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).

Shared humanity, awareness of socio-economic privilege, and classism during the pandemic as predictors of supporting equal socio-economic policies.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused unemployment to skyrocket, exposed the longstanding inequalities in health care services and working conditions, and mainly affected the poor in different parts of the world. In the current study, we focus on social identity and social class-related factors that are critical during the pandemic to gain insights into what predicts support for policies favoring economic equality in the post-pandemic period. We argue that to the extent that individuals 1) identify with all humanity during the pandemic, 2) are aware of their socio-economic status-based privilege, 3) do not hold classist attitudes, they would support policies favoring economic equality. In Study 1, survey data from 1212 participants in Turkey were analyzed by means of hierarchical linear regression analysis. The findings showed that stronger identification with all humanity, higher awareness of socio-economic status-based privilege, and less endorsement of classist attitudes predict more support for socio-economic equality policies in the post-pandemic period, after controlling for socio-demographic and socio-political characteristics of participants. Study 2 (N = 212) replicated the findings in a different context, namely the U.S. Our findings extend previous studies by showing the importance of a global identity, such as shared human identity, in the ongoing and potentially in the aftermath of the pandemic. In addition, our findings highlight the joint contributions of socio-economic factors such as classist attitudes and awareness of class-based privilege to the support for socio-economic policies.

Obstacles to Birth Surname Retention Upon Marriage: How Do Hostile Sexism and System Justification Predict Support for Marital Surname Change Among Women?

Despite the ongoing shift in societal norms and gender-discriminatory practices toward more equality, many heterosexual women worldwide, including in many Western societies, choose to replace their birth surname with the family name of their spouse upon marriage. Previous research has demonstrated that the adherence to sexist ideologies (i.e., a system of discriminatory gender-based beliefs) among women is associated with their greater endorsement of practices and policies that maintain gender inequality. By integrating the ideas from the system justification theory and the ambivalent sexism theory, we proposed that the more women adhere to hostile and benevolent sexist beliefs, the more likely they would be to justify existing gender relations in society, which in turn, would positively predict their support for traditional, husband-centered marital surname change. We further argued that hostile (as compared to benevolent) sexism could act as a particularly strong direct predictor of the support for marital surname change among women. We tested these possibilities across three cross-sectional studies conducted among women in Turkey (Study 1, N=118, self-identified feminist women; Study 2, N=131, female students) and the United States (Study 3, N=140, female students). Results of Studies 1 and 3 revealed that higher adherence to hostile (but not benevolent) sexism was associated with higher support for marital surname change indirectly through higher gender-based system justification. In Study 2, the hypothesized full mediation was not observed. Consistent with our predictions, in all three studies, hostile (but not benevolent) sexism was found to be a direct positive predictor of the support for marital surname change among women. We discuss the role of dominant ideologies surrounding marriage and inegalitarian naming conventions in different cultures as obstacles to women's birth surname retention upon marriage.

Negative emotions in siblings of individuals with developmental disabilities: The roles of early maladaptive schemas and system justification.

BACKGROUND: Developmental disabilities (DD) in close family members have profound effects on psychological adjustment of siblings of individuals with DD. One factor that influences the psychological adjustment of siblings is emotions. However, little is known about emotions among siblings of individuals with DD. AIMS: This study sought to examine negative emotions of adolescent siblings of individuals with DD and focus on the roles of individual- and system-related factors, namely early maladaptive schemas (EMS) and system justification. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: A cross-sectional study including adolescent 72 siblings of individuals with DD and 109 adolescent siblings of individuals without DD was conducted. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: The siblings of individuals with DD had higher scores on the Other-Directedness schema domain and system justification than the siblings of individuals without DD. However, the frequency of negative emotions did not differ between groups. Lower scores on EMS and higher scores on system justification were associated with less frequent negative emotions. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Negative emotions seem to be common in adolescents regardless of having a sibling with DD or not. Nevertheless, EMS and system justification tendencies in siblings of individuals with DD may act as vulnerability factors for negative emotions.

Expressive suppression as an obstacle to social change: Linking system justification, emotion regulation, and collective action.

Research on system justification theory suggests that justifying the societal status quo decreases negative emotions, leading to less collective action. In this investigation, we propose that the degree to which negative emotions mediate the link between system justification and collective action may depend upon whether individuals tend to suppress the expression of their negative emotions. We tested this hypothesis in the diverse socio-political contexts of Turkey, Israel, and the U.S. In one correlational study (Study 1) and three experimental studies (Studies 2-4), we observed that the link between system justification and willingness to participate in collective action through anger (Studies 1-2 and 4) and guilt (Study 3) was moderated by expressive suppression. We found that negative emotions mediated the association between system justification and collective action among those who suppress the expression of their emotions less frequently, but not those who use expressive suppression more frequently. These findings suggest that emotion regulation may undermine, rather than facilitate, efforts to engage in collective action even among people who are low in system justification. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11031-021-09883-5.

Religiosity and Desired Emotions: Belief Maintenance or Prosocial Facilitation?

We assessed how religiosity is related to desired emotions. We tested two competing hypotheses. First, religiosity could be associated with a stronger desire for emotions that strengthen foundational religious beliefs (i.e., more awe and gratitude and less pride). Second, religiosity could be associated with a stronger desire for emotions that promote prosocial engagement (e.g., more love and empathy and less anger and jealousy). Two cross-cultural studies supported the first hypothesis. Religiosity was related to desire for emotions that strengthen religious beliefs, but not to desire for socially engaging or socially disengaging emotions. These findings held across countries and across several different religions. A third study investigating the mechanisms of both hypotheses using structural equation modeling supported only the first hypothesis. This research extends prior work on desired emotions to the domain of religiosity. It demonstrates that the emotions religious people desire may be those that help strengthen their religious beliefs.

Disappointment expression evokes collective guilt and collective action in intergroup conflict: the moderating role of legitimacy perceptions.

Research on intergroup emotions has largely focused on the experience of emotions and surprisingly little attention has been given to the expression of emotions. Drawing on the social-functional approach to emotions, we argue that in the context of intergroup conflicts, outgroup members' expression of disappointment with one's ingroup induces the complementary emotion of collective guilt and correspondingly a collective action protesting ingroup actions against the outgroup. In Study 1 conducted immediately after the 2014 Gaza war, Jewish-Israeli participants received information about outgroup's (Palestinians) expression of emotions (disappointment, fear, or none). As predicted, outgroup's expression of disappointment increased collective guilt and willingness to participate in collective action, but only among those who saw the intergroup situation as illegitimate. Moreover, collective guilt mediated the relationship between disappointment expression and collective action, moderated, again, by legitimacy perception. In Study 2, we replicated these results in the context of racial tension between Black and White Americans in the US. We discuss the theoretical and applied implications of the findings.

God rest our hearts: Religiosity and cognitive reappraisal.

Although religiosity is often accompanied by more intense emotions, we propose that people who are more religious may be better at using 1 of the most effective emotion regulation strategies-namely, cognitive reappraisal. We argue that religion, which is a meaning-making system, is linked to better cognitive reappraisal, which involves changing the meaning of emotional stimuli. Four studies (N = 2,078) supported our hypotheses. In Study 1, religiosity was associated with more frequent use of cognitive reappraisal in 3 distinct religions (i.e., Islam, Christianity, Judaism). In Studies 2A-2B, we replicated these findings using 2 indices of cognitive reappraisal and in a large representative sample. In Studies 3-4, individuals more (vs. less) religious were more effective in using cognitive reappraisal in the laboratory. We discuss how these findings inform our understanding of the psychology of religion and of emotion regulation.