TY - JOUR
T1 - I feel loved when other people feel loved
T2 - Cultural congruence in beliefs on love is related to well-being
AU - Heshmati, Saeideh
AU - Oravecz, Zita
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the John Templeton Foundation under grant number 48192 ( http://templeton.org/ ).
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2021.
PY - 2022/2
Y1 - 2022/2
N2 - Cultural conformity in psychological constructs has been shown to play a critical role in people’s health and well-being. The more people’s individual beliefs about a construct aligns with the cultural norms, their cultural identity is more cultivated, leading to higher levels of well-being. Considering feeling loved in everyday contexts as a social construct that people indicate shared beliefs and cultural consensus for, in the current study, we explored congruency in cultural beliefs on love and its association with well-being in the United States. 495 participants in the United States evaluated everyday life scenarios in terms of whether they elicit loving feelings or not. We examined the correspondence between people’s beliefs about what makes themselves (i.e., self) feel loved compared to what they think makes others feel loved and the cultural consensus on indicators of love. We then explored how individual differences in these correspondence measures are associated with people’s well-being. We reported evidence for the lack as well as for the existence of these associations using Bayes Factors in the Bayesian statistical framework. Results indicated that both self-other and self-consensus agreements are meaningfully associated with individuals’ well-being. Furthermore, when examining disagreements in self vs. other ratings of love, we found that one type of disagreement (believing other people feel loved in scenarios that I don’t), is associated with lower levels of well-being. This meaningful relationship to well-being was not visible in the case where a person would report feeling loved in a scenario while believing that others would not. Implications for well-being interventions are further discussed.
AB - Cultural conformity in psychological constructs has been shown to play a critical role in people’s health and well-being. The more people’s individual beliefs about a construct aligns with the cultural norms, their cultural identity is more cultivated, leading to higher levels of well-being. Considering feeling loved in everyday contexts as a social construct that people indicate shared beliefs and cultural consensus for, in the current study, we explored congruency in cultural beliefs on love and its association with well-being in the United States. 495 participants in the United States evaluated everyday life scenarios in terms of whether they elicit loving feelings or not. We examined the correspondence between people’s beliefs about what makes themselves (i.e., self) feel loved compared to what they think makes others feel loved and the cultural consensus on indicators of love. We then explored how individual differences in these correspondence measures are associated with people’s well-being. We reported evidence for the lack as well as for the existence of these associations using Bayes Factors in the Bayesian statistical framework. Results indicated that both self-other and self-consensus agreements are meaningfully associated with individuals’ well-being. Furthermore, when examining disagreements in self vs. other ratings of love, we found that one type of disagreement (believing other people feel loved in scenarios that I don’t), is associated with lower levels of well-being. This meaningful relationship to well-being was not visible in the case where a person would report feeling loved in a scenario while believing that others would not. Implications for well-being interventions are further discussed.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85112293205&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85112293205&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/02654075211036510
DO - 10.1177/02654075211036510
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85112293205
VL - 39
SP - 347
EP - 371
JO - Journal of Social and Personal Relationships
JF - Journal of Social and Personal Relationships
SN - 0265-4075
IS - 2
ER -