The most recent Russian emigration wave of 2022–2023 has some peculiar features. Unlike their predecessors, the migrants of that wave have been leaving the country in conditions of high economic instability, strong tensions in the international political arena, closed airspace for Russia’s airlines, and suspended facilitation of obtaining the Schengen visa. The research goal of the current paper is to describe the adaptation practices of Russian migrants in 2022–2023 in the context of international tension. The empirical basis of the research consists of sixteen interviews with migrants in Germany and Georgia who left Russia in 2022 and 2023. The analysis shows that most common and successful adaptation practices include membership in a community and participation in activities that the migrants find interesting and valuable. Peculiarities of adaptation process in each country have been defined. The forced nature of emigration leads to the choice of a country with easier entry conditions, however, further adaptation in such cases is less successful. When moving to a country requiring entry preparation, informants adapt better as they have a clearer vision of their future in the new location. Thus, unlike migrants in Germany, informants from Georgia do not plan to remain in the country, which results in their isolation within the Russian-speaking community. They have a vague image of their future, which decreases the overall level of their adaptive capacity.

This article explores the impact of employment structure on emancipative values across countries with varying levels of development and cultural sensitivity, particularly focusing on Asian societies. Building upon modernization theory, which traditionally emphasizes economic growth as the primary driver of value change, we introduce and test an alternative hypothesis – that the sectoral composition of employment (agricultural, industrial, and post-industrial) significantly mediates shifts from materialistic to emancipative values. Using data from the World Values Survey spanning 1981–2022, we apply panel regression models and regression discontinuity designs to investigate these dynamics. Our results show a nuanced relationship: the transition from agricultural to service-oriented employment does indeed promote emancipative values, but only once a certain threshold of economic development is reached. In poorer economies, the mere expansion of the service sector, often involving low-skilled jobs, does not trigger significant value liberalization. In wealthier contexts, growth in service employment enhances autonomy, tolerance, and inclusiveness. Post-industrial employment has a significant impact at both the individual and country levels, but there is no joint effect.

In this paper, we use data from a longitudinal online study to examine how characteristics of prosocial behaviors influence the level of positive affect they produce. Although much work has found that prosocial behaviors benefit those who enact them, the question remains if and how these effects vary based on characteristics of those acts. Using models that adjust for co-occurrence among act characteristics, we find that positive affect produced by prosocial acts is greater for those acts that: involve giving money or items, are seen as unusually kind, elicit positive feedback, and are varied over time. However, we find that the actor’s relationship to the beneficiary, reaping benefits from prosocial acts, and the number of successive acts made no difference in terms of resultant positive affect. We conclude with a discussion of potential mechanisms explaining these differing effects and explore practical implications for kindness interventions.

This study investigates the factors contributing to cross-cultural variation in the disapproval of free-riding behaviors such as tax evasion, fare dodging, and benefits fraud. While some cross-cultural researchers contend that attitudes toward these behaviors exhibit minimal variance due to a universal value of fairness, others adopting an institutional perspective argue that significant differences can be explained by factors like government effectiveness and the rule of law. We aim to replicate the pivotal role of institutional quality and propose that its impact is further moderated by cultural dimensions of individualism-collectivism and tightness-looseness. Utilizing a diverse dataset from the World Values Survey and European Values Study, encompassing 92 countries and over 158,000 individuals, we employ multilevel modeling to explore global and contextual patterns. Our findings reveal that while institutional quality reduces tolerance for free riding globally, its effect is not uniform and varies significantly based on cultural context. Specifically, whereas attitudes to free riding in individualistic and loose cultures depend heavily on just and effective governance, in collectivist and tight societies this reliance diminishes as group-centric values and low tolerance toward deviance help sustain compliant attitudes even when institutional quality is low.

This article investigates cognitive load in fully labeled and end-labeled Likert-type scales. We compared cognitive load between two conditions using different methods such as pupillometry, completion times, and subjective evaluation of mental effort. We conducted a laboratory experiment (N = 170) using eye-tracking technology to measure pupil dilation while respondents completed a web survey. The mean pupil diameter was larger in the fully labeled than in the end-labeled condition. Because the fully labeled scales provide more information and require respondents to read labels for all scale values, they increase neurophysiological load compared to the end-labeled scales. Though the effect was small, it was consistent. We found no difference in completion time and subjective rating of mental effort between the conditions. Despite higher cognitive load in the fully labeled condition, data quality benefits from the provision of clear verbal labels in the scale.

We examine whether regional sectoral employment structure helps explain cross-regional variation in individualism–collectivism (IC) beyond income. Using a representative CATI survey of more than 18,000 respondents from 60 Russian regions (2019–2020) linked to employment statistics, we estimate OLS models of regional IC with log GRP per capita and controls (inequality, education, life expectancy, latitude, political openness). We find that agricultural employment shares are negatively associated with IC, whereas service/post-industrial shares are positively associated, net of income; industry shows mixed patterns. Conceptually, we distinguish two possible channels from economic structure to values—(i) a material-security channel (income effects) and (ii) an organizational-logic channel (workplace micro-contexts of autonomy, interdependence, and monitoring). Empirically, we focus on the second pathway and treat income as a covariate rather than a mediator. The findings suggest that how work is organized may matter for regional value profiles in addition to prosperity. Results are robust to alternative IC measure.

Elaborating on Welzel et al.'s "Cool Water Theory," our study zooms into the more limited (albeit still varied) framework conditions of Russia's huge territory. Within Russia's confines, we examine how the combination of moderately cool seasons with steady rain (i.e., Cool Water) affects sub-national areas' contemporary societal progress in two modernization indicators: material prosperity in the economic domain and emancipative values in the psychological domain. The analysis hinges on climate data, historical census materials and contemporary surveys across Russia's roughly fifty provinces. We find strong evidence that Russian regions with a more pronounced Cool Water Condition (CWC) relied early on labor-extensive forms of agriculture, which lowered reproductive pressures on women, visible in lower fertility rates. Lower historic fertilities, then, strengthened human capital formation, which eventually helped to create pathways towards higher material prosperity and stronger emancipative values. The Russian case, thus, confirms-within the confines of a more limited cultural universe-CWCinitiated modernization dynamics demonstrated before for global cross-cultural contexts. 

This paper attempts to model the evolutionary theory of modernization and democratization. The model reflects the key provisions of R. Inglehart and C. Welzel's theory and provides a microfoundation for the adaptation of subjective values to the objective importances of the survival factors and the structure of the labour markets from the perspective of evolutionary theory and rational-emotional choice. We consider an optimization problem of a representative agent allocating their time between production of private goods (participation in the economy), distribution of public goods (participation in politics), and leisure. Thus, the long-term dynamics of the allocation of society's time resources can be explained by technological progress (reduction in the labour intensity of production), social progress (increasing effectiveness of political institutions), and structural changes in the labour markets (altering importances of work, politics, and leisure). In addition, the model developed in the paper reflects the phenomenon of hedonic adaptation and the resulting Easterlin paradox, explains the modern trend towards a higher share of the government in the economy, and illustrates the democratic congruence theory by C. Welzel. The key implications of the model are tested against data from the WVS/EVS and other sources.

The link between economic inequality and individual well-being has been gaining increasing research attention. This study examines this relationship using data from 71 countries with diverse national incomes, addressing three key research gaps: (1) incorporating measures of both perceived and objective economic inequality, (2) extending analysis to multiple components of well-being beyond happiness, including meaning in life, harmony, and spirituality, and (3) assessing levels of both current and ideal well-being. Findings reveal that perceived economic inequality predicts personal well-being more strongly than objective inequality. In addition, perceived inequality is associated with a wider gap between current and ideal levels of happiness, meaning, harmony, and spirituality, although national income moderates the effects of meaning, harmony, and spirituality. We discuss the implications of these results, highlighting the need for more culturally sensitive studies on perceived economic inequality and well-being.