The primary goal of the current study was to examine cultural differences in Chinese and U.S. adolescents’ and parents’ perceptions and evaluations of adolescent misconduct behaviors. A total of 395 U.S. and Chinese adolescents (ages 11-19 years) and 255 parents participated in this study. Each participant generated adolescent misconduct behaviors and rated each misconduct behavior as to the degree of wrongness. The misconduct behaviors were coded into 10 categories across three themes (moral offenses, drugs, and conventions). Results revealed significant cultural differences in a number of adolescent misconduct behaviors. For example, the United States generated more misconduct behaviors in weapon offenses and drug use than did China. These cultural differences were further complicated by an interaction between culture and generation. Chinese adolescents were more likely than U.S. adolescents to use categories of school, home, and social conventional violations, and considered these adolescent misconduct behaviors to be more wrong. However, it was the U.S. parents who considered adolescent misconduct behaviors in these categories to be more wrong than did Chinese parents.
Prior research indicates that there may be a disharmonious relationship between positive attitudes toward ethnic and cultural diversity and social identity within a socially dominant group. Recent work in cultural psychology, however, has implied that this disharmonious relationship may be confined to a specific representation of social identity. This research examined this possibility. Study 1 (N = 51,238) found that the negative association between national identity and diversity attitudes found among participants from Western societies did not extend to participants from non-Western societies. Study 2 (N = 222) recruited American and Japanese participants, disentangled two distinct representations of their social identity—collective and relational social identity—and found their differential associations with positive attitudes toward multiculturalism. Implications are discussed.
Past research on language brokering has primarily focused on the positive and negative outcomes that children of immigrant families experience from brokering. Little is known, however, regarding the positive experiences that language brokees—the immigrant family members for whom children broker—garner from participating in this interaction. Utilizing survey data from 120 Latina/o mother–adolescent dyads, we examined whether more frequent participation in brokering was positively related to mothers’ (i.e., brokees) and adolescents’ (i.e., brokers) prosocial capacities. In turn, we considered whether their prosocial capacities were related to feeling less apprehensive interacting with people outside their cultural group (i.e., intercultural communication apprehension). Multigroup path analyses revealed that mothers’ and adolescents’ frequent participation in brokering was positively related to general perspective-taking and empathic concern; however, only empathic concern was negatively related to intercultural communication apprehension. Our findings reveal that brokers and brokees may experience benefits with positive implications for their intercultural interactions.
In Uganda, depression is a growing concern, yet mental health professionals are in short supply, and help is often sought from traditional healers. To develop an integrated system of care, we must understand sociocultural aspects of depression including beliefs about help seeking and treatment. In a mixed methods study, we used semi-structured interviews and self-report measures to assess depressed patients (N = 30) seeking treatment in traditional healing (n = 15) and psychiatry clinics (n = 15) near Kampala, Uganda. We assessed demographics, symptoms, treatment characteristics, and explanatory models (EMs) of depression (e.g., labeling the problem, cause, impact on life, best type of treatment). We predicted differences across treatment settings. To further explore EMs, we assessed differences in EMs of patients and their providers by interviewing patient–provider dyads (n = 8 dyads). Patients in both settings were similar in demographics, symptoms, perceived cause, seriousness, and impact of depression. However, patients at traditional clinics were more likely to desire herbal remedies, while those in psychiatry clinics were more likely to desire modern medication. Patient–provider dyads also had different treatment beliefs, with patients desiring financial assistance, social support, and medication, and providers more likely to suggest counseling or advice. The study highlights the need to understand diverse beliefs and treatment trajectories in a multicultural context.
This study focuses on parenting, both as a belief system and a set of practices, in a context of cultural transition during immigration. Parenting beliefs and practices are modified in the process of immigration by negotiating cultures when new cultural sensibilities are constructed. The main focus of our study was parenting beliefs and practices among 1.5 generation of Jewish immigrant mothers from Former Soviet Union (FSU). We compared socialization goals of this group (n = 30) with first generation (n = 15) of FSU immigrant mothers and with secular nonimmigrant Israeli born mothers (n = 20). Our results indicate that the most important socialization goal—education, learning, and goal orientation—does not differ between the first generation and 1.5 generation of immigrant mothers, reflecting preservation of major values from the culture of origin. The second and third most important socialization goals of the 1.5-generation FSU immigrant mothers, self-confidence and social skills, are the same as the goals of the Israeli secular mothers, pointing to a process of incorporation of adaptive values from the host society. However, Israeli mothers posed happiness, positivity, and joy of life as their preferred socialization goal for children. Moreover, this study showed that the 1.5-generation immigrant mothers’ socialization goals and perceptions of good mothering are reflected in their behavior and discourse practices toward their babies during play situations.
Cultural neuroscience research examines how psychological processes are affected by the interplay between culture and biological factors, including genetic influences, patterns of neural activation, and physiological processes. In this review, we present foundational and current empirical research in this area, and we also discuss theories that aim to explain how various aspects of the social environment are interpreted as meaningful in different cultures and interact with a cascade of biological processes to ultimately influence thoughts and behaviors. This review highlights theoretical and methodological issues, potential solutions, and future implications for a field that aspires to integrate the complexities of human biology with the richness of culture.
Using World Values Survey data from several dozen countries around the world, this article analyzes the relationship between postmaterialist values and bribery (dis)approval in a multilevel framework. We find that people, who place stronger emphasis on postmaterialist values, tend to justify bribery more. However, the "ecological" effect of postmaterialism operates in the exactly opposite direction: A higher prevalence of postmaterialist values induces more bribery disapproval, and especially among postmaterialists themselves. In our view, this happens because the large number of people who internalized postmaterialist values generate positive social externalities which strengthen negative attitudes toward corruption. We outline a theoretical framework that explains why and how these externalities may emerge. Our results contribute to the literature on the sociocultural factors of corruption, provide a better understanding of the complex nature of postmaterialism, and also might be interesting in the light of ongoing discussions on whether moral attitudes are culturally universal or culturally specific.
Previous studies have shown that Easterners generally perceive themselves as having lower subjective well-being compared with Westerners, and several mechanisms causing such differences have been identified. However, few studies have analyzed the causes of such differences from the perspective of the cross-cultural differences in the meanings of important life events such as whether people receive approval from others. Specifically, events regarding others’ approval might have different meanings to and influences on Easterners and Westerners. Thus, the degree of fluctuation of people’s views of self-worth in response to these events (i.e., others’ approval contingencies of self-worth [CSW]) probably differs between Easterners and Westerners. This may be a reason for cross-cultural differences in subjective well-being. We investigated two samples of undergraduate students from Taiwan and the United States to examine the mediating role of others’ approval CSW in forming cross-cultural differences in subjective well-being. The results revealed that Taiwanese participants exhibited lower subjective well-being and higher others’ approval CSW than American participants. In addition, others’ approval CSW partially mediated the cross-cultural differences in subjective well-being. Thus, one reason for lower subjective well-being among Easterners was likely that their self-esteem was more prone to larger fluctuations depending on whether they receive approval from others in everyday life.
Domestic theories of democratization emphasize the role of values, interests, and mobilization/opportunities as determinants of regime change. This article takes a step back and develops a model of national personality and democratization to ascertain the indirect effect of national personality traits on worldwide variation of regime type. In particular, I theorize that personality traits influence a country’s regime type by shaping citizens’ traditional and self-expression values, which, in turn, influence the establishment and consolidation of democratic institutions. Data from McCrae and Terracciano’s assessment of the five-factor model from 47 countries allow me to assess this hypothesis empirically. Results reveal that countries whose societies are high in Openness to experience tend to have more democratic institutions, even after adjusting for relevant confounders: economic inequalities, economic development, technological advancement, disease stress, climate demands, and methodological characteristics of the national sample. Although the effect of Extraversion on a country’s democratic institutions is also significantly positive, the inclusion of confounders weakens the reliability of this association. In an exploration of the mechanisms of these associations, a mediation analysis shows that the relationship between national Openness and democratic institutions is channeled through secular and especially self-expression national values. The same analysis with the effect of Extraversion on democracy indicates that the association between this trait and democracy is only channeled through national self-expression values but not national secular values. In short, this article constitutes a first step toward a more complete understanding of the cross-cultural psychological roots of political institutions.
To make valid comparisons across countries, a measurement instrument needs to be measurement invariant across countries. The present article provides a nontechnical exposition of a recently proposed multilevel factor analysis approach to test measurement invariance across countries. It is explained that strong factorial invariance across countries implies equal factor loadings across levels and zero residual variance at the country level in a two-level factor model. Using two-level factor analysis, the decomposition of the variance at each level can be investigated, measurement invariance can be tested, and country-level variables can be added to explain differences in the common or residual factors. The approach is illustrated using two examples. The first example features data about well-being from the European Social Survey and the second example uses data about mathematical ability from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study. The input-files and annotated output-files for both examples are provided in the supplementary files.
We compare generational change in culturally related personal values as represented by the Schwartz values taxonomy, across two decades of individuals representing independent samples of the urban, Turkish workforce, employed in a variety of occupations and in numerous urban centers, in both 1998 and 2009 (N = 779). Results indicate that whereas self-transcendence (harmony) and conservation (collectivism) values have decreased over time, self-enhancement (mastery) has increased. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
In North America, Asians reliably report higher levels of stigma toward people with depression than do Europeans. Possible methods of reducing this discrepancy have rarely been explored. Asian undergraduate students (n = 132) were presented with one of four antistigma videos with two actresses: one portraying a student with depression and the other a professor. The videos used the concept of social proof, presenting either positive or negative descriptive norms, to effect change in stigma, measured by social distance. It was hypothesized that the positive descriptive norms intervention would show significantly greater positive change in social distance compared with the negative descriptive norms intervention. All videos were effective in reducing preferred social distance toward people with depression relative to the control condition. The effectiveness of the positive descriptive norm video was mediated through descriptive norms and self-efficacy. The effectiveness of the negative descriptive norm video was mediated through injunctive norms and perceived value of support. The findings can help guide interventions that aim to encourage social engagement with people with depression among Asian student populations. Manipulating social norms and increasing self-efficacy may be especially effective.
Cultural practices socialize people to relate to others in different ways. One critical way in which these interpersonal bonds are formed and maintained is via empathy, our emotional reactivity toward others’ experiences. However, the extent to which individuals from different cultures vary in their dispositional empathy, and the correlates of these differences, are relatively unknown. Thus, the current study explored cultural variation in empathy, and how this variation is related to psychological characteristics and prosocial behavior across cultures. Evidence from an original sample of 104,365 adults across 63 countries reveals that higher empathy countries also have higher levels of collectivism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, self-esteem, emotionality, subjective well-being, and prosocial behavior. These findings reveal that empathy is situated within a broader nomological network of other psychological characteristics, emotional expression and experiences, and prosocial behavior across cultures. The current study expands our understanding about how psychological characteristics vary across cultures and how these characteristics can manifest in broader national indicators of prosocial behavior.
The recent development of data analytic tools rooted around the Multi-Group Latent Class Analysis (MGLCA) has enabled the examination of heterogeneous datasets in a cross-cultural context. Although the MGLCA is considered as an established and popular cross-cultural data analysis approach, the infinite relational model (IRM) is a new and disruptive type of unsupervised clustering approach that has been developed recently by cognitive psychologists and computer scientists. In this article, an extended version of the IRM coined the multinominal IRM—or mIRM in short—is applied to a cross-cultural analysis of survey data available from the World Value Survey organization. Specifically, the present work analyzes response patterns of the Portrait Value Questionnaire (PVQ) representing Schwartz’s 10 basic values of Japanese and Swedes. The applied model exposes heterogeneous structures of the two societies consisting of fine-grained response patterns expressed by the respective subpopulations and extracts latent typological structures contrasting and highlighting similarities and differences between these two societies. In the final section, we discuss similarities and differences identified between the MGLCA and the mIRM approaches, which indicate potential applications and contributions of the mIRM and the general IRM framework for future cross-cultural data analyses.
Individual and cross-cultural factors associated with attitudes toward homosexual people were examined in this study. Using cross-sectional data from the sixth biennial European Social Survey, which represents 36,959 individuals nested within 28 European countries, successive nested models were tested using multilevel modeling (MLM). Results found that attitudes varied cross-culturally as a function of people’s country of residence—this clustering effect was controlled for in all subsequent models. Individual-level predictors (Level 1) of male gender, older age, less education, being an immigrant to one’s residing country, conservative political affiliation, high religiosity, perceptions that politics in one’s country were unfair, low openness to change values, low self-transcendence values, high conservation values, and high self-enhancement values were significantly linked with anti-homosexuality attitudes. At the country level (Level 2), a high emphasis on social conservatism and fewer civil rights for homosexuals was connected with more unfavorable attitudes. Findings indicate main effects of predictors at both levels; however, country-level variables tended to yield stronger coefficients than individual-level factors, highlighting the contributions of macro- and microfactors in simultaneously shaping attitudes toward homosexuality. Beyond these effects, interactions of country- and individual-level variables show political affiliation, religiosity, self-enhancement values as stronger predictors in liberal countries, but openness to change values, younger age, and higher education as stronger predictors in conservative countries. Implications are discussed for understanding the wide continuum of views toward homosexuality across people and countries.
Religion is an important topic to understand in cross-cultural psychology. More theorizing and empirical work has gone into Western religions than Eastern religions. We briefly review work on cultural differences among Western religious groups, using the framework of individualism and collectivism. Such work raises questions on how religions and cultures affect each other, how diverse cultural groups are, and how confounded country and religious identities are. We then ask some of the same questions about Eastern religions and propose new questions for a cross-cultural psychology of religion, such as what counts as a religion, and whether there are nonreligious parallels of religious constructs that serve similar functions (e.g., belief in a just world [BJW], or social axiom of reward for human application). In all, we propose that a greater attention to both Western and Eastern religions in cross-cultural psychology can be illuminating regarding religion and culture.
This study addresses the question of whether and when religious parenting is a bridge or a barrier to Muslim immigrant children’s integration. Integration was defined as children’s identification with the heritage culture and the host culture. Participants included 210 self-identified Turkish Muslim mothers, children (aged 9-14), and 115 fathers in Germany. All family members filled in questionnaires on identification with Turks and identification with Germans; in addition both parents reported on religious parenting and children on religiosity. Results of multivariate regression analyses revealed that religious parenting was negatively related to children’s identification with Germans but positively related to children’s identification with Turks through increased child religiosity. However, additional multiple-group analyses revealed that only the religious parenting of lower educated parents and first-generation mothers reduced the likelihood of children’s identification with Germans. The religious parenting of higher educated parents and second-generation mothers did not affect children’s identification with Germans but promoted children’s identification with Turks. Taken together, the findings highlight the diverse roles of religious parenting in cultural socialization processes in Muslim immigrant families.
Cross-cultural investigations addressing the development of individual differences are important because these speak to the generalizability of results and the extent to which the development of temperament and personality differs by culture. The present study was aimed at comparing manifestations of fear, defined in infancy as startle or distress to sudden changes in stimulation (e.g., facial/bodily expressions of fear), and inhibited approach to novelty (e.g., escape/avoidance), for samples from Spain (n = 51) and the United States (n = 102). We obtained data from mothers of U.S. and Spanish infants at 12 months of age, also observing these babies in the context of a structured laboratory procedure designed to elicit fearful reactivity. Data reduction efforts produced coherent observation-based fearfulness constructs for both groups, and individual indicators were also examined. Significant differences between U.S. and Spanish infants for the observation-based fear composite and component indices of distress vocalizations, bodily fear, and escape intensity, but not for the parent-report of this attribute, were demonstrated. A significant culture-by-gender interaction emerged for the laboratory-based fear composite and the intensity of facial fear indicator, wherein Spanish female infants exhibited higher intensity of expression, relative to the U.S. counterparts.
Collectivism and individualism are commonly used to delineate societies that differ in their cultural values and patterns of social behavior, prioritizing the relative importance of the group and the individual, respectively. Collectivist and individualist expression is likely to be intricately linked with the political and economic history of a society. Scholars have proposed mechanisms for both positive and negative correlations between economic growth and a culture of either individualism or collectivism. Here, we consider these relationships across the dramatic history of 20th- and early 21st-century Russia (1901-2009), spanning the late Russian Empire, the communist state, and the growth of capitalism. We sample Russian speakers to identify common Russian words expressing individualism or collectivism, and examine the changing frequencies of these terms in Russian publications collected in Google’s Ngram corpus. We correlate normalized individualism and collectivism expression against published estimates of economic growth (GDP and net material product [NMP]) available between 1961 and 1995, finding high collectivist expression and economic growth rate followed by the correlated decline of both prior to the end of Soviet system. Temporal trends in the published expression of individualism and collectivism, in addition to their correlations with estimated economic growth rates, are examined in relation to the change in economic and political structures, ideology and public discourse. We also compare our sampled Russian-language terms for individualism and collectivism with Twenge et al.’s equivalent collection from American English speakers.
We attempt to develop an integrative model of the factors that give rise to the overestimation of their abilities among the incompetent and underestimation of the competent by decomposing the specific conditions of the cognitive and motivational components underlying the self-assessment phenomenon from a statistical point of view. Hong Kong (Study 1) and European American participants (Study 2) took an ability test and assessed their performance. By plotting estimated relative ability against actual ability and fitting a regression line, we found that a comparative bias (intercept), reflecting participants’ self-enhancement motivation, and a less-than-perfect estimation accuracy (slope), reflecting participants’ cognitive bias, jointly contributed to the ability estimation line wherein low-performance participants overestimate and high performance participants underestimate their performance. In testing and validating the model, the relationship between participants’ estimated relative ability and actual performance was examined as a function of participants’ self-esteem (motivational factor) and perceived difficulty level (cognitive factor). Regarding the extent of self-enhancement, we found that participants with higher self-esteem rated their ability more favorably independent of their actual performance. Moreover, participants who perceived the task to be more difficult made more unfavorable self-assessments. Regarding the relationship between estimated and actual performance, we found that when the task was seen as more difficult, and, hence, less diagnostic of ability, participants were less likely to base their ability assessment on their actual performance, resulting in less accurate self-assessments.
This qualitative study explores the trajectories of drug abuse and addiction development among former Soviet Union (FSU) immigrant users. It is based on in-depth interviews with 19 Russian-speaking recovering addict counselors employed in Israeli addiction treatment centers. The interview analysis yielded two main trajectories: one of abuse deterioration and the other of abuse initiation in the context of coping with immigration. The core issue that characterizes both trajectories is the immigrant users’ sense of loneliness. Participation in treatment appears as a path for regaining their sense of belonging. Implications for prevention and treatment based on the interviewees’ reflections, as well as on extant literature, are discussed.
The literature suggests that religion may play an important role in the acculturation process of immigrants by contributing to the maintenance of the heritage culture and preventing identification with the mainstream. With few exceptions, studies on this topic have focused on religion as a whole by assessing specific aspects or dimensions (such as religious identification, beliefs, and practices) and creating a composite measure without analyzing the contribution of each dimension to the acculturation process. In this study, the relationships between specific religious dimensions and acculturation were assessed with a sample of 282 Muslim immigrants who were recruited in the northern part of Italy. Two regression models show that religious identification drives the maintenance of Muslim culture but is unrelated to the acculturation to Italian culture, whereas beliefs and practices do not contribute to heritage acculturation but are negatively associated to acculturation to the host culture.
People from all cultures are averse to looking dumb in front of others, especially if there is a large audience. However, there could be a difference between Face and Dignity cultures in the extent to which their members see themselves as dumb when they perform poorly before a large versus small audience. In the present study, Chinese and Americans were asked to imagine themselves performing poorly on tasks either in front of 10 others or one other and make judgments about how poorly (a) they thought and (b) others would think they performed on the tasks. Chinese were found to judge their performance more negatively in the large (vs. small) audience, but Americans were not. Audience size effect on self-judgments was mediated by how the Chinese perceived others to judge their performance in the large (vs. small) audience. Findings are discussed in the context of the logic of Face and Dignity cultures.
This study aimed at finding the kernel structure common to three different value taxonomies in European languages (Dutch with 641 values and 634 participants, Austrian with 496 values and 456 participants, and Spanish with 566 values and 532 participants). Values from those three taxonomies were translated into English, thus forming the basis for the connections between the taxonomies. Using the common values between the three pairs of languages, factor structures resulting from a principal components analysis (PCA) were pairwise compared based on congruence coefficients after Procrustes rotation. Moreover, PCA was applied to a set of 139 values that was common to the three taxonomies. Furthermore, a joint matrix of values was formed with 1,703 values and 1,622 participants. Using only the common values after translation into English, this matrix was compressed to a set with 413 values and 1,622 participants, which was subjected to simultaneous components analysis (SCA). The different procedures ultimately led to a common structure with five value components, each specified in four facets. Those value components are Interpersonal Relatedness, Status and Respect, Commitment and Tradition, Competence, and Autonomy.
Personality traits like Neuroticism and Extroversion, Satisfaction With Relationships, and Attachment Security are among the most important predictors of subjective well-being (SWB). However, the relative contribution of these predictors to SWB is seldom tested, and even more rarely tested cross-culturally. In this study, we replicate and extend Galinha, Oishi, Pereira, Wirtz, and Esteves, aiming to identify the strongest predictors of SWB, and in what way that contribution is universal or culture-specific, across such collectivist-individualist countries as India, Sweden, and the United States (N = 1,622). Structural equation modeling showed that Satisfaction With Relationships is a stronger predictor of SWB in India, while Neuroticism is a stronger predictor of SWB in Sweden and the United States, results consistent with prior Portuguese and Mozambican samples. These findings suggest that Satisfaction With Relationships is probably a stronger predictor of SWB in more collectivistic and less developed countries, while low Neuroticism is a stronger predictor of SWB in more individualistic and highly developed countries. Across all samples, Attachment Security and Extroversion showed very weak or nonsignificant effects on SWB above the contribution of Neuroticism and Satisfaction With Relationships, consistent with prior results. Neuroticism significantly mediated the relationship between Attachment Security, SWB, and Satisfaction With Relationships.
Despite beneficial effects of minority members’ contact with majority members, studies have repeatedly shown minorities’ tendency of having predominantly intraethnic social contacts, a phenomenon called ethnic homophily. This study aimed at examining ethnic homophily among mothers belonging to minority groups in Germany and Israel. Mothers from four minority groups participated. Groups were defined by level of societal segregation (higher vs. lower residential and cultural segregation of minority groups within a given society) and cultural distance to the majority society (close vs. distant in terms of religion and value similarity with majority population). We expected group differences, with ethnic homophily being highest among minority mothers living in more segregated societies with a large cultural distance to the majority population and vice versa. We also expected within-group variation, with higher levels of homophily being reported by women who use the majority language less frequently, have lower orientations toward natives, have higher orientations toward their own minority, and perceive higher levels of discrimination. The total sample included 1,223 mothers (ethnic German diaspora repatriates and Turks in Germany, Russian Jewish diaspora migrants, and Arabs in Israel). We assessed homophily in strong and weak social network ties. Results revealed the highest homophily (for weak and strong ties) among Israeli Arab mothers and lowest among ethnic German diaspora repatriate mothers with the two other groups located in between the two. Use of majority language emerged as rather universal predictor related to both outcomes in all minority groups, whereas minority and majority orientations were outcome or group specific, respectively.
Applying the proximal–distal framework, we were interested in whether the relationship between loss of face (LOF) concerns to depression and social anxiety were mediated by coping among 154 Asian Americans (AA). Utilizing a convenience sample from an online survey of AA, we ran ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions to examine whether direct and indirect coping explained the relationship between LOF concerns, depression, and social anxiety. LOF was positively associated with both direct and indirect coping. LOF also was positively associated with depression and social anxiety. The relationship between LOF and depression was significantly mediated by indirect coping but not direct coping. Higher levels of indirect coping explained the relationship between LOF and depression. In addition, the relationship between LOF and social anxiety was significantly mediated by indirect coping and direct coping. The relationship between LOF and social anxiety was partially explained by lower levels of direct coping and higher levels of indirect coping. LOF, however, continued to significantly predict social anxiety even after accounting for coping strategies. These results suggest that the LOF has a distal relationship to depression and social anxiety. Coping has a more proximal relationship to depression and social anxiety. By identifying proximal factors to depression and social anxiety, it is possible to reduce symptoms of depression and social anxiety among AA without mitigating the endorsement of traditional cultural values.
Zhongyong thinking (Doctrine of the Mean) is a traditional Confucius interpersonal style with emphasis on interpersonal harmony and connection. In contemporary society, is Zhongyong thinking beneficial to, or has Zhongyong thinking become an old-fashioned idea with trivial or even detrimental influence on mental health? The current study explored the relationship of Zhongyong thinking and mental health measures in two studies. Study 1 was a cross-sectional survey involving a large representative sample of 8,178 Chinese undergraduate students. We found that Zhongyong thinking was negatively associated with anxiety (r = –.23, p < .01) and depressive symptoms (r = –.32, p < .01), but positively associated with self-esteem (r = .28, p < .01). Compared with low-Zhongyong group, those who scored high on the Zhongyong Thinking Scale had substantially lower scores on anxiety and depressive symptoms, and had higher scores on self-esteem and life satisfaction. In Study 2, we experimentally intervened in Zhongyong thinking in 30 mildly depressed students, comparing mental health outcomes with a randomized control group (n = 30) who received regular supportive group intervention. We found that training in Zhongyong thinking was more effective in alleviating depressive symptoms compared with the control group. The two studies prove from different aspects that Zhongyong thinking still plays an important role in regulating mental distress and maintaining subjective well-being among contemporary Chinese young adults. Why Zhongyong thinking is beneficial, and how to transmit this traditional cultural heritage to promote emotion regulation strategies are discussed.
Theory of mind (ToM) is the child’s representational understanding of mental states (e.g., true and false beliefs) and how these influence people’s overt behavior. Past research in numerous Western and a few non-Western cultures has suggested that children throughout the world master a key milestone in ToM development, false-belief understanding, by age 5 to 6 years. However, before drawing theoretical conclusions about such apparent cross-cultural synchrony in timing, investigation of a broader range of non-Western cultures is crucial. We selected the Philippines because there has been no known previous study of ToM development in this population. A sample of 78 Filipino children aged 3 through 6 years took three standard false-belief tests and a measure of language ability in their mother tongue. The results revealed strikingly poor ToM performance. Only 12% of the full sample (Mage = 4.95 years) passed any false-belief test at all, and only 15% of those older than 5 years (Mage = 5.54 years; n = 39) displayed ToM by passing two out of three tests. ToM was unrelated to parents’ educational background, family size, and child language ability. Nor could methodological factors (e.g., type of false-belief test used) readily explain Filipino children’s exceptionally slow false-belief mastery. Further study is clearly needed to confirm and extend these intriguing results. Based on past evidence from other cultures, possible influences of parental conversation and socialization styles warrant further exploration in the Filipino context.
Previous research in the United States has revealed that children’s and adolescents’ understandings of social convention go through a developmental trajectory that includes an early adolescent phase "negating" the importance of convention. This study examined whether this developmental pattern would generalize to children and adolescents from the more traditional East Asian culture of Korea. Specifically, among U.S. samples, children in middle childhood have an understanding of conventions based on a concrete understanding of social hierarchy; early adolescents "negate" their prior understandings and view conventions as "merely" the dictates of authority; and in middle adolescence, U.S. samples establish an affirmation of convention as constituent elements of a social system structured by shared norms. Our hypotheses were that Korean children would not exhibit the negation phase associated with early adolescence and might develop an understanding of the societal function of convention earlier than U.S. samples. To examine this, interviews were conducted using culturally appropriate situations with 64 Korean children and adolescents in three age groups of 10 to 11 years (Mage = 10.1 years), 12 to 13 years (Mage = 13.2 years), and 15 to 16 years (Mage = 15.8 years). Findings revealed that, contrary to our expectations, Korean children go through the same developmental sequence of concepts about convention as observed with children in the United States. This implies that the developmental trajectories of understandings of the functions of social convention can be generalized to children in traditional East Asian cultural settings.
A total of 600 dream reports were collected from 300 Canadian university students, 150 female and 150 male, and their content analyzed with the Hall and Van de Castle (1966) system of categories. The main dream content categories were characters, aggressive and friendly interactions, positive and negative emotions, and dream outcomes. The main purpose of the analysis was to provide normative data for a large sample of young Canadians to determine (a) whether negative elements prevail over positive ones, as assumed by the threat simulation theory and (b) whether dream gender differences are consistent with differences in waking life, in accordance with the continuity hypothesis. Overall, findings support both theories. The final objective was to compare the Canadian data, relative to gender differences, with normative data established in 1966 with the original American sample. Findings for males and females and gender differences remain consistent with the American normative data for most categories despite a 50 years interval. Similarities in Canadian and American dream content reflect similarities between the respective cultures. They also attest to fundamental structural dimensions of dream content that transcend cultures. Other types of content analysis relative to themes, for instance, might be appropriate to highlight cultural differences.
Prior research demonstrated that an experimentally primed collectivist orientation increased repressive suffering construal (RSC): interpretation of suffering as being caused by deviance and having the purpose of maintaining social order. Furthermore, the effect of collectivism on RSC was mediated by social morality: the belief that society dictates morality. The current research provides the first cross-cultural empirical evidence for the links between RSC, collectivism, and social morality. In an investigation of religious subcultures, collectivist Mennonites endorsed RSC to a greater degree than individualist Unitarian Universalists and undergraduates, and this difference was mediated by collectivism. Examining the RSC construct in greater detail, two additional studies compared participants from China and the United States. Chinese participants scored higher on RSC’s teleological component—the belief that suffering upholds society—but not its causal component—the belief that suffering is caused by deviance. This difference was mediated by social morality endorsement.
Previous findings in culture and attention reported mixed results. While some studies demonstrated systematic cultural variations in patterns of eye movement, other studies reported that the magnitude of the effects is minor. To further scrutinize when cultural variations in attention are attenuated or enhanced, we conducted a new series of visual flicker tasks while making changes in focal figures more salient than those in the background. European Canadian and Japanese participants searched for a change in a pair of quickly alternating still images. The task consisted of two parts: In the majority of trials, we set a change in part of either the focal object or the background (change trials), while in some trials, a pair of identical images was presented unbeknownst to participants (no-change trials), which resulted in forcing participants to search for a nonexistent change for 1 min. We then measured patterns of eye movement during each type of trial. The results of the change trials indicated that there were no cultural variations in change detection styles, nor were there cultural variations in eye movement patterns except for the total fixation duration, suggesting in general that both groups exhibited similar bottom-up patterns of attention. However, in the no-change trials, there were substantial cultural variations in eye movement patterns: European Canadians substantially attended to the focal figures longer and more frequently than to the backgrounds, whereas Japanese equally allocated their attention to both the focal figures and the backgrounds, suggesting that culturally unique top-down patterns were more evident.
Prior work examining the role of cultural groupings (i.e., national membership) on personal values showed small to moderate amounts of variability attributable to culture, refuting the idea that culture determines values. We extend this research by examining the proportion of variance in values that could be explained by cultural membership. Because there is no definitive level of proportion of variance that would lead to a conclusion that values are culturally determined, personality, which is arguably not culturally determined, was used as a relative benchmark. Language groups were used as an alternate conception of cultural groupings. A large data set of 144,857 workers from across 31 major language groups revealed that language groups explained a significant and non-negligible amount of variance in personal value dimensions (7%-17%). Nevertheless, this was not significantly larger than any single personality dimension (3%-12%). In other words, our data failed to support the notion that personal values are strongly determined by cultural groupings compared with personality.
Previous two-nation comparisons have provided evidence that self-efficacy may be a protective factor against depression in individualist cultures, whereas relationship harmony may be a stronger protective factor in collectivist cultures. However, wider sampling and more specific measures of cultural difference are required to test these conclusions. Student ratings of depression and life satisfaction were surveyed in 10 samples drawn from nine nations. Culture-level individualism positively moderated the relationship of self-efficacy to low depression. However, culture-level collectivism negatively moderated the linkage of relationship harmony to depression. To better understand these effects, four separate nation-level predictors derived from dimensions of self-construal were employed. Effects of self-efficacy were strongest where cultural models of selfhood emphasized self-direction (vs. receptiveness to influence); effects of relationship harmony were strongest where cultural models of selfhood emphasized dependence on others (vs. self-reliance). These results illustrate the value of unpackaging the diffusely defined concept of individualism-collectivism.
Norms for dishonest behaviors vary across societies, but whether this variation is related to differences in individuals’ core tendencies toward dishonesty is unknown. We compare individual dishonesty on a novel task across 10 participant samples from five countries varying in corruption and cultural values. In each country, a die-rolling task was administered to students at major public universities and the general public in coffee shops. A separate group of participants in each country predicted that dishonesty would vary across countries and demonstrated a home country dishonesty bias. In contrast to predictions from independent samples, observed dishonesty was limited in magnitude and similar across countries. We found no meaningful relationships between dishonesty on our task and macro-level indicators, including corruption ratings and cultural values. These findings suggest that individuals around the world are similarly dishonest at their core.
Currently, international mobility is common. Living abroad requires adaptation to the new culture, and adaptation outcomes are influenced by various socio-cultural factors. The literature examining these factors is vast but highly specialized. This article reviews studies on adaptation in various groups of cross-cultural travelers to identify the social and cultural contextual antecedents that have been overlooked in each of the specialized research areas. Our review reveals three distinct literature fields: on expatriates and their spouses, on international students, and on first-generation migrants. Each of them conceptualizes adaptation in a different manner. The literature on expatriates is pragmatically oriented and centered on the work context, which translates into a preference for variables that can be easily linked to expatriate work outcomes (socio-cultural adaptation, work-related antecedents). In contrast, the literature on migrants focuses on psychological outcomes of adaptation and tends to understudy factors related to the overall efficacy of migrants’ functioning within the host society. The literature on international students is the most eclectic and diverse, both conceptually and empirically, but lacks a common direction. We discuss the differences between these three literature groups in detail and formulate several recommendations for future research.
The Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ) focuses on the "pure" cognitive components of emotion regulation thought to help people to manage and control their emotions during or after the experience of a stressful event. The aim of this study was to explore the psychometric properties of an Arabic version of the CERQ (CERQ-Ar) across four Arabic-speaking countries in the Middle East (i.e., Egypt, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar; N = 1,470). The original nine-factor CERQ model was confirmed, and these factors had moderate-to-high internal reliabilities, modest-to-strong interrelations, and meaningful associations with positive and negative affect. Results were robust across the four Arabic countries, suggesting that the same cognitive emotion regulation strategies appear to be present across different cultures, but the relative preference to use one or more strategies may quantitatively vary across cultures.
Using terror management theory, we examined whether mortality salience (MS; death-related cognitions) increased support for religious and political extremism and/or violent extremism in young Indonesian Muslims. Muslim and non-Muslim Indonesian students studying in Australia were randomized to an MS or control condition. Following completion of a distracter task, participants were asked to rate their agreement/disagreement with another Indonesian Muslim student’s (bogus) statements toward extremist views and violent extremist actions. After controlling for alienation, Muslim students in the MS condition reported significantly higher levels of support for extremist views than did non-Muslims. There was no significant effect of MS on violent extremist action in either Muslims or non-Muslims. The results suggest that reminders of death (MS) may lead young Muslims to be more supportive of politically and religiously extreme views, but not violent action. Our findings lend partial support to previous research in Iranian Muslim students; however, further research is needed to establish factors that can result in increased support for violent extremism.
In two cross-cultural studies, we examined the relationship between intrinsic religiosity (IR; inwardly held religious devotion), coalitional rigidity (CR; a rigid adherence to the superiority of the norms and beliefs of one’s own group), and intergroup hostility (IH; morally impugning or wishing persecution on members of other groups). For Study 1, we analyzed a number of single-item interview questions in a data set collected from 10,068 people in 10 nations. For Study 2, we conducted our own surveys in two multicultural samples: Vancouver, Canada, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In all 18 religious subsamples from both studies, there were null or negative independent relationships between IR and some form of IH, and null or positive independent relationships between CR and such hostility. The results suggest that this pattern of prediction, which has previously been found in North American Christian samples, generalizes cross-culturally.
Why some multicultural individuals think and identify differently to others is a question that is yet to be clearly answered. We suggest that a key antecedent to psychological differences among multiculturals is early immersive culture mixing, or experiencing multiple cultures simultaneously at home while growing up. We propose that innate multiculturals (defined as individuals who have experienced early immersive culture mixing) are cognitively guided by a single hybrid cultural schema and have a hybrid cultural identity. This would make them fundamentally different from achieved multiculturals (individuals who have become multicultural in other ways), who should possess multiple distinct cultural schemas and cultural identities. A quasi-experiment indicated that, as predicted, innate multiculturals were guided by a single cultural frame with respect to attribution and locus of attention, whereas achieved multiculturals switched between different cultural frames. Innate multiculturals also reported a more integrated cultural identity than did achieved multiculturals. These findings open a new avenue in multiculturalism research, with important potential implications of early immersive culture mixing for a range of individual outcomes such as creativity.
Social resources (i.e., number and nature of relationships with family and friends) are an important, yet largely unrecognized, feature of the sociocultural contexts of social class that influence psychological functioning. To assess the nature and content of social resources, we conducted semistructured interviews with American women living in poverty (n = 21) and working-class (n = 31) contexts. In contrast to previous research, which demonstrates that lower social class contexts foster greater social connection and interdependence than middle-class or upper-class contexts, this study revealed that poverty constitutes a clear cutoff point at which reduced material resources no longer predict higher levels of social connection, but instead social isolation. Our interview data revealed that women in poverty had fewer connections to family and friends, experienced greater difficulty with trust, and reported more challenges involving relationships compared with working-class women. These findings extend psychological theories regarding how social class shapes psychological functioning and have important implications for understanding the maintenance and reproduction of poverty.
Verbal deception may be considered morally reprehensible or acceptable depending on culturally relevant contextual factors and ethical perspectives. In the current study, Euro-Canadian (n = 180) and Han Chinese (n = 180) children ages 8 to 16 were recruited to investigate their moral evaluations of lying and truth-telling in competitive situations. The participants classified a story character’s statement told to either harm or help themselves or collectives of various group sizes (i.e., their class, school, or country) as a lie, the truth, or something else. Participants then made moral judgments regarding the statements and provided justifications for their evaluations. Chinese children’s evaluations became more nuanced with age: They evaluated lies told to benefit a collective as less negative than Canadian children, and truths told to harm a collective as more negative. These evaluations became more pronounced with the increasing size of the collectivity. Cultural and contextual factors relevant to evaluations and justifications of verbal deception are discussed.
The present study investigated whether psychological inflexibility is related to disordered eating in Japanese undergraduate students and compared the strength and pattern of the associations with effects in a sample of undergraduate students from the United States. Data from 200 Japanese (n female = 100) and 481 U.S. (n female = 380) college students were used. Contrary to prediction, female gender and higher body mass index (BMI), but not psychological inflexibility, were uniquely related to higher levels of disordered eating while controlling for age and psychological distress in the Japanese group. In the U.S. group, greater psychological inflexibility was the only variable that was uniquely related to higher levels of disordered eating after controlling for other study variables. Our findings suggest that psychological inflexibility may not be a useful concept for understanding disordered eating within Japanese college students.
Recent research suggests that cultural groups comprise subgroups differing in the combination of their self-identifications with their heritage and host cultures and following distinct trajectories of acculturation. This study aimed at identifying such subgroups, predicting group membership by pre-migration factors, and testing for acculturation-related experiences with the host culture over time. The sample comprised 366 adolescent diaspora migrants (59% female, 16 years old) from the former Soviet Union to Germany. A person-oriented and longitudinal approach using growth mixture modeling revealed three subtypes of cultural identification change. The first subgroup (Idealists) comprised adolescents with high and stable identification with their host culture and low but increasing identification with their heritage culture. The second group (Skeptics) showed low and stable identification with their host culture and high but decreasing identification with their heritage culture. The third group (Realists) reported medium-level and stable identification with both host and heritage cultures. Group comparisons showed pre-migration differences: Idealists and Realists most likely spoke the host-culture language (i.e., German) as a native language and Idealists reported the highest level of maternal education. Membership in subgroups also related to adolescents’ perception of their current situation in the host culture: Idealists reported less acculturation-related hassles with respect to language and socio-cultural adaptation. Skeptics perceived lower expectations by natives to get in contact with natives and higher expectations to spend time with members of their immigrant group than the average immigrant. Results highlight the heterogeneity in immigrant populations and their specific needs before and after the actual migration.
Developing an understanding of others’ minds (called theory of mind) has been a topic of considerable research effort. Literature on theory of mind and family influences within Western cultures has documented that children’s understanding of mind is related to parental and family factors such as the number of siblings, discussion about emotions inside the family, and parenting styles. However, research in non-Western cultures is scarce, despite culture playing an important role in shaping parenting practices and family atmosphere. The current study therefore investigated links between mothers’ disciplinary strategies and children’s theory of mind understanding in Iran. Mothers of forty 4- to 6-year-old children responded to six parenting disciplinary situations derived from a study by Ruffman, Perner, and Parkin. In each situation, mothers were presented with a challenging scenario which may occur in daily interactions and were asked what they would do if that the situation happens. Mothers’ answers were coded based on a variety of disciplinary strategies. Children were tested with a battery of theory of mind tasks, including false belief, diverse beliefs, and a Theory of Mind Scale. Results showed that the disciplinary strategy of Silence or avoiding direct encounter with the child was negatively correlated with children’s total theory of mind scores as well as false belief and diverse beliefs understanding. In contrast, the disciplinary strategy focused on Discussion was positively correlated to all theory of mind measures. This study presents important findings to better understand theory of mind development and factors associated with it in a culture different from previously studied samples.
In two studies, we examined the shared and unique meaning of acquiescent, extreme, midpoint, and socially desirable responding in association with the Occupational Personality Questionnaire (OPQ32), a forced-choice format personality measure designed to be less affected by these response styles, compared with personality inventories with Likert-type scales. Country-level response style indexes were derived from six waves of the International Social Survey Programme and from a meta-analysis of a social desirability scale. In the country-level correlational analysis, the four response styles formed a general response style (GRS) factor which was positively associated with (a) dominance (vs. submission) in interpersonal relationships, (b) competitive (vs. modest and democratic) feelings and emotions, and (c) data rational thinking. In a multilevel analysis, age showed a positive and education a negative effect on the individual-level GRS. Negative effects of country-level socioeconomic development and individualism and positive effects of competitiveness and data rational thinking on the individual-level response style were found. We conclude that country-level response styles are systematically associated with country personality measured by the OPQ32, suggesting that they can be viewed as having substantive meaning (i.e., culturally influenced response amplification vs. moderation). Implications are discussed.
Osterman and Brown demonstrated that U.S. honor states had higher rates of suicide than non-honor states and related this phenomenon to the higher incidence of depression and a reduced readiness to seek antidepression treatment in honor states. The present study critiques their research and re-examines the origin of the association between honor culture and suicide using a more expansive multi-year data set and controlling for culturally relevant factors (i.e., climate, gun ownership, population density, collectivism, access to health care, economic deprivation). Replicating some of their findings, higher rates of depression were related to higher levels of suicide in honor states but not non-honor states. In addition, we found state levels of antidepressant drug prescriptions to be related to lower levels of suicide in honor states but not non-honor states. A mediation analysis further revealed that levels of antidepressant drug prescriptions, but not levels of depression, mediated the relationship between honor culture and suicide, consistent with higher suicide rates in honor states being the result of a lack of treatment. The discussion focuses on clinical and cultural implications for suicide prevention in honor states.
Is democracy really a good thing because it improves well-being? Everywhere? Here we use multiple regression analysis to examine continuous associations between democracy and well-being across 137 countries. The results are clarified by breaking them down for 20 poor countries with demanding winters or summers (threatening habitats), 48 poor countries with undemanding temperate climates (unthreatening habitats), 23 rich countries with undemanding temperate climates (unchallenging habitats), and 46 rich countries with demanding winters or summers (challenging habitats). We show that democratic governance is negatively related to satisfaction with freedom of choice and overall happiness in threatening habitats and unrelated in unthreatening and unchallenging habitats. Only in challenging habitats of rich countries with demanding climates is democracy positively related to satisfaction with freedom of choice and overall happiness. This pattern of findings, which persists when controlling for a variety of societal risks, might suggest that the link between democracy and well-being can be particularly strengthened by empowering poorer populations in more demanding climates to generate more income.
In this study, the authors examine the generalizability of the Five-Factor Model of personality to the Romanian population by describing the translation and validation of the Romanian version of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R). Using data from five samples and multiple sources (self-reports, other-reports, and school records) and over two thousand participants, they examined the internal consistency, test–retest reliability, factor structure, self–other agreement, and correlations with age, gender, education, and academic performance. Construct-related validity evidence was obtained by examining the correlations of the NEO PI-R with the Big Five Questionnaire and Big Five Adjectives. The results suggest that the Five-Factor Model generalizes to the Romanian cultural context and that the Romanian NEO PI-R has sound psychometric properties comparable with normative samples in America and elsewhere.
In a demanding test of measurement invariance, we examine the relative cross-cultural generalizability of the five-factor model of social axioms in samples from 23 nations (total N = 7,275). With some modifications, results showed modest evidence of both configural and factorial invariance of the measure. Even such modest evidence is impressive in such a diverse sample and with such a stringent test, but nonetheless, areas are noted where the Social Axioms Survey could be improved to achieve better fit for invariance tests.
In this study, we examined whether culture moderates the correlates of psychological control as a function of the type of measure used. We administered two measures of parental psychological control to university undergraduates from India (n = 166) and the United States (n = 177), as well as a measure of participants’ self-esteem. One measure assessed harsh psychologically controlling tactics; the other relationship-oriented guilt induction. We argued that while relationship-oriented guilt induction might be deemed inappropriate in the United States, Indian parents might more frequently use this technique to promote familial interdependence, a culturally specific value. Harsh psychological control, on the other hand, is unlikely to be used for benign purposes in either group. We had the following hypotheses: (a) across groups, harsh psychological control would be more strongly associated than relationship-oriented guilt induction with lower levels of reported self-esteem; (b) reports of relationship-oriented guilt induction and harsh psychological control would be more strongly associated in the United States than in India; (c) reports of relationship-oriented parental guilt induction would be more strongly associated with lower levels of self-esteem in the United States than in India; and (d) the negative associations between relationship-oriented guilt induction and self-esteem for students from the United States would become non-significant when controlling for harsh parental psychological control. Support was found for all hypotheses. Unexpectedly, in the Indian group, relationship-oriented guilt induction was positively associated with self-esteem. The implications for the measurement of psychological control are discussed.
Intended self-presentation in job interviews was examined among university students in 10 countries (N = 3,509). The aim was to assess cross-cultural differences in the endorsement of self-presentation tactics, and whether such differences could be explained by cultural values and socioeconomic variables. The Cultural Impression Management Scale–Applicant Scale (CIM-A) was used that measures assertiveness, individual excellence, accommodation, and pointing out obstacles. Cross-cultural differences were found in endorsement of all tactics, most notably in individual excellence and pointing out obstacles. Importance assigned to self-presentation tactics was larger among individuals from cultures emphasizing embeddedness, mastery, and hierarchy, and with larger income disparities. The exception to this pattern was the American sample. Implications for personnel selection in international contexts are discussed.
This study addresses the question how the setting of assessment influences maternal playing behavior with their 3-month-old infants across cultures. Mother–infant interactions of 338 dyads from two cultural communities (German middle-class and rural Cameroonian Nso) were videotaped either in their home or in a laboratory setting. Results indicate that both settings of assessment are appropriate to observe cultural differences in maternal interactional behavior. As expected, rural Nso mothers show more proximal interactional behavior than German middle-class mothers, who focus more on distal behavioral strategies. The laboratory setting amplifies cultural differences by culture-specific effects on the playing behavior. Whereas rural Nso mothers show increased activities in the lab, German middle-class mothers’ behavior seems to be inhibited.
Rates of scientific and technological innovation vary widely across cultures, but why? Given the previously documented effects of disease threat on cultural values and traits that inhibit innovation, this variation may be due, at least in part, to regional variation in the prevalence of disease-causing pathogens. Five country-level measures of innovation were used to investigate this hypothesis. Preliminary results revealed that pathogen prevalence was significantly associated with all five measures of innovation. Further analyses revealed that pathogen prevalence significantly predicted innovation when statistically controlling for other purported causes of cross-cultural variation in innovation, such as education, wealth, and population structure. Finally, mediational analyses revealed that the effect of disease prevalence on innovation was mediated by levels of collectivism and conformity. These results demonstrate that the previously documented impact of disease threat on cultural value systems may have downstream consequences for scientific and technological innovation.
The present studies bridged across the conflict management and family psychology literatures to increase our understanding of intergenerational conflict within the context of immigrant Arab Canadian families. Using a quantitative approach, Study 1 (n = 71) found that although emerging adults reported relatively low levels of intergenerational conflict, honor-related conflict issues were salient to this population and not captured by the Intergenerational Conflict Inventory. Study 1 also found that emerging adults’ preferred conflict handling style was associated with overall levels of intergenerational conflict as well as cultural orientation and adaptation. Three conflict handling styles (avoid, integrate, and dominate) were associated with increased intergenerational conflict, whereas oblige was associated with decreased intergenerational conflict. These results were confirmed using a qualitative approach in Study 2 (n = 12). Importantly, Study 2 also suggested that oblige took two distinct forms in this population, as some emerging adults actually obliged their parents in the conflict situation, whereas others stated that they would but covertly disobeyed their parents.
Japanese participants endorsed a belief in emotional residue (i.e., emotions lingering in a physical space can affect a new person entering it) more strongly than Americans when the question was posed with explicit items. However, both Japanese and Americans expressed the belief when it was measured with indirect, scenario-based questions. Also, both groups thought that negative emotional residues would decay over time. We discuss future research directions.
This article investigates the effect of response styles (RSs) on rural–urban measurement comparability in Guyana. It uses the representative indicators response styles means and covariance structure (RIRSMACS) model and finds that traditional measurement invariance (MI) tests provide inadequate assurance of the absence of rural–urban measurement bias when RSs are not controlled. Even when MI is achieved, RSs can still differentially affect measurements and substantive results between rural and urban regions. In addition, a lack of MI may be at least partially due to RSs bias, but MI may also be due to RSs. Therefore, adjustments for RSs are necessary and researchers should be cautious about pooling data across rural and urban areas without controlling RSs.
A number of studies have focused on Bicultural Identity Integration (BII) to explore whether and how migrants and ethnic minorities, who experience multiple cultural belongings, perceive their two cultural backgrounds as compatible (vs. conflictual) and to study the impact of these differences on their psychosocial well-being. Nevertheless, there is a lack of research on BII among transracial adoptees, who also experience unique conditions of dual cultural belonging. Relying on a sample of 170 adopted adolescents born in Latin American countries and subsequently adopted in Italy (aged between 15 and 25) and both of their parents, the aim of the present study was twofold: to explore whether and the extent to which BII is related to adoptees’ behavioral problems and to analyze the influence of specific family and social identity variables on BII. Multivariate analyses using the structural equation modeling indicated that adoptive filiation (i.e., belonging to the adoptive family) and parents’ cultural socialization strategies are significant protective factors for national identity and ethnic identity, respectively, which in turn influences adoptees’ behavioral problems, but this relation is mediated by differences in BII.
Three dimensions of subordinate–supervisor relations (affective attachment, deference to supervisor, and personal-life inclusion) that had been found by Y. Chen, Friedman, Yu, Fang, and Lu to be characteristic of a guanxi relationship between subordinates and their supervisors in China were surveyed in Taiwan, Singapore, and six non-Chinese cultural contexts. The Affective Attachment and Deference subscales demonstrated full metric invariance whereas the Personal-Life Inclusion subscale was found to have partial metric invariance across all eight samples. Structural equation modeling revealed that the affective attachment dimension had a cross-nationally invariant positive relationship to affective organizational commitment and a negative relationship to turnover intention. The deference to the supervisor dimension had invariant positive relationships with both affective and normative organizational commitment. The personal-life inclusion dimension was unrelated to all outcomes. These results indicate the relevance of aspects of guanxi to superior–subordinate relations in non-Chinese cultures. Studies of indigenous concepts can contribute to a broader understanding of organizational behavior.
Normative socio-cultural influences may lead to parent–child value similarity over and above familial processes. Such influences, in which the mainstream position taken by people in a given culture leads to an average similarity between unrelated members of the culture, have been investigated for the most part by considering one country at a time. This has, however, left several questions open; among these is the question of whether parent–child value similarity is a matter of societal homogeneity in values. In an attempt to answer this query, the current study intends to examine the effect of the national and ethnic normative profiles, that is, groups’ average profiles, on parent–child value similarity, while assuming a cross-cultural perspective. It involves 212 mother–adolescent dyads from Northern Italy and 222 Jewish and Arab mother–adolescent dyads from Israel, all participants in the Value of Children (VOC) Study. In the more homogeneous value context of Italy, parent–child value similarity was strongly inflated by the broad socio-cultural context and can best be viewed as a general similarity to a national standard. On the contrary, in the less homogeneous context of Israel, when accounting for the effects of normative profiles, there was still similarity unique to a particular dyad: Mothers and children, especially from the Arab group, were similar to each other in those values which distinguish them from the other people in the country. All in all, the results help us to disentangle the origins and to interpret the actual meaning of detected parent–child value similarity.
Although differences between independent and interdependent self-construals have been extensively investigated, few studies have considered intra-cultural variability in self-construal in China. In the present research, we aimed at exploring ethnic group differences in interdependent self-construal. We first compared self-reported importance of the private self, relational self, and collective self between the Uyghur and the Han—two ethnic groups in China. The results show that the Han viewed the collective self to be less important than the private self and the relational self, while the Uyghur exhibited a different pattern, rating the collective self as more important than the private self and the relational self (Study 1). Three follow-up self-referential memory experiments provided further support for the difference in interdependent self-construal between the Han and the Uyghur. Specifically, only the Han participants exhibited significantly better memories of mother-referenced information than famous-person-referenced information (Study 2). In contrast, only the Uyghur participants exhibited significantly better memories of group-referenced information (Studies 3 and 4). These marked ethnic differences in interdependent self-construal suggest that the Han privilege the relational self and the Uyghur the collective self, thus highlighting the intra-cultural variability of interdependent self-construal in Chinese populations.
The heritage of a nation founded by devout Puritan Protestants has had wide-ranging effects on U.S. culture and, as experimental evidence suggests, continues to exert an implicit influence on the feelings, judgments, and behaviors of contemporary Americans. The United States is distinguished by a faith in individual merit and traditional values uncommon among economically developed democracies, both of which have been traced, in part, to the moral ideals of the founding Protestant communities. Calvinist Protestantism has further profoundly shaped American workways, including the moralization of work and the manifestation of professional norms that prescribe impersonal and unemotional workplace interactions. The implicit influence of traditional Protestant beliefs extends not only to devout American Protestants, but even to non-Protestant and less-religious Americans.
This study tests the hypothesis that societal change from subsistence agriculture to a market economy with higher levels of formal schooling leads to an increase in individualistic values that guide human development. Values relating to adolescent development and the transition to adulthood were compared across three generations of women in 18 families in the Maya community of Zinacantán in southern Mexico. Grandmothers grew up in Zinacantán when it was a farming community; mothers grew up during the introduction of commerce in the late 1970s and 1980s; daughters are now experiencing adolescence with an opportunity to attend high school in their community. Comparisons were also conducted between 40 female and male adolescents in high school and a matched sample of 40 adolescents who discontinued school after elementary. Values were measured using eight ethnographically derived social dilemmas about adolescent relationships with parents and peers, work and family gender roles, and sexuality and partnering. One character in the dilemmas advocates for interdependent values; a second character advocates for independent values. High school adolescents were more likely to endorse characters articulating independent values than non–high school adolescents, mothers, and grandmothers. Involvement in a market economy was also associated with higher levels of independent value endorsement in the mother and grandmother generations. Results suggest that the introduction of commerce drove value changes between grandmother and mother generations, and now schooling drives change. Qualitative examples of participants’ responses also illustrate how families negotiate shifting values.
Building upon existing measures, four new brief acculturation scales are presented, measuring sociocultural adaptation, psychological adaptation, perceived cultural distance, and acculturation orientation. Following good scale reliability in initial samples, the English scales were translated into nine different languages (Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Thai, and Turkish). The translated scales were administered to a large sample of sojourners (N = 1,929), demonstrating good reliability and adequate structural equivalence across languages. In line with existing theory, sociocultural adaptation and psychological adaptation were positively correlated, and showed a negative association with perceived cultural distance. General measures of well-being were correlated with adaptation and distance, with better adaptation relating to higher well-being, and more distance relating to lower well-being. Acculturation orientation toward the home and host culture were measured separately and a weak negative correlation was found between the two, supporting their independence. Arguing against dichotomization, these subscales were analyzed as continuous variables. Regression analysis showed sojourners to be better adapted, if they were oriented more toward the host culture and less toward the home culture. These new scales are proposed as alternatives to existing measures.
The minimal group effect (MGE) is one of the most robust psychological findings in studies of intergroup conflict, yet there is little evidence comparing its magnitude across cultures. Recent evidence suggests that the MGE is due in part to a projection of one’s own perceived characteristics onto the novel in-group. Because of cultural variability in self-enhancement motivations, we thus expected that those from East Asian cultures would exhibit a diminished MGE relative to Westerners. A large and diverse sample of Japanese and American participants completed a traditional minimal group study. American participants were more likely to show an in-group bias in group identification, perceived group intelligence, perceived group personality traits, and resource allocation. Furthermore, these cultural differences were partially mediated by self-esteem. We discuss the implication of these findings for theories of intergroup conflict and suggest multiple directions for future cross-cultural research on the MGE.
As a core feature of musical rituals around the world, humans synchronize their movements to the pulse of a shared acoustic pattern—a behavior called rhythmic entrainment. The purpose of the present study was (a) to examine the development of rhythmic entrainment with a focus on the role of experience and (b) to follow one line of evidence concerning its adaptive function. We hypothesized (a) that children learn how to synchronize movements to sound during social interactions, where they experience this behavior as a convention of the surrounding culture’s practice, and (b) that rhythmic entrainment has an adaptive value by allowing several people to coordinate their actions, thereby creating group cohesion and ultimately promoting cooperativeness. We compared the spontaneous synchronization behavior of Brazilian and German preschool children during joint drumming with an experimenter, either vis-à-vis or separated by a curtain, versus drumming along a playback beat. Afterward, we measured the children’s prosocial tendencies toward the experimenter. We found that Brazilian children were more likely than German children to spontaneously synchronize their drumming in a social setting, even if the codrummer was hidden from view. According to hypothesis, the variation in individual synchronization accuracy between and within the two samples could be partly explained by differences in individual experience with active musical practice, as revealed by parental interviews. However, we found no differences in children’s prosocial tendencies depending on whether they just had drummed alone or together with the experimenter.
Bicultural Identity Integration (BII), or biculturals’ perceived compatibility between their two cultural identities, has been found to predict a variety of psychological processes and behavioral outcomes. However, it is not clear why biculturals differ in their levels of BII. We suggest that the valence of bicultural experiences influences BII. Furthermore, we predict that biculturals’ level of BII can be changed momentarily by recalling valenced bicultural experiences. An experimental study manipulating recall of positive or negative bicultural experiences found that recalling positive bicultural experiences increased BII, whereas recalling negative bicultural experiences decreased BII. However, recalling experiences irrelevant to bicultural experiences did not change BII. Theoretical and practical implications of the malleability of BII are discussed.
Fischer and Schwartz demonstrated that values vary much more within countries than between countries. This challenges the prevailing conception of culture as shared meaning systems, with high consensus, in which values play a central role. This article offers a concept of culture that does not assume shared individual values. It views societal culture as the hypothetical, latent, normative value system that underlies and justifies the functioning of societal institutions. As such, culture is external to individuals. But if culture is not in the minds of individuals, can it be measured by aggregating individuals’ values? This article explicates the links between the latent culture and individual values, mediated through societal institutions that partially shape the beliefs, values, behaviors, and styles of thinking of societal members. It discusses the reasons for low value consensus among individuals and the justification for inferring cultural value emphases from aggregated individual values.
Paternalistic leadership has been claimed to be one dominant leadership style in Asia. However, research failed to assess its comparability and applicability across East Asian contexts. The triad model of paternalistic leadership entails elements of authoritarian, benevolent, and moral character leadership. This article investigates the triad model of paternalistic leadership in mainland China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Paternalistic leadership occurs in an equivalent three-factorial structure indicating the applicability of the triad model, whereas some of the item intercepts vary between the four East Asian employee samples. These findings indicate generalizability of the meaning attributed to paternalistic leadership via three components, whereas the different measurement intercepts epitomize culture-specific scales across the four Asian contexts. The assessment of weak and strong measurement invariance is essential for an emerging cross-cultural research on paternalistic leadership by establishing evidence for the applicability and generalizability (including their boundaries) across cultural contexts.
Asian students on average not only performed better than other ethnic groups as documented in multinational achievement tests, but also in general showed more negative emotions and test anxiety. We argued that this seemingly paradoxical achievement pattern was rooted in the endorsement of social-oriented achievement motivation (SOAM) among Asian students. Within SOAM, academic achievement is construed as an obligation to parents and significant others. This research tested if Chinese students endorsing SOAM would indeed show goal endorsement, emotions, and behavioral tendency that typify obligatory endeavors in academic settings. First, endorsing SOAM indeed was associated with viewing academic achievement as indicative of a person’s obligation (Study 1); the stronger the individuals held this link, the more they felt guilty and a failure when they met with academic setbacks (Study 2); endorsing SOAM was associated with experiencing anxiety in taking examination (test anxiety; Studies 4 and 5) and feeling agitated (guilt, shame, and anxiety) in the face of setbacks (Studies 3 and 4), and associated with performance (demonstration and avoidance) goals (Studies 3, 4, and 5), achieving and surface approaches to learning (Studies 4 and 5). Finally, in comparison with those endorsing low SOAM, students endorsing high SOAM indeed spent more time and effort in studying and were also more likely to endorse performance demonstration goals and achieving approach to learning, and as a result achieved better actual examination performance (Study 5). These findings suggest that SOAM sets up a meaning system within which academic achievement is construed as an obligation.
This study examines predictors of life satisfaction that are more distal (spousal normative beliefs and attitudes) and more proximal (marital satisfaction) in 404 mainstreamers, 375 Western, and 195 non-Western immigrants living in the Netherlands. In the immigrant groups, we used ethnic and mainstream identity and perceived discrimination as distal predictors. Results revealed that path models in which proximal variables mediated the relation between distal variables and outcomes were valid in all groups. Significant, yet small group differences were found between the non-Western immigrants and Western immigrants on all scales (to a lesser extent between non-Western immigrants and mainstreamers). Traditional marital types and perceived discrimination were more prevailing in the non-Western group, whereas a harmonious marital type, mainstream identity, and marital satisfaction were more salient in the Western group. The mainstream Dutch group was similar to the Western group in all marriage-related aspects. Validity of marriage models were discussed in light of a bottom-up approach to life satisfaction. Group differences and similarities were discussed in terms of differences in family formation and structure as well as adjustment to the Dutch society.
Since the Enlightenment, rationality has been set above intuition and associated with male thought, while intuition has become linked with female thought. Do these stereotypes still exist today? If they do, are they the same for different domains of life? And are they stable across age groups, gender, and culture? We investigated these questions in two countries that differ in women’s traditional roles, using representative national samples of 1,016 people in Germany and 1,002 people in Spain. Participants reported their beliefs about men and women’s intuitions for nine personal and professional domains. The main results are as follows: Substantial stereotypes about intuition exist, are highly domain-specific rather than general and, strikingly, do not differ in sign and size between age groups. Moreover, in every domain, substantial in-group preferences exist: Females believe more strongly in the intuitive power of women, and males in that of men. Across domains, stereotypes about gender-specific intuition are more frequent in Germany, even though Spain has a stronger Catholic tradition and political history of conservative gender roles.
The refined theory of basic human values (Schwartz et al., 2012) divides the circular continuum of values into 19 motivationally distinct values. Research with a new questionnaire discriminated these values in 10 countries and demonstrated the benefits of the finer distinctions. We ask, whether researchers can gain by applying the refined theory to the large repository of available data gathered with the 40-Item Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ40)? How many, if any, of the more refined values can be distinguished in PVQ40 data, and does this provide improved understanding of the topics studied? We addressed these questions with data from 13 countries on four continents (total N = 7,352). Theory-based multidimensional scaling and confirmatory factor analyses in each country revealed several more narrowly defined values in the PVQ data. Examples from 14 countries demonstrated that these refinements can increase predictive and explanatory power.
Research shows that performing positive activities, such as expressing gratitude and doing acts of kindness, boosts happiness. But do specific positive activities work equally well across cultures? Our study examined the role of culture–activity fit by testing two positive activities across two cultures. Participants from the United States (n = 250) and South Korea (n = 270) were randomly assigned to express gratitude, perform kind acts, or engage in a neutral activity for the first half of a 6-week positive activity intervention. Multilevel growth modeling analyses revealed that the effect of practicing gratitude or kindness was moderated by culture: U.S. participants increased in well-being (WB) from both activities, 11 = 0.19, SE = 0.06, t(511) = 3.04, p = .0006; 12 = 0.11, SE = 0.06, t(511) = 1.73, p = .03 (compared with the control group), but South Korean participants benefited significantly less from practicing gratitude than did U.S. participants, 13 = –0.24, SE = 0.07, t(511) = –3.36, p = .002. South Korean participants, however, showed similar increases in WB as did U.S. participants when performing kind acts, 14 = –0.06, SE = 0.07, t(511) = –0.82, ns. Finally, although greater self-reported effort yielded significantly larger increases in WB for U.S. participants, the effect of effort was not as strong for South Korean participants. We posit that, due to their dialectical philosophical tradition, South Koreans might have been more prone to feel mixed emotions (e.g., indebtedness and gratitude) while engaging in the gratitude letter activity than did U.S. participants.
The present study focused on the assessment of imitation performance in a large sample of 6- and 9-month-old infants from two different cultural contexts: German middle-class infants from urban areas and Nso infants from a rural area in northwestern Cameroon were tested by using age-adapted deferred imitation tasks that were varied regarding their cultural familiarity (two types of instruments each being highly familiar for one of the two cultural contexts). Within both cultural groups and without being influenced by the cultural familiarity of the instruments, infants performed more target actions in the test compared with the baseline phase, even though this difference did not yield significance in the group of 6-month-old Cameroonian Nso infants. Moreover, a higher mean number of imitated actions has been observed for 9-month-olds compared with 6-month-olds demonstrating an age-related improvement of infants’ learning ability. Furthermore, at 9 months of age, German infants showed a higher level of baseline activity compared with the infants in the Cameroonian sample, which is assumed to be based on differences regarding the degree of object experiences. Results provide evidence that early in infancy, imitation is a universal learning tool in different cultural environments.
This study was aimed at contributing to the understanding of cultural parenting strategies in a context of immigration. Socialization goals (SGs) and parenting behaviors during interaction with 3-month-old infants of first-generation West African immigrant mothers in Italy and autochthonous Italian mothers were compared. The relation between SGs and maternal behaviors within the two groups was also examined. As expected, results showed that West African immigrant mothers placed more emphasis on SGs related to hierarchical relatedness and a proximal parenting style than Italian mothers, who emphasized SGs related to psychological autonomy and a distal parenting style. Although there were no significant differences in the amount of overall vocal/verbal behaviors between the two samples, West African immigrant mothers showed longer durations of rhythmic vocalizing and singing than Italian mothers, who showed more affectionate talking. Compared with the literature on West African parenting strategies, this result suggests a possible increased amount of talking of immigrant mothers in the new language-driven environment, but maintenance of a protosong structure typical of their culture of origin. Furthermore, a significant association between socialization goals and parenting behaviors was found in the Italian group of mothers but not in the sample of immigrant mothers, suggesting that the weaker links between goals and behaviors in the immigrant sample may express a reorganization in the composition of parenting beliefs and practices.
Bleuler and Freud claimed that conflicting feelings toward an attitude object, or ambivalence, may be associated with psychological maladjustment. While their viewpoint seems generally accepted in Western cultures, it is less clear whether it applies in other cultures. Two studies investigated whether self-ambivalence (SA; the co-presence of contrary evaluations of the self as an attitude object) is associated with several common manifestations of mental health in America (one study) and Japan (two studies). In Study 1, participants were 152 American and 162 Japanese college students. Results indicated that American participants were significantly higher in self-esteem (SE), and significantly lower in SA and depression than the Japanese participants, but did not differ in pessimism or anxiety, and that SA was associated with higher pessimism, anxiety, and depression in America, but associated with lower pessimism and uncorrelated with anxiety and depression in Japan. In Study 2, involving 165 Japanese participants, a negative relationship was found between SE and neuroticism, pessimism, anxiety, and depression, and a positive relationship between SE and life satisfaction, but no relationship was found between SA and neuroticism, pessimism, life satisfaction, anxiety, or depression. However, SE and SA were modestly correlated, suggesting that SA is not only not inimical to mental health (in Japan) but may actually be (at least modestly) beneficial. Culture-specific mental health implications of SA are discussed.
This study investigated language data collected in 1978-1979 from ninety-six 3- to 5-year-old children in four different non-Western cultures: Garifuna in Belize, Logoli in Kenya, Newars in Nepal, and Samoans in America Samoa. There were 24 children per culture; half of the children were 3 years of age, and half were 5 years of age. The study examined the use of information-seeking questions in everyday life situations and the proportion of explanation-seeking questions (why-questions) in these communities relative to those reported among Western samples. Results revealed that the number of information-seeking questions does not differ from those of Western samples, but the proportion of explanation-seeking questions was much lower than that reported for Western children. Implications of these findings are discussed.
This study examines the association of gender role orientations to juvenile violent offending in a sample of nearly 500 Dutch and Moroccan-Dutch adolescent boys. While results from this study support the hypothesis that an ethnic minority background is associated with higher prevalence rates in serious violent offending, direct examination of the effects of ethnicity on serious violent offending demonstrated the influential role of gender role orientations in the prevalence rates of serious violent offending. Specifically, lower class boys and Moroccan-Dutch boys reported more conventional gender role attitudes than their counterparts. The results highlight the importance of considering the need to provide positive male role models who provide concrete information about how to behave, as source of support and guidance, but also to provide concrete information to boys regarding what is possible for them as members of specific social groups. The psychosocial need for affirmation, convention, and support may be an important consideration in addressing violent offending.
The present study focused on the function of autonomy for individuals from a collectivistic culture, thereby differentiating between two prevailing conceptualizations of autonomy—namely, autonomy as independence and autonomy as self-endorsed functioning. Participants were 573 Chinese adolescents from both urban and rural regions. Autonomy as independence (versus dependence) was operationalized as the degree of independent decision making within the family, whereas autonomy as self-endorsed (versus controlled) functioning was operationalized in terms of the degree of self-endorsement reflected in motives underlying both independent and dependent decision making. Basic psychological need satisfaction was examined as an explanatory mechanism (i.e., mediator) of the association between autonomy and well-being. Results showed that relatively more self-endorsed motives for both independent and dependent decision making yielded a unique positive relation with psychological well-being, with psychological need satisfaction playing an intervening role in these associations. In contrast, the degree of independent decision making as such did not yield any significant relations with well-being or need satisfaction. Moreover, individual differences in collectivistic cultural orientation did not moderate any of the above associations. Discussion focuses on the distinction between the two viewpoints of autonomy and their meaning for Chinese adolescents.
Returning to a sample of Ingrian Finnish migrants (N = 136) in which postmigration change in personal values has previously been documented, we investigated the permanency of such value change. Personal values, measured within the framework provided by Schwartz’s (1992) values theory, were previously measured prior to migration and 1 year after migration. We now add a second follow-up, conducted 2 years after migration. At this time, the changes observed at the first follow-up were dissipating. Specifically, Universalism and Security values were now on the decline after having been elevated at the first follow-up (an inverted U-shape), and Achievement values were increasing in importance after having previously diminished (a U-shape). Personal values appear to react to changing social circumstances but then return close to their baseline levels. The results of the present research constitute the first longitudinal evidence for a rebound effect in personal values.
Intercultural contact may lead to temporary phases of acculturative stress but is also associated with personal growth. While this topic has been well studied, we argue that there has been a lack of systematic investigation in the form of panel data studies. The present article examines the temporal pattern of stress and self-esteem, with measures for sojourners and controls prior to, during, and post intercultural contact. The sojourner sample consisted of a group of Belgian adolescents who took part in a 1 year intercultural exchange program. Sojourners reported lower levels of stress and higher levels of self-esteem during the sojourn compared to pre-departure levels and controls. These findings were explained in terms of personal growth and acculturative resilience. Subsequent analyses also investigated whether stress and self-esteem could be predicted by intrapersonal (i.e., homesickness), interpersonal (i.e., social support), intergroup (i.e., identity, prejudice), and cultural distance measures. Stress was indeed associated with intrapersonal, interpersonal, and intergroup measures, but not with cultural distance. Self-esteem was associated with intrapersonal and intergroup predictors.
The Motivation for Ethno-cultural Continuity (MEC) scale was developed to capture the agency of minority individuals in the long-term acculturation of their group and their dedication to cultural persistence over many generations. Study 1 presents the construction and validation of a pilot MEC scale, an 18-item unifactorial measure demonstrating good reliability (α = 0.95), convergent validity via its significant correlations with Collective Self-Esteem (r = 0.67), Perceived Collective Continuity (r = 0.54), Perceived Group Entitativity (r = 0.32), and discriminant validity in that it was unrelated to attitudes toward Assimilation (r = -.10, ns). Study 2 confirmed the structural equivalence of the final 10-item MEC scale and examined its prevalence and function across samples of New Zealand Jews, Maori, and Chinese (n = 311). Good scale reliability was found across cultures (α = 0.94 to 0.95). As expected, higher values were found among Jews and Maori than Chinese. Together with traditional ethnocentric predictors, MEC predicted intentions for endogamy and in turn selective dating for Jews and Maori, but not for Chinese. Results are interpreted in terms of existential uncertainty experienced by "small peoples" and the impact of collective interests on individual behavior.
In the present study, we examined the family drawings of preschool-aged children from three cultural contexts that represented different aspects of autonomy and relatedness. The final sample consisted of 53 children from urban Western middle-class families from Osnabrueck, Germany; 63 children from rural Cameroonian Nso farming families; and 59 children from urban middle-class families from Ankara, Turkey. The children were of similar age and did not differ in basic drawing abilities. The family drawings varied with cultural context and the respective orientation toward autonomy and relatedness, specifically in regard to the number and position of family members, the depicted absolute and relative size of family members, the details of facial features, and the emotional expression. Additionally, the positioning and spatial arrangement of family members on the paper can be linked to the children’s familiarity with external frames of reference in drawings.
The study tests gene-environment interactions for explaining cross-national differences in social hierarchy values and beliefs. Greater threats are predicted to be associated with stronger endorsement and support of social hierarchies in the presence of population genetic deficiencies in processing threat-related information. Predictions are tested with data from 28 societies, focusing on hierarchical dominance values in teachers and student samples (28 societies) and support for central authority in representative samples (21 societies). The interaction between greater population frequency of short alleles of the 5-HTT serotonin transporter gene and presence of threats was significant in six out of the eight regressions. I discuss the findings in the larger context of interdependencies between biological and cultural processes and the importance of broadening our tool kit for studying cultural differences.
This article introduces a psychology of economic immigration as a field complementary to but separate from research on acculturation. A theoretical model of psychological disharmony is outlined, where hard work and thrift become the crucial elements of immigrant condition. Three studies are reported. Studies 1 and 2 were conducted among Polish immigrants in Ireland. These studies addressed personality comparisons between immigrants and nonimmigrant samples (Study 1: peer observations) and immigrant self-perceived changes (Study 2). Adaptive personality changes did occur as hypothesized, particularly in the domain of conscientiousness, which regulates work-related activities. This finding was restricted in Study 2 to a prospective time frame (change measured with time flow). Study 2 introduced four lifestyles: eudaimonia, hedonism, self-sacrifice, and alienation. Prospective change in conscientiousness favored eudaimonic lifestyle, but retrospective change predicted self-sacrifice. Participants in Study 3 were Eastern Slav and Vietnamese immigrants in Poland. Based on previous work on Confucian work dynamism, it was expected that Vietnamese would demonstrate greater work involvement, eudaimonic lifestyle, and thrift, compared to Slav immigrants. These hypotheses were confirmed, showing that within the general model of immigrant adaptation, there is room for cultural differences.
The authors investigate the role of intragroup functional diversity in influencing intergroup relations, defined as intergroup cooperation and group-level citizenship behavior toward other workgroups. Based on predominantly Western literature, the authors hypothesize that groups working in an American culture will show an inverted U-shaped relationship and that groups operating in a Chinese culture will show a J-shaped relationship. The two hypotheses are tested using 67 American workgroups in eight companies and 149 Chinese workgroups in 12 companies. The hypotheses are largely supported with some nuanced departure from the predicted curves. In particular, except for one negative linear relationship, American workgroups and workgroups with highly individualistic values display an inverted J-shape, with both homogenous and moderately diverse groups showing more positive intergroup behaviors than extremely diverse groups. Chinese workgroups exhibit a U-shaped pattern, with both homogenous and highly diverse groups showing the most positive intergroup cooperation. All Chinese groups show a high level of group citizenship behavior regardless of diversity. Collectivistic groups show the J-shape regarding both outcomes, as hypothesized. The article concludes with implications of findings for future research on workgroup diversity and for practices in cross-cultural management.
Cultural phenomena are usually viewed as possessing some temporal stability. Measured properly, the dimensions that they yield have convincing predictive properties and create clear geographic or economic clusters of countries. Using these criteria, we assess the nature of 10 World Values Survey items that address societal norms. We find that they form two factors at the ecological level. Only one of these (personal-sexual) is unambiguously a cultural dimension, associated with previous measures of conservatism and collectivism; the second one (illegal-dishonest) is not. We conclude that although some norms are within the domain of culture, others are only weakly associated with it. We also comment on the implications of our findings for Gelfand’s tightness versus looseness as a dimension of national culture reflecting attitudes toward norms.