Thomas Talhelm

Maybe we should just use books? 😅

Interesting side finding: A reviewer asked us to look at previous data on individualism across China like unique baby names, unique nicknames on Weibo (China's Twitter), and whether people write a bio on Weibo. These often went in the wrong direction, suggesting they may not represent individualism.

I appreciate you taking the time to suggest it!

Great suggestion! 👏 I just created two "variable guides." They're the same as the CSV data files, except they have descriptions of the variables under the variable names.

Credit to my hard-working co-authors! 👏

Just remember to rewind it before you return it. 😉 @loneblockbuster.bsky.social

The full text is available without a paywall. Have at it! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Fellow researchers: Use my data! 📢 The whole point of the journal Scientific Data is to validate and share datasets for other researchers to use. It's all available on the Open Science Framework: doi.org/10.17605/OSF... @cos.io

And here's a taste of the types of analyses you can do with this data. Why are some places more collectivistic than others? If you know me, you guessed it--a history of rice farming! 🌾

But wait, is this just measuring economic development? After all, people need money to live on their own (and get divorced). It *is* correlated with GDP per capita, but not as strongly as people might think. It's just r = .04 in the latest province data! 😮

We also compared the collectivism index to the words people use on Weibo (China's Twitter). That comes from a recent study I did with researchers at @upenn.edu. Good to see more converging evidence! ✅ www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Is it actually valid? Does it actually measure collectivism? We compared our new index to external markers like rates of visiting family for Chinese New Year and family ownership of companies. It checks out! ✅

The index uses statistics on divorce rates, the percentage of people living alone, and people living with extended family, following research in other countries. www.researchgate.net/profile/Dov-...

You can rewind back to 1982. That means we can track change over time.

Here's the cool part: because it's Census data, you can rewind and fast forward.

And 31 provinces.

We used Census data to estimate cultural differences in collectivism across 356 prefectures (like counties).

New study just out! 🚨 We created a way to rewind and fast forward through cultural differences in China.
www.nature.com/articles/s41... @natureportfolio.nature.com

The US and Canada are neighbors, but they're on opposite ends of this scale! 🇺🇸🇨🇦

It's fascinating that two neighboring countries are on the opposite ends of the spectrum! 🧐 Oftentimes proximity is a good predictor of cultural similarity. I'd love to see what sorts of ecological variables predict these differences.

Oh oops! Yes, I miswrote that. 😵‍💫 Those were the non-responses. I'm sure some were email addresses that have been deactivated after people move schools and such. But still, that's too low!

Congratulations!

Thanks for the shout out! 😃

Wow, 5,000 people contacted. 4,700 respond.

I'm honored to be elected an APS fellow! 🥳 Thanks to those who nominated me. @psychscience.bsky.social www.psychologicalscience.org/members/fell...

Congrats to Igor! 👏

Responsibilism predicts less dating.

It turns out, warm fuzzy collectivism predicts more dating…

Proud of Lindsay Ackerman for presenting new data on responsibilism and romantic relationships at SPSP! @spspnews.bsky.social #SPSP2026

Proud of Richard for speaking at SPSP! 👏 Go, Richard!