The Impact of COVID-19 and Religious Restrictions on the Well-Being of Ghanaian Christians: The Perspectives of Religious Leaders.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ghana government instituted a ban on social gatherings, including religious gatherings. To understand how the unanticipated restrictions and interruption in normal church routines affected the well-being of congregants in Ghana, we interviewed 14 religious leaders. Thematic analysis revealed psychospiritual impacts including decline in spiritual life, loss of fellowship and community, financial difficulties, challenges with childcare, as well as fear of infection. Religious leaders intervened by delivering sermons on hope, faith, and repentance. Some religious leaders sensitized their members on health hygiene and COVID-19-related stigma. The study sheds light on the perceived impacts of COVID-19 and restrictions of religious gatherings on congregants in Ghana.

Ban of Religious Gatherings during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Impact on Christian Church Leaders' Well-Being in Ghana.

This study was conducted during a period of lockdown and ban on social gatherings, including religious gatherings, in Ghana. The restrictions were instituted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of the study was to understand how the well-being of Christian church leaders was impacted during the prohibition in terms of aspects of their vocation and religious practices. Fourteen Christian church leaders located in urban and rural settings in Ghana, with 5 to 32 years of experience, discussed how they and their families were impacted by the ban on religious gatherings in Ghana. Findings revealed negative impacts of the COVID-19 restrictions, including spiritual slacking, loss of fellowship, disruption of normal routine, pandemic anxiety, and financial stress. Positive impacts included increased faith, relief/reduced stress, and increased family time. These findings are discussed from psychological trauma and disaster response perspectives.

A Cultural Psychological Model of Cross-National Variation in Gender Gaps in STEM Participation.

Gender gaps in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) participation are larger in societies where women have greater freedom of choice. We provide a cultural psychological model to explain this pattern. We consider how individualistic/post-materialistic cultural patterns in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic) settings foster a self-expressive construction of academic choice, whereby affirming femininity/masculinity and ensuring identity fit become primary goals. Striving to fulfill these goals can lead men toward, and women away from, STEM pursuit, resulting in a large gender gap. In Majority World settings, on the contrary, collectivistic/materialistic cultural patterns foster a security-oriented construction, whereby achieving financial security and fulfilling relational expectations become primary goals of academic choice. These goals can lead both women and men toward secure and lucrative fields like STEM, resulting in a smaller gender gap. Finally, gender gaps in STEM participation feed back into the STEM=male stereotype. We discuss the implications of our model for research and theory, and intervention and policy.

An educational intervention to improve women's academic STEM outcomes: Divergent effects on well-represented vs. underrepresented minority women.

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this field experiment was to test the effect of a social psychological intervention on an ethnically diverse sample of first-year college women majoring in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). We hypothesized that grade point averages in STEM courses would be higher in the intervention condition relative to the control condition. Furthermore, we tested competing hypotheses about the moderating role of belonging to either a well-represented (WR) or underrepresented minority (URM) ethnic group in STEM. METHOD: The sample (N = 199) included 115 women from WR ethnic groups and 84 women from URM ethnic groups who were randomly assigned to condition. Women in the intervention were educated about the harmful impact of gender stereotypes in STEM and provided with effective strategies for coping with stereotype threat. At the end of their first year, we obtained participants' academic transcripts. RESULTS: At the end of their first year in college, URM women in the intervention condition had higher grade point averages in their STEM courses than URM women in the control condition. The intervention had no effect on WR women. CONCLUSIONS: The present research demonstrates the importance of intersectional approaches to studying the experiences of women in STEM. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Context matters for attractiveness bias.

To fully understand the attractiveness bias, we propose that contextual factors or affordances should be integrated into the mating-based evolutionary account of Maestripieri et al. We review examples highlighting the role of contextual factors in the perception of attractiveness and in attractiveness bias. These suggest contextual factors differentially afford the development of preference for attractive others into observed habits of mind.

Ethnic variation in gender-STEM stereotypes and STEM participation: an intersectional approach.

Stereotypes associating men and masculine traits with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields are ubiquitous, but the relative strength of these stereotypes varies considerably across cultures. The present research applies an intersectional approach to understanding ethnic variation in gender-STEM stereotypes and STEM participation within an American university context. African American college women participated in STEM majors at higher rates than European American college women (Study 1, Study 2, and Study 4). Furthermore, African American women had weaker implicit gender-STEM stereotypes than European American women (Studies 2-4), and ethnic differences in implicit gender-STEM stereotypes partially mediated ethnic differences in STEM participation (Study 2 and Study 4). Although African American men had weaker implicit gender-STEM stereotypes than European American men (Study 4), ethnic differences between men in STEM participation were generally small (Study 1) or nonsignificant (Study 4). We discuss the implications of an intersectional approach for understanding the relationship between gender and STEM participation.

The Marley hypothesis: denial of racism reflects ignorance of history.

This study used a signal detection paradigm to explore the Marley hypothesis--that group differences in perception of racism reflect dominant-group denial of and ignorance about the extent of past racism. White American students from a midwestern university and Black American students from two historically Black universities completed surveys about their historical knowledge and perception of racism. Relative to Black participants, White participants perceived less racism in both isolated incidents and systemic manifestations of racism. They also performed worse on a measure of historical knowledge (i.e., they did not discriminate historical fact from fiction), and this group difference in historical knowledge mediated the differences in perception of racism. Racial identity relevance moderated group differences in perception of systemic manifestations of racism (but not isolated incidents), such that group differences were stronger among participants who scored higher on a measure of racial identity relevance. The results help illuminate the importance of epistemologies of ignorance: cultural-psychological tools that afford denial of and inaction about injustice.

"Reasonable suspicion" about tough immigration legislation: enforcing laws or ethnocentric exclusion?

We examined whether support for tough immigration legislation reflects identity-neutral enforcement of law or identity-relevant defense of privilege. Participants read a fabricated news story in which law-enforcement personnel detained a person due to "reasonable suspicion" that he was an undocumented immigrant. We manipulated descriptions of the detainee so that he was either (a) an undocumented immigrant (both studies), (b) a documented immigrant (Study 1), or (c) a U.S. citizen (Study 2) of either Mexican or Canadian origin. Participants in both studies endorsed tougher punishment of an undocumented detainee and rated tough treatment as more fair when the detainee was of Mexican than Canadian origin (regardless of documentation status). Across both studies, the patterns of ethnocentric exclusion-harsher treatment toward Mexican immigrants than Canadian immigrants-were particularly pronounced among participants who defined American identity in terms of assimilation to Anglocentric cultural values (e.g., being able to speak English). Overall, results suggest that people may support tough measures to restrict immigration to defend against symbolic threats-especially threats that cultural "others" pose to Anglocentric understandings of American identity.

Reverence and Reciprocity in Prioritization of Care to a Parent: The Role of Cultural Ecologies and Implications for Decolonizing Relationality.

Relationship research in the dominant psychological science portrays the prioritization of conjugal over consanguine relationships as a healthy standard. We argue that this "standard" pattern is only evident in cultural ecologies of independence. Drawing on the Confucian concept of filial piety, we conducted five studies and two mini meta-analyses to normalize the prioritization of mother over spouse. Cultural ecologies were operationalized by a variety of indexes, including histories of residential mobility, country, manipulated relational/residential mobility, and race. While participants situated in cultural ecologies of independence prioritized care to spouse over mother, participants inhabited in interdependence prioritized care to mother over spouse. Both American and Chinese participants showed greater prioritization of care for mother over spouse when they imagined a relational ecology of interdependence versus independence. Authoritarian filial piety mediated cultural-ecological variation on relational prioritization. Results illuminate cultural-ecological foundations of care and naturalize love as dutiful fulfillment of obligation.

Turning the lens in the study of precarity: On experimental social psychology's acquiescence to the settler-colonial status quo in historic Palestine.

This review examines the coloniality infused within the conduct and third reporting of experimental research in what is commonly referred to as the 'Israeli-Palestinian conflict'. Informed by a settler colonial framework and decolonial theory, our review measured the appearance of sociopolitical terms and critically analysed the reconciliation measures. We found that papers were three times more likely to describe the context through the framework of intractable conflict compared to occupation. Power asymmetry was often acknowledged and then flattened via, for instance, adjacent mentions of Israeli and Palestinian physical violence. Two-thirds of the dependent variables were not related to material claims (e.g. land, settlements, or Palestinian refugees) but rather to the feelings and attitudes of Jewish Israelis and Palestinians. Of the dependent measures that did consider material issues, they nearly universally privileged conditions of the two-state solution and compromises on refugees' right of return that would violate international law. The majority of the studies sampled Jewish-Israeli participants exclusively, and the majority of authors were affiliated with Israeli institutions. We argue that for social psychology to offer insights that coincide with the decolonization of historic Palestine, the discipline will have to begin by contextualizing its research within the material conditions and history that socially stratify the groups.

Implications of COVID-19 Innovations for Social Interaction: Provisional Insights From a Qualitative Study of Ghanaian Christian Leaders.

Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic prompted people and institutions to turn to online virtual environments for a wide variety of social gatherings. In this perspectives article, we draw upon our previous work and interviews with Ghanaian Christian leaders to consider implications of this shift. Specifically, we propose that the shift from physical to virtual interactions mimics and amplifies the neoliberal individualist experience of abstraction from place associated with Eurocentric modernity. On the positive side, the shift from physical to virtual environments liberates people to selectively pursue the most fulfilling interactions, free from constraints of physical distance. On the negative side, the move from physical to virtual space necessitates a shift from material care and tangible engagement with the local community to the psychologization of care and pursuit of emotional intimacy in relations of one's choosing-a dynamic that further marginalizes people who are already on the margins. The disruptions of the pandemic provide an opportunity to re-set social relations, to design ways of being that better promote sustainable collective well-being rather than fleeting personal fulfillment.

Obligation or Desire: Variation in Motivation for Compliance With COVID-19 Public Health Guidance.

Why do people comply with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) public health guidance? This study considers cultural-psychological foundations of variation in beliefs about motivations for such compliance. Specifically, we focused on beliefs about two sources of prosocial motivation: desire to protect others and obligation to society. Across two studies, we observed that the relative emphasis on the desire to protect others (vs. the obligation to the community) as an explanation for compliance was greater in the United States settings associated with cultural ecologies of abstracted independence than in Chinese settings associated with cultural ecologies of embedded interdependence. We observed these patterns for explanations of psychological experience of both others (Study 1) and self (Study 2), and for compliance with mandates for both social distancing and face masks (Study 2). Discussion of results considers both practical implications for motivating compliance with public health guidance and theoretical implications for denaturalizing prevailing accounts of prosocial motivation.

Generosity or genocide? Identity implications of silence in American Thanksgiving commemorations.

This paper investigates the identity implications of silence about genocide in commemorations of American Thanksgiving. In Study 1 we assessed the co-occurrence of national glorification themes with different forms of silence in commemoration products by conducting a content analysis of presidential Thanksgiving proclamations. In Study 2 we examined the extent to which different commemoration products are infused with particular beliefs and desires by measuring participants' reactions to different Thanksgiving commemorations-a literal-silence condition that did not mention Indigenous Peoples, an interpretive-silence condition that mentioned Indigenous Peoples but did not explicitly mention genocidal conquest, and an anti-silence condition that did mention genocidal conquest-as a function of national glorification. In Study 3 we manipulated exposure to different Thanksgiving commemorations (with associated forms of silence) and assessed the impact on national glorification and identity-relevant action. Results provide evidence for the hypothesised, bi-directional relationship between national glorification and silence about genocide in commemorations of American Thanksgiving.

Dilemma Tales as African Knowledge Practice: An Example From Research on Obligations of Support.

This contribution to the Frontiers research topic collection on African Cultural Models considers dilemma tales: an African knowledge practice in which narrators present listeners with a difficult choice that usually has ethical or moral implications. We adapted the dilemma tale format to create research tasks. We then used these research tasks to investigate conceptions of care, support, and relationality among participants in Ghanaian, African American, and European American settings that vary in affordances for embedded interdependence vs. modern individualism. Results revealed hypothesized patterns, such that judgments about the inappropriateness of institutionalized eldercare (vs. home elder care) and prioritization of material support to parent (over spouse) were greater among Ghanaian participants than European American participants. Responses of African American participants were more ambiguous, resembling European American acceptance of institutionalized eldercare relative to Ghanaian participants, but resembling Ghanaian tendencies to prioritize support to parent (over spouse) relative to European American participants. Results illuminate that standard patterns of hegemonic psychological science (e.g., tendencies to prioritize obligations to spouse over mother) are the particular product of WEIRD cultural ecologies rather than context-general characteristics.

Cultural Models of Well-Being Implicit in Four Ghanaian Languages.

This contribution to the collection of articles on "African Cultural Models" considers the topic of well-being. Reflecting modern individualist selfways of North American and European worlds, normative conceptions of well-being in hegemonic psychological science tend to valorize self-acceptance, personal growth, and autonomy. In contrast, given the embedded interdependence of everyday life in many West African worlds, one can hypothesize that cultural models of well-being in many Ghanaian settings will place greater emphasis on sustainability-oriented themes of material sufficiency and successful navigation of normative obligations. To explore this hypothesis, we interviewed local cultural experts who function as custodians of religion and an important source of support for well-being in many Ghanaian settings. We asked participants to identify and explain models of well-being implicit in four Ghanaian languages (Akan, Dagbani, Ewe, and Ga). Participants were 19 men and 15 women (age range 32-92 years; Mean = 59.83; SD: 14.01). Results reveal some features of local models, including good health and positive affective states, that appear to resonate with standard understandings of well-being in hegemonic psychological science. However, results also provide evidence for other features of local models - specifically, good living (including moral living, material success, and proper relationality) and peace of mind - associated with a sustainability or maintenance orientation to well-being.

High energy phosphate concentrations and AMPK phosphorylation in skeletal muscle from mice with inherited differences in hypoxic exercise tolerance.

The effect of chronic hypobaric hypoxia (1/2 atmospheric pressure) on high energy phosphate (HEP) compounds was investigated in slow (soleus; SOL) and fast twitch (extensor digitorum longus; EDL) muscle from 3 strains of mice with large differences in hypoxic exercise tolerance (HET). Phosphocreatine concentration ([PCr]) decreased 16-29% following hypoxia in EDL and SOL in all strains, while [ADP] and [AMP] increased. In the EDL, HET was negatively correlated with the PCr/ATP ratio and positively correlated with the ATP/P(i) ratio. The free energy of ATP hydrolysis (DeltaG(obs)) remained constant despite the substantial changes that occurred in HEP profiles. The alteration of HEP set points and preservation of DeltaG(obs) are consistent with the notion that (1) maximal rates of steady-state ATP turnover are reduced under hypoxia, and (2) HEP perturbations during rest to work transitions are reduced in skeletal muscle from hypoxia acclimated animals. We therefore expected a lower phosphorylation ratio of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK-P/AMPK) during stimulation in hypoxic acclimated animals. However, neither the resting nor stimulated AMPK-P/AMPK was influenced by hypoxia, although there were significant differences among strains.

The cultural grounding of personal relationship: the importance of attractiveness in everyday life.

Previous research has suggested that physically attractive people experience more positive life outcomes than do unattractive people. However, the importance of physical attractiveness in everyday life may vary depending on the extent to which different cultural worlds afford or require individual choice in the construction and maintenance of personal relationships. The authors hypothesized that attractiveness matters more for life outcomes in settings that promote voluntaristic-independent constructions of relationship as the product of personal choice than it does in settings that promote embedded-interdependent constructions of relationship as an environmental affordance. Study 1 examined self-reported outcomes of attractive and unattractive persons. Study 2 examined expectations about attractive and unattractive targets. Results provide support for the hypothesis along four dimensions: national context, relationship context, rural-urban context, and experimental manipulation of relationship constructions. These patterns suggest that the importance of physical attractiveness documented by psychological research is the product of particular constructions of reality.

'My Own House, Car, My Husband, and Children': meanings of success among Ghanaians.

The purpose of the study was to explore the extent to which contemporary social, economic, and religious developments inform social constructions of success in Ghana. Participants, consisting of 21 females and 39 males, aged between 20 and 70, from different educational and occupational backgrounds were interviewed about what they consider as success. Participants belonged to either Traditionally Western Mission Churches or Charismatic Christian denominations and were selected from three regions of Ghana. Thematic analysis revealed four dimensions of success: (1) Social (including marriage, children, social recognition, and social contribution to society); (2) Material (comprising meeting basic needs; economic independence; material wealth); (3) Educational; and (4) Religious (e.g., God's work, relationship with God). Three pathways to success were also observed in the data: (a) Divine blessings; (b) Adaptability; and (c) Striving. Discussion focuses on social, policy, counselling, and research implications.

Health psychology in African settings: a cultural-psychological analysis.

African settings provide an important context in which to examine the relationship between cultural beliefs and health. First, research in African settings helps illuminate the sociocultural grounding of health and illness: the idea that beliefs play a constitutive role in the experience of distress. Second, research in African settings helps to illuminate the cultural grounding of health sciences: the idea that theory and practice reflect particular constructions of reality. We examine these ideas in the context of three research examples: the prominent experience of personal enemies; epidemic outbreaks of genital-shrinking panic; and fears about sabotage of vaccines in immunization campaigns.