This paper uses spatial statistics to test whether Tobler's First Law applies to national culture.

Tobler's First Law of Geography states that everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things. This paper uses spatial statistics to test whether Tobler's First Law applies to national culture. Are nations that are geographically close more similar in their culture than those far apart? The results of the analysis of 26 widely used cultural dimensions from six major studies involving between 42 and 78 countries result in a resounding yes. Indeed, some of the cultural dimensions included are as spatially organized as temperature and rainfall. Of course, it would be absurd to claim that geographical proximity alone can explain the similarities and differences between national cultures. Some nations that are half a world apart, for instance the UK and Australia, or Spain and Uruguay, share similar cultures because of shared historical connections and large scale immigration. Nevertheless, there are good reasons to expect a higher degree of cultural similarity between social groups that are physically close then those that are far apart.

First, it has been suggested that some cultural traits are adaptations to environmental conditions. Relationships between culture and the physical climate would tend to produce geographically organized cultural zones, because countries that have similar climates are close together. Second, because of the increased opportunities for communication and migration, the processes of cultural diffusion and borrowing are likely to occur more frequently amongst populations that are physically close together than amongst populations that are physically far apart. This would also tend to increase the cultural similarity between neighbouring nations. This research is the first to use spatial autocorrelation to analyze cross-cultural data. The value of this method is that it rather neatly side-steps Galton's Problem.