Gratitude, defined as a positive emotional response to the recognition of benevolence or favorable life circumstances, is widely acknowledged as a protective factor for psychological well-being and life satisfaction. However, the generalizability of these benefits across cultural contexts and socioeconomic strata remains largely underexplored. A recent study conducted with Indian students, thus within a collectivistic culture, found gratitude to be a significant predictor of well-being and life satisfaction, even after controlling for age, gender, and socioeconomic status. The present close replication study was conducted with a German sample (n = 401), thereby representing an individualistic context, where it was initially unclear whether gratitude effects would also emerge independently of individuals’ socioeconomic status, which plays a more central role in an individualistic (vs. collectivistic) context. German participants completed validated self-report measures assessing gratitude, psychological well-being, life satisfaction, and socioeconomic status. In line with the preregistered hypotheses, the findings of the original study were successfully replicated, suggesting that gratitude functions as a robust psychological resource, even in societies where socioeconomic status is tightly linked to identity and well-being.
Coping is crucial for managing stress and mental health outcomes; however, self-report assessments may be vulnerable to response biases. Although biases such as social desirability have been examined, little is known about the impact of supernormality, an extreme form of positive response bias, on coping assessments. In the present study, 862 participants (aged 18–71 years) completed an online survey including the Brief-COPE and measures of both positive and negative response bias. Based on their scores on the Supernormality Scale-Revised (SS-R), participants were categorized into a “supernormal group” (n = 222; 25.8 %) or a “credible group” (n = 640; 74.2 %). Group differences across coping-related outcomes were examined. Approximately 25.8 % of respondents exhibited supernormality. Compared to credible respondents, supernormal respondents reported significantly higher use of problem-focused coping and significantly lower use of emotion-focused and avoidant coping. Differences were particularly evident for specific coping strategies such as humor, venting, behavioral disengagement, denial, substance use, self-blame, and self-distraction. Taken together, these findings highlight that supernormality is prevalent in coping self-reports and systematically influences the pattern of self-reported coping strategies. These results underscore the need for alternative methodologies to enhance the validity of coping assessments in both research and clinical practice.
What makes the encounter with artworks so unique? Many report a certain aura of art galleries where art is typically perceived, appreciated and lauded. We enter a certain mode of art experiencing, which can render even the experience of the most banal and commonplace objects meaningful. Aesthetics philosophers have discussed this phenomenon for over 300 years, mainly regarding the experience of beauty. However, it was seldom examined empirically, especially not through exploring raw and lived interactions with art. To address this gap, we designed two separate VR environments (an art gallery and a furniture store) and exhibited the same nine artworks in each. Participants (n = 32) were randomly allocated to one of the two environments, where they were given complete freedom to interact with the artworks. Participants completed two structured interviews: immediately after and two weeks after the VR visit, and the data were analysed using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Overall, five superordinate themes were identified: 1) Visual Exploration, 2) Cognitive Processing, 3) Feelings and Emotions, 4) Personal Reference, and 5) Evaluation. In almost all themes, clear differences between the groups were found: gallery participants drew and linked more associations and interpretations, formed deeper sets of meanings, and reported having more peak emotional experiences and elaborate personal connections. Art processing created greater interconnections between the visual, cognitive, and affective aspects of experience, culminating in more fulfilling experiences. We conclude that there are indications that an art-specific mode of experiencing indeed exists and provide a preliminary sketch of its nature.
Human survival depends on their ability to react fast to challenges from the environment. To support this, stimuli preceding target stimuli can serve as warnings, or alerts, and the brain uses them to elicit phasic alertness, a temporary state of readiness for perception and action. Traditionally, it is assumed that phasic alertness is bottom-up stimulus-driven and thus independent of top-down processing, for instance of the top-down expectations for external stimuli. Here, we falsify this assumption. In two experiments, participants performed a choice task whose target stimuli were preceded by an auditory alert or no alert. In separate sessions, alerts were followed by a target on 90 % or 10 % of the trials, thus predicting whether a target or no target was about to appear. Compared with the no alert condition, alerting supported action and made choice reactions faster (the classic phasic alerting effect), but this was only the case if the alert predicted the target. This reveals that the behavioral benefits of phasic alertness are not entirely stimulus-driven, but are to a part based on the expectation of target stimuli due to alerts. Therefore, even though phasic alertness seems to be elicited in a bottom-up fashion, it can only support behavior if it fits in with the running top-down processing.
Recently, a variety of global AI attitude measures have been published providing insights into global positive and/or negative AI attitudes. The investigation of individual differences in AI attitudes represents a timely research endeavor, because AI attitudes might influence how much societies embrace the upcoming AI technology with its many facets. The present study is to our knowledge the first one showing how the following set of global AI attitude measures (six measures) are correlated with each other. In detail the GAAIS, the ATAI, the ATTARI-12, a (two) single item framework, the AIPA and the AIAS were administered and validated against varying levels of experience with AI and trust in ChatGPT. In N = 225 participants from India we observed that existing global AI attitude measures are associated with each other to different extent, and they also correlate meaningfully with the variables of experience with AI and trusting ChatGPT. Further, in the supplement associations with the Big Five of Personality are reported. The results of this study might be helpful to compare and translate findings from global AI attitude papers relying on different measures in the field. This is necessary, because the different measures administered might provide insights into global AI attitudes only to different degrees (given different content of items, item numbers and different psychometrics). This said, given the small sample size, sampling and some psychometric issues the present findings should be seen as very preliminary.
