Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze cross-national and cross-cultural similarities and differences in perceptions and conceptualizations of workplace bullying among human resource professionals (HRPs). Particular emphasis was given to what kind of behaviors are considered as bullying in different countries and what criteria interviewees use to decide whether a particular behavior is bullying or not. Design/methodology/approach HRPs in 13 different countries/regions (n=199), spanning all continents and all GLOBE cultural clusters (House et al., 2004), were interviewed and a qualitative content analysis was carried out. Findings Whereas interviewees across the different countries largely saw personal harassment and physical intimidation as bullying, work-related negative acts and social exclusion were construed very differently in the different countries. Repetition, negative effects on the target, intention to harm, and lack of a business case were decision criteria typically used by interviewees across the globe – other criteria varied by country. Practical implications The results help HRPs working in multinational organizations understand different perceptions of negative acts. Originality/value The findings point to the importance of cultural factors, such as power distance and performance orientation, and other contextual factors, such as economy and legislation for understanding varying conceptualizations of bullying.

Smiling individuals are usually perceived more favorably than non-smiling ones—they are judged as happier, more attractive, competent, and friendly. These seemingly clear and obvious consequences of smiling are assumed to be culturally universal, however most of the psychological research is carried out in WEIRD societies (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) and the influence of culture on social perception of nonverbal behavior is still understudied. Here we show that a smiling individual may be judged as less intelligent than the same non-smiling individual in cultures low on the GLOBE’s uncertainty avoidance dimension. Furthermore, we show that corruption at the societal level may undermine the prosocial perception of smiling—in societies with high corruption indicators, trust toward smiling individuals is reduced. This research fosters understanding of the cultural framework surrounding nonverbal communication processes and reveals that in some cultures smiling may lead to negative attributions.

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Numerous studies document that societal happiness is correlated with individualism, but the nature of this phenomenon remains understudied. In the current paper, we address this gap and test the reasoning that individualism correlates with societal happiness because the most common measure of societal happiness (i.e., country-level aggregates of personal life satisfaction) is individualism-themed. With the data collected from 13,009 participants across fifty countries, we compare associations of four types of happiness (out of which three are more collectivism-themed than personal life satisfaction) with two different measures of individualism. We replicated previous findings by demonstrating that societal happiness measured as country-level aggregate of personal life satisfaction is correlated with individualism. Importantly though, we also found that the country-level aggregates of the collectivism-themed measures of happiness do not tend to be significantly correlated with individualism. Implications for happiness studies and for policy makers are signaled.

Cultural sensitivity in societal development has been advocated for since at least the 1960s but has remained understudied. Our goal is to address this gap and to investigate folk theories of societal development. We aimed to identify both universal and culturally specific lay beliefs about what constitutes good societal development. We collected data from 2,684 participants from Japan, Hong Kong (China), Poland, Turkey, Brazil, France, Nigeria, the USA, and Canada. We measured preferences for 28 development aims. We used multidimensional scaling, analysis of variance, and pairwise comparisons to identify universal and country‐specific preferences. Our results demonstrate that what people understand as modernization is fairly universal across countries, but specific pathways of development and preferences towards these pathways tend to vary between countries. We distinguished three facets of modernization—foundational aims (e.g., trust, economic development), welfare aims (e.g., poverty eradication, education), and inclusive aims (e.g., openness, gender equality)—and incorporated them into a folk meta‐theory of modernization. In all nine countries, the three facets of modernization were preferred more than conventional aims (e.g., military, demographic growth). We propose a method of implementing our findings into a culturally sensitive modernization index.