High economic inequality is linked to greater moralization.

Throughout the 21st century, economic inequality is predicted to increase as we face new challenges, from changes in the technological landscape to the growing climate crisis. It is crucial we understand how these changes in inequality may affect how people think and behave. We propose that economic inequality threatens the social fabric of society, in turn increasing moralization-that is, the greater tendency to employ or emphasize morality in everyday life-as an attempt to restore order and control. Using longitudinal data from X, formerly known as Twitter, our first study demonstrates that high economic inequality is associated with greater use of moral language online (e.g. the use of words such as "disgust", "hurt", and "respect'). Study 2 then examined data from 41 regions around the world, generally showing that higher inequality has a small association with harsher moral judgments of people's everyday actions. Together these findings demonstrate that economic inequality is linked to the tendency to see the world through a moral lens.

Social mindfulness predicts concern for nature and immigrants across 36 nations.

People cooperate every day in ways that range from largescale contributions that mitigate climate change to simple actions such as leaving another individual with choice - known as social mindfulness. It is not yet clear whether and how these complex and more simple forms of cooperation relate. Prior work has found that countries with individuals who made more socially mindful choices were linked to a higher country environmental performance - a proxy for complex cooperation. Here we replicated this initial finding in 41 samples around the world, demonstrating the robustness of the association between social mindfulness and environmental performance, and substantially built on it to show this relationship extended to a wide range of complex cooperative indices, tied closely to many current societal issues. We found that greater social mindfulness expressed by an individual was related to living in countries with more social capital, more community participation and reduced prejudice towards immigrants. Our findings speak to the symbiotic relationship between simple and more complex forms of cooperation in societies.

Seeing the self through rose-colored glasses: A cross-cultural study of positive illusions using a behavioral approach.

Previous studies on self-enhancement bias used self-report measures to investigate individual and cultural differences in well-being. In the current research, we took a behavioral approach to analyze positive and negative perception tendencies between European Canadians, Asian Canadians and Koreans. In Study 1 and 2, participants were asked to bet on their expectation of success on a given task and then perform the task. The betting behaviors and actual performance were used to quantify positive and negative perception tendencies. In Study 1, we did not find cultural differences in positive and negative illusions. Positive self-perceptions were also not associated with higher self-reported well-being. In Study 2, we employed the same research design as Study 1, and we included a measure of perceived desirability to examine whether perceived desirability of the performance tasks are related to the two illusions indices. The results from Study 2 replicated the findings from Study 1, and perceived desirability did not influence the results. Our findings suggest that North Americans do not always exhibit more positive self-perceptions than Asians, suggesting that North Americans do not always view the self through rose-colored lenses.

Preference for depth versus breadth in social relationships: Childhood socioeconomic background matters.

Although the need for social connection is fundamental, people approach this need through different strategies. Drawing from life history theory, the current research explored whether individuals' early-life experiences are associated with narrow/deep (depth), or broad/shallow (breadth) approach to social relationships. Three studies revealed that participants' childhood socioeconomic status (SES) interacts with perception of economic instability to create diverging preferences in social relationship pattern. Specifically, when economic instability was salient (chronic belief, Study 1; experimentally primed, Studies 2 and 3), individuals from lower-SES childhood preferred a narrower and deeper social network, whereas those from higher-SES childhood preferred a broader and shallower network. Taken together, the present research offers a novel understanding of depth- versus breadth-focused approach to social relationships from the perspective of life history theory.

Perceiving societal pressure to be happy is linked to poor well-being, especially in happy nations.

Happiness is a valuable experience, and societies want their citizens to be happy. Although this societal commitment seems laudable, overly emphasizing positivity (versus negativity) may create an unattainable emotion norm that ironically compromises individual well-being. In this multi-national study (40 countries; 7443 participants), we investigate how societal pressure to be happy and not sad predicts emotional, cognitive and clinical indicators of well-being around the world, and examine how these relations differ as a function of countries' national happiness levels (collected from the World Happiness Report). Although detrimental well-being associations manifest for an average country, the strength of these relations varies across countries. People's felt societal pressure to be happy and not sad is particularly linked to poor well-being in countries with a higher World Happiness Index. Although the cross-sectional nature of our work prohibits causal conclusions, our findings highlight the correlational link between social emotion valuation and individual well-being, and suggest that high national happiness levels may have downsides for some.

Happiness, Meaning, and Psychological Richness.

What kind of life do people want? In psychology, a good life has typically been conceptualized in terms of either hedonic or eudaimonic well-being. We propose that psychological richness is another neglected aspect of what people consider a good life. In study 1 (9-nation cross-cultural study), we asked participants whether they ideally wanted a happy, a meaningful, or a psychologically rich life. Roughly 7 to 17% of participants chose the psychologically rich life. In study 2, we asked 1611 Americans and 680 Koreans what they regret most in their lives; then, if they could undo or reverse the regretful event, whether their lives would have been happier, more meaningful, or psychologically richer as a result. Roughly 28% of Americans and 35% of Koreans reported their lives would have been psychologically richer. Together, this work provides a foundation for the study of psychological richness as another dimension of a good life.

Family Matters: Rethinking the Psychology of Human Social Motivation.

What motives do people prioritize in their social lives? Historically, social psychologists, especially those adopting an evolutionary perspective, have devoted a great deal of research attention to sexual attraction and romantic-partner choice (mate seeking). Research on long-term familial bonds (mate retention and kin care) has been less thoroughly connected to relevant comparative and evolutionary work on other species, and in the case of kin care, these bonds have been less well researched. Examining varied sources of data from 27 societies around the world, we found that people generally view familial motives as primary in importance and mate-seeking motives as relatively low in importance. Compared with other groups, college students, single people, and men place relatively higher emphasis on mate seeking, but even those samples rated kin-care motives as more important. Furthermore, motives linked to long-term familial bonds are positively associated with psychological well-being, but mate-seeking motives are associated with anxiety and depression. We address theoretical and empirical reasons why there has been extensive research on mate seeking and why people prioritize goals related to long-term familial bonds over mating goals. Reallocating relatively greater research effort toward long-term familial relationships would likely yield many interesting new findings relevant to everyday people's highest social priorities.

When Gratitude Evokes Indebtedness.

BACKGROUND: Research in the US found that gratitude increases happiness. We conducted three studies to examine whether gratitude increases happiness among Koreans, as well. METHODS: Participants were randomly assigned to a gratitude or a control condition in Studies 1 and 2, and into a gratitude toward someone important or a gratitude toward own health condition in Study 3. Their moods were then measured. RESULTS: Gratitude writing marginally significantly evoked indebtedness among Korean students (Study 1, N = 336) but not among American students (Study 2, N = 219). Equally important, even among Americans, those who wrote about their gratitude toward someone important reported feeling indebtedness marginally more than those who wrote about their gratitude toward something or someone not that important. In Study 3 (N = 181), American participants, randomly assigned to write about their gratitude toward someone important, reported not only more gratitude but also more indebtedness than those assigned to write about their gratitude toward their own health. CONCLUSIONS: Taken together, these studies suggest that gratitude evokes indebtedness when gratitude is about someone important.

Do Happy Events Love Company? Cultural Variations in Sharing Positive Events With Others.

The present study examined cultural differences in the act of sharing positive events with others, called capitalization attempts. The first three studies tested whether capitalization attempts differ between two cultures using multiple methods: self-reports (Study 1), children's storybooks (Study 2), and Facebook (Study 3). We found that Koreans are less likely to share their positive events with others than European Americans. Study 4 further examined the antecedents and consequences of capitalization attempts. We replicated the earlier findings that Koreans are hesitant to share their positive events and demonstrated that this is because Koreans are more concerned about the potential negative consequences for social relationships. Moreover, we found that the cultural differences in capitalization attempts partly account for mean-level differences in well-being between cultures. Implications for capitalization, culture, and well-being are discussed.

Darling, Get Closer to Me: Spatial Proximity Amplifies Interpersonal Liking.

Does close distance increase liking for a social object? In a preliminary sociogram task, an association between proximity and intimacy was found in drawings of self and others. In three experimental studies, male participants consistently preferred female targets who were (actually or appeared to be) close than far from them. Distance was manipulated through various means-sitting distance (Study 2), presenting two facial images separately to each eye by a stereoscopic device (Study 3), or a video clip (Study 4). This effect was stronger among those with deprived social needs and occurred in part because close (vs. far) targets seemed psychologically more accessible to the perceiver. Our findings offer rare experimental evidence for the empirically challenged propinquity effect and provide new insights on how distance shapes inner experience.

Development and preliminary validation of a Korean version of the Personal Relative Deprivation Scale.

The current research developed and validated a Korean-translated version of the Personal Relative Deprivation Scale (PRDS). The PRDS measures individual differences in people's tendencies to feel resentful about what they have compared to what other people like them have. Across 2 studies, Exploratory Factor Analyses revealed that the two reverse-worded items from the original PRDS did not load onto the primary factor for the Korean-translated PRDS. A reduced 3-item Korean PRDS, however, showed good convergent validity. Replicating previous findings using Western samples, greater tendencies to make social comparisons of abilities (but not opinions) were associated with higher PRDS (Studies 1 and 2), and participants scoring higher on the 3-item Korean PRDS were more materialistic (Studies 1 and 2), reported worse physical health (Study 1), had lower self-esteem (Study 2) and experienced higher stress (Study 2).

Why People Are in a Generally Good Mood.

Evidence shows that people feel mild positive moods when no strong emotional events are occurring, a phenomenon known as positive mood offset. We offer an evolutionary explanation of this characteristic, showing that it improves fertility, fecundity, and health, and abets other characteristics that were critical to reproductive success. We review research showing that positive mood offset is virtually universal in the nations of the world, even among people who live in extremely difficult circumstances. Positive moods increase the likelihood of the types of adaptive behaviors that likely characterized our Paleolithic ancestors, such as creativity, planning, mating, and sociality. Because of the ubiquity and apparent advantages of positive moods, it is a reasonable hypothesis that humans were selected for positivity offset in our evolutionary past. We outline additional evidence that is needed to help confirm that positive mood offset is an evolutionary adaptation in humans and we explore the research questions that the hypothesis generates.

Culture, distress, and oxytocin receptor polymorphism (OXTR) interact to influence emotional support seeking.

Research has demonstrated that certain genotypes are expressed in different forms, depending on input from the social environment. To examine sensitivity to cultural norms regarding emotional support seeking as a type of social environment, we explored the behavioral expression of oxytocin receptor polymorphism (OXTR) rs53576, a gene previously related to socio-emotional sensitivity. Seeking emotional support in times of distress is normative in American culture but not in Korean culture. Consequently, we predicted a three-way interaction of culture, distress, and OXTR genotype on emotional support seeking. Korean and American participants (n = 274) completed assessments of psychological distress and emotional support seeking and were genotyped for OXTR. We found the predicted three-way interaction: among distressed American participants, those with the GG/AG genotypes reported seeking more emotional social support, compared with those with the AA genotype, whereas Korean participants did not differ significantly by genotype; under conditions of low distress, OXTR groups did not differ significantly in either cultural group. These findings suggest that OXTR rs53576 is sensitive to input from the social environment, specifically cultural norms regarding emotional social support seeking. These findings also indicate that psychological distress and culture are important moderators that shape behavioral outcomes associated with OXTR genotypes.

Culture, serotonin receptor polymorphism and locus of attention.

The present research examined the interaction between genes and culture as potential determinants of individuals' locus of attention. As the serotonin (5-HT) system has been associated with attentional focus and the ability to adapt to changes in reinforcement, we examined the serotonin 1A receptor polymorphism (5-HTR1A). Koreans and European Americans were genotyped and reported their chronic locus of attention. There was a significant interaction between 5-HTR1A genotype and culture in the locus of attention. Koreans reported attending to the field more than European Americans, and this cultural difference was moderated by 5-HTR1A. There was a linear pattern such that those homozygous for the G allele, which is associated with reduced ability to adapt to changes in reinforcement, more strongly endorsed the culturally reinforced mode of thinking than those homozygous for the C allele, with those heterozygous in the middle. Our findings suggest that the same genetic predisposition can result in divergent psychological outcomes, depending on an individual's cultural context.

Sheltering the self from the storm: self-construal abstractness and the stability of self-esteem.

Self-construal abstractness (SCA) refers to the degree to which people construe important bases of self-esteem in a broad, flexible, and abstract rather than a concrete and specific manner. This article hypothesized that SCA would be a unique predictor of self-esteem stability, capturing the degree to which people's most important bases of self-worth are resistant to disconfirmation. Two studies using a daily diary methodology examined relationships between SCA, daily self-esteem, and daily emotions and/or events. In Study 1, individual differences in SCA emerged as the most consistent and unique predictor of self-esteem stability. Furthermore, SCA contributed to self-esteem stability by buffering the influence of daily negative emotions on self-esteem. Study 2 manipulated SCA via a daily self-construal task and found an abstract versus concrete self-focus to buffer the influence of daily negative events on self-esteem. Implications of these findings for the study of the self and well-being are discussed.

Downsides of an overly context-sensitive self: implications from the culture and subjective well-being research.

The self becomes context sensitive in service of the need to belong. When it comes to achieving personal happiness, an identity system that derives its worth and meaning excessively from its social context puts itself in a significantly disadvantageous position. This article integrates empirical findings and ideas from the self, subjective well-being, and cross-cultural literature and tries to offer insights to why East Asian cultural members report surprisingly low levels of happiness. The various cognitive, motivational, behavioral, and affective characteristics of the overly relation-oriented self are discussed as potential explanations. Implications for the study of self and culture are offered.

Culture, identity consistency, and subjective well-being.

All individuals have multiple views of themselves. Whereas the consistency among the different aspects of identity is emphasized in Western cultures, the "multiple selves" are often viewed as coexisting realities in East Asian cultures. This research revisits the classic thesis in psychology that identity consistency is a prerequisite condition of psychological well-being. Between individuals (Study 1), people with a more consistent self-view had a more clear self-knowledge, were more assertive, and, most notably, had self-experiences that were less affected by the perspectives of others. Compared with North American participants (Study 2), Koreans viewed themselves more flexibly across situations, and their subjective well-being was less predictable from levels of identity consistency. Also, consistent individuals received positive social evaluations from others in the United States but not in Korea.

Cultural influences on personality.

Ecologies shape cultures; cultures influence the development of personalities. There are both universal and culture-specific aspects of variation in personality. Some culture-specific aspects correspond to cultural syndromes such as complexity, tightness, individualism, and collectivism. A large body of literature suggests that the Big Five personality factors emerge in various cultures. However, caution is required in arguing for such universality, because most studies have not included emic (culture-specific) traits and have not studied samples that are extremely different in culture from Western samples.