Talhelm et al. (2014) provided an original rice theory to explain large psychological differences acrosscountries and even within countries and their impact on innovation. However, their findings are subjectto the problems of sample bias, measurement error, and model misspecification. After correcting theseproblems, most findings in the original paper no longer hold. We collected data on collectivism fromother sources and linked them with rice areas but failed to find any relationship as predicted by the ricetheory. The role of rice farming in shaping cultural psychology and innovations seems to be much moremuted than asserted in Talhelm et al. (2014).
