ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2024
Continuities and discontinuities in the cultural evolution of global consciousness.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 15 citations in OpenAlex.
- What is groundwater?Hydrogeology journal · 2026Article
- Life satisfaction effects of national identity, global identity, and their interactions.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Long-distance social relationships can both undercut and promote local natural resource management.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Characteristic processes of human evolution caused the Anthropocene and may obstruct its global solutions.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Continuities and discontinuities in the cultural evolution of global consciousness.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Behavioral evidence for global consciousness transcending national parochialism.Scientific reports · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
11 authors at 7 institutions in 6 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Global consciousness (GC), encompassing cosmopolitan orientation, global orientations (i.e. openness to multicultural experiences) and identification with all humanity, is a relatively stable individual difference that is strongly associated with pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours, less ingroup favouritism and prejudice, and greater pandemic prevention safety behaviours. Little is known about how it is socialized in everyday life. Using stratified samples from six societies, socializing institution factors correlating positively with GC were education, white collar work (and its higher income) and religiosity. However, GC also decreased with increasing age, contradicting a 'wisdom of elders' transmission of social learning, and not replicating typical findings that general prosociality increases with age. Longitudinal findings were that empathy-building, network-enhancing elements like getting married or welcoming a new infant, increased GC the most across a three-month interval. Instrumental gains like receiving a promotion (or getting a better job) also showed positive effects. Less intuitively, death of a close-other enhanced rather than reduced GC. Perhaps this was achieved through the ritualized management of meaning where a sense of the smallness of self is associated with growth of empathy for the human condition, as a more discontinuous or opportunistic form of culture-based learning. This article is part of the theme issue 'Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis'.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.