Browsing by Author "Alm, Charlotte"

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Citation - WoS: 2
Citation - Scopus: 3
Conservatism Negatively Predicts Creativity: a Study Across 28 Countries
(Sage Publications Inc, 2024) Groyecka-Bernard, Agata; Sorokowski, Piotr; Karwowski, Maciej; Roberts, S. Craig; Aavik, Toivo; Akello, Grace; Alm, Charlotte; Dural, Seda; Sorokowska, Agnieszka
Previous studies have found a negative relationship between creativity and conservatism. However, as these studies were mostly conducted on samples of homogeneous nationality, the generalizability of the effect across different cultures is unknown. We addressed this gap by conducting a study in 28 countries. Based on the notion that attitudes can be shaped by both environmental and ecological factors, we hypothesized that parasite stress can also affect creativity and thus, its potential effects should be controlled for. The results of multilevel analyses showed that, as expected, conservatism was a significant predictor of lower creativity, adjusting for economic status, age, sex, education level, subjective susceptibility to disease, and country-level parasite stress. In addition, most of the variability in creativity was due to individual rather than country-level variance. Our study provides evidence for a weak but significant negative link between conservatism and creativity at the individual level (beta = -0.08, p < .001) and no such effect when country-level conservatism was considered. We present our hypotheses considering previous findings on the behavioral immune system in humans.
Citation - WoS: 13
Citation - Scopus: 13
Love and Affectionate Touch Toward Romantic Partners All Over the World
(Nature Portfolio, 2023) Sorokowska; Kowal; Saluja; Aavik; Alm,; Anjum,; Asao; Can, Seda; Dural, Seda; Aavik, Toivo; Kowal, Marta; Alm, Charlotte; Sorokowska, Agnieszka; Anjum, Afifa; Croy, Ilona; Saluja, Supreet
Touch is the primary way people communicate intimacy in romantic relationships, and affectionate touch behaviors such as stroking, hugging and kissing are universally observed in partnerships all over the world. Here, we explored the association of love and affectionate touch behaviors in romantic partnerships in two studies comprising 7880 participants. In the first study, we used a cross-cultural survey conducted in 37 countries to test whether love was universally associated with affectionate touch behaviors. In the second study, using a more fine-tuned touch behavior scale, we tested whether the frequency of affectionate touch behaviors was related to love in romantic partnerships. As hypothesized, love was significantly and positively associated with affectionate touch behaviors in both studies and this result was replicated regardless of the inclusion of potentially relevant factors as controls. Altogether, our data strongly suggest that affectionate touch is a relatively stable characteristic of human romantic relationships that is robustly and reliably related to the degree of reported love between partners.