Distressed yet bonded: A longitudinal investigation of the COVID-19 pandemic’s silver lining effects on life satisfaction.

It is a common understanding that the 2019 coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) significantly harmed mental health. However, findings on changes in overall life satisfaction have been mixed and inconclusive. To address this puzzling phenomenon, we draw upon the domain specific perspective of well-being and research on catastrophe compassion and propose thatthe pandemic can have opposing effects on mental health and communal satisfaction, which then differently relate to people’s overall life satisfaction. Longitudinal analyses of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics (HILDA) Survey of Australia (N = 12,093) showed that while there was a greater decrease in mental health in the first COVID-19 pandemic year (2019-2020) than in previous years (2017-2019), an increase in communal satisfaction also occurred, demonstrating a potential silver lining effect of the pandemic on people’s satisfaction with family, community and neighborhood. Moreover, consistent with socioemotional selectivity theory, changes in mental health, communal satisfaction and life satisfaction were related to age such that older adults generally reported less harmful and more beneficial psychological changes. We further found that age was associated with stronger associations of mental health and communal satisfaction with life satisfaction during the pandemic year. Overall, our findings speak to the importance of communal life in life satisfaction during the pandemic and age-related differences in the process, shedding light on the need to devise customized support to address inequalities in pandemic effects on public well-being

Do Chinese Traditional and Modern Cultures Affect Young Adults’ Moral Priorities?

Dramatic cultural change has occurred in Mainland China over the past four decades, yet little is known about how this cultural shift impacts Chinese peoples’ moral values. The present research aims to fill this gap by examining whether Chinese traditional and modern cultures influence young adults’ moral judgments. Study 1 investigated the relation between psychological traditionality/modernity and moral concerns. Results indicated that participants who strongly endorsed Chinese traditional culture prioritize relationship concern rather than justice concern. Study 2 used the cultural priming method and tested the effects of traditional and modern icons on moral concerns. Results suggested that participants who were primed with traditional or modern or neutral icons did not give priority to relationship or justice concern. Together, our findings provide initial empirical evidence on whether Chinese traditional and modern cultures shift the moral mindsets of bicultural young Chinese among alternative (and even competing) moral codes

Cultural variations in the relationship between anger coping styles, depression and life satisfaction

Hypotheses are tested that ways of handling anger and their consequences will differ in student samples drawn from dignity cultures (UK and Finland), honor cultures (Turkey and Pakistan) and face cultures (Hong Kong and China). In line with our hypotheses, holding anger in and controlling anger correlate positively in face cultures but not in other samples, whereas holding anger in and letting anger out correlate positively in honor cultures but not in other samples. Furthermore, holding anger in and letting anger out are more strongly predictive of high depression and low life satisfaction in honor cultures than in other samples. The results provide support for the cross-cultural validity of Spielberger's (1999) anger expression inventory and for the proposition that differences in ways of handling anger can be understood in terms of contrasting cultural contexts

Continuities and discontinuities in the cultural evolution of global consciousness

Global consciousness (GC), encompassing cosmopolitan orientation, global orientations (i.e. openness to multicultural experiences) and identification with all humanity, is a relatively stable individual difference that is strongly associated with pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours, less ingroup favouritism and prejudice, and greater pandemic prevention safety behaviours. Little is known about how it is socialized in everyday life. Using stratified samples from six societies, socializing institution factors correlating positively with GC were education, white collar work (and its higher income) and religiosity. However, GC also decreased with increasing age, contradicting a ‘wisdom of elders’ transmission of social learning, and not replicating typical findings that general prosociality increases with age. Longitudinal findings were that empathy-building, network-enhancing elements like getting married or welcoming a new infant, increased GC the most across a three-month interval. Instrumental gains like receiving a promotion (or getting a better job) also showed positive effects. Less intuitively, death of a close-other enhanced rather than reduced GC. Perhaps this was achieved through the ritualized management of meaning where a sense of the smallness of self is associated with growth of empathy for the human condition, as a more discontinuous or opportunistic form of culture-based learning. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis’

Nation-level moderators of the extent to which self-efficacy and relationship harmony predict students’ depression and life satisfaction: evidence from ten cultures

Previous two-nation comparisons have provided evidence that self-efficacy may be a protective factor against depression in individualist cultures, whereas relationship harmony may be a stronger protective factor in collectivist cultures. However, wider sampling and more specific measures of cultural difference are required to test these conclusions. Student ratings of depression and life satisfaction were surveyed in 10 samples drawn from nine nations. Culture-level individualism positively moderated the relationship of self-efficacy to low depression. However, culture-level collectivism negatively moderated the linkage of relationship harmony to depression. To better understand these effects, four separate nation-level predictors derived from dimensions of self-construal were employed. Effects of self-efficacy were strongest where cultural models of selfhood emphasized self-direction (vs. receptiveness to influence); effects of relationship harmony were strongest where cultural models of selfhood emphasized dependence on others (vs. self-reliance). These results illustrate the value of unpackaging the diffusely defined concept of individualism-collectivism

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Connecting and separating mind-sets: Culture as situated cognition.

People perceive meaningful wholes and later separate out constituent parts (D. Navon, 1977). Yet there are cross-national differences in whether a focal target or integrated whole is first perceived. Rather than construe these differences as fixed, the proposed culture-as-situated-cognition model explains these differences as due to whether a collective or individual mind-set is cued at the moment of observation. Eight studies demonstrated that when cultural mind-set and task demands are congruent, easier tasks are accomplished more quickly and more difficult or time-constrained tasks are accomplished more accurately (Study 1: Koreans, Korean Americans; Study 2: Hong Kong Chinese; Study 3: European- and Asian-heritage Americans; Study 4: Americans; Study: 5 Hong Kong Chinese; Study 6: Americans; Study 7: Norwegians; Study 8: African-, European-, and Asian-heritage Americans). Meta-analyses (d = .34) demonstrated homogeneous effects across geographic place (East-West), racial-ethnic group, task, and sensory mode-differences are cued in the moment. Contrast and separation are salient individual mind-set procedures, resulting in focus on a single target or main point. Assimilation and connection are salient collective mind-set procedures, resulting in focus on multiplicity and integration.Department of Applied Social Science

Is it cultural context or cultural value? Unpackaging cultural influences on stigma toward mental illness and barrier to help-seeking

There have been growing interests in sampling underrepresented populations to test whether psychological processes are universal. The present cross-sectional study examined cultural influences on stigma toward mental illness and perceived barrier to help-seeking among Hong Kong Chinese, Chinese Americans, and European Americans (N = 555 university students). Significant cultural differences were found in the mean levels, with the two Chinese groups reporting higher levels of stigma toward mental illness and perceived barrier to help-seeking than European Americans, and these cultural differences were accounted for by face concern. In addition, the strengths of paths from face concern to stigma toward mental illness and perceived barrier to help-seeking were equivalent across the three cultural groups. These findings tease apart the source of cultural influences and underscore the importance of comparing cultural differences both at the mean level and the structural level, but more importantly, to unpackage the observed differences by testing the mediating role of cultural values