Modern East Asian populations plausibly retained extensive psychological adaptations in general personality traits and social dynamics to arctic environments, from ancestral Northeast Asian populations' late Pleistocene habitation of arctic and subarctic North Eurasia, prior to migrating southwards into East Asia in the Holocene. The first cross-cultural study between modern East Asian and Inuit populations is conducted, as an epistemically sound ethnographic analogy for paleolithic Arctic populations, and a shared set of arctic adapted personality traits is proposed- a higher than average tendency of emotional control/suppression, harmony/cohesion, indirectness, self and social consciousness, reserve/introversion, cautiousness, and perseverance/stoic endurance. The proposed candidate Arcticist traits are tested for environmental causation in modern polar personnel psychology, using decades of personality research on workers, expeditioners, and military personnel who adapt to Arctic and Antarctic environments. Consistently replicated results support causation of polar climates in necessitating the proposed Arcticist traits for adaptive success, and such traits are generalizable and predictive of adaptive success even across modern European populations that temporarily live in polar climates. A theoretical framework for the universal principles of arctic psychological adaptation is introduced, a novel methodology for testing causation and formation of psychological adaptation to post-OoA environments is proposed, and previous popular theories on the roots of Eastern psychology are reexamined in the light of Arcticism theory.
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Seeds of Science is a scientific journal (funded through Scott Alexander's ACX grants program) publishing speculative or non-traditional research articles. Peer review is conducted through community-based voting and commenting by a diverse network of reviewers (or "gardeners" as we call them). Comments that critique or extend the article (the "seed of science") in a useful manner are published in the final document following the main text.
We have just sent out a manuscript for review, "Arctic Instincts? The universal principles of Arctic psychological adaptation and the origins of East Asian psychology", that may be of interest to some in the LessWrong community so I wanted to see if anyone would be interested in joining us as a gardener and providing feedback on the article. As noted above, this is an opportunity to have your comment recorded in the scientific literature (comments can be made with real name or pseudonym).
It is free to join as a gardener and anyone is welcome (we currently have gardeners from all levels of academia and outside of it). Participation is entirely voluntary - we send you submitted articles and you can choose to vote/comment or abstain without notification (so no worries if you don't plan on reviewing very often but just want to take a look here and there at the articles people are submitting).
To register, you can fill out this google form. From there, it's pretty self-explanatory - I will add you to the mailing list and send you an email that includes the manuscript, our publication criteria, and a simple review form for recording votes/comments. If you would like to just take a look at this article without being added to the mailing list, then just reach out (info@theseedsofscience.org) and say so.
Happy to answer any questions about the journal through email or in the comments below.
Abstract
Modern East Asian populations plausibly retained extensive psychological adaptations in general personality traits and social dynamics to arctic environments, from ancestral Northeast Asian populations' late Pleistocene habitation of arctic and subarctic North Eurasia, prior to migrating southwards into East Asia in the Holocene. The first cross-cultural study between modern East Asian and Inuit populations is conducted, as an epistemically sound ethnographic analogy for paleolithic Arctic populations, and a shared set of arctic adapted personality traits is proposed- a higher than average tendency of emotional control/suppression, harmony/cohesion, indirectness, self and social consciousness, reserve/introversion, cautiousness, and perseverance/stoic endurance. The proposed candidate Arcticist traits are tested for environmental causation in modern polar personnel psychology, using decades of personality research on workers, expeditioners, and military personnel who adapt to Arctic and Antarctic environments. Consistently replicated results support causation of polar climates in necessitating the proposed Arcticist traits for adaptive success, and such traits are generalizable and predictive of adaptive success even across modern European populations that temporarily live in polar climates. A theoretical framework for the universal principles of arctic psychological adaptation is introduced, a novel methodology for testing causation and formation of psychological adaptation to post-OoA environments is proposed, and previous popular theories on the roots of Eastern psychology are reexamined in the light of Arcticism theory.
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Seeds of Science is a scientific journal (funded through Scott Alexander's ACX grants program) publishing speculative or non-traditional research articles. Peer review is conducted through community-based voting and commenting by a diverse network of reviewers (or "gardeners" as we call them). Comments that critique or extend the article (the "seed of science") in a useful manner are published in the final document following the main text.
We have just sent out a manuscript for review, "Arctic Instincts? The universal principles of Arctic psychological adaptation and the origins of East Asian psychology", that may be of interest to some in the LessWrong community so I wanted to see if anyone would be interested in joining us as a gardener and providing feedback on the article. As noted above, this is an opportunity to have your comment recorded in the scientific literature (comments can be made with real name or pseudonym).
It is free to join as a gardener and anyone is welcome (we currently have gardeners from all levels of academia and outside of it). Participation is entirely voluntary - we send you submitted articles and you can choose to vote/comment or abstain without notification (so no worries if you don't plan on reviewing very often but just want to take a look here and there at the articles people are submitting).
To register, you can fill out this google form. From there, it's pretty self-explanatory - I will add you to the mailing list and send you an email that includes the manuscript, our publication criteria, and a simple review form for recording votes/comments. If you would like to just take a look at this article without being added to the mailing list, then just reach out (info@theseedsofscience.org) and say so.
Happy to answer any questions about the journal through email or in the comments below.