Sergio Salgado

• Dr. in Social and Organizational Behaviour
• Professor (Full) at University of La Frontera

Our attention is constantly drawn by messages that propose to us what should (not) be done in a specific place. According to the Evaluative Model of Normative Appeals (EMNA), we perceive them through a process (normative appraisal) that is structured in three dimensions, and assesses the degree to which the proposal (a) comes from an institution th...

Based on the Evaluative Model of Normative Appeals (EMNA), we designed a diagnosis tool that allows forecasting the extent to which employees may comply with a set of norms. We first performed two cross-sectional studies to apply the tool within a general sample of workers (Study 1, N = 382) and within a sample of employees of a specific organizati...

People in economically advantaged nations tend to evaluate their life as more positive overall and report greater well-being than people in less advantaged nations. But how does positivity manifest in the daily life experiences of individuals around the world? The present study asked 15,244 college students from 62 nations, in 42 languages, to desc...

The COVID-19 pandemic caused drastic social changes for many people, including separation from friends and coworkers, enforced close contact with family, and reductions in mobility. Here we assess the extent to which people's evolutionarily-relevant basic motivations and goals—fundamental social motives such as Affiliation and Kin Care—might have b...

The coronavirus disease has exposed the population to psychosocial threats that could increase mental health problems. This research analyzed the relationships between emotional states (negative [−EWB] and positive [+EWB] experienced well-being), personal resources (resilient coping [RC]), dispositional resources (control beliefs about stress [BAS]...

The aim of this study is two-fold. Firstly, to analyze the relations between the perceptions of job insecurity and financial threat and general mental health during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. And secondly, to identify the potential moderating effect of the support network. We carried out a cross-sectional study on a non-probabilistic...

How does psychology vary across human societies? The fundamental social motives framework adopts an evolutionary approach to capture the broad range of human social goals within a taxonomy of ancestrally recurring threats and opportunities. These motives—self-protection, disease avoidance, affiliation, status, mate acquisition, mate retention, and...

A normative appeal indicates that one should (or should not) do a certain action in a concrete situation. According to the Evaluative Model of Normative Appeals (EMNA), willingness to comply with these messages depends on an appraisal formed by two dimensions: formality and protection. In this work we center on the dimension of protection, proposin...

Abstract What does it mean to be happy? The vast majority of cross-cultural studies on happiness have employed a Western-origin, or “WEIRD” measure of happiness that conceptualizes it as a self-centered (or “independent”), high-arousal emotion. However, research from East�ern cultures, particularly Japan, conceptualizes happiness as including an in...

Objective The current exploratory study sought to examine dispositional optimism, or the general expectation for positive outcomes, around the world. Method Dispositional optimism and possible correlates were assessed across 61 countries (N = 15,185; mean age = 21.92; 77% female). Mean‐level differences in optimism were computed along with their r...

The social distancing, confinement and quarantine adopted since March 2020 to confront the COVID-19 pandemic have affected multiple vital areas, and specially work, business and productive activities. Prior research has highlighted the relation between perceptions of risk in employment and its concomitant financial risk with a myriad of consequence...

The current study seeks to replicate and extend principal findings reported in The World at 7:00 , a project that examined the psychological experience of situations in 20 countries. Data were collected from participants in 62 countries (N = 15,318), recruited from universities by local collaborators to complete the study via a custom‐built website...

What motives do people prioritize in their social lives? Historically, social psychologists, especially those adopting an evolutionary perspective, have devoted a great deal of research attention to sexual attraction and romantic-partner choice (mate seeking). Research on long-term familial bonds (mate retention and kin care) has been less thorough...

In this work, two objectives were addressed. First, the visual aesthetics assessment of the workplace was explored for the first time as a potential antecedent of the proactive behaviors of job crafting. Second, the potential mediating role of the affective organizational commitment in this relationship was analyzed. To address these purposes, a fi...

Quixoteism is a motive that leads people to undertake challenging actions as an instrumental goal toward an ultimate goal of improving the welfare of the world. The present research tests whether the activation of a Quixoteism motive increases a person’s willingness to perform extraordinary helping behaviors. In Study 1 (N = 66), the centrality of...

This review discusses the findings in the literature on pain and distraction tasks according to their sensory modality. Distraction tasks have been shown to reduce (experimentally induced) acute pain and chronic pain. This can be influenced by nature and by the sensory modalities used in the distraction tasks. Yet the effect on reducing pain accord...

Past research suggests that the connection between values and people's behaviour may not be as straightforward and robust as has been claimed. We propose that a more holistic and discriminative view that acknowledges the influence of a specific combination of values on specific kinds of behaviour is needed. In the current project, we test two hypot...

We conducted five studies to test the transcendental change constellation (TCC)–quixoteism hypothesis: The presence of a specific set of values labeled TCC elicits a motive with the ultimate goal of increasing the welfare of the world (quixoteism). First, the salience of the TCC increased the commitment to (Study 1) and preference for (Study 2) act...

Purpose: The aim of the present work is to advance in a topic that has received little attention in the literature: normative diagnosis; contributing new empirical evidence to a recently proposed model: the Evaluative Model of Normative Appeals (EMNA). Design/methodology: Two field studies were carried out. In Study 1 we tested the EMNA premises b...

Normative appeals refer to those messages that indicate that one should (or should not) engage in a certain action in a given situation. According to the psychosocial research, the decision to fulfill a normative appeal depends on both the extent to which it has captured our attention, and the evaluation of what we may gain or lose by doing so. How...

Quixoteism refers to a motive whose ultimategoal is to improve the welfare of the world.It is proposed that this motive is activated by a world-change valuing: the extent to which one individual values changes that go beyond a specific individual or a group. Two studies were conducted to test this proposal. The results of Study 1 (N = 99) showed th...

Durante el año 2014 se resolvieron los concursos FONDECYT regular 2014 y de Iniciación a la investigación 2013. En el concurso de Iniciación a la Investigación, se presentaron 703 proyectos, de los cuales fueron aprobaron 308. De estos, 6 corresponden a Psicología (de un total de 20 proyectos postulados), por un valor de 358.897 millones de pesos,...

Feeling empathy for a member of the group may result in either favoring this individual at the expense of the group or helping the entire group. We explain these intriguing find- ings by proposing that the combined influence of feeling empathy for one individual and awareness of others enhances willingness to help both the individual and the others (...

We analyze the prosocial effect of including the macro-environment in life space. Namely, it is proposed that the extent to which people perceive that their life takes place in broader environmental contexts (e.g., the society, the world) will facilitate prosocial behavior when the situation of need is presented in an abstract fashion (e.g., very b...

World change orientation refers to the extent to which one individual attributes his or her prosocial action to the function of making the world a better place. In Study 1, we developed a scale to measure this world change orientation [world change scale (WCS)] and to analyze its theoretical structure as a distinctive motivational orientation. In S...

We use the term Quixoteism to refer to a new social motive. The characterization of this motive deals with two aspects: the definition of the ultimate goal (i.e., to increase the welfare of the world) and the proposal of a process that activates it (i.e., a transcendental-change orientation). Three studies were conducted to test this characterizati...

Tesis doctoral inédita leída en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Facultad de Psicología, Departamento de Psicología Social y Metodología. Fecha de lectura: 27 de febrero de 2009 Bibliogr.: p. 145-156

Feeling empathy for one person in need while being aware of others may increase the motivational ambivalence between the motive of helping the one and the motive of helping the others, and such motivational ambivalence may reduce the helping directed to the person in need. To test these hypotheses we carried out three studies in which participants...