Despite global commitments and efforts, a gender-based division of paid and unpaid work persists. To identify how psychological factors, national policies, and the broader sociocultural context contribute to this inequality, we assessed parental-leave intentions in young adults (18-30 years old) planning to have children (N = 13,942; 8,880 identified as women; 5,062 identified as men) across 37 countries that varied in parental-leave policies and societal gender equality. In all countries, women intended to take longer leave than men. National parental-leave policies and women's political representation partially explained cross-national variations in the gender gap. Gender gaps in leave intentions were paradoxically larger in countries with more gender-egalitarian parental-leave policies (i.e., longer leave available to both fathers and mothers). Interestingly, this cross-national variation in the gender gap was driven by cross-national variations in women's (rather than men's) leave intentions. Financially generous leave and gender-egalitarian policies (linked to men's higher uptake in prior research) were not associated with leave intentions in men. Rather, men's leave intentions were related to their individual gender attitudes. Leave intentions were inversely related to career ambitions. The potential for existing policies to foster gender equality in paid and unpaid work is discussed.
Acting is closely related to theory of mind and empathy, which are fundamental abilities to maintain interpersonal relationships and facilitate cooperation among people. Acting experience intervention is known as one instrument to foster theory of mind and empathy; however, empirical evidence on the effects of brief acting experience in a laboratory setting remains scarce. To obtain further evidence to support
the effects, we assigned 47 Japanese participants randomly to either an
acting condition where they experienced a play in a group of three people in a 60 minute session or a control condition and measured their levels of theory of mind and empathy three times (one day before the intervention, soon after the intervention, and a week after the intervention). As expected, brief acting experience improved the level of empathic concern. However, no effect of acting was found in theory of
mind and the other facets of empathy. Implications for future work in applied settings are discussed.
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