Moving to wheat-farming regions increases analytic thought, but moving to cities does not: A three-wave longitudinal study.

Abstract

Does moving to a new environment change people's cultural thought style? We tracked the cultural thought style of 1462 university students at 18 sites over time after they moved across China for college. We tested their holistic thought, which is more common in interdependent cultures. One logical prediction is that students would think less holistically after moving to big cities and more economically developed areas, in line with modernization theory. However, moving to bigger cities or more-developed areas did not predict decreases in holistic thought. Instead, regions' history of rice versus wheat farming predicted change in thought style. Within just five months, students who moved to wheat-farming prefectures thought less holistically than people who moved to rice-farming prefectures. This fits with the idea that rice farming required more coordination and interdependence than wheat farming. In a follow-up wave three years later, differences widened between students in rice and wheat areas. This three-wave longitudinal study documents the transmission of cultural differences in cognition, even without personal experience farming. The results suggest that China's farming history is still shaping cultural differences in the modern day.