What Doesn’t Kill Us: Harsh Ecologies Beget Difficulty-as-Improvement Norms

Abstract Culture-based norms help people make sense of their worlds especially in ambiguous situations. We show that harsher environments foster one such norm, difficulty-as-improvement, which focuses on whether unchosen difficulty has a character-building upside. People are more likely to hold difficulty-as-improvement beliefs if they live in societies with harsher environments (e.g., mortality, economy, ecology). Moreover, difficulty-as-improvement beliefs are sticky –relatively stable once developed, more prevalent in traditional cultures, and associated with societal and individual endurance-based action. Effects are stable across diverse methods and samples –simulation, spatial analyses, historical analyses, and multinational surveys.