Mating Performance and Singlehood Across 14 Nations.

Adult individuals frequently face difficulties in attracting and keeping mates, which is an important driver of singlehood. In the current research, we investigated the mating performance (i.e., how well people do in attracting and retaining intimate partners) and singlehood status in 14 different countries, namely Austria, Brazil, China, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Peru, Poland, Russia, Spain, Turkey, the UK, and Ukraine (N = 7,181). We found that poor mating performance was in high occurrence, with about one in four participants scoring low in this dimension, and more than 57% facing difficulties in starting and/or keeping a relationship. Men and women did not differ in their mating performance scores, but there was a small yet significant effect of age, with older participants indicating higher mating performance. Moreover, nearly 13% of the participants indicated that they were involuntarily single, which accounted for about one-third of the singles in the sample. In addition, more than 15% of the participants indicated that they were voluntarily single, and 10% were between-relationships single. We also found that poor mating performance was associated with an increased likelihood of voluntary, involuntary, and between-relationships singlehood. All types of singlehood were in higher occurrence in younger participants. Although there was some cross-cultural variation, the results were generally consistent across samples.

On the relationship between valence and arousal in samples across the globe.

Affect is involved in many psychological phenomena, but a descriptive structure, long sought, has been elusive. Valence and arousal are fundamental, and a key question-the focus of the present study-is the relationship between them. Valence is sometimes thought to be independent of arousal, but, in some studies (representing too few societies in the world) arousal was found to vary with valence. One common finding is that arousal is lowest at neutral valence and increases with both positive and negative valence: a symmetric V-shaped relationship. In the study reported here of self-reported affect during a remembered moment (N = 8,590), we tested the valence-arousal relationship in 33 societies with 25 different languages. The two most common hypotheses in the literature-independence and a symmetric V-shaped relationship-were not supported. With data of all samples pooled, arousal increased with positive but not negative valence. Valence accounted for between 5% (Finland) and 43% (China Beijing) of the variance in arousal. Although there is evidence for a structural relationship between the two, there is also a large amount of variability in this relation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Domains of Everyday Creativity and Personal Values.

We examined the applicability of the hybrid model of creativity, which specifies distinct domains that all express an underlying general creativity factor, in data from representative samples from Central Russia and the North Caucasus (N = 2,046). Using multigroup confirmatory analysis, Study 1 supported the invariance of a model with the six unifactorial domains (i.e., crafts, visual arts, performance, theater, products for work, and machine graphics) at the first level and a general creativity factor at the second level. Study 2 examined socio-demographic characteristics and 19 basic values that might be associated with creative activity. The more modern Central Russian region scored higher on global creativity and on all 6 domains. Of the 4 higher order values in the Schwartz model, Openness to Change values correlated positively and Conservation values correlated negatively with global creativity and with creativity in most domains. Variation across domains in the specific values that predicted creativity revealed that creativity in each domain had some unique motivators. We draw on culture and social structure to explain differences between regions in the value motivators of creativity.