Climate, Affluence, and Culture

Evert Van de Vliert is an organizational psychologist with experience as internal (1967–1971) and external organization consultant (1977–1983). After receiving his PhD from the Free University in Amsterdam in 1973, he held teacher and researcher positions at the same university, at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and at the Royal Military Academy in The Netherlands. He served as member of many editorial boards, as chairman of the Dutch Research Association of Social and Organizational Psychologists (1984–1989), as research director of the Kurt Lewin Institute (1993–1996), and as member of the international advisory board of the Center for Social and Economic Behavior of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (2001–2006). Professor Van de Vliert has published more than 200 journal articles, chapters, and books including Complex Interpersonal Conflict Behaviour: Theoretical Frontiers (Psychology Press, 1997) and Climate, Affluence, and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2009). He was appointed as Companion in the Order of Orange-Nassau in 2004, and received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Association for Conflict Management in 2005. At present, he is Professor Emeritus of Organizational and Applied Social Psychology at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands, and Research Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology at the University of Bergen in Norway.

“There is no doubt that human societies have had to adapt to the weather they get, but theories about the link between climate and culture had so far never reached scientific status. By introducing affluence as a controlling variable, Evert Van de Vliert opens new perspectives to an old debate. His exploration into explaining the sources of some of the most fundamental differences between human cultures makes very good reading indeed.” —Geert Hofstede, author of Culture's Consequences

• Part I. Introduction: 1. Creators of culture; Part II. Climate, Cash, and Work: 2. Climate colors life satisfaction; 3. Cash compensates for climate; 4. Work copes with context; Part III. Survival, Cooperation, and Organization: 5. Survival, self-expression, and easygoingness; 6. Cooperation; 7. Organization; Part IV. Conclusion: 8. Bird's-eye views of culture; Appendix A. Climate indices.