Social mindfulness predicts concern for nature and immigrants across 36 nations

People cooperate every day in ways that range from largescale contributions that mitigate climatechange 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. Priorwork has found that countries with individuals who made more socially mindful choices were linked toa higher country environmental performance – a proxy for complex cooperation. Here we replicatedthis initial finding in 41 samples around the world, demonstrating the robustness of the associationbetween social mindfulness and environmental performance, and substantially built on it to show thisrelationship extended to a wide range of complex cooperative indices, tied closely to many currentsocietal issues. We found that greater social mindfulness expressed by an individual was related toliving in countries with more social capital, more community participation and reduced prejudicetowards immigrants. Our findings speak to the symbiotic relationship between simple and morecomplex forms of cooperation in societies.Social decision makin

The economic well-being of nations is associated with positive daily situational experiences

People in economically advantaged nations tend to evaluate their life as more positive overall and report greater well-being than people in less advantaged nations. But how does positivity manifest in the daily life experiences of individuals around the world? The present study asked 15,244 college students from 62 nations, in 42 languages, to describe a situation they experienced the previous day using the Riverside Situational Q-sort (RSQ). Using expert ratings, the overall positivity of each situation was calculated for both nations and individuals. The positivity of the average situation in each nation was strongly related to the economic development of the nation as measured by the Human Development Index (HDI). For individuals’ daily experiences, the economic status of their nation also predicted the positivity of their experience, even more than their family socioeconomic status. Further analyses revealed the specific characteristics of the average situations for higher HDI nations that make their experiences more positive. Higher HDI was associated with situational experiences involving humor, socializing with others, and the potential to express emotions and fantasies. Lower HDI was associated with an increase in the presence of threats, blame, and hostility, as well as situational experiences consisting of family, religion, and money. Despite the increase in a few negative situational characteristics in lower HDI countries, the overall average experience still ranged from neutral to slightly positive, rather than negative, suggesting that greater HDI may not necessarily increase positive experiences but rather decrease negative experiences. The results illustrate how national economic status influences the lives of individuals even within a single instance of daily life, with large and powerful consequences when accumulated across individuals within each nation

Self-concept consistency and short-term stability in eight cultures

Self-concept consistency and short-term stability were investigated in the United States, Australia, Mexico, Venezuela, Philippines, Malaysia, China, and Japan. Evidence for substantial cross-role consistency and reliable within-individual variability in trait self-perceptions were found in each culture. Participants in all cultures exhibited short-term stability in their self-reported traits within roles and moderately stable if-then patterns of trait self-perceptions. Cultural differences, which primarily involved Japan, were partially accounted for by cultural differences in dialecticism, but not self-construals or cultural tightness. In all cultures, satisfaction of needs in various roles partially accounted for within-individual variability in self-reported traits. The results provide support for integrating trait and cultural psychology perspectives, as well as structure and process approaches, in the study of self-concepts across cultures

Relating Self-Concept Consistency to Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-Being in Eight Cultures

Western theories suggest that self-concept consistency is important for well-being, but cultural psychologists have proposed that this relationship may be weaker in collectivistic or dialectical cultures. Hypotheses regarding the ability of self-concept (cross-role) consistency and short-term stability to predict hedonic and eudaimonic well-being across cultures were tested. College students in the United States, Australia, Mexico, Venezuela, the Philippines, Malaysia, China, and Japan rated their traits in various roles at test and retest and completed measures of hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. In all cultures, cross-role consistency and short-term stability were inversely associated with negative affect, an aspect of hedonic well-being, and positively associated with Big Five Emotional Stability. In contrast, cross-role consistency and short-term stability were related to eudaimonic well-being more reliably in individualistic cultures than in collectivistic cultures, although the results in China only partially conformed to this pattern. We concluded that cross-role variability and short-term instability of self-concepts have a significant temperamental or affective basis, and this temperamental basis is a cultural universal. In addition, cultural psychology predictions of a weaker relationship between self-concept consistency and well-being in collectivistic cultures, as compared with individualistic cultures, were largely supported for eudaimonic well-being

Culture, cross-role consistency, and adjustment: Testing trait and cultural psychology perspectives

Trait and cultural psychology perspectives on cross-role consistency and its relation to adjustment were examined in 2 individualistic cultures, the United States (N = 231) and Australia (N = 195), and 4 collectivistic cultures, Mexico (N = 199), the Philippines (N = 195), Malaysia (N = 217), and Japan (N = 180). Cross-role consistency in trait ratings was evident in all cultures, supporting trait perspectives. Cultural comparisons of mean consistency provided support for cultural psychology perspectives as applied to East Asian cultures (i.e., Japan) but not collectivistic cultures more generally. Some but not all of the hypothesized predictors of consistency were supported across cultures. Cross-role consistency predicted aspects of adjustment in all cultures, but prediction was most reliable in the U.S. sample and weakest in the Japanese sample. Alternative constructs proposed by cultural psychologists—personality coherence, social appraisal, and relationship harmony—predicted adjustment in all cultures but were not, as hypothesized, better predictors of adjustment in collectivistic cultures than in individualistic cultures

Need Satisfaction and Well-Being: Testing Self-Determination Theory in Eight Cultures

According to Self-Determination Theory (SDT), satisfaction of needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness is a universal requirement for psychological well-being. We tested this hypothesis with college students in the United States, Australia, Mexico, Venezuela, the Philippines, Malaysia, China, and Japan. Participants rated the extent to which these needs, plus needs for self-actualization and pleasure-stimulation, were satisfied in various roles and reported their general hedonic (i.e., positive and negative affect) and eudaimonic (e.g., meaning in life, personal growth) well-being. Asian participants averaged lower than non-Asian participants in perceived satisfaction of autonomy, competence, and self-actualization needs and in most aspects of eudaimonic well-being, and these differences were partially accounted for by differences in dialecticism and independent self-construals. Nonetheless, perceived need satisfaction predicted overall well-being to a similar degree in all cultures and in most cultures provided incremental prediction beyond the Big Five traits. Perceived imbalance in the satisfaction of different needs also modestly predicted well-being, particularly negative affect. The study extended support for the universal importance of SDT need satisfaction to several new cultures

Cross-Situational Self-Consistency in Nine Cultures: The Importance of Separating Influences of Social Norms and Distinctive Dispositions

We assessed self-consistency (expressing similar traits in different situations) by having undergraduates in the United States (n = 230), Australia (n = 220), Canada (n = 240), Ecuador (n = 101), Mexico (n = 209), Venezuela (n = 209), Japan (n = 178), Malaysia (n = 254), and the Philippines (n = 241) report the traits they expressed in four different social situations. Self-consistency was positively associated with age, well-being, living in Latin America, and not living in Japan; however, each of these variables showed a unique pattern of associations with various psychologically distinct sources of raw self-consistency, including cross-situationally consistent social norms and injunctions. For example, low consistency between injunctive norms and trait expressions fully explained the low self-consistency in Japan. In accord with trait theory, after removing normative and injunctive sources of consistency, there remained robust distinctive noninjunctive self-consistency (reflecting individuating personality dispositions) in every country, including Japan. The results highlight how clarifying the determinants and implications of self-consistency requires differentiating its distinctive, injunctive, and noninjunctive components