Girishwar Misra

Girishwar Misra
Mahatma Gandhi International Hindi University · Vice Chancellor

Ph.D.

About

102
Publications
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2,157
Citations

Publications

Publications (102)
Article
Full-text available
The indigenous psychology (IP) movement has challenged mainstream psychology, which is considered rooted in colonial legacies, and has advocated for locally informed and developed theories and practices. The article explores the nexus of IP and decolonial psychology, emphasizes the need to challenge Western-centric hegemony and promotes a contextua...
Article
Emotional regulation improves the ability to control emotions internally or externally by changing the emotions or the situation or both. Considering the situation and controlling the response changes a person’s cognitive states. Such techniques can be learned and used at a younger age with proper instruction and dedication. An older adult with exp...
Chapter
Historically, emotions have been treated as basic bodily mechanisms present in living organisms, which are responsible for their survival and growth. They are oftentimes viewed as mediating the course of engagement with the environment by shaping processes like attention, memory, thinking, communication, etc. Today, there is consensus that emotions...
Chapter
While the quest for happiness has been a perennial global concern, it’s meaning and ways to pursue it differ widely. The traditional Indian worldview situates human life on a broader spectrum of conditions encompassing physical, psycho-social, and spiritual modes of existence. According to this dynamic process, model happiness is achieving liberati...
Chapter
Full-text available
One of the persistent features of modern life is the increasing incidence of anger and aggression which culminate in hostility and violence. The incidence of these negative emotions is on the rise at various levels (e.g., individual, family, group, and nation), and humanity is paying heavy costs in terms of loss of life, increase in ecological haza...
Chapter
Emotions constitute some of the most important aspects of our lives; they give meaning to life, stimulate behavior, and shape the thoughts and patterns of social interactions. Understanding how culture shapes people’s emotional lives and the impact of emotions on the health and well-being of people in different cultures is becoming an important iss...
Chapter
More than two millennia ago Lord Buddha had observed, “what we think, we become.” While he was not a psychologist in modern sense of the term, his observation has a strong bearing for contemporary psychological theory and practice. The contents of our thoughts are powerful determinants of various life outcomes such as happiness, health, and well-be...
Article
Full-text available
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 b...
Article
Full-text available
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 b...
Article
This article presents the concept of shared spaces among religious groups in the contemporary Indian context. In the land of unity in diversity which India is known to be, this article showcases some illustrations of attempts to build shared spaces historically through religion, social arrangements, and interfaith communications and discusses the c...
Article
The program of teaching and research in psychology in modern India started in the early twentieth century. As one of its pioneers Professor Sinha (1922–1998) made a multidimensional endeavour to address the societal problems in a cultural context. On the occasion of Sinha's birth centenary, Psychological Studies presents its tribute to him by shari...
Article
Full-text available
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 partici...
Article
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Recent cross-cultural and neuro-hormonal investigations have suggested that love is a near universal phenomenon that has a biological background. Therefore, the remaining important question is not whether love exists worldwide but which cultural, social, or environmental factors influence experiences and expressions of love. In the present study, w...
Chapter
This chapter examines the pattern of relationship among identity, religious beliefs, and well-being for the four different religious groups. It was observed that social aspects of identity were more salient for all four groups. Identity aspects were also related to religious beliefs and practices, though the strength of the relationship varied for...
Chapter
The present work attempted to explore the relationship between religion, identity, and well-being. The findings demonstrated that religion continues to play a significant role in personal and collective lives of the people. Religion connects very closely with identity formation and the well-being of its followers. Identity emerged as an important c...
Chapter
This chapter initially details the results for identity formation of participants across the four major religions—Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and Sikhs; and, then noted its influence with developmental stages and gender. Data were subjected to 4 × 2x3 factorial ANOVA, to identify the multidimensional nature of identity in relation to developmental...
Chapter
One of the main pillars of religion has been in the development and establishment of religious beliefs and practices for its adherents. The present chapter assessed ten components of religious practices and beliefs across the four major religious groups and its interaction across identity, age and gender. Significantly, religious beliefs and practi...
Chapter
Life involves a series of negotiations between alternative choices, a variety of stresses and strains, management of relationships, striking a balance between personal and social needs and demands. It is often punctuated by a series of religious engagements across the life span. The period of transition from adolescence to young adulthood is viewed...
Chapter
Psychological assessment is undertaken to understand and evaluate various qualities, attributes, and behavioral patterns of an individual and/or to compile patterns of behavior for groups who have participated in a research study as participants. This is possible by the use of systematic and standardized ways of testing. Hence, assessment is the fi...
Chapter
Full-text available
During the past century, the modern psychology, originating in the Euro-American region, was transplanted in India during the British colonial period. With the expansion of higher education in the country, psychology has grown and diversified as an academic discipline and profession. The expansion, however, has primarily followed the paradigm and p...
Chapter
During its disciplinary voyage in India, a tremendous change has taken place in the field of psychology during the last hundred years. It is reflected in the progress noted in the domains of teaching, research, training, and application of psychology in different sectors. In particular, it is evidenced in terms of the emergence of psychology as an...
Chapter
The development of psychological thought in the Indian subcontinent may be divided into three distinct periods: first, a multi-millennial span from antiquity to the founding of the British empire in the mid-nineteenth century; second, about a century of British colonial times up to independence attained in 1947, and third, bit over half a century o...
Chapter
This chapter expounds on paradigms where ingredients of Eastern and Western streams of psychological knowledge flow harmoniously in the scientific tradition. To achieve this objective, the chapter provides an overview of some defining features of psychology. It is in fact a narrative reminiscent of some important observations from the Western and t...
Article
Full-text available
A wide range of literature connects sex ratio and mating behaviours in non-human animals. However, research examining sex ratio and human mating is limited in scope. Prior work has examined the relationship between sex ratio and desire for short-term, uncommitted mating as well as outcomes such as marriage and divorce rates. Less empirical attentio...
Article
Full-text available
A wide range of literature connects sex ratio and mating behaviours in non-human animals. However, research examining sex ratio and human mating is limited in scope. Prior work has examined the relationship between sex ratio and desire for short-term, uncommitted mating as well as outcomes such as marriage and divorce rates. Less empirical attentio...
Article
Full-text available
A wide range of literature connects sex ratio and mating behaviours in non-human animals. However, research examining sex ratio and human mating is limited in scope. Prior work has examined the relationship between sex ratio and desire for short-term, uncommitted mating as well as outcomes such as marriage and divorce rates. Less empirical attentio...
Article
Full-text available
Interpersonal touch behavior differs across cultures, yet no study to date has systematically tested for cultural variation in affective touch, nor examined the factors that might account for this variability. Here, over 14,000 individuals from 45 countries were asked whether they embraced, stroked, kissed, or hugged their partner, friends, and you...
Chapter
This study adopted a psycholexical approach to uncover the personality trait structure of Hindi speaking Indians. The endorsement for personality descriptive adjectives was obtained from young adults (n=240) using a Likert-type 5-point rating scale. The principal component analysis using varimax rotation revealed a six-factor structure comprised of...
Book
This book offers a critical account of the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological developments in key areas of psychology in India, providing insights into the developments and advances as well as future directions. Filling an important gap in the literature on the history of psychology in India, it brings together contributions by leading sch...
Article
Full-text available
The present study has tried to delineate the notion of 'santosh' (contentment) in the everyday discourse taking gender variations and developmental stages into consideration. The study was conducted on subgroups of young adults, older people and saints (N = 100). The data were obtained through an open ended measure pertaining to different experienc...
Article
Full-text available
The Triangular Theory of Love (measured with Sternberg’s Triangular Love Scale – STLS) is a prominent theoretical concept in empirical research on love. To expand the culturally homogeneous body of previous psychometric research regarding the STLS, we conducted a large-scale cross-cultural study with the use of this scale. In total, we examined mor...
Article
Full-text available
Humans express a wide array of ideal mate preferences. Around the world, people desire romantic partners who are intelligent, healthy, kind, physically attractive, wealthy, and more. In order for these ideal preferences to guide the choice of actual romantic partners, human mating psychology must possess a means to integrate information across thes...
Article
Mate choice lies close to differential reproduction, the engine of evolution. Patterns of mate choice consequently have power to direct the course of evolution. Here we provide evidence suggesting one pattern of human mate choice—the tendency for mates to be similar in overall desirability—caused the evolution of a structure of correlations that we...
Chapter
Full-text available
This chapter aims to elaborate the dynamics of social development and examine how authentic self can become a basis for societal development. Ethics of authenticity and responsibility as shaping individual and collective lives have been the focus of inquiry while analyzing the life stories of Malala Yousafzai and APJ Abdul Kalam.
Chapter
Full-text available
Higher education (HE) in its institutionalized structure primarily engages with creation, critique and dissemination of knowledge through teaching and research. It is situated within a historical context, evolves through socio-political aspirations, interfaces with economy and contributes towards shaping the culture of a community at any particular...
Chapter
Health and well-being are significant aspects of human existence. Issues related to health have been changing over time in several respects. While infectious diseases were earlier considered as the cause for ill health, in recent times, health problems are related to degenerative diseases brought about by unhealthy lifestyle practices. Lack of adeq...
Chapter
In view of increasing stresses human life is becoming more vulnerable. There is lack of mental peace, life satisfaction and positivity in relationships. In this context of existential challenge spirituality/religion provide opportunity for extending a sacred worldview and offer inner resources to deal with life’s stresses. With this view, the relev...
Article
Full-text available
In the past few decades, yoga programs have begun to make their way in schools. However, in pursuance of induction of yogic lifestyle education programs in schools, instructors, teachers, and related agencies face multiple difficulties. To empower them to effectively carry out their professional responsibilities, knowledge of barriers and facilitat...
Book
This volume provides multifaceted and multidisciplinary insights into the growing field of health studies. Providing inputs from the behavioural sciences as well as social sciences, it discusses the issues of recovery from illness, and growth and wellbeing, as situated in social and eco-cultural contexts, and addresses the modalities of health-rela...
Article
Full-text available
Gendered segregation of lifestyle issues is of central importance in identifying gender-linked priorities of health education being followed in various schools with different economic-cultural settings. Therefore, this study has examined gender differences in multiple aspects of an adolescent’s lifestyle, including dietary habits, food consumption,...
Article
Full-text available
In view of a rampant increase in availability of and access to many health-compromising leisure choices and opportunities in India during the last few decades, this study examines the pattern of leisure practices in a sample of school-going adolescents from rural, urban, and metro regions of North India (n = 1,500). Data were collected through an a...
Article
We add an Indian perspective to the effort that Wen and Wang (2013) took towards developing a cultural psychology based on Confucian roots. Their focus on contextually created co-creation of intentionality suggests a new way to conceptualize social reality. What needs to happen on elaboration of their perspective is the analysis of the process of t...
Article
Full-text available
Nostalgia is a frequently-experienced complex emotion, understood by laypersons in the United Kingdom and United States of America to (1) refer prototypically to fond, self-relevant, social memories and (2) be more pleasant (e.g., happy, warm) than unpleasant (e.g., sad, regretful). This research examined whether people across cultures conceive of...
Chapter
Full-text available
Indigenous psychology (IP) shares with critical health psychology a discontent with mainstream psychology and the endeavor to offer alternative formulations of health and illness. As an alternative to the individualistic framework of health in mainstream psychology, we propose a model of the self as a multilayered concentric system. For illustratio...
Article
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Even after sixty-four years of his death, Gandhi evokes special interest in most of the Indians. His presence has seeped deep inside our psyche, and continues to influence our life-for some considerably, for others slightly-none the less it does. A noticeable example of it is the mass unrest and awareness that Anna Hazare, a Gandhian, could instill...
Article
The psycho-lexical approach is extended to Hindi, a major language spoken in India. From both the dictionary and from Hindi novels, a huge set of personality descriptors was put together, ultimately reduced to a manageable set of 295 trait terms. Both self and peer ratings were collected on those terms from a sample of 511 participants. Factor anal...
Chapter
The challenge of understanding the nature of self and others has long occupied the attention of psychologists as well as lay people. Both deploy “personality” as an integrated whole of attributes to explain the causes of behaviors. Indigenous personality concerns itself with the behavior and the related body of knowledge that derives its theories f...
Chapter
Durganand Sinha was a Guru, one of the great Indian psychologists of the modern period. Born on September, 23, 1922 in a village in the northeastern part of the Indian state of Bihar, he obtained an M.A. in philosophy with a specialization in psychology from Patna University in 1945. Subsequently, he went to Cambridge University where he completed...
Chapter
The quest for happiness, a good life, and a vision for the future has been one of the core and pervasive concerns among all civilizations. It addresses the basic existential question: What does one want from life? The answer, as the Dalai Lama maintained, is that the main purpose of life is happiness. While connotations of happiness in various lang...
Chapter
Control signifies the experience of causing an outcome to happen. Supposed to be an inherent tendency, it refers to competence or effectance, and implies the experience of agency and mastery. Researchers have proposed an array of control concepts such as desire for control, action control, control motive, and locus of control. Other closely related...
Article
Full-text available
This study adopted a psycholexical approach to uncover the personality trait structure of Hindi speaking Indians. The endorsement for personality descriptive adjectives was obtained from young adults (n=240) using a Likert-type 5-point rating scale. The principal component analysis using varimax rotation revealed a six-factor structure comprised of...
Article
Full-text available
Beliefs about personhood are understood to be a defining feature of individualism-collectivism (I-C), but they have been insufficiently explored, given the emphasis of research on values and self-construals. We propose the construct of contextualism, referring to beliefs about the importance of context in understanding people, as a facet of cultura...
Article
Full-text available
Beliefs about personhood are understood to be a defining feature of individualism-collectivism (I-C), but they have been insufficiently explored, given the emphasis of research on values and self-construals. We propose the construct of contextualism, referring to beliefs about the importance of context in understanding people, as a facet of cultura...
Article
Full-text available
Beliefs about personhood are understood to be a defining feature of individualism-collectivism (I-C), but they have been insufficiently explored, given the emphasis of research on values and self-construals. We propose the construct of contextualism, referring to beliefs about the importance of context in understanding people, as a facet of cultura...
Conference Paper
The Sikh cultural narrative was explored using social representations in the public sphere. To this end textual analysis of newspaper articles (N=200) published from January 2003 to April 2005 was done. These analyses addressed four major domains: religio-cultural, political identity, contemporary trends, and redressing self-perception. The emergin...
Conference Paper
This study adopted a psycholexical approach to uncover the personality trait structure of Hindi speaking Indians. The endorsement for personality descriptive adjectives was obtained from young adults (n=240) using a Likert-type 5-point rating scale. The principal component analysis using varimax rotation revealed a six-factor structure comprised of...
Article
Full-text available
The present study investigated the prevalence of lifestyle related concerns among school adolescents. The data were collected from 1,500 Indian school students enrolled in sixth to eleventh grades drawn from rural, urban, and metro settings. They completed an anonymous Adolescent Lifestyle Survey. The study documents the multiple concerns relate...
Article
Psychology's Involvement with Societal DevelopmentConceptualizing Societal Development: Changing PerspectivesStrategies for Societal Development: The Indian ExperienceIndigenous PsychologyConcluding CommentsReferences
Article
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There has been paucity of theory-based life style interventions to improve academic competence among school adolescents. Therefore, present study examined the effect of Life Style Intervention Programme (LSIP) introduced through a psycho-education programme on academic competence in a sample (N = 100) of students in a residential school located at...
Article
Full-text available
This article makes an effort to conceptualise the emerging field of scholarship called Indian Psychology (IP) in the backdrop of the disciplinary developments. After situating IP in the disciplinary matrix, the article articulates the meaning and scope of IP, its critical features and misconceptions about its conceptualisation. It is argued that IP...
Article
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In modern times Gandhi demonstrated the use of nonviolence in the freedom struggle of India and has shown way to the people in other parts of the world. According to Gandhi non-injury or not entertaining ill feeling or hostility toward others due to anger, hatred, jealousy, conflict, or any act driven by selfishness is non-violence. Non-violence re...
Article
This study explored the nature and development of patterns of prosocial reasoning and behaviour of Indian children (N = 167), between 5 and 14 years of age, from low and high SES, in naturalistic contexts. Prosocial reasoning of children in real life contexts was characterised primarily by authority/punishment orientation, concern for needs of othe...
Article
Full-text available
A comparison involving individuals in urban areas of India and the United States reveals both individual and relational concepts of self in each sample. However, cultural differences arose in specific ways in which individual and relational concepts are constructed.
Article
This article explores the social, psychological and historical processes through which the Sikh community has categorised and differentiated itselffrom other communities to form a distinct self. It traces the socio-historical circumstances that have shaped and helped consolidate the Sikh community's distinctive features including dress code, symbol...
Article
Notes that creativity has been conceptualized in the West in terms of novelty and appropriateness of a product. In contrast, the Indian view is more process-oriented. It involves the experience of personal fulfillment. Its conception pertains to the primordial realm, or the expression of an inner essence or ultimate reality. To understand the natur...
Article
This study explored the meaning of the notion of "intelligence" as understood and used by the lay people in India. In a multi-centric study, participants (n=1,885), varying along the dimensions of ecological context (rural/urban), schooling, age and gender, from five localities, volunteered. Responding to an open-ended question, participants descri...
Article
The twentieth century has witnessed a multifaceted growth of the discipline of psychology. As a human scientific enterprise as well as a profession, psychology is increasingly expected toplaya key role in many areas. Teaching, training and research in Indian institutions of higher learning are finding it difficult to face this challenge and to keep...
Article
The development and application of psychological tests is an ever increasing activity in India. Based on a cross-cultural perspective, major forms of cultural bias in testing are identified. An historical overview of test development and the attendant problem of bias is presented within an Indian context. The problems of test adaptation, test trans...
Article
Full-text available
When one understands psychological science to be a by-product of the Western tradition, fashioned by particular cultural and historical conditions, the door is opened to a fresh consideration of the practice of psychology in the global context. By using examples from experiences in Turkey, New Zealand, and India, the reader is sensitized first to t...
Article
Argues for changes within psychology in order to affect social policy to correct social problems. The nature of social problems and policy and the psychology–policy interface are examined. Psychologists can contribute toward policy formulation in many domains including teaching, childcare, guidance and counseling, by shifting research paradigms and...
Article
Recent studies have indicated that the generalizability of traditional theory of achievement motivation across cultures is considerably limited. Empirical evidence from various cultures points out that there are cross-cultural differences in the meaning of achievement that play a crucial role in determining the achievement efforts of the people in...
Article
The commentary of our esteemed colleagues concentrates on the status of cross-cultural psychology (CCP), and the role of the experiment in achieving the goal of universal psychology-that is, a psychology that would “incorporate” all indigenous (including Western) psychologies. While our colleagues share our concern with cultural variation, the visi...
Article
Full-text available
Based on a positivist-empiricist mode of inquiry, mainstream psychology has been vigorously engaged in characterizing human lives in terms of mechanistic and individualistic constructions, with the aim of predicting and controlling the behaviour of acultural and decontextualized others. Committed to a belief in psychological universals, this enterp...
Article
Conceptualization of achievement, in terms of emphasis on preferred goals and means in Indian sociocultural context, was investigated among young adults (N=922) from two ecological backgrounds (village and city) studying in 10th grade, 12th grade, and undergraduate standards. Content analysis of responses elicited from the entire sample yielded 32...
Article
The present paper analyzes the meaning of achievement in the Indian socio‐cultural context. Based on earlier studies of the authors, measures of goals and means of achievement were administered on samples drawn from rural and urban settings in north India. The responses were subjected to principal component factor analysis with varimax rotation. Th...
Article
Date revised - 19851201, Last updated - 2012-09-10, SubjectsTermNotLitGenreText - Caste System
Article
The relative effects of chronological age and experiential deprivation upon pictorial recognition were investigated. Following a 4 x 2 factorial design four age levels (4-5, 5-6, 6-7 and 7-8 years) and two levels of deprivation (low/high) were manipulated. There were 50 subjects in each cell i.e., a total of 400 subjects. All subjects performed on...
Article
Examines studies on the cognitive effects of deprivation (e.g., poverty or social disadvantage) in the laboratory and in real-life settings. It is argued that deprivation should be conceived of as an experiential phenomenon and that cognitive growth can be understood only in terms of the psychological mechanisms that mediate it. The measurement of...
Article
Recent studies of the effects of impoverished environment of prolonged deprivations in natural settings have unequivocally shown that deprivation of various kinds, such as sensory, muscular, social, parental, cultural, and economic, result in deficient cognitive functioning, especially in complex perceptual tasks and conceptualization. However, a c...
Article
Discusses concepts of self within Indian cultural contexts. Unlike traditional Western psychology, which views the autonomous, independent self as a universal concept that focuses on the conscious ego, Indian cultural traditions stress the importance of networks of social relationships and interdependence on the development of self. From an Indian...
Article
Examines the underlying assumptions of psychology in the Western world: human consciousness can be examined in the same way as physical reality, and the scientific method is immune to human weaknesses. The concepts of a free and self-contained individual and of personal control, projected as a basic explanation of human functioning, are seen as cul...
Article
Typescript (photocopy). Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rochester. Dept. of Philosophy, 1988. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 249-252).

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