Browsing by Author "Bastian, Brock"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6

Citation - WoS: 12
Citation - Scopus: 18
Explaining Illness With Evil: Pathogen Prevalence Fosters Moral Vitalism
(Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2019) Sachkova, Marianna; Kuppens, Peter; Crespo, Carla; Bain, Paul; Leknes, Siri; Tong, Jennifer; Fischer, Ronald; Eastwick, Paul W; Pelay, Cesar; M. Guerra, Valeschka; Guevara, José Luis Castellanos; Pina, Afroditi; Swann, William B; Yeung, Victoria Wai-lan; Hooper, Nic; Karasawa, Minoru; Vauclair, Christin-Melanie; Ashokkumar, Ashwini; Friese, Malte; Huang, Li-Li; Saguy, Tamar; Silfver-Kuhalampi, Mia; Loughnan, Steve; Bastian, Brock; Becker, Maja; Duffy, Jacob; Bilewicz, Michał; Sortheix, Florencia; Collier-Baker, Emma; Hanke, Katja; Peker, Müjde; Gómez, Ángel; Junqi, Shi
Pathogens represent a significant threat to human health leading to the emergence of strategies designed to help manage their negative impact. We examined how spiritual beliefs developed to explain and predict the devastating effects of pathogens and spread of infectious disease. Analysis of existing data in studies 1 and 2 suggests that moral vitalism (beliefs about spiritual forces of evil) is higher in geographical regions characterized by historical higher levels of pathogens. Furthermore, drawing on a sample of 3140 participants from 28 countries in study 3, we found that historical higher levels of pathogens were associated with stronger endorsement of moral vitalistic beliefs. Furthermore, endorsement of moral vitalistic beliefs statistically mediated the previously reported relationship between pathogen prevalence and conservative ideologies, suggesting these beliefs reinforce behavioural strategies which function to prevent infection. We conclude that moral vitalism may be adaptive: by emphasizing concerns over contagion, it provided an explanatory model that enabled human groups to reduce rates of contagious disease.
Citation - WoS: 5
Citation - Scopus: 6
Measurement Invariance of the Moral Vitalism Scale Across 28 Cultural Groups
(Public Library of Science, 2020) Bilewicz, Michal; Kuppens, Peter; Crespo, Carla; Collier-Baker, Emma; Fischer, Ronald; Pelay, Cesar; Peker, Müjde; Pina, Afroditi; Karasawa, Minoru; Hooper, Nic; Vauclair, Christin-Melanie; Friese, Malte; AminihajibashiI, Samira; Wailan Yeung, Victoria; Rudnev, Maksim; Eastwic, Paul; Luis Castellanos Guevara, Jose; Saguy, Tamar; Silfver-Kuhalampi, Mia; Gomez, Angel; Becker, Maja; Loughnan, Steve; Bastian, Brock; Swann, William; Tong, Jennifer (Yuk-Yue); Sortheix, Florencia; Guerra, Valeschka; Huang, Li-li; Shi, Junqi; Hanke, Katja; Sachkova, Marianna; Castellanos Guevara, Jose Luis; Guevara, José Luis Castellanos; Aminihajibashi, Samira
Moral vitalism refers to a tendency to view good and evil as actual forces that can influence people and events. The Moral Vitalism Scale had been designed to assess moral vitalism in a brief survey form. Previous studies established the reliability and validity of the scale in US-American and Australian samples. In this study, the cross-cultural comparability of the scale was tested across 28 different cultural groups worldwide through measurement invariance tests. A series of exact invariance tests marginally supported partial metric invariance, however, an approximate invariance approach provided evidence of partial scalar invariance for a 5-item measure. The established level of measurement invariance allows for comparisons of latent means across cultures. We conclude that the brief measure of moral vitalism is invariant across 28 cultures and can be used to estimate levels of moral vitalism with the same precision across very different cultural settings.
Citation - WoS: 20
Citation - Scopus: 21
Moral Expansiveness Around the World: the Role of Societal Factors Across 36 Countries
(SAGE Publications Inc., 2022) Rudnev, Maksim; Peker, Müjde; Jetten, Jolanda; Acevedo-Triana, Cesar; Crimston, Charlie R.; Kirkland, Kelly; Amiot, Catherine E.; Bastian, Brock
What are the things that we think matter morally, and how do societal factors influence this? To date, research has explored several individual-level and historical factors that influence the size of our ‘moral circles.' There has, however, been less attention focused on which societal factors play a role. We present the first multi-national exploration of moral expansiveness—that is, the size of people’s moral circles across countries. We found low generalized trust, greater perceptions of a breakdown in the social fabric of society, and greater perceived economic inequality were associated with smaller moral circles. Generalized trust also helped explain the effects of perceived inequality on lower levels of moral inclusiveness. Other inequality indicators (i.e., Gini coefficients) were, however, unrelated to moral expansiveness. These findings suggest that societal factors, especially those associated with generalized trust, may influence the size of our moral circles.
Citation - WoS: 41
Citation - Scopus: 45
Multinational Data Show That Conspiracy Beliefs Are Associated With the Perception (and Reality) of Poor National Economic Performance
(Wiley, 2022) Jetten, Jolanda; Peker Booth, Mujde; Van Lange, Paul A. M.; Sassenberg, Kai; Kang, Jemima; Pearson, Samuel; Hornsey, Matthew J.; Bastian, Brock
While a great deal is known about the individual difference factors associated with conspiracy beliefs, much less is known about the country-level factors that shape people's willingness to believe conspiracy theories. In the current article we discuss the possibility that willingness to believe conspiracy theories might be shaped by the perception (and reality) of poor economic performance at the national level. To test this notion, we surveyed 6723 participants from 36 countries. In line with predictions, propensity to believe conspiracy theories was negatively associated with perceptions of current and future national economic vitality. Furthermore, countries with higher GDP per capita tended to have lower belief in conspiracy theories. The data suggest that conspiracy beliefs are not just caused by intrapsychic factors but are also shaped by difficult economic circumstances for which distrust might have a rational basis.
Citation - WoS: 18
Citation - Scopus: 21
Perceiving Societal Pressure To Be Happy Is Linked To Poor Well-Being, Especially in Happy Nations
(Nature Research, 2022) Rhee, J Joshua; Peker, Müjde; Becker, Maja; Bilewicz, Michal; Bastian, Brock; Baguma, K Peter; Barry, Oumar; Dejonckheere, Egon; Baguma, Peter K.
Happiness is a valuable experience, and societies want their citizens to be happy. Although this societal commitment seems laudable, overly emphasizing positivity (versus negativity) may create an unattainable emotion norm that ironically compromises individual well-being. In this multi-national study (40 countries; 7443 participants), we investigate how societal pressure to be happy and not sad predicts emotional, cognitive and clinical indicators of well-being around the world, and examine how these relations differ as a function of countries' national happiness levels (collected from the World Happiness Report). Although detrimental well-being associations manifest for an average country, the strength of these relations varies across countries. People's felt societal pressure to be happy and not sad is particularly linked to poor well-being in countries with a higher World Happiness Index. Although the cross-sectional nature of our work prohibits causal conclusions, our findings highlight the correlational link between social emotion valuation and individual well-being, and suggest that high national happiness levels may have downsides for some.
Citation - WoS: 11
Citation - Scopus: 12
Social Mindfulness Predicts Concern for Nature and Immigrants Across 36 Nations
(Nature Portfolio, 2022) Peker, Müjde; Van Lange, Paul A. M.; Acevedo-Triana, Cesar; Van Doesum, Niels J.; Kirkland, Kelly; Ausmees, Liisi; Amiot, Catherine E.; Bastian, Brock
People cooperate every day in ways that range from largescale contributions that mitigate climate change to simple actions such as leaving another individual with choice - known as social mindfulness. It is not yet clear whether and how these complex and more simple forms of cooperation relate. Prior work has found that countries with individuals who made more socially mindful choices were linked to a higher country environmental performance - a proxy for complex cooperation. Here we replicated this initial finding in 41 samples around the world, demonstrating the robustness of the association between social mindfulness and environmental performance, and substantially built on it to show this relationship extended to a wide range of complex cooperative indices, tied closely to many current societal issues. We found that greater social mindfulness expressed by an individual was related to living in countries with more social capital, more community participation and reduced prejudice towards immigrants. Our findings speak to the symbiotic relationship between simple and more complex forms of cooperation in societies.