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.

When and how does an environmental protest cycle affect election outcomes under electoral authoritarianism? Drawing on the case of the Bashkortostan republic, a Russian ethnic region, I leverage the spatial proximity to the protest site to identify its effects on parliamentary elections. The environmental protest cycle peaked in Bashkortostan around the regional government’s decisions to extract minerals from shikhans – mountains composed of limestone. Employing a difference-in-differences (DiD) design, I show that precincts exposed to the environmental protest cycle experienced a significant drop in United Russia vote share, while voting for systemic opposition increased in the affected precincts. To explain the dynamics, I propose treating non-political protests, such as environmental ones, as an information revelation mechanism. The mechanism identified through a causal mediation analysis indicates that the environmental protest cycle conveys information on regional malperformance to voters. Their updated preferences, in turn, heavily undermine the electoral mobilizing capacity of local elites.

Even in the most egalitarian societies, hierarchies of power and status shape social life. However, power and received status are not synonymous—individuals in positions of power may or may not be accorded the respect corresponding to their role. Using a cooperatively collected dataset from 18,096 participants across 70 cultures, we investigate, through a survey-based correlational design, when perceived position-based power (operationalized as influence and control) of various powerholders is associated with their elevated social status (operationalized as perceived respect and instrumental social value). We document that the positive link between power and status characterizes most cultural regions, except for WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) and Post-Soviet regions. The strength of this association depends on individual and cultural factors. First, the perceived other-orientation of powerholders amplifies the positive link between perceived power and status. The perceived self-orientation of powerholders weakens this relationship. Second, among cultures characterized by low Self-Expression versus Harmony (e.g., South Korea, Taiwan), high Embeddedness (e.g., Senegal), and high Cultural Tightness (e.g., Malaysia), the association between power and status tends to be particularly strong. The results underline  the importance of both individual perceptions and societal values in how position-based power relates to social status.

Previous research has often demonstrated that liberal values and democratic regimes are associated with higher levels of subjective well-being (SWB). However, consistent results are only found at the country level, while at the individual level the relationship between values, democracy, and SWB is not as clear. This article analyzes recent data from 86 countries and shows that individual SWB depends on whether one’s values match the country’s predominant values and political system. In authoritarian countries, those with more conservative values tend to exhibit higher levels of SWB, reaching a level of happiness comparable to that of an average person in a typical democracy. Conversely, their liberal-minded compatriots often report significantly lower levels of SWB. In democracies, people with more liberal values tend to have higher SWB than do conservatives, although this difference is not as robust as in autocracies. This study emphasizes the importance of political context in the relationship between liberal values and SWB.

Wellbeing levels have been a global concern during the COVID-19 pandemic, but there is a lack of attention to invariance questions that allow a robust examination of wellbeing dynamics across cultures. Questions of temporal stability that are crucial for examining the impact of the pandemic on wellbeing have received even less attention. Some studies suggested that measures may not be stable after the onset of the pandemic. We examine invariance parameters, the factorial structure and variability of wellbeing variables (life satisfaction, pandemic worries, anxiety and depression screenings) across five different cultural contexts from 2020 to 2022 (N = 4387, total observations = 13,161). A three-factor model separating life satisfaction, worry and distress performed best in terms of model fit and parsimony. We observed scalar invariance across times and identified little variability of wellbeing measures during the pandemic, suggesting that wellbeing levels remained stable during the pandemic in each of the countries sampled. In contrast, we only identified metric invariance across countries at each time point, and found a weakening of correlations between life satisfaction and a depressive/anxious symptoms scale in lower income countries. We discuss implications of our findings for discussions of wellbeing dynamics.

This article aims to identify factors associated with distribution of Presidential grants for environmental initiatives in 2017-23. The main  assumption is to check if there is a presence of political logic in supporting regional eco-initiatives. While previous studies considered environmental conflicts, as a rule, on the part of eco-activists, in this paper we focus to a greater extent on studying the strategy of the authorities. For this purpose, we propose using the concept of regional environmental politics. Assuming that the key point for the authorities is an attempt to reduce eco-protest activity, we proceed from the fact that the authorities seek to use not only the "stick", meaning forceful strategies for combating protests, but also the "carrot", or strategies for co-opting eco-activists. In this model, the distribution of grants to support environmental initiatives is considered as a reaction to the nature of environmental problems and conflicts. We test three main hypotheses about the logic of project support: a reaction to the deterioration of the environmental situation in the region, a reaction to the frequency of eco-protests, and a reaction to inequality, which contributes to protest sentiments in general. We rely on several sources of empirical data. First, we use data on the distribution of Presidential grants to eco-NGOs. Second, we use a large-scale database on eco-protests. Third, we use data from the National Ecological Rating of Russian regions. Fixed-effects models show that the distribution of presidential grants follows both eco-protests and the deterioration of the environmental situation in the regions. In addition, the distribution of grants is affected by low inequality, which in Russia is typically characteristic of poor regions. We also illustrate our arguments on the example of the Sverdlovsk region, which indicates a “gross” rather than individually based nature of support for environmental initiatives.

During COVID-19 pandemic, Russian frontline nurses had access to regular material, symbolic and organizational support, the lack of which became noticeable after the closure of COVID-19 hospitals. The return of frontline nurses to their usual working conditions, characterized by low wages, irregular work and rest hours, increased workload, weak organizational and public support, was not covered by the attention of Russian researchers. The article focuses on the pandemic and post–pandemic contexts of the emotional labor of frontline nurses from Volgograd. Our task is to find out how the emotional labor of frontline nurses was realized and how the experience gained determines their (non)sensitivity to today's working conditions. Turning to the concept of emotional labor allows us to focus on the intuitively built practices of feeling and expressing feelings by frontline nurses and on ways to avoid alienation from feelings in order to continue working in less attractive working conditions after COVID-19. The article is based on the materials of 27 interviews with frontline nurses from Volgograd hospitals. As a result, it is shown that the emotional labor of Volgograd frontline nurses, despite the uncertainty, general anxiety and chaotic nature of what was happening during the pandemic, was carried out in more favorable conditions than after it. For this reason, the experience of working in the frontline is remembered by some nurses with a sense of gratitude and regret that similar support for health workers is not expected in the near future. Rationalization of emotions helped nurses to distance themselves from compassion, pity and the experience of deaths in the workplace during the pandemic, and after it from expressing disagreement with working conditions.

The article is devoted to the study of the emotional labor of nurses involved in the pandemic crisis on the front line of the fight against COVID-19 and caring for patients not on the front line of the fight against COVID-19. The experience of nursing labor at the forefront of the fight against COVID-19 is characterized by extraordinary, as is the COVID-19 pandemic itself, considered as a historical event that complicated the work of representatives of the health system, regardless of their involvement in the fight against COVID-19. We are faced with the task of finding and describing similarities and differences in the experience of managing emotions, in practices and opportunities for support by nurses safe working conditions in different zones of the hospital space. The choice in favor of analyzing foreign studies was made due to the insufficient representation in Russian-language scientific publications of the labor of non-frontline nurses. Due to the lack of Russian-language research on a given topic, it is difficult to assume what nurses, not only from covid, but also from non-covid departments with different resources to maintain safe working conditions, encountered in their work. It will be even more difficult to understand the reasons for the (non)sensitivity of nurses to various forms of inequality in the workplace after the pandemic, after their reunification into the teams of non-covid departments. In this regard, we consider it advisable to review the empirical experience of English-speaking authors of scientific publications that problematize (not always using sociological approaches) the labor of frontline and non-frontline nurses, demonstrating similar risks arising in their emotional labor and different ways to minimize them. The application of the concept of emotional labor helps us in interpreting the results of interdisciplinary research abroad on the emotional experiences at the nurses of the hospital space. Generalization of foreign experience makes it possible to build a logic for further analysis of similar working conditions for nurses from Russia.