Effects of Voice Pitch on Social Perceptions Vary With Relational Mobility and Homicide Rate.

Fundamental frequency ( fo) is the most perceptually salient vocal acoustic parameter, yet little is known about how its perceptual influence varies across societies. We examined how fo affects key social perceptions and how socioecological variables modulate these effects in 2,647 adult listeners sampled from 44 locations across 22 nations. Low male fo increased men's perceptions of formidability and prestige, especially in societies with higher homicide rates and greater relational mobility in which male intrasexual competition may be more intense and rapid identification of high-status competitors may be exigent. High female fo increased women's perceptions of flirtatiousness where relational mobility was lower and threats to mating relationships may be greater. These results indicate that the influence of fo on social perceptions depends on socioecological variables, including those related to competition for status and mates.

Using Protection Motivation Theory to Predict Adherence to COVID-19 Behavioral Guidelines.

COVID-19 has become a global pandemic. Throughout most of the pandemic, mitigating its spread has relied on human behavior, namely on adherence to protective behaviors (e.g., wearing a face mask). This research proposes that Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) can contribute to understanding differences in individual adherence to COVID-19 behavioral guidelines. PMT identifies four fundamental cognitive components that drive responses to fear appeals: perceptions of susceptibility (to the disease), severity (of the disease), self-efficacy (to protect oneself), and response efficacy (i.e., recommended behaviors' effectiveness). Two online self-report studies assessed PMT components' capacity to predict adherence to protective behaviors concurrently and across culturally different countries (Israel, Germany, India; Study 1), and again at six-week follow-up (Israeli participants; Study 2). Study 1's findings indicate excellent fit of the PMT model, with about half of the variance in adherence explained. No significant differences were found between participants from Israel (n = 917), Germany (n = 222) and India (n = 160). Study 2 (n = 711) confirmed that PMT components continue to predict adherence after six weeks. In both studies, response efficacy was the PMT component most strongly associated with adherence levels. This study demonstrates that PMT can serve as a theoretical framework to better understand differences in adherence to COVID-19 protective behaviors. The findings may further inform the design of adherence-promoting communications, suggesting that it may be beneficial to highlight response efficacy in such messages.

Appraisal and coping predict health and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic: An international approach.

COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on people worldwide. We conducted an international survey (n = 3646) examining the degree to which people's appraisals and coping activities around the pandemic predicted their health and well-being. We obtained subsamples from 12 countries-Bangladesh, Bulgaria, China, Colombia, India, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Portugal, Turkey and the United States. For each, we assessed appraisals and coping strategies as well as indicators of physical and mental health and well-being. Results indicated that, despite mean-level societal differences in outcomes, the pattern of appraisals and coping strategies predicting health and well-being was consistent across countries. Use of disengagement coping (particularly behavioural disengagement and self-isolation) was associated with relatively negative outcomes. In contrast, optimistic appraisals (particularly of high accommodation-focused coping potential and the ability to meet one's physical needs), use of problem-focused coping strategies (especially problem-solving) and accommodative coping strategies (especially positive reappraisal and self-encouragement) were associated with relatively positive outcomes. Our study highlights the critical importance of considering accommodative coping in stress and coping research. It also provides important information on how people have been dealing with the pandemic, the predictors of well-being under pandemic conditions and the generality of such relations.

Mind your meat: Religious differences in the social perception of animals.

While previous work demonstrated that animals are categorised based on their edibility, little research has systematically evaluated the role of religion in the perception of animal edibility, particularly when specific animals are deemed sacred in a religion. In two studies, we explored a key psychological mechanism through which sacred animals are deemed inedible by members of a faith: mind attribution. In Study 1, non-vegetarian Hindus in Singapore (N = 70) evaluated 19 animals that differed in terms of their sacredness and edibility. Results showed that participants categorised animals into three groups: holy animals (high sacredness but low edibility), food animals (low sacredness but high edibility) and neutral animals (low sacredness and low edibility). Holy animals were deemed to possess greater mental life compared to other animal categories. In Study 2, we replicated this key finding with Hindus in India (N = 100), and further demonstrated that the observed pattern of results was specific to Hindus but not Muslims (N = 90). In both studies, mind attribution mediated the negative association between sacredness and edibility. Our findings illustrate how religious groups diverge in animal perception, thereby highlighting the role of mind attribution as a crucial link between sacredness and edibility.

Country-level correlates of the Dark Triad traits in 49 countries.

OBJECTIVES: The Dark Triad traits (i.e., narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism) capture individual differences in aversive personality to complement work on other taxonomies, such as the Big Five traits. However, the literature on the Dark Triad traits relies mostly on samples from English-speaking (i.e., Westernized) countries. We broadened the scope of this literature by sampling from a wider array of countries. METHOD: We drew on data from 49 countries (N = 11,723; 65.8% female; AgeMean  = 21.53) to examine how an extensive net of country-level variables in economic status (e.g., Human Development Index), social relations (e.g., gender equality), political orientations (e.g., democracy), and cultural values (e.g., embeddedness) relate to country-level rates of the Dark Triad traits, as well as variance in the magnitude of sex differences in them. RESULTS: Narcissism was especially sensitive to country-level variables. Countries with more embedded and hierarchical cultural systems were more narcissistic. Also, sex differences in narcissism were larger in more developed societies: Women were less likely to be narcissistic in developed (vs. less developed) countries. CONCLUSIONS: We discuss the results based on evolutionary and social role models of personality and sex differences. That higher country-level narcissism was more common in less developed countries, whereas sex differences in narcissism were larger in more developed countries, is more consistent with evolutionary than social role models.

Being an other-sex crush during early adolescence in India: Investigating socio-behavioral and psychological concomitants.

INTRODUCTION: After years of neglect, there is now strong empirical interest in adolescents' romantic experiences. Most studies, however, focus on adolescents' romantic relationships in Western societies and fail to consider other-types of romantic experiences and adolescents who reside in non-Western societies. METHODS: The present study begins to address these research gaps by examining the social-behavioral and psychological concomitants of being viewed by many other-sex peers as a crush, or having high crush status, in a large (N = 445; 56% male; Mage = 13.77 years, SD = 0.43) longitudinal sample of young adolescents in urban India. RESULTS: Utilizing self- and peer-report data, results provide the first evidence that being viewed by many peers as an other-sex crush in India is related to some of the same (i.e., physical attractiveness), but also different (i.e., shyness) social-behavioral characteristics relative to what has been found in studies of young adolescents from the United States. Further analysis revealed new evidence regarding the unique social-behavioral (i.e., decreased physical aggression) and psychological (i.e., decreased social anxiety) outcomes associated with high crush status in urban India. CONCLUSIONS: Taken as a whole, results underscore the importance of considering the larger cultural context in studies of young adolescents' crush experiences.

Detecting affiliation in colaughter across 24 societies.

Laughter is a nonverbal vocal expression that often communicates positive affect and cooperative intent in humans. Temporally coincident laughter occurring within groups is a potentially rich cue of affiliation to overhearers. We examined listeners' judgments of affiliation based on brief, decontextualized instances of colaughter between either established friends or recently acquainted strangers. In a sample of 966 participants from 24 societies, people reliably distinguished friends from strangers with an accuracy of 53-67%. Acoustic analyses of the individual laughter segments revealed that, across cultures, listeners' judgments were consistently predicted by voicing dynamics, suggesting perceptual sensitivity to emotionally triggered spontaneous production. Colaughter affords rapid and accurate appraisals of affiliation that transcend cultural and linguistic boundaries, and may constitute a universal means of signaling cooperative relationships.

The Perception of Spontaneous and Volitional Laughter Across 21 Societies.

Laughter is a nonverbal vocalization occurring in every known culture, ubiquitous across all forms of human social interaction. Here, we examined whether listeners around the world, irrespective of their own native language and culture, can distinguish between spontaneous laughter and volitional laughter-laugh types likely generated by different vocal-production systems. Using a set of 36 recorded laughs produced by female English speakers in tests involving 884 participants from 21 societies across six regions of the world, we asked listeners to determine whether each laugh was real or fake, and listeners differentiated between the two laugh types with an accuracy of 56% to 69%. Acoustic analysis revealed that sound features associated with arousal in vocal production predicted listeners' judgments fairly uniformly across societies. These results demonstrate high consistency across cultures in laughter judgments, underscoring the potential importance of nonverbal vocal communicative phenomena in human affiliation and cooperation.

Heterogeneity of long-history migration explains cultural differences in reports of emotional expressivity and the functions of smiles.

A small number of facial expressions may be universal in that they are produced by the same basic affective states and recognized as such throughout the world. However, other aspects of emotionally expressive behavior vary widely across culture. Just why do they vary? We propose that some cultural differences in expressive behavior are determined by historical heterogeneity, or the extent to which a country's present-day population descended from migration from numerous vs. few source countries over a period of 500 y. Our reanalysis of data on cultural rules for displaying emotion from 32 countries [n = 5,340; Matsumoto D, Yoo S, Fontaine J (2008) J Cross Cult Psychol 39(1):55-74] reveals that historical heterogeneity explains substantial, unique variance in the degree to which individuals believe that emotions should be openly expressed. We also report an original study of the underlying states that people believe are signified by a smile. Cluster analysis applied to data from nine countries (n = 726), including Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States, reveals that countries group into "cultures of smiling" determined by historical heterogeneity. Factor analysis shows that smiles sort into three social-functional subtypes: pleasure, affiliative, and dominance. The relative importance of these smile subtypes varies as a function of historical heterogeneity. These findings thus highlight the power of social-historical factors to explain cross-cultural variation in emotional expression and smile behavior.

The mental health continuum-short form: The structure and application for cross-cultural studies-A 38 nation study.

OBJECTIVE: The Mental Health Continuum-Short Form (MHC-SF) is a brief scale measuring positive human functioning. The study aimed to examine the factor structure and to explore the cross-cultural utility of the MHC-SF using bifactor models and exploratory structural equation modelling. METHOD: Using multigroup confirmatory analysis (MGCFA) we examined the measurement invariance of the MHC-SF in 38 countries (university students, N = 8,066; 61.73% women, mean age 21.55 years). RESULTS: MGCFA supported the cross-cultural replicability of a bifactor structure and a metric level of invariance between student samples. The average proportion of variance explained by the general factor was high (ECV = .66), suggesting that the three aspects of mental health (emotional, social, and psychological well-being) can be treated as a single dimension of well-being. CONCLUSION: The metric level of invariance offers the possibility of comparing correlates and predictors of positive mental functioning across countries; however, the comparison of the levels of mental health across countries is not possible due to lack of scalar invariance. Our study has preliminary character and could serve as an initial assessment of the structure of the MHC-SF across different cultural settings. Further studies on general populations are required for extending our findings.

Understanding the Association Between Spirituality, Religiosity, and Feelings of Happiness and Sadness Among HIV-Positive Indian Adults: Examining Stress-Related Growth as a Mediator.

This study examined the role of stress-related growth as a mediator of the associations between spirituality, religiosity, and feelings of happiness and sadness in a sample of 178 HIV-positive Indian adults. Results indicated that spirituality, but not religiosity, was associated with feelings of happiness and sadness. Subsequent mediation analyses indicated that stress-related growth fully mediated the relationships involving spirituality and feelings of happiness and sadness. Overall, our findings point to the importance of facilitating greater spiritual development among HIV-positive Indians, as well as promoting strategies that help them develop and apply stress-related growth coping methods in their lives.

The effects of brief prayer on the experience of forgiveness: An American and Indian comparison.

The present study offers a cross-cultural examination of the effect of prayer on forgiveness. American (n = 51) and Indian (n = 100) participants either prayed for their romantic partner (prayer condition) or described their romantic partner's physical attributes (control condition). Prayers were self-guided and lasted 3 minutes. Pre-test and post-test measures of retaliation were completed. Results showed that participants in the prayer group showed statistically significant decreases in retaliation motives from pre-test to post-test and the magnitude of this change was not different across cultures. Control groups in both cultures showed no change. Because of the religious diversity present in the Indian sample, the robustness of the effect of prayer on forgiveness was tested across Christian, Hindu and Muslim Indians. Religious affiliation did not moderate the effect of prayer on forgiveness in this sample. Results suggest that a brief prayer is capable of producing real change in forgiveness and this change is consistent across American and Indian cultures and across three different religious groups in India. Brief prayer for others that enhances forgiveness may be useful for individuals in close relationships, in certain counselling settings and for people in many different walks of life.

The acceptability among young Hindus and Muslims of actively ending the lives of newborns with genetic defects.

AIM: To explore the views in non-Western cultures about ending the lives of damaged newborns. METHOD: 254 university students from India and 150 from Kuwait rated the acceptability of ending the lives of newborns with genetic defects in 54 vignettes consisting of all combinations of four factors: gestational age (term or 7 months); severity of genetic defect (trisomy 21 alone, trisomy 21 with serious morphological abnormalities or trisomy 13 with impending death); the parents' attitude about prolonging care (unknown, in favour or opposed); and the procedure used (withholding treatment, withdrawing it or injecting a lethal substance). RESULTS: Four clusters were identified by cluster analysis and subjected to analysis of variance. Cluster I, labelled 'Never Acceptable', included 4% of the Indians and 59% of the Kuwaitis. Cluster II, 'No Firm Opinion', had little variation in rating from one scenario to the next; it included 38% of the Indians and 18% of the Kuwaitis. In Cluster III, 'Parents' Attitude+Severity+Procedure', all three factors affected the ratings; it was composed of 18% of the Indians and 16% of the Kuwaitis. Cluster IV was called 'Severity+Parents' Attitude' because these had the strongest impact; it was composed of 40% of the Indians and 7% of the Kuwaitis. CONCLUSIONS: In accordance with the teachings of Islam versus Hinduism, Kuwaiti students were more likely to oppose ending a newborn's life under all conditions, Indian students more likely to favour it and to judge its acceptability in light of the different circumstances.

Kneel, stand, prostrate: The psychology of prayer postures in three world religions.

Most people practice a religion, often multiple times daily. Among the most visible aspects of these practices are body postures, which according to embodiment theories, likely shape the psychological experience of religion. In a preregistered study, we test this idea among Christians, Muslims, and Hindus in the United States, Turkey, and India (N = 2,458). In a repeated-measures experimental design, participants imagined praying in various typical postures, then reported their affective experiences, perceived relationship with deity, and prayer content for each posture. Compared to downward and constrictive postures, expansive and upward postures led to more positive emotions, dominance, and praise-focused prayers, yet fewer introspective or intercessory prayers. Interestingly, these effects varied based on religious context (e.g., many Hindus found upward and expansive postures offensive, causing no positive affect). We further explored whether these effects varied based on posture familiarity, religiosity, interoceptive sensibility, and personality traits. This research provides unique data on embodied processes shaping affect and cognition in religious practices.

Pancultural nostalgia in action: Prevalence, triggers, and psychological functions of nostalgia across cultures.

Nostalgia is a social, self-relevant, and bittersweet (although mostly positive) emotion that arises when reflecting on fond past memories and serves key psychological functions. The majority of evidence concerning the prevalence, triggers, and functions of nostalgia has been amassed in samples from a handful of largely Western cultures. If nostalgia is a fundamental psychological resource, it should perform similar functions across cultures, although its operational dynamics may be shaped by culture. This study (N = 2,606) examined dispositional nostalgia, self-reported triggers of nostalgia, and functions of experimentally induced nostalgia in young adults across 28 countries and a special administrative region of China (i.e., Hong Kong). Results indicated that nostalgia is frequently experienced across cultures, albeit better valued in more-developed countries (i.e., higher national wealth and life-expectancy). Nostalgia is triggered by psychological threats (especially in warmer countries), sensory stimuli (especially in more-developed countries), and social gatherings (especially in less-developed countries). The positive or negative affect prompted by experimentally induced nostalgia varied by country, but was mild overall. More importantly, recalling a nostalgic (vs. ordinary) memory increased social connectedness, self-continuity, and meaning in life across cultures. In less-developed countries, recalling an ordinary memory also conferred some of these functions, reducing the effect size of nostalgia. Finally, recalling a nostalgic (vs. ordinary) memory augmented state satisfaction with life in countries with lower quality of living (i.e., lower life-expectancy and life-satisfaction). Overall, findings confirm the relevance of nostalgia across a wide range of cultures and indicate cultural nuances in its functioning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Grandiose narcissism, unfounded beliefs, and behavioral reactions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A theoretical perspective on grandiose narcissism suggests four forms of it (sanctity, admiration, heroism, rivalry) and states that these forms conduce to different ways of thinking and acting. Guided by this perspective, we examined in a multinational and multicultural study (61 countries; N = 15,039) how narcissism forms are linked to cognitions and behaviors prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic. As expected, differences in cognitions and behaviors across narcissism forms emerged. For example, higher narcissistic rivalry predicted lower likelihood of enactment of COVID-19 prevention behaviors, but higher narcissistic sanctity predicted higher likelihood of enactment of COVID-19 prevention behaviors. Further, whereas the heroism, admiration, and rivalry narcissism forms acted in a typically antisocial manner, with high narcissism predicting greater endorsement of unfounded health beliefs, the sanctity form acted in a prosocial manner, with higher narcissism being linked to lower endorsement of unfounded COVID-19 health beliefs. Thus, the findings (a) support the idea of four narcissism forms acting differently, and (b) show that these differences reflect a double-edged sword, sometimes linking to an anti-social orientation, and sometimes linking to a pro-social orientation.

Compassion and contamination. Cultural differences in vegetarianism.

A growing body of research has shown that Western vegetarians report more concern for animal welfare and environmental sustainability, and endorse more liberal values than do Western omnivores. However, despite the prevalence of Indian vegetarianism, its psychological associations and underpinnings remain largely unexamined. In Study 1, we find that Euro-American vegetarians are more concerned than omnivores with the impact of their daily food choices on the environment and animal welfare, show more concern for general animal welfare, and endorse universalistic values more, yet among Indian participants, these differences are not significant. In Study 2, we show that Indian vegetarians more strongly endorse the belief that eating meat is polluting, and show a heightened concern for the conservative ethics of Purity, Authority, and Ingroup relative to their omnivorous peers, whereas these differences are largely absent among Euro-Canadians and Euro-Americans.

Emotion regulation strategies and psychological health across cultures.

Emotion regulation is important for psychological health and can be achieved by implementing various strategies. How one regulates emotions is critical for maximizing psychological health. Few studies, however, tested the psychological correlates of different emotion regulation strategies across multiple cultures. In a preregistered cross-cultural study (N = 3,960, 19 countries), conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, we assessed associations between the use of seven emotion regulation strategies (situation selection, distraction, rumination, cognitive reappraisal, acceptance, expressive suppression, and emotional support seeking) and four indices of psychological health (life satisfaction, depressive symptoms, perceived stress, and loneliness). Model comparisons based on Bayesian information criteria provided support for cultural differences in 36% of associations, with very strong support for differences in 18% of associations. Strategies that were linked to worse psychological health in individualist countries (e.g., rumination, expressive suppression) were unrelated or linked to better psychological health in collectivist countries. Cultural differences in associations with psychological health were most prominent for expressive suppression and rumination and also found for distraction and acceptance. In addition, we found evidence for cultural similarities in 46% of associations between strategies and psychological health, but none of this evidence was very strong. Cultural similarities were most prominent in associations of psychological health with emotional support seeking. These findings highlight the importance of considering the cultural context to understand how individuals from diverse backgrounds manage unpleasant emotions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Greater traditionalism predicts COVID-19 precautionary behaviors across 27 societies.

People vary both in their embrace of their society's traditions, and in their perception of hazards as salient and necessitating a response. Over evolutionary time, traditions have offered avenues for addressing hazards, plausibly resulting in linkages between orientations toward tradition and orientations toward danger. Emerging research documents connections between traditionalism and threat responsivity, including pathogen-avoidance motivations. Additionally, because hazard-mitigating behaviors can conflict with competing priorities, associations between traditionalism and pathogen avoidance may hinge on contextually contingent tradeoffs. The COVID-19 pandemic provides a real-world test of the posited relationship between traditionalism and hazard avoidance. Across 27 societies (N = 7844), we find that, in a majority of countries, individuals' endorsement of tradition positively correlates with their adherence to costly COVID-19-avoidance behaviors; accounting for some of the conflicts that arise between public health precautions and other objectives further strengthens this evidence that traditionalism is associated with greater attention to hazards.

Belief in a just world, teacher justice, and bullying behavior.

The relation between school students' belief in a just world (BJW) and their bullying behavior was investigated in a questionnaire study. The mediating role of teacher justice was also examined. Data were obtained from a total of N = 458 German and Indian high school students. Regression analyses revealed that the more strongly students believed in a personal just world and the more they evaluated their teachers' behavior toward them personally to be just, the less bullying behavior they reported. Moreover, students with a strong BJW tended to evaluate their teachers' behavior toward them personally to be more just, and the experience of teacher justice mediated the relation between BJW and less bullying perpetration. This pattern of results was as expected and consistent across different cultural contexts. It persisted when neuroticism, sex, and country were controlled. The adaptive functions of BJW and implications for future school research are discussed.