Future Tense and Economic Decisions: Controlling for Cultural Evolution

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Psychology
• Economics

Background:

• Previous research suggests a link between grammatical future marking in languages and lower savings rates.
• This correlation was found even after controlling for economic and demographic factors.
• The prior study overlooked linguistic relatedness, potentially inflating results (Galton's problem).

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the robustness of the correlation between future-marking languages and savings behavior.
• To correct for linguistic relatedness (Galton's problem) in cross-cultural comparisons.
• To assess the validity of claims about synchronic patterns between cultural and linguistic variables.

Main Methods:

• Statistical analysis of linguistic and economic data.
• Correction for language relatedness using phylogenetic methods.
• Testing correlation robustness under various relatedness controls and data aggregation levels.

Main Results:

• The correlation between future-marking languages and savings is generally weaker when controlling for linguistic relatedness.
• Under strict relatedness tests and non-aggregated data, the correlation becomes statistically insignificant.
• The correlation remained somewhat robust in several, less stringent, statistical tests.

Conclusions:

• Claims of synchronic patterns between cultural and linguistic variables require testing for spurious correlations.
• Large-scale correlational studies may be less fruitful than experiments or case studies for this topic.
• Future research should employ methods that account for linguistic relatedness and explore causal mechanisms.