How U.S. 'cultural defaults' challenge American public health and what public health officers can do about it.

As practitioners and scientists reflect on what can be learned from COVID, we argue that cultural defaults-commonsense, rational, and taken-for-granted ways of thinking, feeling, and acting -played an important role in how countries responded to the pandemic, and help explain why the United States suffered 4-6 times more deaths per 100,000 people compared to the East Asian countries of Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. Drawing on a recent review and theoretical integration, we describe six pairs of contrasting cultural defaults that were common in how the U.S.

Cultural Defaults in the Time of COVID: Lessons for the Future.

Five years after the beginning of the COVID pandemic, one thing is clear: The East Asian countries of Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea outperformed the United States in responding to and controlling the outbreak of the deadly virus. Although multiple factors likely contributed to this disparity, we propose that the culturally linked psychological defaults ("cultural defaults") that pervade these contexts also played a role. Cultural defaults are commonsense, rational, taken-for-granted ways of thinking, feeling, and acting.

Who feels they contribute to U.S. society? Helping behaviors and social class disparities in perceived contributions.

Americans in lower (vs. higher) social class contexts are less likely to believe they contribute to society. Helping others by giving one's time is an important way of contributing to others that also varies with social class.

People who share encounters with racism are silenced online by humans and machines, but a guideline-reframing intervention holds promise.

Are members of marginalized communities silenced on social media when they share personal experiences of racism? Here, we investigate the role of algorithms, humans, and platform guidelines in suppressing disclosures of racial discrimination. In a field study of actual posts from a neighborhood-based social media platform, we find that when users talk about their experiences as targets of racism, their posts are disproportionately flagged for removal as toxic by five widely used moderation algorithms from major online platforms, including the most recent large language models. We show that human users disproportionately flag these disclosures for removal as well.

What causes social class disparities in education? The role of the mismatches between academic contexts and working-class socialization contexts and how the effects of these mismatches are explained.

Within psychology, the underachievement of students from working-class backgrounds has often been explained as a product of individual characteristics such as a lack of intelligence or motivation. Here, we propose an integrated model illustrating how contribute to social class disparities in education over and beyond individual characteristics. According to this new social class disparities in education are due to several mismatches between the experiences that students from working-class backgrounds bring with them to the classroom and those valued in academic contexts-specifically, mismatches between (a) academic contexts' culture of independence and the working-class orientation to interdependence, (b) academic contexts' culture of competition and the working-class orientation toward cooperation, (c) the knowledge valued in academic contexts and the knowledge developed through working-class socialization, and (d) the social identities valued in academic contexts and the negatively stereotyped social identities of students from working-class backgrounds.

A leadership-level culture cycle intervention changes teachers' culturally inclusive beliefs and practices.

Despite an abundance of support for culturally inclusive learning environments, there is little consensus regarding how to change educational contexts to effectively and sustainably foster cultural inclusion. To address this gap, we report findings from a research-practice partnership that leveraged the Culture Cycle Framework (CCF) to expand educators' praxis to include both independent and interdependent models of self. Most U.

We built this culture (so we can change it): Seven principles for intentional culture change.

Calls for culture change abound. Headlines regularly feature calls to change the "broken" or "toxic" cultures of institutions and organizations, and people debate which norms and practices across society are now defunct. As people blame current societal problems on culture, the proposed fix is "culture change.

Listening to bridge societal divides.

The U.S. is plagued by a variety of societal divides across political orientation, race, and gender, among others.

Unequal opportunities from the start: Socioeconomic disparities in classroom participation in preschool.

Why do socioeconomic disparities in achievement emerge so early in life? Previous answers to this question have generally focused on the perceived deficits of parents from disadvantaged backgrounds (e.g., insufficient childrearing knowledge).

Personal harm from the Covid-19 pandemic predicts advocacy for equality.

The Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare the vast amount of economic inequality in the U.S. Yet, has it influenced Americans' attitudes and behaviors toward equality? With a three-wave longitudinal survey, the current research provides evidence that experiencing personal harm (e.

Psychosocial context and food healthiness in top-grossing American films.

Objective: Healthy eating is shaped by the context. To understand how healthy eating is modeled in popular media, this systematic analysis quantified which contextual factors, character behaviors, and character demographics were associated with food healthiness in popular movies.

Method: Two researchers content-coded the contextual factors, character behaviors, and character demographics depicted across 9,093 foods in 244 top-grossing Hollywood movies released from 1994-2018.

Negative consequences of self-presentation on disclosure of health information: A catch-22 for Black patients?

Rationale: Most patients assume that it is adaptive to present oneself in a positive light when interacting with medical professionals. Here in two studies focused on Black patients we ask: might this desire to present oneself well inhibit the disclosure of health-relevant information when patients are concerned about negative and stereotypic evaluations by their health care providers?

Objective: Specifically, we explore three important questions: First, whether self-presentational efforts (e.g.

White patients' physical responses to healthcare treatments are influenced by provider race and gender.

The healthcare workforce in the United States is becoming increasingly diverse, gradually shifting society away from the historical overrepresentation of White men among physicians. However, given the long-standing underrepresentation of people of color and women in the medical field, patients may still associate the concept of doctors with White men and may be physiologically less responsive to treatment administered by providers from other backgrounds. To investigate this, we varied the race and gender of the provider from which White patients received identical treatment for allergic reactions and measured patients' improvement in response to this treatment, thus isolating how a provider's demographic characteristics shape physical responses to healthcare.

Will This Help Be Helpful? Giving Aid to Strangers in the United States and Japan.

Japanese rank among the least likely to intervene to help a stranger in a non-emergency situation while Americans rank among the most likely. Across four studies, we demonstrate that Japanese are less likely to offer help to strangers because their decisions rely more heavily on the assessment of the needs of others. Accordingly, when there is uncertainty about the need for help, Japanese are less likely to intervene than Americans because without an understanding of the needs of recipient, the impact of intervention may also be harmful.

Language in popular American culture constructs the meaning of healthy and unhealthy eating: Narratives of craveability, excitement, and social connection in movies, television, social media, recipes, and food reviews.

Many people want to eat healthier but struggle to do so, in part due to a dominant perception that healthy foods are at odds with hedonic goals. Is the perception that healthy foods are less appealing than unhealthy foods represented in language across popular entertainment media and social media? Six studies analyzed dialogue about food in six cultural products - creations of a culture that reflect its perspectives - including movies, television, social media posts, food recipes, and food reviews. In Study 1 (N = 617 movies) and Study 2 (N = 27 television shows), healthy foods were described with fewer appealing descriptions (e.

Nutritional Analysis of Foods and Beverages Posted in Social Media Accounts of Highly Followed Celebrities.

Importance: Celebrity social media posts engage millions of young followers daily, but the nutritional quality of foods and beverages in such posts, sponsored and unsponsored, is unknown.

Objective: To quantify the nutritional quality of foods and beverages depicted in social media accounts of highly followed celebrities and assess whether nutritional quality is associated with post sponsorship, celebrity profession or gender, and followers' likes and comments.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This cross-sectional study analyzed the content of food- and beverage-containing posts from Instagram (a photo- and video-sharing social media platform) accounts of 181 highly followed athletes, actors, actresses, television personalities, and music artists.

Can Exercising and Eating Healthy Be Fun and Indulgent Instead of Boring and Depriving? Targeting Mindsets About the Process of Engaging in Healthy Behaviors.

This paper investigates mindsets about the process of health behaviors-the extent to which people associate physical activity and healthy eating with appealing (pleasurable, fun, indulgent) versus unappealing (unpleasant, boring, depriving) qualities-to promote greater engagement. Study 1 ( = 536) examined how mindsets about physical activity and healthy eating relate to current and future health behavior. Study 2 ( = 149) intervened in actual fitness classes to compare the effects of brief appeal-focused and health-focused interventions on mindsets about physical activity and class engagement.

The salience of choice fuels independence: Implications for self-perception, cognition, and behavior.

More than ever before, people across the world are exposed to ideas of choice and have opportunities to make choices. What are the consequences of this rapidly expanding exposure to the ideas and practice of choice? The current research investigated an unexamined and potentially powerful consequence of this salience of choice: an awareness and experience of independence. Four studies ( = 1,288) across three cultural contexts known to differ in both the salience of choice and the cultural emphasis on independence (the United States, Singapore, and India) provided converging evidence of a link between the salience of choice and independence.

Gender Inequality and Well-Being: Concepts and Their Measures Are Cultural Products-A Reflection on Li et al. (2021).

This Further Reflections piece was invited by the Editors of the journal to provide additional consideration of some of the significant issues under study in "Culture Moderates the Relation Between Gender Inequality and Well-Being" (Li et al., 2021) available online at https://doi.org/10.

Passion matters but not equally everywhere: Predicting achievement from interest, enjoyment, and efficacy in 59 societies.

How to identify the students and employees most likely to achieve is a challenge in every field. American academic and lay theories alike highlight the importance of passion for strong achievement. Based on a Western independent model of motivation, passionate individuals-those who have a strong interest, demonstrate deep enjoyment, and express confidence in what they are doing-are considered future achievers.

Nutritional Analysis of Foods and Beverages Depicted in Top-Grossing US Movies, 1994-2018.

Importance: Many countries now restrict advertisements for unhealthy foods. However, movies depict foods and beverages with nutritional quality that is unknown, unregulated, and underappreciated as a source of dietary influence.

Objective: To compare nutritional content depicted in top-grossing US movies with established nutrition rating systems, dietary recommendations, and US individuals' actual consumption.

Masculine defaults: Identifying and mitigating hidden cultural biases.

Understanding and remedying women's underrepresentation in majority-male fields and occupations require the recognition of a lesser-known form of cultural bias called masculine defaults. Masculine defaults exist when aspects of a culture value, reward, or regard as standard, normal, neutral, or necessary characteristics or behaviors associated with the male gender role. Although feminist theorists have previously described and analyzed masculine defaults (e.

Toward a science of delivering aid with dignity: Experimental evidence and local forecasts from Kenya.

How can governments and nonprofits design aid programs that afford dignity and facilitate beneficial outcomes for recipients? We conceptualize dignity as a state that manifests when the stigma associated with receiving aid is countered and recipients are empowered, both in culturally resonant ways. Yet materials from the largest cash transfer programs in Africa predominantly characterize recipients as needy and vulnerable. Three studies examined the causal effects of alternative aid narratives on cash transfer recipients and donors.