Journal: Personality and Individual Differences

The Role of Culture on the Link between Worldviews on Nature and Psychological Health during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Brian W. Haas, Ph.D. (Univ of Georgia); Fumiko Hoeft, MD, Ph.D.; Kazufumi Omura, Ph.D.

Worldviews about human's relationship with the natural world play an important role in psychological health. However, very little is currently known regarding the way worldviews about nature are linked with psychological health during a severe natural disaster and how this link may differ according to cultural context. In this study, we measured individual differences in worldviews about nature and psychological health during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic within two different cultural contexts (Japan and United States). We found that across Japanese and American cultural contexts, holding a Harmony-with-nature worldview was positively associated with improved psychological health during the COVID-19 pandemic. We also found that culture moderated the link between Mastery-over-nature worldviews and negative affect. Americans showed a stronger link between mastery-over-nature worldviews and negative affect than Japanese. These findings support the biophilia hypothesis and contribute to theories differentiating Japanese and American cultural contexts based on naïve dialecticism and susceptibility to cognitive dissonance.