Exploring the Roots of Culture Using Spatial Autocorrelation

Abstract

This article examines the distribution of some well-established dimensions of national culture within geographic and ecosocial space. Using spatial autocorrelation to quantify the relationships between geographical location, distance from the equator, physical climate, religion, and national development and 38 cultural dimensions, we find a substantial degree of spatial organization; some cultural dimensions are as spatially organized as temperature or rainfall. Overall, we find that culture as measured by aggregated personal values covaries to about the same extent with geographical proximity, national development and religion, and significantly less with the physical climate and distance from the equator. It is also found that there are significant differences in the spatial patterning of GLOBE societal-level values and the personal value measures of previous researchers. GLOBE values are also strongly organized by geographical proximity and religion but unlike personal value measures only weakly organized by level of national development. GLOBE practices are not strongly spatially organized at all suggesting that practice in a nation does not evolve simplistically from national values or vice versa. Religion, a major organizing variable for how people believe things should be in society, has little relationship with how people believe things are. We conclude that the approach taken by the project GLOBE is a valuable contribution to our understanding of national culture and that spatial autocorrelation is an exploratory method of analysis that is underused in cross-cultural research.