Situations across 62 countries

Eight years ago, we participated in a tremendous global endeavor: trying to describe situations across the Globe. We didn’t do that bad. In a project led by my friend and colleague Dr. David Funder, we collected data from 5,447 people from 20 different countries, and the take-home message was that situational experience was pretty much similar across the world. There was something consistent in our findings: we found more variation when situations were negative than when they were positive.

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.“

Anna Karenina — Leo Tolstoi

Although this was a great achievement, last year we replicated and extended these findings multiplying the numbers by three. Last year we collected data from about 15,000 participants in 62 countries speaking 42 languages. This gigantic effort was rewarded as we majority of the findings did replicate. However, the previously reported exploratory finding that negative aspects of situations varied more across countries than positive aspects did not replicate. Again, though, another consistent finding was found: there’s much more within-country variation than between-country variation. This is consistent with personality research that shows the same pattern at the individual level. The abstract can be found below, and the article here.

Lee, DI, Gardiner, G, Baranski, E, Members of the International Situations Project, Funder, DC. Situational experience around the world: A replication and extension in 62 countries. J Pers. 2020; 88: 1091– 1110. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12558

Objective: The current study seeks to replicate and extend principal findings reported in The World at 7:00, a project that examined the psychological experience of situations in 20 countries.

Method: Data were collected from participants in 62 countries (N = 15,318), recruited from universities by local collaborators to complete the study via a custom‐built website using 42 languages.

Results: Several findings of the previous study were replicated. The average reported situational experience around the world was mildly positive. The same countries tended to be most alike in reported situational experience (r = .60) across the two studies, among the countries included in both. As in the previous study, the homogeneity of reported situational experience was significantly greater within than between countries, although the difference was small. The previously reported exploratory finding that negative aspects of situations varied more across countries than positive aspects did not replicate. Correlations between aspects of reported situational experience and country‐level average value scores, personality, and demographic variables were largely similar between the two studies.

Conclusion: The findings underscore the importance of cross‐cultural situational research and the need to replicate its results, and highlight the complex interplay of culture and situational experience.