Asian Journal of Social Psychology最新文献

Rumors, conspiracies, and health-related misinformation have gone hand-in-hand with the global COVID-19 pandemic, making it hard to obtain reliable and accurate information. Against this background, this study examined the different psychosocial predictors of believing in conspiratorial information related to general health in India. Indian participants (N = 826) responded to measures related to conspiratorial thinking, trust, moral emotions, political ideology, bullshit receptivity, and belief in conspiratorial information in an online survey. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to determine the validity of the instruments used with an Indian sample. Results revealed that lower subjective socioeconomic status, lower trust in political institutions, greater negative moral emotions, greater conspiratorial thinking, and right-leaning political ideology predicted beliefs in health-related conspiratorial information. In highlighting these potential psychosocial determinants of conspiratorial beliefs, we can move toward combating conspiracies effectively and developing necessary interventions for the same. Future work can focus on assessing the moderating effects of political ideology on conspiratorial beliefs in India.

This prospective study examined (a) the mediating roles of Carl Rogers' facilitative interpersonal conditions (i.e., genuineness, empathic understanding, and unconditional positive regard) and (b) the moderating roles of femininity ideology in the association between dispositional authenticity and dyadic relationship functioning using a dyadic approach. Participants, 239 opposite-gender couples, completed the Authenticity Scale, Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory:mini, Femininity Ideology Scale, and Dyadic Adjustment Scale in two separate phases. Longitudinal data were analyzed using the actor-partner interdependence (mediation/moderation) model within a structural equation modelling framework. Perceived facilitativeness served as a mediator, channelling the positive associations from dispositional authenticity to dyadic relationship functioning, at both interpersonal and intrapersonal levels. Additionally, femininity ideology emerged as a moderator, influencing the relationships between dispositional authenticity and dyadic relationship functioning in both contexts. These findings underscore the significance of embracing authenticity and transcending traditional femininity ideologies for opposite-gender partners to thrive cohesively as a dyad. The implications of these findings and avenues for future research are further discussed.

This study revisits the concepts and measurement scales of Hashimoto and Yamagishi's (Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 2016, 19, 286) adaptationist model of self-construals, which provides a promising framework for intercultural and cross-cultural research. Responding to a call for the establishment of measurement invariance of the scales across cultures, this study revised the scales and conducted a series of tests including tests of their dimensionality and measurement invariance across cultures. Additionally, this study examined construct and predictive validity of the revised scales across cultures. A total of 649 undergraduates from Japan and the United States were invited to respond to a survey designed for the purposes of the study. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the four-factor model, which consists of dual interdependence (harmony seeking and rejection avoidance) and dual independence (distinctiveness of the self and self-expression), fit the data better than alternative models across cultures. The invariance tests provided evidence to support partial configural, metric, and scalar invariance of the revised scales across cultures. The validity tests provided evidence to support construct and predictive validity of the revised scales across cultures. The results were discussed and the implications were offered.

This study examined the associations between changes in different types of social support and change in life satisfaction in retired older adults, and the moderating role of socioeconomic status (education and income). Data were extracted from a nationally representative sample of 2837 older adults taken from the survey of the 7th (2018) and 8th (2020) waves of the Korean Retirement and Income Study. The study employed regression analysis to explore the relationships between changes in three types of social support (emotional, informational, instrumental) and changes in life satisfaction. The results of the study indicate that the associations between changes in social support and life satisfaction differed by type of social support and participants' changes in income. Specifically, an increase in emotional social support positively related to an increase in life satisfaction, with a stronger association observed among older adults with decreased income compared to those with increased income. Meanwhile, changes in informational social support were positively related to changes in life satisfaction regardless of education or income level. Finally, changes in instrumental social support were not found to be significantly associated with changes in life satisfaction. This study highlights the importance of considering the types of social support that older adults have and need, as well as changes in their economic status, when seeking to understand their life satisfaction.

Good communication skills facilitate successful interpersonal relationships. However, the specific communication skills (encoding and decoding) required for establishing friendships can vary depending on aspects of the social context. We conducted a two-wave longitudinal study in Japan to investigate the adaptive value of communication skills in different socio-ecological contexts (i.e., different stages of university life). New college students are immersed in a high-level relational mobility environment, where they have a greater range of options for forming new relationships and leaving old ones. Conversely, students beyond their second year experience less relational mobility. Cross-lagged analyses indicated a positive association between decoding skill and friendship satisfaction 3 months later for senior students, who are likely to be in an environment characterised by low relational mobility. However, for first-year students in a high-relational-mobility environment, the association was negative, supporting our hypothesis. Conversely, encoding skill did not demonstrate an association with satisfaction 3 months later. However, it was positively associated with satisfaction at each time point. Another cross-lagged analysis revealed that satisfying relationships helped improve encoding skills. We further explore the socio-ecological aspects related to the adaptive value of communication skills.

This research investigates the contents, antecedents, and mediators of happiness in the Indian state of Assam. The first study examines the content and meanings of happiness in Assamese culture. Posing exploratory questions, a thematic analysis of the narrations of 53 participants revealed 18 themes, grouped into intrinsic or content and extrinsic or context factors of happiness. The content and meanings of happiness embrace a blend of ancient Indian, Eastern, and Western concepts. Based on these results, a culture-sensitive happiness scale is constructed in the second study. It further tests whether life skills mediate the relationship between character strength and happiness. Data from 503 Assamese participants showed that the one-factor model of happiness, combining all 14 items of intrinsic and extrinsic factors, is acceptable. It has measurement invariance across male and female genders and high- and low-income groups. To ensure criterion-related validity, the happiness of people is associated with their well-being profiles. Adjusting the confounding effects of age and sex of participants, it is observed that character strengths do not promote happiness but pass through life skills fully to promote happiness.

Previous studies have mainly explored the impacts of social mindfulness on social behaviours (e.g., cooperation), little is known about crucial macro social environment factors that affect social mindfulness, like the market economy. With the development of the market economy, people typically acquire the self-centred and rational market mindset which may suppress social mindfulness. Therefore, the current study aimed to examine the causal relationship between the market mindset and social mindfulness, as well as the psychological mechanism behind the effect. In Study 1, participants whose market mindset was activated by recalling market experiences showed lower social mindfulness than those whose non-market mindset was activated by recalling other experiences. Studies 2 and 3 explored the mediation of perspective taking and state empathy behind the detrimental effect. It was found that the relationship between the market mindset and social mindfulness was mediated by perspective taking rather than by state empathy. Together, the present three studies expand the existing literature on the relationship between the market mindset and social mindfulness and remind policymakers to pay attention to the adverse effects of the market mindset on social mindfulness.

Research on the interplay between negative direct intergroup contact frequency and outgroup humanization in intergroup relations is limited. Thus, across two different intergroup settings (i.e., Switzerland and Kosovo; N = 435), we examined individuals' positive behavioural intentions towards outgroup members (i.e., immigrants in Study 1 and the Roma in Study 2) as a function of both negative direct intergroup contact and humanizing information versus positive but not humanizing information (both studies) and control/no information (Study 2). Results show that information portraying outgroup members in a humanizing light (versus positive and/or control with no information) decreased anxiety (in both studies) and increased empathy (Study 2), which then related to more positive behavioural intentions among people who reported high versus low levels of negative direct contact with outgroup members. In this article, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings concerning intergroup relations.

Using the lens of interpretative phenomenological analysis, this study explored the leadership experiences of bicultural business leaders in the Philippines. Semistructured interviews were conducted among 16 leaders in family-owned, small and medium-sized enterprises in the Philippines who are ethnically Chinese and have Filipino nationality. Findings focused on salient expressions of biculturalism in leadership, bicultural leadership challenges, and advantages. Most of the participants experienced fluidity in their expressions of Filipino and Chinese identities and how these manifest in the workplace. Challenges shared pertain to generational factors as participants assumed leadership roles through kinship, as well as relational challenges reflective of cultural nuances. The leaders view their being bicultural as having the “best of both worlds” as they have greater access to cultural information and a more holistic view of which values and norms to use in their leadership roles and in various social interactions. Fluency in communicating in Chinese and Filipino was perceived to enable effective interactions and facilitate trust building with their customers, employees, and suppliers. Implications focused on the need to consider biculturalism in leadership development programmes in educational institutions and organizations, especially with increasing bi/multiculturalism in workplaces.

People hold different perspectives about how they think the world is changing or should change. We examined five of these “worldviews” about change: Progress, Golden Age, Endless Cycle, Maintenance, and Balance. In Studies 1–4 (total N = 2733) we established reliable measures of each change worldview, and showed how these help explain when people will support or oppose social change in contexts spanning sustainability, technological innovations, and political elections. In mapping out these relationships we identify how the importance of different change worldviews varies across contexts, with Balance most critical for understanding support for sustainability, Progress/Golden Age important for understanding responses to innovations, and Golden Age uniquely important for preferring Trump/Republicans in the 2016 US election. These relationships were independent of prominent individual differences (e.g., values, political orientation for elections) or context-specific factors (e.g., self-reported innovativeness for responses to innovations). Study 5 (N = 2140) examined generalizability in 10 countries/regions spanning five continents, establishing that these worldviews exhibited metric invariance, but with country/region differences in how change worldviews were related to support for sustainability. These findings show that change worldviews can act as a general “lens” people use to help determine whether to support or oppose social change.