The Founder: Dispositional Greed, Showbiz, and the Commercial Determinants of Health.

Marketing unhealthy products by multinational corporations has caused considerable harm to individual health, collective wellbeing, and environmental sustainability. This is a growing threat to all societies and a significant contributor to the rising global burden of non-communicable diseases and early mortality. While there is growing consideration of the commercial determinants of health, this is largely focused on the methods by which unhealthy products are marketed and disseminated, including efforts to manipulate policy. Little attention has been paid to the underlying psychological traits and worldviews that are driving corporate greed. Here, we consider the role of "dispositional greed" in the commercial determinants of health with a focus on the historical attitudes and culture in the ultra-processed food industry-exemplified by "The Founder" of the McDonald's franchise. We argue that greed and associated psychological constructs, such as social dominance orientation and collective narcissism, permeate the commercial determinants of health at a collective level. This includes how a culture of greed within organizations, and individual dispositional greed, can magnify and cluster at scale, perpetuated by social dominance orientation. We also consider the ways in which "showbiz" marketing specifically targets marginalized populations and vulnerable groups, including children-in ways that are justified, or even celebrated despite clear links to non-communicable diseases and increased mortality. Finally, we consider how greed and exploitative mindsets mirror cultural values and priorities, with trends for increasing collective narcissism at scale, recognizing that many of these attitudes are cultivated in early life. A healthier future will depend on navigating a path that balances material prosperity with physical and spiritual wellbeing. This will require cultural change that places higher value on kindness, reciprocity, and mutualistic values especially in early life, for more equitable flourishing.

Survival of the fittest in the pandemic age: Introducing disease-related social Darwinism.

COVID-19 was a harsh reminder that diseases are an aspect of human existence and mortality. It was also a live experiment in the formation and alteration of disease-related attitudes. Not only are these attitudes relevant to an individual's self-protective behavior, but they also seem to be associated with social and political attitudes more broadly. One of these attitudes is Social Darwinism, which holds that a pandemic benefits society by enabling nature "to weed out the weak". In two countries (N = 300, N = 533), we introduce and provide evidence for the reliability, validity, and usefulness of the Disease-Related Social Darwinism (DRSD) Short Scale measuring this concept. Results indicate that DRSD is meaningful related to other central political attitudes like Social Dominance Orientation, Authoritarianism and neoliberalism. Importantly, the scale significantly predicted people's protective behavior during the Pandemic over and above general social Darwinism. Moreover, it significantly predicted conservative attitudes, even after controlling for Social Dominance Orientation.

Identity salience moderates the effect of social dominance orientation on COVID-19 'rule bending'.

Amidst the economic, political, and social turmoil caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, contrasting responses to government mandated and recommended mitigation strategies have posed many challenges for governments as they seek to persuade individuals to adhere to prevention guidelines. Much research has subsequently examined the tendency of individuals to either follow (or not) such guidelines, and yet a 'grey area' also exists wherein many rules are subject to individual interpretation. In a large study of Canadians (N = 1032, Mage = 34.39, 52% female; collected April 6, 2020), we examine how social dominance orientation (SDO) as an individual difference predicts individual propensity to 'bend the rules' (i.e., engaging in behaviors that push the boundaries of adherence), finding that SDO is significantly and positively associated with greater intentions toward rule-bending behaviors. We further find that highlighting a self-oriented or in-group identity enhances the relationship between SDO and rule-bending, whereas making salient a superordinate-level identity (e.g., Canada) attenuates this effect. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.