Did Descriptive and Prescriptive Norms About Gender Equality at Home Change During the COVID-19 Pandemic? A Cross-National Investigation.

Using data from 15 countries, this article investigates whether descriptive and prescriptive gender norms concerning housework and child care (domestic work) changed after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results of a total of 8,343 participants (M = 19.95, SD = 1.68) from two comparable student samples suggest that descriptive norms about unpaid domestic work have been affected by the pandemic, with individuals seeing mothers' relative to fathers' share of housework and child care as even larger. Moderation analyses revealed that the effect of the pandemic on descriptive norms about child care decreased with countries' increasing levels of gender equality; countries with stronger gender inequality showed a larger difference between pre- and post-pandemic. This study documents a shift in descriptive norms and discusses implications for gender equality-emphasizing the importance of addressing the additional challenges that mothers face during health-related crises.

Awe, curiosity, and multicultural experience.

INTRODUCTION: Despite broad consensus about multicultural experience's benefits, there is a lack of research on the antecedents to multicultural experiences. Research has indicated that awe shifts attention away from the self toward larger entities, which could include elements of other cultures. METHODS: Four studies (N = 2915) tested whether trait, daily, and induced awe promoted multicultural experience. RESULTS: Studies 1-2 (adolescents, young, middle, and older adults) showed that trait awe predicted greater multicultural identity and experience independent of other positive emotions and openness. Study 3 (students & adults in U.S. & Malaysia) demonstrated that daily awe predicted more daily multicultural experience independent of yesterday's multicultural experience. These results were explained by trait and daily curiosity. Study 4 (adults) found that induction of awe increased state multicultural identity and experience via state curious emotions and then state curious personality. CONCLUSION: We found that experiencing more awe can be a tool for enhancing the multicultural experience. The discussion focuses on the implications for future research on awe and multicultural experiences.

Bent, But Not Broken: Locus-of-Hope and Well-Being Among Malaysians Facing Economic Challenges Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Hope is conceptualized as a cognitive set that has often been studied in the context of adversity. No studies, however, directly examine how locus-of-hope (LOH) influences psychological outcomes among vulnerable populations within collectivist cultural contexts. We address this gap by assessing the relationships between LOH and well-being among Malaysians facing financial struggles during the COVID-19 pandemic. We hypothesized that LOH will predict well-being but that external LOH will more strongly predict well-being than internal LOH. One-hundred and fifty-two (152) Malaysians (63 men, 89 women, average age 29.69 years old) who have (1) experienced loss of employment status (2) decrease in salary earnings or (3) earn below the lower 40% threshold of national household incomes completed a series of questionnaires assessing their LOH and well-being. Results indicate that controlling for age, perceptions of government efforts and trait optimism, LOH significantly predict well-being. Findings also show that internal LOH and LOH-family were the strongest predictors of well-being. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in light of these findings.

'I have high self-compassion': A face-valid single-item self-compassion scale for resource-limited research contexts.

The original 26-item Self-Compassion Scale (SCS; Neff, 2003) and 12-item Short-Form Self-Compassion Scale (SF-SCS; Raes et al., 2011) are scales commonly used in cross-sectional and longitudinal research to assess the global self-compassion construct and its six facets. We introduce the Single-Item Self-Compassion Scale (SISC; 'I have high self-compassion') to measure the global self-compassion construct in time-, space- and resource-limited contexts (e.g., daily diaries, experience sampling and nationally representative surveys). Additionally, the SISC will expand knowledge about self-compassion by providing researchers whose primary interest is not self-compassion with a convenient, face-valid option to measure self-compassion. Across 10 samples (four cross-sectional, four longitudinal and two 7-day daily diary; N = 2,477), we demonstrated that the SISC has acceptable psychometric properties. Specifically, the SISC was temporally consistent, correlated adequately with the SCS and SF-SCS, exhibited nearly identical correlational patterns when compared with the SCS and SF-SCS with a wide range of criterion measures (e.g., self-esteem, personality, affective and social functioning, mental health and demographic variables) and saved 12 min over a 7-day diary. Results replicated among students, community samples and across the United States, Turkey and Malaysia. Thus, we provide the field with an alternative measure of the global self-compassion construct that complements the SCS and SF-SCS.

A Compassionate Self Is a True Self? Self-Compassion Promotes Subjective Authenticity.

Theory and research converge to suggest that authenticity predicts positive psychological adjustment. Given these benefits of authenticity, there is a surprising dearth of research on the factors that foster authenticity. Five studies help fill this gap by testing whether self-compassion promotes subjective authenticity. Study 1 found a positive association between trait self-compassion and authenticity. Study 2 demonstrated that on days when people felt more self-compassionate, they also felt more authentic. Study 3 discovered that people experimentally induced to be self-compassionate reported greater state authenticity relative to control participants. Studies 4 and 5 recruited samples from multiple cultures and used a cross-sectional and a longitudinal design, respectively, and found that self-compassion predicts greater authenticity through reduced fear of negative evaluation (Study 4) and heightened optimism (Study 5). Across studies, self-compassion's effects on authenticity could not be accounted for by self-esteem. Overall, the results suggest that self-compassion can help cultivate subjective authenticity.

Psychometric Comparisons of Benevolent and Corrective Humor across 22 Countries: The Virtue Gap in Humor Goes International.

Recently, two forms of virtue-related humor, benevolent and corrective, have been introduced. Benevolent humor treats human weaknesses and wrongdoings benevolently, while corrective humor aims at correcting and bettering them. Twelve marker items for benevolent and corrective humor (the BenCor) were developed, and it was demonstrated that they fill the gap between humor as temperament and virtue. The present study investigates responses to the BenCor from 25 samples in 22 countries (overall N = 7,226). The psychometric properties of the BenCor were found to be sufficient in most of the samples, including internal consistency, unidimensionality, and factorial validity. Importantly, benevolent and corrective humor were clearly established as two positively related, yet distinct dimensions of virtue-related humor. Metric measurement invariance was supported across the 25 samples, and scalar invariance was supported across six age groups (from 18 to 50+ years) and across gender. Comparisons of samples within and between four countries (Malaysia, Switzerland, Turkey, and the UK) showed that the item profiles were more similar within than between countries, though some evidence for regional differences was also found. This study thus supported, for the first time, the suitability of the 12 marker items of benevolent and corrective humor in different countries, enabling a cumulative cross-cultural research and eventually applications of humor aiming at the good.