Selected Academic Publications

Wang, Y., Wang, F., Talhelm, T., & Chen, Y. (2025). New evidence finds young people in Mainland China are now bicultural. British Journal of Psychology, 116(2), 460-483. (Twitter explainer)
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Talhelm, T., Medvedev, D., & Li, Y. (2025). The homo economicus model of work describes men more than women, but only in WEIRD cultures. Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality, 43(3), 29–52. (Free PDF)

Zhou, X., English, A. S., Wei, L., ...Talhelm, T., ...Zhang, X. (2025). Understanding perceived changes, collectivism, and social exclusion: A cross-cultural study in 32 countries. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 107, 102198.

Guntuku, S. C., Talhelm, T., Sherman, G., Fan, A., Giorgi, S., Wei, L., Ungar, L. H. (2024). Historical patterns of rice farming explain modern-day language use in China and Japan more than modernization and urbanization. Nature Humanities and Social Science Communications, 11, 1724. (Free PDF, Twitter explainer)

*Wei, L., English, A. S., Talhelm, T., Wang, J., Zhang, Y., Tan, X., & Zhu, J. (2025). People in relationally mobile cultures report higher well-being. Emotion, 25(3), 541-555. (Free PDF, Twitter explainer)
*Selected as APA Editor’s Choice for noteworthy and impactful for the field

Talhelm, T., & Dong., X. (2024). People quasi-randomly assigned to farm rice are more collectivistic than people assigned to farm wheat. Nature Communications, 15, 1782. (Free PDF, Twitter explainer)

Medvedev, D., Davenport, D., Talhelm, T., & Li, Y. (2024). The motivating effect of monetary over psychological incentives is stronger in Western cultures. Nature Human Behaviour, 8, 456-470. (Free PDF, Twitter explainer)

Wang, Y., Wang, F., Talhelm, T., & Chen, Y. (2025). New evidence finds young people in Mainland China are now bicultural. British Journal of Psychology. (Free PDF)

Zhang, Q., Lin, X., English, A. S., & Talhelm, T. (2024). Beyond perceived risk: Understanding vaccination behaviors in China’s rice- and wheat-farming cultures. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 103, 102075. (Twitter explainer)

Wei, L., English, A. S., Talhelm, T., Li, X., Zhang, X., & Wang, S. (2025). People in tight cultures and tight situations wear masks more: Evidence from three large-scale studies in China. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. (Free PDF)

Talhelm, T., Wu, S. J., Lyu, C., Zhou, H., & Zhang, X. (2023). People in rice-farming cultures perceive emotions more accurately. Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology, 4, 100122. (Free PDF, Twitter explainer)

English, A. S., Sun, J. J., Xu, S. H., Zheng, L., Zhang, Q. H., & Talhelm, T. (2023). COVID-19 non-death loss and acceptance coping: A 3-wave cross-lagged panel analysis. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 17(12). 

Zhang, X., English, A. S., Talhelm, T., Nam, B., & Wei, L. (2023). Rice-farming areas report more anxiety across two years of the COVID-19 pandemic in China. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 17(9), e12795. 

Wu, K., & Talhelm, T. (2023). Hide a dagger behind a smile: Collectivistic cultures compete more than individualistic cultures. In S. Garcia & A. Tor (Eds.), Oxford Handbook on Psychology of Competition. Oxford University Press. (Free PDF)

Wei, X., Talhelm, T., Zhang, K., & Wang, F. (2023). When interdependence backfires: The coronavirus infected three times more people in rice-farming areas during Chinese New Year. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. (Free PDF)

*Harati, H., & *Talhelm, T. (2023). Cultures in water-scarce environments are more long-term oriented. Psychological Science, 34(7), 754-770. *Shared first authorship (Free PDF, Twitter explainer)

English, A. S., & Talhelm, T. (2023). COVID‐19 lockdown anxiety harms newcomers’ job satisfaction: A cross‐lagged panel analysis during snap lockdowns in China. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 17(8), e12786. 

Grossmann, I., Rotella, A., …Talhelm, T., …Wilkening, T. (2023). Insights into accuracy of social scientists' forecasts of societal change. Nature Human Behavior, 7, 484–501. 

English, A. S., Wang, S., Zhang, Q., & Talhelm, T. (2023). Cultural traits or social norms? Both responsibilism and norms linked to accepting COVID-19 vaccine. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 17(8), e12791. 

Deng, W., Rosenblatt, A. K., Talhelm, T., & Putnam, A. L. (2023). People from the US and China think about their personal and collective future differently. Memory & Cognition, 51, 87-100. (Free PDF, Twitter explainer)

Lee, C.-S., Talhelm, T., & Dong, X. (2023). People in historically rice-farming areas are less happy and socially compare more than people in wheat-farming areas. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 124(5), 935-957. (Free PDF, Twitter explainer)

Pick, C. M., Ko, A., Wormley, A. S., …Talhelm, T., …Varnum, M. E. W. (2022). Family still matters: Human social motivation across 42 countries during a global pandemic. Evolution and Human Behavior. (Open access)

Talhelm, T. (2022). The Rice Theory of Culture. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 4(1). (Open access)

Pick, C. M., Ko, A., Kenrick, D. T., …Wei, L., Talhelm, T., & Varnum, M. E. W. (2022). Fundamental social motives measured across forty-two cultures in two waves. Scientific Data, 9(499). (Open access)

Talhelm, T., Lee, C.-S., English, A. S., & Shuang, W. (2022). How rice fights pandemics: Nature-crop-human interactions shaped COVID-19 outcomes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. (Free PDF, one-minute Twitter explainer)

English, A. S., Talhelm, T., Tong, R., Li, X., & Su, Y. (2022). Historical rice farming explains faster mask use during early days of China’s COVID-19 outbreak. Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology, 3, 100034. (Open access; one-minute Twitter explainer)

Zhang, H., Talhelm, T., Yang, Q., & Hu, C. S. (2021). High-status people are more individualistic and analytic-thinking in the West and wheat-farming areas, but not rice-farming areas. European Journal of Social Psychology. (PDF; one-minute Twitter explainer)
 
Zhu, C., Talhelm, T., Li, Y., Chen, G., Zhu, J., & Wang, J. (2021). Relationship between rice farming and polygenic scores potentially linked to agriculture in China. Royal Society Open Science, 8(8), 210382. (Open access)

Talhelm, T., & English, A. S. (2020). Historically rice-farming societies have tighter social norms in China and worldwide. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (Open access)

Ko, A., Pick, C. M., Kwon, J. Y., ... Talhelm, T., ... Kenrick, D. T. (2020). Family matters: Rethinking the psychology of human social motivation. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(1), 173–201. (One-minute Twitter explainer)

Liu, S., Morris, M. W., Talhelm, T., & Yang, Q. (2019). Ingroup vigilance in collectivistic culture. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (PDF) 

Talhelm, T. (2019). Emerging evidence of cultural differences linked to rice versus wheat agriculture. Current Opinion in Psychology. (PDF)

Talhelm, T., & Oishi, S. (2019). Culture and Ecology. In D. Cohen & S. Kitayama (Eds.), Handbook of Cultural Psychology. Guilford Press. (PDF) 

Talhelm, T., Zhang, X., & Oishi, S. (2018). Moving chairs in Starbucks: Observational studies find rice-wheat cultural differences. Science Advances, 4, eaap8469. (Open access)

Thomson, R., Yuki, M., Talhelm, T., Schug, J., Kito, M., Ayanian, A. H., … Visserman, M. L. (2018). Relational mobility predicts social behaviors in 39 countries and is tied to historical farming and threat. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Dong, X., Talhelm, T., & Ren, X. (2018). Teens in rice county are more interdependent and think more holistically than nearby wheat county. Social Psychological and Personality Science. (PDF.)

Talhelm, T., Oishi, S., & Zhang, X. (2018). Who smiles while alone? Rates of  smiling lower in China than US. Emotion. (PDF)

Talhelm, T., & Oishi, S. (2018). How Rice Farming Shaped Culture in Southern China. In A. K. Uskul & S. Oishi (Eds.), Socioeconomic Environment and Human Psychology (pp. 53–76). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. (PDF) 

Talhelm, T. (2018). Hong Kong liberals are WEIRD: Analytic thought increases support for liberal policies. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44(5), 717-728. (PDF.)

Talhelm, T., Zhang, X., Oishi, S., Chen, S., Duan, D., Lan, X., & Kitayama, S. (2014). Discovery of large-scale psychological differences within China explained by rice vs. wheat agriculture. Science, 344(6184), 603-608.
(PDF) 

Talhelm, T., Haidt, J., Oishi, S., Zhang, X., Miao, F. F., & Chen, S. (2015). Liberals think more analytically (more “WEIRD”) than conservatives. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41(2) 250–267. (PDF)

Oishi, S., Talhelm, T., Lee, M., Komiya, A., & Satoshi, A. (2015). Residential mobility and low-commitment groups. Archives of Scientific Psychology, 3, 54-61. (PDF)

Talhelm, T., & Oishi, S. (2013). Residential mobility affects self-concept, group support, and happiness of individuals and communities. In J. Rentfrow (Ed.) Geographical psychology: Exploring the interaction of environment and behavior (pp. 219-239). Washington DC: American Psychological Association. (PDF)
   
Oishi, S., & Talhelm, T. (2012). Residential mobility: What psychological research reveals. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 21(6), 425-430.

Oishi, S., Talhelm, T., & Lee, M. (2015). Personality and geography: Introverts prefer mountains. Journal of Research in Personality, 58, 55-68. (PDF)

Oishi, S., Kesebir, S., Miao, F. F., Talhelm, T., Endo, Y., Uchida, Y. Shibanai, Y., & Norasakkunkit, V. (2013). Residential mobility increases motivation to expand  social networks: But why? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(2), 217-223.
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Open Science Collaboration. (2013). The Reproducibility Project: A model of large-scale collaboration for empirical research on reproducibility. In V. Stodden, F. Leisch, & R. Peng (Eds.), Implementing Reproducible Computational Research (A Volume in The R Series, pp. 299-323). New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.

Open Science Collaboration. (2012). An open, large-scale, collaborative effort to estimate the reproducibility of psychological science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 652-655.  

Journalistic Publications

Relationships are important for happiness, but so is feeling free to end them. Psyche, January 30, 2025.

Is your future your country's future? Not in America. SPSP Character and Context, September 30, 2024. 

What a quirk in history can teach us about where culture comes from. SPSP Character and Context, August 2, 2024.

​How climate shaped our minds—and how it might still save us from climate change. APS Observer, August 31, 2023.
 
What rice-farming cultures can teach us about pandemic preparedness. Scientific American, January 5, 2023.

Cowboy culture doesn’t have a monopoly on innovation. Scientific American. February 28, 2022.  

Time to end assumption that public health interventions encourage risk. Behavioral Scientist, February 15, 2021.

Why your understanding of collectivism is probably wrong. APS Observer, October 29, 2019.

Author's corner: A look back at Bo Yang's The Ugly Chinaman. Far Eastern Economic Review, December 7, 2008.

Fashionable Mandarin: New Mandarin propaganda efforts push Mandarin as chic. Urbane, September, 2008.

H1N1 gets treatment from TCM. China Daily, June 24, 2009.

New forms of old revolutions: A softened Cultural Revolution lives on in modern China. Far Eastern Economic Review, November 7, 2008.

 Superheroes and anti-theft devices: What the psychology of barred windows can teach us about China and America's education systems. Perspectives: Overseas Chinese Forum, 9(3).

China's Confucian resurgence and KTV. City Weekend, March 23, 2009.

Finding China's Jews. City Weekend, June 15, 2009.

Beijing's Summer of Smog. City Weekend, July 6, 2009.

Minimum Wage Increase Jacks Up Beijing Prices. City Weekend, August 16, 2010.

2.6 billion eyeballs, lessons from the street. China Daily, December 9, 2010.

Chinese net sheriffs rise to enforce a new justice from the Internet jungle. Urbane, November, 2008.

Coal Town: Beijing cleans itself of coal heaters. City Weekend, November 6, 2008.​

Karakul Lake, Xinjiang