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Xenophobia and anti-immigrant attacks rose during the COVID-19 pandemic, yet this may not be solely due to the disease threat. According to theories of frustration and scapegoating, situational obstructions and deprivation can motivate prejudice against outgroups. Using a global natural quasi-experimental design, this study tests whether the restrictiveness of national lockdowns can explain higher individual-level perceptions of immigrant threat. Data of 45,894 participants from 23 countries were analyzed. Both lockdown duration and lockdown severity were positively associated with individuals’ perceived threat of immigrants. The lockdown effects were independent of objective and subjective measures of disease threat, and there was no evidence that disease threat drives people’s prejudice toward immigrants. Subgroup analysis suggested the lockdown effects were reliable in Europe and the Americas, but not in Asia. These findings suggest a need to mitigate frustration and scapegoating when implementing lockdowns, and to distinguish the influence of societal restrictions from disease threat.

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Cultural context can affect how changes in self-concepts are either valued or tolerated. However, very little is currently known regarding how culture may differentially confer consequences to people that change their self-concepts over the course of several years. We investigated the moderating role of culture (Japan and USA) on the link between long-term (∼4 years) self-concept changes and a comprehensive set of well-being measures (hedonic, eudaimonic, and family based). We found that American’s self-concept instability was more negatively associated with one’s well-being and emotional support within one’s family than Japanese. Furthermore, Americans were particularly negatively impacted when they became less agentic and conscientious over time. One possible interpretation is that Western, individualistic cultures may discourage people from changing their identities throughout their adult life. Although American culture often espouses the sanctity of freedom, American culture may also limit people’s freedom to change how they see themselves over time.

Introduction:Dual-smoker couples are a highly prevalent group who report low motivation to quit smoking.Aims:This study tested the effect of a messaging intervention (couples- vs. individual-focused smoking outcomes) on motivation to quit among dual-smoker couples and examined the moderating effect of perceived support.Methods:A total of 202 individuals in 101 dual-smoker couples were randomized by dyad using a 2 (frame: gain/loss) by 2 (outcome focus: individual/couple) factorial design. Participants reviewed scenarios of either positive or negative outcomes of quitting versus not quitting as they applied to either the individual or the couple. Participants then reported their own motivation to quit and motivation for their partner to quit. The main outcome was motivation to quit smoking.Results:No main effects of framing or message focus emerged. Significant interactions between message focus and negative support predicted motivation for self and partner to quit. Individuals who reported lower negative support reported greater motivation for self to quit and less motivation for partner to quit after reviewing couple- (vs. individual-) focused messages.Conclusions:Individuals in dual-smoker couples typically report low motivation to quit smoking. Couple-focused messages may increase motivation to quit among individuals who are not receiving negative support from their partners.

Before vaccines for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) became available, a set of infection-prevention behaviors constituted the primary means to mitigate the virus spread. Our study aimed to identify important predictors of this set of behaviors. Whereas social and health psychological theories suggest a limited set of predictors, machine-learning analyses can identify correlates from a larger pool of candidate predictors. We used random forests to rank 115 candidate correlates of infection-prevention behavior in 56,072 participants across 28 countries, administered in March to May 2020. The machine-learning model predicted 52% of the variance in infection-prevention behavior in a separate test sample—exceeding the performance of psychological models of health behavior. Results indicated the two most important predictors related to individual-level injunctive norms. Illustrating how data-driven methods can complement theory, some of the most important predictors were not derived from theories of health behavior—and some theoretically derived predictors were relatively unimportant.

In everyday life, people often exert self-control not only for their own sake but also for the sake of close others. Here, the authors examine the specific case of joint self-control—when multiple people must simultaneously exert self-control for mutual success—in the context of close relationships. The authors test the hypothesis that people use situational cues to determine if one member of the relationship bears more responsibility for exerting self-control than the other. In this article, the authors test the specific cue of past behavior and find in two studies that participants who exert self-control on behalf of the relationship on a preliminary task continue to exert self-control on behalf of the relationship on a secondary task compared to those who exerted less self-control on the preliminary task. The authors explain these results by focusing on the role that expectations about behaviors play in contributing effort to a difficult or unpleasant task.