Cultural Psychology - East Asian, Siberian, Inuit, Andean

 Arctic instincts: The personality of East Asians by David Sun, via Aporia. 

I don't have the background to tell whether this is a just-so story, but I will say that the theory holds together with some things I know about human migration and physiological similarities, and also matches up with some fragments of historical linguistics, though the time-depth for that makes everything chancy. 

My paper falls within the discipline of cultural psychology, which seeks to understand people’s culture and personality by examining the socioecological factors that they experienced over the last 10,000 years. Many interesting findings have been made already, as a recent literature review documents: population density predicts collectivism, tightness and future orientation; frontier regions are characterized by individualism and high agency; pathogen prevalence predicts collectivism; rice farming is associated with tightness and higher nepotism...

My paper documents that, in terms of psychology, East Asians bear a striking resemblance to indigenous Inuit and Siberians. All three groups exhibit high emotional suppression, in-group cohesion/unassertiveness, introversion, indirectness, self-consciousness, social sensitivity, cautiousness, perseverance and visuospatial abilities – traits that would have enhanced their ancestors’ survival in the unforgiving environment of Ice Age Siberia.

My paper also documents that Arctic environments necessitate these very traits in polar workers and expeditioners.

It is fascinating, at any rate. These ideas remain unpopular to even study in wide swaths of academia, but Sun seems to be on a mission about it.