MyMedR

Sorokowska A, Groyecka A, Karwowski M, Frackowiak T, Lansford JE, Ahmadi K, et al.

Chem. Senses, 2018 08 24;43(7):503-513.

PMID: 29955865 DOI: 10.1093/chemse/bjy038

Olfaction plays an important role in human social communication, including multiple domains in which people often rely on their sense of smell in the social context. The importance of the sense of smell and its role can however vary inter-individually and culturally. Despite the growing body of literature on differences in olfactory performance or hedonic preferences across the globe, the aspects of a given culture as well as culturally universal individual differences affecting odor awareness in human social life remain unknown. Here, we conducted a large-scale analysis of data collected from 10 794 participants from 52 study sites from 44 countries all over the world. The aim of our research was to explore the potential individual and country-level correlates of odor awareness in the social context. The results show that the individual characteristics were more strongly related than country-level factors to self-reported odor awareness in different social contexts. A model including individual-level predictors (gender, age, material situation, education, and preferred social distance) provided a relatively good fit to the data, but adding country-level predictors (Human Development Index, population density, and average temperature) did not improve model parameters. Although there were some cross-cultural differences in social odor awareness, the main differentiating role was played by the individual differences. This suggests that people living in different cultures and different climate conditions may still share some similar patterns of odor awareness if they share other individual-level characteristics.

Corrigendum: The Associations of Dyadic Coping and Relationship Satisfaction Vary between and within Nations: A 35-Nation Study

Hilpert P, Randall AK, Sorokowski P, Atkins DC, Sorokowska A, Ahmadi K, et al.

Front Psychol, 2016;7:1404.

PMID: 27698648

[This corrects the article on p. 1106 in vol. 7, PMID: 27551269.].

Fulltext Corrigendum: Marital Satisfaction, Sex, Age, Marriage Duration, Religion, Number of Children, Economic Status, Education, and Collectivistic Values: Data from 33 Countries

Sorokowski P, Randall AK, Groyecka A, Frackowiak T, Cantarero K, Hilpert P, et al.

Front Psychol, 2017;8:1728.

PMID: 29021774 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01728

[This corrects the article on p. 1199 in vol. 8, PMID: 28785230.].

Fulltext Marital Satisfaction, Sex, Age, Marriage Duration, Religion, Number of Children, Economic Status, Education, and Collectivistic Values: Data from 33 Countries

Sorokowski P, Randall AK, Groyecka A, Frackowiak T, Cantarero K, Hilpert P, et al.

Front Psychol, 2017;8:1199.

PMID: 28785230 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01199

Fulltext The Associations of Dyadic Coping and Relationship Satisfaction Vary between and within Nations: A 35-Nation Study

Hilpert P, Randall AK, Sorokowski P, Atkins DC, Sorokowska A, Ahmadi K, et al.

Front Psychol, 2016;7:1106.

PMID: 27551269 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01106

OBJECTIVE: Theories about how couples help each other to cope with stress, such as the systemic transactional model of dyadic coping, suggest that the cultural context in which couples live influences how their coping behavior affects their relationship satisfaction. In contrast to the theoretical assumptions, a recent meta-analysis provides evidence that neither culture, nor gender, influences the association between dyadic coping and relationship satisfaction, at least based on their samples of couples living in North America and West Europe. Thus, it is an open questions whether the theoretical assumptions of cultural influences are false or whether cultural influences on couple behavior just occur in cultures outside of the Western world.

METHOD: In order to examine the cultural influence, using a sample of married individuals (N = 7973) from 35 nations, we used multilevel modeling to test whether the positive association between dyadic coping and relationship satisfaction varies across nations and whether gender might moderate the association.

RESULTS: RESULTS reveal that the association between dyadic coping and relationship satisfaction varies between nations. In addition, results show that in some nations the association is higher for men and in other nations it is higher for women.

CONCLUSIONS: Cultural and gender differences across the globe influence how couples' coping behavior affects relationship outcomes. This crucial finding indicates that couple relationship education programs and interventions need to be culturally adapted, as skill trainings such as dyadic coping lead to differential effects on relationship satisfaction based on the culture in which couples live.

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