Darling I don’t know why I go to extremes: a seemingly culturally universal and potentially evolved human tendency to hold extreme preferences and values

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).