Previous research has contrasted patterns of cautious or prevention-oriented relationality in various West African settings with patterns of growth or promotion-oriented relationality in many North American settings. The present research draws upon the concept of relational mobility to test the hypothesis that different patterns of relationality have their source in respective affordances for embedded interdependence or abstracted independence. Study 1 investigated the relationship between cautious intimacy and perception of relational mobility among a sample of Hong Kong students. Study 2 compared students in Hong Kong and North American settings to test whether differences in perception of relational mobility mediated the hypothesized differences in caution about friends. Study 3 used an experimental manipulation among a sample of Hong Kong students to test the hypothesis that increased perception of relational mobility reduces caution about friends. Results reveal broad support for the hypotheses. Whether as a measured variable or as an experimental treatment, the perception of relational mobility was negatively related to caution about friends. Moreover, this relationship mediated hypothesized cross-national differences in caution about friendship.Adiscussion of the results considers intersections of cultural and ecological approaches to psychology and implications for theoretical conceptions of interdependence.

We studied the gender gap in life expectancy (GGLE), which currently favours women on average by 5 years. Individual data from 54 societies were extracted from the 1999-2004 wave of the World Values Survey. The GGLE was not predicted by the socio-economic factors of gross domestic product (GDP) or Gini coefficient, but was increased by national level of alcohol consumption, and decreased by gender differences in national levels of life satisfaction. Different national-level phenomena appear to be responsible for male and female contributions to the GGLE. National levels of male longevity were responsive to GDP, Gini coefficient, social engagement, tobacco use and life satisfaction, whereas female longevity rates were responsive only to GDP and alcohol consumption, underscoring the greater sensitivity of male longevity to contextual features of the nations where they live.

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Past research showed that East Asians' belief in holism was expressed as their tendencies to include background facial emotions into the evaluation of target faces more than North Americans. However, this pattern can be interpreted as North Americans' tendency to downplay background facial emotions due to their conceptualization of facial emotion as volitional expression of internal states. Examining this alternative explanation, we investigated whether different types of contextual information produce varying degrees of effect on one's face evaluation across cultures. In three studies, European Canadians and East Asians rated the intensity of target facial emotions surrounded with either affectively salient landscape sceneries or background facial emotions. The results showed that, although affectively salient landscapes influenced the judgment of both cultural groups, only European Canadians downplayed the background facial emotions. The role of agency as differently conceptualized across cultures and multilayered systems of cultural meanings are discussed.