Obstacles to birth surname retention upon marriage: how do hostile sexism and system justification predict support for marital surname change among women?

Despite the ongoing shift in societal norms and gender-discriminatory practices toward more equality, many heterosexual women worldwide, including in many Western societies, choose to replace their birth surname with the family name of their spouse upon marriage. Previous research has demonstrated that the adherence to sexist ideologies (i.e., a system of discriminatory gender-based beliefs) among women is associated with their greater endorsement of practices and policies that maintain gender inequality. By integrating the ideas from the system justification theory and the ambivalent sexism theory, we proposed that the more women adhere to hostile and benevolent sexist beliefs, the more likely they would be to justify existing gender relations in society, which in turn, would positively predict their support for traditional, husband-centered marital surname change. We further argued that hostile (as compared to benevolent) sexism could act as a particularly strong direct predictor of the support for marital surname change among women. We tested these possibilities across three cross-sectional studies conducted among women in Turkey (Study 1, N=118, self-identified feminist women; Study 2, N=131, female students) and the United States (Study 3, N=140, female students). Results of Studies 1 and 3 revealed that higher adherence to hostile (but not benevolent) sexism was associated with higher support for marital surname change indirectly through higher gender-based system justification. In Study 2, the hypothesized full mediation was not observed. Consistent with our predictions, in all three studies, hostile (but not benevolent) sexism was found to be a direct positive predictor of the support for marital surname change among women. We discuss the role of dominant ideologies surrounding marriage and inegalitarian naming conventions in different cultures as obstacles to women’s birth surname retention upon marriage

Emotion regulation strategies and psychological health across cultures

Emotion regulation is important for psychological health and can be achieved by implementing various strategies. How one regulates emotions is critical for maximizing psychological health. Few studies, however, tested the psychological correlates of different emotion regulation strategies across multiple cultures. In a preregistered cross-cultural study (N = 3,960, 19 countries), conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, we assessed associations between the use of seven emotion regulation strategies (situation selection, distraction, rumination, cognitive reappraisal, acceptance, expressive suppression, and emotional support seeking) and four indices of psychological health (life satisfaction, depressive symptoms, perceived stress, and loneliness). Model comparisons based on Bayesian information criteria provided support for cultural differences in 36% of associations, with very strong support for differences in 18% of associations. Strategies that were linked to worse psychological health in individualist countries (e.g., rumination, expressive suppression) were unrelated or linked to better psychological health in collectivist countries. Cultural differences in associations with psychological health were most prominent for expressive suppression and rumination and also found for distraction and acceptance. In addition, we found evidence for cultural similarities in 46% of associations between strategies and psychological health, but none of this evidence was very strong. Cultural similarities were most prominent in associations of psychological health with emotional support seeking. These findings highlight the importance of considering the cultural context to understand how individuals from diverse backgrounds manage unpleasant emotions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved

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The studies of emotions and emotion regulation from the social psychological perspective have been dominated by two general approaches, namely, individual and group-based research perspectives (e.g., Frijda, 1986; Gross, 2014; Halperin, 2014; Smith, Seger, & Mackie, 2007). Considering that emotions cannot only be limited to the individual- and the group-level contexts, the system-level dynamics (Stangor & Jost, 1997) should be examined to better understand their impacts on both individual and society. Drawing on system justification theory (Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004), the current study has attempted to provide empirical evidence for the characteristics of system-level emotions (Solak, Jost, Sümer, & Clore, 2012). Moreover, the present study was aimed to examine how system justification affects the regulating ways of emotions evoked by the system-level context. In doing so, in Study 1 and Study 2, system justification motivation was measured as an individual difference variable in the US and Turkish samples, respectively. In Study 3, the study hypotheses were tested during the 2013 Gezi Protests, and in Study 4, system justification motivation was experimentally manipulated. The current study provided empirical evidence for the characteristics of system-level emotions. These are system-based emotions (I) reflect standing in the social order, (II) reflect appraisals of the social order, (III) affect action tendencies and behaviors. Moreover, it was demonstrated that emotion regulation strategies affect the relationship between system justification and system-level emotions. The implications and contributions of the study were discussedPh.D. - Doctoral Progra

Socioeconomic disadvantage as a risk factor for attachment insecurity: the moderating role of gender

Although socioeconomic conditions are crucial predictors of adult attachment, the relationships between attachment patterns and distinct dimensions of socioeconomic disadvantage, reflecting its structure as a multi-faceted social construct, remain largely unexplored. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of the previous studies utilized samples from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societies, so little is known about how these relationships unfold in underrepresented cultural contexts. To fill these gaps, we explored the relationships between attachment dimensions and multiple indicators of socioeconomic disadvantage in a large community sample of married couples (N = 2622) in Turkey. We expected that indicators of socioeconomic disadvantage would be positively related to both attachment anxiety and avoidance, particularly among women. In line with our expectations, we found that several indicators of socioeconomic disadvantage are related to both dimensions of insecure attachment. Furthermore, lower income levels emerged as a predictor for women’s attachment avoidance. Results are discussed in light of gender, evolutionary, and cultural perspectives