An Investigation of Meat Eating in Samples from Australia and Germany: The Role of Justifications, Perceptions, and Empathy.

Despite concerns about animal welfare, and health and environmental issues associated with eating meat, meat consumption has continued to increase worldwide, including in Australia. One exception to this is Germany, with 2021 meat consumption levels being the lowest in the last 30 years. This pre-registered study investigated socio-cultural variables associated with meat consumption in Germany ( = 399) and Australia ( = 399) in a cross-sectional online survey.

Neural Representations of Death in the Cortical Midline Structures Promote Temporal Discounting.

Death is an important reminder that our lives are finite. Although some studies have shown that thinking about one's own death increases temporal discounting (i.e.

Nostalgia enhances detection of death threat: neural and behavioral evidence.

An experiment examined the potency of nostalgia-a sentimental longing for one's past-to facilitate detection of death-related stimuli, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and behavioral techniques (i.e., judgmental accuracy, reaction times).

How Much Is Enough in a Perfect World? Cultural Variation in Ideal Levels of Happiness, Pleasure, Freedom, Health, Self-Esteem, Longevity, and Intelligence.

The maximization principle-that people aspire to the highest possible level of something good if all practical constraints are removed-is a common yet untested assumption about human nature. We predict that in holistic cultures-where contradiction, change, and context are emphasized-ideal states of being for the self will be more moderate than in other cultures. In two studies ( Ns = 2,392 and 6,239), we asked this question: If participants could choose their ideal level of happiness, pleasure, freedom, health, self-esteem, longevity, and intelligence, what level would they choose? Consistent with predictions, results showed that maximization was less pronounced in holistic cultures; members of holistic cultures aspired to less happiness, pleasure, freedom, health, self-esteem, longevity, and IQ than did members of other cultures.

The Effect of Social Support on Psychological Flourishing and Distress Among Migrants in Australia.

We examine the access that culturally diverse migrant groups in Australia have to different sources of social support and how this access, or lack thereof, is associated with psychological flourishing and distress. A national online survey was conducted with 1334 migrants in Australia, examining 11 different sources of social support, including family, friends, relationship partner, acquaintances, work colleagues, health professionals, government agencies, community organisations, religious groups, social groups and online groups. We also examined migrants from different cultural groups.

The Role of Close Relationships in Terror Management: A Systematic Review and Research Agenda.

Terror management theory outlines how humans seek self-esteem and worldview validation to manage death-related anxiety. Accumulating evidence reveals that close relationships serve a similar role. However, to date, there has been no synthesis of the literature that delineates when close relationships buffer mortality concerns, under what conditions, on which specific outcomes, and for whom.

Tolerating dissimilar other when primed with death: neural evidence of self-control engaged by interdependent people in Japan.

Mortality salience (MS) has been shown to lead to derogation of others with dissimilar worldviews, yet recent research has shown that Asian-Americans who presumably adopt an interdependent self-construal (SC) tend to reveal greater tolerance after MS induction. In the present study, we demonstrated that Japanese individuals who are high on interdependent SC indeed show greater tolerance toward worldview-threatening other in the MS (vs control) condition, thus replicating the prior research. Extending this research, we also found that interdependent people's tolerance toward worldview-threatening other was mediated by increased activity in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex in the MS condition.

Self-esteem modulates amygdala-ventrolateral prefrontal cortex connectivity in response to mortality threats.

Reminders of death often elicit defensive responses in individuals, especially among those with low self-esteem. Although empirical evidence indicates that self-esteem serves as a buffer against mortality threats, the precise neural mechanism underlying this effect remains unknown. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to test the hypothesis that self-esteem modulates neural responses to death-related stimuli, especially functional connectivity within the limbic-frontal circuitry, thereby affecting subsequent defensive reactions.

Life satisfaction in the new country: a multilevel longitudinal analysis of effects of culture and 5-HTT allele frequency distribution in country of origin.

Life satisfaction of migrants to Australia from 17 countries, assessed at 4-5 months, 16-17 months and 3½ years after arrival, was analyzed with a longitudinal, multilevel analysis. The results indicated that migrants were more satisfied, if the national average life satisfaction was higher in their country of origin, after adjustment for individual-level income, age, and sex and a linear temporal trend. Simultaneously, the migrants were also happier if people in their country of origin had a higher frequency of 5-HTT long allele, a genotype known to be associated with resilience under life stresses.

Non-conscious neural regulation against mortality concerns.

Social psychological studies have shown that an experience of threat such as an encounter with death-related stimuli and social exclusion results in tuning toward positive emotional information. Neuroimaging studies have also begun to uncover the neural basis of threat coping, and in this literature, the activity of the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (rVLPFC) has been suggested to play a key role in detection and regulation of threats. Using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), we examined the activity of rVLPFC while participants were subliminally primed with the concept of "death" or the control concept "pain".

Communicative intentions can modulate the linguistic perception-action link.

Although applauding Pickering & Garrod's (P&G's) attempt to ground language use in the ideomotor perception-action link, which provides an "infrastructure" of embodied social interaction, we suggest that it needs to be complemented by an additional control mechanism that modulates its operation in the service of the language users' communicative intentions. Implications for intergroup relationships and intercultural communication are discussed.

Differences between tight and loose cultures: a 33-nation study.

With data from 33 nations, we illustrate the differences between cultures that are tight (have many strong norms and a low tolerance of deviant behavior) versus loose (have weak social norms and a high tolerance of deviant behavior). Tightness-looseness is part of a complex, loosely integrated multilevel system that comprises distal ecological and historical threats (e.g.

Social identity and worldview validation: the effects of ingroup identity primes and mortality salience on value endorsement.

In this article, the authors report an investigation of the relationship between terror management and social identity processes by testing for the effects of social identity salience on worldview validation. Two studies, with distinct populations, were conducted to test the hypothesis that mortality salience would lead to worldview validation of values related to a salient social identity. In Study 1, reasonable support for this hypothesis was found with bicultural Aboriginal Australian participants (N = 97).

Culture and self: are there within-culture differences in self between metropolitan areas and regional cities?

Although differences in self-conception across cultures have been well researched, regional differences within a culture have escaped attention. The present study examined individual, relational, and collective selves, which capture people's conceptions of themselves in relation to their goals, significant others, and in groups, comparing Australians and Japanese participants living in regional cities and metropolitan areas. Culture, gender, and urbanism were found to be related to individual, relational, and collective selves, respectively.