There are presently two approaches to the study of well-being. Philosophers typically focus on normative theorizing, attempting to identify the things that are ultimately good for a person, while largely ignoring empirical research. The idea is that empirical attention cannot be directed to the right place without a rigorous theory. Meanwhile, social scientists typically focus on empirical research

Pluralistic ignorance occurs when group members mistakenly believe others’ cognitions and/or behaviors are systematically different from their own. More than 20 years have passed since the last review of pluralistic ignorance from a psychological framework, with more than 60 empirical articles assessing pluralistic ignorance published since then. Previous reviews took an almost entirely conceptual

In this study, we sought to empirically validate the model of development of urban families in Southern Angola. The study was carried out with a sample of 256 participants (n = 130, 50.78% women; n = 126, 49.22% men) from urban centers of Southern Angola, aged between 18–79 years. We aimed, particularly, to identify women’s and men’s perceptions of their family functioning (SCORE-15), family vulnerability

Recent psychology scholarship has engaged topics of decoloniality, from conferences to journal publications to edited volumes. These efforts are examples of the decolonial turn, a paradigm shift oriented to interrupting the colonial legacies of power, knowledge, and being. As critical community psychologists, we contend that decoloniality/decolonization is an epistemic and ontological process of continuously

Coloniality describes the way in which racialized conceptions of being, personhood, and morality inherent in colonial regimes are maintained long after the formal end of colonial enterprises. Central to coloniality has been the material and psychological colonization of space and time, largely by Western and industrialized nations. We propose the importance of understanding the coloniality of time

In this article, we propose a “6P” unified framework for understanding wisdom and accounts of wisdom: purpose, press, problems, persons, processes, products. We discuss wisdom in terms of these 6Ps, which expand and elaborate upon 4Ps originally suggested for models of creativity. We open the article with a discussion of the importance of wisdom. Then, we consider some past accounts of wisdom. We begin

Hegarty, P., Prandelli, M., Lundberg, T., Liao, L.-M., Creighton, S., & Roen, K. (2020). Drawing the Line Between Essential and Nonessential Interventions on Intersex Characteristics With European Health Care Professionals. Review of General Psychology. DOI: 10.1177/1089268020963622

It is well known that people who read fiction have many reasons for doing so. But perhaps one of the most understudied reasons people have for reading fiction is their belief that reading will result in their acquisition of certain forms of knowledge or skill. Such expectations have long been fostered by literary theorists, critics, authors, and readers who have asserted that reading may indeed be

As the humanities suffer decline in the academy, some psychologists have turned to them as an especially apt way to advance a psychological science that reflects lived experience more accurately and robustly. Disciplinary psychology’s adoption of the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of the natural sciences is often seen as a misapplication that has resulted in a science that diminishes

The decolonial impulse in psychology has manifested across a variety of domains, perhaps most notably psychological theory and approaches to research methodology. In this article, we focus on how decoloniality can reshape approaches to teaching and learning. We present a case study of how we recurriculated, from 1999 to 2020, three community psychology modules using a decolonial lens. We describe three

Human rights statements on intersex characteristics distinguish legitimate “medically necessary” interventions from illegitimate normalizing ones. Ironically, this binary classification seems partially grounded in knowledge of anatomy and medical interventions; the very expertise that human rights statements challenge. Here, 23 European health professionals from specialist “disorder of sex development”

One of the most important things people see is what other people do. In photographs of actions, people see what other people have done. This analysis focuses on photographs of motor actions or interactions taken in naturally occurring situations. I suggest that such photographs represent special meanings, which I call action-related meanings. I examined the hypothesis that viewers understand these

Recent discussions have revived old claims that hereditarian research on race differences in intelligence has been subject to a long and effective taboo. We argue that given the extensive publications, citations, and discussions of such work since 1969, claims of taboo and suppression are a myth. We critically examine claims that (self-described) hereditarians currently and exclusively experience major

The self is a multifaceted phenomenon that manifests in a complex configuration of character traits, roles, orientations, and other psychological components. The entity that is binding these subcomponents together has mostly eluded systematic enquiry. In an effort to approach this Gestalt-like whole in an empirical manner, we here introduce the concept of the “peripheral self”: the moments of growth

The present article gives an overview of sociocultural approaches to creativity and advances a particular theory of the creative process grounded in the notions of difference, position, perspective, dialogue, and affordance. If sociocultural psychology challenges old dichotomies between mind and body, individual and society, then creativity is ideally placed to demonstrate their interdependence. While

Loneliness is a common experience with major negative consequences for well-being. Although much research has examined protective and risk factors for loneliness, we know little about its cultural underpinnings. The few studies that exist seem paradoxical, suggesting that loneliness is higher in cultures where tighter and more demanding (i.e., more restrictive) cultural norms about social relationships

Empirical studies of the power of photographs on recollections of the personal past have produced a complicated set of results, with reports of both costs and benefits on recollection accuracy. The purpose of the selective review offered in the current paper is to cast in new light this complicated pattern of findings by calling for close attention to the acts of looking, including the timing of the

In the United States, many adolescent girls experience sexual harassment before they leave high school, and between 20% and 25% of college women are survivors of sexual assault. Despite the many negative consequences associated with these experiences, perpetrating sexual harassment and assault is often viewed as normative. Using Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theoretical framework, we propose a bioecological

Simplicity is a fundamental tenet of cognition intended to cope with a complex and intricate world. Based on the writings of the German philosopher Hans Vaihinger, this article introduces a wide-ranging simplification scheme denoted the “as if” heuristic. Following this heuristic, much of our productive and constructive thoughts about the world, specifically in science, are based on idealized fictitious

This article makes a case for connecting knowledge of the sense(s) of self-movement with understanding psychology’s subject matter in terms of relations. It first outlines the history of the sense of movement as a form of awareness and reviews usage of the terms “kinaesthesia,” “proprioception,” and “haptic sense.” It shows that the structure and “feel” of the sense of movement have been thought to

Developing a widely accepted theory of behavior causation has been hampered by the lack of a rigorous approach to understanding the kinds of determinants at work. Interest in behavior change is also burgeoning, and requires a profound understanding of how personal and environmental determinants interact dynamically to predict changed behavioral outcomes. Behavior settings theory, a powerful naturalistic

The ability to imagine and simulate events that may happen in the future has been studied in several related but independent research areas (e.g., episodic future thinking, mind-wandering, prospective memory), with a newly emerging field of involuntary future thinking focusing primarily on the spontaneous occurrence of such thoughts. In this article, we review evidence from these diverse fields to

As meta-analytic studies have come to occupy a sizable contingent of published work in the psychological sciences, clarity in the research and reporting practices of such work is crucial to the interpretability and reproducibility of research findings. The present study examines the state of research and reporting practices within a random sample of 384 published psychological meta-analyses across

This article introduces the expanded network theory and demonstrates the heuristic value of its construct of strong-ties and weak-ties rationalities. This construct is derived from the network theory of Granovetter and corroborated with evolutionary biology and psychological studies on group processes. This construct has wide-ranging implications and applications for cultural and cross-cultural psychology

Social psychologists are often criticized for failing to capture the dynamic nature of psychological processes. We present a novel framework to address this problem. The MOVE framework contends that to comprehend complex, contradictory, and divergent patterns of thought, affect, and behavior within changing, real-world contexts, it is necessary to undertake ecologically valid research that is attentive

Disruptive experiences are opportunities for learning, yet, people often resist them. This tendency is evident in individual experience, organizational behavior, and denialist discourses. Research has been hampered by conceptualizing this defensiveness in terms of unconscious defense mechanisms or underlying cognitive processes. In contrast, I conceptualize defensiveness in terms of observable defensive

Two narratives of economic development are presented. The first highlights contemporary global wealth and income inequality. The second illustrates historical aggregate gains in global wealth and income. Within these two broad narratives of economic development, protests and social movements will arise to modulate feelings of unfairness and deprivation. A new theory of social movements is developed

The scientific study of social cognition is a growing field which promises to deliver valuable insights into how the brain underpins human’s social success. However, the poor ecological validity of many popular paradigms constrains the progress of social cognitive scientists. Highly simplistic and contrived stimuli are commonplace, despite the complexity and unpredictability of real-world social experiences

Many empirical studies have demonstrated the psychological effects of various aspects of money, including the aspiration for money, mere thoughts about money, possession of money, and placement of people in economic contexts. Although multiple aspects of money and varied methodologies have been focused on and implemented, the underlying mechanisms of the empirical findings from these seemingly isolated

Gatekeeping is an ever-present feature in the distribution of and access to educational resources in many aspects of our lives. In high performance domains, a gatekeeping process determines acceptance into elite training programs, invitations to perform, drafting onto elite sports teams, and matriculation into graduate school. Gatekeeping can be defined as the process by which an arbiter influences

The article draws from historical and contemporary resources to articulate the enduring or persistent responsibilities of general psychology, suggesting “common ground” and “point of view” as useful concepts in line with these. It then explores three important developments in the discipline over the past several decades—big data analytics, methodological proliferation, and critical psychology—and considers

Cultural psychological research has compellingly demonstrated that reliable East-West differences exist in basic cognitive styles: in contrast to the analytic, focal, linear thinking prevalent in the West, East Asians prefer to engage in more holistic, contextual, and intuitive thinking. However, despite the consensus on these cultural differences in thinking style, the literature on cross-cultural

The legacy of Russian psychologist Lev Semenovich Vygotsky is most closely associated with the cultural-historical paradigm and, in the West, has found its most extensive application in contemporary developmental and educational psychology. However, Vygotsky’s project was far more ambitious than this perspective implies—in fact, he conceived a new, original program of general psychology that could

In this article, I consider what I have long taken to be the two foundational principles of the Berlin School of Gestalt psychology, namely, that perceptual configurations are “distinguishable from” or “other than” the elements from which they are configured and that the identity of such “elements” is determined by their relation to other elements within perceptual configurations. Yet, while it seems

This article examines the processes by which different dialogical positionalities are taken in the contact zone. The contact zone provides a framework for the consideration of potential confrontations and uncertainties during intercultural contacts between migrant children, their family, and another adult. The other adult is usually someone in a position of authority. For young people who language

How people respond to positive and negative events is a basic question in psychology. Most theoretical accounts assume that the detrimental impact of negative life events is cumulative, resulting in a “more is more” effect. A similar assumption of “more is more” is typically used to predict the influence of multiple positive life events, people’s reactions to evaluative stimuli (e.g., an audience)

How has the concept of metacognition been used within basic and applied psychological research? We begin our answer by presenting a broad definition of metacognition, a historical overview of its development and its presence in research databases. To assess which function and facets are most frequently addressed within each of the sub-disciplines, we present results from separate literature searches

Dehumanization is an everyday, pervasive phenomenon in health contexts. Given its detrimental consequences to health care, much research has been dedicated to understanding and promoting the humanization of health services. However, health care service research has neglected the sociopsychological processes involved in the dehumanization of self and others, in formal but also informal health-related

Interest in the experience of well-being, as both a research topic and as a policy goal, has significantly increased in recent decades. Although subjective well-being (SWB)—composed of positive affect, low negative affect, and life satisfaction—is the most commonly used measure of well-being, many experts have argued that another important dimension of well-being, often referred to as eudaimonic well-being

A growing number of studies have examined the psychological corollaries of using social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter (often called social media). The interdisciplinary research area and conflicting evidence from primary studies complicate the assessment of current scholarly knowledge in this field of high public attention. We review meta-analytic evidence on three

This meta-analysis examined the relationship between moral identity and moral emotions drawing on 57 independent studies. Moral identity was significantly associated with moral emotions, r = .32, p < .01, 95% confidence interval [CI: .27, .36]. Effect sizes were moderated by the type of moral emotion. Studies reporting other-regarding emotions (sympathy, empathy, and compassion) had the largest effect

Sense of self (SOS) is a cornerstone of psychological inquiry and therapy and is a defining feature of a range of psychological conditions including borderline personality disorder, yet it is poorly understood. SOS is that continuous experience of being a complete and authentic person who feels in control of their own activities. It is a part of normal development of the self and, when weakened by

This is a proposal to make persons and their lives central to and the primary focus of psychological theory and inquiry. To this end, the ontological status of persons is clarified, their unique ontogeny is described, and the nature of their lives is explored. With these clarifications and descriptions in place, the proposal concludes with a consideration of advantages to psychology and psychologists

We consider the topic of arrogance from a cross-disciplinary viewpoint. To stimulate further research, we suggest three types of arrogance (individual, comparative, and antagonistic) and six components contributing to them, each logically related to the next. The components progress from imperfect knowledge and abilities to an unrealistic assessment of them, an unwarranted attitude of superiority over

Over the past two decades, the concept of authenticity has been the subject of considerable disagreement and debate. Although there have been attempts at reconciling various existing approaches, the literature is still short on a definition that is both practical and precise. This article proposes to make significant headway to that effect by suggesting that authenticity can be accounted for by an

Two perspectives are used to reframe Simonton’s recent three-factor definition of creative outcome. The first perspective is functional: that creative ideas are those that add significantly to knowledge by providing both utility and learning. The second perspective is calculational: that learning can be estimated by the change in probabilistic beliefs about an idea’s utility before and after it has

Pain overlap theory has generated decades of controversy and still receives considerable research attention. A major advance has been the revelation that social and physical pain activate similar neural regions, providing suggestive evidence of a “piggybacked” alarm system that coevolved to detect social exclusion. Recent developments, however, have brought neural evidence for pain overlap into question

Pain is a universal, multidimensional experience with sensory, emotional, cognitive, and social components, which is fundamental to our environmental learning when functioning typically. Understanding pain processing in psychiatric conditions could provide unique insight into the underlying pathophysiology or psychiatric disease, especially given the psychobiological overlap with pain processing pathways

Psychologists are increasingly interested in studying the psychological effects of engaging with various forms of the arts and humanities because of their significance and ubiquity in human life. There is, however, a lack of a robust conceptual framework to support a systematic and integrative approach to the study of the psychological effects of the arts and humanities. Through an extensive review

Attempts to understand subjectivity have historically involved distinguishing the strengths of subjective methods (e.g., survey ratings from informants) from those of alternative methods (e.g., observational/performance-based tasks). Yet a movement is underway in Psychology that considers the merits of intersubjectivity: Understanding the space between two or more informant’s subjective impressions

Although semiotics has historically been a focus of interest in psychology, its impact over recent decades has been fairly muted. Moreover, no systematic efforts have been made to study and understand it from a positive perspective, that is, the way sign-systems are or can be “positive.” As such, this article introduces the notion of “positive semiotics,” a label for the disparate research and theorizing

Research on patterns of marriage has determined that marriages serve as a reproductive contract between men and women. Marriage usually lasts for periods of time sufficient to raise a child until he or she can care for himself or herself. Patterns of marriage and divorce also embody features showing that the sexes act in their own reproductive best interests, for example, men initiating divorce later

A major idea in relationship science is that partners in a close relationship can “sculpt” each other in a manner that helps them align more closely with their ideal, or true, self. This sculpting metaphor is compelling, elegant, and generative, but it also possesses previously unrecognized liabilities, especially in its conceptualization of the ideal self as a sculpture yearning for release from a

We outline a program of research in which we examined state authenticity, the sense of being one’s true self. In particular, we describe its phenomenology (what it feels like to be experience authenticity), its correlates (e.g., emotions, needs), its nomological network (e.g., real-ideal self overlap, public and private self-consciousness), its cultural parameters (Easter and Western culture), its

Perceptions of authenticity (or, inauthenticity) have been shown to affect people’s judgments and behavior across a wide variety of domains. However, there is still ambiguity about how the concept should be defined. This is attributable, at least in part, to a growing list of different “kinds of authenticity” with little discussion of the potential overlaps between them. The goal of this paper is to

Research on authenticity frequently invokes notions of true self, but is there such thing? The question must be answered twice, given frequent confusion and conflation of self with self-concept. Summarizing and integrating themes from authenticity research as evident in this special issue, I draw these conclusions. True self-concepts are more plausible than genuinely true selves, if the latter are

Authenticity is generally believed to play an important role in our daily lives. Empirical research thus far has made progress in understanding the nature of this important construct. We identify four broad conclusions about authenticity based on this research: (a) People value authenticity in their own behavior and other domains (e.g., life experiences, consumer products), (b) Self-reports of personal

A central tenet of many prominent philosophical and psychological traditions is that personal authenticity facilitates psychological well-being. This idea, however, is at odds with numerous perspectives arguing that it is difficult, if not impossible, to really know one's self, or the true self may not even exist. Moreover, empirical findings suggest that reports of authenticity are often contaminated

As the term is typically used, authenticity refers to the degree to which a particular behavior is congruent with a person’s attitudes, beliefs, values, motives, and other dispositions. However, researchers disagree regarding the best way to conceptualize and measure authenticity, whether being authentic is always desirable, why people are motivated to be authentic, and the nature of the relationship

The subjective awareness of one’s true self is considered a fundamental aspect of authenticity. It is theorized to reflect an experienced disconnect between one’s conscious awareness and actual experiences. In this brief review, I describe some of the early theorizing on the construct and the research that this theorizing has inspired. I then review an emerging direction of research specifically focused