When Interdependence Backfires: The Coronavirus Infected Three Times More People in Rice-Farming Areas During Chinese New Year

Abstract

Interdependent cultures around the world have generally controlled COVID-19 better. We tested this pattern in China based on the rice theory, which argues that historically rice-farming regions of China are more interdependent than wheat-farming areas. Unlike earlier findings, rice-farming areas suffered more COVID-19 cases in the early days of the outbreak. We suspected this happened because the outbreak fell on Chinese New Year, and people in rice areas felt more pressure to visit family and friends. We found historical evidence that people in rice areas visit more family and friends for Chinese New Year than people in wheat areas. In 2020, rice areas also saw more New Year travel. Regional differences in social visits were correlated with COVID-19 spread. These results reveal an exception to the general idea that interdependent culture helps cultures contain COVID-19. When relational duties conflict with public health, interdependence can lead to more spread of disease.

Keywords

COVID-19 rice theory culture collectivism interdependence

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Ang

J. B.

Fredriksson

P. G

. (2017). Wheat and family ties. European Economic Review, 100, 236–256.

Canatay

Emegwa

T. J.

Hossein Talukder

M. F

. (2021). Critical country-level determinants of death rate during Covid-19 pandemic. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 64, 102507.

Covid-19 deaths in Wuhan seem far higher than the official count. (2021, May 30). The Economist. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/05/30/covid-19-deaths-in-wuhan-seem-far-higher-than-the-official-count

Curran

P. J.

West

S. G.

Finch

J. F

. (1996). The robustness of test statistics to nonnormality and specification error in confirmatory factor analysis. Psychological Methods, 1(1), 16–29.

de Guzman

. (2023, January 20). Lunar new year: 5 Things to know about the holiday. Time. https://time.com/6248736/lunar-new-year-celebrations/

Dong

Talhelm

Ren

. (2018). Teens in rice county are more interdependent and think more holistically than nearby wheat county. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 10(7), 966–976.

English

A. S.

Talhelm

Tong

. (2022). Historical rice farming explains faster mask use during early days of China’s COVID-19 outbreak. Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology, 3, 100034.

Fang

Wang

Yang

. (2020). Human mobility restrictions and the spread of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCov) in China. Journal of Public Economics, 191, 104272.

Fei

. (1945). Earthbound China: A study of rural economy in Yunnan. University of Chicago Press.

10.

Fincher

C. L.

Thornhill

Murray

D. R.

Schaller

. (2008). Pathogen prevalence predicts human cross-cultural variability in individualism/collectivism. Proceedings Biological Sciences, 275, 1279–1285.

11.

Freeman

J. D.

Schug

. (2021). Freedom to stay-at-home? Countries higher in relational mobility showed decreased geographic mobility at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, Article 648042.

12.

Gelfand

M. J.

Jackson

J. C.

Pan

Nau

Pieper

Denison

Dagher

Van Lange

Chiu

C.-Y.

Wang

. (2021). The relationship between cultural tightness-looseness and COVID-19 cases and deaths: A global analysis. The Lancet Planetary Health, 5(3), e135–e144.

13.

Gelfand

M. J.

Raver

J. L.

Nishii

Leslie

L. M.

Lun

Lim

B. C.

Duan

Almaliach

Ang

Arnadottir

Aycan

Boehnke

Boski

Cabecinhas

Chan

Chhokar

D’Amato

Ferrer

Fischlmayr

I. C.

. . . Yamaguchi

(2011). Differences between tight and loose cultures: A 33-nation study. Science, 332(6033), 1100–1104. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1197754

14.

Gong

Zhu

Gürel

Xie

. (2021). The lineage theory of the regional variation of individualism/collectivism in China. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, Article 596762.

15.

Grossmann

Varnum

M. E. W

. (2015). Social structure, infectious diseases, disasters, secularism, and cultural change in America. Psychological Science, 26, 311–324.

16.

Kito

Maeda

. (2021). The effect of relational mobility on the early and late stages of the COVID-19 outbreak: Discussion from the socioecological perspective. Shinrigaku Kenkyu, 92(5), 473–481.

17.

Krys

Vignoles

V. L.

De Alameida

Uchida

(2021). Outside the ‘cultural binary’: Understanding why Latin American collectivist societies foster independent selves. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 17(4), 1166–1187.

18.

Kumar

. (2021). Impact of societal culture on Covid-19 morbidity and mortality across countries. Journal of Cross-cultural Psychology, 52(7), 643–662.

19.

Lauer

S. A.

Grantz

K. H.

Jones

F. K.

Zheng

Meredith

H. R.

Azman

A. S.

Reich

N. G.

Lessler

. (2020). The incubation period of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) from publicly reported confirmed cases: Estimation and application. Annals of Internal Medicine, 172(9), 577–582.

20.

Lauerman

. (2020, February 28). Coronavirus spread in China mostly among families, WHO says. Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-28/coronavirus-spread-in-china-mostly-among-families-report-says

21.

J. G.

Jin

English

A. S

. (2021). Collectivism predicts mask use during COVID-19. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(23), Article e2021793118.

22.

Nisbett

R. E.

Cohen

. (2018). Culture of honor: The psychology of violence in the South. Routledge.

23.

Noblit

. (2022). The origin and evolution of Chinese lineages. Harvard University.

24.

Rad

M. S.

Martingano

A. J.

Ginges

. (2018). Toward a psychology of Homo sapiens: Making psychological science more representative of the human population. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(45), 11401–11405.

25.

Salvador

C. E.

Berg

M. K.

San Martin

Kitayama

. (2020). Relational mobility predicts faster spread of COVID-19: A 39-country study. Psychological Science, 31(10), 1236–1244.

26.

Schug

Yuki

Maddux

. (2010). Relational mobility explains between- and within-culture differences in self-disclosure to close friends. Psychological Science, 21(10), 1471–1478.

27.

Talhelm

English

A. S

. (2020). Historically rice-farming societies have tighter social norms in China and worldwide. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(33), 19816–19824.

28.

Talhelm

Lee

C.-S.

English

A. S.

Shuang

. (2022). How rice fights pandemics: Nature-crop-human interactions shaped COVID-19 outcomes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

29.

Talhelm

Oishi

. (2018). How rice farming shaped culture in Southern China. In Uskul

A. K.

Oishi

. (Eds.), Socioeconomic environment and human psychology (pp. 53–76). Oxford University Press.

30.

Talhelm

Oishi

. (2019). Culture and ecology. In Cohen

Kitayama

. (Eds.), Handbook of cultural psychology (pp. 119–143). Guilford Press.

31.

Talhelm

Zhang

Oishi

. (2018). Moving chairs in Starbucks: Observational studies find rice-wheat cultural differences in daily life in China. Science Advances, 4, Article eaa8469.

32.

Talhelm

Zhang

Oishi

Shimin

Duan

Lan

Kitayama

. (2014). Large-scale psychological differences within China explained by rice versus wheat agriculture. Science, 344, 603–608.

33.

Thomson

Yuki

Talhelm

Schug

Kito

Ayanian

A. H.

Becker

J. C.

Becker

Chiu

Choi

H.-S.

Ferreira

C. M.

Fülöp

Gul

Houghton-Illera

A. M.

Joasoo

Jong

Kavanagh

C. M.

Khutkyy

Manzi

. . .Visserman

M. L

. (2018). Relational mobility predicts social behaviors in 39 countries and is tied to historical farming and threat. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(29), 7521–7526.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.11 MB