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.

Affect is involved in many psychological phenomena, but a descriptive structure, long sought, has been elusive. Valence and arousal are fundamental, and a key question–the focus of the present study–is the relationship between them. Valence is sometimes thought to be independent of arousal, but, in some studies (representing too few societies in the world) arousal was found to vary with valence. One common finding is that arousal is lowest at neutral valence and increases with both positive and negative valence: a symmetric V-shaped relationship. In the study reported here of self-reported affect during a remembered moment (N = 8,590), we tested the valence-arousal relationship in 33 societies with 25 different languages. The two most common hypotheses in the literature–independence and a symmetric V-shaped relationship–were not supported. With data of all samples pooled, arousal increased with positive but not negative valence. Valence accounted for between 5% (Finland) and 43% (China Beijing) of the variance in arousal. Although there is evidence for a structural relationship between the two, there is also a large amount of variability in this relation.

The aim of this study was to investigate the meanings attributed to retirement by active workers. For this purpose, the Retirement Meaning Scale was constructed and administered to 275 active workers (53.5% women) aged 22 to 67 years. The results reveal an ambiguous meaning attribution to the phenomenon: on one hand, there is a positive idea of freedom; on the other hand, the workers report experiences of anguish and insecurity related to retirement. Among the variables investigated, the proximity to retirement was especially relevant to the perception of the phenomenon, which influenced three of the four factors identified. This study has implications for policies and programs that aim to promote healthy experiences in retirement.

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People across cultures differ in behaviours, thoughts and preferences. Cultural sensitivity – i.e., acknowledgment of these cultural differences – in development science is a postulate known since at least the 1960s, but has remained understudied. The goal of the current paper is to address this gap and to investigate folk theories of societal development, and in particular to identify both universal and culturally specific lay beliefs on what constitutes good societal development. In this study we collected data on preferences in social developmental from 2,684 participants across nine countries from five continents. We measured preferences towards twenty-eight different development aims, and separately for preferences towards three aims constituting Human Development Index. We used a comprehensive analysis approach, consisting of multidimensional scaling, analysis of variance, and pairwise comparisons to characterize universal and country specific preference patterns. Our results demonstrate that what people understand as modernization remains substantially universal across countries, but specific pathways of development and preferences towards these pathways tend to be different between countries. We also distinguished three facets of modernization: basics for modernization (e.g., trust, safety, economic development), welfare aims (e.g., poverty eradication, education), and inclusive aims (e.g., openness, gender equality, human rights). Importantly, in all studied countries, we found that each of the three types of modernization is much more preferred than conventional aims (e.g., military, demographic, religion). Cultural sensitivity may be reflected in how development is conceptualised and measured, and in this paper we propose a method of implementing our findings into development indexes