How Much Is Enough in a Perfect World? Cultural Variation in Ideal Levels of Happiness, Pleasure, Freedom, Health, Self-Esteem, Longevity, and Intelligence.

The maximization principle-that people aspire to the highest possible level of something good if all practical constraints are removed-is a common yet untested assumption about human nature. We predict that in holistic cultures-where contradiction, change, and context are emphasized-ideal states of being for the self will be more moderate than in other cultures. In two studies ( Ns = 2,392 and 6,239), we asked this question: If participants could choose their ideal level of happiness, pleasure, freedom, health, self-esteem, longevity, and intelligence, what level would they choose? Consistent with predictions, results showed that maximization was less pronounced in holistic cultures; members of holistic cultures aspired to less happiness, pleasure, freedom, health, self-esteem, longevity, and IQ than did members of other cultures. In contrast, no differences emerged on ideals for society. The studies show that the maximization principle is not a universal aspect of human nature and that there are predictable cultural differences in people's notions of perfection.

Global Study of Social Odor Awareness.

Olfaction plays an important role in human social communication, including multiple domains in which people often rely on their sense of smell in the social context. The importance of the sense of smell and its role can however vary inter-individually and culturally. Despite the growing body of literature on differences in olfactory performance or hedonic preferences across the globe, the aspects of a given culture as well as culturally universal individual differences affecting odor awareness in human social life remain unknown. Here, we conducted a large-scale analysis of data collected from 10 794 participants from 52 study sites from 44 countries all over the world. The aim of our research was to explore the potential individual and country-level correlates of odor awareness in the social context. The results show that the individual characteristics were more strongly related than country-level factors to self-reported odor awareness in different social contexts. A model including individual-level predictors (gender, age, material situation, education, and preferred social distance) provided a relatively good fit to the data, but adding country-level predictors (Human Development Index, population density, and average temperature) did not improve model parameters. Although there were some cross-cultural differences in social odor awareness, the main differentiating role was played by the individual differences. This suggests that people living in different cultures and different climate conditions may still share some similar patterns of odor awareness if they share other individual-level characteristics.

Changes in social norms during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic across 43 countries.

The emergence of COVID-19 dramatically changed social behavior across societies and contexts. Here we study whether social norms also changed. Specifically, we study this question for cultural tightness (the degree to which societies generally have strong norms), specific social norms (e.g. stealing, hand washing), and norms about enforcement, using survey data from 30,431 respondents in 43 countries recorded before and in the early stages following the emergence of COVID-19. Using variation in disease intensity, we shed light on the mechanisms predicting changes in social norm measures. We find evidence that, after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, hand washing norms increased while tightness and punishing frequency slightly decreased but observe no evidence for a robust change in most other norms. Thus, at least in the short term, our findings suggest that cultures are largely stable to pandemic threats except in those norms, hand washing in this case, that are perceived to be directly relevant to dealing with the collective threat.

Perceptions of the appropriate response to norm violation in 57 societies.

Norm enforcement may be important for resolving conflicts and promoting cooperation. However, little is known about how preferred responses to norm violations vary across cultures and across domains. In a preregistered study of 57 countries (using convenience samples of 22,863 students and non-students), we measured perceptions of the appropriateness of various responses to a violation of a cooperative norm and to atypical social behaviors. Our findings highlight both cultural universals and cultural variation. We find a universal negative relation between appropriateness ratings of norm violations and appropriateness ratings of responses in the form of confrontation, social ostracism and gossip. Moreover, we find the country variation in the appropriateness of sanctions to be consistent across different norm violations but not across different sanctions. Specifically, in those countries where use of physical confrontation and social ostracism is rated as less appropriate, gossip is rated as more appropriate.

Motivational orientations of high-achieving students as mediators of a positive perception of a high-achieving classmate: Results from a cross-national study / Orientaciones motivacionales de los estudiantes de alto rendimiento como mediadoras de una percepción positiva por parte de sus compañeros: Resultados de un estudio transnacional

The purpose of this study was to explore whether and in what ways high-achieving school students’ motivational orientations influence their perceptions of a fictitious future high-achieving classmate. The final sample consisted of the 396 highest achieving students out of a sample from 1794 seventh and tenth graders from five countries: Australia, Peru, South Korea, Spain, and Vietnam. A series of stepwise regression models were used to test the hypothesis that positive perceptions of a highachieving classmate might be mediated by an approach motivation, but not by an avoidance motivational orientation. The hypothesis was generally confirmed. Learning goal orientation and performance approach motivation predicted positive perceptions of a high-achieving classmate’s intellectual ability, social qualities and popularity among peers, whereas a performance avoidance orientation was usually uncorrelated. However, sporadic exceptions have been found among the participants from Vietnam, South Korea, and Peru

El propósito de este estudio es explorar si las motivaciones de alto logro influencian las percepciones de los alumnos sobre un futuro compañero de clase ficticio que se caracteriza por tener un alto rendimiento; y si es así de qué modo ocurre. La muestra final consistió en 396 alumnos de alto rendimiento que fueron seleccionados de un total de 1794 alumnos de séptimo y decimo grado de cinco países: Australia, Perú, Corea del sur, España y Vietnam. Se llevaron a cabo una serie de modelos de regresión por pasos sucesivos para probar la hipótesis de que las percepciones positivas sobre un compañero de alto rendimiento podrían estar mediadas por el enfoque motivacional, pero no por la orientación a la evitación del trabajo. La hipótesis fue confirmada en su generalidad. Las metas orientadas al manejo del aprendizaje y las orientadas al alto rendimiento predijeron percepciones positivas de la habilidad intelectual, cualidades sociales y popularidad entre los compañeros del alumno de alto rendimiento, mientras que las metas de evitación del trabajo no obtuvieron correlaciones significativas. Sin embargo, se dieron algunas excepciones esporádicas entre los participantes de Vietnam, Corea del sur y Perú