Tears evoke the intention to offer social support: A systematic investigation of the interpersonal effects of emotional crying across 41 countries

Tearful crying is a ubiquitous and likely uniquely human phenomenon. Scholars have argued that emotional tears serve an attachment function: Tears are thought to act as a social glue by evoking social support intentions. Initial experimental studies supported this proposition across several methodologies, but these were conducted almost exclusively on participants from North America and Europe, resulting in limited generalizability. This project examined the tears-social support intentions effect and possible mediating and moderating variables in a fully pre-registered study across 7007 participants (24,886 ratings) and 41 countries spanning all populated continents. Participants were presented with four pictures out of 100 possible targets with or without digitally-added tears. We confirmed the main prediction that seeing a tearful individual elicits the intention to support, d = 0.49 [0.43, 0.55]. Our data suggest that this effect could be mediated by perceiving the crying target as warmer and more helpless, feeling more connected, as well as feeling more empathic concern for the crier, but not by an increase in personal distress of the observer. The effect was moderated by the situational valence, identifying the target as part of one's group, and trait empathic concern. A neutral situation, high trait empathic concern, and low identification increased the effect. We observed high heterogeneity across countries that was, via split-half validation, best explained by country-level GDP per capita and subjective well-being with stronger effects for higher-scoring countries. These findings suggest that tears can function as social glue, providing one possible explanation why emotional crying persists into adulthood.</p

A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about a situation. Participants from 87 countries and regions (n = 21,644) were randomly assigned to one of two brief reappraisal interventions (reconstrual or repurposing) or one of two control conditions (active or passive). Results revealed that both reappraisal interventions (vesus both control conditions) consistently reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions across different measures. Reconstrual and repurposing interventions had similar effects. Importantly, planned exploratory analyses indicated that reappraisal interventions did not reduce intentions to practice preventive health behaviours. The findings demonstrate the viability of creating scalable, low-cost interventions for use around the world

Predicting academic success in mathematics : the role of self-efficacy and its sources, grade goal, and effort regulation

Traditionally, academic success in college is predicted by intelligence and prior achievement, such as high school grades. Research has shown, however, that nonintellective factors like personality, motivation, self-regulated learning, and approaches to learning, among others, significantly influence academic success. Three of the strongest non-intellective predictors of academic success identified from a meta-analysis are self-efficacy, effort regulation and grade goal (Richardson, Abraham, & Bond, 2012). Among these non-intellective factors, self-efficacy has been found to be a stable and universal predictor of academic success across different disciplines, in various age groups and across different nationalities. Using a mixed-methods sequential explanatory design, the current study sought to examine how these non-intellective factors influence academic success in undergraduate mathematics. The quantitative phase (N = 661) employed a prospective, predictive research design to (1) test a mediation model that links self-efficacy to academic success, through effort regulation and grade goal and (2) to examine the relative contribution of socially conferred sources of self-efficacy (vicarious experience and social persuasion) in explaining differences in mathematics self-efficacy, over and above the contribution of self-referent sources of self-efficacy (mastery experience and emotional and physiological states). The quantitative phase confirmed that (1) mathematics self-efficacy influences mathematics achievement through effort regulation and grade goal and (2) mastery experience remains to be the most powerful source of self-efficacy, but vicarious experience from teacher, social persuasion by teacher, and social persuasion by family still significantly predict mathematics self-efficacy, when the contribution of self-referent sources is controlled. In the qualitative phase 11 students (6 high achievers and 5 low achievers) from the quantitative sample were interviewed in order to elaborate the relationships t

Political leaders' identity leadership and civic citizenship behavior: the mediating role of trust in fellow citizens and the moderating role of economic inequality

Identity leadership involves leaders creating and promoting a sense of shared group membership (a sense of 'we' and 'us') among followers. The present research report tests this claim by drawing on data from 26 countries that are part of the Global Identity Leadership Development (GILD) project to examine the relationship between political leaders' identity leadership and civic citizenship behavior (N = 6,787). It also examines the contribution of trust and economic inequality to this relationship. Political leaders' identity leadership (PLIL) was positively associated with respondents' people-oriented civic citizenship behaviors (CCB-P) in 20 of 26 countries and civic citizenship behaviors aimed at one's country (CCB-C) in 23 of 26 countries. Mediational analyses also confirmed the indirect effects of PLIL via trust in fellow citizens on both CCB-P (in 25 out of the 26 countries) and CCB-C (in all 26 countries). Economic inequality moderated these effects such that the main and indirect effects of trust in one's fellow citizens on CCB-C were stronger in countries with higher economic inequality. This interaction effect was not observed for CCB-P. The study highlights the importance of identity leadership and trust in fellow citizens in promoting civic citizenship behavior, especially in the context of economic inequality

Identity leadership, employee burnout and the mediating role of team identification: Evidence from the global identity leadership development project

Do leaders who build a sense of shared social identity in their teams thereby protect them from the adverse effects of workplace stress? This is a question that the present paper explores by testing the hypothesis that identity leadership contributes to stronger team identification among employees and, through this, is associated with reduced burnout. We tested this model with unique datasets from the Global Identity Leadership Development (GILD) project with participants from all inhabited continents. We compared two datasets from 2016/2017 (N = 5290; 20 countries) and 2020/2021 (N = 7294; 28 countries) and found very similar levels of identity leadership, team identification and burnout across the five years. An inspection of the 2020/2021 data at the onset of and later in the COVID-19 pandemic showed stable identity leadership levels and slightly higher levels of both burnout and team identification. Supporting our hypotheses, we found almost identical indirect effects (2016/2017, b = −0.132; 2020/2021, b = −0.133) across the five-year span in both datasets. Using a subset of N = 111 German participants surveyed over two waves, we found the indirect effect confirmed over time with identity leadership (at T1) predicting team identification and, in turn, burnout, three months later. Finally, we explored whether there could be a “too-much-of-a-good-thing” effect for identity leadership. Speaking against this, we found a u-shaped quadratic effect whereby ratings of identity leadership at the upper end of the distribution were related to even stronger team identification and a stronger indirect effect on reduced burnout.</p

Tears evoke the intention to offer social support: A systematic investigation of the interpersonal effects of emotional crying across 41 countries

Tearful crying is a ubiquitous and likely uniquely human phenomenon. Scholars have argued that emotional tears serve an attachment function: Tears are thought to act as a social glue by evoking social support intentions. Initial experimental studies supported this proposition across several methodologies, but these were conducted almost exclusively on participants from North America and Europe, resulting in limited generalizability. This project examined the tears-social support intentions effect and possible mediating and moderating variables in a fully pre-registered study across 7007 participants (24,886 ratings) and 41 countries spanning all populated continents. Participants were presented with four pictures out of 100 possible targets with or without digitally-added tears. We confirmed the main prediction that seeing a tearful individual elicits the intention to support, d = 0.49 [0.43, 0.55]. Our data suggest that this effect could be mediated by perceiving the crying target as warmer and more helpless, feeling more connected, as well as feeling more empathic concern for the crier, but not by an increase in personal distress of the observer. The effect was moderated by the situational valence, identifying the target as part of one's group, and trait empathic concern. A neutral situation, high trait empathic concern, and low identification increased the effect. We observed high heterogeneity across countries that was, via split-half validation, best explained by country-level GDP per capita and subjective well-being with stronger effects for higher-scoring countries. These findings suggest that tears can function as social glue, providing one possible explanation why emotional crying persists into adulthood

Tears evoke the intention to offer social support: A systematic investigation of the interpersonal effects of emotional crying across 41 countries

From Elsevier via Jisc Publications RouterHistory: accepted 2021-03-18, epub 2021-04-13, issue date 2021-07-31Article version: AMPublication status: PublishedFunder: National Science Centre, Poland; FundRef: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100004281; Grant(s): 2015/19/D/HS6/00641, 2019/35/B/HS6/00528Funder: Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange; Grant(s): PPN/BEK/2019/1/00092/DEC/1Funder: Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology; Grant(s): UID/PSI/03125/2020Funder: Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office; Grant(s): FK128614Funder: Hungarian Brain Research Programme; Grant(s): 2017-1.2.1-NKP-2017-00002Funder: Open University of Israel; FundRef: https://doi.org/10.13039/100008509; Grant(s): 509993-2018Tearful crying is a ubiquitous and likely uniquely human phenomenon. Scholars have argued that emotional tears serve an attachment function: Tears are thought to act as a social glue by evoking social support intentions. Initial experimental studies supported this proposition across several methodologies, but these were conducted almost exclusively on participants from North America and Europe, resulting in limited generalizability. This project examined the tears-social support intentions effect and possible mediating and moderating variables in a fully pre-registered study across 7007 participants (24,886 ratings) and 41 countries spanning all populated continents. Participants were presented with four pictures out of 100 possible targets with or without digitally-added tears. We confirmed the main prediction that seeing a tearful individual elicits the intention to support, d = 0.49 [0.43, 0.55]. Our data suggest that this effect could be mediated by perceiving the crying target as warmer and more helpless, feeling more connected, as well as feeling more empathic concern for the crier, but not by an increase in personal distress of the observer. The effect was moderated by the situational valence, identifying the target as part of one's group, and trait empathic concern. A neutral situation, high trait empathic concern, and low identification increased the effect. We observed high heterogeneity across countries that was, via split-half validation, best explained by country-level GDP per capita and subjective well-being with stronger effects for higher-scoring countries. These findings suggest that tears can function as social glue, providing one possible explanation why emotional crying persists into adulthood