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Social mindfulness and prosociality vary across the globe.

ABSTRACT: Humans are social animals, but not everyone will be mindful of others to the same extent. Individual differences have been found, but would social mindfulness also be shaped by one's location in the world? Expecting cross-national differences to exist, we examined if and how social mindfulness differs across countries. At little to no material cost, social mindfulness typically entails small acts of attention or kindness. Even though fairly common, such low-cost cooperation has received little empirical attention. Measuring social mindfulness across 31 samples from industrialized countries and regions (n = 8,354), we found considerable variation. Among selected country-level variables, greater social mindfulness was most strongly associated with countries' better general performance on environmental protection. Together, our findings contribute to the literature on prosociality by targeting the kind of everyday cooperation that is more focused on communicating benevolence than on providing material benefits.

SUBMITTER: Van Doesum NJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8536393 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Social mindfulness and prosociality vary across the globe.

Van Doesum Niels J NJ Murphy Ryan O RO Gallucci Marcello M Aharonov-Majar Efrat E Athenstaedt Ursula U Au Wing Tung WT Bai Liying L Böhm Robert R Bovina Inna I Buchan Nancy R NR Chen Xiao-Ping XP Dumont Kitty B KB Engelmann Jan B JB Eriksson Kimmo K Euh Hyun H Fiedler Susann S Friesen Justin J Gächter Simon S Garcia Camilo C González Roberto R Graf Sylvie S Growiec Katarzyna K Guimond Serge S Hřebíčková Martina M Immer-Bernold Elizabeth E Joireman Jeff J Karagonlar Gokhan G Kawakami Kerry K Kiyonari Toko T Kou Yu Y Kuhlman D Michael DM Kyrtsis Alexandros-Andreas AA Lay Siugmin S Leonardelli Geoffrey J GJ Li Norman P NP Li Yang Y Maciejovsky Boris B Manesi Zoi Z Mashuri Ali A Mok Aurelia A Moser Karin S KS Moták Ladislav L Netedu Adrian A Pammi Chandrasekhar C Platow Michael J MJ Raczka-Winkler Karolina K Reinders Folmer Christopher P CP Reyna Cecilia C Romano Angelo A Shalvi Shaul S Simão Cláudia C Stivers Adam W AW Strimling Pontus P Tsirbas Yannis Y Utz Sonja S van der Meij Leander L Waldzus Sven S Wang Yiwen Y Weber Bernd B Weisel Ori O Wildschut Tim T Winter Fabian F Wu Junhui J Yong Jose C JC Van Lange Paul A M PAM

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20210801 35

Humans are social animals, but not everyone will be mindful of others to the same extent. Individual differences have been found, but would social mindfulness also be shaped by one's location in the world? Expecting cross-national differences to exist, we examined if and how social mindfulness differs across countries. At little to no material cost, social mindfulness typically entails small acts of attention or kindness. Even though fairly common, such low-cost cooperation has received little e ...[more]

PMID: 34426492

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Project description:Background Appropriate social interactions influence animal fitness by impacting several processes, such as mating, territory defense, and offspring care. Many studies shedding light on the neurobiological underpinnings of social behavior have focused on nonapeptides (vasopressin, oxytocin, and homologues) and on sexual or parent-offspring interactions. Furthermore, animals have been studied under artificial laboratory conditions, where the consequences of behavioral responses may not be as critical as when expressed under natural environments, therefore obscuring certain physiological responses. We used automated recording of social interactions of wild house mice outside of the breeding season to detect individuals at both tails of a distribution of egocentric network sizes (characterized by number of different partners encountered per day). We then used RNA-seq to perform an unbiased assessment of neural differences in gene expression in the prefrontal cortex, the hippocampus and the hypothalamus between these mice with naturally occurring extreme differences in social network size. Results We found that the neurogenomic pathways associated with having extreme social network sizes differed between the sexes. In females, hundreds of genes were differentially expressed between animals with small and large social network sizes, whereas in males very few were. In males, X-chromosome inactivation pathways in the prefrontal cortex were the ones that better differentiated animals with small from those with large social network sizes animals. In females, animals with small network size showed up-regulation of dopaminergic production and transport pathways in the hypothalamus. Additionally, in females, extracellular matrix deposition on hippocampal neurons was higher in individuals with small relative to large social network size. Conclusions Studying neural substrates of natural variation in social behavior in traditional model organisms in their habitat can open new targets of research for understanding variation in social behavior in other taxa.

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Social mindfulness and prosociality vary across the globe.

Publications

Social mindfulness and prosociality vary across the globe.

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