Sociodemographic Variation and Childhood Predictors of Showing Love and Care for Others Across 22 Countries: A Cross-National Analysis

Read the full article See related articles

Listed in

This article is not in any list yet, why not save it to one of your lists.
Log in to save this article

Abstract

Showing love and care for other people is a vital aspect of human relationships. However, little is known about how levels of love/care expression differ across cultures and across demographic groups within those different cultures, or about the potential childhood antecedents that are associated with love/care expression in adulthood. Based on nationally representative data from 22 countries in six continents in the Global Flourishing Study (N=202,898), we present ordered means of love/care expression across countries, observe its distributions across key sociodemographic characteristics, and evaluate the strength of its childhood predictors (with E-values as a robustness check), revealing the extent to which the distributions and associations are uniform throughout the world or differ by country. The mean levels of love/care expression (scaled 0-10) ranged from 9.05 in the Philippines to 5.96 in Japan and tended to be higher in countries in the Global South. Based on a random effects meta-analysis of means and a multivariate regression analysis of childhood predictors, we find evidence of both universal and country-specific influences. Age cohort, gender, self-rated health, and religious service attendance were the strongest childhood predictors. These findings enhance our understanding of the country-specific variations in love/care expression and early-life predictors of adult outcomes, providing a foundation for future investigations into sociocultural influences that might shape love/care expression.

Article activity feed