Vassilis Pavlopoulos

• Ph.D
• Professor at National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Meditation is a widely used and long-researched psychological tool worldwide. Despite numerous descriptions, the necessary and sufficient criteria for defining and understanding it have not been adequately established. Instead, we are witnessing an alternative use of meditation and mindfulness, along with ambiguity regarding its history and origins...

The present study, centred on the meaning of life, employed a four‐level socio‐psychological analysis, categorizing participants ( N = 400) based on intraindividual, interindividual, positional and ideological levels. Examining factors like self‐construal, interpersonal discomfort, political self‐positioning and social identity, the study revealed...

Understanding patterns of adolescent political participation is essential for healthy democracies. Drawing upon data from Greek youth (n=589, Mage=15.1), this study (1) identified distinct profiles of adolescent political participation, (2) examined predictors of profile membership, and (3) explored transitions between profiles across a one-year pe...

People care about their own well-being and about the well-being of their families. It is currently, however, unknown how much people tend to value their own versus their family's well-being. A recent study documented that people value family happiness over personal happiness across four cultures. In this study, we sought to replicate this finding a...

We argue that the importance of family relationships for individual well-being varies across societies as a function of a society’s degree of cultural heterogeneity. To examine the role of family relationships, we analyzed the responses from 13,009 participants in 50 societies on their life satisfaction across societies varying in their levels of h...

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a surge of conspiracy theories that are used to explain this health crisis. Belief in these theories in turn has significant implications regarding adherence to scientifically based health measures and the seeking of appropriate medical treatment. However, the precursors of conspiracy thinking have not yet been full...

Psychological science tends to treat subjective well-being and happiness synonymously. We start from the assumption that subjective well-being is more than being happy to ask the fundamental question: What is the ideal level of happiness? From a cross-cultural perspective, we propose that the idealization of attaining maximum levels of happiness ma...

Millions of forced migrants settling in host countries often struggle to adjust to their new life. As their inclusion and adjustment within receiving societies has become a global social challenge, studying the factors that support their successful transition is an important topic of research inquiry. The present three-wave longitudinal study exami...

We explore to what extent previously observed pan-cultural association between dimensions of self-construal and personal life satisfaction (PLS) may be moderated by three national-contextual variables: national wealth, economic inequality, and religious heritage. The results showed that MSelf-reliance (vs. dependence on others) predicted PLSpositiv...

Past research has shown that economic inequality shapes individuals’ self-construals. However, it has been unclear which dimensions of self-construal are associated with and affected by economic inequality. A correlational (Study 1: N = 264) and an experimental study (Study 2: N = 532) provided converging evidence linking perceived economic inequal...

People care about their own well-being and about the well-being of their families. It is currently, however, unknown how much people tend to value their own versus their family’s well-being. A recent study documented that people value family happiness over personal happiness across four cultures. In this study, we sought to replicate this finding a...

How can one conclude that well-being is higher in country A than country B, when well-being is being measured according to the way people in country A think about well-being? We address this issue by proposing a new culturally sensitive method to comparing societal levels of well-being. We support our reasoning with data on life satisfaction and in...

A global challenge for developmental psychology is to better understand how young people around the world make sense of their identities growing up in pluralistic societies. The study of ethnic-racial identity provides an important lens for this process. This paper describes how five European countries (Germany, Greece, Italy, Norway, and Sweden) a...

Introduction Greece was hit particularly hard by the latest economic recession. Method Using a quasi‐experimental design, we examined whether and how psychosocial resources promoted and/or protected youth's school adjustment (academic achievement, school engagement, and conduct) and psychological well‐being (absence of emotional symptoms) during t...

Many refugees moving into Greece and other European countries often struggle to adjust to their new life. Over and above other factors, social isolation seems to be a major contributor in their poor adjustment outcomes, yet the underlying psychological mechanisms of their links are not well understood. Based on the Social Identity Model of Identity...

The COVID-19 pandemic is having a huge impact on people’s lives. Especially at the first stages, adherence to preventive measures was key to decreasing the number of cases, and institutions have been recommending citizens to act in a socially responsible way. Still, during the pandemic people might experience dilemmas on what it means to do so. We...

Resilient adaptation among immigrant youth provides the foundation for healthy and productive adult lives. Great diversity is observed in their adaptation. This diversity has been studied during the past decade from different angles and intellectual traditions. However, the results are disconnected. In this paper, first, we present a resilience con...

The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on quality of life is widely underscored. This study aimed to investigate the role of cognitive, affective, and behavioral factors on quality of life, as well as their mediating effect in the relationship of perceived risk of infection and control beliefs with quality of life. The sample consisted of 1730 adults. A b...

Group-based anger might take different forms depending on the target that is directed at. In this research, conducted in Greece (N = 470), we distinguished between two types of group-based anger in the context of socioeconomic crisis: Anger directed towards the international system and anger directed towards the local politicians. We showed that po...

In this paper, we introduce the concept of ‘societal emotional environment’: the emotional climate of a society (operationalized as the degree to which positive and negative emotions are expressed in a society). Using data collected from 12,888 participants across 49 countries, we show how societal emotional environments vary across countries and c...

Numerous studies document that societal happiness is correlated with individualism, but the nature of this phenomenon remains understudied. In the current paper, we address this gap and test the reasoning that individualism correlates with societal happiness because the most common measure of societal happiness (i.e., country-level aggregates of pe...

Living together in culturally plural societies poses numerous challenges for members of ethnocultural groups and for the larger society. An important goal of these societies is to achieve positive intercultural relations among all its peoples. Successful management of these relations depends on many factors including a research-based understanding...

The current study investigated the relationship between unconscious difficulties with separation-individuation in patients with Crohn’s disease. Thirty patients with Crohn’s disease and 30 healthy subjects were administered the Rorschach Inkblot Test. Comparison of their responses on the Symbiotic Phenomena Content Scale (SPCS) revealed significant...

Precarious manhood beliefs portray manhood, relative to womanhood, as a social status that is hard to earn, easy to lose, and proven via public action. Here, we present cross-cultural data on a brief measure of precarious manhood beliefs (the Precarious Manhood Beliefs scale [PMB]) that covaries meaningfully with other cross-culturally validated ge...

Purpose We aimed to develop and validate the Musicians' Hearing Handicap Index (MHHI), a new self-evaluation tool for quantifying occupation-related auditory difficulties in music professionals. Although pure-tone audiometry is often considered the “gold standard” and is usually employed as the main instrument for hearing assessment, it cannot full...

The Utrecht-Management of Identity Commitments Scale (U-MICS) is one of the most-commonly used self-report scales to assess personal identity in studies of developmental processes. While it has been translated and validated in many countries around the world, evidence of its applicability in Greek is absent. The purpose of this study was to examine...

Resilient adaptation of immigrant and refugee youth in receiving societies is consequential for the wellbeing of the youth and the prosperity of the receiving societies. Yet there is significant diversity in their adaptation. The central question addressed in this article is: “Who among immigrant and refugee youth do well and why?” To address this...

Objectives The emotional correlates of multiple sclerosis have been the source of empirical interest in recent years. Studies have indicated that alexithymia as well as anxiety and depression are of central importance in this regard. The purpose of the present study was to continue this line of investigation regarding the relationships between alex...

European youth’s civic engagement and political participation in EU-related issues is a timely imperative. Research findings on youth citizenship range from political apathy to alternative forms of participation, although theoretical evidence remains poor. This study is based on empirical data from the Greek contribution to the European program CAT...

Men sometimes withdraw support for gender equality movements when their higher gender status is threatened. Here, we expand the focus of this phenomenon by examining it cross‐culturally, to test if both individual‐ and country‐level variables predict men's collective action intentions to support gender equality. We tested a model in which men's zer...

The present study proposed typologies of situational categories on eliciting hurt and anger from the perspective of the emotion’s receptor and source. Using two samples from two European countries, we present a derived-etic approach. One hundred and thirty-five young Romanians (n = 87) and Spaniards (n = 48), aged between 18 to 30, involved in a ro...

The present study examined the direction of effects between peer likeability and youth’s school adjustment and psychological well-being, and the moderation of these effects by students’ immigrant status. One thousand one hundred and eighteen students (63% immigrants) nested in 57 Greek middle-school classrooms took part in the study (Wave 1; age M...

This study analyzed the unique effects of gender and culture on psychopathology in adolescents from seven countries, after controlling for factors that might have contributed to variations in psychopathology. In a sample of 2259 adolescents (M = 15 years; 54 % female) from France, Germany, Turkey, Greece, Peru, Pakistan, and Poland, we assessed ide...

This exploratory paper applying cross-cultural and developmental perspective analyses and discusses trust in alternative media and its relation to trust in professional media, seeking to identify the national specifics of media trust and its developmental patterns. Employing 2016 survey data of Czech, Estonian and Greek youth (aged 14–25, N = 3654)...

This paper adopts a social psychological perspective to review individual and socio-political factors accounting for the resurgence of the far right in Europe, in light of the economic crisis. The paper addresses three main questions in relation to this review. First, what psychological processes translate unfavorable contextual attributes into per...

Psychopathology in adolescents from seven countries: What role does controlling identity development and family relationships play? Abstract. This study analyzed the unique effects of gender and culture on psychopathology in adolescents from seven countries, after controlling for factors that might have contributed to variations in psychopathology....

Inequalities between men and women are common and well-documented. Objective indexes show that men are better positioned than women in societal hierarchies—there is no single country in the world without a gender gap. In contrast, researchers have found that the women-are-wonderful effect—that women are evaluated more positively than men overall—is...

The impact of identity-related risk factors on psychopathology was analyzed in 2,113 emerging adults (M = 22.0 years; 66% female) from France, Germany, Turkey, Greece, Peru, Pakistan, and Poland. Identity stress, coping with identity stress, maternal parenting (support, psychological control, and anxious rearing), and psychopathology (internalizing...

The current study examines the extent to which religiosity account for ideological orientations in 16 countries from five continents (Australia, Brazil, Chile, Germany, Greece, Finland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States). Results showed that religiosity was consistently related...

This study examined, first, the longitudinal interplay between immigrant youth's acculturation into the host and ethnic cultures and perceived ethnic discrimination, and, second, whether acceptance and rejection by immigrant and non-immigrant peers longitudinally mediated the link between acculturation and discrimination. 1057 students nested in 49...

As part of a larger research project, we asked 1,806 adults from France, Greece, and Italy (in the larger project, Portuguese students were included) to discuss the causes of the current economic crisis and the strategies that should be adopted by the countries to overcome it. The six factors extracted by the factor analysis revealed that the econo...

Η Διαπολιτισμική Ψυχολογία δεν ήρθε να προστεθεί ως ένας επιπλέον κλάδος δίπλα στα βασικά γνωστικά πεδία της Ψυχολογίας. Αντικείμενό της είναι η μελέτη της ανθρώπινης συμπεριφοράς σε παγκόσμιο οικολογικό πολιτισμικό πλαίσιο, πώς δηλαδή επηρεάζεται από αυτό και πώς το επηρεάζει. Ενδιαφέρεται για τα οικουμενικά στοιχεία και για το εύρος της διακύμανσ...

Political participation is one of the most studied aspects of the contemporary development of western democracies (Ekman & Amnå, 2012; van Deth, 2014). A recent trend focuses the lack of political participation among younger generations (e.g., Henn, Weinstein & Forrest, 2005; Kimberlee, 2002). At the same time, the last decades have also witnessed...

This exploratory paper applying cross-cultural and developmental perspective analyses and discusses trust in alternative media and its relation to trust in professional media, seeking to identify the national specifics of media trust and its developmental patterns. Employing 2016 survey data of Czech, Estonian and Greek youth (aged 14–25, N = 3654)...

Cross-border mobility is one of the most important factors that are assumed to strengthen young people’s commitment as European citizens. However, the existing empirical evidence does not provide consistent support. In this paper, we tested the hypothesis that cross-border mobility is associated with a stronger European identification, more positiv...

How does academic literature across various disciplines conceptualize and empirically address active citizenship? What are the potential benefits and dangers of dominant epistemological and ideological perspectives on ‘good citizenship’? Our paper engages with these questions by drawing on literature across 12 disciplines. We used textual analysis...

The current study examines the contribution of left–right (or liberal–conservative) ideology to voting, as well as the extent to which basic values account for ideological orientation. Analyses were conducted in 16 countries from five continents (Europe, North America, South America, Asia, and Oceania), most of which have been neglected by previous...

In this paper, we analyse the responses of 450 students from Greece, Portugal and Italy, who were asked to assess the efficacy of 32 actions as reactions against the austerity measures implemented to deal with the financial and economic crisis. These actions were organized into six types by a principal component factor analysis, and were ranked as...

In the current research, we investigated the lay representations of the recent economic downturn, that had severe consequences on the lives of the involved people. We compared data of respondents from two countries that were affected to a different degree by the crisis: Greece ('N' = 529) and Italy ('N' = 327). We examined laypeople’s representatio...

Today, life circumstances have changed dramatically and children in late adolescence and young adulthood may benefit from parental involvement. Also, parental behavior and identity development differs across cultures with a considerable delay in identity development (high exploration, low commitment) of emerging adults in many Western industrialize...

Smiling individuals are usually perceived more favorably than non-smiling ones - they are judged as happier, more attractive, competent, and friendly. These seemingly clear and obvious consequences of smiling are assumed to be culturally universal, however most of the psychological research is carried out in WEIRD societies (Western, Educated, Indu...

This cross-sectional study examined, first, whether and how immigrant youth’s personal and family resources account for individual differences in their academic achievement, and second, whether social risks and immigrant status further contribute to academic achievement after controlling for these resources. The sample consisted of 300 middle schoo...

This article presents some of the issues attached to the research methods used in Social Psychology. First it introduces the different methods used in social psychological research (quantitative and qualitative) and discusses the basic epistemological assumptions that lie on the basis of each of them. Then it presents methods of generating/collecti...

This study investigated the factorial validity of the Utrecht-Management of Identity Commitments Scale (UMICS), as well as the measurement invariance in Greek and immigrant adolescents living in Greece. Results show that the scale is internally and externally valid, and can be used to compare the personal identity development of Greek and immigrant...

Στο κεφάλαιο αυτό μελετώνται οι ψυχολογικές διαστάσεις της μετανάστευσης που άπτονται της προσαρμογής των παιδιών και των εφήβων. Έμφαση δίνεται στη διασύνδεση των διεργασιών της επιπολιτισμοποίησης με εκείνες της ανάπτυξης και των διομαδικών σχέσεων κατά τη μετακίνηση και εγκατάσταση σε μια νέα χώρα. Το κεφάλαιο διαρθρώνεται σε τέσσερις ενότητες....

Using data from 28 countries in four continents, the present research addresses the question of how basic values may account for political activism. Study 1 (N = 35,116) analyses data from representative samples in 20 countries that responded to the 21-item version of the Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ-21) in the European Social Survey. Study 2...

Do the political values of the general public form a coherent system? What might be the source of coherence? We view political values as expressions, in the political domain, of more basic personal values. Basic personal values (e.g., security, achievement, benevolence, hedonism) are organized on a circular continuum that reflects their conflicting...

We validate, extend, and empirically and theoretically criticize the cultural dimension of humane orientation of the project GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness Research Program, House et al., 2004). Theoretically, humane orientation is not just a one-dimensionally positive concept about being caring, altruistic, and...

We validate, extend, and empirically and theoretically criticize the cultural dimension of humane orientation of the project GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness Research Program). Theoretically, humane orientation is not just a one-dimensionally positive concept about being caring, altruistic, and kind to others as di...

Background Parents of children and adolescents with Diabetes Type usually experience high stress levels as they have to cope with multiple demands in their everyday life. Different complex interventions have been implemented, which sometimes have led to opposite results. Objective The purpose of this study was to assess stress levels in parents of...

The Big Five Model was used to assess the role of personality traits in orienting voting choice across five European countries (n = 1288). Findings from Italy, Spain, Germany, Greece, and Poland showed that the Big Five were linked to party preference in theoretically consistent ways. Traits had substantial effects on voting, whereas the socio-demo...

Childhood personality is a rapidly growing area of investigation within individual differences research. One understudied topic is the universality of the hierarchical structure of childhood personality. In the present investigation, parents rated the personality characteristics of 3,751 children from 5 countries and 4 age groups. The hierarchical...

Despite the increasing numbers of immigrants in Greece (about 10% of the population), there has been no systematic definition and measurement of concrete integration indices. To fill this gap, a multidisciplinary research team collected empirical data from a representative sample of 1,843 immigrants across the country. This paper presents indices r...

This study tested the assumption that self- and spouse reports on values, self-disclosure and satisfaction could predict conflict patterns, as proposed by Rusbult, Zembrodt, & Gunn’s (1982) Exit-Voice-Loyalty-Neglect typology. Participants were 133 married Greek couples. Results were generally consistent with expectations: Self- and spouse reports...

This paper investigates the relationship between the frequency of parent-adolescent conflict and the quality of adaptation of immigrant Albanian adolescents and of their native Greek classmates. Aims of the present study were: (a) to compare the frequency of immigrant and non-immigrant adolescents' conflicts with their parents; (b) to compare the q...

This study tested the assumption that self- and spouse reports on values, self-disclosure and satisfaction could predict conflict patterns, as proposed by Rusbult, Zembrodt, & Gunn’s (1982) Exit-Voice-Loyalty-Neglect typology. Participants were 133 married Greek couples. Results were generally consistent with expectations: Self- and spouse reports...

This study tested the assumption that self- and spouse reports on values, self-disclosure and satisfaction could predict conflict patterns, as proposed by Rusbult, Zembrodt, & Gunn’s (1982) Exit-Voice-Loyalty-Neglect typology. Participants were 133 married Greek couples. Results were generally consistent with expectations: Self- and spouse reports...

The purpose of this study was to examine the association of immigrant status to adversity and adjustment. Two samples of 12- to 15-year-old public school students in the Athens area were studied: a sample of first generation Albanian and Native Greek students attending two public schools (N = 325), and a sample of first-generation Pontian immigrant...

The purpose of this study was to examine the association of immigrant status to adversity and adjustment. Two samples of 12- to 15-year-old public school students in the Athens area were studied: a sample of first generation Albanian and Native Greek students attending two public schools (N = 325), and a sample of first-generation Pontian immigrant...

The purpose of this study was to examine the acculturation, psychological well-being, and school adjustment of Pontian adolescents from the former Soviet Union (FSU-Pontians), who are immigrants of the diaspora living in Greece, compared with an immigrant group from Albania and native Greek classmates. The sample included 165 FSU-Pontian immigrants...

The purpose of the present study was to explore the acculturation patterns of immigrants in Greece in relation to their economic and psychological adaptation. The following research questions were examined: How do immigrants adapt to the host culture? How do they deal with the multiple pressures and challenges of “culture shock”? What is the relati...

This chapter is based on a project which studied similarities and differences in families across cultures (Georgas, Berry, Van de Vijver, Kağıtçıbaşı & Poortinga, 2006). The goal of the project was to study family networks, family roles and psychological variables in different ecological and sociopolitical systems across 30 countries. The present c...

Questionnaires. The questionnaires detect hidden alcoholism related to psychosocial parametres.

(from the chapter) This Chapter provides an overview of the cross-cultural data analyses. The Chapter is presented in seven parts. The first two involve the analyses of the psychometric properties of the instruments. "Equivalence and pooled factor Solutions" discusses the equivalence analyses, addressing the question of to what extent the instrumen...

A HISTORICAL OUTLINE OF GREECE Greece was established as an independent nation state in 1822, having rebelled against the Ottoman Empire. Its present-day population is approximately 10,500,000 inhabitants. Athens is the capital, with 4,500,000 inhabitants. Greece became a member of the European Union in 1981. ECOLOGICAL FEATURES Greece is in southe...

Alcohol abuse and addiction are big current problems of the developed world having multivariate causality and multiple effects. Alcohol abuse in young people is a matter of central importance due to its wide range long lasting effects, especially so in Greece where the problem has only recently started growing. The Hellenic Navy is interested in th...

The conclusions about changes in the family in Greece appear to be, that although affluence has been increasing in recent years, the traditional extended family has not decomposed into isolated nuclear families, but has changed its configuration. Its morphological equivalent is the extended family system in the urban setting with a continuation of...

Based on over 50,000 parental descriptors of children gathered in eight different countries, we used a combination of focus group sorting of descriptors in each country and factor analyses of instruments developed in four of the countries (United States, China, Greece, and the Netherlands) to describe children ages 3 to 12 years to select items for...

(from the preface) Presents the method employed in the cross-cultural analyses of Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children--Third Edition data sets. The first part of the chapter presents an overview of which items were closely translated from the American original or British version and which items were adapted in each country. This presentation p...

This paper reports data on factor analyses based on parental descriptions of their 12-year old children. A questionnaire containing 214 items/statements was administered to -and filled in by- 509 mothers and fathers of 12-year-old children. This list represents the first phase of questionnaire construction which is based on parental free descriptio...

Researchers studying personality development have been concerned with a variety of issues, one of them being the lack of consensus about the structure of adult personality. In the adult personality domain, however, many researchers have adopted the Five-Factor Model (FFM) as a guide to the structure of personality traits (eg, Digman, 1990; Goldberg...