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

Mediation of the Effort - Affective Prediction (expected happiness) Relationship by Subjective Quality (Study 1).

<p>Values represent unstandardized regression coefficients. The coefficient in parentheses represents the association between Effort and Affective Prediction when Subjective Quality is not included in the model (* <i>p</i><.05; ** <i>p</i><.01; *** <i>p</i><.001).</p

Mediation of the Effort - Affective Prediction (expected happiness) Relationship by Subjective Quality (Study 2).

<p>Values represent unstandardized regression coefficients. The coefficient in parentheses represents the association between Effort and Affective Prediction when Subjective Quality is not included in the model (* <i>p</i><.07; ** <i>p</i><.05; *** <i>p</i><.01).</p

So much to do and so little time: Effort and perceived temporal distance

In a series of five experiments, we showed that the perception of temporal distance to a future event is shaped by the effort one must invest to realize the event. Studies 1a and 1b showed that when actors are faced with realizing an event by a certain deadline, more effortful events are perceived as closer in time, regardless of the objective temporal distance to the deadline. This negative relationship was reversed, however, when deadlines were absent (Study 2). Finally, priming high effort reduced perceived temporal distance to an event, whereas priming low effort increased perceived temporal distance to the event (Studies 3 and 4). The implications of these findings for models of temporal distance are discussed

Work More, Then Feel More: The Influence of Effort on Affective Predictions

Two studies examined how effort invested in a task shapes the affective predictions related to potential success in that task, and the mechanism underlying this relationship. In Study 1, PhD students awaiting an editorial decision about a submitted manuscript estimated the effort they had invested in preparing that manuscript for submission and how happy they would feel if it were accepted. Subjective estimates of effort were positively related to participants’ anticipated happiness, an effect mediated by the higher perceived quality of one’s work. In other words, the more effort one though having invested, the happier one expected to feel if it were accepted, because one expected a higher quality manuscript. We replicated this effect and its underlying mediation in Study 2, this time using an experimental manipulation of effort in the context of creating an advertising slogan. Study 2 further showed that participants mistakenly thought their extra efforts invested in the task had improved the quality of their work, while independent judges had found no objective differences in quality between the outcomes of the high- and low-effort groups. We discuss the implications of the relationship between effort and anticipated emotions and the conditions under which such relationship might be functional

Self-administered mindfulness interventions reduce stress in a large, randomized controlled multi-site study

Mindfulness witnessed a substantial popularity surge in the past decade, especially as digitally self-administered interventions became available at relatively low costs. Yet, it is uncertain whether they effectively help reduce stress. In a preregistered (OSF https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/UF4JZ; retrospective registration at ClinicalTrials.gov NCT06308744) multi-site study (nsites = 37, nparticipants = 2,239, 70.4% women, Mage = 22.4, s.d.age = 10.1, all fluent English speakers), we experimentally tested whether four single, standalone mindfulness exercises effectively reduced stress, using Bayesian mixed-effects models. All exercises proved to be more efficacious than the active control. We observed a mean difference of 0.27 (d = −0.56; 95% confidence interval, −0.43 to −0.69) between the control condition (M = 1.95, s.d. = 0.50) and the condition with the largest stress reduction (body scan: M = 1.68, s.d. = 0.46). Our findings suggest that mindfulness may be beneficial for reducing self-reported short-term stress for English speakers from higher-income countries