Individualism, collectivism and conformity in nine countries: Relations with parenting and child adjustment

This study investigated how individualism, collectivism and conformity are associated with parenting and child adjustment in 1297 families with 10-year-old children from 13 cultural groups in nine countries. With multilevel models disaggregating between- and within-culture effects, we examined between- and within-culture associations between maternal and paternal cultural values, parenting dimensions and children's adjustment. Mothers from cultures endorsing higher collectivism and fathers from cultures endorsing lower individualism engage more frequently in warm parenting behaviours. Mothers and fathers with higher-than-average collectivism in their culture reported higher parent warmth and expectations for children's family obligations. Mothers with higher-than-average collectivism in their cultures more frequently reported warm parenting and fewer externalising problems in children, whereas mothers with higher-than-average individualism in their culture reported more child adjustment problems. Mothers with higher-than-average conformity values in their culture reported more father-displays of warmth and greater mother-reported expectations for children's family obligations. Fathers with higher-than-average individualism in their culture reported setting more rules and soliciting more knowledge about their children's whereabouts. Fathers who endorsed higher-than-average conformity in their culture displayed more warmth and expectations for children's family obligations and granted them more autonomy. Being connected to an interdependent, cohesive group appears to relate to parenting and children's adjustment.

Decoding the Dynamics of Cultural Change: A Cultural Evolution Approach to the Psychology of Acculturation

PUBLIC ABSTRACT

Acculturation describes the cultural and psychological changes resulting from intercultural contact. Here, we use concepts from "cultural evolution" to better understand the processes of acculturation. Cultural evolution researchers view cultural change as an evolutionary process, allowing them to borrow tools and methods from biology. Cultural evolutionary mechanisms such as conformity (copying the numerical majority), anti-conformity (copying the numerical minority), prestige bias (copying famous individuals), payoff bias (copying successful people), and vertical cultural transmission (copying your parents) can cause people to adopt elements from other cultures and/or conserve their cultural heritage. We explore how these transmission mechanisms might create distinct acculturation strategies, shaping cultural change and diversity over the long-term. This theoretical integration can pave the way for a more sophisticated understanding of the pervasive cultural shifts occurring in many ethnically diverse societies, notably by identifying conditions that empower minority-group members, often marginalized, to significantly influence the majority group and society.

Understanding Rewarding and Challenging Nursing Experiences During the Pandemic in Five Countries: Toward Strengthening the Workforce

INTRODUCTION

Nurses are now more likely to leave their current role in direct patient care than they were before the COVID-19 pandemic. Country culture and the organization of health care systems drive nurses' decisions to leave or stay in the profession.

METHODS

In a fall 2020 survey of nurse professional quality of life, a content analysis of responses to the open-ended question, "What has been challenging or rewarding during this pandemic experience?" was performed. Results were organized within Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions Theory.

RESULTS

Six hundred and fifty-six nurses across five countries responded to the question; 526 comments were analyzed. Most (53.6%) respondents were staff bedside nurses. Themes, such as Distress and Fatigue and Building and Experiencing Social Capital were found and understood to reflect cultural values and dimensions such as Uncertainty Avoidance and Power Distance.

DISCUSSION

Recommendations include strengthening culturally tailored leadership knowledge to inform and facilitate countries' nurse retention.

On Cultural Differences of Heroes: Evidence From Individualistic and Collectivistic Cultures

Building on earlier research that examined the characteristics people associate with heroes, our research examined similarities and differences of the hero stereotype across cultures. Specifically, in Study 1 (N = 209) and Study 2 (N = 298), we investigated lay perceptions of heroes among participants from a collectivistic culture. In Study 3 (N = 586), we examined whether group membership could be determined by participants' centrality ratings of the combined set of hero features. In Study 4 (N = 197), we tested whether the hero features that distinguish American and Chinese participants, when used to describe a target person, influence the impression that the target person is a hero. In Study 5 (N = 158) and Study 6 (N = 591), we investigated cultural differences in perceptions of different types of heroes (e.g., social, martial, civil) and the influence of individualism and collectivism on the perception of those heroes.

Patients' recommendations to improve help-seeking for vaginismus: a qualitative study

BACKGROUND

Research to improve healthcare experiences for women with vaginismus tends to be produced from the perspective of healthcare professionals or health-based researchers. There is lacking research on women's experiences and recommendations to improve help-seeking for vaginismus from their perspective. To address this research gap, this qualitative study aimed to identify the issues that women face when help-seeking for vaginismus and their recommendations to address it. This sought to support the wellbeing of patients to advocate for their healthcare needs which is often overlooked.

METHODS

Using a feminist theoretical approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 participants who sought help for their vaginismus. Thematic analysis was employed to analyse participants' recommendations.

RESULTS

Four main themes emerged: Increase awareness of vaginismus, Dismantle myths about sex, Destigmatise vaginismus, and Empower people with vaginismus during medical consultations. Subthemes were identified as actionable strategies that participants recommended to improve help-seeking and healthcare for vaginismus.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings from this study can inform healthcare practice and policy to foster better synchronicity between health professionals and their patients' perceptions and expectations of treating vaginismus. This can promote more acceptance of patients' advocacy of their needs and goals to improve the therapeutic alliance and treatment outcomes for vaginismus in healthcare practice. The strategies recommended to increase awareness of vaginismus and challenge its stigma should be considered in policy to incite a culture of change in healthcare practice and broader society.

Cognitive fossils: using cultural artifacts to reconstruct psychological changes throughout history

Psychology is crucial for understanding human history. When aggregated, changes in the psychology of individuals - in the intensity of social trust, parental care, or intellectual curiosity - can lead to important changes in institutions, social norms, and cultures. However, studying the role of psychology in shaping human history has been hindered by the difficulty of documenting the psychological traits of people who are no longer alive. Recent developments in psychology suggest that cultural artifacts reflect in part the psychological traits of the individuals who produced or consumed them. Cultural artifacts can thus serve as 'cognitive fossils' - physical imprints of the psychological traits of long-dead people. We review the range of materials available to cognitive and behavioral scientists, and discuss the methods that can be used to recover and quantify changes in psychological traits throughout history.

When expert predictions fail

We examine the opportunities and challenges of expert judgment in the social sciences, scrutinizing the way social scientists make predictions. While social scientists show above-chance accuracy in predicting laboratory-based phenomena, they often struggle to predict real-world societal changes. We argue that most causal models used in social sciences are oversimplified, confuse levels of analysis to which a model applies, misalign the nature of the model with the nature of the phenomena, and fail to consider factors beyond the scientist's pet theory. Taking cues from physical sciences and meteorology, we advocate an approach that integrates broad foundational models with context-specific time series data. We call for a shift in the social sciences towards more precise, daring predictions and greater intellectual humility.

The Migration Experience: A Conceptual Framework and Systematic Scoping Review of Psychological Acculturation

ACADEMIC ABSTRACT

One of the key challenges to researching psychological acculturation is the immense heterogeneity in theories and measures. These inconsistencies make it difficult to compare past literature, hinder straightforward measurement selections, and stifle theoretical integration. To structure acculturation, we propose to utilize the four basic aspects of human experiences (wanting, feeling, thinking, and doing) as a conceptual framework. We use this framework to build a theory-driven assessment of past theoretical (final N = 92), psychometric (final N = 233), and empirical literature (final N = 530). We find that the framework allows us to examine and compare past conceptualizations. For example, empirical works have understudied the more internal aspects of acculturation (i.e., motivations and feelings) compared with theoretical works. We, then, discuss the framework's novel insights including its temporal resolution, its comprehensive and cross-cultural structure, and how the framework can aid transparent and functional theories, studies, and interventions going forward.

PUBLIC ABSTRACT

This systematic scoping review indicates that the concept of psychological acculturation can be structured in terms of affect (e.g., feeling at home), behavior (e.g., language use), cognition (e.g., ethnic identification), and desire (e.g., independence wish). We find that the framework is useful in structuring past research and helps with new predictions and interventions. We, for example, find a crucial disconnect between theory and practice, which will need to be resolved in the future.

Homo temporus: Seasonal Cycles as a Fundamental Source of Variation in Human Psychology

Many animal species exhibit seasonal changes in their physiology and behavior. Yet despite ample evidence that humans are also responsive to seasons, the impact of seasonal changes on human psychology is underappreciated relative to other sources of variation (e.g., personality, culture, development). This is unfortunate because seasonal variation has potentially profound conceptual, empirical, methodological, and practical implications. Here, we encourage a more systematic and comprehensive collective effort to document and understand the many ways in which seasons influence human psychology. We provide an illustrative summary of empirical evidence showing that seasons impact a wide range of affective, cognitive, and behavioral phenomena. We then articulate a conceptual framework that outlines a set of causal mechanisms through which seasons can influence human psychology-mechanisms that reflect seasonal changes not only in meteorological variables but also in ecological and sociocultural variables. This framework may be useful for integrating many different seasonal effects that have already been empirically documented and for generating new hypotheses about additional seasonal effects that have not yet received empirical attention. The article closes with a section that provides practical suggestions to facilitate greater appreciation for, and systematic study of, seasons as a fundamental source of variation in human psychology.

Cultural evolution needed to complete the Grossmann theory

Grossmann used evolutionary analysis to argue for the adaptive nature of fearfulness. This analysis, however, falls short of addressing why negative affectivity is maladaptive in contemporary Western societies. Here, we fill the gap by documenting the implied cultural variation and considering cultural (rather than biological) evolution over the last 10,000 years to explain the observed cultural variation.

What lies ahead of us? Collective future thinking in Turkish, Chinese, and American adults

Collective future thinking, namely the anticipation of events for a group, is a relatively new research area in memory studies. Research to date with predominantly Western populations suggests that people tend to expect negative events for their country's future. In two studies, we investigated the emotional valence and perceived control of anticipated future events of one's country and examined the roles of country identification and national well-being in collective future thinking. US and Chinese college students (Study 1) and US, Chinese, and Turkish adults of a community sample (Study 2) imagined events that could happen to their respective countries in 1 week, 1 year, and 10-15 years. Participants rated each event on emotional valence and perceived control. They also completed measures for their country identification and perceived national well-being. Chinese participants imagined future events for their country to be more positive than did the US and Turkish participants, whereas US participants reported higher perceived control by their country for the future events than did Chinese and Turks. Country identification and national well-being predicted more positive future thinking and also mediated cultural differences in future-event valence and perceived country control. These original findings shed critical light on the characteristics of collective future thinking that are shaped by societal-cultural factors.

Insights into the accuracy of social scientists' forecasts of societal change

How well can social scientists predict societal change, and what processes underlie their predictions? To answer these questions, we ran two forecasting tournaments testing the accuracy of predictions of societal change in domains commonly studied in the social sciences: ideological preferences, political polarization, life satisfaction, sentiment on social media, and gender-career and racial bias. After we provided them with historical trend data on the relevant domain, social scientists submitted pre-registered monthly forecasts for a year (Tournament 1; N = 86 teams and 359 forecasts), with an opportunity to update forecasts on the basis of new data six months later (Tournament 2; N = 120 teams and 546 forecasts). Benchmarking forecasting accuracy revealed that social scientists' forecasts were on average no more accurate than those of simple statistical models (historical means, random walks or linear regressions) or the aggregate forecasts of a sample from the general public (N = 802). However, scientists were more accurate if they had scientific expertise in a prediction domain, were interdisciplinary, used simpler models and based predictions on prior data.

Historical Psychology

A growing body of evidence suggests that many aspects of psychology have evolved culturally over historical time. A combination of approaches, including experimental data collected over the past 75 years, cross-cultural comparisons, and studies of immigrants, points to systematic changes in psychological domains as diverse as conformity, attention, emotion, morality, and olfaction. However, these approaches can go back in time only for a few decades and typically fail to provide continuous measures of cultural change, posing a challenge for testing deeper historical psychological processes. To tackle this challenge most directly, computational methods emerging from natural language processing can be adapted to extract psychological information from large-scale historical corpora. Here, we first review the benefits of psychology as a historical science and then present three useful classes of text-analytic techniques for historical psychological inquiry: dictionary-based methods, distributed-representational methods, and human-annotation-based methods. These represent an excellent suite of methodologies that can be used to examine the record of “dead minds.” Finally, we discuss the importance of going beyond English-centric text analysis in historical psychology to foster a more generalizable and inclusive science of human behavior. We propose that historical psychology should incorporate and further develop a variety of text-analytic approaches to reliably quantify the historical processes that gave rise to contemporary social, political, and psychological phenomena.

Symbolic meanings of ordinary city streets and their trees

Symbolic meaning is one of a number of modes of humans' relationships with physical settings. Although symbolic meaning is qualitative and ambiguous, it is an encompassing mode of interaction: symbolic meanings assemble feelings, urges, and abstract concepts; they shape people's understanding of the world and motivate their purposes, attitudes, and actions. Early literature in environmental psychology acknowledged symbolic meaning's promise, but in recent decades it has been inadequately studied; theoretical and methodological research has been needed. This paper advances the understanding and use of symbolic meaning by, first, presenting a theory which posits that in ordinary environmental settings symbolic meanings emerge from interaction between the perceptible qualities of environmental features and people's psychological predisposition to respond to them. The paper then demonstrates methods which use the theory to objectively guide the identification of symbolic meanings in the case of ordinary urban streets and their trees. Although symbolic interpretation is intuitive and subjective, in this study it is guided by objective empirical knowledge and theoretical frameworks from human sciences. A combination of methods is applied, making conclusions answerable to diverse types of underlying data. One method was in firsthand observation of present-day streets; interpretations were accepted which linked objects' perceptible qualities with people's known dispositions to respond to them. A second method was interpretation in conventional street features' documented historical evolution. Interpretations were accepted which linked objects' perceptible qualities with people's known disposition to respond, and with symbols' known cultural tendency over time to specialize, differentiate, and evolve into coherent systems consistent with social norms. The results confirm that ordinary streets and their trees form a coherent system of symbols. Their meanings are social and sociomoral; they are guides to and affirmations of humane social life; they deserve to be prioritized in design agendas alongside tangible performance measures. It is concluded that symbolic meanings are present in ordinary urban settings, that their presence can be explained theoretically, and that their interpretation can be objectively guided.

Cultural factors associated with burden in unpaid caregivers of older adults: A systematic review

The aim of the present systematic review was to investigate cultural factors associated with burden in unpaid caregivers of older adults. Searches were conducted in the Pubmed, Web of Science, PsycInfo, Scopus, Embase, LILACs and SciELO databases for relevant articles published in English, Portuguese and Spanish using the search terms 'Caregiver AND Culture AND (Burnout OR Caregiver Burden) AND Aged'. No restriction was imposed regarding year of publication. A total of 1234 articles were identified, 34 of which were selected for the present review. The following sociodemographic characteristics were associated with burden: being female, married, White caregivers, young and the spouse of the care recipient; having no siblings; having low schooling and low economic status. Cultural factors associated with burden were living with the care recipient, not professing a religion or having little spirituality, familism (i.e. less reciprocity) and an absence of social support. The present findings underscore the importance of developing intervention strategies that consider cultural factors to minimise the negative impacts of care on unpaid caregivers of older adults.

Four Decades of Challenges by Culture to Mainstream Psychology: Finding Ways Forward

Over 5 days at the Nag’s Head Conference Center, USA in 1987, social and cross-cultural psychologists discussed what would be required if research relating to culture were to gain greater attention from psychology in general, and in particular from what was perceived at the time as its mainstream. The criteria for gaining greater credibility laid down by three leading social psychologists proved daunting in relation to the cross-cultural work presented at the meeting but subsequently inspired cross-culturalists to “raise their game.” In this paper, we describe these crucial challenges and how they have been addressed more recently by cross-cultural psychologists. We assess the extent to which studies focused on cultural differences are now thoughtfully represented in social, personality, and organizational psychology by briefly surveying the content of a single year’s issues of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of International Business Studies, and the Journal of Personality in relation to the concurrent content of the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. We identify the perils of assimilation to psychology in general by diluting the concept of culture and by tyrannizing research with over-specified criteria of statistical rectitude. We also identify studies published in top-rated journals that have nonetheless advanced our field. We reiterate the need for defensible measures of cultural difference and methods for identifying and examining them as a basis for multi-level explanations of cultural effects and cultural change. We conclude by proposing a gold standard for assaying cross-cultural studies of psychological processes and outcomes.

Social bias insights concern judgments rather than real-world decisions

Judgments differ from decisions. Judgments are more abstract, decontextualized, and bear fewer consequences for the agent. In pursuit of experimental control, psychological experiments on bias create a simplified, bare-bone representation of social behavior. These experiments resemble conditions in which people judge others, but not how they make real-world decisions.

Does Economic Growth Raise Happiness in China? A Comprehensive Reexamination

Has China’s vigorous economic growth raised its citizens’ happiness? Existing studies have portrayed, if not a pessimistic picture, a complicated one. We conducted two studies to clarify this issue. In Study 1, we used data from available national surveys between 1990 and 2018 (64 samples) and demonstrated a significant quadratic U-shaped trend and a rising tendency. In Study 2, we conducted a cross-temporal meta-analysis from 2001 to 2019 (689 samples) and found that Chinese happiness manifested a linear rising trend, although this trend was more salient in the community sample than in the student one. In both studies, Granger causal analysis suggested that economic growth was the Granger cause of the increase in Chinese happiness. These findings indicate that economic growth has raised happiness in China since 1990, particularly since 2001, and highlight the importance of moving beyond the Easterlin Paradox.

Serial reproduction of narratives preserves emotional appraisals

We conducted the largest multiple-iteration retelling study to date (12,840 participants and 19,086 retellings) with two different studies that test how emotional appraisals are transmitted across retellings. We use a novel Bayesian model that tracks changes across retellings. Study 1 examines the preservation of appraisals of happy and sad stories and finds that retellings preserve the story's degree of happiness and sadness even when length shrinks and aspects of story coherence and rationalisation deteriorate. Study 2 compared the transmission of appraisals of happiness and sadness with embarrassment, disgust, and risk. Appraisals of happiness, sadness, and also embarrassment showed high appraisal preservation, while disgust and risk were not well preserved. We conclude that participants in our studies encoded happy and sad stories by encapsulating the events and details into an overall emotional appraisal of the story and that this processing strategy might also apply to stories involving other emotions like embarrassment. The emotional appraisal played a key role in retelling by helping to guide the selection, invention, and ordering of the story elements. Hence, we posit that emotion appraisals can operate as anchors for remembering and retelling stories, thus playing an important role in narrative communication.

Learning outcomes of leader and leadership development: Method of Soft and Female leadership (SFL) empirical framework for driving the gender equality change in Mediterranean Engineering Education

The foundation of gender equality was built some decades ago, but higher education institutions are far from achieving it. Perhaps the leadership needs to integrate new narratives for a greater commitment especially in engineering, and new tools for the existing toolbox. This study aims to share the outcomes of soft female leadership framework (SFL) development for gender equality at the RMEI network, entailing the commitment of top-managers from engineering schools, creation of new leaders to lead the change at their institutions, students acting as change-agents, and an active community of practice. The SFL toolbox comprises self-awareness, humanistic care, intuition, creativity, and trust. The transformation of mindset, skillset, and culture entails using Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 'Systemic View of Life' arguments, and drawing knowledge from organizational learning frameworks, scientific phenomena, and mechanisms, such as a) 4I-Intuiting-Interpreting-Integrating-Institutionalizing organizational learning process starting from intuition to achieve an institutional change; b) 'Stigmergy' scientific mechanism of self-organized collective schemes with coordinated actions and interactions, in which the action performed by an agent leaves a trace in the environment that stimulates subsequent actions; c) 'Spillover' phenomenon advocating that the behavior of an agent can bring the adoption of related behaviors by other agents. The RMEI gender equality plan (GEP) was evaluated by the HORIZON2020 TARGET project consortium. The SFL excelled as successful in setting goals, articulating a policy that integrates systems approach frameworks, insights from science and technology, innovation, ecology, philosophy, self-awareness, ethics, and values. The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted physical meetings, but the process of change was not ceased at the network because we disrupted the disruption by boosting collaborative knowledge, consolidation and dissemination processes. The SFL framework integrates context, regional, and temporal characteristics, alongside cognitive, affective, and motivational outcomes over behavioral outcomes, new mindsets beyond organizational skills, and collaborative learning over individual learning.

Exploring Perceptions of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting Abandonment (FGM/C) in Kenyan Health Care Professionals

Female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) remains a global problem. We aimed to explore Kenyan health care professionals' (HCPs) perceptions of FGM/C abandonment and, in particular, those focused on those serving Maasai communities who continue to practice FGM/C. Using a grounded theory Straussian approach, 18 interviews were conducted with HCPs in Kajiado County, Kenya, to understand perceptions of FGM/C as a cultural practice, identify barriers and facilitators to abandonment, and explore attitudes to medicalization (FGM/C conducted by HCPs) and alternatives of FGM/C. Within a substantive theory, one core category ("FGM/C persists but can be abandoned") comprised two subcategories: "exploring the influencers of persistence" and the "roadmap to abandonment." HCPs believed collaborative multilateral efforts were necessary to support successful abandonment and that "enlightening" the community needed to focus on changing the perception of FGM/C as a social norm alongside a health risk educational approach. Future effective intervention is needed to support the abandonment of FGM/C in Kenya.

The salience of choice fuels independence: Implications for self-perception, cognition, and behavior

More than ever before, people across the world are exposed to ideas of choice and have opportunities to make choices. What are the consequences of this rapidly expanding exposure to the ideas and practice of choice? The current research investigated an unexamined and potentially powerful consequence of this salience of choice: an awareness and experience of independence. Four studies (n = 1,288) across three cultural contexts known to differ in both the salience of choice and the cultural emphasis on independence (the United States, Singapore, and India) provided converging evidence of a link between the salience of choice and independence. Singaporean students who recalled choices rather than actions represented themselves as larger than their peers (study 1). Conceptually replicating this finding, study 2 found that Americans who recalled choices rather than actions rated themselves as physically stronger. In a word/nonword lexical decision task (study 3), Singaporean students who recalled choices rather than actions were quicker at identifying independence-related words, but not neutral or interdependence-related words. Americans, Singaporeans, and Indians all indicated that when working in an organization that emphasized choice, they would be more likely to express their opinions. Similarly, Americans, Singaporeans, and Indians reported a preference for working in such an organization (studies 4a and 4b). The findings suggest that the salience of personal choice may drive an awareness and experience of independence even in contexts where, unlike in the United States, independence has not been the predominant ethos. Choice may be an unmarked and proximate mechanism of cultural change and growing global individualism.

Viewing Development Through the Lens of Culture: Integrating Developmental and Cultural Psychology to Better Understand Cognition and Behavior

Although many definitions of culture exist, studies in psychology typically conceptualize different cultures as different countries. In this article, we argue that cultural psychology also provides a useful lens through which to view developmental milestones. Like other forms of culture, different developmental milestones are demarcated by shared values and language as well as transmission of particular social norms. Viewing development through the lens of cultural psychology sheds light on questions of particular interest to cultural psychologists, such as those concerning the emergence of new cultures and the role of culture in shaping psychological processes. This novel framework also clarifies topics of particular interest to developmental psychology, such as conflict between individuals at different milestones (e.g., arguments between older and younger siblings) and age-related changes in cognition and behavior.

Changing cultures, changing brains: A framework for integrating cultural neuroscience and cultural change research

Cultural neuroscience research has provided substantial evidence that culture shapes the brain by providing systematically different sets of experiences. However, cultures are ever-changing in response to the physical and social environment. In the present paper, we integrate theories and methods from cultural neuroscience with the emerging body of research on cultural change and suggest several ways in which the two fields can inform each other. First, we propose that the cultural change perspective helps us reexamine what is meant by culturally typical experiences, which are shaped by the dynamic interaction between cultural norms, values, meanings, and other environmental constraints on behavior. It also allows us to make predictions about the variability/stability of cultural neural differences over time. Then, we discuss how methods used in cultural change research may be applied to cultural neuroscience research and vice versa. We end with a "blue sky vision" for a neuroscience of cultural change.

Τhe Sustainability of Creativity

Creativity is a critical element of sustainable development. In current paper it is described through Social Identity by identifying the main factors that shape the background of creativity. We conclude that health, maturity, and positive attitudes of cultural change as well as the social stability, the environmental care and finally, the incentives, material and non-material, shape the human creative dynamism.

Culture, ecology, and grounded procedures

We propose that grounded procedures may help explain psychological variations across cultures. Here we offer a set of novel predictions based on the interplay between the social and physical ecology, chronic sensorimotor experience, and cultural norms.

Post-traumatic growth as positive personality change: Challenges, opportunities, and recommendations

OBJECTIVE

Post-traumatic growth typically refers to enduring positive psychological change experienced as a result of adversity, trauma, or highly challenging life circumstances. Critics have challenged insights from much of the prior research on this topic, pinpointing its significant methodological limitations. In response to these critiques, we propose that post-traumatic growth can be more accurately captured in terms of personality change-an approach that affords a more rigorous examination of the phenomenon.

METHOD

We outline a set of conceptual and methodological questions and considerations for future work on the topic of post-traumatic growth.

RESULTS

We provide a series of recommendations for researchers from across the disciplines of clinical/counseling, developmental, health, personality, and social psychology and beyond, who are interested in improving the quality of research examining resilience and growth in the context of adversity.

CONCLUSION

We are hopeful that these recommendations will pave the way for a more accurate understanding of the ubiquity, durability, and causal processes underlying post-traumatic growth.

Patterns of Implicit and Explicit Stereotypes III: Long-Term Change in Gender Stereotypes

Gender stereotypes are widely shared “collective representations” that link gender groups (e.g., male/female) with roles or attributes (e.g., career/family, science/arts). Such collective stereotypes, especially implicit stereotypes, are assumed to be so deeply embedded in society that they are resistant to change. Yet over the past several decades, shifts in real-world gender roles suggest the possibility that gender stereotypes may also have changed alongside such shifts. The current project tests the patterns of recent gender stereotype change using a decade (2007–2018) of continuously collected data from 1.4 million implicit and explicit tests of gender stereotypes (male-science/female-arts, male-career/female-family). Time series analyses revealed that, over just 10 years, both implicit and explicit male-science/female-arts and male-career/female-family stereotypes have shifted toward neutrality, weakening by 13%–19%. Furthermore, these trends were observed across nearly all demographic groups and in all geographic regions of the United States and several other countries, indicating worldwide shifts in collective implicit and explicit gender stereotypes.

Friendship Importance Around the World: Links to Cultural Factors, Health, and Well-Being

Prioritizing friendship is associated with many health and well-being benefits. However, to date, there have been relatively few studies that have examined cultural moderators of the link between friendship and important outcomes. In other words, is prioritizing friendships more beneficial in some contexts than others? In the current study, we examined how culture- and country-level factors were associated with the importance people place on friendships and the benefits derived from this importance. The sample comprised of 323,200 participants (M = 40.79 years, SD = 16.09 years) from 99 countries from the World Values Survey. Multilevel analyses revealed that women, people with higher levels of education, and people living in countries that are more economically equal and high in indulgence placed more value on friendships. Prioritizing friendships in life was associated with better health and well-being, but these associations depended on many cultural factors. The findings are discussed in the context of the ways in which friendships can enrich health and well-being across different settings.

Why are song lyrics becoming simpler? a time series analysis of lyrical complexity in six decades of American popular music

Song lyrics are rich in meaning. In recent years, the lyrical content of popular songs has been used as an index of culture's shifting norms, affect, and values. One particular, newly uncovered, trend is that lyrics of popular songs have become increasingly simple over time. Why might this be? Here, we test the idea that increasing lyrical simplicity is accompanied by a widening array of novel song choices. We do so by using six decades (1958-2016) of popular music in the United States (N = 14,661 songs), controlling for multiple well-studied ecological and cultural factors plausibly linked to shifts in lyrical simplicity (e.g., resource availability, pathogen prevalence, rising individualism). In years when more novel song choices were produced, the average lyrical simplicity of the songs entering U.S. billboard charts was greater. This cross-temporal relationship was robust when controlling for a range of cultural and ecological factors and employing multiverse analyses to control for potentially confounding influence of temporal autocorrelation. Finally, simpler songs entering the charts were more successful, reaching higher chart positions, especially in years when more novel songs were produced. The present results suggest that cultural transmission depends on the amount of novel choices in the information landscape.

COVID-19 and Its Global Economic Impact

Pandemics are enormous threats to the world that impact all aspects of our lives, especially the global economy. The COVID-19 pandemic has emerged since December 2019 and has affected the global economy in many ways. As the world becomes more interconnected, the economic impacts of the pandemic become more serious. In addition to increased health expenditures and reduced labor force, the pandemic has hit the supply and demand chain massively and caused trouble for manufacturers who have to fire some of their employees or delay their economic activities to prevent more loss. With the closure of manufacturers and companies and reduced travel rates, usage of oil after the beginning of the pandemic has decreased significantly that was unprecedented in the last 30 years. The mining industry is a critical sector in several developing countries, and the COVID-19 pandemic has hit this industry too. Also, world stock markets declined as investors started to become concerned about the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The tourism industry and airlines have also experienced an enormous loss too. The GDP has reduced, and this pandemic will cost the world more than 2 trillion at the end of 2020.

The Cultural Foundation of Human Memory

Human memory, as a product of the mind and brain, is inherently private and personal. Yet, arising from the interaction between the organism and its ecology in the course of phylogeny and ontogeny, human memory is also profoundly collective and cultural. In this review, I discuss the cultural foundation of human memory. I start by briefly reflecting on the conception of memory against a historical and cultural background. I then detail a model of a culturally saturated mnemonic system in which cultural elements constitute and condition various processes of remembering, focusing on memory representation, perceptual encoding, memory function, memory reconstruction, memory expression, and memory socialization. Then I discuss research on working memory, episodic memory, and autobiographical memory as examples that further demonstrate how cultural elements shape the processes and consequences of remembering and lay the foundation for human memory. I conclude by outlining some important future directions in memory research.

Being Heard, Exerting Influence, or Knowing How to Play the Game? Expectations of Client Involvement among Social and Health Care Professionals and Clients

Contemporary social and health care services exhibit a significant movement toward increasing client involvement in their own care and in the development of services. This major cultural change represents a marked shift in the client’s role from a passive patient to an active empowered agent. We draw on interaction-oriented focus group research and conversation analysis to study workshop conversations in which social and health care clients and professionals discussed “client involvement”. Our analysis focuses on the participants’ mutually congruent or discrepant views on the topic. The professionals and clients both saw client involvement as an ideal that should be promoted. Although both participant groups considered the clients’ experience of being heard a prerequisite of client involvement, the clients deviated from the professionals in that they also highlighted the need for actual decision-making power. However, when the professionals invoked the clients’ responsibility for their own treatment, the clients were not eager to agree with their view. In addition, in analyzing problems of client involvement during the clients’ and professionals’ meta-talk about client involvement, the paper also shows how the “client involvement” rhetoric itself may, paradoxically, sometimes serve to hinder here-and-now client involvement.

The status of cultural care among nurses working in different wards of teaching hospitals in Ardabil, Iran: A cross-sectional survey study

Introduction

Culture is an important determinant in providing appropriate and coordinated health care for people from different ethnicities. The present study aimed to evaluate the status of cultural care among nurses working in teaching hospitals affiliated to Ardabil University of Medical Sciences.

Methods

In this descriptive-correlational study, 350 nurses completed the Persian version of Cultural Care Inventory (PCCI). This tool consists of 51 items and measures cultural care process in four domains including cultural preparation, cultural attitude, cultural awareness and cultural competence. Data were analyzed by IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, version 22.

Results

The grand item mean of cultural care was 2.60 ± 0.621, which is considered poor. The grand item mean was 2.64 ± 0.78 in the subscale of cultural preparation, 3.45 ± 0.559 in cultural attitude, 2.81 ± 0.736 in cultural awareness and 2.58 ± 0.834 in cultural competence. Cultural competence was significantly related to cultural preparation (r = 0.80), cultural attitude (r = 0.62) and cultural awareness (r = 0.87).

Discussion

Based on the present findings, cultural care and its dimensions (with the exception of cultural attitude) were at a poor level. It can also be claimed that there is a direct and strong relationship between the dimensions of cultural care including cultural preparation, awareness, attitude and competence, which indicates the interdependence of these dimensions on each other. Nurses need to improve their cultural competence to ensure of providing patient-centered and culturally coordinated care.

Strong-Ties and Weak-Ties Rationalities: Toward an Expanded Network Theory

This article introduces the expanded network theory and demonstrates the heuristic value of its construct of strong-ties and weak-ties rationalities. This construct is derived from the network theory of Granovetter and corroborated with evolutionary biology and psychological studies on group processes. This construct has wide-ranging implications and applications for cultural and cross-cultural psychology. It informs our efforts toward cultural sensitivity in theory and research design and offers a new tool for cultural analysis. In particular, it can serve as a useful framework to investigate cultures in transition in the globalizing era. Insights into strong-ties and weak-ties rationalities may even contribute to shaping the future of the human society.

The Convergence Between Cultural Psychology and Developmental Science: Acculturation as an Exemplar

The present article proposes an integration between cultural psychology and developmental science. Such an integration would draw on the cultural-psychology principle of culture-psyche interactions, as well as on the developmental-science principle of person↔context relations. Our proposed integration centers on acculturation, which is inherently both cultural and developmental. Specifically, we propose that acculturation is governed by specific transactions between the individual and the cultural context, and that different types of international migrants (e.g., legal immigrants, undocumented immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, crisis migrants) encounter quite different culture-psyche interactions and person↔context relations. We outline the ways in which various acculturation-related phenomena, such as acculturation operating at macro-level versus micro-level time scales, can be viewed through cultural and developmental lenses. The article concludes with future directions in research on acculturation as an intersection of cultural and developmental processes.

Multi-level modelling of time-series cross-sectional data reveals the dynamic interaction between ecological threats and democratic development

What is the relationship between environment and democracy? The framework of cultural evolution suggests that societal development is an adaptation to ecological threats. Pertinent theories assume that democracy emerges as societies adapt to ecological factors such as higher economic wealth, lower pathogen threats, less demanding climates and fewer natural disasters. However, previous research confused within-country processes with between-country processes and erroneously interpreted between-country findings as if they generalize to within-country mechanisms. We analyse a time-series cross-sectional dataset to study the dynamic relationship between environment and democracy (1949-2016), accounting for previous misconceptions in levels of analysis. By separating within-country processes from between-country processes, we find that the relationship between environment and democracy not only differs by country but also depends on the level of analysis. Economic wealth predicts increasing levels of democracy in between-country comparisons, but within-country comparisons show that democracy declines in years when countries become wealthier. This relationship is only prevalent among historically wealthy countries but not among historically poor countries, whose wealth also increased over time. By contrast, pathogen prevalence predicts lower levels of democracy in both between-country and within-country comparisons. Multi-level modelling also confirms that the within-country effect of pathogen prevalence remains robust even after considering a region-level analysis. Longitudinal analyses identifying temporal precedence reveal that not only reductions in pathogen prevalence drive future democracy, but also democracy reduces future pathogen prevalence and increases future wealth. These nuanced results contrast with previous analyses using narrow, cross-sectional data. Overall, our findings illuminate the dynamic process by which environment and democracy shape each other.

The wealth→life history→innovation account of the Industrial Revolution is largely inconsistent with empirical time series data

Baumard proposes a model to explain the dramatic rise in innovation that occurred during the Industrial Revolution, whereby rising living standards led to slower life history strategies, which, in turn, fostered innovation. We test his model explicitly using time series data, finding limited support for these proposed linkages. Instead, we find evidence that rising living standards appear to have a time-lagged bidirectional relationship with increasing innovation.

Social Psychological Theory as History: Outlining the Critical-Historical Approach to Theory

The mainstream epistemology of social psychology is markedly ahistorical, prioritizing the quantification of processes assumed to be lawful and generalizable. Social psychologists often consider theory to be either a practical tool for summarizing what is known about a problem area and making predictions or a torch that illuminates the counterintuitive causal force underlying a variety of disparate phenomena. I propose a third vision of critical-historical theory. From this perspective, theories should be committed to deep interdisciplinarity and historical validity claims-understanding individual and group experiences as part of historically contingent forces. Theories also should be critical, containing an awareness of the researcher as implicated in the social process and committed to actively improving society. To demonstrate its viability, I review classic works from the history of the discipline that exemplify critical-historical theory and offer concrete implications for theorists interested in employing this approach in their own work.

Latitudinal Psychology: An Ecological Perspective on Creativity, Aggression, Happiness, and Beyond

Are there systematic trends around the world in levels of creativity, aggressiveness, life satisfaction, individualism, trust, and suicidality? This article suggests a new field, latitudinal psychology, that delineates differences in such culturally shared features along northern and southern rather than eastern and western locations. In addition to geographical, ecological, and other explanations, we offer three metric foundations of latitudinal variations: replicability (latitudinal gradient repeatability across hemispheres), reversibility (north-south gradient reversal near the equator), and gradient strength (degree of replicability and reversibility). We show that aggressiveness decreases whereas creativity, life satisfaction, and individualism increase as one moves closer to either the North or South Pole. We also discuss the replicability, reversibility, and gradient strength of (a) temperatures and rainfall as remote predictors and (b) pathogen prevalence, national wealth, population density, and income inequality as more proximate predictors of latitudinal gradients in human functioning. Preliminary analyses suggest that cultural and psychological diversity often need to be partially understood in terms of latitudinal variations in integrated exposure to climate-induced demands and wealth-based resources. We conclude with broader implications, emphasizing the importance of north-south replications in samples that are not from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societies.

Cross-temporal changes in people's ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving

Are people's ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving changing, reflecting transformative changes in our ways of living? If so, are these changes evident globally? There is a large and evolving research literature that attempts to answer these questions. The current review takes stock of this development to provide a brief summary of the literature and also to overview this research field's methodological challenges and innovations, disputed findings, remaining questions, and future directions.