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Napp and Breda (2023) raised three arguments against the generational-shift account of the gender-equality paradox (GEP) in chess participation. First, using finer operationalizations of the age structure of players, they showed that it partially but not fully accounts for the GEP in chess participation. I find merit in these analyses and conclusion. Second, they argued that the country-level age structure is unrelated to the GEP in chess participation, which undermines the generational-shift account of the GEP. In contrast, I provide new analyses to show that the two are related after adjusting for the U-shaped relation between gender equality and female chess participation. Finally, they argued that previous explanations of the GEP are viable for explaining the GEP in chess participation. In contrast, I argue that the global increase in the proportion of female players is incompatible with previous explanations of the GEP, and I provide new analyses to support this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is generally assumed that there is greater pressure to conform to social norms in collectivist cultures than in individualist cultures. However, most research on cultural differences in social norms has examined norms for behaviors. Here, we examine cultural differences in norms for emotions. Relative to members of collectivist cultures, members of individualist cultures are more attuned to internal states and value them more. Therefore, we predicted that adherence to emotion norms would be greater in individualist than in collectivist cultures. In four studies with 119 samples from 69 distinct countries and over 200,000 participants, we estimated adherence to emotion norms in different cultures, and how deviation from emotion norms is associated with life satisfaction. As predicted, in countries higher in individualism, emotional experiences of individuals were more homogenous and more concordant with the emotions of others in their culture. Furthermore, in more individualist countries, deviation from the mean emotional experience was linked to lower life satisfaction. We discuss two complementary mechanisms that may underlie such differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two lines of research in the psychology of religion have developed independently of each other: why people are religious and how they are religious. Leveraging theories of goal constructs, we propose that these two lines of research are connected, such that religious expressions are the manifestation of religious motivations. In Part I, we build and test a model of relations between religious motivations and religious expressions using data from Christians in the United Kingdom (Study 1; N = 418) and Jews in Israel (Study 2; N = 505). In Part II, we demonstrate the utility of the model by showing how relations between religiosity and political ideology can be understood by this integrated model. We discuss how this model advances research on the psychology of religion beyond the refinement of typologies and how it can be used to model associations between religiosity and other constructs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gender-equality paradox refers to the puzzling finding that societies with more gender equality demonstrate larger gender differences across a range of phenomena, most notably in the proportion of women who pursue degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math. The present investigation demonstrates across two different measures of gender equality that this paradox extends to chess participation (N = 803,485 across 160 countries; age range: 3–100 years), specifically that women participate more often in countries with less gender equality. Previous explanations for the paradox fail to account for this finding. Instead, consistent with the notion that gender equality reflects a generational shift, mediation analyses suggest that the gender-equality paradox in chess is driven by the greater participation of younger players in countries with less gender equality. A curvilinear effect of gender equality on the participation of female players was also found, demonstrating that gender differences in chess participation are largest at the highest and lowest ends of the gender-equality spectrum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is no easy answer to the question of whether religiosity promotes or hinders commitment to democracy. Earlier research largely pointed to religiosity as a source of antidemocratic orientations. More recent empirical evidence is less conclusive, however, suggesting that the effect of religiosity on democratic commitment could be positive, negative, or null. We review the existing approaches to the study of religiosity and democratic commitment, focusing on support for the democratic system, political engagement, and political tolerance, by distinguishing accounts that examine a single dimension of religiosity from accounts that adopt a multidimensional approach. We show that multidimensional approaches, while effective in accounting for the effect of religiosity on discrete democratic norms, fall short of accounting for some of the inconsistencies in the literature and in identifying the mechanisms that may be responsible for shaping how religiosity affects endorsement of democratic norms as a whole. To fill this gap, we propose the Religious Motivations and Expressions (REME) model. Applying theories of goal constructs to religion, this model maps associations between three religious expressions (belief, social behavior, and private behavior) and the religious motivations that underly these expressions. We discuss how inconsistent associations between religiosity and elements of democratic commitment can be rendered interpretable once the motivations underlying religious expressions, as well as contextual information, are accounted for. We contend that applying goal constructs to religion is critical for understanding the nature of the religion‐democracy nexus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key distinction in motivational processes is between motivations and the means for pursuing motivations. Despite being a motivated process, existing models of acculturation do not make this distinction, neither empirically nor theoretically. A motivational framework that is informed by theories of goal constructs to understand the process of acculturation is proposed. This model is tested in two distinct samples comprising immigrants from the former Soviet Union to Israel (N = 239) as well as immigrants from Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh to Britain (N = 236). Results revealed that the motivation to preserve one's heritage culture and the motivation to adopt one's host culture were each uniquely associated with the respective means for doing so. Furthermore, outcomes in acculturation were determined by the match between acculturation motivations and acculturation means. These findings demonstrate the theoretical and practical implications of analyzing the process of acculturation using a motivational framework. Despite being a motivated process, existing models of acculturation do not distinguish between motivations in acculturation and means in acculturation. We test a motivational framework that is informed by theories of goal constructs to understand the process of acculturation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotion regulation strategies have been typically studied independently of the specific emotions people try to change by using them. However, to the extent that negative emotions are inherently different from one another, people may choose different means to change them. Focusing on fear and sadness, we first mapped emotion-related content to theoretically matched reappraisal tactics. We then tested how frequently people choose such reappraisal tactics when regulating fear and sadness (Studies 1, 2, and 4a). As predicted, people were most likely to select reappraisal tactics that targeted content that was particularly relevant to the specific emotion they tried to regulate. Next, we tested whether such choices were driven by differences in the efficacy (Study 3), perceived efficacy (Study 4b), and anticipated effort (Study 4c) of regulation. Our findings demonstrate that the means people select to regulate their emotions depend on which emotions they try to regulate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People higher (vs. lower) in religiosity differ in the emotions they typically experience, but do they also differ in how they deal with their emotions? In this investigation, we systematically tested links between religiosity and elements of emotion regulation, including beliefs regarding the controllability of emotion, the motivation to feel better, and the tendency to use specific emotion regulation strategies (e.g., cognitive reappraisal, rumination, distraction). Participants were American Catholics, Israeli Jews, and Muslim Turks (N = 616) who were stratified sampled based on level of religiosity. All eight preregistered hypotheses were confirmed, even after controlling for demographic variables. We found that people higher (vs. lower) in religiosity were more likely to use emotion regulation strategies that are typically linked to adaptive emotional outcomes (e.g., cognitive reappraisal, acceptance) and less likely to use emotion regulation strategies that are typically linked to less adaptive outcomes (e.g., rumination). These findings suggest that people higher (vs. lower) in religiosity may deal with their emotions in more adaptive ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political and social changes in the past decade have rendered questions about religion and immigration more salient than ever. However, we know very little about the potential impact of religion as it operates in the real world on attitudes toward immigrants. In this investigation, we tested whether and how contextual religious cues in the public sphere might affect tolerance toward immigrants. In two studies, we compared the effects of a religious and a secular context (Study 1: religious location; Study 2: religious attire) on attitudes toward Jewish immigrants (i.e., a religious ingroup) and non-Jewish immigrants (i.e., a religious outgroup). Across studies, contextual religious cues predicted ingroup favoritism, as expressed by less social rejection toward religious ingroups and less support for anti-immigration policies affecting religious ingroups. However, contextual religious cues were unrelated to anti-immigration attitudes toward religious outgroups. In Study 2, these patterns were moderated by participants' religiosity, such that they were found among more (but not fewer) religious participants. These findings extend prior laboratory findings and shed light on how religion influences attitudes toward immigration in rich and complex real environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In seven studies, six with American Christians and one with Israeli Jews (total N = 2,323), we examine how and when belief in moralizing gods influences dehumanization of ethno-religious outgroups. We focus on dehumanization because it is a key feature of intergroup conflict. In Studies 1-6, participants completed measures of dehumanization from their own perspectives and also from the perspective of God, rating the groups' humanity as they thought God would rate it, or wish for them to rate it. When participants completed measures from both their own and God's perspectives, they reported believing that, compared with their own views, God would see (or prefer for them to see) outgroup members as more human. In Study 7, we extend these findings by demonstrating that thinking about God's views reduces the extent to which religious believers personally dehumanize outgroup members. Collectively, results demonstrate that religious believers attribute universalizing moral attitudes to God, compared to themselves, and document how thinking about God's views can promote more positive intergroup attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most humans believe in a god or gods, a belief that may promote prosociality toward coreligionists. A critical question is whether such enhanced prosociality is primarily parochial and confined to the religious ingroup or whether it extends to members of religious outgroups. To address this question, we conducted field and online experiments with Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Jewish adults in the Middle East, Fiji, and the United States (N = 4,753). Participants were given the opportunity to share money with anonymous strangers from different ethno-religious groups. We manipulated whether they were asked to think about their god before making their choice. Thinking about God increased giving by 11% (4.17% of the total stake), an increase that was extended equally to ingroup and outgroup members. This suggests that belief in a god or gods may facilitate intergroup cooperation, particularly in economic transactions, even in contexts with heightened intergroup tension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Values reflect how people want to experience the world; emotions reflect how people actually experience the world. Therefore, we propose that across cultures people desire emotions that are consistent with their values. Whereas prior research focused on the desirability of specific affective states or 1 or 2 target emotions, we offer a broader account of desired emotions. After reporting initial evidence for the potential causal effects of values on desired emotions in a preliminary study (N = 200), we tested the predictions of our proposed model in 8 samples (N = 2,328) from distinct world cultural regions. Across cultural samples, we found that people who endorsed values of self-transcendence (e.g., benevolence) wanted to feel more empathy and compassion, people who endorsed values of self-enhancement (e.g., power) wanted to feel more anger and pride, people who endorsed values of openness to change (e.g., self-direction) wanted to feel more interest and excitement, and people who endorsed values of conservation (e.g., tradition) wanted to feel more calmness and less fear. These patterns were independent of differences in emotional experience. We discuss the implications of our value-based account of desired emotions for understanding emotion regulation, culture, and other individual differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent findings show that in more individualist cultures, people's emotions are more homogenous and more concordant with the emotions of others in their culture. These findings have been interpreted as evidence that adherence to emotion norms is greater in more individualist cultures. This investigation examined a consequence of this to the acquisition of emotion norms. If immigrants from more individualist cultures are more likely to adhere to emotion norms, they should be more sensitive to the emotion norms of their host culture and will acquire them more readily. Therefore, we expected that immigrants from more individualist cultures would acquire the emotion norms of their host culture to a greater extent than immigrants from less individualist cultures. This hypothesis was supported in two studies with diverse samples of immigrants ( N > 10,000) that assessed emotion concordance with one's host culture, an implicit measure of the acquisition of emotion norms. We ruled out alternative explanations, such as cultural tightness and the cultural distance between host cultures and heritage cultures. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Gratitude confers a sense of indebtedness to repay the benefactor, which poses a limitation on one's autonomy-an aversive experience in individualist cultures. Yet, gratitude is frequently valued and expressed in individualist cultures such as the United States. One solution to this dilemma is that gratitude has different aspects: It confers a sense of obligation but also strengthens social relations. Thus, gratitude might be associated more strongly with indebtedness in cultural contexts where autonomy is less valued, but it might be associated with a desire to be close to others in cultural contexts where autonomy is more valued. We tested how motivations for being indebted, for connecting to others, and for a hedonic emotional balance predict both gratitude to God and interpersonal gratitude in samples from the United States, India, Israel, Poland, South Korea, and Turkey ( N = 2,093). Results revealed substantial cultural variation in how these correlates are associated with gratitude. We discuss how gratitude can inform cultural differences in how relationships are construed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotion regulation is linked to adaptive psychological outcomes. To engage in such regulation, people must be motivated to do it. Given that people in different countries vary in how they think about unpleasant emotions, we expected motivation to decrease unpleasant emotions to differ across countries. Furthermore, given that emotion regulation strategies operate in the service of motivation, we expected people who are less motivated to decrease unpleasant emotions to use emotion regulation strategies less across countries. To test these predictions, we conducted two studies during the COVID-19 pandemic: Study 1 in 2020 ( N = 1,329) and Study 2 in 2021 ( N = 1,279). We assessed the motivation to decrease unpleasant emotions and the use of emotion regulation strategies among members of East Asian countries (i.e., Japan, South Korea, and China) and Western countries (i.e., United States, United Kingdom, and Germany). Because we found substantial variation within these two broader cultural categories, we examined motivation and overall strategy use in emotion regulation at the country level. In both studies, motivation to decrease unpleasant emotions was the lowest in Japan and relatively high in the United States. As expected, across countries, weaker motivation to decrease unpleasant emotions was associated with using emotion regulation strategies less. We discuss implications of our findings for understanding cultural differences in motivated emotion regulation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Because emotion regulation is a motivated process, one must adopt a motivational perspective to understand it. We build on the distinction between goal setting (i.e., selecting end-states to achieve) and goal striving (i.e., engaging in behaviors to achieve desired end-states). First, we discuss how these concepts apply to regulation in the emotion domain. Second, we review existing research on setting emotion goals and striving for them. Third, we highlight how goal setting and goal striving can operate in tandem to shape emotion regulation. Finally, we highlight the importance of considering emotion regulation as a motivated process, and how doing so informs key topics explored in this special issue, including those pertaining to determinants (e.g., culture as setting emotion goals), consequences (e.g., monitoring emotion goal progress and mental health), and interventions (e.g., manipulating features of emotion goal setting and striving to promote adaptive emotion regulation). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).