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Has the income–happiness correlation changed over time? If so, what predicts such changes? We tested these questions in diverse economic, political, and cultural contexts. Drawing on nationally representative data, we found that the income–happiness correlation has increased in the USA since 1972, as GDP per capita and income inequality increased (Study 1). Study 2 examined an income–life satisfaction correlation in nationally representative surveys between 1978 and 2011 in Japan. Unlike in the USA, there was no clear increase in the income–life satisfaction correlation over time. We next examined the income–life satisfaction correlations in 16 European countries and found that on average the income–life satisfaction correlation has increased since 1970, and it was particularly high in years of high GDP per capita and high-income inequality (Study 3). Finally, we found that among Latin American countries, the income–life satisfaction correlation has, on average, decreased since 1997, as income inequality has decreased (Study 4). Over the last 5 decades, the income–happiness correlation has increased, not decreased, in the USA and several European countries. The income–happiness correlation tends to get higher when both GDP per capita and income inequality are high, whereas it tends to get lower when GDP per capita and/or income inequality are low. These findings suggest the importance of accounting for income inequality as well as national wealth in understanding the role of money in happiness.

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. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s42761-020-00011-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The present study examined the effect of residential mobility on impression formation. In the study, participants were first engaged in a residential mobility priming task where they were asked to imagine and describe either frequent moving life (high-mobility condition) or less frequent moving life (low-mobility condition). They then evaluated their attitudes toward four types of target persons: competent vs. incompetent and warm vs. cold. As a result, in the high-mobility condition, the effect of competence was observed only when participants evaluated a warm person, whereas in the low-mobility condition, it appeared only when participants evaluated a cold person. The potential influence of individual residential mobility on the relationship formation is also discussed.

The present study explored why married couples periodically exchange gifts. Based on the commitment signal hypothesis, we tested whether relational mobility, which was operationalized as divorce rate in Study 1 and relational opportunities in Study 2, is positively correlated with the frequency of gift exchanges among married couples. In Study 1, we found that married couples in the U.S., which is associated with a relatively high divorce rate, were more likely to give and receive gifts to and from their partners than those in Japan, which is associated with a relatively low divorce rate. This societal difference, in contrast, was not observed among unmarried couples, who were still developing their relationship (and thus, partner changes could frequently happen regardless of the country-level divorce rate). Study 2, a secondary analysis of extant survey data, revealed that Japanese married couples who have more relational opportunities more frequently engage in gift exchanges than those who do not. Together, these results support our hypothesis that periodical gift exchanges work as commitment signals among married couples.

The main goal of the present research is to examine socio-ecological hypothesis on apology and compensation. Specifically, we conducted four studies to test the idea that an apology is an effective means to induce reconciliation in a residentially stable community, whereas compensation is an effective means in a residentially mobile community. In Studies 1, 2a, and 2b, American and Japanese participants (national difference in mobility; Study 1) or non-movers and movers (within-nation difference in mobility; Studies 2a and 2b) imagined the situations in which they were hurt by their friends and rated to what extent they would be willing to maintain their friendships upon receipt of apology or compensation. The results showed that compensation was more effective in appeasing residentially mobile people (i.e., Americans and movers) than stable people (i.e., Japanese and non-movers), while apology was slightly more effective appeasing residentially stable people than residentially mobile people (significant in Study 1; not significant in Studies 2a and 2b). In Study 3, by conducting an economics game experiment, we directly tested the hypothesis that mobility would impair the effectiveness of apology and enhance the effectiveness of compensation. The results again partially supported our hypothesis: In the high mobility condition, compensation increased one’s willingness to continue the relationship with the offender, when compared to willingness in the low mobility condition. The importance of socio-ecological perspective on the forgiveness literature is discussed.

Work stress is a significant problem all over the world. In the present study, from the perspective of the combination of vertical and horizontal management, we investigated the relationships of managerial ethical leadership, mutual monitoring, and mutual support among employees' work stress levels. A total of 307 white collar employees in Japan were asked to complete an online questionnaire on three separate occasions. The results showed that both ethical leadership and mutual support were negatively related to stress. In addition, mutual support mediated the relationship between ethical leadership and work stress. Further, mutual monitoring moderated the relationship between ethical leadership and work stress: when mutual monitoring was high, stress did not decline with more ethical leadership. These results may suggest that ethical leadership can reduce work stress both directly and through mutual support, indirectly. Additionally, the direct effect may be constrained under high monitoring situations. Practical implications and needed future research are also discussed.

There has been considerable interest in empirical research on epistemic emotions, i.e., emotions related to knowledge-generating qualities of cognitive tasks and activities such as curiosity, interest, and surprise. One big challenge when studying epistemic emotions is systematically inducting these emotions in restricted experimental settings. The current study created a novel stimulus set called Magic Curiosity Arousing Tricks (MagicCATs): a collection of 166 short magic trick video clips that aim to induce a variety of epistemic emotions. MagicCATs are freely available for research and can be used in a variety of ways to examine epistemic emotions. Rating data also support that the magic tricks elicit a variety of epistemic emotions with sufficient inter-stimulus variability, demonstrating good psychometric properties for their use in psychological experiments.

The present study aimed to examine how the replaceability of a loss moderates the effectiveness of compensation. In Study 1, we sampled real-life experiences of experiential loss, material loss, or loss of materials to which the victims had special attachment, and assayed subsequent feelings toward the transgressor who caused the loss. The results showed that for those who reported losses of an experience or cherished material object, perpetrators’ offers of compensation did not facilitate forgiveness. In Study 2, by manipulating replaceability of hypothetical losses in vignettes, we showed that compensation for replaceable losses effectively elicits forgiveness from a victim, but compensation for irreplaceable losses is ineffective. A series of mediation analyses showed that the effect of replaceability on forgiveness is explained by the victim’s perception of whether their loss was sufficiently recovered. We discuss the function of compensation and its inherent limitations.

Previous research found that low levels of national wealth and high levels of historical pathogen prevalence are associated with collectivism. The main idea is that harsh economic and physical environments present a psychological threat, which evokes collectivism or the priority of protecting in-group members. To the extent that natural disasters pose a major threat, we hypothesized that natural disaster risk is also associated with collectivism. Consistent with our hypothesis, nations with higher levels of natural disaster risk were more collectivistic than those with lower risk using both Hofstede’s individualism–collectivism scores and Taras, Steel, and Kirkman’s meta-analytic individualism–collectivism scores from 1970 to 2010, and Taras et al.’s meta-analytic individualism–collectivism scores from the 2000s. This association remained significant when controlling for other climatic factors such as historical pathogen prevalence, climatic harshness, and distance from the equator, respectively, when Hofstede’s individualism–collectivism scores and Taras et al.’s scores from 1970 to 2010 were used. The association became marginal when Taras et al.’s scores from the 2000s were used. A multiple regression analysis showed that natural disaster risk was not a predictor of collectivism, above and beyond gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, pathogen prevalence, climatic harshness, and distance from the equator simultaneously. Finally, we found the interaction between GDP per capita and natural disaster such that the link between natural disaster risk and collectivism was present among wealthy but not among poorer nations.

Does a major natural disaster change human values and job preferences? The present studies examined whether the experience of a natural disaster experience shifts people's values and job preferences toward pro–social directions. In Study 1 (cross–temporal analysis), we analysed job application data in nine cities in Japan over 12 years and found that the popularity of pro–social occupations (e.g. firefighter) increased after the Great Hanshin–Awaji Earthquake in 1995, in particular the area hit hardest by the quake. In Study 2 (a large national survey), we found that Japanese respondents who had experienced a major earthquake are more likely to hold a pro–social job than those who never experienced a major earthquake. Together, the current findings suggest that the experience of a major natural disaster shifts human values from the egocentric to the allocentric direction, which in turn could result in a social structure that values pro–social occupations. Copyright © 2017 European Association of Personality Psychology

People to be born in the future have no direct influence on current affairs. Given the disconnect between people who are currently living and those who will inherit the planet left for them, individuals who are currently alive tend to be more oriented toward the present, posing a fundamental problem related to sustainability. In this study, we propose a new framework for reconciling the disconnect between the present and the future whereby some individuals in the current generation serve as an imaginary future generation that negotiates with individuals in the real-world present. Through a laboratory-controlled intergenerational sustainability dilemma game (ISDG), we show how the presence of negotiators for a future generation increases the benefits of future generations. More specifically, we found that when faced with members of an imaginary future generation, 60% of participants selected an option that promoted sustainability. In contrast, when the imaginary future generation was not salient, only 28% of participants chose the sustainable option.

The present research examined rural–urban differences in interpersonal regret. In Study 1, participants who grew up in rural areas reported stronger interpersonal regret than those who grew up in large cities. In Study 2, we conducted an experiment and found that participants who were assigned to imagine a rural life reported greater interpersonal regret than those who were assigned to imagine an urban life. Moreover, this rural–urban difference was mediated by the degree to which participants wrote about informal social control such as gossip and reputation concerns. Finally, in Study 3, we used the pictorial eye manipulation, which evokes a concern for informal social control, and found that participants from large cities who were exposed to the eyes reported more intense interpersonal regret than those who were not exposed to the eyes. Together, these studies demonstrate that informal social control is a key to understanding rural–urban differences in interpersonal regret.

We conducted two studies to examine the hypothesis that residential mobility would evoke anxiety and foster sensitivity to signs of disapproval, such as the disappearance of happiness. American and Japanese participants were asked to watch happy-to-neutral movies and sad-to-neutral movies and judge the point at which they thought that their initial expressions had disappeared. We found that, regardless of cultures, participants who had experienced frequent moving (Study 1) and those asked to imagine and describe a mobile lifestyle of frequent moving (Study 2) judged the disappearance of happy faces faster than those who did not experience or imagine frequent moving. Our results were also in line with the previous finding in which Japanese were more vigilant than Americans in regards to the disappearance of happy faces. Moreover, we found that imagining a mobile lifestyle made participants feel more concerned than when imagining a stable lifestyle. The implications for the social skills needed for people in the globalising world are discussed.

Curiosity is often portrayed as a desirable feature of human faculty. However, curiosity may come at a cost that sometimes puts people in a harmful situation. Here, with a set of behavioural and neuroimaging experiments using stimuli that strongly trigger curiosity (e.g., magic tricks), we examined the psychological and neural mechanisms underlying the motivational effect of curiosity. We consistently demonstrated that across different samples, people were indeed willing to gamble, subjecting themselves to physical risks (i.e. electric shocks) in order to satisfy their curiosity for trivial knowledge that carries no apparent instrumental value. Also, this influence of curiosity shares common neural mechanisms with that of extrinsic incentives (i.e. hunger for food). In particular, we showed that acceptance (compared to rejection) of curiosity/incentive-driven gambles was accompanied by enhanced activity in the ventral striatum (when curiosity was elicited), which extended into the dorsal striatum (when participants made a decision).

© 2018 American Psychological Association. Which is more enjoyable: trying to think enjoyable thoughts or doing everyday solitary activities? Wilson et al. (2014) found that American participants much preferred solitary everyday activities, such as reading or watching TV, to thinking for pleasure. To see whether this preference generalized outside of the United States, we replicated the study with 2,557 participants from 12 sites in 11 countries. The results were consistent in every country: Participants randomly assigned to do something reported significantly greater enjoyment than did participants randomly assigned to think for pleasure. Although we found systematic differences by country in how much participants enjoyed thinking for pleasure, we used a series of nested structural equation models to show that these differences were fully accounted for by country-level variation in 5 individual differences, 4 of which were positively correlated with thinking for pleasure (need for cognition, openness to experience, meditation experience, and initial positive affect) and 1 of which was negatively correlated (reported phone usage). ispartof: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology vol:117 issue:5 pages:E71-E83 ispartof: location:United States status: published

Why are megachurches (at least 2,000 attendees in weekend services) and Meetup groups (www.meetup.com) more popular in some cities or states than others? Our answer: residential mobility (when people move a lot, they like groups that are easy to join and easy to leave; they might move again soon, so they cannot commit to 1 group). As predicted, we found that there are more megachurches in residentially mobile states than in stable states. We also found that there are more Meetup groups in residentially mobile cities than stable cities (population and median income being equal). We also found that low-commitment, short-term Internet plans (low initial set-up fee, low penalty of breaking the contract, but higher monthly fee) are more popular in residentially mobile areas than in stable areas. In the final study, we also found that college students who had moved a lot joined low-commitment student clubs more than students who had not moved.

Recent experimental studies have accumulated evidence about self-punishment. In accordance with the evolutionary perspective that shame has a reputation-maintenance function, we speculated that shame would promote self-punishment. Accordingly, we tested whether proneness to shame would predict self-punishment. In the first phase of the experiment, 98 undergraduates completed the Test of Self-Conscious Affect (TOSCA), a standard measure of proneness to shame and guilt. About 2 months later, 50 of the original participants took part in a self-punishment experiment, in which they all unintentionally made an unfair resource allocation, and then had the opportunity to inflict self-punishment by abandoning some of the money they had allocated to themselves. The amount of money the participants relinquished was significantly correlated with their shame-proneness. The intensity of posttransgression shame mediated the effect of shame-proneness on self-punishment. These results provide support for the evolutionary theorization of shame as a reputation-maintenance emotion.

We examine how the timing of trust violations affects cooperation and solidarity, including trust and relational cohesion. Past studies that used repeated Prisoner’s Dilemmas suggest that trust violations are more harmful when they occur in early rather than later interactions. We argue that this effect of early trust violations depends on cultural and individual differences in generalized trust. A laboratory study from high- and low-trust cultures (the United States vs. Japan) supported our claim. First, early trust violations were more harmful than late trust violations, but only for Americans; the pattern reversed for Japanese. Second, these patterns were mediated by individual differences in generalized trust. Finally, generalized trust also moderated the effect of trust violations in the United States but not Japan. By demonstrating that generalized trust is not only lower but also less important in low-trust cultures, our research advances our understanding of how culture affects the development of solidarity in exchange relations.

The present study investigated a genetic underpinning of human reconciliation. Recent research has shown that people tend to inflict self-punishment as part of a repertoire of reparative acts. Since empathy generally facilitates reparative acts, we hypothesized that there exists an association between an empathy-related genetic variation, a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the oxytocin receptor ( OXTR ) gene (rs53576 A vs. G), and the tendency toward self-punishment. Participants played a modified version of the dictator game, in which they made an unfair allocation unintentionally. They then had the opportunity to punish themselves by reducing some portion of their monetary reward. The results showed that the participants with the GA or GG genotype, compared to the participants with the AA genotype, were more likely to engage in self-punishment after making the unfair allocation unintentionally. This effect was not mediated by self-critical feelings (guilt and shame) associated with the unfair allocation. The present study suggests that the OXTR polymorphism is associated with a human reconciliatory tendency.

Seeking help from close friends is beneficial for help seekers but also entails costs. Past research on social support suggested that East Asians were more likely than their North American counterparts to perceive relational costs (e.g., causing trouble for close friends), whereas North Americans tended to selectively perceive personal costs (e.g., admitting incompetence). We first collected European Canadian and Japanese people’s everyday experiences of help-seeking behaviors. We then examined whether norms would mediate the relationship between perceptions of costs and expected closeness in friendship. For European Canadians, we found such meditating relationships only for personal costs; whereas for the Japanese, the relationships were observed for both personal and relational costs. Implications for social cognitive research and clinical research are discussed.

Previous studies have argued that people feel regret more strongly when they act than when they fail to act (termed the action effect). This study investigated cultural differences in the circumstances under which the action effect occurs. Japanese and U.S. undergraduates played roulette games that determined either the participant's or a friend's outcome. After a computer randomly chose one of two roulettes, participants were asked to decide to change or not to change the roulette (i.e., action or inaction). Japanese participants regretted action more strongly than inaction under the friend condition, whereas U.S. participants showed the same pattern under the self condition. Additionally, those who regretted actions strongly were more likely to avoid actions. The authors discuss the functions of regret in culturally defined contexts.

The purpose of this study was to explore cultural similarities and differences in regret, focusing on distinctions between interpersonal and self-situations, and between action and inaction regrets. Japanese and American undergraduates were asked to describe regrets experienced in interpersonal and self-situations. We found that both situational and cultural contexts influenced the likelihood of regretting inactions over actions. Participants were more likely to recall inaction regrets in self-situations than in interpersonal situations, and that the likelihood of recalling inaction regrets was more pronounced for Americans than for Japanese. Furthermore, we examined the intensity of the regret. Whereas American students experienced regret as intense as that of Japanese students in self-situations, Japanese students experienced regret more strongly than American students in interpersonal situations. Detailed content analysis also showed that individuals experienced regret in ways consistent with cultural values. The situational and cultural grounding of regret is discussed.

Interleukin-8 (IL-8) is a CXC-type chemokine with a chemotactic activity mainly on neutrophils and plays a key role in promoting inflammation. In teleosts, several CXC-chemokines have been cloned and characterized as being IL-8-like. Phylogenetic data however indicate that the reported teleost IL-8-like chemokines are substantially remote from mammalian IL-8, forming a fish-specific clade of IL-8-like chemokines distinct from that of tetrapod IL-8. In the present study, a novel IL-8-like chemokine, designated CaIL-8, has been found in the expressed sequence tags of carp gills and identified as an orthologue of mammalian IL-8. The CaIL-8 transcript encodes 99 amino acids containing a typical CXC motif but lacks an ELR motif, as in most teleost IL-8-like chemokines. Phylogenetic tree constructed by the maximum likelihood method suggests a closer relationship of CaIL-8 with mammalian IL-8 than with other teleost CXC-chemokines reported to be IL-8-like. In a normal unstimulated carp, CaIL-8 mRNA was detected by RT-PCR only in gills, kidney, spleen, heart and peripheral blood leukocytes, in contrast to a previously reported carp IL-8-like chemokine CXCa, which shows ubiquitous basal expression. The results, taken together, are strongly indicative of the presence of two major IL-8-like lineages of CXC-chemokines in teleost.

We compared the regret that people report in individual and group decision-making in two experimental studies. In the first study, thirty-nine participants were randomly assigned to either an individual or a group decision-making condition, and then failed on an assigned task. They were asked to rate their regret and cognitive variables of controllability, internal and external factors related to their failure. Participants in the group decision condition, reported less regret than in the individual decision condition. In the second study, we added individual and group decision conditions where the participants heard others express regret. Fifty-eight participants played and lost the same game in the four conditions. In the group decision condition, we found that the participants who heard others express regret reported more regret than the participants who did not hear others' regret. These findings suggest that the expression of regret enhances others' regret. Some implications of the findings are discussed.