N Pontus Leander
Biographic Data
| ID | 207350 |
|---|---|
| NAME | N Pontus Leander |
| GIVEN NAMES | N Pontus |
| FAMILY NAME | Leander |
| SIGNATURE | LEANDER N P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Groningen |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3073-5038 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 71 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Gender inequality and cultural values in explaining gender differences in positive and negative emotions: A comparison of 24 countries during the Covid-19 pandemic
The coronavirus pandemic posed a major challenge to mental health. Existing evidence shows that COVID-19 is related to poor emotional well-being, particularly among women. However, most work on the subject uses single-country samples, limiting the ability to generalize the disparity or explain it as a function of societal variables. The present study investigates the expression of positive and negative emotions during the pandemic as a function o…
Just World Beliefs in a Time of Crisis: Cross-Lagged Panel and Moderating Cross-National Effects on Mental Health and Well-Being Outcomes
Belief in a just world (BJW) is well established as a coping resource, particularly for those times when the world is experienced as uncertain, unpredictable, and uncontrollable. The early days of the COVID-19 pandemic was such a time, and therefore provided an opportunity to test the boundary conditions of BJW theorizing. Here, we make a new methodological contribution, testing (a) cross-lagged panel effects of BJW on mental health and well-bein…
A threat-complexity hypothesis of conspiracy thinking during the Covid-19 pandemic: Cross-national and longitudinal evidence of a three-way interaction effect of financial strain, disempowerment and p…
One way to cope with crises is by attributing their ultimate causes to malevolent conspiracies. As crises are rarely simple, and may involve an interplay between multiple, co-occurring threats, we suggest that conspiracy thinking mainly occurs among individuals who experience conditions of threat complexity - such as socioeconomic vulnerability paired with a sense of helplessness in society, and who are also sufficiently paranoid to infer a consp…
Why Americans increasingly claim to own guns for self-protection: A modern culture of social-psychological threat defense
This article addresses two questions: (a) why do Americans believe that they need guns to defend themselves and their families and (b) why has the number of Americans who share this belief increased dramatically in recent decades? To address the first question, we describe a model of defensive gun ownership that assumes that Americans’ perceived need of a gun for self-defense is not only determined by their perceived lifetime risk of being assaul…
The Precarity of Progress: Implications of a Shifting Gendered Division of Labor for Relationships and Well-Being as a Function of Country-Level Gender Equality
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic saw a shift toward a more traditional division of labor–one where women took greater responsibility for household tasks and childcare than men. We tested whether this regressive shift was more acutely perceived and experienced by women in countries with greater gender equality. Cross-cultural longitudinal survey data for women and men ( N = 10,238) was collected weekly during the first few months of the pandemic…
Passion for guns and beliefs in a dangerous world: An examination of defensive gun ownership
This research examines the notion of defensive gun ownership using the Dualistic Model of Passion. We hypothesized that an obsessive (vs. harmonious) passion for guns would be associated with a belief in a dangerous world (BDW). We expected this relationship to intensify in threatening contexts, leading to a more expansive view on defensive gun ownership. We tested this hypothesis across three threat contexts: a gun‐control message (Study 1, N = …
Covid-19 may have increased global support for universal health coverage: Multi-country observational study
Introduction The multiple risks generated by the COVID-19 pandemic intensified the debate about healthcare access and coverage. Whether the burden of disease caused by the coronavirus outbreak changed public opinion about healthcare provision remains unclear. In this study, it was specifically examined if the pandemic changed support for governmental intervention in healthcare as a proxy to support for universal health coverage (UHC). It also exa…
Intentions to be Vaccinated Against Covid-19: The Role of Prosociality and Conspiracy Beliefs across 20 Countries
Understanding the determinants of COVID-19 vaccine uptake is important to inform policy decisions and plan vaccination campaigns. The aims of this research were to: (1) explore the individual- and country-level determinants of intentions to be vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2, and (2) examine worldwide variation in vaccination intentions. This cross-sectional online survey was conducted during the first wave of the pandemic, involving 6697 responden…
The role of values in coping with health and economic threats of Covid-19
61,490) suggest that health and economic threats of COVID-19 evoke different values, with implications for controlling and coping with the pandemic. Specifically, health threats predicted prioritization of communal values related to caring for others and belonging, whereas economic threats predicted prioritization of agentic values focused on competition and achievement. Concurrently and over time, prioritizing communal values over agentic values…
Impact of National Pandemic Lockdowns on Perceived Threat of Immigrants: A Natural Quasi-Experiment Across 23 Countries
Xenophobia and anti-immigrant attacks rose during the COVID-19 pandemic, yet this may not be solely due to the disease threat. According to theories of frustration and scapegoating, situational obstructions and deprivation can motivate prejudice against outgroups. Using a global natural quasi-experimental design, this study tests whether the restrictiveness of national lockdowns can explain higher individual-level perceptions of immigrant threat.…
Frustration–aggression hypothesis reconsidered: The role of significance quest
One of the oldest scientific theories of human aggression is the frustration–aggression hypothesis, advanced in 1939. Although this theory has received considerable empirical support and is alive and well today, its underlying mechanisms have not been adequately explored. In this article, we examine major findings and concepts from extant psychological research on hostile aggression and offer an integrative conception: aggression is a primordial …
Identifying important individual‐ and country‐level predictors of conspiracy theorizing: A machine learning analysis
Psychological research on the predictors of conspiracy theorizing—explaining important social and political events or circumstances as secret plots by malevolent groups—has flourished in recent years. However, research has typically examined only a small number of predictors in one, or a small number of, national contexts. Such approaches make it difficult to examine the relative importance of predictors, and risk overlooking some potentially rel…
Lockdown Lives: A Longitudinal Study of Inter-Relationships Among Feelings of Loneliness, Social Contacts, and Solidarity During the Covid-19 Lockdown in Early 2020
We examine how social contacts and feelings of solidarity shape experiences of loneliness during the COVID-19 lockdown in early 2020. From the PsyCorona database, we obtained longitudinal data from 23 countries, collected between March and May 2020. The results demonstrated that although online contacts help to reduce feelings of loneliness, people who feel more lonely are less likely to use that strategy. Solidarity played only a small role in s…
The rise and fall of job insecurity during a pandemic: The role of habitual coping
Crises like the COVID-19 pandemic can trigger concerns about loss of employment and changes in work conditions, and thereby increase job insecurity. Yet, little is known about how perceived job insecurity subsequently unfolds over time and how individual differences in habitual coping moderate such a trajectory. Using longitudinal data from 899 US-based participants across 5 waves (March to June 2020), we investigated the trajectory of job insecu…
Age differences in hedonic adaptation to societal restrictions? Positive and negative affect trajectories during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in 33 nations
We examined age group differences in hedonic adaptation trajectories of positive and negative affect (PA/NA) at different arousal levels during the severe societal restrictions that governments implemented to contain the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic (March to June 2020). Data from 10,509 participants from 33 countries and 12 weekly assessments were used (67% women, aged 18 to 85 +, on average 318 participants per country ( SD = 434) and 5.…
Significance-Quest Theory
Even though the motivation to feel worthy, to be respected, and to matter to others has been identified for centuries by scholars, the antecedents, consequences, and conditions of its activation have not been systematically analyzed or integrated. The purpose of this article is to offer such an integration. We feature a motivational construct, the quest for significance, defined as the need to have social worth. This need is typically fulfilled b…
Associations of risk perception of Covid-19 with emotion and mental health during the pandemic
Cooperation and Trust Across Societies During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Cross-societal differences in cooperation and trust among strangers in the provision of public goods may be key to understanding how societies are managing the COVID-19 pandemic. We report a survey conducted across 41 societies between March and May 2020 ( N = 34,526), and test pre-registered hypotheses about how cross-societal differences in cooperation and trust relate to prosocial COVID-19 responses (e.g., social distancing), stringency of pol…
We are all in the same boat’: How societal discontent affects intention to help during the Covid ‐19 pandemic
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused a global health crisis. Consequently, many countries have adopted restrictive measures that caused a substantial change in society. Within this framework, it is reasonable to suppose that a sentiment of societal discontent, defined as generalized concern about the precarious state of society, has arisen. Literature shows that collectively experienced situations can motivate people to hel…
Frustration-affirmation? Thwarted goals motivate compliance with social norms for violence and nonviolence
whereby thwarted goals increase compliance with perceived norms for behavior, which can increase endorsement of violent means such as guns and war, but also nonviolent charitable actions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)
Mass shootings and the salience of guns as means of compensation for thwarted goals
Between 2016 and 2017, Americans suffered 3 of the deadliest mass shootings in modern history by a lone gunman: the Orlando nightclub shooting, the Las Vegas strip shooting, and the Texas church shooting. We studied American gun owners in the wakes of these tragedies, theorizing that a byproduct of the salience of mass shootings is to increase the salience of guns as means of individual empowerment and significance. We hypothesized that this incr…
Is It a Dangerous World Out There? The Motivational Bases of American Gun Ownership
Americans are the world’s best armed citizens and public polling suggests protection/self-defense is their main reason for gun ownership. However, there is virtually no psychological research on gun ownership. The present article develops the first psychological process model of defensive gun ownership—specifically, a two-component model that considers both the antecedents and consequences of owning a gun for protection/self-defense. We demonstra…
On thwarted goals and displaced aggression: A compensatory competence model
Indifferent reactions: Regulatory responses to the apathy of others
How do people react to indifference when they see it in others? In 5 studies we examined how people may respond to it as a cue to disengage when they lack sufficient commitment to a goal or task themselves. Across the studies, participants were either exposed to cues implying an absence of motivation or not, after which their own goal-directed motivation was assessed. Results indicated that participants were likely to behaviorally assimilate indi…
The object of my protection: Shielding fundamental motives from the implicit motivational influence of others
Significance-Quest Theory
Even though the motivation to feel worthy, to be respected, and to matter to others has been identified for centuries by scholars, the antecedents, consequences, and conditions of its activation have not been systematically analyzed or integrated. The purpose of this article is to offer such an integration. We feature a motivational construct, the quest for significance, defined as the need to have social worth. This need is typically fulfilled b…
Frustration–aggression hypothesis reconsidered: The role of significance quest
One of the oldest scientific theories of human aggression is the frustration–aggression hypothesis, advanced in 1939. Although this theory has received considerable empirical support and is alive and well today, its underlying mechanisms have not been adequately explored. In this article, we examine major findings and concepts from extant psychological research on hostile aggression and offer an integrative conception: aggression is a primordial …
On thwarted goals and displaced aggression: A compensatory competence model
Frustration-affirmation? Thwarted goals motivate compliance with social norms for violence and nonviolence
whereby thwarted goals increase compliance with perceived norms for behavior, which can increase endorsement of violent means such as guns and war, but also nonviolent charitable actions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)
Mass shootings and the salience of guns as means of compensation for thwarted goals
Between 2016 and 2017, Americans suffered 3 of the deadliest mass shootings in modern history by a lone gunman: the Orlando nightclub shooting, the Las Vegas strip shooting, and the Texas church shooting. We studied American gun owners in the wakes of these tragedies, theorizing that a byproduct of the salience of mass shootings is to increase the salience of guns as means of individual empowerment and significance. We hypothesized that this incr…
The Precarity of Progress: Implications of a Shifting Gendered Division of Labor for Relationships and Well-Being as a Function of Country-Level Gender Equality
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic saw a shift toward a more traditional division of labor–one where women took greater responsibility for household tasks and childcare than men. We tested whether this regressive shift was more acutely perceived and experienced by women in countries with greater gender equality. Cross-cultural longitudinal survey data for women and men ( N = 10,238) was collected weekly during the first few months of the pandemic…
Identifying important individual‐ and country‐level predictors of conspiracy theorizing: A machine learning analysis
Psychological research on the predictors of conspiracy theorizing—explaining important social and political events or circumstances as secret plots by malevolent groups—has flourished in recent years. However, research has typically examined only a small number of predictors in one, or a small number of, national contexts. Such approaches make it difficult to examine the relative importance of predictors, and risk overlooking some potentially rel…
The object of my protection: Shielding fundamental motives from the implicit motivational influence of others
Mind your mannerisms: Behavioral mimicry elicits stereotype conformity
Why Americans increasingly claim to own guns for self-protection: A modern culture of social-psychological threat defense
This article addresses two questions: (a) why do Americans believe that they need guns to defend themselves and their families and (b) why has the number of Americans who share this belief increased dramatically in recent decades? To address the first question, we describe a model of defensive gun ownership that assumes that Americans’ perceived need of a gun for self-defense is not only determined by their perceived lifetime risk of being assaul…
We are all in the same boat’: How societal discontent affects intention to help during the Covid ‐19 pandemic
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused a global health crisis. Consequently, many countries have adopted restrictive measures that caused a substantial change in society. Within this framework, it is reasonable to suppose that a sentiment of societal discontent, defined as generalized concern about the precarious state of society, has arisen. Literature shows that collectively experienced situations can motivate people to hel…
A threat-complexity hypothesis of conspiracy thinking during the Covid-19 pandemic: Cross-national and longitudinal evidence of a three-way interaction effect of financial strain, disempowerment and p…
One way to cope with crises is by attributing their ultimate causes to malevolent conspiracies. As crises are rarely simple, and may involve an interplay between multiple, co-occurring threats, we suggest that conspiracy thinking mainly occurs among individuals who experience conditions of threat complexity - such as socioeconomic vulnerability paired with a sense of helplessness in society, and who are also sufficiently paranoid to infer a consp…
Passion for guns and beliefs in a dangerous world: An examination of defensive gun ownership
This research examines the notion of defensive gun ownership using the Dualistic Model of Passion. We hypothesized that an obsessive (vs. harmonious) passion for guns would be associated with a belief in a dangerous world (BDW). We expected this relationship to intensify in threatening contexts, leading to a more expansive view on defensive gun ownership. We tested this hypothesis across three threat contexts: a gun‐control message (Study 1, N = …
Testosterone Treatment, Affect, and Appearance: Slight Effects in Normal Subjects
In a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled experiment, 64 women and 26 men applied testosterone and placebo skin creams during two five- to seven-day periods. Subjects provided serum samples for testosterone assay, completed a daily affect measure, wrote projective stories, recorded random samples of everyday speech, provided a guess as to which week they had received testosterone, and were videotaped in a standard setting. The treatment mor…
Mind your mannerisms: Behavioral mimicry elicits stereotype conformity
The object of my protection: Shielding fundamental motives from the implicit motivational influence of others
Indifferent reactions: Regulatory responses to the apathy of others
How do people react to indifference when they see it in others? In 5 studies we examined how people may respond to it as a cue to disengage when they lack sufficient commitment to a goal or task themselves. Across the studies, participants were either exposed to cues implying an absence of motivation or not, after which their own goal-directed motivation was assessed. Results indicated that participants were likely to behaviorally assimilate indi…
Is It a Dangerous World Out There? The Motivational Bases of American Gun Ownership
Americans are the world’s best armed citizens and public polling suggests protection/self-defense is their main reason for gun ownership. However, there is virtually no psychological research on gun ownership. The present article develops the first psychological process model of defensive gun ownership—specifically, a two-component model that considers both the antecedents and consequences of owning a gun for protection/self-defense. We demonstra…
On thwarted goals and displaced aggression: A compensatory competence model
Mass shootings and the salience of guns as means of compensation for thwarted goals
Between 2016 and 2017, Americans suffered 3 of the deadliest mass shootings in modern history by a lone gunman: the Orlando nightclub shooting, the Las Vegas strip shooting, and the Texas church shooting. We studied American gun owners in the wakes of these tragedies, theorizing that a byproduct of the salience of mass shootings is to increase the salience of guns as means of individual empowerment and significance. We hypothesized that this incr…
Frustration-affirmation? Thwarted goals motivate compliance with social norms for violence and nonviolence
whereby thwarted goals increase compliance with perceived norms for behavior, which can increase endorsement of violent means such as guns and war, but also nonviolent charitable actions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)
Associations of risk perception of Covid-19 with emotion and mental health during the pandemic
Cooperation and Trust Across Societies During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Cross-societal differences in cooperation and trust among strangers in the provision of public goods may be key to understanding how societies are managing the COVID-19 pandemic. We report a survey conducted across 41 societies between March and May 2020 ( N = 34,526), and test pre-registered hypotheses about how cross-societal differences in cooperation and trust relate to prosocial COVID-19 responses (e.g., social distancing), stringency of pol…
We are all in the same boat’: How societal discontent affects intention to help during the Covid ‐19 pandemic
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused a global health crisis. Consequently, many countries have adopted restrictive measures that caused a substantial change in society. Within this framework, it is reasonable to suppose that a sentiment of societal discontent, defined as generalized concern about the precarious state of society, has arisen. Literature shows that collectively experienced situations can motivate people to hel…
Lockdown Lives: A Longitudinal Study of Inter-Relationships Among Feelings of Loneliness, Social Contacts, and Solidarity During the Covid-19 Lockdown in Early 2020
We examine how social contacts and feelings of solidarity shape experiences of loneliness during the COVID-19 lockdown in early 2020. From the PsyCorona database, we obtained longitudinal data from 23 countries, collected between March and May 2020. The results demonstrated that although online contacts help to reduce feelings of loneliness, people who feel more lonely are less likely to use that strategy. Solidarity played only a small role in s…
The rise and fall of job insecurity during a pandemic: The role of habitual coping
Crises like the COVID-19 pandemic can trigger concerns about loss of employment and changes in work conditions, and thereby increase job insecurity. Yet, little is known about how perceived job insecurity subsequently unfolds over time and how individual differences in habitual coping moderate such a trajectory. Using longitudinal data from 899 US-based participants across 5 waves (March to June 2020), we investigated the trajectory of job insecu…
Age differences in hedonic adaptation to societal restrictions? Positive and negative affect trajectories during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in 33 nations
We examined age group differences in hedonic adaptation trajectories of positive and negative affect (PA/NA) at different arousal levels during the severe societal restrictions that governments implemented to contain the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic (March to June 2020). Data from 10,509 participants from 33 countries and 12 weekly assessments were used (67% women, aged 18 to 85 +, on average 318 participants per country ( SD = 434) and 5.…
Significance-Quest Theory
Even though the motivation to feel worthy, to be respected, and to matter to others has been identified for centuries by scholars, the antecedents, consequences, and conditions of its activation have not been systematically analyzed or integrated. The purpose of this article is to offer such an integration. We feature a motivational construct, the quest for significance, defined as the need to have social worth. This need is typically fulfilled b…
Covid-19 may have increased global support for universal health coverage: Multi-country observational study
Introduction The multiple risks generated by the COVID-19 pandemic intensified the debate about healthcare access and coverage. Whether the burden of disease caused by the coronavirus outbreak changed public opinion about healthcare provision remains unclear. In this study, it was specifically examined if the pandemic changed support for governmental intervention in healthcare as a proxy to support for universal health coverage (UHC). It also exa…
Intentions to be Vaccinated Against Covid-19: The Role of Prosociality and Conspiracy Beliefs across 20 Countries
Understanding the determinants of COVID-19 vaccine uptake is important to inform policy decisions and plan vaccination campaigns. The aims of this research were to: (1) explore the individual- and country-level determinants of intentions to be vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2, and (2) examine worldwide variation in vaccination intentions. This cross-sectional online survey was conducted during the first wave of the pandemic, involving 6697 responden…
The role of values in coping with health and economic threats of Covid-19
61,490) suggest that health and economic threats of COVID-19 evoke different values, with implications for controlling and coping with the pandemic. Specifically, health threats predicted prioritization of communal values related to caring for others and belonging, whereas economic threats predicted prioritization of agentic values focused on competition and achievement. Concurrently and over time, prioritizing communal values over agentic values…
Impact of National Pandemic Lockdowns on Perceived Threat of Immigrants: A Natural Quasi-Experiment Across 23 Countries
Xenophobia and anti-immigrant attacks rose during the COVID-19 pandemic, yet this may not be solely due to the disease threat. According to theories of frustration and scapegoating, situational obstructions and deprivation can motivate prejudice against outgroups. Using a global natural quasi-experimental design, this study tests whether the restrictiveness of national lockdowns can explain higher individual-level perceptions of immigrant threat.…
Frustration–aggression hypothesis reconsidered: The role of significance quest
One of the oldest scientific theories of human aggression is the frustration–aggression hypothesis, advanced in 1939. Although this theory has received considerable empirical support and is alive and well today, its underlying mechanisms have not been adequately explored. In this article, we examine major findings and concepts from extant psychological research on hostile aggression and offer an integrative conception: aggression is a primordial …
Identifying important individual‐ and country‐level predictors of conspiracy theorizing: A machine learning analysis
Psychological research on the predictors of conspiracy theorizing—explaining important social and political events or circumstances as secret plots by malevolent groups—has flourished in recent years. However, research has typically examined only a small number of predictors in one, or a small number of, national contexts. Such approaches make it difficult to examine the relative importance of predictors, and risk overlooking some potentially rel…
Why Americans increasingly claim to own guns for self-protection: A modern culture of social-psychological threat defense
This article addresses two questions: (a) why do Americans believe that they need guns to defend themselves and their families and (b) why has the number of Americans who share this belief increased dramatically in recent decades? To address the first question, we describe a model of defensive gun ownership that assumes that Americans’ perceived need of a gun for self-defense is not only determined by their perceived lifetime risk of being assaul…
The Precarity of Progress: Implications of a Shifting Gendered Division of Labor for Relationships and Well-Being as a Function of Country-Level Gender Equality
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic saw a shift toward a more traditional division of labor–one where women took greater responsibility for household tasks and childcare than men. We tested whether this regressive shift was more acutely perceived and experienced by women in countries with greater gender equality. Cross-cultural longitudinal survey data for women and men ( N = 10,238) was collected weekly during the first few months of the pandemic…
Passion for guns and beliefs in a dangerous world: An examination of defensive gun ownership
This research examines the notion of defensive gun ownership using the Dualistic Model of Passion. We hypothesized that an obsessive (vs. harmonious) passion for guns would be associated with a belief in a dangerous world (BDW). We expected this relationship to intensify in threatening contexts, leading to a more expansive view on defensive gun ownership. We tested this hypothesis across three threat contexts: a gun‐control message (Study 1, N = …
Gender inequality and cultural values in explaining gender differences in positive and negative emotions: A comparison of 24 countries during the Covid-19 pandemic
The coronavirus pandemic posed a major challenge to mental health. Existing evidence shows that COVID-19 is related to poor emotional well-being, particularly among women. However, most work on the subject uses single-country samples, limiting the ability to generalize the disparity or explain it as a function of societal variables. The present study investigates the expression of positive and negative emotions during the pandemic as a function o…
Psychology (25 works) · Social Psychology (23 works) · Medicine (15 works) · Pandemic (12 works) · Political science (12 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (10 works) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (9 works) · Disease (8 works) · Economics (8 works)