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Global inequality is one of today’s major challenges. How people mentally represent inequality is often determined by the way it is framed. In the present work, we seek to analyze whether putting the comparative focus on the disadvantaged or on the advantaged group affects legitimacy perceptions of, and action intentions against global inequality. Results of two preliminary studies indicated that global inequality is perceived as less legitimate and action intentions are increased when the disadvantaged group is the grammatical subject of the comparison, but only when the size of the economic inequality is perceived to be large (vs. small). In addition, social emotions mediated the relationship between comparative framing and legitimacy perceptions. Building on these preliminary studies, we present a planned large-scale study in which we aim to replicate these effects and to additionally test whether the strength of individuals’ emotional responses to comparative framing is moderated by different dimensions of justice sensitivity. We will discuss findings with regard to the role of how framing elicits certain mental representations of justice.

In this study, we will examine how framing prize money differences between female and male athletes affects perceptions of the size of prize money differences, fairness, and willingness to do something about it.

Who is a contemporary EQUAMAN – a supporter of gender equality movements? How do men understand gender equality in different cultural contexts? How do boys and men perceive their masculine gender roles? How are gender roles developed throughout adolescence? And how are gender equality and masculine gender roles related to men’s well-being and satisfaction with life? In this 3-year project, a team of interdisciplinary researchers including psychological and sociological scientists from Poland and Norway will focus on the important, though understudied, topic of men’s understanding of gender equality and relationships between masculine gender roles and well-being. More precisely, we will analyse 1) how gender roles and gender equality are related to boys’ and mens’ well-being, and 2) what makes men involved in gender equality movements. This is a novel approach to the topic of masculinity and well-being, and we want to investigate it through different perspectives using a variety of methods – focus group interviews, surveys, experimental studies and educational interventions conducted in schools and at universities. The data collection will take place in Poland and Norway - two countries strongly varying in their level of gender equality. Norway is one of the most gender equal nations in the world in terms of providing equal rights, opportunities, and resources for all genders, while Poland is among the least gender equal countries in the EU (EIGE, 2022). Our project will consist of four work packages focused on different aspects of masculinity: In Work Package 1, we will investigate the role masculinity plays in adolescence in different cultural contexts. More precisely, we will analyse the development of gender role identities in adolescents in Poland and Norway and investigate how it relates to young men’s well-being, satisfaction with life and risky behavior over time. In Work Package 2, we will examine the conditions under which men are willing to contribute to gender equality by taking different actions to support it. In Work Package 3, we will explore how different groups of men, varying in age, cultural origin, and socio-economic status, understand what it means to be a man and what gender equality is. We will also investigate challenges and barriers that might prevent men from becoming involved in gender equality movements. In Work Package 4, we will apply the knowledge gained from Work Packages 1-3 by developing educational interventions. They will be tested among adolescents and young adults, whether information- and science-based interventions can alter young men’s attitudes towards gender roles and gender equality. An important contribution from Work Package 4 will be an open-access manual for educational programs that can be used by professionals to educate young men about the role of gender equality and gender roles for men’s overall well-being. Combining and integrating different disciplines and perspectives in a cross-cultural approach allows us to get a better understanding of the complex ways that men’s gender roles relate to well-being and inequality, both globally and within societies. Our interdisciplinary, scientific team consists of expert investigators involved in four work packages. This carefully assembled team of researchers brings together a broad variety of expertise in different research fields and methods, and will thus allow not only for an innovative and truly interdisciplinary perspective on the topic, but it will also lead to an optimal realization of the project through joint publications in high-impact journals. Our results might furthermore be important in understanding mechanisms relating to gender equality around the world and can be beneficial for global, social change movements interested in increasing men’s and women’s well-being.

Precarious manhood theory states that manhood, relative to womanhood, is widely conceptualized as a social status that is hard to win, easy to lose, and must be proved repeatedly via action (Vandello et al., 2008). Cultures perpetuate beliefs in the precarity of manhood: men are being held to stricter gender rules than women, especially in cultures characterized by greater male-male status struggles (Bosson et al., 2022). After obtaining data from eight culturally diverse countries, we will analyze men's reactions to situations threatening their masculinity. The survey was conducted in 8 countries with varying levels of precarious manhood beliefs, collectivism, and gender equality (Bosson et al.. 2021): Australia, Chile, Germany, Norway, Poland, South Africa, and the United States. 1,310 adult men gave their responses regarding their feelings (i.e. anger, frustration, happiness, and pride) and judgments regarding the level of threat for manhood upon reading each of 9 vignettes detailing situations that may be viewed as masculinity threatening (materials used available at https://osf.io/94u53/). Participants were randomly assigned to two conditions: a situation happening to them or to a male stranger. The content of the scenes was created based on the analysis of qualitative data from our previous study - the situations were created based on qualitative data collection from 62 countries where respondents were given examples of situations in which men can appear unmanly. The situations depicted: - wearing make-up during a work-related videoconference, - walking holding dresses in a clothing store, - crying in public, - female partner faking orgasms, - struggling with the weight of groceries in public, - betraying another man’s trust, - female partner earning more money, - failing at protecting female partner, - being indecisive. After reading through each of the 9 scenarios, respondents were presented with 8 items that measured their sense of manhood being threatened. The dependent variable will be a factor score for each participant based on the CFA output (factors presented in the "Dependent variables" section), using items presented after each scene (e.g. "This situation makes me feel angry"). We plan to conduct measurement invariance to validate the use of our newly developed tool for cross-cultural analyses and then compare means across countries.

A detailed pre-registration is attached.

The main aim of the proposed research project is to extend and advance previous research on collective action. We aim to do this by examining the interplay between cultural dimensions in predicting willingness to engage in collective actions directed to preserve the status quo and actions for social change. Specifically, we concentrate on the following goals. (I) to explore the role of a cultural dimension of tightness-looseness as a possible moderator of the link between identification, efficacy and emotions and normative and non-normative CA; (II) to explore the role of face, honour, dignity cultural dimensions in predicting CA and to examine the role of interaction between tightness and face, honour, dignity in predicting CA; (III) to compare predictors of protests for and against the settlement of migrants in a given country, and to explore if the same psychosocial mechanism is related to CA in both cases.

Late 2019 the COVID-19 pandemic emerged and soon spread across the world. The virus quickly spread and led to lockdown and restrictions in many countries. This led to schools, childcare facilities, and businesses being closed, people had to work from home, and stores and restaurants were closed for several weeks or even months. Research from across the world has shown negative consequences of the pandemic, such as that parents’ and children’s well-being decreased (Gassman-Pines et al., 2020), domestic violence increased (Boserup et al., 2020), and many families struggled financially (Witteveen, 2020). Recent research has investigated potential protective factors for the negative consequences of the pandemic. One study from the US found that having a higher income was associated with lower depressive symptoms and higher life satisfaction during the pandemic (Wanberg et al., 2020). In Norway, the government implemented a national lockdown on March 12th. All non-essential stores were closed, schools and childcare centers were closed or turned into online teaching, and adults who were able worked from home. After the first lockdown there have been stricter restrictions across the country based on local infection rates. In general, the government implemented national restrictions after the first lockdown that made it possible for stores and restaurants to keep open, as well as reopening schools and childcare centers. All national restrictions were lifted approximately one and a half year after the initial lockdown (Regjeringen, 2021). For this reason, to understand the effects of the pandemic in Norway on parental well-being, the present study will investigate how mothers’ well-being was affected by the pandemic using a longitudinal design with five timepoints. Data were collected from mothers of elementary school children in Norway at three occasions: June 2020, November 2020, and May 2021. The questionnaire in June 2020 also included retrospective measures in which mothers were asked to indicate their well-being before the pandemic and during the first lockdown (March/April 2020). The main hypotheses and research questions are tested on data collected in June 2020 and November 2020–with four timepoints–while the data collected in May 2021 is used for exploratory purposes. The present research project will thus gain knowledge about how the pandemic affected families’ mental health and investigate potential protective factors.

The aim of the present study is to investigate the connection between the self-concept and social group identification. The self-concept is based on both internal factors such as values, goals and self-perceptions, and on external factors such as socioeconomic status. Self-perceptions are developed partially based on gender norms, meaning that men and women view themselves in line with what is expected of their gender. Women therefore often have more communal self-perceptions (i.e., viewing oneself as warm and caring) whilst men often have more agentic self-perceptions (i.e., viewing oneself as assertive and competent). This is explained by role congruity theory, which poses that individuals who act in accordance with the norms associated with the social group are evaluated positively, and those who do not may face negative consequences (Diekman & Eagly, 2008). Therefore, someone who do not view their self-concept to align with the expectation for their social group might disassociate with the group in order to avoid the negative evaluation, thus reporting less perceived fit and sense of belonging to their social group. Additionally, previous research has found that perceived fit and sense of belonging are important factors that influence dropout intentions (Sulhmann et al., 2018; Sullivan et al., 2021). In particular, a study by Suhlmann and colleagues (2018) found that perceived fit is related to dropout intentions through sense of belonging, where those who perceived themselves as a good fit with their major had a stronger sense of belonging with their major, and thus had less dropout intentions. In the present project, we therefore aim to investigate how emphasizing the importance of having communal traits in communal occupations influence female students in communal major perceived fit with major and sense of belonging with major. To investigate how perceived fit and sense of belonging with major can be influenced, we experimentally tested if describing that having communal traits is important for success in communal occupations would influence perceived fit and sense of belonging for women with communal majors. According to the previous results by Suhlmann and colleagues (2018) and role congruity theory, we predict that individuals who are told that communal traits are important in communal occupations who also view themselves as more communal will have stronger perceived fit and stronger sense of belonging with their communal major.

We hereby pre-register the following project, a detailed pre-registration plan file is attached.

Career development is a lifelong process that starts in infancy and is shaped by a number of different factors during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Even though career development is shaped through life, relatively little is known about the predictors of occupational aspirations in childhood. Therefore, in the present work we investigate how the stereotypicality of a mother’s occupation (female-dominated/communal vs. non-femaledominated/agentic) influences her young child’s communal occupational aspirations and communal orientation. We conducted two studies with young children. Study 1 included 72 mother–child dyads recruited from childcare centers in Northern Norway (children’s age range: 4½–6years). Study 2 included 106 mother–child dyads recruited from Norwegian elementary schools (children’s age range: 6 to 13years). Results from Study 1 showed that the stereotypicality of mothers’ occupation was related to their children’s communal occupational aspirations and children’s communal orientation. In contrast to our predictions and results from Study 1, the stereotypicality of mothers’ occupation was not significantly related to children’s communal occupational aspirations nor their communal orientation in Study 2. In both studies, we found no relationship between mothers’ gender attitudes or share of child care and children’s communal occupational aspirations. The results are discussed in terms of parents’ influence on children’s development of occupational aspirations.