ABSTRACT

Positive psychologists have observed, based on large cross-cultural data, that “most people are happy” and “life is pretty meaningful.” Evolutionary and behavior genetic considerations suggest, however, that the human tendency to hold “extreme” opinions significantly above or below the scale midpoint may be more universal. Analyses of all relevant questions in the 2014 General Social Survey (n = 266 questions and 2,538 respondents) and Wave 6 of the World Values Survey (n = 138 questions and 79,805 respondents in 59 countries) show that, no matter what question one asks anywhere in the world, humans hold “extreme” opinions in nearly all (94.6%) cases, and the observed effect is both highly statistically significant (mean t = 29.44) and large (mean d = .80).

摘要

积极的心理学家根据大量跨文化数据观察到，“大多数人都快乐”并且“生活很有意义”。然而，进化论和行为遗传学的考虑表明，人类倾向于将“极端”观点保持在明显高于或低于尺度中点的趋势可能更为普遍。对2014年综合社会调查中的所有相关问题（n  = 266个问题和2,538名受访者）和世界价值调查第6浪（n  = 138个问题和59,805个国家/地区的79,805名受访者）进行的分析表明，无论一个问题在任何地方提出在世界上，几乎所有（94.6％）的案例中，人类都拥有“极端”的观点，并且观察到的效果在统计学上具有很高的显着性（平均t  = 29.44），并且在很大的程度上（平均d  = .80）。