Kuang-Hui Yeh ¹ Jane Terpstra Tong ^2* Rachel Sing-Kiat Ting ³ Michael H. Bond ⁴ Meetu Khosla ⁵ Virendra P. Yadav ⁶ Shashwat Shukla ⁷ Charles Liu ⁸ Louise Sundararajan ^9*

• ¹ Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan
• ² School of Business, Monash University Malaysia, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia
• ³ Department of Psychology, Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Monash University Malaysia, Bandar Sunway, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia
• ⁴ Department of Management and Marketing, Faculty of Business, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong, SAR China
• ⁵ Department of Psychology, Daulat Ram College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India
• ⁶ Department of Applied Psychology, Shyama Prasad Mukherji College for Women, University of Delhi, Shahdara, National Capital Territory of Delhi, India
• ⁷ Department of Management, University of Allahabad, India, Old Katra, Prayagraj, India
• ⁸ School of Psychology, Counseling, and Family Therapy, Wheaton College, United States, Wheaton, Il, United States
• ⁹ Independent Researcher, Rochester, New York, United States, New York, United States

There is growing evidence of the connection between variations in kinship intensity and cross-cultural differences in psychological traits. Contributing to this literature on kinship intensity, we put forward a mental model to explain the enduring connection between ancestral niche and psychological traits. Our model posits that two primary orientations or dispositions – strong-ties and weak-ties rationalities – have co-evolved with our ancestral niches to perpetuate-- by internalizing and reproducing-- the social structure (such as preferences for certain attitudes, values, and beliefs) of the ancestral niche. The findings from 1,291 participants across four societies - China, India, Taiwan, and the United States - support our hypothesis that strong-ties (weak-ties) rationalities, when activated, will endorse strong-tie (weak-ties) values and beliefs. This proposed model contributes to the toolbox of cultural and cross-cultural psychology in a twofold sense: First, in addition to the index of kinship intensity, it offers a measure of kin-based rationality as another predictor of psychological traits; second, it renders intelligible the niche and rationality disconnect prevalent in the globalizing era.