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https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-023-00169-w
Establishing psychological universals
Asifa Majid
Universals of thought and behaviour across
variable cultural experiences can reveal
uniquely human cognition. However, culturally
informed and theoretically motivated sampling
is needed to reveal true universals.
Humans are characterized by cultural diversity. Around the planet,
people organize social structures according to distinct beliefs and
values, eat or have taboos against ingesting a variety of foods, and com-
municate in 7,000 mutually unintelligible languages. This variation
is a provocation to psychologists who strive for a unified account of
the human mind and behaviour. However, theorizing is limited when
observations come from a relatively homogenous group of people1
(Fig. 1a). The group itself might not be representative of humanity, so
the generalizability of observations is called into question. Crucially,
key human traits not evident in the observed sample — but shared across
other cultures — will be overlooked by scientists entirely2.
Cross-cultural studies are essential to establish psychological uni-
versals. If researchers find the same trait across cultures, despite varia-
ble cultural experiences, this discovery reveals a fundamental fact about
the human mind and could shed light on the biological foundations
of human cognition.
Many studies, despite aiming to collect data from a heterogenous
group, overestimate the cultural diversity of their samples and there-
fore cannot be used to draw conclusions about universals. Culturally
informed and theoretically motivated study designs are needed to
determine the extent of psychological universality and diversity.
Limitations of current global psychology
Modern technological innovations have enabled psychological testing
on a grand scale. Psychologists put their studies online or gamify them
and recruit participants through collaboration via social networks,
press releases and media campaigns3–5. The goal is to collect data from
many people in as many settings as possible with the hope of general-
izing to the human population. Embedded in this globalized approach
is the assumption that data collected from large samples across many
countries can inform researchers about universals.
Going global through collaboration and crowdsourcing is an
important advance for psychology given its historical neglect of cul-
tural diversity. These global efforts can address important questions
about the replicability of psychological effects across contexts. How-
ever, it is a flawed approach for positing psychological universals for
three key reasons.
First, global samples acquired through convenience sampling repro-
duce the sampling biases of traditional lab-based psychology, in which a
rather homogenous group of undergraduate students is tested (Fig. 1b).
Undergraduate students are not typical of the broader communities to
which they belong6. Furthermore, the internationalization of universi-
ties means undergraduates everywhere — regardless of their home
nation — have more in common than distinguishes them. They usually
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come from economically advantaged backgrounds. They are internet
savvy, possess mobile technologies, are likely to be fluent in English and
partake of American popular culture (including films, TV and games),
and consume products from a monopolized flavour and fragrance indus-
try. So even when researchers test undergraduates from across the globe,
they are not sampling a representative slice of humanity.
Second, global studies are designed and conducted in English.
The use of English as both test and research language is a homogeniz-
ing force in the study of cognition2. When researchers make efforts to
be more inclusive, they might translate their study into a well-studied
language of European descent or one spoken by a majority community
of Asia (such as Mandarin). This approach leads to numerically repre-
sentative sampling in which easy-to-access communities from majority
cultures are included, whereas those from minority cultures are over-
looked (Fig. 1c). English and Mandarin have over a billion speakers each;
Spanish over half a billion; French, German, and Japanese hundreds of
millions. By contrast, most languages of the world have 100–10,000
speakers. Speakers of large official languages share attributes including
literacy, formalized education and technological savviness. Further-
more, they are members of larger, sparser, more stratified societies,
with more strangers and less mutually held knowledge, than are speak-
ers of smaller languages. These common factors across majority com-
munities can lead to premature conclusions of universality, even when
testing beyond English.
Third, global studies often equate cultures with country. To dem-
onstrate the diversity of peoples sampled in some studies, researchers
simply enumerate the nations tested. Alternatively, ‘world regions’5 or
‘major civilizations’4 are taken to be cultural units. However, countries,
world regions, and major civilizations are questionable proxies for
meaningful cultural entities. An unstated presupposition of cultural
hegemony within a country or region also occurs when there is inad-
equate reporting about who exactly is participating in studies. Every
participant living in a particular country cannot be assumed to be a
member of the same unitary culture. Various migrant populations
bring their cultures to other nations and participants can have mul-
tiple or distinct cultural identities beyond national or mainstream
culture. Critically, almost half a billion indigenous people live in
90 countries worldwide. They speak two-thirds of the world’s lan-
guages and manifest unique cultures and distinct ways of life. Their
identities are elided in national surveys, and so genuine cultural diver-
sity becomes omitted from consideration. For all of these reasons,
it is misleading to report participants’ countries rather than their
cultural identities.
A study that focuses on undergraduates or a narrow sample of eth-
nolinguistic communities, or analyses geography without considering
cultural diversity, will only ever be a weak test of universality. A study of
closely related communities or participants with shared demographic
backgrounds cannot unambiguously support claims of universality.
If similarities are uncovered, this is a minimal threshold for univer-
sality, but such results are also entirely compatible with a cultural
learning account (such as shared cultural forces across the sampled
communities producing a common effect).
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a Classical non-comparative sampling b Convenience sampling
Access to technology
Ease of participant recruitment
c Numerically representative sampling d Theory-based sampling
Theoretical axis 2
Culture Theoretical axis 1
Sampling scheme
Fig. 1 | Sampling strategies for establishing psychological universals. Each blue
dot represents a culture or ethnolinguistic group. The larger the dot, the bigger
the population. A few majority cultures are represented by millions of people, but
most minority cultures are represented by a few hundred or thousand people. Open
circles represent experimental samples within a study. a, Classical non-comparative
sampling. A single community is sampled, historically only English-speaking
Americans or British people. b, Convenience sampling. An experimental sample
is obtained according to ease of testing, which typically leads to sampling of a
relatively homogenous group of undergraduates from majority communities.
c, Numerically representative sampling. Sample sizes within cultures are
determined according to their global representation, which leads to over-
representation of majority cultures and under-representation of minority cultures.
d, Theory-based sampling. The relevant theoretical parameters of cultural variation
are established and then participants are sampled from cultures accordingly.
Culturally informed, theoretically motivated sampling
A strong test of universality maximizes the sampling of cultures that
differ along theoretically relevant dimensions. It must also take into
consideration shared characteristics of participants and communi-
ties to rule out similarities that arise from shared histories rather than
genuine psychological universals. Sampling should be aligned with
theoretical considerations and designed to test diverse cultural groups.
Tests of universals must sample cultures according to dimensions rel-
evant to the research question posed, motivated by theory in that domain,
and considering cultural similarities and differences (Fig. 1d). For example,
a study of universal preferences in odour perception is strengthened if it
minimizes common odour experiences across groups by sampling cul-
tures with different subsistence strategies (for example, foraging, farming
and industrial) and different smellscape ecologies (for example, urban,
rainforest and coastal)7. By contrast, a study of theory-of-mind universals
need not worry about smellscapes; it would instead sample according to
diversity of social structures (including local norms and attitudes about
the nature of minds) and languages (for example, sampling varying mental
state vocabulary and relevant syntactic structures)8.
Furthermore, claims of universality are more credible when tested
against people with the most diverse experiences relative to the rel-
evant theoretical dimension. Tests of universality must go beyond
undergraduate samples and include participants from varied walks
of life across communities. Otherwise, it is unclear whether com-
mon behavioural patterns are the result of uniquely human inherited
infrastructure or shared environmental and socialization forces.
nature reviews psychology
Even distinct cultures can be more similar than they first seem.
For instance, the world’s 7,000 current ethnolinguistic groups are
related by common lineage and contact9. This fact must be taken into
consideration in analyses and interpretation of data. A claim of univer-
sality is stronger when tested against two unrelated and very different
communities for the phenomenon of interest. Even large sample sizes
of closely related communities do not mitigate against the potential
confound of common history.
Claims of universality are strongest when tested against diverse
and independent cultures. The more disparate the cultures, the more
convincing the proposed universal. Therefore, genuine psychological
universals can be established only by testing people from the most dis-
parate communities, where people differ most widely in their cultural
practices, belief systems, languages and habitats.
Establishing psychological universals
The strongest test of universality is a large-scale comparative study:
large not in terms of participant size alone, but in terms of the number
of distinct cultures sampled along theoretically relevant dimensions
(Fig. 1d). A thorny question for psychologists to tackle going forward
is exactly how many cultures ought to be sampled, an issue linguists
and anthropologists have long grappled with. If resources are limited,
a critical test of universality can nevertheless come from only two cul-
tures — if those cultures are maximally distinct for the research question
at hand. The generalizability of those findings can further be bolstered
by testing another two communities, where those cultures are again
sampled to be maximally different along the relevant dimensions.
Converging evidence using different sampling strategies and different
cultures lends more credence to posited universals.
Compelling cross-cultural research cannot be done as parachute sci-
ence, in which psychologists from wealthy institutions extract data from
people without engaging with local communities. It requires research-
ers to grow relationships with communities and invest in partner-
ships10. Establishing psychological universals is important. But to do
it meaningfully, cultural variation must be understood and respected.
Asifa Majid 1,2
1
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford,
Oxford, UK. 2Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University,
Cambridge, MA, USA.
e-mail: asifa.majid@psy.ox.ac.uk
Published online: 3 March 2023
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Acknowledgements
The author thanks M. Frank, H. Over and C. Heyes for comments on an earlier version of this
paper.
Competing interests
The author declares no competing interests.
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