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AbstractIndividuals increase their support for social systems in response to the threat, panic, and uncertainty that characterized the COVID‐19 pandemic. This could be because a powerful social system can compensate for a lack of control at the individual level. However, the levels of public support for national versus local systems could be different in China. Two studies investigate whether people support the national more strongly than the local system during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Study 1 analyzed data of 3593 participants from China; the results showed that participants reported higher levels of support for the national system than the local. In Study 2, we further tested a possible moderator for it. With a sample of 275 participants, we found that the difference between public support for national and local systems in China was based on the perceived higher response efficacy with the national government. Implications for research on system justification and governmental pandemic responses were discussed.

Masspersonal information seeking repertoires are a person-centered method of gaining insight into the relationship between Internet use, subjective well-being, and political participation. Through latent profile analysis, three person types were identified in two waves of stratified samples in 18 countries ( N = 8352). In accord with the "augmentation hypothesis," high levels of interpersonal contact and traditional mass media usage covaried with high Internet use for the highly engaged type, that had highest political participation and life satisfaction, political knowledge, low depressive symptoms and also high anxiety. The other two types fit the "displacement hypothesis," where Internet-based media displaces traditional media and face-to-face communication. Compared with the digitally immersed, the traditional repertoire was more knowledgeable and politically engaged, and had better well-being. Latent transition analysis showed these repertoires were stable over 6 months. Identifying different types of people with different information seeking styles clarifies mixed results on effects of online mass media use.

Psychology has begun contributing to social theory by providing empirical measures of actually existing cosmopolitanism that complements more purely theoretical conceptions of the construct common in philosophy and sociology. Drawing from two waves of research on representative adult samples from 19 countries (N = 8740), metric invariance was found for the three factors of cosmopolitan orientation (COS): cultural openness (CO), global prosociality (GP), and respect for cultural diversity (RCD). In terms of etiology, among Wave 1 measures, the personality factor of agreeableness was the best predictor of the cosmopolitan factors of GP and RCD at Wave 2, whereas openness of personality best predicted CO. Wave 1 measures of education, political liberalism, and self‐reported social status independently also explained a small amount of variance in COS. Functionally, COS was shown to predict less prejudice against immigrants, and more support for global civil society, even after controlling for social dominance orientation. All three COS factors independently predicted better attitudes towards immigrants. GP was the best predictor of trust in the United Nations, whereas RCD was the best predictor of support for environmental protection. The three‐factor model of COS appears well‐calibrated for assessing actually existing cosmopolitanism across cultures.

Psychology has begun contributing to social theory by providing empirical measures of actually existing cosmopolitanism that complements more purely theoretical conceptions of the construct common in philosophy and sociology. Drawing from two waves of research on representative adult samples from 19 countries (N = 8740), metric invariance was found for the three factors of cosmopolitan orientation (COS): cultural openness (CO), global prosociality (GP), and respect for cultural diversity (RCD). In terms of etiology, among Wave 1 measures, the personality factor of agreeableness was the best predictor of the cosmopolitan factors of GP and RCD at Wave 2, whereas openness of personality best predicted CO. Wave 1 measures of education, political liberalism, and self-reported social status independently also explained a small amount of variance in COS. Functionally, COS was shown to predict less prejudice against immigrants, and more support for global civil society, even after controlling for social dominance orientation. All three COS factors independently predicted better attitudes towards immigrants. GP was the best predictor of trust in the United Nations, whereas RCD was the best predictor of support for environmental protection. The three-factor model of COS appears well-calibrated for assessing actually existing cosmopolitanism across cultures.