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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]

We conducted three studies to examine the function of gratitude to God versus dispositional gratitude, dispositional indebtedness, indebtedness to God, and religiosity. Study 1 found that among these variables, dispositional gratitude and religiosity were positively correlated with conscientiousness, the trait most strongly associated with self-regulation, both in self- and informant-reports. Study 2 replicated these findings. Finally, Study 3 (a 44-day daily diary study during Lent) replicated Studies 1 and 2 in terms of predictors of conscientiousness. Furthermore, we found that gratitude to God, rather than dispositional gratitude or religiosity, assessed before the start of Lent predicted average abstinence success during Lent. The multilevel analysis showed that on a day when participants felt more gratitude to God, they abstained more successfully than on a day when they felt less gratitude to God. General gratitude and religiosity were associated with conscientiousness, while gratitude to God was associated with successful abstinence during Lent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined individual, regional, and cultural differences in household debts and identified residential mobility as a key socioecological variable at multiple levels of analysis. Study 1 found that American households' debt rates were higher than Japanese debt rates. Across 76 countries, household debts were higher in residentially mobile countries than those in residentially stable ones (Study 2). Next, across 144 U.S. cities, residents of residentially mobile cities had more credit card debts than those of residentially stable cities (Study 3). We further replicated the international and U.S. findings across 366 districts in India (Study 4). Study 5 found that American participants were more residentially mobile and more willing to borrow than Japanese participants, and the willingness to borrow was partly explained by the personal history of residential mobility. Study 6 found that residentially mobile individuals felt less indebtedness/gratitude than residentially stable individuals; the study also found how indebtedness/gratitude impacted individuals' credit card debts and willingness to borrow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explored in three cultures (the United States, Korea, and Costa Rica) the association between subjective well-being (SWB) and behaviors often described as positive or beneficial. In two studies we found that three forms of subjective well-being (positive affect, negative affect, and life satisfaction) were associated with several categories of behavior (health behavior, supportive behavior, citizenship behavior, and creative behavior). Most of the associations were significant in three nations and not significantly different between nations. Furthermore, we examined whether there exists a significant association between common variance across types of SWB and common variance of categories of behaviors. We found that there was a significant common pathway between a latent SWB factor and a latent behavior factor, along with unique associations between individual SWB and behavior categories. We conclude that the SWB and behavior associations are widespread across the three distinct cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the effects of reading fiction? We propose that literary fiction alters views of the world through its presentation of difference —different minds, different contexts, and different situations—grounding a belief that the social world is complex. Across four studies, two nationally representative and one preregistered (total n = 5,176), we find that the reading of literary fiction in early life is associated with a more complex worldview in Americans: increased attributional complexity, increased psychological richness, decreased belief that contemporary inequalities are legitimate, and decreased belief that people are essentially only one way. By contrast, early-life reading of narrative fiction that presents more standardized plots and characters, such as romance novels, predict holding a less complex worldview. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We conducted 3 studies to explore cultural differences in global versus local processing and their developmental trajectories. In Study 1 ("N" = 363), we found that Japanese college students were less globally oriented in their processing than American or Argentine participants. We replicated this effect in Study 2 ("N" = 1,843) using a nationally representative sample of Japanese and American adults ages 20 to 69, and found further that adults in both cultures became more globally oriented with age. In Study 3 ("N" = 133), we investigated the developmental course of the cultural difference using Japanese and American children, and found it was evident by 4 years of age. Cultural variations in global versus local processing emerge by early childhood, and remain throughout adulthood. At the same time, both Japanese and Americans become increasingly global processors with age.