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Objective/Background Method Results Conclusions Conservative ideology, broadly speaking, has been widely linked to greater happiness and meaning in life. Is that true of all forms of a good life? We examined whether a psychologically rich life is associated with political orientation, system justification, and Protestant work ethic, independent of two other traditional forms of a good life: a happy life and a meaningful life.Participants completed a questionnaire that assessed conservative worldviews and three aspects of well‐being (N = 583 in Study 1; N = 348 in Study 2; N = 436 in Study 3; N = 1,217 in Study 4; N = 2,176 in Study 5; N = 516 in Study 6).Happiness was associated with political conservatism and system justification, and meaning in life was associated with Protestant work ethic. In contrast, zero‐order correlations showed that psychological richness was not associated with conservative worldviews. However, when happiness and meaning in life were included in multiple regression models, the nature of the association shifted: Psychological richness was consistently inversely associated with system justification and on average less political conservatism, suggesting that happiness and meaning in life were suppressor variables.These findings suggest that happiness and meaning in life are associated with conservative ideology, whereas psychological richness is not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From ancient time, Homo sapiens moved around in search of a better life. Although the development of agriculture and industrialization no longer necessitates frequently moving to find new food sources, people today still change their residences for a variety of reasons. This article highlights key findings from residential mobility, focusing on its implications for the self, social relationships, societies, and well-being. Generally, residential mobility shifts individual attention away from collective attributes toward personal attributes. It also changes people's relationship styles and preferences, leading individuals to favor wider social networks, more open communication, low-commitment groups, and egalitarian helpers. In addition, it increases tolerance for norm violations and moral deviations. Lastly, residential mobility can explain some cross-national and within-nation variations. This article reviews recent psychological research on residential mobility and then discusses limitations, paradoxical findings, and future directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current special issue reports seven empirical articles on diverse areas of inequality, ranging from the perception of economic inequality (who are concerned, what cues people use to perceive inequality in everyday life), the educational origin of income inequality, to the role of inequality in luxury consumption, prosocial behaviour, life satisfaction, and beliefs in upward and downward economic mobility. We first comment on these articles, then briefly review the current state of the psychology of inequality and point to future directions. Finally, we point out that a cultural psychological perspective is missing from the extant literature on the psychology of inequality. Namely, it is important to document how current systems of inequality are maintained and transmitted across generations in specific sociocultural contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We conducted two studies to examine the hypothesis that residential mobility would evoke anxiety and foster sensitivity to signs of disapproval, such as the disappearance of happiness. American and Japanese participants were asked to watch happy‐to‐neutral movies and sad‐to‐neutral movies and judge the point at which they thought that their initial expressions had disappeared. We found that, regardless of cultures, participants who had experienced frequent moving (Study 1) and those asked to imagine and describe a mobile lifestyle of frequent moving (Study 2) judged the disappearance of happy faces faster than those who did not experience or imagine frequent moving. Our results were also in line with the previous finding in which Japanese were more vigilant than Americans in regards to the disappearance of happy faces. Moreover, we found that imagining a mobile lifestyle made participants feel more concerned than when imagining a stable lifestyle. The implications for the social skills needed for people in the globalising world are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Research in the US found that gratitude increases happiness. We conducted three studies to examine whether gratitude increases happiness among Koreans, as well. Methods: Participants were randomly assigned to a gratitude or a control condition in Studies 1 and 2, and into a gratitude toward someone important or a gratitude toward own health condition in Study 3. Their moods were then measured. Results: Gratitude writing marginally significantly evoked indebtedness among Korean students (Study 1, N = 336) but not among American students (Study 2, N = 219). Equally important, even among Americans, those who wrote about their gratitude toward someone important reported feeling indebtedness marginally more than those who wrote about their gratitude toward something or someone not that important. In Study 3 (N = 181), American participants, randomly assigned to write about their gratitude toward someone important, reported not only more gratitude but also more indebtedness than those assigned to write about their gratitude toward their own health. Conclusions: Taken together, these studies suggest that gratitude evokes indebtedness when gratitude is about someone important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Previous research on Extraversion and life satisfaction suggests that extraverted individuals are more satisfied with their lives. However, existing studies provide inflated effect sizes, as they were based on simple correlations. In five studies, the authors provide better estimates of the relationship between Extraversion and life satisfaction.Method: The current study examined student and nationally representative samples from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan (Study 1, N = 1,460; Study 2, N = 5,882; Study 3, N = 18,683; Study 4, N = 13,443; Study 5, Japan N = 952 and U.S. N = 891). The relationship between Extraversion and life satisfaction was examined using structural equation modeling by regressing life satisfaction on the Big Five traits.Results: Extraversion was a unique predictor of life satisfaction in the North American student and nationally representative samples (Study 1, β = .232; Study 2, β = .225; Study 5, β = .217), but the effect size was weaker or absent in other non-North American samples (Germany, United Kingdom, and Japan).Conclusions: The findings attest to the moderating role of culture on Extraversion and life satisfaction and the importance of controlling for shared method variance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this paper, we review and integrate the contemporary literature on the societal effects of income inequality, drawing on social, personality, developmental, and organizational psychology, sociology, political science, economics, and public health. Living in highly unequal regimes is associated with both increased mistrust and increased anxiety about social status; these psychological mechanisms help explain some of the negative outcomes associated with income inequality, such as lower happiness, lower social cohesion, weaker morality, higher mortality, worse health, and weaker governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Happiness and well-being are often defined as internal feelings or states of satisfaction. As such, research on well-being has focused on the long-term happiness and life satisfaction of individuals. But recently, psychological researchers have also begun to examine the effects that group-level functions (e.g., nation-level economic status) have on happiness. The present article: (a) overviews measures of individual and collective happiness and the validity of these measurements; (b) explicates the role of culture in understanding the long-term happiness and life satisfaction of individuals; and (c) explores the possibility and importance of studying the happiness of collectives (e.g., work groups, organizations, cities, nations). We then discuss future directions for happiness research, proposing several methodological and theoretical areas for progress in: (a) cross-temporal analyses to examine historical changes; and (b) multilevel analyses to identify the units of culture that affect happiness. Additionally, this paper argues that policy-making and interdisciplinary approaches can make important contributions to happiness studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are people who live in more walkable areas healthier and more satisfied with life? This study investigates that question by using the 2005 Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance System ( BRFSS) survey, the largest telephone survey on health in the US (302,841 respondents from 989 metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas [ MSA]; 177,524 respondents from 703 MSAs had complete data). Using multilevel random coefficient modeling, we found that people living in walkable areas reported being generally healthier than people living in less walkable areas. In addition, aside from higher self-reported health, people living in walkable areas also had a lower body mass index ( BMI). However, contrary to our prediction, people in more walkable areas were less satisfied with their lives than people in less walkable areas after controlling for various individual-level variables (age, gender, race, education, marital status, income, and unemployment). People who live in walkable areas are healthier but not happier than those living in less walkable areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

East Asians and Asian Americans report lower levels of subjective well-being than Europeans and European Americans. Three studies found support for the hypothesis that such differences may be due to the psychological meanings Eastern and Western cultures attach to positive and negative affect. Study 1 demonstrated that the desire to repeat a recent vacation was significantly predicted by recalled positive affect—but not recalled negative affect—for European Americans, whereas Asian Americans considered both positive and negative affect. Study 2 replicated this effect in judging satisfaction with a personal friendship. Study 3 linked changes in European Americans' life satisfaction to everyday positive events caused by the self (vs. others) and changes in Japanese life satisfaction to everyday negative events caused by others (vs. the self). Positive affect appears particularly meaningful for European Americans and negative affect for Asian Americans and Japanese when judging a satisfying vacation, friendship, or life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In two studies, we examined the role of perceived fulfillment of parental expectations in the subjective well-being of college students. In Study 1, we found that American college students reported having higher levels of life satisfaction and self-esteem than did Japanese college students. American college students also reported having fulfilled parental expectations to a greater degree than did Japanese college students. Most importantly, the cultural difference in well-being was mediated by perceived fulfillment of parental expectations. In Study 2, we replicated the mediational finding with Asian American and European American college students. Asian American participants also perceived their parents' expectations about their academic performance to be more specific than did European Americans, which was associated with the cultural difference in perceived fulfillment of parental expectations. In short, perceived parental expectations play an important role in the cultural difference in the well-being of Asians and European Americans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social cognition research indicates that life-satisfaction judgments are based on a selected set of relevant information that is accessible at the time of the life-satisfaction judgment. Personality research indicates that life-satisfaction judgments are quite stable over extended periods of time and predicted by personality traits. The present article integrates these two research traditions. We propose that people rely on the same sources to form repeated life-satisfaction judgments over time. Some of these sources (e.g., memories of emotional experiences, academic performance) provide stable information that explains the stability in life-satisfaction judgments. Second, we propose that the influence of personality traits on life satisfaction is mediated by the use of chronically accessible sources because traits produce stability of these sources. Most important, the influence of extraversion and neuroticism is mediated by use of memories of past emotional experiences. To test this model, participants repeatedly judged life-satisfaction over the course of a semester. After each assessment, participants reported sources that they used for these judgments. Changes in reported sources were related to changes in life-satisfaction judgments. A path model demonstrated that chronically accessible and stable sources are related to stable individual differences in life-satisfaction. Furthermore, the model supported the hypothesis that personality effects were mediated by chronically accessible and stable sources. In sum, the results are consistent with our theory that life-satisfaction judgments are based on chronically accessible sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three studies were conducted to examine the role of global life satisfaction in the discrepancy between specific and global domain satisfaction. Participants rated both global (e.g., education) and the corresponding, specific domain (e.g., professors, textbooks) satisfactions. In 3 studies, we found that individuals with higher life satisfaction evaluated global domain as a whole as more satisfying than those with lower life satisfaction, given the same level of satisfaction with specific domains. In Study 3, we also found that, given the same level of satisfaction during the previous 2 weeks, individuals with higher life satisfaction rated the global domains in general as more satisfying than those with lower life satisfaction. Overall, the association between globallife satisfaction and evaluative enhancement of global domains was most consistent in "self" and "social relationships." Finally, the effect of global life satisfaction on evaluative enhancement remained significant, controlling for extraversion and neuroticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated individual differences in the processes of subjective well-being (SWB). There were considerable individual differences in the domain that was most strongly associated with global life satisfaction. Individuals also differed significantly in the types of activities that they found satisfying. Moreover, these individual differences in the patterns of SWB were systematically related to value orientations. A 23-day daily diary study revealed that intraindividual changes in satisfaction were strongly influenced by the degree of success in the domains that individuals value. The present findings highlight the meaningful individual differences in the qualitative aspects of subjective well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the association between parental marital status, marital conflict, culture, and the well-being of children. A study found that well-being was negatively associated with marital conflict, and that collectivism lessens the impact of divorce after a combustible marriage, and the impact of marital conflict when a parent remarries. A second study examined the association of parental marital status and conflict, finding a negative association between divorce and marital conflict among nonadopted young adults.

Article impact statement: Conservation values are unlikely to change through intentional efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]