psychological universal
a psychological feature that occurs and is recognized across diverse cultures, albeit sometimes in different forms. In 1980, U.S. psychologist Walter J. Lonner (1934– ) proposed a seven-level structure to categorize ideas and concepts that may qualify as psychological universals: (a) simple universals (e.g., the absolute facticity of human aggression); (b) variform universals (e.g., aggression takes on various forms in different cultures, but it always occurs); (c) functional universals (societal variations that have the same social consequences but are equilibrated for local relevance); (d) diachronic universals (universals of behavior that are temporally invariant but interpreted differently); (e) ethologically oriented universals (those with phylogenetic, Darwinian links); (f) systematic behavioral universals (various subcategories in psychology); and (g) cocktail-party universals
(those things that all people feel but can only discuss as phenomena that defy measurement).