Jochen E Gebauer
Biographic Data
| ID | 1306404 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jochen E Gebauer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jochen E |
| FAMILY NAME | Gebauer |
| SIGNATURE | GEBAUER J E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3789-3629 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 189 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 43 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
On the Inner Workings of the Person–Culture Match Effect on Well-Being
A match between a person and their culture is widely considered a source of well-being. However, why does this “person–culture match effect” (PCME) emerge? This research seeks to elucidate that question on three counts. It reports the first experimental—and, thus, causal—test of the PCME, examines whether match increases well-being only for people who consider their culture central to themselves, and tests whether the PCME occurs only for match w…
Which leadership style do more narcissistic subordinates prefer in supervisors
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Subordinates in Western cultures generally prefer supervisors with a democratic rather than autocratic leadership style. It is unclear, however, whether more narcissistic subordinates share or challenge this prodemocratic default attitude. On the one hand, more narcissistic individuals strive for power and thus may favor a democratic supervisor, who grants them power through participation. On the other hand, similarity a…
Socioeconomic status differences in agentic and communal self-concepts: Insights from 6 million people across 133 nations
11.50) across 133 nations. Overall, people of higher status saw themselves as somewhat more agentic and as slightly less (or negligibly less) communal. Crucially, those associations varied considerably across nations. We sought to explain that variation with 11 national characteristics and found only three of them to be robustly relevant: National religiosity and pathogen load curbed status differences in agentic self-concepts, and income inequal…
Secularization Trends Obscure Developmental Changes in Religiosity
How do people’s religious beliefs and behaviors change over the course of adulthood? Previous research found rapid decreases in religiosity during young adulthood and rebounds in middle and late adulthood. However, secularization trends—if not accounted for—can bias or obscure age-graded changes in religiosity. Using longitudinal data from over 14,000 Dutch participants aged 16 to 101 years, we disentangled secularization trends from developmenta…
Big Five personality and religiosity: Bidirectional cross‐lagged effects and their moderation by culture
OBJECTIVE: Personality has long been assumed to be a cause of religiosity, not a consequence. Yet, recent research suggests that religiosity may well cause personality change. Consequently, longitudinal research is required that examines the bi-directionality between personality and religiosity. The required research must also attend to cultural religiosity-a critical moderator in previous cross-sectional research. METHOD: = 44,485). Each sample …
Transactional effects between personality and religiosity
Do changes in religiosity beget changes in personality, or do changes in personality precede changes in religiosity? Existing evidence supports longitudinal associations between personality and religiosity at the between-person level, such that individual differences in personality predict subsequent individual differences in change in religiosity. However, no research to date has examined whether within-person changes in personality lead to subs…
Are Regional Differences in Psychological Characteristics and Their Correlates Robust? Applying Spatial-Analysis Techniques to Examine Regional Variation in Personality
There is growing evidence that psychological characteristics are spatially clustered across geographic regions and that regionally aggregated psychological characteristics are related to important outcomes. However, much of the evidence comes from research that relied on methods that are theoretically ill-suited for working with spatial data. The validity and generalizability of this work are thus unclear. Here we address two main challenges of w…
Pandemics Initially Spread Among People of Higher (Not Lower) Social Status: Evidence From Covid-19 and the Spanish Flu
According to a staple in the social sciences, pandemics particularly spread among people of lower social status. Challenging this staple, we hypothesize that it holds true in later phases of pandemics only. In the initial phases, by contrast, people of higher social status should be at the center of the spread. We tested our phase-sensitive hypothesis in two studies. In Study 1, we analyzed region-level COVID-19 infection data from 3,132 U.S. reg…
The ‘mixed bag’ of segregation—On positive and negative associations with migrants’ acculturation
Many researchers and practitioners consider ethnic segregation in neighbourhoods or schools detrimental to migrants’ acculturation in host societies. Empirically, however, segregation is a 'mixed bag' and its effects depend crucially on the investigated acculturation domain (e.g., negative for language skills, positive for well‐being). As most prior studies have focused on a restricted spectrum of acculturation, a comprehensive assessment within …
A sociocultural norm perspective on Big Five prediction
The Big Five predict numerous preferences, decisions, and behaviors-but why? To help answer this key question, the present research develops the sociocultural norm perspective (SNP) on Big Five prediction-a critical revision and extension of the sociocultural motives perspective. The SNP states: Agreeableness, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness predict outcomes positively if those outcomes are socioculturally normative. Openness, by contrast, pr…
Big Five facets and religiosity: Three large-scale, cross-cultural, theory-driven, and process-attentive tests
How relevant are the Big Five in predicting religiosity? Existing evidence suggests that the Big Five domains account for only a small amount of variance in religiosity. Some researchers have claimed that the Big Five domains are too broad and not sufficiently specific to explain much religiosity variance. Accordingly, they speculated that the more specific Big Five facets should predict religiosity better. Yet, such research has generally been s…
Country‐level correlates of the Dark Triad traits in 49 countries
OBJECTIVES: The Dark Triad traits (i.e., narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism) capture individual differences in aversive personality to complement work on other taxonomies, such as the Big Five traits. However, the literature on the Dark Triad traits relies mostly on samples from English-speaking (i.e., Westernized) countries. We broadened the scope of this literature by sampling from a wider array of countries. METHOD: = 21.53) to examine …
Religious people only live longer in religious cultural contexts: A gravestone analysis
Religious people live longer than nonreligious people, according to a staple of social science research. Yet, are those longevity benefits an inherent feature of religiosity? To find out, we coded gravestone inscriptions and imagery to assess the religiosity and longevity of 6,400 deceased people from religious and nonreligious U.S. counties. We show that in religious cultural contexts, religious people lived 2.2 years longer than did nonreligiou…
Self-Enhancement and Psychological Adjustment: A Meta-Analytic Review
This article advances the debate about costs and benefits of self-enhancement (the tendency to maintain unrealistically positive self-views) with a comprehensive meta-analytic review (299 samples, N = 126,916). The review considers relations between self-enhancement and personal adjustment (life satisfaction, positive affect, negative affect, depression), and between self-enhancement and interpersonal adjustment (informant reports of domain-gener…
Is Evaluative Conditioning Moderated by Big Five Personality Traits
Evaluative conditioning (EC), a change in liking of a stimulus due to its paired presentation with a positive or negative stimulus, is a key concept in attitude formation. The present article examines to what extent EC effects are moderated by Big Five personality. For this purpose, 567 participants completed an EC procedure and the Big Five Inventory. People high on neuroticism and agreeableness showed stronger EC effects than people low on thos…
Individual self > relational self > collective self—But why? Processes driving the self‐hierarchy in self‐ and person perception
Objective The self has three parts: individual, relational, and collective. Typically, people personally value their individual self most, their relational self less, and their collective self least. This self‐hierarchy is consequential, but underlying processes have remained unknown. Here, we propose two process accounts. The content account draws upon selves' agentic–communal content, explaining why the individual self is preferred most. The te…
What is the structure of perceiver effects? On the importance of global positivity and trait-specificity across personality domains and judgment contexts
When judging others' personalities, perceivers differ in their general judgment tendencies. These perceiver effects partly reflect a response bias but are also stable and psychologically important individual differences. However, current insights into the basic structure of perceiver effects are ambiguous with previous research pointing to either a unidimensional structure (i.e., people see others as globally positive vs. negative) or a multidime…
Agentic narcissism, communal narcissism, and prosociality
Grandiose narcissism and prosociality are important topics in personality and social psychology, but research on their interplay is lacking. We present a first large-scale, systematic, and multimethod investigation linking the two. In 2 studies (N1 = 688, N2 = 336), we assessed grandiose narcissism comprehensively (i.e., agentic and communal narcissism) and examined its relations with instantiations of prosociality, namely, objective prosociality…
Christian self-enhancement
People overestimate themselves in domains that are central to their self-concept. Critically, the psychological status of this "self-centrality principle" remains unclear. One view regards the principle as an inextricable part of human nature and, thus, as universal and resistant to normative pressure. A contrasting view regards the principle as liable to pressure (and subsequent modification) from self-effacement norms, thus questioning its univ…
The religiosity as social value hypothesis: A multi-method replication and extension across 65 countries and three levels of spatial aggregation
Are religious people psychologically better or worse adjusted than their nonreligious counterparts? Hundreds of studies have reported a positive relation between religiosity and psychological adjustment. Recently, however, a comparatively small number of cross-cultural studies has questioned this staple of religiosity research. The latter studies find that religious adjustment benefits are restricted to religious cultures. Gebauer, Sedikides, and…
Age and gender differences in self-esteem—A cross-cultural window
Research and theorizing on gender and age differences in self-esteem have played a prominent role in psychology over the past 20 years. However, virtually all empirical research has been undertaken in the United States or other Western industrialized countries, providing a narrow empirical base from which to draw conclusions and develop theory. To broaden the empirical base, the present research uses a large Internet sample (N = 985,937) to provi…
Cultural norm fulfillment, interpersonal belonging, or getting ahead? A large-scale cross-cultural test of three perspectives on the function of self-esteem
What is the function of self-esteem? We classified relevant theoretical work into 3 perspectives. The cultural norm-fulfillment perspective regards self-esteem a result of adherence to cultural norms. The interpersonal-belonging perspective regards self-esteem as a sociometer of interpersonal belonging. The getting-ahead perspective regards self-esteem as a sociometer of getting ahead in the social world, while regarding low anxiety/neuroticism a…
The Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding Short Form (Bidr-16)
Self-report studies often call for assessment of socially desirable responding. Many researchers use the Marlowe-Crowne Scale for its brief versions; however, this scale is outdated, and contemporary models of social desirability emphasize its multi-dimensional nature. The 40-item Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR) incorporates Self-Deceptive Enhancement (honest but overly positive responding) and Impression Management (bias toward…
Satisfaction–Adaptation Principles in Sexual Desire: Exploring Gender Differences Across the Life Span
Sexual desire may change according to two principles: the satisfaction principle (high sexual opportunity/frequency decreases sexual desire) and the adaptation principle (high sexual opportunity/frequency increases sexual desire). We explore the workings of these opposing principles separately for both genders across the adult life span. Two tests within a large ( N = 181,546) and cross-cultural (11 countries) data set revealed that the satisfact…
Agency‐Communion and Interest in Prosocial Behavior: Social Motives for Assimilation and Contrast Explain Sociocultural Inconsistencies
Identifying the “prosocial personality” is a classic project in personality psychology. However, personality traits have been elusive predictors of prosocial behavior, with personality‐prosociality relations varying widely across sociocultural contexts. We propose the social motives perspective to account for such sociocultural inconsistencies. According to this perspective, a focal quality of agency (e.g., competence, independence, openness) is …
Age and gender differences in self-esteem—A cross-cultural window
Research and theorizing on gender and age differences in self-esteem have played a prominent role in psychology over the past 20 years. However, virtually all empirical research has been undertaken in the United States or other Western industrialized countries, providing a narrow empirical base from which to draw conclusions and develop theory. To broaden the empirical base, the present research uses a large Internet sample (N = 985,937) to provi…
Communal narcissism
An agency-communion model of narcissism distinguishes between agentic narcissists (individuals satisfying self-motives of grandiosity, esteem, entitlement, and power in agentic domains) and communal narcissists (individuals satisfying the same self-motives in communal domains). Five studies supported the model. In Study 1, participants listed their grandiose self-thoughts. Two distinct types emerged: agentic ("I am the most intelligent person") a…
The Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding Short Form (Bidr-16)
Self-report studies often call for assessment of socially desirable responding. Many researchers use the Marlowe-Crowne Scale for its brief versions; however, this scale is outdated, and contemporary models of social desirability emphasize its multi-dimensional nature. The 40-item Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR) incorporates Self-Deceptive Enhancement (honest but overly positive responding) and Impression Management (bias toward…
Pleasure and pressure based prosocial motivation: Divergent relations to subjective well-being
Basic human values: Inter-value structure in memory
Cultural norm fulfillment, interpersonal belonging, or getting ahead? A large-scale cross-cultural test of three perspectives on the function of self-esteem
What is the function of self-esteem? We classified relevant theoretical work into 3 perspectives. The cultural norm-fulfillment perspective regards self-esteem a result of adherence to cultural norms. The interpersonal-belonging perspective regards self-esteem as a sociometer of interpersonal belonging. The getting-ahead perspective regards self-esteem as a sociometer of getting ahead in the social world, while regarding low anxiety/neuroticism a…
How much do you like your name?” An implicit measure of global self-esteem
We introduce a single-item implicit measure of global self-esteem. The measure is based on the mere-ownership effect and asks participants to indicate how much they like their name. Six studies attested to the validity of this measure. In addition to showing high test–retest reliability (r = .85), the studies found that Name-Liking was (a) unrelated to impression management, (b) positively related to the Name-Letter-Task, the Self-Esteem IAT, exp…
The religiosity as social value hypothesis: A multi-method replication and extension across 65 countries and three levels of spatial aggregation
Are religious people psychologically better or worse adjusted than their nonreligious counterparts? Hundreds of studies have reported a positive relation between religiosity and psychological adjustment. Recently, however, a comparatively small number of cross-cultural studies has questioned this staple of religiosity research. The latter studies find that religious adjustment benefits are restricted to religious cultures. Gebauer, Sedikides, and…
What is the structure of perceiver effects? On the importance of global positivity and trait-specificity across personality domains and judgment contexts
When judging others' personalities, perceivers differ in their general judgment tendencies. These perceiver effects partly reflect a response bias but are also stable and psychologically important individual differences. However, current insights into the basic structure of perceiver effects are ambiguous with previous research pointing to either a unidimensional structure (i.e., people see others as globally positive vs. negative) or a multidime…
Agentic narcissism, communal narcissism, and prosociality
Grandiose narcissism and prosociality are important topics in personality and social psychology, but research on their interplay is lacking. We present a first large-scale, systematic, and multimethod investigation linking the two. In 2 studies (N1 = 688, N2 = 336), we assessed grandiose narcissism comprehensively (i.e., agentic and communal narcissism) and examined its relations with instantiations of prosociality, namely, objective prosociality…
Cross-cultural variations in Big Five relationships with religiosity: A sociocultural motives perspective
A sociocultural motives perspective (SMP) on Big Five relationships is introduced. According to the SMP, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness elicit assimilation to sociocultural norms, Openness elicits contrast from these norms, and Extraversion and Neuroticism are independent of sociocultural assimilation and contrast. Due to sociocultural assimilation, then, relationships of Agreeableness and Conscientiousness with an outcome wax (become more p…
Inclusion-exclusion of positive and negative past selves: Mood congruence as information
The current research challenges the widespread truism that recalling a positive self necessarily increases self-esteem, whereas recalling a negative self necessarily decreases self-esteem. Four experiments demonstrate that chronically happy people show a relative increase in self-esteem by recalling either a positive or a negative self. Chronically sad people, however, show a relative decrease in self-esteem by recalling either a positive or a ne…
Christian self-enhancement
People overestimate themselves in domains that are central to their self-concept. Critically, the psychological status of this "self-centrality principle" remains unclear. One view regards the principle as an inextricable part of human nature and, thus, as universal and resistant to normative pressure. A contrasting view regards the principle as liable to pressure (and subsequent modification) from self-effacement norms, thus questioning its univ…
Defensive self-esteem impacts attention, attitude strength, and self-affirmation processes
Transactional effects between personality and religiosity
Do changes in religiosity beget changes in personality, or do changes in personality precede changes in religiosity? Existing evidence supports longitudinal associations between personality and religiosity at the between-person level, such that individual differences in personality predict subsequent individual differences in change in religiosity. However, no research to date has examined whether within-person changes in personality lead to subs…
A sociocultural norm perspective on Big Five prediction
The Big Five predict numerous preferences, decisions, and behaviors-but why? To help answer this key question, the present research develops the sociocultural norm perspective (SNP) on Big Five prediction-a critical revision and extension of the sociocultural motives perspective. The SNP states: Agreeableness, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness predict outcomes positively if those outcomes are socioculturally normative. Openness, by contrast, pr…
Big Five facets and religiosity: Three large-scale, cross-cultural, theory-driven, and process-attentive tests
How relevant are the Big Five in predicting religiosity? Existing evidence suggests that the Big Five domains account for only a small amount of variance in religiosity. Some researchers have claimed that the Big Five domains are too broad and not sufficiently specific to explain much religiosity variance. Accordingly, they speculated that the more specific Big Five facets should predict religiosity better. Yet, such research has generally been s…
Religious people only live longer in religious cultural contexts: A gravestone analysis
Religious people live longer than nonreligious people, according to a staple of social science research. Yet, are those longevity benefits an inherent feature of religiosity? To find out, we coded gravestone inscriptions and imagery to assess the religiosity and longevity of 6,400 deceased people from religious and nonreligious U.S. counties. We show that in religious cultural contexts, religious people lived 2.2 years longer than did nonreligiou…
How temporal distance from past selves influences self‐perception
The present studies examine how perceived temporal distance from past selves influences perceptions of the current self. Participants recalled their past self either at age 9 or 15. These two past selves differ in levels of identification with gender and thus denote different standards of comparison. Three hypotheses were tested. Temporal distance should determine whether recalled past selves produce assimilation or contrast effects on the curren…
Socioeconomic status differences in agentic and communal self-concepts: Insights from 6 million people across 133 nations
11.50) across 133 nations. Overall, people of higher status saw themselves as somewhat more agentic and as slightly less (or negligibly less) communal. Crucially, those associations varied considerably across nations. We sought to explain that variation with 11 national characteristics and found only three of them to be robustly relevant: National religiosity and pathogen load curbed status differences in agentic self-concepts, and income inequal…
Basic human values: Inter-value structure in memory
Pleasure and pressure based prosocial motivation: Divergent relations to subjective well-being
How temporal distance from past selves influences self‐perception
The present studies examine how perceived temporal distance from past selves influences perceptions of the current self. Participants recalled their past self either at age 9 or 15. These two past selves differ in levels of identification with gender and thus denote different standards of comparison. Three hypotheses were tested. Temporal distance should determine whether recalled past selves produce assimilation or contrast effects on the curren…
Inclusion-exclusion of positive and negative past selves: Mood congruence as information
The current research challenges the widespread truism that recalling a positive self necessarily increases self-esteem, whereas recalling a negative self necessarily decreases self-esteem. Four experiments demonstrate that chronically happy people show a relative increase in self-esteem by recalling either a positive or a negative self. Chronically sad people, however, show a relative decrease in self-esteem by recalling either a positive or a ne…
How much do you like your name?” An implicit measure of global self-esteem
We introduce a single-item implicit measure of global self-esteem. The measure is based on the mere-ownership effect and asks participants to indicate how much they like their name. Six studies attested to the validity of this measure. In addition to showing high test–retest reliability (r = .85), the studies found that Name-Liking was (a) unrelated to impression management, (b) positively related to the Name-Letter-Task, the Self-Esteem IAT, exp…
Religiosity as Self-Enhancement: A Meta-Analysis of the Relation Between Socially Desirable Responding and Religiosity
In a meta-analysis, the authors test the theoretical formulation that religiosity is a means for self-enhancement. The authors operationalized self-enhancement as socially desirable responding (SDR) and focused on three facets of religiosity: intrinsic, extrinsic, and religion-as-quest. Importantly, they assessed two moderators of the relation between SDR and religiosity. Macro-level culture reflected countries that varied in degree of religiosit…
Dynamics of Identity: Between Self-Enhancement and Self-Assessment
Defensive self-esteem impacts attention, attitude strength, and self-affirmation processes
Religiosity, Social Self-Esteem, and Psychological Adjustment: On the Cross-Cultural Specificity of the Psychological Benefits of Religiosity
Studies have found that religious believers have higher social self-esteem (Aydin, Fischer, & Frey, 2010; Rivadeneyra, Ward, & Gordon, 2007) and are better psychologically adjusted (Koenig, McCullough, & Larson, 2001; Smith, McCullough, & Poll, 2003) than nonbelievers. Is this relation true across cultures—which would attest to the robustness of religiosity as a wellspring of psychological benefits—or is it found only in specific cultures—which w…
Unfortunate First Names: Effects of Name-Based Relational Devaluation and Interpersonal Neglect
Can negative first names cause interpersonal neglect? Study 1 ( N = 968) compared extremely negatively named online-daters with extremely positively named online-daters. Study 2 ( N = 4,070) compared less extreme groups—namely, online-daters with somewhat unattractive versus somewhat attractive first names. Study 3 ( N = 6,775) compared online-daters with currently popular versus currently less popular first names, while controlling for name-popu…
The Need to Belong Can Motivate Belief in God
The need to belong can motivate belief in God. In Study 1, 40 undergraduates read bogus astrophysics articles “proving” God's existence or not offering proof. Participants in the proof‐for‐God condition reported higher belief in God (compared to control) when they chronically imagined God as accepting but lower belief in God when they imagined God as rejecting. Additionally, in Study 2 (72 undergraduates), these effects did not occur when partici…
Communal narcissism
An agency-communion model of narcissism distinguishes between agentic narcissists (individuals satisfying self-motives of grandiosity, esteem, entitlement, and power in agentic domains) and communal narcissists (individuals satisfying the same self-motives in communal domains). Five studies supported the model. In Study 1, participants listed their grandiose self-thoughts. Two distinct types emerged: agentic ("I am the most intelligent person") a…
Big Two Personality and Religiosity Across Cultures: Communals as Religious Conformists and Agentics as Religious Contrarians
How are the Big Two personality dimensions of agency (e.g., competence, uniqueness, ambition) and communion (e.g., warmth, relatedness, morality) related to religiosity? A standard view assumes that communion encourages religiosity, whereas agency is independent of religiosity. Our model is more nuanced, taking into account the Big Two’s motivational base as well as culture: Because communal individuals seek assimilation with their ambient cultur…
The Psychological Benefits of Income are Contingent on Individual-Level and Culture-Level Religiosity
Higher income is related to better psychological adjustment. We propose that religiosity attenuates this relation. First, in comforting the poor, religious teachings de-emphasize the importance of money, which would buffer low-income's psychological harms (religiosity as poverty buffer account). Second, religious teachings convey antiwealth norms, which would reduce income's psychological benefits (religiosity as antiwealth norms account). A stud…
Agency‐Communion and Self‐Esteem Relations Are Moderated by Culture, Religiosity, Age, and Sex: Evidence for the “Self‐Centrality Breeds Self‐Enhancement” Principle
OBJECTIVE: Who has high self-esteem? Is it ambitious, competitive, outgoing people-agentic personalities? Or is it caring, honest, understanding people-communal personalities? The literature on agency-communion and self-esteem is sparse, indirect, and inconsistent. Based on William James's theorizing, we propose the "self-centrality breeds self-enhancement" principle. Accordingly, agency will be linked to self-esteem, if agency is self-central. C…
The role of semantic self-perceptions in temporal distance perceptions toward autobiographical events: The semantic congruence model
Why do some autobiographical events feel as if they happened yesterday, whereas others feel like ancient history? Such temporal distance perceptions have surprisingly little to do with actual calendar time distance. Instead, psychologists have found that people typically perceive positive autobiographical events as overly recent, while perceiving negative events as overly distant. The origins of this temporal distance bias have been sought in sel…
Satisfaction–Adaptation Principles in Sexual Desire: Exploring Gender Differences Across the Life Span
Sexual desire may change according to two principles: the satisfaction principle (high sexual opportunity/frequency decreases sexual desire) and the adaptation principle (high sexual opportunity/frequency increases sexual desire). We explore the workings of these opposing principles separately for both genders across the adult life span. Two tests within a large ( N = 181,546) and cross-cultural (11 countries) data set revealed that the satisfact…
Agency‐Communion and Interest in Prosocial Behavior: Social Motives for Assimilation and Contrast Explain Sociocultural Inconsistencies
Identifying the “prosocial personality” is a classic project in personality psychology. However, personality traits have been elusive predictors of prosocial behavior, with personality‐prosociality relations varying widely across sociocultural contexts. We propose the social motives perspective to account for such sociocultural inconsistencies. According to this perspective, a focal quality of agency (e.g., competence, independence, openness) is …
Pancultural nostalgia: Prototypical conceptions across cultures
Nostalgia is a frequently experienced complex emotion, understood by laypersons in the United Kingdom and United States of America to (a) refer prototypically to fond, self-relevant, social memories and (b) be more pleasant (e.g., happy, warm) than unpleasant (e.g., sad, regretful). This research examined whether people across cultures conceive of nostalgia in the same way. Students in 18 countries across 5 continents (N = 1,704) rated the protot…
Cross-cultural variations in Big Five relationships with religiosity: A sociocultural motives perspective
A sociocultural motives perspective (SMP) on Big Five relationships is introduced. According to the SMP, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness elicit assimilation to sociocultural norms, Openness elicits contrast from these norms, and Extraversion and Neuroticism are independent of sociocultural assimilation and contrast. Due to sociocultural assimilation, then, relationships of Agreeableness and Conscientiousness with an outcome wax (become more p…
Cultural norm fulfillment, interpersonal belonging, or getting ahead? A large-scale cross-cultural test of three perspectives on the function of self-esteem
What is the function of self-esteem? We classified relevant theoretical work into 3 perspectives. The cultural norm-fulfillment perspective regards self-esteem a result of adherence to cultural norms. The interpersonal-belonging perspective regards self-esteem as a sociometer of interpersonal belonging. The getting-ahead perspective regards self-esteem as a sociometer of getting ahead in the social world, while regarding low anxiety/neuroticism a…
The Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding Short Form (Bidr-16)
Self-report studies often call for assessment of socially desirable responding. Many researchers use the Marlowe-Crowne Scale for its brief versions; however, this scale is outdated, and contemporary models of social desirability emphasize its multi-dimensional nature. The 40-item Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR) incorporates Self-Deceptive Enhancement (honest but overly positive responding) and Impression Management (bias toward…
Age and gender differences in self-esteem—A cross-cultural window
Research and theorizing on gender and age differences in self-esteem have played a prominent role in psychology over the past 20 years. However, virtually all empirical research has been undertaken in the United States or other Western industrialized countries, providing a narrow empirical base from which to draw conclusions and develop theory. To broaden the empirical base, the present research uses a large Internet sample (N = 985,937) to provi…
Christian self-enhancement
People overestimate themselves in domains that are central to their self-concept. Critically, the psychological status of this "self-centrality principle" remains unclear. One view regards the principle as an inextricable part of human nature and, thus, as universal and resistant to normative pressure. A contrasting view regards the principle as liable to pressure (and subsequent modification) from self-effacement norms, thus questioning its univ…
The religiosity as social value hypothesis: A multi-method replication and extension across 65 countries and three levels of spatial aggregation
Are religious people psychologically better or worse adjusted than their nonreligious counterparts? Hundreds of studies have reported a positive relation between religiosity and psychological adjustment. Recently, however, a comparatively small number of cross-cultural studies has questioned this staple of religiosity research. The latter studies find that religious adjustment benefits are restricted to religious cultures. Gebauer, Sedikides, and…
Psychology (41 works) · Social Psychology (40 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (21 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (18 works) · Developmental psychology (15 works) · Personality Traits and Psychology (14 works) · Personality (12 works) · Religiosity (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology (10 works)