Beyond God and Government : The Role of Personal Control in Supporting Citizens’ Well-Being in the Face of Changing Economy and Rising Inequality

Journal article

Nguyen, Thuy-vy, McPhetres, Jonathon and Deci, Edward. (2020). Beyond God and Government : The Role of Personal Control in Supporting Citizens’ Well-Being in the Face of Changing Economy and Rising Inequality. Social Psychological Bulletin. 15(1), pp. 1-21. https://doi.org/10.32872/spb.2663
AuthorsNguyen, Thuy-vy, McPhetres, Jonathon and Deci, Edward
Abstract

Based on previous theoretical models, the present research investigated three different psychological constructs (religious belief, trust in government, and the experience of personal control) as moderators of the link between country’s economic growth (i.e., Gross Domestic Product) and income inequality (i.e., Gini) on health, happiness, and life satisfaction. Using a large cross-national data set (N = 490,579), we found that personal control predicted health, happiness, and life satisfaction above and beyond reliance on God and trust in government. Religious belief predicted greater health and buffered the negative effect of income inequality on health only in wealthy economies, but yielded negative correlations with health in poor economies. The associations between personal control and trust in government with well-being outcomes were consistently positive across different levels of countries’ GDP and Gini. Further, personal control also served a compensatory function by buffering the negative effect of income inequality in wealthy economies.

Keywordspersonal control; religion; system justification; self-determination; well-being
Year01 Jan 2020
JournalSocial Psychological Bulletin
Journal citation15 (1), pp. 1-21
PublisherPsychOPen
ISSN2569-653X
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.32872/spb.2663
Web address (URL)https://spb.psychopen.eu/index.php/spb/article/view/2663
Open accessPublished as ‘gold’ (paid) open access
Research or scholarlyResearch
Page range1-21
Publisher's version
License
File Access Level
Open
Output statusPublished
Publication dates
Print03 Jun 2020
Publication process dates
Accepted11 Dec 2019
Deposited29 May 2024
Additional information

© The Author(s), 2020.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction, provided the original work is properly cited.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Nguyen T.-v., McPhetres J., Deci E. L. (2019). Research data to "Beyond God and government: The role of personal control in supporting citizens’ well-being in the face of changing economy and rising inequality" , https://osf.io/ckzg5/?view_only=6a5f54f7961b4292aaefc740fe7e9372

Nguyen T.-v., McPhetres J., Deci E. L. (2020). Supplementary materials to "Beyond God and government: The role of personal control in supporting citizens’ well-being in the face of changing economy and rising inequality" , https://doi.org/10.23668/psycharchives.2881

Place of publicationGermany
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