Publications by authors named "Hamdi Muluk"

Some public officials have expressed concern that policies mandating collective public health behaviors (e.g., national/regional "lockdown") may result in behavioral fatigue that ultimately renders such policies ineffective.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Anxiety associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and home confinement has been associated with adverse health behaviors, such as unhealthy eating, smoking, and drinking. However, most studies have been limited by regional sampling, which precludes the examination of behavioral consequences associated with the pandemic at a global level. Further, few studies operationalized pandemic-related stressors to enable the investigation of the impact of different types of stressors on health outcomes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

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.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The present paper examines longitudinally how subjective perceptions about COVID-19, one's community, and the government predict adherence to public health measures to reduce the spread of the virus. Using an international survey (N = 3040), we test how infection risk perception, trust in the governmental response and communications about COVID-19, conspiracy beliefs, social norms on distancing, tightness of culture, and community punishment predict various containment-related attitudes and behavior. Autoregressive analyses indicate that, at the personal level, personal hygiene behavior was predicted by personal infection risk perception.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Tightening social norms is thought to be adaptive for dealing with collective threat yet it may have negative consequences for increasing prejudice. The present research investigated the role of desire for cultural tightness, triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, in increasing negative attitudes towards immigrants. We used participant-level data from 41 countries ( = 55,015) collected as part of the PsyCorona project, a cross-national longitudinal study on responses to COVID-19.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • * Overall, 72.9% of respondents expressed a willingness to get vaccinated, with prosocial behavior positively correlating with vaccine intentions, while belief in conspiracy theories and religiosity negatively influenced them.
  • * The research highlights the need to address misinformation and engage religious organizations in campaigns, emphasizing the importance of promoting prosocial values to boost vaccination rates globally.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a global health crisis, prompting many countries to implement strict measures that have significantly altered societal dynamics.
  • This situation has fostered a sentiment of societal discontent, which is defined as a collective worry about society's fragile state and can drive individuals to engage in altruistic behavior.
  • The study analyzed data from 42 countries and found that higher societal discontent increases individuals' willingness to help others affected by COVID-19, highlighting important implications for crisis management strategies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

During the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. conservative politicians and the media downplayed the risk of both contracting COVID-19 and the effectiveness of recommended health behaviors.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - The study analyzes how social connections and feelings of solidarity influenced experiences of loneliness during the COVID-19 lockdown across 23 countries from March to May 2020.
  • - Findings reveal that while online interactions can help lessen loneliness, those who feel lonelier are less likely to engage in online contact, and solidarity has minimal impact on loneliness levels during lockdown.
  • - Additionally, increased online communication does not replace in-person interactions; instead, it appears to encourage more face-to-face contacts later on, highlighting the complexity of social interactions during lockdown.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The UCLA Loneliness Scale (ULS-20) and its short version (ULS-8) are widely used to measure loneliness. However, the question remains whether or not previous studies using the scale to measure loneliness are measuring the construct equally across countries. The present study examined the measurement invariance (MI) of both scales in Germany, Indonesia, and the United States ( = 2350).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This paper examines whether compliance with COVID-19 mitigation measures is motivated by wanting to save lives or save the economy (or both), and which implications this carries to fight the pandemic. National representative samples were collected from 24 countries (N = 25,435). The main predictors were (1) perceived risk to contract coronavirus, (2) perceived risk to suffer economic losses due to coronavirus, and (3) their interaction effect.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This study aims to describe how group leaders operate with their social ties of jihadi terrorists, using social network analysis. Data was collected through documents and interviews from terrorist detainees who were involved in jihadi terrorism activities in Indonesia. We found that relational trust with operational leaders plays an important role in terrorist social networks.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A small number of facial expressions may be universal in that they are produced by the same basic affective states and recognized as such throughout the world. However, other aspects of emotionally expressive behavior vary widely across culture. Just why do they vary? We propose that some cultural differences in expressive behavior are determined by historical heterogeneity, or the extent to which a country's present-day population descended from migration from numerous vs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF