Culture, interpersonal perceptions, and happiness in social interactions

Are my wife's recovery activities related to my subsequent recovery activities at work?

We proposed a model where a male employee's wife's engagement in recovery activities results in the husband's own enactment of recovery activities while in the workplace, via emotional contagion, based on the COR theory and broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. We expected wives may experience positive emotions after engaging in social interactions, which has a contagion effect on husbands' positive emotions. Further, husbands were expected to leverage their positive emotions to engage in future recovery activities (better lunch nap and meal quality while at work). Lastly, we examined whether power imbalance in the married couple has a moderating effect on emotional contagion processes. To test our model, we used an experience-sampling method in which 110 dyads completed daily diary questionnaires for 8 consecutive days (N = 768, after removing 112 invalid observations). As expected, wives' social interactions are linked to husbands' positive emotions via wives' positive emotions. Further, husbands' positive emotions predict the quality of two workplace recovery activities (lunch naps and meals). Finally, power imbalance moderates the association between wives' (donors) emotions and husbands' (recipients) emotions such that the crossover of emotions is stronger when wives (donors) have relatively more power than when they have less.

Feeling understood and appreciated in relationships: Where do these perceptions come from and why do they matter?

Perceptions of romantic partners (even inaccurate perceptions) are important determinants of initial liking and long-term relationship satisfaction. In the current article, we consider the role of perceptions in romantic relationships through the lens of felt understanding and appreciation. We first examine where perceptions of feeling understood and appreciated come from, considering partner, self, and dyadic influences. We then examine how feeling understood and appreciated shape relationship quality, focusing on these perceptions as buffers of negative relationship experiences and mechanisms through which couples can create positive upward cycles of responsiveness and appreciation. Finally, we theorize about the unique dyadic experience of feeling understood and appreciated, positing that moments of mutual understanding and appreciation play a critical role in increasing social connection.

Responsiveness in cultural-ecological context

Theoretical and empirical research on responsiveness focused mostly on cultural ecologies of independence. Emerging studies suggest that the responsiveness process may unfold differently in cultural ecologies of interdependence. We organize these studies into a working conceptual model. The model argues that two mechanisms-expectations of culturally normative relationship behaviors and relative centrality of relationships-carry the influence of cultural ecology on responsiveness. Together, these mechanisms explain variation in (a) self-expressive behaviors thought to elicit responsiveness, (b) associations between partner behaviors and perceived responsiveness, and (c) associations between perceived responsiveness and well-being.

Underestimated caregiver burden by cancer patients and its association with quality of life, depression and anxiety among caregivers

This study examined how patients with cancer estimate caregiver burden (CB) and the association between their underestimation of CB and their caregivers' self-ratings of their quality of life (CQOLC-K; Korean version of the Caregiver Quality of Life Index-Cancer), depression and anxiety (Korean version of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale). Participants consisted of 990 patient-caregiver dyads recruited from a nationwide cross-sectional survey conducted in South Korea. Medical baseline data were retrieved from the hospital information systems of the participating centres. The patients with cancer who underestimated CB ranged from 18.62% (for physical CB) to 23.33% (for social CB). They had less advanced cancer, a lower income, were the caregiver's spouse, reported higher levels of family avoidance of communication about cancer, and had female caregivers. The patients' underestimation of CB was significantly related to lower CQoL and higher levels of caregiver depression and anxiety. The current study provides empirical evidence for the link between the underestimation of CB by patients with cancer and compromised caregiving experiences of cancer caregivers. Open family communication about cancer was discussed as one of several practical strategies for decreasing patients' underestimation of CB.

Lay Definitions of Happiness across Nations: The Primacy of Inner Harmony and Relational Connectedness

In well-being research the term happiness is often used as synonymous with life satisfaction. However, little is known about lay people's understanding of happiness. Building on the available literature, this study explored lay definitions of happiness across nations and cultural dimensions, analyzing their components and relationship with participants' demographic features. Participants were 2799 adults (age range = 30-60, 50% women) living in urban areas of Argentina, Brazil, Croatia, Hungary, India, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, and United States. They completed the Eudaimonic and Hedonic Happiness Investigation (EHHI), reporting, among other information, their own definition of happiness. Answers comprised definitions referring to a broad range of life domains, covering both the contextual-social sphere and the psychological sphere. Across countries and with little variation by age and gender, inner harmony predominated among psychological definitions, and family and social relationships among contextual definitions. Whereas relationships are widely acknowledged as basic happiness components, inner harmony is substantially neglected. Nevertheless, its cross-national primacy, together with relations, is consistent with the view of an ontological interconnectedness characterizing living systems, shared by several conceptual frameworks across disciplines and cultures. At the methodological level, these findings suggest the potential of a bottom-up, mixed method approach to contextualize psychological dimensions within culture and lay understanding.

Emotional Dynamics in Intimate Relationships

Forming intimate relationships is a fundamental human motive. Emotions play a critical role in intimate relationships—they are central to the development and maintenance of these bonds, and these very bonds can influence both individual and interpersonal emotional dynamics across time. Investigating emotional dynamics in an interpersonal context provides unique insight into the functioning of intimate relationships and, at the same time, provides a window into the interdependence of partners’ daily experiences. Reviewing a selection of the literature involving emotional dynamics in intimate relationships, we explore how intimate relationships shape partner’s emotional experiences and the implications this may have for their relationship across time.

Feeling (Mis)Understood and Intergroup Friendships in Interracial Interactions

The present research investigated whether having out-group friends serves as a buffer for feeling misunderstood in interracial interactions. Across three experience sampling studies, we found that among ethnic minorities who have few White friends or are not interacting with White friends, daily interracial interactions are associated with feeling less understood. By contrast, we found that among ethnic minorities who have more White friends or are interacting with White friends, the relationship between daily interracial interactions and feeling understood is not significant. We did not find similar results for Whites; that is, having ethnic minority friends did not play a role in the relationship between daily interracial interactions and feeling understood. Together, these studies demonstrate the beneficial effects of intergroup friendships for ethnic minorities.

The neural bases of feeling understood and not understood

Past research suggests that feeling understood enhances both personal and social well-being. However, little research has examined the neurobiological bases of feeling understood and not understood. We addressed these gaps by experimentally inducing felt understanding and not understanding as participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging. The results demonstrated that feeling understood activated neural regions previously associated with reward and social connection (i.e. ventral striatum and middle insula), while not feeling understood activated neural regions previously associated with negative affect (i.e. anterior insula). Both feeling understood and not feeling understood activated different components of the mentalizing system (feeling understood: precuneus and temporoparietal junction; not feeling understood: dorsomedial prefrontal cortex). Neural responses were associated with subsequent feelings of social connection and disconnection and were modulated by individual differences in rejection sensitivity. Thus, this study provides insight into the psychological processes underlying feeling understood (or not) and may suggest new avenues for targeted interventions that amplify the benefits of feeling understood or buffer individuals from the harmful consequences of not feeling understood.

Lost in translation: staff and interpreters' experiences of the edinburgh postnatal depression scale with women from refugee backgrounds

This paper explores the cross-cultural application of the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) and the difficulties associated with administration to women from refugee backgrounds. Assessing women's comprehension of individual scale items identified problems associated with "Western" terminology and concepts. Re-interpretation of discrete items on the scale was often necessary, raising doubts about the objectivity and reliability of scores. Our findings call for a closer examination of the ethnocentric assumptions underpinning the EPDS items, and the need to incorporate a more diverse range of cross-cultural understandings into future iterations.

Targeting the Good Target

A person’s judgeability, or the extent to which a person is easy to understand, plays an important role in how accurately a target will be perceived by others. Research on this topic, however, has not been systematic or well-integrated. The current review begins to remedy this by integrating the available research on judgeability from the fields of personality perception, nonverbal communication, and social cognition. Specifically, this review summarizes the characteristics that are likely to promote judgeability and explores its potential consequences. A diverse range of characteristics are identified as predictors of judgeability, all relating to three broader categories: psychological adjustment, social status, and socialization. Furthermore, being judgeable has a variety of potential, largely positive, consequences for the target, leaving good targets poised for greater personal and interpersonal well-being. Nevertheless, many questions on this topic remain and it is crucial for this relatively understudied topic to receive more systematic empirical attention.

Do you want to convince me or to be understood?: preference-consistent information sharing and its motivational determinants

In two experiments, we provide evidence for a fundamental discussion asymmetry, namely, preference-consistent information sharing. Despite being in a dyadic situation requiring open information exchange and being given no incentive to do so, participants communicated more information that supported their individually preferred decision alternative than information that contradicted it. Preference-consistent information sharing was not caused by biased recall and occurred in written as well as in face-to-face communication. Moreover, we tested whether preference-consistent information sharing was influenced by statements by bogus discussion partners indicating that they held a congruent versus incongruent preference to the participants' preference and that they understood versus did not understand the participants' preference. We found that when partners stated that they understood the participants' preference, subsequent preference-consistent information sharing was considerably reduced. This indicates that a motivation to be understood by others might be an important driving force underlying preference-consistent information sharing.

Felt Understanding and Misunderstanding Affect the Perception of Pain, Slant, and Distance

We conducted two studies to examine whether the psychological states of felt understanding and misunderstanding would affect people’s basic perceptions such as pain, geographical slant, and distance. As predicted, an experimentally induced sense of felt understanding relative to misunderstanding increased pain tolerance marginally and reduced the perceived distance to the target locations significantly. In Study 2, we not only replicated Study 1’s findings on pain tolerance and distance perception but also found that participants in the understanding condition perceived the same hill to be significantly less steep than those in the misunderstanding condition. Our studies demonstrated that the experimentally induced feeling of misunderstanding tends to have the aversive effect on the perception of pain, geographical slant, and distance, whereas the experimentally induced feeling of understanding tends to alleviate pain, reduce the geographical slant, and the perceived distance to a target location.

Feeling close and doing well: the prevalence and motivational effects of interpersonally engaging emotions in Mexican and European American cultural contexts

Two studies investigate whether interpersonally engaging emotions--those that bring the self closer to others (e.g., affection, shame)--are central to the model of self and relationships prevalent in Mexican cultural contexts. Study 1 demonstrated that compared to people in European American contexts, people in Mexican contexts were more likely to report experiencing interpersonally engaging emotions and less likely to report experiencing interpersonally disengaging emotions. Study 2 found that interpersonally engaging emotions had a substantial influence on performance motivation in Mexican contexts--Mexican participants solved more word search puzzles after recalling instances in which they experienced positive interpersonally engaging emotions, and fewer after recalling negative interpersonally disengaging emotions; in contrast, there were no differences by condition for European Americans. These findings significantly extend previous research by documenting the implications of relational concerns (e.g., simpatia, personalismo) for emotion and motivation in Mexican contexts, and are the first to demonstrate the motivational effects of interpersonally engaging emotions.

Cultural Variations in Motivational Responses to Felt Misunderstanding

Three studies examined cultural variations in the motivational consequences of being misunderstood by others. Study 1 found that European American students who felt misunderstood by others performed progressively better academically, whereas Asian and Asian American students who felt misunderstood by others performed progressively worse. In Studies 2 and 3, felt misunderstanding was experimentally manipulated, and motivational responses were measured with a handgrip task (Study 2) and prefrontal electroencephalography (EEG) asymmetry (Study 3). Across the two studies, Asians and Asian Americans showed more withdrawal-related responses but European Americans showed either no difference (Study 2) or more motivated responses (Study 3) after being misunderstood versus being understood. Together, these studies demonstrate systematic cultural variations in motivational responses to felt misunderstanding.

Information, Perspective, and Judgments About the Self in Face and Dignity Cultures

People’s judgments about their own moral status and well-being were made differently by those from a Dignity culture (Anglo-Americans) and by those from a Face culture (Asian Americans). Face culture participants were more influenced by information processed from a third-person (compared with first-person) perspective, with information about the self having a powerful effect only when seen through another’s eyes. Thus, (a) Asian Americans felt the greatest need for moral cleansing when thinking about how others would judge their many (vs. few) transgressions, but this effect did not hold when others were not invoked, and (b) Asian Americans defined themselves as having a rich social network and worthwhile life when thinking about how others would evaluate their many (vs. few) friendships, but again, effects did not hold when others were not invoked. In contrast, Anglo-Americans responded to information about their transgressions or friendships, but effects were pronounced only when other people were not invoked.

The Psychology of Residential Mobility: Implications for the Self, Social Relationships, and Well-Being

Residential mobility is an increasingly important personal and societal issue in both the United States and the world in general. However, it has received relatively limited attention in psychological theorizing and research. This article demonstrates the importance of residential mobility in understanding the self, social relationships, and well-being. Recent research has shown that residential mobility (number of moves for an individual or percentage having moved recently for a neighborhood) is associated with the primacy of the personal over the collective self. It is also associated with "duty-free" friendships and group memberships rather than obligatory friendships and group memberships. Overall, residential mobility is associated with lower levels of well-being at the individual level of analysis. Finally, residential mobility is associated with personal forms of subjective well-being (based on self-esteem, the verification of the personal self) as opposed to interpersonal forms of subjective well-being (based on social support, the verification of the collective selves). In short, residential mobility is a powerful, parsimonious explanatory construct in the self, social relationships, and subjective well-being and may be a key to understanding the future of mind and behavior in the increasingly mobile world.

On Feeling Understood and Feeling Well: The Role of Interdependence

The present research examined whether people feel happier and healthier when they feel more understood in daily social interactions. A two-week diary study showed that people reported greater life satisfaction and fewer physical symptoms on days in which they felt more understood by others. Moreover, we found that individuals who tend to see themselves in relations to others (i.e., women or those scored high on interdependent self-construal measure) showed a stronger association between daily felt understanding and daily life satisfaction or physical symptoms. These findings demonstrate that daily social experiences, such as felt understanding, are associated with daily well-being, particularly for individuals with greater interdependent self-construal.