Social mindfulness and prosociality vary across the globe

Humans are social animals, but not everyone will be mindful of others to the same extent. Individual differences have been found, but would social mindfulness also be shaped by one’s location in the world? Expecting cross-national differences to exist, we examined if and how social mindfulness differs across countries. At little to no material cost, social mindfulness typically entails small acts of attention or kindness. Even though fairly common, such low-cost cooperation has received little empirical attention. Measuring social mindfulness across 31 samples from industrialized countries and regions (n = 8,354), we found considerable variation. Among selected country-level variables, greater social mindfulness was most strongly associated with countries’ better general performance on environmental protection. Together, our findings contribute to the literature on prosociality by targeting the kind of everyday cooperation that is more focused on communicating benevolence than on providing material benefits

Reply to Komatsu et al.: from local social mindfulness to global sustainability efforts?

Komatsu et al. (1) argue that Van Doesum et al. (2) may have overlooked the role of GDP in reporting a positive association between social mindfulness (SoMi) and the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) at country level. Although the relationship between EPI and SoMi is relatively weaker for countries with higher GDP, that does not imply that the overall observed relationship is a statistical artifact. Rather, it implies that GDP may be a moderator of the relationship between EPI and SoMi. The observed correlation is a valid result on average across countries, and the actual effect size would, at least to some degree, depend on GDP.Social decision makin

Reply to Nielsen et al.: social mindfulness is associated with countries’ environmental performance and individual environmental concern

Nielsen et al. (1) argue that Van Doesum et al. (2) need to consider three points for their interpretation of a positive association between individual-level social mindfulness (SoMi) and environmental performance (EPI) at the country level (3). The association is weaker when 1) it is controlled for GDP and 2) when the data of three countries are removed; also, 3) the data do not address the association between SoMi and individual-level environmental concern. We discuss these points in turn.Social decision makin

Integrated allelic, transcriptional, and phenomic dissection of the cardiac effects of titin truncations in health and disease

10.1126/scitranslmed.3010134Science Translational Medicine7270270ra

Social identity patterns and trust in demographically diverse work teams

The article presents a model that links trust in a demographically diverse work context to three different social-identity patterns. Trust is considered to be beneficial for interpersonal relationships and work outcomes in diverse teams as well as for a healthy work relationship between minority members and their company. First, imposing a common ingroup identity based on similarities has been put forward as a useful method of creating depersonalized forms of trust among members of different demographic subgroups. However, its usefulness seems to be limited to situations of low identity threat. Alternatively, recent findings support the usefulness of creating a relational identity orientation or a common ingroup identity that explicitly embraces the value of diversity. The latter methods seem to enforce more personalized and more robust forms of identity-based trust in teams. They may also be useful in promoting trust of minority members in the organizational setting as a whole and in its authorities, probably because these identity patterns contribute to feelings of respect among minority members. Practical implications of these findings are discussed

Social mindfulness and prosociality vary across the globe

Humans are social animals, but not everyone will be mindful of others to the same extent. Individual differences have been found, but would social mindfulness also be shaped by one’s location in the world? Expecting cross-national differences to exist, we examined if and how social mindfulness differs across countries. At little to no material cost, social mindfulness typically entails small acts of attention or kindness. Even though fairly common, such low-cost cooperation has received little empirical attention. Measuring social mindfulness across 31 samples from industrialized countries and regions (n = 8,354), we found considerable variation. Among selected country-level variables, greater social mindfulness was most strongly associated with countries’ better general performance on environmental protection. Together, our findings contribute to the literature on prosociality by targeting the kind of everyday cooperation that is more focused on communicating benevolence than on providing material benefits.Social decision makin