ArticleNature communications2024
People quasi-randomly assigned to farm rice are more collectivistic than people assigned to farm wheat.
Article in Nature communications, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
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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.
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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.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Rethinking yield stability through phenotypic plasticity and its link to modern statistical methods.Journal of experimental botany · 2026Review
- Errors or Adaptations? A Critical Review of Predictive Processing in Psychiatry.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Evaluating multiple candidates simultaneously reduces racial disparities in promotion and tenure.Nature communications · 2026Article
- A Collectivism Index for Investigating Cultural Variation in China across Regions and Time.Scientific data · 2026Article
- How Age and Culture Influence Cognition: A Lifespan Developmental Perspective.Developmental review : DR · 2025Article
- The determinants of trust: findings from large, representative samples in six OECD countries.Economica · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The rice theory of culture argues that the high labor demands and interdependent irrigation networks of paddy rice farming makes cultures more collectivistic than wheat-farming cultures. Despite prior evidence, proving causality is difficult because people are not randomly assigned to farm rice. In this study, we take advantage of a unique time when the Chinese government quasi-randomly assigned people to farm rice or wheat in two state farms that are otherwise nearly identical. The rice farmers show less individualism, more loyalty/nepotism toward a friend over a stranger, and more relational thought style. These results rule out confounds in tests of the rice theory, such as temperature, latitude, and historical events. The differences suggest rice-wheat cultural differences can form in a single generation.
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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.