Egalitarian vs. proportional voting in various contexts: An experimental study

The paper reports the results of series of experiments aimed at examining people’s readiness to use proportional voting as opposed to traditional, egalitarian ”one person-one vote“ principle. With proportional voting we understand voting procedures where the number of votes per person are determined based on how much the outcome of the vote influences each voter. In one experiment, the participants where asked to vote on a number of issues using various voting procedures. In addition to the traditional ”one issue—one vote“ procedure, the participants were also offered two voting schemes that let them freely divide a pre-assigned total number of votes between issues in various ways. The participants were also asked to evaluate the issues to measure their stakes. In another experiment, the participants were asked to evaluate various voting procedures that pre-assigned votes to different voter groups depending on the stakes of these groups. The voting issues were hypothetical scenarios regarding municipal-level decisions about construction work. Participants evaluated proportional voting procedures more favorably when more information was available about the stakes of those involved in the voting process. The overall results show that, at least in experimental conditions, people are ready to use proportional voting and are equally satisfied with proportional and egalitarian voting procedures. However, the question remains open whether proportional voting schemes can realistically be introduced into real-life democratic process

Evaluation of misinformation among pro-Ukrainian Latvians – the role of prior attitude, analytical thinking, and emotions

In this exploratory study with a community sample (N = 115), we look at the perception of pro-Russia and pro-Ukraine misinformation, mimicking content shared by naive Facebook users, and the factors related to it among pro-Ukraine Latvians. Our results support the integrative model in the perception of misinformation—we found strong evidence of myside bias, as pro-Russia misinformation was judged to be significantly less accurate than pro-Ukraine misinformation. Analytical thinking, measured with the seven-item cognitive reflection test, was associated with lower levels of pro-Ukraine misinformation accuracy judgments and lower overall misinformation accuracy judgments; however, there was no correlation between analytical thinking and pro-Russian misinformation accuracy judgments. Pro-Ukrainian misinformation accuracy judgments were positively related to positive emotions elicited by misinformation, the level of support for Ukraine, and the participant's age. In addition, participants indicated a higher likelihood of engaging with misinformation if they came across it online, trusted the information, and if it elicited positive emotions. Thus, our findings emphasize the role of one's attitude, analytical thinking, and emotions in one's perception, evaluation, and engagement with congruent and incongruent misinformation

Stereotypes about Mental Health Care Providers as Predictors of Psychological Help-Seeking Intentions

The aim of this study was to explore predictors of help-seeking intentions for mental health problems. This study examined warmth and competence stereotypes about mental health care providers, in relation to help-seeking intentions. A total of 338 adults participated in the study. They were asked to rate their stereotypes about psychologists, psychiatrists, family doctors, clergypersons, and astrologers, and intentions to seek help for mental health problems on a number of Likert-type scales. The results showed that the stereotypes about helping professionals in the mental health care field were significant predictors of intentions to seek help. Higher perceptions about the competence of a family doctor, psychologist, clergyman and astrologer and higher perceptions about warmth of a psychiatrist indicated potential clients’ willingness to seek their help. Differences in predictors of the help-seeking intentions between different mental health care provider professions revealed a complex network of beliefs based on professional stereotypes about mental health care providers. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n3s2p5

Social mindfulness predicts concern for nature and immigrants across 36 nations

People cooperate every day in ways that range from largescale contributions that mitigate climate change to simple actions such as leaving another individual with choice – known as social mindfulness. It is not yet clear whether and how these complex and more simple forms of cooperation relate. Prior work has found that countries with individuals who made more socially mindful choices were linked to a higher country environmental performance – a proxy for complex cooperation. Here we replicated this initial finding in 41 samples around the world, demonstrating the robustness of the association between social mindfulness and environmental performance, and substantially built on it to show this relationship extended to a wide range of complex cooperative indices, tied closely to many current societal issues. We found that greater social mindfulness expressed by an individual was related to living in countries with more social capital, more community participation and reduced prejudice towards immigrants. Our findings speak to the symbiotic relationship between simple and more complex forms of cooperation in societies

Moral expansiveness around the world:The role of societal factors across 36 countries

International audienceWhat are the things that we think matter morally, and how do societal factors influence this? To date, research has explored several individual-level and historical factors that influence the size of our ‘moral circles.' There has, however, been less attention focused on which societal factors play a role. We present the first multi-national exploration of moral expansiveness—that is, the size of people’s moral circles across countries. We found low generalized trust, greater perceptions of a breakdown in the social fabric of society, and greater perceived economic inequality were associated with smaller moral circles. Generalized trust also helped explain the effects of perceived inequality on lower levels of moral inclusiveness. Other inequality indicators (i.e., Gini coefficients) were, however, unrelated to moral expansiveness. These findings suggest that societal factors, especially those associated with generalized trust, may influence the size of our moral circles

A 32-society investigation of the influence of perceived economic inequality on social class stereotyping

International audienceThere is a growing body of work suggesting that social class stereotypes are amplified when people perceive higher levels of economic inequality-that is, the wealthy are perceived as more competent and assertive and the poor as more incompetent and unassertive. The present study tested this prediction in 32 societies and also examines the role of wealth-based categorization in explaining this relationship. We found that people who perceived higher economic inequality were indeed more likely to consider wealth as a meaningful basis for categorization. Unexpectedly, however, higher levels of perceived inequality were associated with perceiving the wealthy as less competent and assertive and the poor as more competent and assertive. Unpacking this further, exploratory analyses showed that the observed tendency to stereotype the wealthy negatively only emerged in societies with lower social mobility and democracy and higher corruption. This points to the importance of understanding how socio-structural features that co-occur with economic inequality may shape perceptions of the wealthy and the poor

Happiness around the world: A combined etic-emic approach across 63 countries.

What does it mean to be happy? The vast majority of cross-cultural studies on happiness have employed a Western-origin, or "WEIRD" measure of happiness that conceptualizes it as a self-centered (or "independent"), high-arousal emotion. However, research from Eastern cultures, particularly Japan, conceptualizes happiness as including an interpersonal aspect emphasizing harmony and connectedness to others. Following a combined emic-etic approach (Cheung, van de Vijver & Leong, 2011), we assessed the cross-cultural applicability of a measure of independent happiness developed in the US (Subjective Happiness Scale; Lyubomirsky & Lepper, 1999) and a measure of interdependent happiness developed in Japan (Interdependent Happiness Scale; Hitokoto & Uchida, 2015), with data from 63 countries representing 7 sociocultural regions. Results indicate that the schema of independent happiness was more coherent in more WEIRD countries. In contrast, the coherence of interdependent happiness was unrelated to a country's "WEIRD-ness." Reliabilities of both happiness measures were lowest in African and Middle Eastern countries, suggesting these two conceptualizations of happiness may not be globally comprehensive. Overall, while the two measures had many similar correlates and properties, the self-focused concept of independent happiness is "WEIRD-er" than interdependent happiness, suggesting cross-cultural researchers should attend to both conceptualizations