Smiling individuals are usually perceived more favorably than non-smiling ones—they are judged as happier, more attractive, competent, and friendly. These seemingly clear and obvious consequences of smiling are assumed to be culturally universal, however most of the psychological research is carried out in WEIRD societies (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) and the influence of culture on social perception of nonverbal behavior is still understudied. Here we show that a smiling individual may be judged as less intelligent than the same non-smiling individual in cultures low on the GLOBE’s uncertainty avoidance dimension. Furthermore, we show that corruption at the societal level may undermine the prosocial perception of smiling—in societies with high corruption indicators, trust toward smiling individuals is reduced. This research fosters understanding of the cultural framework surrounding nonverbal communication processes and reveals that in some cultures smiling may lead to negative attributions.

Since the Second World War, the dominating paradigm of societal development has focused on economic growth. While economic growth has improved the quality of human life in a variety of ways, we posit that the identification of economic growth as the primary societal goal is culture-blind because preferences for developmental pathways likely vary between societies. We argue that the cultural diversity of developmental goals and the pathways leading to these goals could be reflected in a culturally sensitive approach to assessing societal development. For the vast majority of post-materialistic societies, it is an urgent necessity to prepare culturally sensitive compasses on how to develop next, and to start conceptualizing growth in a more nuanced and culturally responsive way. Furthermore, we propose that cultural sensitivity in measuring societal growth could also be applied to existing development indicators (e.g. the Human Development Index). We call for cultural researchers, in cooperation with development economists and other social scientists, to prepare a new cultural map of developmental goals, and to create and adapt development indexes that are more culturally sensitive. This innovation could ultimately help social planners understand the diverse pathways of development and assess the degree to which societies are progressing in a self-determined and indigenously valued manner.

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 across fifty countries, we compare associations of four types of happiness (out of which three are more collectivism-themed than personal life satisfaction) with two different measures of individualism. We replicated previous findings by demonstrating that societal happiness measured as country-level aggregate of personal life satisfaction is correlated with individualism. Importantly though, we also found that the country-level aggregates of the collectivism-themed measures of happiness do not tend to be significantly correlated with individualism. Implications for happiness studies and for policy makers are signaled.

El propósito del presente estudio fue desarrollar y validar la Escala de Actitud Religiosa, con el fin de contar con un instrumento que evalúe las actitudes religiosas de personas creyentes en una religión teísta. Se utilizó una muestra no probabilística compuesta por 1982 personas, de las cuales la mayoría fueron mujeres (56.7%), y una media de edad de 29 años. La escala final quedó compuesta por 17 reactivos tipo Likert, con un α de Cronbach de .94 y la varianza explicada con una dimensión fue del 55.9%. Los resultados indican que la Escala de Actitud Religiosa cuenta con características psicométricas adecuadas. Sin embargo, es necesario realizar nuevos estudios que permitan determinar su validez en muestras pertenecientes a distintas religiones.

Inequalities between men and women are common and well-documented. Objective indexes show that men are better positioned than women in societal hierarchies-there is no single country in the world without a gender gap. In contrast, researchers have found that the women-are-wonderful effect-that women are evaluated more positively than men overall-is also common. Cross-cultural studies on gender equality reveal that the more gender egalitarian the society is, the less prevalent explicit gender stereotypes are. Yet, because self-reported gender stereotypes may differ from implicit attitudes towards each gender, we reanalysed data collected across 44 cultures, and (a) confirmed that societal gender egalitarianism reduces the women-are-wonderful effect when it is measured more implicitly (i.e. rating the personality of men and women presented in images) and (b) documented that the social perception of men benefits more from gender egalitarianism than that of women.

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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 forty-nine countries. We demonstrate that the relative idealization of the two types of well-being varies across cultural contexts and are associated with culturally different models of selfhood. Furthermore, we show that rankings of societal well-being based on life satisfaction tend to underestimate the contribution from interdependent happiness. We introduce a new culturally sensitive method for calculating societal well-being, and examine its construct validity by testing for associations with the experience of emotions and with individualism-collectivism. This new culturally sensitive approach represents a slight, yet important improvement in measuring well-being.

Se examinan las propiedades psicométricas de la versión breve de la Escala de Resiliencia para niños de González-Arratia (GA-RE14) con dos estudios. Primero se verifica la estructura tridimensional y consistencia interna con una muestra de 217 escolares (122 niños, 95 niñas) y una Media de edad de 11.14 años (DE = .78). El Estudio 2 aporta evidencias de convergencia teórica con autoestima y satisfacción con la vida, con 121 participantes (59 niños, 62 niñas) con promedio de edad de 10.60 años (DE = .67). La configuración se comprobó con análisis factorial confirmatorio (GFI = .94, AGFI = .91, RMSEA = .046; NFI = .79, TLI = .90, CFI = .92). Hay asociación positiva y significativa entre las variables evaluadas, y puntajes más altos en las niñas que en los niños. Esta escala es útil para medición de la resiliencia infantil en contextos académicos y con fines de investigación.