Wheat and rice legacies affect behavior
Print Edition
An American team of scientists suggested people in wheat-growing northern China are more individualistic than those in rice-growing southern China.
A study published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances has shown that people in northern China are happy to sit alone or actively move chairs that block their way in cafes while those in southern China show more interdependent behavior like sitting in groups or squeezing themselves through narrowly placed chairs.
The authors said these behavioral differences among customers was providing the first evidence that historical rice versus wheat cultural differences extend into modern life.
It seems to challenge the modernization theory of culture, which suggests that as countries become wealthy, modernized, and urbanized, people in those cultures become more individualistic and more Western.
According to authors, people’s farming legacies seemed more important than factors like wealth, in explaining their everyday behavior.
For thousands of years, people in northern China grew wheat, while people in southern China farmed paddy rice.
Rice farmers often shared labor and coordinated irrigation, which likely resulted in an interdependent culture, something not common in wheat-growing regions, where farmers were more individualistic.
The researchers from the Behavioral Science University of Chicago Booth School of Business observed customers in Starbucks in six Chinese cities that included Hong Kong to evaluate whether behaviors indicative of rice versus wheat cultures persist today.
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