Espen Roysamb

Biographic Data

ID147240
NAMEEspen Roysamb
GIVEN NAMESEspen
FAMILY NAMERoysamb
SIGNATUREROYSAMB E
AFFILIATIONSNorwegian Institute of Public Health
ORCID0000-0001-5133-7170
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS66
TOTAL CITATIONS156
AUTHOR COUNT66
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1998
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX6

  • Is Societal Progress Muting the Expressivity of Negative Emotions? Evidence from Two Cross-national Studies

    Open AccessJune Chun Yeung, Vivian Miu-Chi Lun et al.ARTICLEJournal of Cross-Cultural…2026

    Contemporary theories of emotion emphasize the dual role of emotions as both personal experiences and communicative signals during social interactions. However, the impact of macro-level societal structures on emotional expression remains underexplored. This study investigates the expression-experience discrepancy for self-reported emotions across nations, focusing on how societal development relates to this discrepancy, which captures expressivi…

  • The Relationship Between Educational Attainment and Right-Wing Authoritarianism

    Open AccessNikolai Haahjem Eftedal, Thomas Haarklau Kleppesto et al.ARTICLEPersonality and Social Psychology…2026

    While it is well-established that educational attainment and Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) are negatively correlated, it remains unclear why, as causal effects are hard to distinguish from the effects of confounders. Here, we use an adaptation of the discordant twin design in a structural equation framework (ACE-β models) with 1264 Norwegian monozygotic and dizygotic twins, to investigate whether education and RWA remain associated after cont…

  • A Norwegian curriculum reform

    Open AccessMaud Edvoll, Siri Hausland Folstad et al.ARTICLEStudies In Educational Evaluation2026

  • Development of Negative Emotionality in Mothers Across 18 Years

    Open AccessIngrid Borren, Filip De Fruyt et al.ARTICLEJournal of Personality2026

    INTRODUCTION: Negative emotionality (NE) tends to decrease with age. However, we lack information about how divorce and other social role experiences predict long-term development of NE in women after the transition to parenthood. METHODS: The current study used data from an 18-year longitudinal study with eight data collection waves, including 823 mothers living with their child's father at baseline. Mixed models and Random Intercept Cross-Lagge…

  • Happiness Maximization Is a Weird Way of Living

    Open AccessKuba Krys, Olga Kostoula et al.ARTICLEPerspectives on Psychological…2025

    Psychological science tends to treat subjective well-being and happiness synonymously. We start from the assumption that subjective well-being is more than being happy to ask the fundamental question: What is the ideal level of happiness? From a cross-cultural perspective, we propose that the idealization of attaining maximum levels of happiness may be especially characteristic of Western, educated, industrial, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societ…

  • Mental illbeing and wellbeing are influenced by recent adverse life events. Evidence from a longitudinal twin study

    Open AccessLive Skow Hofgaard, Ragnhild Bang Nes et al.ARTICLECurrent Psychology2025

    Adverse life events have been associated with increased mental illbeing and decreased wellbeing. These associations may partly reflect reverse causality and confounding genetics. Few studies have accounted for such effects, and few have compared the effect of adversities within and across different mental health outcomes. Our sample includes 1987 monozygotic and dizygotic twins born 1945-60, in the Norwegian Twin Registry, who responded to two qu…

  • Reciprocal associations between general psychopathology and emotion regulation from adolescence to adulthood

    Open AccessEmily Gabriela Vira, Ragnhild Bang Nes et al.ARTICLEInternational Journal of…2025

    Emotion regulation (ER) is central to most mental health difficulties. However, we know less about the impact of mental health on ER, particularly during vulnerable developmental periods. This study examines longitudinal associations between ER strategies and general psychopathology from adolescence to adulthood, distinguishing between- and within-person effects across 1 and 13 years. Norwegian adolescents ( N = 2,464, 51% female, mean age = 13.7…

  • Financial factors and depression and anxiety

    Open AccessLudvig D Bjørndal, Espen Roysamb et al.ARTICLESSM - Mental Health2025

    A network approach can be applied to study relationships between financial factors and mental health. • We assessed associations in 49,940 randomly sampled Norwegian adults. • Several symptoms were linked to financial hardship or protective variables. • Depressive symptoms were more strongly linked to financial difficulties than anxiety symptoms. • Hopelessness was a key symptom tying financial factors to mental health adversities

  • Positively Negative

    Open AccessJinrui Liu, Ragnhild Bang Nes et al.ARTICLEJournal of Happiness Studies2025

    Many researchers oppose the hedonic idea that wellbeing can be reduced to the maximization of positive affect (PA) and the minimization of negative affect (NA). However, few studies have investigated alternative optimal levels of affects other than maximized PA and minimized NA. This paper examines ideal levels of PA and NA, and their alignment as an alternative approach to wellbeing. Study 1 investigates people’s ideal levels of affects. In a ra…

  • A Cross-cultural Study On the Association Between Societal Conditions and the Idealization of Happiness

    Open AccessXiaobin Lou, Brian W Haas et al.ARTICLEApplied Research in Quality of Life2025References: 81

    Although most people aspire to be happy, the extent to which people pursue or idealize experiencing high levels of happiness does differ according to sociocultural context. This study was designed to elucidate which societal and cultural indicators are the most conducive to fostering high levels of happiness idealization. To accomplish this goal, we measured levels of happiness idealization for 11,170 participants residing in 43 different countri…

  • Love beyond east and west

    Open AccessAyu Okvitawanli, Olga Gajewska et al.ARTICLEInternational Journal of…2025Cited by: 1References: 6

  • Cultural religiosity moderates the relationship between being in love and subjective well-being

    Open AccessMateusz Olechowski, Maciej R Górski et al.ARTICLEInternational Journal of…2025References: 7

  • The nature of the relation between mental well-being and ill-being

    Open AccessChristian K Tamnes, Mona Bekkhus et al.ARTICLENature Human Behaviour2025References: 97

  • The Role of Cultural Heterogeneity in Strengthening the Link Between Family Relationships and Life Satisfaction in 50 Societies

    Open AccessL M W Li, Vivian Miu-Chi Lun et al.ARTICLEJournal of Happiness Studies2024

    We argue that the importance of family relationships for individual well-being varies across societies as a function of a society’s degree of cultural heterogeneity. To examine the role of family relationships, we analyzed the responses from 13,009 participants in 50 societies on their life satisfaction across societies varying in their levels of historical and contemporary cultural heterogeneity. Such heterogeneity creates differences in the fre…

  • The genetic underpinnings of right‐wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation explain political attitudes beyond Big Five personality

    Open AccessThomas Haarklau Kleppesto, Nikolai Olavi Czajkowski et al.ARTICLEJournal of Personality2024

    OBJECTIVE: Political attitudes are predicted by the key ideological variables of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO), as well as some of the Big Five personality traits. Past research indicates that personality and ideological traits are correlated for genetic reasons. A question that has yet to be tested concerns whether the genetic variation underlying the ideological traits of RWA and SDO has distinct contr…

  • Life Satisfaction among Unaccompanied Refugee Minors

    Open AccessAnne Kristine Solhaug, Brit Oppedal et al.ARTICLEJournal of Child & Adolescent…2024

    While there is a growing literature about mental health problems among unaccompanied asylum-seeking and refugee minors (URMs), far less is known about their wellbeing. Such information is important as a subjective sense of wellbeing is associated with a variety of positive health and psychosocial outcomes. The aim of this study was to examine life satisfaction and the association with traumatic events, daily hassles, and asylum status among URMs …

  • Stability and change in maternal wellbeing and illbeing from pregnancy to three years postpartum

    Open AccessLilian Mayerhofer, Ragnhild Bang Nes et al.ARTICLEQuality of Life Research2024

    Understanding the mutual relationship between different aspects of wellbeing and illbeing allows for identifying potential targets for health promotion interventions. Time-invariant stability was partially explained by genetics. Maternal wellbeing and illbeing develop in an interdependent way from pregnancy to 36 months postpartum

  • Multiple social factors are associated with wellbeing when accounting for shared genetic and environmental confounding

    Open AccessLudvig D Bjørndal, Ragnhild Bang Nes et al.ARTICLEQuality of Life Research2024

    Our findings provide evidence that multiple social factors are associated with wellbeing after accounting for potential confounding by shared genetic and/or environmental factors. These findings highlight the importance of multiple aspects of the social environment for wellbeing in older adulthood. Future studies should examine the directionality in associations between social factors and mental health and assess these relationships beyond older …

  • Worldwide Well-Being

    Open AccessEspen Roysamb, Terrie E Moffitt et al.ARTICLEPerspectives on Psychological…2023

    What are the major sources of worldwide variability in subjective well-being (SWB)? Twin and family studies of SWB have found substantial heritability and strong effects from unique environments but virtually no effects from shared environments. However, extant findings are not necessarily valid at the global level. Prior studies have examined within-countries variability but did not take into account mean differences across nations. In this arti…

  • Introduction to a Culturally Sensitive Measure of Well-Being

    Open AccessKuba Krys, Brian W Haas et al.ARTICLEJournal of Happiness Studies2023

    How can one conclude that well-being is higher in country A than country B, when well-being is being measured according to the way people in country A think about well-being? We address this issue by proposing a new culturally sensitive method to comparing societal levels of well-being. We support our reasoning with data on life satisfaction and interdependent happiness focusing on individual and family, collected mostly from students, across for…

  • Unpackaging the link between economic inequality and self-construal

    Ángel Sánchez-Rodríguez, Ayse K Uskul et al.ARTICLESelf and Identity2023

    Past research has shown that economic inequality shapes individuals' self-construals. However, it has been unclear which dimensions of self-construal are associated with and affected by economic inequality. A correlational (Study 1: N = 264) and an experimental study (Study 2: N = 532) provided converging evidence linking perceived economic inequality with two forms of independent (vs. interdependent) self-construal: Difference from Others and Se…

  • Self-construals predict personal life satisfaction with different strengths across societal contexts differing in national wealth and religious heritage

    Ángel Sánchez-Rodríguez, Vivian L Vignoles et al.ARTICLESelf and Identity2023

    We explore to what extent previously observed pan-cultural association between dimensions of self-construal and personal life satisfaction (PLS) may be moderated by three national-contextual variables: national wealth, economic inequality, and religious heritage. The results showed that Self-reliance (vs. dependence on others) predicted PLS positively in poorer countries but negatively in richer countries. Connectedness to others (vs. self-contai…

  • The structure of well-being

    Open AccessLudvig D Bjørndal, Ragnhild Bang Nes et al.ARTICLEQuality of Life Research2023

    Our findings yield novel insights into the structure of well-being and genetic and environmental influences on general well-being factors, with implications for well-being and mental health research, including genetically informative studies

  • Preschool structural quality and student–teacher closeness are related to children's adjustment

    Open AccessNina Alexandersen, H D Zachrisson et al.ARTICLEEarly Childhood Research Quarterly2023References: 6

    This study aims at examining whether children's adjustment, social play behavior and Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) program-liking in universal ECEC are associated with the quality of student–teacher relationships and structural quality features of the classrooms they attend. The sample includes 7,436 5-year-old children (50% girls) and 195 sibling pairs (48% girls) participating in the nationwide Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Coh…

  • Mental health and environmental factors in adults

    Ludvig D Bjørndal, Omid V Ebrahimi et al.ARTICLEAmerican Psychologist2023Cited by: 2

    Few studies have assessed the multifactorial nature of environmental influences on population mental health. In this large-scale, population-based study of adults, we applied network analysis to study the relationship between environmental factors and symptoms of depression, anxiety, and well-being. We estimated networks with overall mental health nodes and individual symptoms to assess both broad and fine-grained associations between environment…