Westerners tend to be more individualistic than Easterners. Did our ancestors plant these cultural differences hundreds of years ago when they chose which grains to grow?
Teamwork needed: Successfully growing rice requires villages to work together to build irrigation systems and get the crop planted. By comparison, wheat is easier to grow.
Handout/Getty ImagesAsk Americans to describe themselves, and chances are you'll get adjectives like "energetic," "friendly" or "hard-working."
In Japan, the responses would likely be much different. "Dependent on others" and "considerate" might pop up, studies have found.
Psychologists have known for a long time that people in East Asia think differently, on average, than do those in the U.S. and Europe. Easterners indeed tend to be more cooperative and intuitive, while Westerners lean toward individualism and analytical thinking.
Now psychologists have evidence that our ancestors planted some of these cultural differences hundreds of years ago when they chose which grains to sow.
It takes a village to grow rice paddies: Taiwanese farmers break a Guinness World Record for the largest number of people planting rice at once in August 2012.
Sam Yeh/AFP/Getty Images"We call it the rice theory," says Thomas Talhelm, a graduate student at the University of Virginia who led the study. "Rice is a really special kind of farming."
The idea is simple. Growing rice tends to foster cultures that are more cooperative and interconnected, Talhelm and his colleagues explain Thursday in the journal Science.
Why? Because farming rice paddies requires collaboration with your neighbors, Talhelm tells The Salt. Self-reliance is dangerous.
"Families have to flood and drain their field at the same time," he says. " So there are punishments for being too individualistic. If you flood too early, you would really piss off your neighbors."
Rice paddies also require irrigation systems. "That cost falls on the village, not just one family," he says. "So villages have to figure out a way to coordinate and pay for and maintain this system. It makes people cooperate."
Wheat, on the other hand, as well as barley and corn, doesn't generally require irrigation — or much collaboration. One family alone can plant, grow and harvest a field of wheat, without the help of others.
So wheat farming fosters cultures with more individualism, independence and innovation, Talhelm and his colleagues say. Self-reliance and innovation are rewarded.
Solitude and self-reliance: Farming corn and wheat historically has required less labor and dependency on others in a community.
John Moore/Getty ImagesOf course, proposing this rice theory is easy. Demonstrating that farming styles actually drive cultural changes is much harder.
To start to do that, Talhelm and his colleagues turned to a country that historically farmed both wheat and rice: China.
For generations, the people in the northern half of China have generally grown wheat, while those in the southern half have focused on rice.
And guess which people people tend to think more like Westerners? The northerners whose ancestors farmed wheat.
Talhelm and his colleagues gave simple psychological tests to about a thousand college students from both parts of China. Students in the north answered the questions more like Americans and Europeans: They tended to be more individualistic and use more analytical thinking. Those in the south aligned more with the cultures in Japan and Korea.
One test, for instance, asked a person to draw his social network, with circles representing himself and his friends. Americans tend to draw themselves bigger than their friends, about a quarter of an inch bigger. But Japanese draw themselves, on average, a bit smaller than their friends, a previous study found.
"America is No. 1 when it comes to self-inflation," Telhelm says. "We draw ourselves much larger than friends. We take that as a measure of self-inflation."
When Talhelm gave the same social network test to Chinese students, the amount of self-inflation depended on where the students lived. People from wheat-growing regions drew themselves slightly larger than their friends, on average. Students from the rice-growing regions drew themselves smaller than their friends. Like Westerners, people whose ancestors farmed wheat tend to inflate their own importance more.
Of course, the rice theory isn't the only hypothesis for why Easterners and Westerners tend to think differently.
Some scientists have chalked up these differences to wealth and modernization: As societies get richer and more educated, people become more individualistic and analytical.
But that idea doesn't explain the cooperative cultures in Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea — which, in some ways, are richer than the U.S.
And the studies supporting this modernization idea, so far, haven't been as strong as the current study in Science, says psychologist Joseph Henrich, of the University of British Columbia, who wasn't involved in the work.
"The [rice theory] idea has been out there for a while," he tells The Salt. "This is really the first study that I know of with systematic data supporting it. Other theories mostly stem from very small studies across nationalities. The quality of this study is better than those."
But there's still much more work to be done before the hypothesis is accepted, Heinrich says. "This is only the first study and we would want much more evidence before we declare victory."
And the rice theory doesn't explain all the psychological differences observed in the students from the north and south of China.
"Lots of other things in the environment [besides rice farming] can create the same pattern," Henrich says. "These things can last for generations. They become the right way to do things. And it takes a while to get a way from them."
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I see a link with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polder_model:
“The polder model (Dutch: poldermodel) is a method of consensus decision-making, based on the Dutch version of consensus-based economic and social policymaking in the 1980s and 1990s. It gets its name from the Dutch word (polder) for tracts of land enclosed by dikes.
[…]
A third explanation refers to a unique aspect of the Netherlands, that it consists in large part of polders, land reclaimed from the sea, which requires constant pumping and maintenance of the dykes. Ever since the Middle Ages, when the process of land reclamation began, different societies living in the same polder have been forced to cooperate because without unanimous agreement on shared responsibility for maintenance of the dykes and pumping stations, the polders would have flooded and everyone would have suffered. Crucially, even when different cities in the same polder were at war, they still had to cooperate in this respect. This is thought to have taught the Dutch to set aside differences for a greater purpose.”
This is one of the things that makes sci-fi stories set on Moon and Mars colonies more interesting than generic space opera with abundant/unexplained resourcing.
Unfortunately the Moon/Mars genre has been tainted by Heinlein’s “Moon is a Harsh Mistress” which recognized this question and solved it by making everyone a true libertarian who would rather nobly suffocate than steal air. When a criminal element shows up, it’s a racial stereotype shipped from Earth and the enlightened lunar dwellers simply kick him out and proceed with their zero-crime paradise of private property. Ridiculous book but understandably influential in its era.
By atq2119 2026-02-1013:52 Don't forget the literal deus ex machina in the form of the computer that coordinates everything.
By unwind 2026-02-1015:32 How about "R, G, B Mars" [1], then?
By rmonvfer 2026-02-1014:33 This is precisely what happens in the Apple TV series “For All Mankind” an I think it’s a pretty realistic take on how future lunar and Martian settlements would work (either everyone cooperates or everyone is cooked)
Eastern culture seems too big a term. What do you think is cooperative in Chinese culture? The whole point of the Chinese imperial ruling system post-Qin is to make sure people don’t cooperate to secure the emperor’s rule. It worked wonders for two millennia. Then the totalitarian Leninist system perfected it with modern technology, party organization and propaganda. The modern mainland Chinese people cooperate because there is a powerful central government pushing. Random people have minimal trust towards one another for cooperation. Yes we build power plants and highspeed rails. But we also quarantine cities and abort fetuses en mass and engineer famines with the same system. It’s cooperation with totalitarian characteristics.
Remember that the study is westerners trying to make sense of psychological surveys conducted in east asia with the words they have in their vocabulary.
I agree that “cooperation” isn’t the perfect word. What they really mean is that east asian countries are good at large-scale projects: rice farming back then, building high speed rail today.
But westerners overlook that east asian societies, specifically China, often tolerate openly self-interested behavior: pursuit of personal advantage, or advantage for one’s family, without regard to others. There’s a funny Ronny Chieng joke that east asian mothers want their kids to be doctors, but view “helping people” as an undesirable consequence of the job.
By contrast, we think of westerners, and Americans specifically, as highly individualistic, but many subgroups of Americans have a high level of self-organization. They’ll make and socially enforce rules without anyone telling them what to do.
I've always thought that the American individualist/China familial is looking at things absolutely upside down. For the Chinese, the family mimics the tyrannical nature of the government (and/or the other way around). The keyboard social observer of me find the American family value of equality, respect for autonomy, unconditional love and support more conducive to forming stronger bonds. Anyone who's lived in a typical Chinese family should wonder why the hell there's the stereotype that Americans are more individualistic?
By throw554345 2026-02-1016:091 reply > Anyone who's lived in a typical Chinese family should wonder why the hell there's the stereotype that Americans are more individualistic?
For me, it was finding a lot of my American friend’s grandparents lived in nursing homes. That really shocked me, since just about everyone I knew in Taiwan lived with their grandparents.
The other one was learning quite a few of my American classmates had to pay their own college tuition. Not because their parents couldn’t afford it, but simply because they were seen as “adults” so were on their own.
Or people getting divorced multiple times each, parents having extensive hobbies that don't involve family, grandparents who don't help raise kids, how much input grandparents have into how kids are raised, etc. My wife is Anglo-American and I'm south asian and the culture shock is real. In my family you have all these rules to allow people to save face, suppress open conflict, etc. In her family, you just say what you mean and if the other person doesn't like it, you just get divorced, or "go no contact," or otherwise just stop dealing with each other.
By hmm37 2026-02-1014:51 In China at least the equivalence of WWI and WWII was basically the Warring States period (around 400-200BC), where tons of people die, therefore generally a strong dislike for war in Chinese culture. I always thought that WWII created a similar feeling in at least Europe.
There were other periods also of disunity in China, and consequently tons of people ended up dying as well. I'm sure it's similar with e.g. Japan where they had their own "three kingdoms" period.
Growing up, my American-addled brain could not comprehend putting the "good of others" above my own empowerment. The focus on the individual (me, I suppose) was a thing I was, for some reason, proud of about the U.S. (or perhaps "the West" by extension?).
Only as an adult, with a wife, kids (and perhaps a better perspective of the world?) did I realize how foolish I was growing up. And I see more and more how we, as a nation, constantly pay the price for that mindset.
Naive self-interest is a characteristic of children. You didn't stumble upon some ancient wisdom of another culture, you just matured and established a family, which your instincts tell you to put before yourself.
The West is individualistic, but all that means is that individuals choose their circle of concern. Without any further guidance, that means that innate instincts about who is important (family, close friends) dominate, rather than a forced narrative about the collective.
By watwut 2026-02-1014:25 Kids do think about others and cooperate, they do have natural empathy and care too. A lot more in cooperative cultures where they are taught to be like that. Less in individualistic cultures where they are taught to not be empathetic. Even within West, there is range of individualism. Netherland is different then USA and both are different then Spain.
It is not just instinct that makes some people (including kids) dominant, it is also that they are being actively taught to act like that. The natural thing is for parents to teach kids own values, both in a planned and conscious way and in the "by the way" style.
Not the "West", obsessive single minded individualism is a US characteristic. All other western nations (read: Europe) realize that there is significant value to society and that to achieve things we need to work as a group.
By squeefers 2026-02-1014:46 > and that to achieve things we need to work as a group.
yeah, lots of "cooperation" in europe all right. left and right hate each other just as much as they do anywhere else
Kids have very little agency to begin with, so looking out for #1 is a fully rational strategy from their POV. As an adult, you grow a lot more comfortable with your situation and it becomes natural to "expand the circle of concern" beyond oneself.
By cucumber3732842 2026-02-1014:49 I think it has more to do with agency than age except that agency increases with age.
Look at prisoners, people dependent upon disability, people in authoritarian societies, you see all the same stuff. They're just more tactful about it because they're adults.
By gjsman-1000 2026-02-1014:30 However, complaints about this always ring hollow because it’s constantly tied to a political goal.
“Americans are so individualistic, they don’t care about climate change.”
For how many Americans don’t care about their credit score, or bank account, or student debt, or local elections, or countless other things directly immediately affecting their lives, that’s not the case. It’s more that humans A) are bad at caring about the future and B) don’t trust scientists for any number of reasons they wouldn’t trust any other human meaning C) the only way to change this is to convince them, not lecture them, just like any other group that wants power, because no group is intrinsically special regarding human communication.
By ferguess_k 2026-02-1013:46 I always heard that individualism is centric to the American mind, but on the other hand, I found that American interests groups (corporations especially) are very good at "hunting" in a group. I talked to some mid-level policy-maker friends in China and they recognize that the American corporations are very good at working as a "wolf pack", while the Chinese ones usually fight each other -- you can see examples in Huawei versus Zhongxing when both are competing in foreign markets.
By simonmales 2026-02-1013:45 I made fun of the 'America First' campaign slogan and referred to it as 'America Only'.
Then you can quickly use this idea on people who put themselves in front of others. And the reality is it's not about being first, rather it's only about them, not what comes after them.
