Custodes Futurifor the advancement of humanity

Factor 05 of 9

Cultural factors

Shared beliefs and norms that restrict roles, breed fatalism, and protect group identity from evidence.

Barriers within this factor

Each barrier has its own page with the evidence and sources behind it.

  1. 1Rigid norms and roles

    Rigid norms about gender, occupation, or life path restrict the roles people are expected to take.

    Evidence and sources (3 evidence points, 6 experimental methods)

  2. 2Fatalism

    Fatalism is the belief that outcomes are fixed by fate or social position.

    Evidence and sources (3 evidence points, 4 experimental methods)

  3. 3Identity-protective thinking

    Kahan et al. (2012) found people with higher science literacy were more polarized on climate risk, not less, because they used their skills to defend their group's position.

    Evidence and sources (2 evidence points, 5 experimental methods)

  4. 4Distrust of expertise

    Distrust of expertise slows adoption of useful knowledge. Most people trust scientists, but where trust is lower, people are less likely to follow expert advice.

    Evidence and sources (3 evidence points, 5 experimental methods)

  5. 5Materialism and status competition

    Self-Determination Theory research finds prioritizing wealth, image, and status is associated with lower wellbeing than prioritizing growth and relationships.

    Evidence and sources (3 evidence points, 4 experimental methods)

  6. 6Cultural value differences

    Hofstede (2001) describes how cultures differ in individualism and tolerance for uncertainty. No single profile is better overall, and critics argue that treating each nation as one uniform culture oversimplifies (rated C).

    Evidence and sources (3 evidence points, 3 experimental methods)

Evidence strength

Main findings behind this page, grouped by the strength ratings, from strongest to weakest. Each tier lists the findings that received that rating.

StrengthFindings
ModerateSurvey measures of gender norms. Trust in scientists. The aspirations trial (a single trial). Materialism and children's learning.
LimitedIdentity-protective thinking. Cultural value differences. Individualism and innovation. The concept of tight and loose cultures.
Contested or debatedMaterialism as a cause of lower wellbeing. Country rankings of cultural tightness.

Actions that can reduce these barriers

Proven actions for the cultural barriers have not yet been researched. Each barrier below lists proposed and experimental methods only, with the stage labels and ratings explained below.

Proposed and experimental methods

Each barrier also has a list of proposed and experimental methods. It covers methods that are proposed, under trial, approved in some places but not widely used, or tried and then failed or reversed, so readers can see what is being tested. Each method has a stage label and an evidence rating in parentheses. The stage labels are Theoretical (proposed but not yet tested as an intervention), Early trial (small or first studies), Large trial (large randomized or field trials), Approved but not scaled (legally approved or running in some places but not widely adopted), In wide use (widely adopted but newly tested or questioned), Sold commercially without trials (used for polygenic embryo screening), and Failed or reversed (tested and shown not to work, or adopted and then withdrawn). The word contested is added where the evidence is disputed. Failed, reversed, and unhelpful methods are listed last and begin with "Failed," "Reversed," or "Not shown to help." A stage label shows how far a method has progressed, not whether it works, and the rating shows the strength of the evidence.

Ideal conditions that counter this factor

Cultural conditions

What the evidence shows

Bell et al. found women and disadvantaged youth are as underrepresented among high-impact inventors as among inventors overall, suggesting lost opportunity rather than lower ability. Wheatley's authorship was doubted because she was an enslaved Black woman, Wollstonecraft had no access to higher education as a woman, and Julian was refused positions because of his race.

Ideal:

  • A culture that values curiosity and questioning
  • Tolerance for nonconformity
  • Respect for evidence
  • Inclusion of historically excluded groups
  • Fair credit for contributions

Evidence strength: Moderate. The exclusion data are strong.

All ten conditions

In the pioneer cases

Statements from the pioneer records that this site classifies under the cultural factor. The classification is this site's.

PioneerEffectStatement
Albert EinsteinHelpedA secular Jewish family that valued learning.
Albert EinsteinHelpedGerman-speaking Europe as the center of theoretical physics around 1900.
Albert EinsteinHelpedA philosophical tradition (Hume, Mach) that encouraged questioning foundations.
Albert EinsteinHelpedThe Pestalozzi-inspired Aarau school, which encouraged independent and visual thinking.
Marie CurieBarrierRussian-ruled Warsaw barred women from university.
Katalin KarikóBarrierFew scientists shared her vision, making grants hard to get. Some commentators, including UC Berkeley biologist Michael Eisen, have suggested she was penalized for being a woman and an immigrant from Eastern Europe. This is a suggestion rather than a documented finding.
Tu YouyouHelpedTraining in two traditions. Western-trained professors taught her pharmacy at Beijing Medical College. She then completed a government program in traditional Chinese medicine for scientists with modern medical training.
Tu YouyouHelpedA close reading of an ancient text. After more than 100 herbal extracts produced few promising results, she reread Ge Hong's A Handbook of Prescriptions for Emergencies, which describes soaking qinghao (sweet wormwood) in cold water rather than boiling it. She reasoned that heat was destroying the active ingredient and switched to low-temperature extraction with ether. In October 1971, sample number 191 fully suppressed malaria parasites in rodents.
Percy JulianBarrierAfter he earned a master's degree from Harvard in 1923, Harvard denied him the teaching assistantship needed to continue to a doctorate, reportedly out of concern that white students would resent a Black instructor.
Percy JulianBarrierAfter his physostigmine breakthrough, DePauw refused him a permanent faculty position. At the time, American colleges were not prepared to have a Black person teach white students.
Percy JulianBarrierWhen his family moved to the white suburb of Oak Park, Illinois, around 1950, their home was attacked, including a firebombing. The family stayed.
Percy JulianNot overcomeHe was denied the academic career his research merited, and his family faced racist violence. When Glidden declined to pursue further biomedical work, he left to start his own company.
Ignaz SemmelweisBarrierIt conflicted with prevailing beliefs. Many physicians believed disease spread through bad air (miasma), and his explanation implied that doctors themselves were killing patients.
Baruch SpinozaBarrierOn July 27, 1656, Amsterdam's Sephardic community issued him the harshest writ of excommunication it ever pronounced. It was never rescinded, and its exact reasons are not known for certain.
Baruch SpinozaBarrierHe published the Theological-Political Treatise anonymously in 1670, and it caused great alarm. It was banned in the Netherlands in 1674.
Baruch SpinozaNoteA door he refused. In 1673 the University of Heidelberg offered him a professorship. He declined because it required him not to disturb the established religion.
Phillis WheatleyBarrierMany colonists refused to believe that an enslaved African girl could have written the poems. Susanna Wheatley sent her to London because she judged the chances of finding a publisher were better there than in Massachusetts.
Phillis WheatleyBarrierHer publisher required an attestation of authorship. It was signed by 18 prominent Bostonians, including John Hancock, and printed at the front of the book. Whether she faced an in-person examination is debated. Her biographer Vincent Carretta suspects the signers knew her socially.
Benjamin FranklinNoteSharing his inventions. He declined a governor's offer of a patent on his stove, writing that because people benefit from others' inventions, they should share their own freely.
Benjamin FranklinNoteSlavery. Franklin enslaved people for much of his life, and his newspaper carried advertisements for slave sales. He became an outspoken opponent of slavery late in life. In 1787 he became president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and his last public act was a 1790 petition to Congress asking for an end to slavery and the slave trade.
Yuan LongpingBarrierHis training followed the Soviet theories of heredity of Michurin and Lysenko, and he had to teach himself Mendelian genetics.
Yuan LongpingBarrierThe accepted view was that rice, which pollinates itself, would not show hybrid vigor.
Mary Engle PenningtonBarrierHer federal civil service papers were submitted under the name "M. E. Pennington," hiding that she was a woman. When this was discovered, Civil Service officials reportedly tried to withdraw the offer, though her own later account says she was already at work (Stephan, 1996).
Fritz HaberNot overcomeBorn to a Jewish family, he had converted to Protestantism in 1892, but in 1933 Nazi race laws forced most of his Jewish staff out. He resigned rather than agree to the dismissals, left Germany, and died in Basel in January 1934.
Nikolai VavilovBarrierWhy his work was suppressed. Trofim Lysenko, who had Stalin's support, rejected Mendelian genetics and publicly denounced Vavilov from 1934 to 1939. In 1938 Lysenko became president of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences, which Vavilov had led from 1929 until his dismissal in 1935.

Key figures

MeasureValueSource
Gender Social Norms Index, 2023 (80 countries, 85% of the world's population)Nearly 9 in 10 men and women hold at least one fundamental bias against womenUNDP
Beliefs about political and business leadershipAbout half of people believe men make better political leaders, and more than 40% believe men make better business executives, with no improvement over the previous decadeUNDP
Child marriageAn estimated 640 million girls and women alive today were married in childhood. About 1 in 5 young women aged 20 to 24 were married as children, down from nearly 1 in 4 a decade earlier. At the current rate, ending the practice would take about 300 yearsUNICEF (2023)
Trust in scientists across 68 countries71,922 people surveyed. In most countries, most people trust scientists and want them to engage more in society and policymaking. Trust varied within and between countries, partly by political orientationCologna et al. (2025)
Science literacy and climate polarizationHighest science literacy and numeracy were the most culturally polarized on climate risk, not the leastKahan et al. (2012)
Aspirations trial in rural EthiopiaHouseholds randomly shown a one-hour documentary about people from similar communities who escaped poverty had higher aspirations six months later, along with more saving, borrowing, and spending on children's schooling. Five years later, they had invested more in farming, children's education, and assetsBernard et al. (2026)
Materialism and wellbeingA meta-analysis of 259 samples found materialist values were associated with lower wellbeing (r = -0.19 for the most widely used measures). The link was strongest for risky health and spending behaviors and negative self-views, and weakest for life satisfaction. The studies are correlational. Three longitudinal studies and a small intervention trial found wellbeing improved as people became less materialistic (Kasser et al., 2014), but a three-year study of 6,551 people using a stricter method found no within-person link between changes in materialism and changes in life satisfaction (reported by PsyPost, 2023)Dittmar et al. (2014)
Tight and loose culturesA 33-nation study measured cultural "tightness," meaning strong norms and low tolerance of deviant behavior. Tighter nations (such as Pakistan, Singapore, and Japan) tended to have histories of threats such as dense populations, resource scarcity, conflict, and disease. Looser nations included New Zealand, the Netherlands, and the United States. Tightness can support coordination but leaves less room for nonconformity. The measure is disputed: a six-country replication found different country rankings and did not support averaging individual answers into country scores (Treviño et al., 2021), and another study argued the scoring method can distort results (Venaik et al., 2021). The country examples should be treated as uncertainGelfand et al. (2011)
Trust in scientists in 12 countries, 2020In panel surveys in 12 countries from March to December 2020, trust in scientists was the key driver of support for and compliance with non-drug public health measures and of favorable attitudes toward vaccinationAlgan et al. (2021)
Trust in experts and vaccination intentionsIn 25 national samples across 12 countries (25,334 people), trust in medical and scientific experts was among the strongest and most consistent correlates of willingness to be vaccinated against COVID-19 (odds ratio 1.28). These are surveys of stated intentionsKerr et al. (2021)
Materialism and children's learningIn 9- to 11-year-olds in Britain and Hong Kong, materialism was linked to lower exam performance through weaker interest in mastering material. In Hong Kong it predicted worse grades a year later, and in an experiment British children shown a materialism prime chose easier performance-oriented tasks and gave up on a learning task sooner. Samples were modest. An independent longitudinal study of 404 Hong Kong secondary students found that earlier materialism predicted lower engagement and lower later achievement, partly through reduced motivation (King and Datu, 2017)Ku, Dittmar, and Banerjee (2014)
Individualism and innovationUsing the frequency of certain genes and historic disease prevalence as instruments for culture, a cross-country study found that individualism raised innovation, productivity, and income per worker, and the link held after controlling for institutions. The instruments rest on strong assumptions that they affect growth only through culture, so this is rated CGorodnichenko and Roland (2017)

References cited on this page

  1. Algan, Y., Cohen, D., Davoine, E., Foucault, M., & Stantcheva, S. (2021). Trust in scientists in times of pandemic: panel evidence from 12 countries. PNAS, 118(40), e2108576118. DOI
  2. Kerr, J. R., Schneider, C. R., Recchia, G., Dryhurst, S., Sahlin, U., Dufouil, C., Arwidson, P., Freeman, A. L. J., & van der Linden, S. (2021). Correlates of intended COVID-19 vaccine acceptance across time and countries: results from a series of cross-sectional surveys. BMJ Open, 11(8), e048025. DOI
  3. Ku, L., Dittmar, H., & Banerjee, R. (2014). To have or to learn? The effects of materialism on British and Chinese children's learning. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(5), 803-821. DOI
  4. Gorodnichenko, Y., & Roland, G. (2017). Culture, institutions, and the wealth of nations. Review of Economics and Statistics, 99(3), 402-416. DOI
  5. King, R. B., & Datu, J. A. D. (2017). Materialism does not pay: materialistic students have lower motivation, engagement, and achievement. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 49, 289-301. DOI
  6. UNDP: Gender Social Norms Index 2023
  7. UNICEF: Is an end to child marriage within reach? (2023)
  8. Cologna, V., Mede, N. G., Berger, S., et al. (2025). Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries. Nature Human Behaviour, 9(4), 713-730. DOI
  9. Kahan, D. M., et al. (2012). The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks. Nature Climate Change, 2, 732-735. Nature
  10. Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68-78. DOI
  11. Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture's Consequences (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
  12. Bernard, T., Dercon, S., Orkin, K., Schinaia, G., & Taffesse, A. S. (2026). The future in mind: aspirations and long-term outcomes in rural Ethiopia. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 141, 1383-1447. DOI
  13. Dittmar, H., Bond, R., Hurst, M., & Kasser, T. (2014). The relationship between materialism and personal well-being: a meta-analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107(5), 879-924. DOI
  14. Kasser, T., Rosenblum, K. L., Sameroff, A. J., Deci, E. L., Niemiec, C. P., Ryan, R. M., et al. (2014). Changes in materialism, changes in psychological well-being: evidence from three longitudinal studies and an intervention experiment. Motivation and Emotion, 38(1), 1-22. DOI
  15. PsyPost (2023). Does materialism really lead to lower life satisfaction? Surprising new study suggests otherwise
  16. Gelfand, M. J., et al. (2011). Differences between tight and loose cultures: a 33-nation study. Science, 332(6033), 1100-1104. DOI
  17. Treviño, L. J., Egri, C. P., Ralston, D. A., Naoumova, I., et al. (2021). A multi-country, multi-sector replication challenge to the validity of the cultural tightness-looseness measure. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 38(2), 735-764. DOI
  18. Venaik, S., Midgley, D. F., & Christopoulos, D. (2021). Do within-subject standardized indices of societal culture distort reality? An illustration with the national Tightness culture scale. Journal of World Business, 56(5), 101242. DOI

Sources for the actions

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  3. Beaman, L., Duflo, E., Pande, R., & Topalova, P. (2012). Female leadership raises aspirations and educational attainment for girls: A policy experiment in India. Science, 335(6068), 582-586. link B Moderate
  4. Buchmann, N., Field, E., Glennerster, R., Nazneen, S., & Wang, X. Y. (2023). A signal to end child marriage: Theory and experimental evidence from Bangladesh. American Economic Review, 113(10), 2645-2688. link B Moderate
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All references