Iva Poláčková Šolcová
Biographic Data
| ID | 152033 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Iva Poláčková Šolcová |
| GIVEN NAMES | Iva Poláčková |
| FAMILY NAME | Šolcová |
| SIGNATURE | ŠOLCOVÁ I P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Czech Academy of Sciences |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3130-5416 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Is Societal Progress Muting the Expressivity of Negative Emotions? Evidence from Two Cross-national Studies
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…
Mind the Gap: Perceived Economic Inequality and the Well-Being Gap around the Globe
The link between economic inequality and individual well-being has been gaining increasing research attention. This study examines this relationship using data from 71 countries with diverse national incomes, addressing three key research gaps: (1) incorporating measures of both perceived and objective economic inequality, (2) extending analysis to multiple components of well-being beyond happiness, including meaning in life, harmony, and spiritu…
Happiness Maximization Is a Weird Way of Living
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…
A Cross-cultural Study On the Association Between Societal Conditions and the Idealization of Happiness
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: How cultural models of selfhood predict frequency of being in love
Cultural religiosity moderates the relationship between being in love and subjective well-being
Love, culture, and well-being: How values moderate the link between relationship status and well-being across 57 countries
The Role of Cultural Heterogeneity in Strengthening the Link Between Family Relationships and Life Satisfaction in 50 Societies
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…
Testing the underlying structure of unfounded beliefs about Covid-19 around the world
Unfounded—conspiracy and health—beliefs about COVID-19 have accompanied the pandemic worldwide. Here, we examined cross-nationally the structure and correlates of these beliefs with an 8-item scale, using a multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. We obtained a two-factor model of unfounded (conspiracy and health) beliefs with good internal structure (average CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.05, SRMR = 0.04), but a high correlation between the two factors (…
Agentic collective narcissism and communal collective narcissism: Do they predict Covid-19 pandemic-related beliefs and behaviors
Introduction to a Culturally Sensitive Measure of Well-Being: Combining Life Satisfaction and Interdependent Happiness Across 49 Different Cultures
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
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
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…
Family First: Evidence of Consistency and Variation in the Value of Family Versus Personal Happiness Across 49 Different Cultures
People care about their own well-being and about the well-being of their families. It is currently, however, unknown how much people tend to value their own versus their family’s well-being. A recent study documented that people value family happiness over personal happiness across four cultures. In this study, we sought to replicate this finding across a larger sample size ( N = 12,819) and a greater number of countries ( N = 49). We found that …
Personal Life Satisfaction as a Measure of Societal Happiness is an Individualistic Presumption: Evidence from Fifty Countries
Numerous studies document that societal happiness is correlated with individualism, but the nature of this phenomenon remains understudied. In the current paper, we address this gap and test the reasoning that individualism correlates with societal happiness because the most common measure of societal happiness (i.e., country-level aggregates of personal life satisfaction) is individualism-themed. With the data collected from 13,009 participants …
Dialogical Integration of Life Experiences and Successful Aging
This article examines the hypothesis that the dialogical integration of life experiences is related to successful aging. Life story interviews with 93 older Czech adults were sorted into categories characterized by specific patterns of life experience integration: (i) without dialogical processes, (ii) with differentiated I-positions, (iii) with dialogical relationships, (iv) partially integrated, and (v) completely integrated. The results indica…
How Czecho-Slovakia Bounces Back: Population-Based Validation of the Brief Resilience Scale in Two Central European Countries
This study provides evidence of good psychometric properties, reliability and validity of the Czech and Slovak adaptations of the BRS
Nadir experiences and ego-integrity: Types of narrative enactment
Coming to terms with negative life experiences is a way of reaching ego-integrity in mature age, a development task belonging to the last phase of Erikson's theory of psycho-social development. This study explores fundamental tensions between negative life experiences and ego-integrity through the lens of narrative enactment, i.e. by looking at how nadir experiences are constructed in the narratives of study participants. From 166 potential parti…
Spirituality, Religious Attendance and Health Complaints in Czech Adolescents
Research in some religious countries shows that religiosity and spirituality positively affect adolescent health. We studied whether religiosity and spirituality also have positive associations with adolescent health in a secular country. We tested the associations between religious attendance and spirituality and self-reported health and health complaints using a representative sample of Czech adolescents ( n = 4182, 14.4 ± 1.1 years, 48.6% boys…
Czech Version of the Spiritual Well-Being Scale: Evaluation and Psychometric Properties
Spirituality and spiritual well-being are connected with many areas of human life. Thus, especially in secular countries, there is a need for reliable validated instruments for measuring spirituality. The Spiritual Well-Being Scale is among the world's most often used tools; therefore, the aim of this study was its psychometrical evaluation in the secular environment of the Czech Republic on a nationally representative sample (n = 1797, mean age:…
The Spiritual Well-Being Scale: Psychometric Evaluation of the Shortened Version in Czech Adolescents
The aim of this study was to psychometrically evaluate the shortened version of the Spiritual Well-Being Scale (SWBS) in Czech adolescents. A nationally representative sample of 4217 adolescents participated in the 2014 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children survey. The internal consistency of the SWBS was assessed using Cronbach's alpha (α) and Mean Inter-Item Correlation (MIIC) values. The factor structure was evaluated using principal compon…
The Higher Your Implicit Affiliation‐Intimacy Motive, the More Loneliness Can Turn You Into a Social Cynic: A Cross‐Cultural Study
Research has shown that the strength of the implicit affiliation‐intimacy motive moderates the effects of satisfaction and frustration of the need for affiliation‐intimacy: Low relatedness was more closely related to envy for people high in the implicit affiliation‐intimacy motive. The present study tests a moderating effect of the strength of the implicit affiliation‐intimacy motive on the association between low relatedness and social cynicism …
National collective identity in transitional societies: Salience and relations to life satisfaction for youth in South Africa, Albania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Kosovo and Romania
In this study we investigated the salience of the construct of national collective identity and its associations with life satisfaction among adolescents living in transitional societies characterised by relevant change in the last decades. Participants were 1 066 adolescents (M = 15.35 years, SD = 1.35) from South Africa (n = 186) and five Central Eastern European countries, including Albania (n = 209), Bulgaria (n = 146), Czech Republic (n = 30…
Narrative construction of resilience: Stories of older Czech adults
Some older adults handle the pitfalls of ageing better than others. One explanation emerges from the concept of resilience, the ability to bounce back from the adversities of later life. In this study, we approached resilience from the narrative perspective. This study is a part of a project based on the DIPEx qualitative methodology, focused on different aspects of ageing. A combination of narrative and semi-structured interviews was conducted w…
Validation of a 16-Item Short Form of the Czech Version of the Experiences in Close Relationships Revised Questionnaire in a Representative Sample
The aim of this study was to create a shorter Czech version (ECR-R-16) of the Revised Experiences in Close Relationships (ECR-R) questionnaire and to assess its psychometric properties. Data from a representative sample of the Czech population from 15 to 90 years old (N = 1000, M age = 46.0 years, SD = 17.3) were collected using a face-to-face structured interview in 2014. The developed short form of the Czech version of the ECR-R showed good int…
Family First: Evidence of Consistency and Variation in the Value of Family Versus Personal Happiness Across 49 Different Cultures
People care about their own well-being and about the well-being of their families. It is currently, however, unknown how much people tend to value their own versus their family’s well-being. A recent study documented that people value family happiness over personal happiness across four cultures. In this study, we sought to replicate this finding across a larger sample size ( N = 12,819) and a greater number of countries ( N = 49). We found that …
Narrative construction of resilience: Stories of older Czech adults
Some older adults handle the pitfalls of ageing better than others. One explanation emerges from the concept of resilience, the ability to bounce back from the adversities of later life. In this study, we approached resilience from the narrative perspective. This study is a part of a project based on the DIPEx qualitative methodology, focused on different aspects of ageing. A combination of narrative and semi-structured interviews was conducted w…
Generativity does not necessarily satisfy all your needs: Associations among cultural demand for generativity, generative concern, generative action, and need satisfaction in the elderly in four cultu…
The present study examines the association between various facets of generativity, that is, cultural demand for generativity, generative concern, and generative action, with the satisfaction of the needs for relatedness, competence, and autonomy in samples of elderly from Cameroon, China (Hong Kong), the Czech Republic, and Germany. Participants provided information on self-transcendence values (internalized cultural demand), generative concern a…
Love beyond east and west: How cultural models of selfhood predict frequency of being in love
Validation of a 16-Item Short Form of the Czech Version of the Experiences in Close Relationships Revised Questionnaire in a Representative Sample
The aim of this study was to create a shorter Czech version (ECR-R-16) of the Revised Experiences in Close Relationships (ECR-R) questionnaire and to assess its psychometric properties. Data from a representative sample of the Czech population from 15 to 90 years old (N = 1000, M age = 46.0 years, SD = 17.3) were collected using a face-to-face structured interview in 2014. The developed short form of the Czech version of the ECR-R showed good int…
Generativity does not necessarily satisfy all your needs: Associations among cultural demand for generativity, generative concern, generative action, and need satisfaction in the elderly in four cultu…
The present study examines the association between various facets of generativity, that is, cultural demand for generativity, generative concern, and generative action, with the satisfaction of the needs for relatedness, competence, and autonomy in samples of elderly from Cameroon, China (Hong Kong), the Czech Republic, and Germany. Participants provided information on self-transcendence values (internalized cultural demand), generative concern a…
The Spiritual Well-Being Scale: Psychometric Evaluation of the Shortened Version in Czech Adolescents
The aim of this study was to psychometrically evaluate the shortened version of the Spiritual Well-Being Scale (SWBS) in Czech adolescents. A nationally representative sample of 4217 adolescents participated in the 2014 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children survey. The internal consistency of the SWBS was assessed using Cronbach's alpha (α) and Mean Inter-Item Correlation (MIIC) values. The factor structure was evaluated using principal compon…
The Higher Your Implicit Affiliation‐Intimacy Motive, the More Loneliness Can Turn You Into a Social Cynic: A Cross‐Cultural Study
Research has shown that the strength of the implicit affiliation‐intimacy motive moderates the effects of satisfaction and frustration of the need for affiliation‐intimacy: Low relatedness was more closely related to envy for people high in the implicit affiliation‐intimacy motive. The present study tests a moderating effect of the strength of the implicit affiliation‐intimacy motive on the association between low relatedness and social cynicism …
National collective identity in transitional societies: Salience and relations to life satisfaction for youth in South Africa, Albania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Kosovo and Romania
In this study we investigated the salience of the construct of national collective identity and its associations with life satisfaction among adolescents living in transitional societies characterised by relevant change in the last decades. Participants were 1 066 adolescents (M = 15.35 years, SD = 1.35) from South Africa (n = 186) and five Central Eastern European countries, including Albania (n = 209), Bulgaria (n = 146), Czech Republic (n = 30…
Narrative construction of resilience: Stories of older Czech adults
Some older adults handle the pitfalls of ageing better than others. One explanation emerges from the concept of resilience, the ability to bounce back from the adversities of later life. In this study, we approached resilience from the narrative perspective. This study is a part of a project based on the DIPEx qualitative methodology, focused on different aspects of ageing. A combination of narrative and semi-structured interviews was conducted w…
Spirituality, Religious Attendance and Health Complaints in Czech Adolescents
Research in some religious countries shows that religiosity and spirituality positively affect adolescent health. We studied whether religiosity and spirituality also have positive associations with adolescent health in a secular country. We tested the associations between religious attendance and spirituality and self-reported health and health complaints using a representative sample of Czech adolescents ( n = 4182, 14.4 ± 1.1 years, 48.6% boys…
Czech Version of the Spiritual Well-Being Scale: Evaluation and Psychometric Properties
Spirituality and spiritual well-being are connected with many areas of human life. Thus, especially in secular countries, there is a need for reliable validated instruments for measuring spirituality. The Spiritual Well-Being Scale is among the world's most often used tools; therefore, the aim of this study was its psychometrical evaluation in the secular environment of the Czech Republic on a nationally representative sample (n = 1797, mean age:…
Personal Life Satisfaction as a Measure of Societal Happiness is an Individualistic Presumption: Evidence from Fifty Countries
Numerous studies document that societal happiness is correlated with individualism, but the nature of this phenomenon remains understudied. In the current paper, we address this gap and test the reasoning that individualism correlates with societal happiness because the most common measure of societal happiness (i.e., country-level aggregates of personal life satisfaction) is individualism-themed. With the data collected from 13,009 participants …
Dialogical Integration of Life Experiences and Successful Aging
This article examines the hypothesis that the dialogical integration of life experiences is related to successful aging. Life story interviews with 93 older Czech adults were sorted into categories characterized by specific patterns of life experience integration: (i) without dialogical processes, (ii) with differentiated I-positions, (iii) with dialogical relationships, (iv) partially integrated, and (v) completely integrated. The results indica…
How Czecho-Slovakia Bounces Back: Population-Based Validation of the Brief Resilience Scale in Two Central European Countries
This study provides evidence of good psychometric properties, reliability and validity of the Czech and Slovak adaptations of the BRS
Nadir experiences and ego-integrity: Types of narrative enactment
Coming to terms with negative life experiences is a way of reaching ego-integrity in mature age, a development task belonging to the last phase of Erikson's theory of psycho-social development. This study explores fundamental tensions between negative life experiences and ego-integrity through the lens of narrative enactment, i.e. by looking at how nadir experiences are constructed in the narratives of study participants. From 166 potential parti…
Introduction to a Culturally Sensitive Measure of Well-Being: Combining Life Satisfaction and Interdependent Happiness Across 49 Different Cultures
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
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
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…
Family First: Evidence of Consistency and Variation in the Value of Family Versus Personal Happiness Across 49 Different Cultures
People care about their own well-being and about the well-being of their families. It is currently, however, unknown how much people tend to value their own versus their family’s well-being. A recent study documented that people value family happiness over personal happiness across four cultures. In this study, we sought to replicate this finding across a larger sample size ( N = 12,819) and a greater number of countries ( N = 49). We found that …
The Role of Cultural Heterogeneity in Strengthening the Link Between Family Relationships and Life Satisfaction in 50 Societies
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…
Testing the underlying structure of unfounded beliefs about Covid-19 around the world
Unfounded—conspiracy and health—beliefs about COVID-19 have accompanied the pandemic worldwide. Here, we examined cross-nationally the structure and correlates of these beliefs with an 8-item scale, using a multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. We obtained a two-factor model of unfounded (conspiracy and health) beliefs with good internal structure (average CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.05, SRMR = 0.04), but a high correlation between the two factors (…
Agentic collective narcissism and communal collective narcissism: Do they predict Covid-19 pandemic-related beliefs and behaviors
Happiness Maximization Is a Weird Way of Living
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…
A Cross-cultural Study On the Association Between Societal Conditions and the Idealization of Happiness
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: How cultural models of selfhood predict frequency of being in love
Cultural religiosity moderates the relationship between being in love and subjective well-being
Love, culture, and well-being: How values moderate the link between relationship status and well-being across 57 countries
Is Societal Progress Muting the Expressivity of Negative Emotions? Evidence from Two Cross-national Studies
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…
Psychology (25 works) · Social Psychology (24 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (13 works) · Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction (12 works) · Social Psychology (12 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Happiness (8 works) · Political science (7 works) · Clinical Psychology (6 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (6 works)