Episode 285: On Culture and Agriculture

Very Bad Wizards

Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro

Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 2024

⏱️ 86 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s an old-school episode as David and Tamler dive into some intriguing research on the origins of cultural differences. Two neighboring communities in communist China were assigned to be wheat farmers and rice farmers. Seventy years later, the people in the rice farming communities showed signs of being more collectivist, relational, and holistic than the people in the wheat farming communities. Plus, we have some questions about a new study on censorship and self-censorship among social psychologists.

Links:

Clark CJ, Fjeldmark M, Lu L, Baumeister RF, Ceci S, Frey K, Miller G, Reilly W, Tice D, von Hippel W, Williams WM, Winegard BM, Tetlock PE. (2024) Taboos and Self-Censorship Among U.S. Psychology Professors. Perspectives on Psychologic al Science [pubmed]

A fascinating theory about the cultural influence of rice farming now has evidence of causality by Eric Dolan [psypost.org]

Talhelm, T., & Dong, X. (2024). People quasi-randomly assigned to farm rice are more collectivistic than people assigned to farm wheat. Nature Communications, 15(1), 1782.[nature.com]

Talhelm, T., Zhang, X., Oishi, S., Shimin, C., Duan, D., Lan, X., & Kitayama, S. (2014). Large-scale psychological differences within China explained by rice versus wheat agriculture. Science, 344(6184), 603-608. [science.org]

Transcript

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0:00.0	Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and a psychologist Dave Vizarro,
0:06.0	having an informal discussion about issues and science and ethics.
0:09.4	Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say and knowing my dad some very inappropriate jokes.
0:17.0	Why do you think your mommy or daddy are always telling you don't put that in your mouth?
0:21.0	Let's find out. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
0:34.0	Who are you?
0:40.0	Who are you? A very bad man.
0:44.0	I'm a very good man.
0:46.0	Good man.
0:48.0	They think deep thoughts, and with no more brains than you have.
0:54.0	May no attention to that man.
0:57.0	Anybody can have a brain.
1:02.0	You're a very bad man.
1:06.0	I'm a very good man.
1:08.0	Just a very bad wizard.
1:11.0	Welcome to very Bad Wizards.
1:13.0	I'm Tamler Summers from the University of Houston.
1:15.8	Dave, the city of Houston, God's Chew-Tew toy, the like squeaky mouse for the kitten.
1:22.6	We just got hit by a surprise Dereko a couple of days ago.
1:26.4	Do you even know what a Dereko is?
1:28.0	No idea, I've never heard that.
1:30.9	I've never heard it either.
	...

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