Individual Well-Being,Geographical Heterogeneity and Social Capital

This paper argues the relevance of analysing the origins of contextual effects to explain subjective well-being (SWB). Using the 2012 European Social Survey, the study applies social capital indicators to distinguish between-context and between-individual heterogeneity in three multilevel models of happiness and life satisfaction. Five indicators of social capital at individual and regional level are used to measure the trust, networks and norms dimensions of social capital. Random intercept and random slope hierarchical models are used to control for unexplained regional variability. The possibility of aggregated subjective perceptions conditioning, or interacting with, the effects of individual perceptions is also examined. The results show that the regional means of the social capital indicators are useful in explaining not only average levels of SWB (between-context heterogeneity) but also differences in the importance individuals attribute to their social capital (between-individual heterogeneity). The paper also proposes a research agenda to expand the frontier on contextual effects in the new science of well-being.     

Subjective Well-Being in Cities: A Multidimensional Concept of Individual, Social and Cultural Variables

Subjective indicators of well-being have been proposed as guides for development policy since development is not limited to material wealth (Veenhoven, Social Indicators Research, 58:33–45 2002; Diener, Journal of Happiness Studies 7:4–397 2006). Development studies have suffered from a materialistic bias (Easterlin, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 27:35–47 1995). The paper presents a comparative cross-cultural investigation of domains of subjective well-being (SWB) and a global measure of Satisfaction with Life as a Whole (SWLS) in three cities: Bogotá-Colombia; Belo-Horizonte-Brazil and Toronto-Canada. The Personal and National Wellbeing Indexes (PWI and NWI) developed by the International Wellbeing Group (IWG, Cummins, Social Indicators Research 38:303–328 1996; Cummins et al., Social Indicators Network News 69:8 2002) as well as the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS, Diener et al., Journal of Personality Assessment 49:71–75 1985) were applied and successfully validated at the city level. The cities chosen have similar democratic institutions but different cultures and different “objective” indicators of development. Significant differences across cities as well as significant interaction effects were found for the subjective well-being indexes and demographic variables. Based on these results, we propose that NWI may be seen as a contextual antecedent of PWI, consistent with our view that individual evaluations of SWB may be determined by dispositional factors (top-down), context (bottom-up domains) and cultural values. The validation of the subjective well-being indexes in diverse cultural contexts is an important contribution in a field that has been mainly dominated by European, American and Australian samples.     

Demystifying Intuition: What It Is,What It Does,and How It Does It

Definitions of intuition are discussed and two working definitions are proposed. This is followed by a list of eight unresolved problems concerning intuition. It is suggested that all of these problems can be resolved by cognitive-experiential self-theory (CEST), a dual-process theory of personality according to which people process information with two systems, an experiential/intuitive system that is an associative learning system that humans share with other animals and a uniquely human verbal reasoning system. Intuition is considered to be a subsystem of the experiential/ intuitive system that operates by exactly the same principles and attributes but has narrower boundary conditions. The next section includes a presentation of the most relevant aspects of CEST with an emphasis on the operating rules and attributes of the experiential/intuitive system. This is followed by demonstrating how the operation of the experiential/intuitive system can resolve each of the unresolved problems concerning intuition. The article closes with a comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of the experiential/intuitive and rational/analytic systems. It is concluded that neither system is generally superior to the other, as each has important advantages and disadvantages.     

促进社会和谐是中国宗教的历史传统与前进方向

<正>中共中央政治局常委、全国政协主席贾庆林在2月8日与全国性宗教团体负责人座谈时指出,要全面贯彻党的宗教工作基本方针,紧紧抓住服务科学发展和促进社会和谐两大任务,     

It Takes Two: The Interplay of Individual and Group Theology on Social Embeddedness

Prior research argues that religious homophily in social networks is a product of overlapping interests and activities unintentionally leading to relationships or the intentional seeking of relationships with people of similar religious beliefs. This article advances research on religious homophily by including the role that exclusive theological beliefs play in explaining religious homophily among friends. We lay out three propositions for individual-, congregational-, and cross-level effects on the relationship between exclusive theology and embeddedness within one's congregation. Using multilevel models and data from the U.S. Congregational Life Survey (USCLS), we find support for our three propositions. We discuss our findings in terms of how exclusive theologies may contribute to bonding forms of social capital, but limit exposure to diverse social perspectives and bridging forms of social capital.     

Economic Hardship and Well-Being: Examining the Relative Role of Individual Resources and Welfare State Effort in Resilience Against Economic Hardship

With the aftermath of the economic crisis starting to fold out, the extent and the conditions under which the experience of economic hardship thwarts subjective well-being spark academic interest. In this paper, we examine the cushioning impact of three immaterial buffers embedded within civil society—namely social networks, religiosity, and confidence in politics—in combination with the cushioning role of the welfare state. Analyzing the 2010 wave of the European Social Survey, the results confirm that the experience of economic hardship is inversely related to happiness. All three proposed protective measures cushion the negative impact of economic strain on happiness, whereby the positive effect of social networks and confidence in politics is stronger in countries with lower levels of social expenditure. The latter finding provides some evidence for the crowding out-thesis but mainly suggests that a strong welfare state can take over the role of protective buffers in civil society, which is helpful as such buffers are less present among the most vulnerable social groups. The results of the analysis are discussed in relation to social science research and public policy.     

Social Support, Locus of Control, and Psychological Well-Being

Social support seems to be positively related to psychological well-being. Studies have shown that individual differences exist in the ability to mobilize and use sources of support. The current study focused on locus of control as a personality factor that might be related to this ability. In 2 samples it was shown that individuals with an internal locus of control perceived more support than did individuals with an external locus of control. Moreover, Study 1 included a sample of mainly females and showed that social support was particularly related to the psychological well-being of individuals with an external locus of control. In a second study, this moderating effect of locus of control could only be replicated for women. For men, no moderating effect of locus of control was found. The implications of these findings for interventions are discussed.     

Protecting Play: It’s a Matter of Life and Death

ABSTRACT

Play is a critical activity, as important to healthy life as sleep, water, and nutrition. Research shows that play promotes cognitive and socioemotional development, and that learning, problem-solving, self-regulation and pro-social skills all stem from playing. Yet play is valued less and less in our culture, with children as young as preschool age being placed in organized activities based on an understanding of enrichment that’s limited to academic achievement and performance. As families and as a society we are failing to provide a “good-enough facilitating environment” for our children to grow, to live, as we take time and space to play away from children and adolescents. Why are we doing this? I speculate that we are a culture who is preoccupied with guaranteeing safety and success because of our anxiety and denial of four fundamental and interrelated experiences: failure, loss, aggression, and death. With the use of clinical material, I illustrate how, in our attempt to guarantee safety and success, we have become unable to safely risk engaging (i.e., play) with, and fully experience, these vulnerabilities, and are in fact creating an unsafe psychic environment for our children, and how play can help us redress this emotional impoverishment.     

Worker Well-Being: What it Is,and how it Should Be Measured

Applied Research in Quality of Life - Worker well-being is a hot topic in organizations, consultancy and academia. However, too often, the buzz about worker well-being, enthusiasm for new programs...     

Social Networks and Subjective Well-Being: A Comparison of Australia,Britain, and China

This paper is a comparative study of formal and informal social networks and their effects on subjective well-being in Australia, Britain, and China. Formal social networks are measured by group affiliations, and informal social networks are measured by personal connections with kin, friends, and acquaintances. An analysis of the national representative sample surveys from the three countries shows that the formal networks are of notable importance in increasing people’s subjective well-being in Britain and urban China, but the informal networks have much greater impacts in all three countries, particularly in rural China. We propose a cultural–structural interaction framework to explain the observed differences in the network influence on subjective well-being in the three countries.     

Inching Toward Inclusiveness: Diversity Climate,Interpersonal Conflict and Well-Being in Women Nurses

Interpersonal conflict is a type of mistreatment acknowledged to be a serious problem in the United States workplace, particularly for women. This interpersonal conflict is related to negative outcomes in women, as well as the exclusion of women in the workplace, which highlights the importance of investigating ways to reduce this conflict. There is reason to believe that features of the social work environment may impact the prevalence of interpersonal conflict targeted at women. In particular, the extent to which a workplace includes social norms prohibiting mistreatment based on differences—a diversity climate—should be associated with lower levels of interpersonal conflict for women. As such, the goal of the current study was to examine the impact of diversity climate on the experience of interpersonal conflict in women. Additionally, well-being outcomes—burnout and engagement—were assessed as part of a model of diversity climate, interpersonal conflict, and outcomes. In a sample of 172 White women nurses from the northwestern U.S., three sources of conflict (physicians, manager and coworker) were found to relate negatively with diversity climate perceptions. Diversity climate perceptions were also associated with higher work engagement, and indirectly related to both engagement and burnout through conflict. The findings indicate that cultivating a diversity climate might be an important strategy to reduce interpersonal conflict experienced by women in the workplace.     

Toward a Social Psychology of Culture and Globalization: Some Social Cognitive Consequences of Activating Two Cultures Simultaneously

Despite the increased attention given to cultural phenomena in social psychology, the field has neglected issues related to globalization's cultural impacts. Meanwhile, opinions in the debates over these issues are divided, polarized, and often motivated by political and ideological commitments. Globalization has brought symbols of diverse cultures together and provided ample opportunities for the simultaneous activation of two or more cultural representations. Using our research on the social cognitive consequences of activating two cultural representations simultaneously as an example, we argue for constructing a social psychology of globalization that offers nuanced understandings of people's psychological responses to globalization. Although simultaneous activation of cultural representations does not determine an individual's cultural identity, it enlarges the felt distinctions between different identity options and magnifies the effects of identity choice. Furthermore, in situations that emphasize appropriating intellectual resources from diverse cultures to foster creativity, simultaneous activation of cultural representations may facilitate creative performance.     

Social Comparisons on Subjective Well-Being: The Role of Social and Cultural Capital

Using the German Socio-Economic Panel, we analyze the relevance of modeling social comparisons to determine their effect on subjective well-being. We find that it is important to model social comparisons in such a way that captures the sensitivity of individuals to proximity. The impact on subjective well-being differs depending on the manner in which proximity is modeled, revealing that the underlying processes in comparisons are not homogenous along the income distribution. Additionally, our results point out that social and cultural capital modify the effect of social comparisons and such modification depends on the sensitivity to proximity.     

Individual and Nomothetic Models of Job Stress: An Examination of Work Hours,Cohesion, and Well-Being1

Many models of job stress are implicitly based on the assumption that there is considerable variability in how individuals perceive and respond to their environments. In this paper, we introduce a nomothetic perspective of job stress. The nomothetic perspective assumes that despite individual differences there will be consistencies in how groups of individuals perceive and respond to similar work environments. To contrast the individual and nomothetic perspectives, we analyzed data from 7,382 respondents from 99 groups. In the analyses, we examined individual-and group-level relationships using both real groups and randomly formed groups. The results revealed that respondents from the same work group agreed about perceptions of the work climate. The results also revealed that both individual and nomothetic perspectives were useful in describing the relationship between cohesion and psychological well-being. The relationship between work hours and psychological well-being, however, was best modeled from a nomothetic perspective.     

Social Identity, Health and Well-Being: An Emerging Agenda for Applied Psychology

The social environment comprising communities, families, neighbourhoods, work teams, and various other forms of social group is not simply an external feature of the world that provides a context for individual behaviour. Instead these groups impact on the psychology of individuals through their capacity to be internalised as part of a person's social identity. If groups provide individuals with a sense of meaning, purpose, and belonging (i.e. a positive sense of social identity) they tend to have positive psychological consequences. The impact of these identity processes on health and well-being is explored in the contributions to this special issue. In this editorial, we discuss these contributions in light of five central themes that have emerged from research to date. These themes address the relationship between social identity and (a) symptom appraisal and response, (b) health-related norms and behaviour, (c) social support, (d) coping, and (e) clinical outcomes. The special issue as a whole points to the capacity for a social identity approach to enrich academic understanding in these areas and to play a key role in shaping health-related policy and practice.     

Consistency Orientation and Models of Social Behavior: Is It Not Time for West to Meet East

The study examined the cultural differences in inconsistency-reducing behaviors by testing the reactions of 110 Japanese and 169 American college students to the inconsistencies arising from a difference of opinion with a significant other on ego-involving issues. It was predicted that (1) the Japanese sample would show more inconsistency support than will an American sample; (2) The American sample will show more preference for active inconsistency-reducing responses than will the Japanese sample; (3) on the hypothesis that contemporary social psychology's models of humans is based upon the American stereotype of the "typical American," the first two predictions will be more strongly confirmed by comparing the American subjects' stereotype of the "typical American" than by comparing their own reported choices. The findings generally supported the first two predictions and strongly supported the third one.