We argue that the importance of family relationships for individual well-being varies across societies as a function of a society’s degree of cultural heterogeneity. To examine the role of family relationships, we analyzed the responses from 13,009 participants in 50 societies on their life satisfaction across societies varying in their levels of historical and contemporary cultural heterogeneity. Such heterogeneity creates differences in the frequency of interacting with unfamiliar groups, which leads families to become more central to their members’ satisfaction with life. Multi-level analyses showed that historical and contemporary cultural heterogeneity moderated the pattern such that greater historical or contemporary cultural heterogeneity of society promoted a stronger positive relation between family relationship satisfaction and individual life satisfaction. Our results also revealed that the moderating role of historical cultural heterogeneity was more reliable than that of contemporary cultural heterogeneity. These findings demonstrate the importance of societal demography in shaping people’s psychological processes in different historical periods, suggesting a universal, trans-historical cultural process.

我们认为，家庭关系对个人福祉的重要性因社会文化异质性程度而异。为了研究家庭关系的作用，我们分析了 50 个社会的 13,009 名参与者对不同历史和当代文化异质性水平不同的社会的生活满意度的反应。这种异质性导致与陌生群体互动的频率存在差异，从而导致家庭对其成员的生活满意度变得更加重要。多层次分析表明，历史和当代文化异质性调节了这种模式，社会更大的历史或当代文化异质性促进了家庭关系满意度和个人生活满意度之间更强的正相关关系。我们的结果还表明，历史文化异质性的调节作用比当代文化异质性的调节作用更可靠。这些发现证明了社会人口学在塑造不同历史时期人们的心理过程方面的重要性，暗示了一种普遍的、跨历史的文化过程。