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.

Free riding behaviors, such as tax evasion and exploiting public resources, erode societal trust and cooperation. Using a representative survey conducted in Spain (N = 2,000, Catalonia) with an embedded experiment that randomly exposed participants to different moral framings, this study examines how such framings shape attitudes towards free riding, including tax evasion, claiming undeserved benefits or stealing a ride. Drawing on Moral Foundations Theory, we test three framings – social order, pro-community altruism and personal autonomy – based on alignment with Authority, Loyalty, and Liberty moral intuitions, respectively. Results indicate that framing cooperation as a matter of social order significantly reduces justification of free riding, while appeals to pro-community altruism have a weaker but still negative effect. Contrary to expectations, the personal autonomy framing does not increase tolerance for free riding, suggesting limited persuasive power in this context. Mediation analysis indicates that collective orientation functions as a central pathway linking moral framing and attitudes toward free riding. Moderation analysis reveals that political ideology and, to a lesser extent, institutional trust, condition the effects on collective orientation, with right-leaning and low-trust individuals demonstrating greater differences under social order framing as compared to control condition. These findings underscore the role of moral narratives in shaping attitudes toward free riding, with implications for public messaging and policy interventions.

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.

This paper examines the relation-ship between gender attitudes and subjec-tive well-being, focusing on life satisfaction as its core indicator. It covers both individual and country-level gender attitudes and tests whether a mismatch between them affects in-dividual well-being. The analysis draws on the 7th wave of the World Values Survey, covering 55 countries. Gender attitudes are captured by composite indices at the individual and so-cietal levels. Since our respondents are nest-ed in countries and determinants operate at multiple levels, we use multilevel regression modeling. On average, individuals with more egalitarian gender attitudes report higher life satisfaction. At the country level, more domi-nant egalitarian gender attitudes are also asso-ciated with higher levels of subjective well-be-ing. However, this individual-level association depends on the broader societal context. In so-cieties with high gender inequality the positive link is weaker, and in the most unequal con-texts egalitarian views are associated with low-er life satisfaction. Initially, the moderation ef-fect of public gender attitudes was not found, but additional analysis showed its presence for respondents with moderate and egalitari-an views. Overall, the results underscore the importance of person — culture fit for subjec-tive well-being and show that the well-being ef-fects of egalitarian gender attitudes vary with both the level of gender inequality and the pre-vailing normative climate.

Drug use disorders (DUDs) are emerging global public health challenges. Here we investigated the global and regional estimates of the prevalence and burden of DUDs, including amphetamine, cannabis, cocaine and opioid use disorders, from 1990 to 2023 for 204 countries and territories by using the Global Burden of Disease Study 2023. Overall, trends in global age-standardized disability-adjusted life-years of DUDs increased from 169.3 (95% uncertainty interval (95% UI), 134.4–203.9) per 100,000 people in 1990 to 212.0 (95% UI, 179.2–245.6) in 2023. In 2023, both prevalence and burden of DUDs were higher in high-income countries, particularly in the USA. The most prevalent DUDs in 2023 were cannabis use disorder (age-standardized prevalence, 270.8 (95% UI, 201.7–350.0) per 100,000 people) and opioid use disorder (205.9 (95% UI, 178.7–235.0)). Particularly, opioid use disorder showed a nearly twofold increase in prevalence and burden between 1990 and 2023. In 2023, compared with countries where cannabis use was illegal, countries permitting both recreational and medical cannabis use had higher prevalence rates for all types of DUDs. Proactive and effective policies are essential to mitigate the increasing global burden of DUDs.

This article analyzes the relationship between environmental protests and allocation of Presidential grants for ecological initiatives in 2017–24 in Russia. While existing studies generally con sider environmental conflicts on the part of eco-activism, the focus of the current article is on government strategies. This study merges the concepts of “grassroots cooptation” and regional environmental politics to explain the logic of the government’s actions toward eco-activists. This work tests the proposition that authorities seek to use not only the “stick,” forceful strategies for combating protests, but also the “carrot,” or strategies for buying the loyalty of eco-activists. In this model, the distribution of grants to support environ mental initiatives is considered a reaction to the frequency of eco-protests. Several sources of empirical data are employed here. First, there is data on the distribution of Presidential grants to eco-NGOs. Second, there is a large-scale database on eco-protests. Third, field research data from five Russian regions complements the main results. Using zero-inflated log-normal and ordered beta models with regional and year random effects, the article finds that the distribution of Presidential grants follows surges in the intensity of eco-pro tests. Fieldwork from five Russian regions helps to demonstrate that grant support for eco-initiatives is of a “gross” nature and aims to fragment the environmental movement by buying the loyalty of eco-activists, isolating them from eco-protesters, and promoting a loyalist environmental agenda. These findings con tribute to a better understanding of the mechanisms of grassroots cooptation in non-democratic regimes.