Family still matters: Human social motivation across 42 countries during a global pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused drastic social changes for many people, including separation from friends and coworkers, enforced close contact with family, and reductions in mobility. Here we assess the extent to which people's evolutionarily-relevant basic motivations and goals-fundamental social motives such as Affiliation and Kin Care-might have been affected. To address this question, we gathered data on fundamental social motives in 42 countries (N = 15,915) across two waves, including 19 countries (N = 10,907) for which data were gathered both before and during the pandemic (pre-pandemic wave: 32 countries, N = 8998; 3302 male, 5585 female; M age  = 24.43, SD = 7.91; mid-pandemic wave: 29 countries, N = 6917; 2249 male, 4218 female; M age  = 28.59, SD = 11.31). Samples include data collected online (e.g., Prolific, MTurk), at universities, and via community sampling. We found that Disease Avoidance motivation was substantially higher during the pandemic, and that most of the other fundamental social motives showed small, yet significant, differences across waves. Most sensibly, concern with caring for one's children was higher during the pandemic, and concerns with Mate Seeking and Status were lower. Earlier findings showing the prioritization of family motives over mating motives (and even over Disease Avoidance motives) were replicated during the pandemic. Finally, well-being remained positively associated with family-related motives and negatively associated with mating motives during the pandemic, as in the pre-pandemic samples. Our results provide further evidence for the robust primacy of family-related motivations even during this unique disruption of social life.

Envy and help giving.

In this research, we explored and demonstrated a relatively implicit and covert means of undermining envied targets-namely, helping them in a way that retains their future dependence, rather than in a way that increases their autonomy. In four studies, we varied our envy manipulations, measured the extent to which these manipulations trigger malicious motivations, and examined the consequences in terms of intended (Studies 1-2) and actual (Studies 3-4) helping behaviors. In Study 4, we also measured and tested the role of individual differences in terms of proneness to malicious versus benign envy. Taken together, our findings suggest that the extent to which envy toward superior versus neutral peers activates malicious motivations negatively impacts peoples' willingness to provide these superior peers with help, particularly with autonomous help. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The primacy of honest reputations.

Reputations play a pivotal role in everyday life, and having a good reputation is deemed a highly valuable currency in the social world. While much of the reputation literature insufficiently distinguishes between varying types of good (or 'cooperative') reputations-e.g., sociable versus honest, here we review recent research pointing to their distinctiveness. Moreover, countering the growing behavioral ethics literature documenting that people are sometimes dishonest, and in some cases, even believe dishonesty is appropriate and ethical, we assert that when it comes to reputations, honesty largely dominates. Specifically, we review recent work suggesting people are primarily concerned about acquiring and maintaining honest (vs. other commendable) reputations, as well as evidence of the substantial consequences of having an honest reputation.

Fundamental social motives measured across forty-two cultures in two waves.

How does psychology vary across human societies? The fundamental social motives framework adopts an evolutionary approach to capture the broad range of human social goals within a taxonomy of ancestrally recurring threats and opportunities. These motives-self-protection, disease avoidance, affiliation, status, mate acquisition, mate retention, and kin care-are high in fitness relevance and everyday salience, yet understudied cross-culturally. Here, we gathered data on these motives in 42 countries (N = 15,915) in two cross-sectional waves, including 19 countries (N = 10,907) for which data were gathered in both waves. Wave 1 was collected from mid-2016 through late 2019 (32 countries, N = 8,998; 3,302 male, 5,585 female; Mage = 24.43, SD = 7.91). Wave 2 was collected from April through November 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic (29 countries, N = 6,917; 2,249 male, 4,218 female; Mage = 28.59, SD = 11.31). These data can be used to assess differences and similarities in people's fundamental social motives both across and within cultures, at different time points, and in relation to other commonly studied cultural indicators and outcomes.

Effects of optimism on creativity under approach and avoidance motivation.

Focusing on avoiding failure or negative outcomes (avoidance motivation) can undermine creativity, due to cognitive (e.g., threat appraisals), affective (e.g., anxiety), and volitional processes (e.g., low intrinsic motivation). This can be problematic for people who are avoidance motivated by nature and in situations in which threats or potential losses are salient. Here, we review the relation between avoidance motivation and creativity, and the processes underlying this relation. We highlight the role of optimism as a potential remedy for the creativity undermining effects of avoidance motivation, due to its impact on the underlying processes. Optimism, expecting to succeed in achieving success or avoiding failure, may reduce negative effects of avoidance motivation, as it eases threat appraisals, anxiety, and disengagement-barriers playing a key role in undermining creativity. People experience these barriers more under avoidance than under approach motivation, and beneficial effects of optimism should therefore be more pronounced under avoidance than approach motivation. Moreover, due to their eagerness, approach motivated people may even be more prone to unrealistic over-optimism and its negative consequences.

When feeling skillful impairs coordination in a lottery selection task.

Choosing a major field of study to secure a good job after graduation is a tacit coordination problem that requires considering others' choices. We examine how feeling skillful, either induced (Experiment 1) or measured (Experiment 2), affects coordination in this type of task. In both experiments participants chose between two lotteries, one offering a larger prize than the other. Participants' entry into the chosen lottery was either related or unrelated to their skill, with the final prize allocated randomly to one of the entrants in each lottery. Importantly, across conditions skill was irrelevant to choosing between lotteries. Notwithstanding, when skill was related to determining lottery entrants, participants who felt highly skillful chose the high prize lottery excessively. Results further suggest that this stems from high confidence in self skill, rather than incorrect expectations regarding others.