Engaging in prosocial behavior is considered an effective way to increase happiness in a sustainable manner. However, there is insufficient knowledge about the conditions under which such a happiness effect occurs. From a person-activity congruence perspective, we proposed that an individual’s eudaimonic orientation moderates the effect of prosocial behavior on happiness, whereas hedonic orientation does not. For this purpose, 128 participants were assigned to play a game in which half of them were explained the benevolence impact of playing the game (the benevolence condition), and the other half played the same game without this knowledge (the control condition). Participants’ eudaimonic and hedonic orientations were assessed before the game, and their post-task happiness were measured after the game. The results showed that participants in the benevolence condition reported higher post-task positive affect than those in the control condition. Furthermore, this happiness effect was moderated by participants’ eudaimonic orientation—participants with high eudaimonic orientation reaped greater benefits from benevolence, and their hedonic orientation did not moderate the relationship between benevolence and happiness. The importance of the effect of person-activity congruence on happiness is discussed, along with the implications of these findings for sustainably pursuing happiness.

In the focal article, Asselineau et al. (2024) pointed out the lack of research on literal silences in organizational psychology. They highlighted the potential benefits of quiet environments and the intentional practice of silence in organizations. In this commentary, we extend the contribution by adding a culturally sensitive perspective that advocates the critical values of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in modern organizations. DEI, briefly and respectively, concerns the representation of social identities with a focus and recognition of underrepresented groups, upholding a fair and unbiased system, and providing an affirming environment for individuals with varied identities (Akbar & Parker, 2021). A fundamental step to pursuing DEI in organizations is to recognize differences in employees' cultural preferences and experiences (Plaut, 2010; Roberson, 2019). We propose that the practice of silence is an area where such cultural differences manifest, as silence has varied meanings for and asymmetric impacts on people from different cultural backgrounds. Building upon emerging cross-cultural research on silence, we further provide practical recommendations for organizations to advance DEI through silence-related practices.

With increasing demands in work and life, successful self‐regulation of multiple goals becomes critical to the well‐being and performance of individuals and organizations. When pursuing multiple goals, individuals may use different strategies and have divergent preferences toward these strategies. Polychronicity, or the preference for multitasking over sequential tasking, has long been considered a unidimensional construct with two opposing ends. To empirically test this assumption, we reconstructed existing polychronicity items to explore a new scale that measures preferences separately and synthesizes different operationalizations of multitasking (i.e., concurrent tasking and task switching) (study 1). We found that multitasking and sequential preferences, while related, have distinct components and can co‐occur within individuals, challenging the traditional bipolar assumption (study 2). Finally, we used a behavioral task‐switching paradigm to simulate a multitasking environment. We found that consistent with past research, the preferences were not associated with behavioral performance but were associated with subjective experience (study 3). Our findings suggest that assuming multitasking and sequential preferences are completely antithetical can be an oversimplification. This research opens opportunities for future research on multiple goals.