The recent expansion of cross-cultural research in the social sciences has led to increased discourse on methodological issues involved when studying culturally diverse populations. However, discussions have largely overlooked the challenges of construct validity- ensuring instruments are measuring what they are intended to- in diverse cultural contexts, particularly in developmental research. We contend that cross-cultural developmental research poses distinct problems for ensuring high construct validity, owing to the nuances of working with children and that the standard approach of transporting protocols designed and validated in one population to another risks low construct validity. Drawing upon our own and others’ work, we highlight several challenges to construct validity in the field of cross-cultural developmental research, including 1) lack of cultural and contextual knowledge, 2) dissociating developmental and cultural theory and methods, 3) lack of causal frameworks, 4) superficial and short- term partnerships and collaborations, and 5) culturally inappropriate tools and tests. We provide guidelines to address these challenges, including 1) using ethnographic and observational approaches, 2) developing evidence-based causal frameworks, 3) conducting community-engaged and collaborative research, and 4) culture-specific refinements and training. We discuss the need to balance methodological consistency with culture-specific refinements to improve construct validity in cross-cultural developmental research.

Individuals who experience divorce in childhood are more likely to divorce themselves as adults. Notably, the magnitude of the intergenerational divorce transmission is stronger for groups among whom divorce is rare. This transmission may reflect differences in mating strategies passed from parent to child, or differences in cultural norms between groups. Sociologists and demographers have struggled to disentangle socioeconomic and cultural factors, because groups that are less wealthy also tend to have higher divorce rates. We use data from Finland, where two native ethnolinguistic groups with comparable socioeconomic characteristics - but different divorce risks - live side by side; Swedish speakers and Finnish speakers. Using register data on the entire Finnish population (N=554,337 couples 1987-2020), we examine separation risk as a function of parental divorce. Data suggest that the intergenerational transmission is greater among Swedish speakers, who have an overall lower separation rate. Group differences in separation risk persist even after controlling for socioeconomic factors and each partner’s experience of parental divorce. Notably, Finnish-speaking couples who reside in Swedish-dominated areas have both somewhat lower separation risk, and higher intergenerational transmission than their peers in Finnish-dominated areas. These results point to a cultural transmission of separation, beyond strong socioeconomic factors.

The suffixing bias (the tendency to exploit suffixes more often than prefixes to express grammatical meanings) in world’s languages was identified a century ago, yet we still lack a clear account for why it emerged, namely, whether the bias emerged because general cognitive mechanisms shape languages to be more easily processed by available cognitive machinery, or the bias is speech-specific and is determined by domain-specific mechanisms. We used statistical learning (SL) experiments to compare processing of suffixed and prefixed sequences on linguistic and non-linguistic material. SL is not speech-specific, and we observed the suffixing preference only on linguistic material, suggesting its language-specific origin. Moreover, morphological properties of native languages (existence of grammatical prefixes) modulate suffixing preferences in SL experiments only on linguistic material, suggesting limited cross-domain transfer.

Evolutionary scientists argue that prosociality has been central to human ecological success. Theoretical models and behavioral experiments have found that prosociality, and cooperation in particular, is conditional and context dependent, that individuals vary in their propensity to cooperate, and that reciprocity stabilizes these behaviors within groups. Experimental findings have had limited validation with observations of behavior in natural settings, especially in organizational contexts. Here, we report in situ measurements of collective action where reciprocity is abundant in organizations embedded in a cash economy. We study small ‘food clubs’ where members share bulk purchases and are considered to be heavily dependent on cooperation. We take advantage high resolution data of economic interactions for 1,528 individuals across 35 clubs over a combined 107 years of operation. We develop a network method to detect different directional and temporal forms of economic reciprocity, and statistically classify individual behavioral types akin to those in experiments. We find abundant direct reciprocity, supplemented by indirect reciprocity, and that members of most clubs can be identified as consistent reciprocators. This study provides initial observational evidence that economic reciprocity may be more abundant in real world settings, sharpening the findings of the behavioral study of cooperation and contributing to the more naturalistic study of reciprocity and prosociality.

With the objective of informing theoretical accounts of social learning and gendered conflict, we explore the role of prestige in the formation of men’s beliefs about gender in a semi rural, but fast urbanising community in northwestern Tanzania. Using focus groups and participant observation, we contrast the extent to which young men view elders and men from the neighboring city as prestigious, and the beliefs they ascribe to each category. Elders were viewed as prestigious because of their age, and position as preservers and teachers of societal norms. Their prestige was culturally mandated, as evidenced by customs bestowing respect. In contrast, only subcategories of city men were deemed prestigious dependent on individual achievement. Prestige was difficult to distinguish from dominance, since both elders and city men can exert penalties on those with differing views. Elders were viewed as mostly, but not always, unsupportive of women’s empowerment, while city men were viewed as mostly, but not always, supportive of women’s empowerment. We conclude that urbanisation shifts the distribution of prestige, exposing individuals to novel sources of social influence. However, future studies should be wary not to oversimplify elders as upholders of patriarchal beliefs and city men as universally supportive of women’s empowerment.

Derived from the disease-avoidance model is the hypothesis that people may direct negative cognitive and behavioral responses towards individuals with physical disfiguring conditions, including physical disabilities. Based on this proposal of a behavioural immune system, physical disability, a noncontagious physical disfiguration, may falsely activate cognitive disease-avoidance processes resulting in prejudicial or negative responses against individuals with physical disabilities. For the first time this hypothesis is put to the test by investigating whether ratings of attractiveness and comfort for a social interaction vary systematically with physical disability (Studies 1 and 2). In addition, we tested whether these ratings were associated with individual differences in pathogen disgust, perceived vulnerability to disease, and concern for contracting COVID-19. In Study 3 we overcame possible methodological limitations by employing a virtual reality environment and using both male and female models. A fourth study was conducted to extend the first two studies by using a more diverse set of avatars. Results from Studies 1 and 2 indicated that disability did not significantly impact comfort ratings for social interactions, although nondisabled stimuli were rated as more attractive. However, Study 3 showed that in a VR environment, participants preferred closer proximity to nondisabled avatars, regardless of gender, over disabled ones, a preference not mitigated by the presence of prosthetics. Study 4 replicated these findings with varied 2D avatars, showing that disability significantly affected both comfort and attractiveness ratings, with nondisabled avatars rated highest, followed by those with prosthetics, and finally disabled avatars. Despite these findings, the expected relationship between comfort ratings and individual differences in pathogen disgust or perceived infectability did not emerge, challenging the behavioral immune system hypothesis. The discomfort associated with physical disability may be more related to social stigma or 3 preconceived notions than to an innate disease-avoidance response. In conclusion, this research contributes to understanding how physical disability influences social comfort and attractiveness perceptions, challenging the behavioral immune system hypothesis and highlighting the role of social and cognitive factors in these judgments.

Perception studies describe numerous discrete morphological facial features as important to judgments of various characteristics. Interestingly, little is known about whether people actually direct their visual attention to these features and how specific contexts or sex affect this attention. We, therefore, examined visual attention to faces in the context of intersexual (opposite-sex assessment of attractiveness) and intrasexual (same-sex assessment of dominance) selection.

In total, 93 women and 33 men rated 80 high-resolution facial photographs of men and women while their gaze was recorded using eye-tracking. To explore patterns of raters’ attention to faces and specific facial features, we used the number of fixations, fixation duration, and visit duration as visual attention measures.

Women directed more visual attention towards the faces of potential partners (more fixations) than potential rivals, and men had longer visit duration when assessing potential partners than rivals. Facial features that acquired the most visual attention across contexts and sexes were the eyes, nose, and mouth, but small differences between the sexes and contexts in visual attention were found for other facial regions suggested by previous perception studies, such as the chin and the cheeks indicating their importance in specific judgements.