Difficulty-as-Improvement: The Courage to Keep Going in the Face of Life’s Difficulties

Yan, Veronica X.; Oyserman, Daphna; Kiper, Gülnaz; Atari, Mohammad

doi:10.1177/01461672231153680

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 118 publications

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“…The denial and suppression of emotion is at the heart of the modern, and ancient, concept of stoicism and fortitude (Furnham, 1992; Sherman, 2005; Stempsey, 2001; Yan et al, 2023). It has been associated with many different religions and investigated as a potentially adaptive coping style (Akrim et al, 2021).…”

Section: Repressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stoicism

Furnham,

Robinson

2024

Journal of Individual Differences

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This study examined stoicism as a coping style. Just over 500 people completed a new, short, multi-dimensional stoicism scale; a short measure of the Big Five (Bright-side personality); the PID-6BF which measures personality disorders along five dimensions (Dark-side personality), and various self-ratings. Analysis of the stoicism scale at both the domain and five facet levels showed that it was related to gender (males scored higher), education (graduates scored higher), trait Extraversion and Openness, as well as Detachment and Psychoticism. Regressions indicated that stoics were Closed-to-Experience, Introverted, and high on Detachment. There were many differences between the regression results onto the different factors. The adaptiveness of stoicism is discussed. Limitations are acknowledged.

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Section: Repressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stoicism

Furnham,

Robinson

2024

Journal of Individual Differences

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“…Future studies investigating justice beliefs could benefit from considering how individual differences in equality and proportionality predict how people react to specific and culturespecific instances of injustice. For example, natural disasters and illness may be perceived to threaten principles of social equality, leading to compensatory action (Hafer & Rubel, 2015); however, these same experiences may seem morally justifiable when cultural narratives attribute them to notions of deservingness (Goudarzi et al, 2020;Sandel, 2020;Yan et al, 2023).…”

Section: Equality and Proportionality As Distinct Paths To Understand...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Morality beyond the WEIRD: How the nomological network of morality varies across cultures.

Atari,

Haidt,

Graham

et al. 2023

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

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Moral foundations theory has been a generative framework in moral psychology in the last 2 decades. Here, we revisit the theory and develop a new measurement tool, the Moral Foundations Questionnaire-2 (MFQ-2), based on data from 25 populations. We demonstrate empirically that equality and proportionality are distinct moral foundations while retaining the other four existing foundations of care, loyalty, authority, and purity. Three studies were conducted to develop the MFQ-2 and to examine how the nomological network of moral foundations varies across 25 populations. Study 1 (N = 3,360, five populations) specified a refined top-down approach for measurement of moral foundations. Study 2 (N = 3,902, 19 populations) used a variety of methods (e.g., factor analysis, exploratory structural equations model, network psychometrics, alignment measurement equivalence) to provide evidence that the MFQ-2 fares well in terms of reliability and validity across cultural contexts. We also examined population-level, religious, ideological, and gender differences using the new measure. Study 3 (N = 1,410, three populations) provided evidence for convergent validity of the MFQ-2 scores, expanded the nomological network of the six moral foundations, and demonstrated the improved predictive power of the measure compared with the original MFQ. Importantly, our results showed how the nomological network of moral foundations varied across cultural contexts: consistent with a pluralistic view of morality, different foundations were influential in the network of moral foundations depending on cultural context. These studies sharpen the theoretical and methodological resolution of moral foundations theory and provide the field of moral psychology a more accurate instrument for investigating the many ways that moral conflicts and divisions are shaping the modern world.

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“…For this to happen, they needed to hear messages that helped them make sense of the difficulty and what it implied for people like them. Compared with some non-Western societies, Americans are generally more likely to think of difficulty as signaling impossibility ( O’Donnell et al, 2023 ) and less likely to think of life hardships as chances for self-improvement ( Kiper et al, 2023 ; Yan et al, 2023 ). But independent of their chronic orientation, people adopt the latter perspective when they see the difficulty as identity congruent.…”

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confidence: 99%

Health Communication and Behavioral Change During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Albarracin,

Oyserman,

Schwarz

2024

Perspect Psychol Sci

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The COVID-19 pandemic challenged the public health system to respond to an emerging, difficult-to-understand pathogen through demanding behaviors, including staying at home, masking for long periods, and vaccinating multiple times. We discuss key challenges of the pandemic health communication efforts deployed in the United States from 2020 to 2022 and identify research priorities. One priority is communicating about uncertainty in ways that prepare the public for disagreement and likely changes in recommendations as scientific understanding advances: How can changes in understanding and recommendations foster a sense that “science works as intended” rather than “the experts are clueless” and prevent creating a void to be filled by misinformation? A second priority concerns creating a culturally fluent framework for asking people to engage in difficult and novel actions: How can health messages foster the perception that difficulties of behavior change signal that the change is important rather than that the change “is not for people like me?” A third priority entails a shift from communication strategies that focus on knowledge and attitudes to interventions that focus on norms, policy, communication about policy, and channel factors that impair behavior change: How can we move beyond educating and correcting misinformation to achieving desired actions?

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Difficulty-as-Improvement: The Courage to Keep Going in the Face of Life’s Difficulties

Cited by 4 publications

References 118 publications

Stoicism

Stoicism

Morality beyond the WEIRD: How the nomological network of morality varies across cultures.

Health Communication and Behavioral Change During the COVID-19 Pandemic

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