude that, “culture often influences individuals through the nature of their connections with others in that culture.” (ibid, p. 6). In this light, the Gerpott et al. (2018) analysis of social situations seems especially apt for comparing the norms of cultural groups concerning the management of member interdependencies. These researchers provide the following definitions of their five dimensions of interdependency:

• Mutual dependence: “Degree of how much each person’s outcomes are determined by how each person behaves in that situation.”…
• Power: “Degree to which an individual determines their own and others’ outcomes, while others do not influence their own outcome.”…
• Conflict: “Degree to which the behavior that results in the best outcome for one individual results in the worst outcome for the other.”…
• Future interdependence: “Degree to which own and others’ behavior in the present situation can affect own and others behavior and outcomes in future interactions.”…
• Information certainty: “Degree to which a person knows their partner’s preferred outcomes and how each person’s actions influence each other’s outcomes.” (p. 718).

We suggest that these dimensions of social–interpersonal interdependency can be linked in suggestive ways with the dimensions of variation in national culture that we discussed in preceding sections. For instance, within collectivistic cultural contexts there are likely to be stronger perceptions of mutual dependence, less perceived personal power, and greater perceived future interdependence. Within tight cultures there is likely to be greater perceived information certainty. However, there is no reason to expect that all contexts within a given nation will replicate the characteristics of the nation as a whole. Other dimensions will become relevant, as Gerpott et al. (2018) have illustrated.

These speculations on cultural systems and their associated logics for interdependency management need to be tested empirically. They may provide a way to integrate situational analysis into cross-cultural comparisons of social and interpersonal behavior.

The Contribution of Individual Personality

What might be the role of personality in the Lewinian model B = f (P.S) for explaining individual behaviors across cultural groupings? There are a few points worth considering in this regard: Firstly, whatever effect personality might exercise on the individuals involved in a cross-cultural study of behavior will be dependent upon the specific lens of the personality measure used in that study. These measures vary across a spectrum of dimensionality – from the single, as in general self-esteem ( Schwarzer and Jerusalem, 1995 ); the double, as in proactive and prevention focus ( Higgins, 1997 ), the triple, as in the dark and light triads ( Kaufman et al., 2019 ); the quartet, as in McClelland’s (1987) Power, Achievement, Affiliation, and Intimacy; the Big Five (e.g., McCrae and Costa, 1989 ); the six of HEXACO ( Ashton et al., 2014 ); the Great Eight Competencies ( Bartram, 2005 ); the Implicit Motive Scale’s nine ( Schönbrodt and Gerstenberg, 2012 ), and beyond. The choice of scale type will change depending on the model for behavioral response being used by the researcher. There is a welter of possibilities to consider.

Secondly, the personality measure used is usually completed by the respondent but could and should have been rated about the respondent by others and included in an actor–observer model of social processes (e.g., Lun and Bond, 2006 ). If interpersonal or social behaviors are the focus, then mutual perceptions by the actors of one another’s personalities become an element in the equation predicting the actor’s response 2 . These perceptions of the other signal to the actor holding those perceptions the likely responses by that other to the actor’s possible actions. Under certain relational considerations, perceptions of the actor held by others may be more decisive than self-perceptions in determining the actor’s outcomes in the exchange, especially over extended periods ( Clark et al., 2018 ).

Perceptions of the actor held by the other or others can of course be considered part of the situation confronting the actor, i.e., the “real” interpersonal context. Furthermore, actors themselves differ in the accuracy of judging these perceptions held about themselves by others ( Kwan et al., 2004 ), and perhaps more importantly, in their attentiveness to the other or the others in the equation underpinning their behavior, as research on need for closure has shown ( Kruglanski and Webster, 1996 ). So, other-attentiveness may be considered a feature of personality, and the more objective measures of the situation mentioned above can be used in conjunction with personality to model actor behavior in group settings.

Thirdly, participants in our research endeavors enter our measurement process at different stages of their lives. By the time of a given study, their initial genetic endowment has been acted upon by the circumstances of their various socialization environments to yield the personality profile of the individual before us ( Bouchard, 2004 ). A meta-analytic study of self-report studies of personality concluded that, “… 40% of individual differences in personality were due to genetic, while 60% are due to environmental influences.” ( Vukasovic and Bratko, 2015 ). Environmental influences in this context would be all those factors impacting on the individual to date and not the immediate situational features considered above. Genetic information about the actor may, however, provide additional predictive power over and above the standard personality measures used in predicting behavior in free-response situations; research has shown that persons with certain genetic profiles seek out particular kinds of social situations and may be more responsive in these situations than others lacking these genetic profiles (see e.g., Dick et al., 2015 ; Salvatore and Dick, 2016 ). The extension of this work on genetic influence into the cross-cultural domain is in its infancy but promising in its capacity to add further predictive power to our standard measures of personality ( Sasaki and Kim, 2017 ).

Finally, the Lewinian equation joining personality (P) with situation (S) to predict behavior (B) does not specify the way in which P and S, however operationalized, are to be combined – the researcher might specify and test for an additive or an interactive relationship between the two. Both approaches are possible, depending on how narrowly “the situation” is defined and whether there are “layers” of situational influence to consider in the analysis, as elaborated next.

Culture as an Encompassing Superordinate Construct

Considering culture as a normative situational context would enable researchers to proceed in applying the Lewinian formula, B = f (P.S) to their behavioral response of interest. To do so, they must hypothesize the personality factors involved, the normative considerations related to the situated behavior, and any P.S interactions, and then test their model. The challenge, however, is to specify the norms applicable for the behaviors being examined. The usual procedure in cross-cultural studies is to measure an actor’s typical behaviors, in effect summarizing across the actor’s life to date. In that case, “the situation” in question is absorbed into the personality measure which summarizes the many, varied situations encompassing an actor’s life to date.

Such a simplifying process has been the typical approach in cross-national research. But, what if one is doing cross-ethnic, cross-state (or province), cross-organizational, cross-team, or cross-family research across national cultures where variations of ethnicity, provinces or states, organizations, teams, and families are embedded within nations? In this case, cultural influences on social psychological processes would “seep down” to the situational–relational level through many potential layers of culture, varying in their immediacy to the actor. A multi-layered, multi-level model of influence then becomes necessary to disentangle the complexity of possible cultural influences in play.

How Does Culture Exercise Its Effect on Individual Social–Psychological Outcomes?

Our approach outlined above is consistent with Brady et al.’s (2018) assertion that, “Fully understanding human behavior necessitates understanding the cultural influences on individuals in a given context .” (p. 11,407, italics added). If researchers are to use the Lewinian formula for behavior as a guide, then behavior, B, can be the result of variation in individuals’ personality, P, variation in the immediate normative situation, S, and variation in their interaction, (P.S). When researching across cultures, culture then becomes a superordinate construct in which the B = f (P.S) model is embedded, a higher-level summary of the individual’s situations encountered across a lifetime.

A number of possible effects may emerge from this multi-cultural, cross-level analysis:

• (1) P may exercise a main effect across all cultural groups, positioning the “average behavior” of members from any cultural group differently from that of other cultural groups.
• (2) S may exercise a main effect across all cultural groups, positioning that average behavior of members from any cultural group differently from that of other cultural groups.
• (3) The P.S interaction may exercise a main effect across all cultural groups, positioning that average behavior of members from any cultural group differently from that of other cultural groups. Leung and Bond (1989) refer to these three possible effects as “cultural positioning effects,” where culture is the superordinate context for action and S the immediate situation confronting the individual actor.

These types of analysis require multi-level modeling ( Raudenbush and Bryk, 2002 ; Nezlek, 2011 ). We have emphasized throughout this paper the importance of distinguishing between levels of analysis, and of not assuming that the relations between variables are the same at different levels of analysis. Multi-level modeling provides the best currently available procedure for detecting these probable differences in relationships. To be effective, an adequate number of samples is required to estimate the relations between variables at each level of analysis. This requirement is typically most challenging for higher-order samples such as nations. While multi-level models containing no more than 10 higher order samples may be tested, the likelihood that hypotheses can be validly tested is greatly enhanced where 30 or more samples have been included.

As an example of this approach, consider the work of Becker et al. (2012) . These authors asked adolescents in 21 nations to provide 10 answers to the question, “Who are you”? Respondents were then asked to rate each attribute of themselves on a series of dimensions, including how much the attribute provided distinctiveness and how much it was important to defining who they were. Individual-level analysis showed that distinctiveness was important in all samples. However, multi-level modeling showed that in more individualistic samples distinctiveness was associated with seeing oneself as separate and different, whereas in collectivistic samples distinctiveness was associated with membership of distinctive groups. Thus, there were main effects both for persons (P), for cultural contexts (S), but Becker et al. (2012) also found significant P.S interactions.

This study lacked individual-level measures of S, but where these are also included we may anticipate that a variety of cross-level moderation effects will emerge. So, culture, however operationalized, might interact with P, with S, with P.S, or with any combination of factors to influence individual behavior, B. These cross-level moderations are referred to by Bond and van de Vijver (2011) as “cultural salience effects,” such that the cultural background of an individual results in that individual’s position on P, S, or P.S being relatively more or less powerful in predicting his or her behavior than for an individual from another culture.

“Cultural salience effect” is a descriptive phrase only, requiring a persuasive logic for explaining why this way of unpackaging culture results in greater or lesser weight being attached to P, to S, or to P.S in affecting B. An a priori argument, well grounded in the literature involving this type of cultural grouping – nation, organization, team, family, role dyad – would be needed to provide a persuasive argument for conducting such a study. As always, methodological rigor and statistical appropriateness are required to prove one’s case. Since results do not always support the researcher’s hypotheses, so a sensible, fair-minded interpretation of the findings would provide a necessary conclusion to the research exercise ( Bond, 2019 ).

When designed using the Lewinian formula described above, cross-cultural research can improve psychologists’ interpretive power. “When psychologists leverage interpretive power, they can use cultural differences to build theories that explain a greater range of phenomena with greater nuance.” ( Brady et al., 2018 , p. 11,408). Carefully planned, executed, analyzed, and interpreted cross-cultural studies will enable researchers to “… go beyond simply documenting cross-cultural differences; (instead) they use their understanding of how culture shapes cognition, motivation, and emotion to build theories that explain why, how, and when psychological processes manifest differently in diverse cultural contexts.” (ibid., p. 11,407, brackets added). That increase in precision and generalizability should be our goal as cross-cultural psychologists.

Into the Future

We have argued that the culture of any type of group may be defined as the norms characterizing that type of group in situated interaction with the personalities of its members to yield each member’s response. This conceptualization of the cross-level relationship between culture and the psychology of its members opens up a host of possibilities for modeling individual behavior. Our vision has been one of a possible future. Few studies exist that have analyzed effects that included individual-level variance in terms of social context other than that defined by nation-level dimensions. We conclude by identifying three studies that indicate the variance that remains to be explored through more detailed investigation.

Diener and Diener (1995) examined the correlation between self-esteem and life satisfaction among students in each of 31 nations. The strength of the correlations was uniformly positive but varied in magnitude. Diener and Diener (1995) found that the strength of the correlation within each sample was significantly predicted by indices of individualism–collectivism. However, the measures of individualism–collectivism were not provided by the student respondents. Direct measurements would give a stronger test of their conclusions. Similar results were reported by Schmitt and Allik (2005) who sampled students from 53 nations. Self-esteem was found to correlate positively with extraversion and negatively with neuroticism in almost all samples, but the magnitude of the relationships varied, and this magnitude was in some instances predicted by scores on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions.

A more recent study did involve direct sample-level measurement of cultural differences. Lun and Bond (2016) examined the strength of the linkage between trust of one’s ingroup members and satisfaction with life in 65,021 representatively sampled individuals from 50 nations. These nations were conceptualized as differing from one another along two dimensions of socialization goals for children, viz., Self- versus Other-directedness and Civility versus Practicality. Although these dimensions are derived from individuals’ recorded preferences, they were identified through sample-level factor analyses that discount individual-level variance, and are thus true estimates of sample-level variability. These dimensions would be considered as process features of culture in Berry’s (2018) eco-cultural model of ecological features of the nation. Using Berry’s terms, these measures of national socialization also relate to “psychological” features of each nation, for instance the norm for equality that characterizes its citizens ( Bond and Lun, 2014 ).

Moving from the national level of analysis to the individual level, Lun and Bond (2016) found that trust of ingroup members was a predictor of life satisfaction pan-nationally but was a stronger predictor in nations higher in Self-directedness and in Civility. The socialization context for children characterizing one’s national culture thus has relevance to the life satisfaction of individual citizens. However, because this study also reported results nation by nation, they were able to show that trusting one’s ingroup did not predict life satisfaction significantly in all 50 nations, even if those nations were high in either Self-directedness or Civility. In fact, for Ethiopians the relationship was negative, albeit not significantly so. Why?

Of course, the specific result for Ethiopia may be an anomaly due to measurement error. However, to understand the results obtained more fully, we should need to move closer to the type of research design outlined in the preceding section. Rather than using a measure of generalized trust as the predictor, we should require measures of personality dimensions and measures of the perceived attributes of different interaction contexts. The World Values Survey already includes a very brief measure of personality but measures more akin to those proposed by Gerpott et al. (2018) would also be required.

Here, then are opportunities for a more “nuanced” understanding of the social–psychological phenomenon in question, albeit one that raises provocative questions of generalizability, begging the question of why a variable that predicts life satisfaction in most national cultures does not do so in a few. Such provocation is surely a reason for conducting studies as culturally comprehensive as that of Lun and Bond (2016) , despite its relatively limited focus on culture just as national context. After all, each individual in these 50 nations is embedded within a family of origin (or family of creation), which is itself embedded within a linguistic–ethnic cultural group within a provincial or state cultural group. Each of these levels of culture may exercise further moderating effects upon the strength of linkage between ingroup trust and life satisfaction. Assessing these further “nuancings” of the outcome requires careful theorizing to justify their examination, not to mention considerable statistical sophistication in their application. But, is not such nuancing in the interests of generalizability the purpose of doing psychology cross-culturally? We agree with Brady et al. (2018) in asserting that it is.

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”-Albert Einstein

Author Contributions

Both authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

1 www.worldvaluessurvey.org

2 http://www.persoc.net/

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• Published: 07 May 2024

Research culture in biomedicine: what we learned, and what we would like to do about it

• Alexa T. McCray   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7936-8956 1   na1 ,
• David Van Vactor   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8156-9482 2   na1 ,
• James Gould 3 ,
• Xiuqi Li   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1796-8555 2 ,
• Jelena Patrnogić   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0008-1343-0460 2 ,
• Caroline Shamu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4081-6023 4 &
• Mary C. Walsh 5  

Communications Biology volume  7 , Article number:  546 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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• Research management

The significant stressors that affect the biomedical research community have the potential to negatively impact the conduct of science. Here we report on work done at Harvard Medical School to identify areas for improvement in research rigor, reproducibility, and responsibility in pursuit of continued research excellence.

Over the last several years, we have worked to better understand the research culture at a large, complex medical school dedicated to research and training. While Harvard Medical School (HMS) is a leading institution for biomedical research and training, like many of our peer institutions in this rapidly evolving area of science, its academic and research community is subject to a variety of stressors and challenges. Some of these factors have the potential to negatively affect research conduct and productivity, laboratory culture, individual satisfaction or advancement opportunities, and, importantly, the reliability of research findings and public trust in science itself 1 , 2 . The many demands on laboratory leaders in today’s hypercompetitive research environment can contribute to inadequate mentorship practices and suboptimal laboratory oversight. In addition, there continues to be a need for greater national consensus on best practices for training in principles and practices of rigorous research. Notably, the traditional incentive structure of academic advancement often fails to adequately reinforce practices that promote rigor, reproducibility, and responsibility (R3) in research 3 . Thus, the forces that shape biomedical science careers and the reliability of scientific discoveries are intimately connected.

Recent surveys, workshops, and other studies have revealed concerns about the state of scientific research culture. Findings indicate that laboratory environments that are supportive, productive, collaborative, and rigorous are not only good for laboratory members, but also lead to better science 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 . Conversely, an unhealthy laboratory environment can lead to questionable research practices, or, in some cases, to researchers leaving science entirely 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 . The need for better career development support and incentive structures have become acute issues for trainees faced with the difficult choice of remaining in academia or pursuing careers in the private sector. The Director of the Wellcome Trust, after reviewing the results of their research culture survey involving thousands of researchers in the UK, commented that “poor research culture ultimately leads to poor research” 13 . Greater transparency in science has been promoted as one countermeasure, with institutions being encouraged—through consensus studies, guidelines, mandates, and grassroots efforts—to create a research culture that better supports and rewards researchers who are engaged in transparent research practices 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 .

Because effective mentorship is a key aspect of a healthy research culture, methods for improving and strengthening approaches to mentorship have been recommended 22 , 23 , 24 . One of the critical characteristics of strong research leaders, or “research exemplars,” as they have been called, is their excellence in mentoring 25 . Guidelines for the appropriate treatment of research trainees have been developed by the Association of American Medical Colleges 26 , 27 , 28 . The Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research uses a train-the-trainer model for mentors and mentees at all career stages throughout the US, and the related National Institutes of Health (NIH)-supported National Research Mentoring Network provides a host of mentorship resources with a focus on diversity and inclusivity 29 , 30 .

Although instruction in the principles and practices of rigor, reproducibility, and responsibility (R3) in research has been a component of traditional training programs in biomedical science for many decades, the methods and modalities of training have received renewed attention at academic institutions that rely on federal funding 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 . Several NIH institutes have issued funding opportunity announcements to develop, pilot, and disseminate training modules to enhance scientific rigor and data reproducibility, not only for training grant programs, but also for investigator-initiated grant programs 37 , 38 , 39 . The current trend towards a more data-driven approach to optimizing the design and delivery of science training provides a rational basis to assess efficacy, and a potential means to improve transparency and accountability for program outcomes. However, national funding agencies provide relatively little by way of structured frameworks and specific guidelines for training, perhaps to allow institutions more freedom to develop innovative approaches. Moreover, external sources of funding to propel and sustain new programs of training beyond individual support for trainees are largely lacking, thus forcing institutions of higher education to be resourceful and creative in developing solutions. All of this suggests that a vigorous effort is required within each institution, and that sharing of new ideas and approaches across peer institutions can provide an economy of innovation as well.

Beginning in early 2019, with the support of our dean, we engaged our colleagues at HMS and its affiliated hospitals in a series of conversations and workshops about R3 in research. (See Figs.  1 and 2 for additional details.) We established an R3 working group that held initial meetings, and we developed a variety of R3 resources. Following a kick-off meeting in late 2019, a survey of the R3 working group and faculty advisory committee asked respondents why they were interested in being involved in the R3 effort. Many felt that culture change in the practice of science was needed and that more attention should be paid to education and training in R3. Some expressed a desire for consistent R3 guidelines and policies. Additional comments spoke to HMS’s values 40 and to the stressors that are in danger of eroding those values, and other comments related to providing better support for mentors so that they, in turn, can best support their mentees.

The rigor, reproducibility, and responsibility in research effort has involved many members of the Harvard Medical School community and has proceeded with strong support from its leadership.

Beginning in early 2019, colleagues at Harvard Medical School and its affiliated hospitals engaged in a series of conversations and workshops about rigor, reproducibility, and responsibility in research.

We subsequently established two faculty-led committees and convened multiple meetings and retreats that included representation from HMS-wide academic departments. Participants included both junior and senior faculty (with a somewhat higher proportion of the latter), and an almost equal number of men and women faculty, as well as interested HMS administrative and academic staff, including representation from many HMS units and offices (e.g., Countway Library, Curriculum Fellows Program, Faculty Affairs, Graduate Education, Office for Academic and Research Integrity, Office for Postdoctoral Fellows, Research Operations, Research Cores and Technology, etc.).

We addressed a wide range of topics, including modeling and promoting a positive laboratory culture; developing best practices, resources, and skills in experimental design and data analysis; reinforcing research rigor in graduate and postdoctoral training; fostering high standards for professional conduct at the institutional level; and assessing and rewarding rigorous and transparent research practices. Our internal deliberations were informed by the extensive efforts to address R3 that are ongoing at the national and global level.

What we learned

Over the course of our meetings and retreats, we had wide-ranging and frank conversations about today’s biomedical research culture, and, in particular, what we might do in our own environment to effect positive change. Several major themes emerged as part of these discussions: (1) laboratory culture, (2) training and mentorship, (3) questionable research practices, (4) transparency of research results, and (5) institutional support and recognition.

Laboratory culture

Many of our conversations focused on the current culture in our pre-clinical, clinical and translational research laboratories. We recognized that the key to supporting a positive and healthy lab culture is to build and maintain a culture of respect in the lab. This includes welcoming diversity and supporting open communication among team members, and working to strengthen the connections between our work and the ongoing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in our community. We noted that it is also important to set expectations for research conduct in the lab. Some lab leaders have found laboratory manuals to be helpful. These provide important and continuously updated information about standard operating procedures, safety procedures, lab authorship policies, and contacts and resources that are available to lab members, to name a few.

We discussed other aspects of lab culture that may be undervalued, or perhaps even overlooked. We recommended the reinvigoration of social connections among colleagues, especially given the disruptions of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.We also felt that it was important to create opportunities for non-work-related activities and to engage regularly in discussions to better assess laboratory health. Limiting email engagement during non-work hours, recognizing and supporting family commitments, and encouraging paid time off, can help contribute to the well-being of lab members. We discussed mental health issues at some length, including methods to promote mental wellness and normalize access to mental health services. One suggestion was to train and appoint mental health liaisons at the lab, program, or departmental level.

Training and mentorship

We posed the question of whether responsible conduct of research (RCR) training is the optimal method for ensuring that all members of the lab conduct themselves in accordance with accepted professional conduct standards. There was general agreement that while such formal training is important, we need to be better at bridging the gap from the classroom to what actually happens in the day-to-day lab setting. Some of our faculty may not be fully aware of the curriculum that exists for students and postdoctoral scholars who enter their labs, and incentives for effectively teaching research design and analysis principles are often missing. We discussed the need to create a structure to organize and document RCR training that adapts well to different programs and to different career stages. Due to the tremendous diversity and scale of faculty research and training backgrounds, consistent transfer of best practices taught in our classrooms to everyday laboratory activities remains a challenging part of our training pipeline.

Given the importance of mentorship and the impact it can have on the career persistence and success of trainees, we discussed a variety of ways to strengthen approaches to mentorship, including considering and evaluating different mentorship models and providing ongoing training in mentorship best practices. Some suggestions included implementing a multi-mentorship model, where each mentor is available throughout the course of the training period and each mentor represents a different, but relevant area of expertise. Providing faculty with ongoing training in rapidly evolving technological advances in biomedicine was seen as critically important. There was strong support for the continuation and expansion of our existing formal faculty mentorship training program which provides faculty with strategies for effective guidance of their trainees as they progress through their decision making processes and career journeys.

Questionable research practices

We spent some time discussing how we can best help lab members recognize what situations and actions might result in questionable research practices before they occur 41 , 42 , 43 . The importance of focusing our efforts on preventing fires, rather than putting them out after the fact was underscored. Destigmatizing errors, setbacks, challenges, and failures by allowing protected spaces to discuss these can help avoid poor research practices. Regularly conducting lab figure review sessions during manuscript preparation, checking raw data, validating reagents, and recognizing where corners have been cut are all practices that may reveal questionable research practices that, if ignored, have the potential to become cases of research misconduct.

Illustrating questionable research practices through (anonymized) case studies in our training courses would help trainees see actual examples of these issues in our community. Creating a cadre of rigor champions 44 within labs and departments and recognizing rigor champion as a defined academic role could help ensure sustainability. We also gave some consideration to the idea of downsizing/right-sizing research labs so that mentor:trainee ratios are optimal for effective mentoring.

Transparency of research results

We discussed the importance of preparation and management of data to enable future reproducibility and sharing those data and materials openly, so that they are of maximal use to other investigators. There was discussion about the value of reporting on both positive and negative findings. We noted that transparency is enhanced by registering research protocols, by depositing preliminary results in openly available preprint archives (e.g., bioRxiv or medRxiv), by adhering to established funder and publisher data sharing and reporting guidelines and requirements, and by depositing data and publications in public repositories. We discussed exploring a variety of ongoing reproducibility efforts, such as the eLife initiatives for assessing experimental outcomes prior to publication.

Integrating conversations about R3 across our community will allow us to learn from our combined experiences, stressing that it is important to balance and incentivize community engagement around priority areas, while being mindful of the potential burden of too many mandates.

Institutional support and recognition

We discussed the feasibility of ongoing institutional support for research data management, including support for wider adoption of electronic laboratory notebooks, laboratory information management systems, research protocol repositories, and templates for data management plans. Better tools for archiving data, tracking experimental metadata, and training in best data management practices could help decrease the management burdens of active labs, and help set consistent standards and operating expectations across our community. We endorsed the idea of providing institutional support for the hiring and training of professional data stewards. Data stewards would have discipline-specific expertise and would provide full-time data management support at the laboratory or departmental level. We also recommended that additional institutional as well as federal resources and support for implementation of new federal data management and sharing policies 45 be made available, including having individuals on-call to liaise with grant managers and to point researchers in the right direction, allowing troubleshooting without being held to sign-off.

We spent some time discussing the value of assessing and rewarding rigorous and transparent research practices as part of promotion and tenure decisions. De-emphasizing the role of the publisher-driven impact factor and articulating the multiple aspects of impact would help establish a system that rewards those aspects. We discussed the possible restructuring of the pre-tenure/pre-professorial reward system, with concomitant changes to the format of our curriculum vitae, such that data sharing, creating large-scale openly available datasets, protocol sharing, serving on local and national ad hoc committees and panels on research integrity matters, and other contributions to open science are considered as part of promotion and appointment.

What we would like to do about it

We propose a multi-pronged approach to promoting R3 principles and practices across our own research community. We suggest four areas of action: (1) engage the community in a sustained and highly visible effort to promote rigor, reproducibility and responsibility in research; (2) provide an innovative data-driven training curriculum in R3 principles and practices; (3) support a positive and inclusive laboratory culture at HMS; and (4) recognize and reward R3 research practices. We are currently in discussions about what resources would be needed in order to make progress in our suggested areas of action.

Engage the HMS-wide community in a sustained effort to promote R3 in research

We envision an academic hub that supports evidence-based R3 research and training and provides innovative and impactful resources for students, trainees, faculty, and staff. We expect to collaborate with our many partners within HMS and affiliated institutions—and beyond—to support a sustainable, effective R3 effort. A critical component of any scholarship toward this goal must include continuous evaluation of the effectiveness and impact of R3 efforts, by developing and using a variety of metrics.

Provide an innovative data-driven training curriculum in R3 principles and practices

Although HMS has a long tradition of instilling in trainees the principles and practices of rigorous experimentation, rapidly advancing knowledge and technology demand that our training curriculum constantly evolve to meet exciting new opportunities and challenges at the vanguard of research. With our colleagues at HMS, we will look for opportunities to share best practices for R3 training and continue to build on the core competencies that have been defined by federally-funded training programs. We are currently designing a curricular framework that maps skills across diverse program offerings to competencies at distinct career stages, and we will develop assessment tools and instruments to allow for the improved collection and analysis of training data. To ensure a consistent transfer of theory to practice, we will work to bridge the gap between R3 training in the classroom and everyday laboratory practices by providing helpful materials for laboratory heads to use.

Support a positive and inclusive laboratory culture at HMS

Our community values include recognizing that our behavior affects the experiences of others, and that we value the well-being of every member of the community. Fostering a positive research laboratory culture, providing guidance and training for optimal mentorship relationships, and promoting scientific integrity in the research setting are paramount for excellence in science. To this end, we plan to examine and strengthen approaches to mentorship and work to model and promote a positive, diverse, inclusive, and equitable laboratory environment.

Engage in and reward R3 research practices

Progress in science depends on rigorous and transparent research practices. The ability to reproduce the results of a study allows others to assess the accuracy and trustworthiness of the results. While being mindful of excessive mandates, we will continue to work to maintain awareness of R3 principles and practices at all career levels, to improve laboratory procedures to prevent questionable research practices, and to promote best practices in data management and analysis. We hope to prompt a review of the academic reward system at HMS so that it might be updated to give appropriate credit to researchers who engage in rigorous and transparent research at all stages of research, from study and experimental design to reporting.

Research rigor has always been central to the effective progress of science. However, the escalating speed of information gathering and dissemination has amplified the impact of errors that might previously have been corrected through the natural process of continuing inquiry. This acceleration is further exacerbated by a hypercompetitive system of incentives in academia and science publishing that emphasizes short-term advances and novelty, rather than the robust and circumspect advance of knowledge. Interestingly, at the same time, private sector investment in science and technology is at an all-time high, making industry increasingly appealing to science trainees. Therefore, in the current research climate, it is not only essential for academic institutions like ours to take a careful look at the way that we conduct and teach science to produce the next generation of reliable investigators but also to think deeply about what will sustain the future of academic research in the coming decades.

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Acknowledgements

We thank George Daley, the Dean of Harvard Medical School, for initiating and supporting this effort. We are most grateful to the many faculty and staff who shared their insights with us. We thank our dedicated colleagues, Rachel Fouché, Julie Goldman, Jason Heustis, Melissa Korf, Jessica Pierce, and Daniel Wainstock, and we are indebted to Deans Kristin Bittinger and David Golan for their continued help and advice.

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These authors contributed equally: Alexa T. McCray, David Van Vactor.

Authors and Affiliations

Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

Alexa T. McCray

Blavatnik Institute of Cell Biology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

David Van Vactor, Xiuqi Li & Jelena Patrnogić

Office for Postdoctoral Fellows, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

James Gould

Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

Caroline Shamu

Maidstone Consulting Group, LLC, Boston, MA, USA

Mary C. Walsh

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A.T.M. and D.V.V. led the effort reported here; and J.G., X.L., J.P., C.S. and M.C.W. each contributed extensively and over several years to the effort. A.T.M. drafted the manuscript. The manuscript was reviewed, revised, and improved by all authors. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Alexa T. McCray .

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McCray, A.T., Van Vactor, D., Gould, J. et al. Research culture in biomedicine: what we learned, and what we would like to do about it. Commun Biol 7 , 546 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-024-06237-y

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Research: How Cultural Differences Can Impact Global Teams

• Vasyl Taras,
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And what managers can do to help their international teams succeed.

Diversity can be both a benefit and a challenge to virtual teams, especially those which are global. The authors unpack their recent research on how diversity works in remote teams, concluding that benefits and drawbacks can be explained by how teams manage the two facets of diversity: personal and contextual. They find that contextual diversity is key to aiding creativity, decision-making, and problem-solving, while personal diversity does not. In their study, teams with higher contextual diversity produced higher-quality consulting reports, and their solutions were more creative and innovative. When it comes to the quality of work, teams that were higher on contextual diversity performed better. Therefore, the potential challenges caused by personal diversity should be anticipated and managed, but the benefits of contextual diversity are likely to outweigh such challenges.

A recent survey of employees from 90 countries found that 89 percent of white-collar workers “at least occasionally” complete projects in global virtual teams (GVTs), where team members are dispersed around the planet and rely on online tools for communication. This is not surprising. In a globalized — not to mention socially distanced — world, online collaboration is indispensable for bringing people together.

• VT Vasyl Taras is an associate professor and the Director of the Master’s or Science in International Business program at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, USA. He is an associate editor of the Journal of International Management and the International Journal of Cross-Cultural Management, and a founder of the X-Culture, an international business competition.
• DB Dan Baack is an expert in international marketing. Dan’s work focuses on how the processing of information or cultural models influences international business. He recently published the 2nd edition of his textbook, International Marketing, with Sage Publications. Beyond academic success, he is an active consultant and expert witness. He has testified at the state and federal level regarding marketing ethics.
• DC Dan Caprar is an Associate Professor at the University of Sydney Business School. His research, teaching, and consulting are focused on culture, identity, and leadership. Before completing his MBA and PhD as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Iowa (USA), Dan worked in a range of consulting and managerial roles in business, NGOs, and government organizations in Romania, the UK, and the US.
• AJ Alfredo Jiménez is Associate Professor at KEDGE Business School (France). His research interests include internationalization, political risk, corruption, culture, and global virtual teams. He is a senior editor at the European Journal of International Management.
• FF Fabian Froese is Chair Professor of Human Resource Management and Asian Business at the University of Göttingen, Germany, and Editor-in-Chief of Asian Business & Management. He obtained a doctorate in International Management from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and another doctorate in Sociology from Waseda University, Japan. His research interests lie in international human resource management and cross-cultural management.

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Leading organizational change according to the conventional management playbook is difficult and often frustrating, and such efforts rarely stay on track. Executives set out with the sound ambition to transform traditionally hierarchical and siloed organizations into more agile, collaborative, and innovative ones: They formulate a compelling vision, communicate it, and try to inspire employees to do what’s required to achieve it. But they often find that people resist change, even when they agree that it’s needed. The top-down approach rarely wins engagement and commitment to a new vision.

In our hard-won experience in organizational transformation projects at several companies, we found that the idea of large-scale transformation can leave employees feeling overwhelmed and insecure about their ability to thrive in the new order. But we learned that by deploying a strengths-based approach at the individual level and then using it to constitute and manage diverse teams, we could win employee commitment to transformation. This approach can help reduce anxiety and burnout, increase inclusive and collaborative behaviors, and cut across hierarchical and functional boundaries. It creates agents of change with the power to contribute to a shared purpose and bold ambition rather than victims of change who feel powerless and fearful.

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All of those outcomes contribute to a stronger culture of innovation in the organization that enables it to continually adapt to changing market conditions and meet new stakeholder demands. As one of us (Linda) has found over decades of research on leading innovation, it’s not about getting people to follow you to the future — it’s about getting them to cocreate it with you. 1

In this article, we’ll explain how we developed our approach, the outcomes and impacts we observed, and what we learned along the way.

Wanted: Capabilities and Courage

Our experiences are rooted in the competitive life sciences sector, where the primary challenge facing leaders is the need to make companies more agile and able to innovate at scale and with speed. At each organization, we sought to lay a strong foundation for transformation by declaring ourselves to be “impact first” and working with employees to cocreate the purpose, vision, and strategic impact goals. We knew that executing on this vision would mean adopting a more democratic approach to innovation that would tap every individual’s capability and effort.

About the Authors

Diya Kapur Misra is a leadership impact adviser, coach, and DEI champion at the Power of i. Linda A. Hill is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Gaurav Laroia is a venture builder and consultant with biotechs globally. Christiane Hamacher is a former biopharma executive.

1. L.A. Hill, G. Brandeau, E. Truelove, et al., “Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation” (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2014).

2. D. Burkus, “Building the Strong Organization: Exploring the Role of Organizational Design in Strengths-Based Leadership,” Journal of Strategic Leadership 3, no. 1 (summer 2011): 54-66.

3. O. Bouskila-Yam and A.N. Kluger, “Strength-Based Performance Appraisal and Goal Setting,” Human Resource Management Review 21, no. 2 (June 2011): 137-147; M. Buckingham and D.O. Clifton, “Now, Discover Your Strengths: The Revolutionary Gallup Program That Shows You How to Develop Your Unique Talents and Strengths” (New York: Free Press, 2001); B. Rigoni and J. Asplund, “Developing Employees’ Strengths Boosts Sales, Profit, and Engagement,” Harvard Business Review, Sept. 1, 2016, https://hbr.org; and “How to Create a Strengths-Based Company Culture,” Gallup, accessed May 28, 2024, www.gallup.com.

4. D.L. Cooperrider and D. Whitney, “Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution in Change” (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2005).

5. P. Block, “Community: The Structure of Belonging” (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2008).

6. V. Van Edwards, “10 Effective Tips on How to Lead a Strengths-Based Team,” Science of People, accessed May 28, 2024, www.scienceofpeople.com.

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'Curious Conversations' podcast: Ozzie Abaye talks about how mung bean is reducing hunger in Senegal

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Ozzie Abaye joined Virginia Tech’s “Curious Conversations” to talk about her work using the mung bean to diversify the cropping system, empower farmers, and reduce hunger in Senegal. She explained why the mung bean is a good fit for that region, the process by which she began to share it with farmers, and the collaborations she’s utilized to expand it across the country. She also shared some of the challenges of developing recipes across cultural lines. 

About Abaye

Abaye is professor of crop and soil environmental sciences in the  School of Plant and Environmental Sciences , a Virginia Cooperative Extension  specialist, and the  Thomas B. Hutcheson Jr. Professor of Agronomy . Abaye is known internationally for her extensive work to improve the livelihoods of farmers, women, and children in  West Africa  through sustainable agriculture.

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• The mung bean has high nutritional value, including high protein, iron, and folate, as well as a short growing period — about 50 days — which makes it appealing to farmers in Senegal.
• Part of the agreement Abaye and her collaborators make with farmers is that they must donate 25 percent of their mung bean crop to local schools. She said they’re currently feeding about 6,000 students with mung beans.
• Abaye has developed over 30 recipes using mung beans and is working with collaborators on animated recipe videos to teach farmers who can’t read.

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Agriculture's cultural culinary impact

In Africa: Sowing seeds of sustainability in Senegal

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"Curious Conversations" is a series of free-flowing conversations with Virginia Tech researchers that take place at the intersection of world-class research and everyday life. Produced and hosted by Virginia Tech writer and editor Travis Williams, university researchers share their expertise and motivations as well as the practical applications of their work in a format that more closely resembles chats at a cookout than classroom lectures. New episodes are shared each Tuesday.

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Improving the research culture of an institution may lead to a fairer, more rewarding and successful environment, but how do you start making changes?

The University of Glasgow was founded more than 550 years ago and currently welcomes over 5000 researchers working in a wide range of subjects across the sciences and the humanities. Feedback suggests that our research culture is already good, but we think that it could be even better. As the Head of Research Policy (TC) and the Researcher Development Manager (EA), we have spent the past few years working to update research culture at Glasgow. Based on our experiences, our advice to anyone trying to change the culture of their institution is to be practical, consistent, and to aim for progress, not perfection. Start even if you cannot see the end. The project is big, slow, fragmented: and yes, it is a fantasy to imagine that a university has, or should have, a single culture.

The recent research culture survey by the Wellcome Trust has highlighted what many of us would not dispute: that the pursuit of a narrow definition of research excellence, and of excellence at any cost, has limited the research endeavour and had an adverse impact on the wellbeing of researchers as well as the quality and reliability of the research they undertake. It is not too late to fix this issue, but solutions will emerge only once research organisations, funders, publishers and government coordinate their efforts to identify practical actions that can be implemented consistently across the research community.

Meanwhile, the complexity of the problem should in no way stop us from implementing changes within our own institutions. At Glasgow, we focus on fostering a positive research culture . To do so, we develop policies, guidance, communications, training and related initiatives that support the success of researchers at all stages of their career.

With the support of our senior management, we have introduced several initiatives that we hope will make our institution an inspiring place in which to develop a career — whether it is academic or administrative, operational or technical, or indeed something different altogether. Some of these initiatives are summarised in this post ; in this article we will also share the lessons we learned along the way that might be useful to others.

Start from what you know

Research culture is a hazy concept, which includes the way we evaluate, support and reward quality in research, how we recognise varied contributions to a research activity, and the way we support different career paths.

Of all the things you could do to improve research culture, start from the priorities that you think matter most to your organisation; those that reflect its values, fit with what your community really cares about, or align to the activities that are already in progress. If you can, line up your agenda to an external driver. In our situation, two prominent drivers are the UK Research Excellence Framework (an exercise that assesses the quality of research, including the research environment, at all UK universities), and the Athena Swan awards (which evaluate gender equality at institutional and local levels). Our research culture initiatives also work alongside everyday drivers from research funders and other bodies, such as concordats on research integrity , career development and open research data .

Even better, align your initiative to more than one agenda. For example, we are supporting transparency, fairness, accountability (and therefore quality, career development, and collaboration) by requesting that research articles deposited in our institutional repository follow the CRediT taxonomy , whereby the roles and responsibilities of each authors are laid down explicitly.

Once you know what you mean by culture, write it down and let people know. This will aid communication, keep everyone focussed, and avoid the misunderstanding that culture is a solution to all our problems (“The car parking is a nightmare. I thought we had a culture agenda!”).

At Glasgow we define a positive research culture as one in which colleagues (i) are valued for their contributions to a research activity, (ii) support each other to succeed, and (iii) are supported to produce research that meets the highest standards of academic rigour. We have then aligned our activities to meet these aims, for example by redesigning our promotion criteria to include collegiality, and creating a new career track for research scientists (see Box 1 ).

Changing promotion criteria and career trajectories to foster a different research culture

At the University of Glasgow, academic promotion criteria are based on a 'preponderance approach': candidates need only meet the necessary criteria in four of the seven dimensions used to assess staff for promotion (academic outputs; grant capture; supervision; esteem; learning and teaching practice; impact; leadership, management and engagement). For the 2019–2020 promotions round, the University has also introduced a requirement to evidence collegiality as well as excellence in each of the four qualifying dimensions. The criteria recognise not only the achievement of the individual but also how that individual has supported the careers of others.

From 2019–2020 onwards, promotion criteria for the academic track also explicitly state that one of the four qualifying criteria should be either academic outputs or impact. By ‘impact’ we mean the evidenced benefits to society that have resulted from the research – these could be economic, societal, cultural, or related to health and policy. The new criteria therefore formally acknowledge that societal impact holds as much value to the institution as outputs, and that generating and evidencing impact takes time. It also ensures that staff does not feel under pressure to ‘do everything’. We will be monitoring the effect of these changes in mid 2020.

In addition, Glasgow has recently introduced a career pathway for research scientists: this track recognises and rewards the contributions made by researchers who have specialist knowledge and skills, such as bioinformaticians. The contributions and intellectual leadership provided by these roles are often not reflected in the traditional promotion criteria, which depend on lead or senior authorships. Research scientists can instead progress in their careers by demonstrating specialist work stream, as well as team contributions.

Practice, not policy

Success will not come from issuing policies, but by making practical changes that signal “the way we do things around here”. Even if university policies are read, they will be forgotten unless the principles are embedded in standard practice. And if we are not serious about our practices, then we are not credible about our intentions.

Over 1500 organisations have signed DORA and have committed not to use unreliable proxies such as journal impact factors in research evaluation. Yet, even purging references to journal impact factors from all paperwork is no guarantee that these or other metrics will not be used. If we are serious about fair evaluation mechanisms, then we need to provide evaluation panels with meaningful information. At Glasgow, we ask applicants to describe in 100 words the importance of their output, and their contribution to it. Many organisations have switched to the use of narrative formats, for instance the Royal Society , or the Dutch research council ( NWO ). To show that we value all dimensions of research, we also ask for a commitment to open research and give parity of credit to academic outputs (such as papers) and the societal impact they create (see Box 1 ).

To ensure that changes are felt on the ground, we are embedding these priorities in annual appraisals, promotion and recruitment, so that the same expectations are encountered in every relevant setting. We have also included the importance of responsible metrics in recruitment training, and will be working with our colleagues in human resources to ensure that local conversations with hiring managers are consistent with our metrics policy (see Box 2 ).

Responsible metrics

The policy on the responsible use of metrics means ensuring that the mechanisms we use to evaluate research quality are appropriate and fairly applied. For example, we need to make sure that quantitative indicators are suitably benchmarked and normalised by subject, and that they are used along qualitative ones. This is to avoid the over-reliance on single-point metrics (such as research funding) and over-use of unreliable proxies for quality (such as journal impact factors).

The policy describes our approach to evaluating the quality of our outputs, our supervision and our grant capture. The proof, however, is in the way the policy is implemented in practice. For example, applicants to our strategic recruitment schemes are requested to select their four best outputs, describe the significance of each output to the field (without relying on impact factors), and narrate their contribution to the work. Applicants are also asked to describe their commitment to open research. This approach allows the recruitment panel to obtain a more rounded impression of the candidate and, we hope, reduces the use of unhelpful proxies such as length of publication list or journal impact factors.

Start, even if you cannot see the finish line

Once you have decided on the general direction, start by doing something without worrying about scoping the project from start to finish.

At Glasgow we started by doing a 360-degree review of our provision for research integrity: this was not just about the training but also about raising the visibility of this agenda in the community. We did not call it ‘culture’ then, but we realised that progress would come from communicating the dimensions of good practice (e.g. open research) rather than by sanctioning breaches of conduct. That exercise gave us experience of getting support from senior management, managing a cross-institutional working group, and getting buy-in from the academic body through the establishment of a network of 29 integrity advisers . These individuals champion this agenda to researchers, contribute to training and policy and also participate in research misconduct panels.

From integrity, we moved to open research, and from there, to careers. It started with compliance, and progressed towards culture. Do not wait for the rules to come to you. Make your own. Have confidence that once projects are initiated, they will suggest future courses of action.

Shout about it

If you want to be noticed, it helps to over-communicate. If your project serves more than one agenda, then your colleagues in, say, human resources, the library, the research office, and the equality, diversity, and inclusion team will already be helping you to amplify the message. We have set up a Culture and Careers group that brings together a range of relevant professional groups and colleagues. Focusing on our culture activities and the training that we can provide to staff and students helps us to share knowledge and to highlight where different agendas can reinforce each other.

Make the framework easy to understand: at Glasgow we talk about supporting what we value (e.g. CRediT), recognising what we value (e.g. our promotion criteria), and celebrating those values, for instance with our recently launched research culture awards . These highlight outstanding activities that promote collegial behaviours and contribute to a positive research culture. In 2019, over 30 applications were received from across the institution, reflecting a variety of career stages, coming from academic, technical and professional services roles, and ranging from groups of researchers to individual staff. The awards have changed the conversation as to what culture actually is.

But equally do not fret if colleagues do not know how your various activities fit together under a ‘culture’ agenda. It is far more important that researchers embrace the activities themselves (see “Practice, not policy” above).

Communication takes legwork, so use any channel you have. Present at committees, consult with different disciplines and career stages. Speak to the willing. Welcome the challenge. Bring together different voices in a discussion forum. For example, we recently organised a research culture event involving action-oriented conversations with academics, administrators, funders, societies, and publishers; this helped to build our evidence base, share perspectives and move forward institutional thinking in relation to key areas of culture (see the illustration for a summary of the discussion).

Map of the ideas discussed at the Re-imagining research culture workshop organised at the University of Glasgow in September 2019.

Jacquie Forbes at drawntolearn.co.uk (CC BY 4.0)

A research culture survey allowed us to assess how we were doing. It gathered examples of good practice (for example, that the community appreciated reading groups and the opportunity for internal peer review) and it highlighted the aspects of research our staff were comfortable with (open access, for instance). It also pointed us towards what people wanted to know more about, such as how to increase the visibility of their research. Together, the event and survey have informed our next actions (you can access the question set here ) and our action plan for the next five years.

No such thing as a single culture

If you work in a research organisation, you are probably relaxed about the fact that different parts of the institution have their own priorities, as befits the disciplinary community.

Institution-wide projects should be designed to address the broad ambitions of the university: for example, all areas of the university can participate in the research culture awards or meet the requirement for collegiality in our promotion criteria.

Each discipline can then be invited to implement the culture programme that suits them. Getting this right requires a bit of flexibility, some confidence that things will not unravel, but also clear leadership. Some institutional glue can be provided by sharing case studies between areas, which is helped by collecting feedback on how policies and guidance are being implemented at the university level. For example, our new guidance on embedding equality, diversity and inclusion in conferences and events contains a weblink to a feedback survey. We hope that this will help us to pinpoint where colleagues are struggling to implement best practice, perhaps due to other organisational challenges such as funding, lack of clear guidance or procurement.

What’s next?

We have published an action plan for our 2020 – 2025 university strategy , which covers career development, research evaluation, collegiality, open research and research integrity. The starting point will be to focus on supporting career development, on helping researchers to enhance their visibility, and on developing an informed and committed leadership across the university.

We have also published an institutional statement to highlight the road travelled and our future plans. All the while, we are drawing inspiration from others: the Wellcome Trust and the Royal Society, and the progressive policies introduced by publishers such as PLoS, eLife, Wiley, and F1000. We are excited by the launch of initiatives that will inform better decision-making in the culture space, and online groups for sharing ideas. We want to be a part of organisations, such as the UK Reproducibility Network , that identify priorities and work together in implementing them.

We are also casting our eyes towards broader aspects of culture: how do we define and encourage research creativity, how do we make more time, and how might we extend the scope of our actions beyond research staff to all those that contribute to research?

Culture does not happen at the expense of excellence; an updated culture is what will allow even more of us to excel.

Author details

Tanita Casci (@tanitacasci) is the Head of Research Policy at the University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom

For correspondence

Competing interests.

Elizabeth Adams (@researchdreams) is the Researcher Development Manager at the University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the extended network of academics, technicians, students and professional services staff who over a long time have variously driven, supported, and constructively challenged what we are doing.

Publication history

• Received: January 29, 2020
• Accepted: January 29, 2020
• Version of Record published : February 10, 2020

© 2020, Casci and Adams

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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2024 Recipients of the Wolfe Fellowship

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The Faculty of Arts is pleased to announce that six PhD candidates have been awarded the 2024 Wolfe Fellowship.

The Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy supports the Wolfe Graduate Fellowship for McGill graduate students in the Faculty of Arts. The Fellowship supports the research of PhD candidates whose thesis work reflects the themes of the Chair, whose mandate is to conduct research, teach, and perform public outreach regarding the intellectual foundations, nature and methods of scientific and technological innovation and to provide support to well-rounded students capable of making constructive contributions to debates surrounding science, technology, and society.

Congratulations to all of this year’s recipients.

Discover the 2024 cohort of Wolfe Fellows

Discover the 2024 Wolfe Fellows

Name	Department:	Thesis subject/title *:
	Communication Studies	“Psychoanalysis for a Blue Humanities.”
	Art History and Communication Studies	“Long Time, First Time: A History of Call-In Radio in the United States and Canada 1945-1975.”
Jay Ritchie	English	Intermedia and the effects of digitality on poetic production, circulation, and reception from 1970 to 2020
	Anthropology	Temporary marriage among disadvantaged women in Iran
	Communication Studies
	School of Information Studies	Technologies to better support the interrelated needs of older adults living alone for physical activity.

* title mentioned where specified on the Wolfe webpage.

Emma Blackett (she/they), is a PhD candidate in Communication Studies whose work is informed by queer/feminist studies, psychoanalytic theory, film studies, and ecocriticism. Her dissertation, “Psychoanalysis for a Blue Humanities”, offers a critique of environmental subjectivity, taking as its premise the failure of public communications about ecological collapse to provoke action adequate to halting it.

Sadie Couture is a PhD candidate in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University working at the intersection of media history, sound studies, and science and technology studies. During her tenure as a Wolfe Fellow, she will be working on my dissertation project, entitled “Long Time, First Time: A History of Call-In Radio in the United States and Canada 1945-1975” which focuses on the origins, development, and conventionalization of call-in radio and traces how technologies, policies, economies, and cultural desires impacted the format and pummeled it—imperfectly—into the shape it is today. Calling-in—using a telephone to connect to a radio station and subsequently be broadcast live—is simultaneously a technical process, a feedback system, satisfies the ‘public good’ criterion of many regulatory regimes, offers an additional way to shape an audience, and generates cheap, usable content.

Jay Ritchie, is a PhD candidate in the Department of English. His SSHRC CGS-funded doctoral research examines how poets created what Fluxus artist Dick Higgins called “intermedia” art, where two or more different artistic media are combined to create an artwork both between and beyond the artwork’s component media. Situating the turn towards intermedia in the context of the emergence of digital technology, his research examines the effects of digitality on poetic production, circulation, and reception from 1970 to 2020.

“Apart from providing vital, sustaining support for research and dissertation writing in the final year of my PhD, the Wolfe Fellowship allows me to attend conferences on digital media, the digital humanities, and science and technology more broadly,” says Jay. “The opportunity to share the research I have conducted while supported by the fellowship and to learn from other academics deepens my intellectual engagement with science and technology in the arts.”

Maryam Roosta , is a PhD candidate in the department of Anthropology at McGill University. Her doctoral dissertation is focused on the practice of temporary marriage among disadvantaged women in Iran. In Twelver Shi’a Islam, temporary marriage or mut’ah is a contract lasting anywhere from an hour to 99 years between a man and an unmarried woman. While mut’ah has traditionally been an urban phenomenon, the introduction of internet has reshaped the social arrangements between men and women who intend to contract mut’ah. Maryam’s research shows that to better understand the boundaries between mut’ah and transactional intimate relations is necessary to attend to the ways in which digital technologies such as the internet both enable and constrain women in contracting such relationships. In addition to Wolfe fellowship, her doctoral research is supported by the Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Société et Culture (FRQSC) and Wenner-Gren foundation.

Mehak Sawhney (she/her) is a PhD candidate and Vanier Canada Graduate Scholar in Communication Studies at McGill University. Her doctoral project titled Audible Waters: Sounding and Surveilling the Indian Ocean traces the production of oceanic territory through underwater sonic technologies in postcolonial India and the subcontinental Indian Ocean. Through a focus on hydrography, military security, conservation, and resource extraction, the project explores the politics of underwater monitoring technologies such as sonars as well as scientific disciplines such as underwater acoustics and bioacoustics. In so doing the project offers media theoretical reflections on the idea of the planetary, ongoing submarine colonialisms, and geopolitically situated ways to think about the relationship between sound, media and the environment.

“The Wolfe fellowship will support me in completing my dissertation as a final year PhD candidate at McGill,” says Mehak. “My dissertation titled Audible Waters: Sounding and Surveilling the Indian Ocean focuses on the production of oceanic territory through underwater sonic technologies in postcolonial India and the subcontinental Indian Ocean. It is based on ethnographic and archival research in India and the US. The fellowship will be very helpful in supporting my work and stay for the next academic session as an international student in Canada.”

Muhe Yang is a PhD candidate in the School of Information Studies at McGill University. Her doctoral research investigates how to design technologies to better support the interrelated needs of older adults living alone for physical activity. Older adults engage in physical activity for myriad purposes, including health benefits, associated sensory pleasures, and increased opportunities of socializing. Yet, older adults, especially those living alone, often encounter various barriers to maintaining their exercise routines, contributing to inactivity and falling short of recommended physical activity levels. Those barriers, including health problems, lack of motivation and social support, lack of exercise resources, not only span across individual, social, and environmental levels but also are often interrelated, as revealed in Muhe’s research findings to date.

For more information on the Wolfe Fellows please visit the Wolfe Fellowship homepage . 

Department and University Information

Jordan Chiles opens up on losing Olympic bronze medal: 'I followed the rules'

Chiles spoke out at the 2024 Forbes Power Women's Summit in New York City.

Olympian Jordan Chiles opened up this week in her first interview since being stripped of her bronze medal from the 2024 Paris Olympics .

The star gymnast, whose bronze medal in the women's gymnastics floor exercise final was revoked in August, spoke on the subject at the 2024 Forbes Power Women's Summit in New York City on Wednesday.

"The biggest thing that was taken from me was that it was the recognition of who I was," said Chiles, pausing halfway through and becoming emotional. "Not just my sport, but the person I am."

Husband throws welcome home surprise for Olympic gold medal-winning wife

"To me, everything that has gone on, it's not about the medal, it's about my skin color, it's about the fact that there were things that have led up to this position of being an athlete," she said.

She added, "I felt like when I was back in 2018, where I did lose the love of this sport. I lost it again. I felt like I was really left in the dark."

Chiles referenced a coach she said she had in 2018, who she claimed "emotionally and verbally abused" her, though she did not name them, and said losing her medal made her feel voiceless again.

"I wasn't able to be heard," she said.

She added, "I made history and I will always continue to make history, and something that I rightfully did, I followed the rules. My coach followed the rules. We did everything that was totally, completely right."

Initially, Chiles finished fifth in the individual floor exercise final at the Paris Olympics, only to be moved up to the bronze medal spot after her coaches appealed the scoring of one of the elements in her routine. In moving from fifth to third, she leaped over two Romanian gymnasts -- including Ana Barbosu, who had already begun celebrating bronze.

Head of panel who ruled against US gymnast Jordan Chiles represented Romania in past cases

The International Gymnastics Federation has since awarded Barbosu third place, after the Court of Arbitration for Sport voided the appeal made by Chiles' coach at the event, with CAS saying Chiles' score was "raised after the conclusion of the one-minute deadline." In stating the challenge came too late, the CAS reinstated Chiles' incorrect 13.666 score.

CAS later said it would not hear Chiles' appeal to keep her bronze medal from the Paris Olympics despite new evidence, according to USA Gymnastics.

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Jordan Chiles breaks silence on bronze medal being stripped

Following the unsuccessful appeal, Chiles took to Instagram to share her feelings on losing the medal.

"I have no words. This decision feels unjust and comes as a significant blow, not just to me, but to everyone who has championed my journey," she wrote in a statement at the time.

"To add to the heartbreak, the unprompted racially driven attacks on social media are wrong and extremely hurtful. I've poured my heart and soul into this sport and I am so proud to represent my culture and my country," she continued.

Chiles took home one medal from the Olympics, helping Team USA secure gold in the women's artistic team all-around event. She was also a part of the silver medal-winning team at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

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