Despite popular intuition, positive world beliefs poorly reflect several objective indicators of privilege, including wealth, health, sex, and neighborhood safety

N Kerry, KC White, ML O'Brien, LM Perry… - Journal of …, 2024‏ - Wiley Online Library
Objectives We tested whether generalized beliefs that the world is safe, abundant,
pleasurable, and progressing (termed “primal world beliefs”) are associated with several …

Psychologists return to the first question of Western philosophy.

JDW Clifton - American Psychologist, 2024‏ - psycnet.apa.org
When ancient humans gained the ability to investigate abstract questions, what first question
did they pose? This article offers a novel, swee**, historical analysis with important …

Beliefs that influence personality likely concern a situation humans never leave.

JDW Clifton, AJ Crum - American Psychologist, 2024‏ - psycnet.apa.org
Many of us—60% of humanity, according to one study—would like to change some of our
personality traits, such as decreasing pessimism or neuroticism. Dweck (2008) proposed …

Mindfulness Interfused with Humor: Insights From a Randomized Controlled Trial of a Humor-Enriched Mindfulness-Based Program

CT Kastner - Mindfulness, 2025‏ - Springer
Objectives Both mindfulness and humor are inherently connected to well-being. Recent
research found evidence for their combined effect in a joint training, the Humor-Enriched …

The world as I see it: genetic and environmental influences on primal world beliefs in a large Swedish twin sample

S Perizonius, LW Wesseldijk, JDW Clifton… - The Journal of …, 2024‏ - Taylor & Francis
Beliefs about the general character of the world–called primals–have received much
attention in recent years. Primals (eg believing that the world is safe) are associated with …

Implications of daily world beliefs for relationship satisfaction: The role of positive relationship illusions

EP Lemay Jr, JN Cutri - The Journal of Positive Psychology, 2024‏ - Taylor & Francis
The current research examined implications of day-to-day variability in beliefs about the
world's general goodness for daily relationship satisfaction and the mediating role of positive …

Social exploration: How and why people seek new connections.

S Tsang, K Barrentine, S Chadha, S Oishi… - Psychological …, 2024‏ - psycnet.apa.org
Just as animals forage for food, humans forage for social connections. People often face a
decision between exploring new relationships versus deepening existing ones. This trade …

Believing in an enticing world: Testing a positive psychological intervention aimed at increasing character strengths and well-being via world beliefs

J Hämpke, SJ Diller, N Kerry, JDW Clifton… - International Journal of …, 2024‏ - Springer
The Enticing world belief factor—encompassing beliefs that the world is interesting,
beautiful, abundant, and worth exploring—has been hypothesized to promote subjective …

Primal World Belief Research, for Skeptics

JDW Clifton, NS Love, N Kerry - Human Development, 2024‏ - karger.com
Sometimes skeptics are tempted to dismiss world beliefs as meaningful phenomena. Such
dismissal, we argue, is a mistake. How beliefs about many broad topics impact behavior is …

Theorizing “Primal World Beliefs”: A Relational-Developmental Account

MF Mascolo - Human Development, 2024‏ - karger.com
Clifton and his colleagues have proposed a dimension-based conception of “primal world
beliefs”–beliefs about “the overall character of the world.” Citing the potential importance of …