A time and place
Terry Pettijohn et al.
Current Psychology, December 2014, Pages 451-459
Abstract:
The facial features of the artists of the top Country Billboard song for each year from 1946 to 2010 were investigated across changes in U.S. socioeconomic conditions. When conditions were relatively poor, country music artists with more mature facial features of smaller eyes and larger chins were popular, and when conditions were more prosperous, country music artists with more baby-faced features of larger eyes and smaller chins were popular. Results extend previous findings with pop singers, movie actresses, and Playboy Playmates, and suggest the social and economic environment influences preferences for country singers across time.
----------------------
David Fielding
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
Past research has shown that the invention of the plow played a key role in human social evolution. The physical strength required to drive a plow gave men a comparative advantage in economically productive activity; this created gender norms that have persisted to the present day. However, there is an additional channel through which the invention of the plow could have influenced modern human societies: the creation of an economic environment favoring not only the sexual division of labor but also the selection of men with more upper-body strength. In this case, modern populations descended from plow-using communities should exhibit greater sexual dimorphism than others, and greater dimorphism should be associated with higher androgen levels in males. This has a direct epidemiological implication, because the incidence of many cancers is correlated with androgen levels. Using international data on cancer incidence, we show that there is a strong association between the magnitude of sex differences in cancer risk and the proportion of the population descended from plow-using communities. Although both of these characteristics are correlated with other socio-economic factors (such as the level of economic development), controlling for such correlations does not diminish estimates of the magnitude of the association between cancer risk and plow ancestry. In addition to their implications for cancer epidemiology, the results suggest that the international variation in gender norms might also be associated with variation in androgen levels.
----------------------
Proximity of Paired Nations Reveals Correlation of Masculinity With Individualism
Herbert Barry
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Hofstede measured four dimensions of national differences: Masculinity, Individualism, Uncertainty Avoidance, and Power Distance. The information was obtained from IBM employees in more than 60 nations. Correlations applied to the national scores were close to zero for Masculinity with each of the three other dimensions. Correlations can be misleading because of regional and other variations in a world sample of nations. Undesirable effects of regional variations can be minimized by correlating differences between paired nearby nations in their scores on the two dimensions. Differences between pair members revealed that the nation with a higher score on Masculinity usually had a higher score on Individualism. A wide range of quantitative scores enabled large differences between the pair members and minimized omissions of data because of the same score for both members on either of the correlated dimensions. National Masculinity is highly correlated with national Individualism when regional differences are controlled.
----------------------
American and Chinese Students' Calibration of Comprehension and Performance
Nannette Evans Commander et al.
Current Psychology, December 2014, Pages 655-671
Abstract:
In the present study we examined the ability of American and Chinese undergraduate students to calibrate their understanding of textbook passages translated into their native languages. Students read a series of texts and made predictions of their understanding of each text as well as the number of questions they would be able to answer correctly. Students also made postdictions of their test performance. Chinese students were significantly better than American students in calibrating their understanding of passages and predicting how many comprehension items they would answer correctly. Chinese students also outperformed American students on comprehension tests. All students were able to make more accurate postdictions of comprehension test scores than predictions. Results are related to possible instructional differences between American and Chinese students. Several possible directions for future research are discussed.
----------------------
Astronomics in Action: The Graduate Earnings Premium and the Dragon Effect in Singapore
Nicholas Sim
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper investigates the return to university education in Singapore using a new estimation strategy related to Chinese traditions where children born in the Year of the Dragon are believed to be superior. Because parents might time the arrival of their offspring on a Dragon year, this causes the Dragon cohort to be larger and university entry to be more competitive. First, we find evidence of a negative "Dragon effect" on university educational attainment. Then, using it as an estimation strategy, we find that university education has a ceteris paribus effect of raising earnings by at least 50% on average.
----------------------
Jenny Kurman et al.
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The main claim of the present study is that regulatory focus (i.e., promotion vs. prevention orientations) is an important explanatory variable of cross-cultural differences in actual and self-reported achievement-related behaviors and preferences, which include a component of autonomy. It adds explained variance in behavior above and beyond that of individualism/collectivism (I/C), and mediates the relations between I/C and behavior. Three studies are reported. The first compared Israeli Jews and Arabs on minimal initiation (n = 255), the second compared Israeli Jews and Japanese on creativity (n = 92), and the third compared Swiss, Mexican, and Indonesian samples on preference for mastery goals in education (n = 488). All three studies demonstrated the ability of regulatory focus scales to distinguish between cultures and to serve as meaningful predictors of actual and self-reported achievement-related behaviors. The measured I/C scales were found to be less relevant to behavior prediction than was regulatory focus. In most studies, regulatory focus scales mediated the relations between some of the I/C scales and behavior. The diversity of the measured behaviors and cultures supports the ecological validity of the findings.
----------------------
Martin Ljunge
Economics & Human Biology, December 2014, Pages 165-186
Abstract:
This paper presents evidence that generalized trust promotes health. Children of immigrants in a broad set of European countries with ancestry from across the world are studied. Individuals are examined within country of residence using variation in trust across countries of ancestry. The approach addresses reverse causality and concerns that the trust measure picks up institutional factors in the individual's contextual setting. There is a significant positive estimate of ancestral trust in explaining self-assessed health. The finding is robust to accounting for individual, parental, and extensive ancestral country characteristics. Individuals with higher ancestral trust are also less likely to be hampered by health problems in their daily life, providing evidence of trust influencing real life outcomes. Individuals with high trust feel and act healthier, enabling a more productive life.
----------------------
Mothers' Goals for Adolescents in the United States and China: Content and Transmission
Yang Qu, Eva Pomerantz & Ciping Deng
Journal of Research on Adolescence, forthcoming
Abstract:
This research examined children's socialization toward culturally valued goals during adolescence in the United States and China. Two hundred and twenty-three mothers listed and ranked their five most important goals for their children (mean age = 12.85 years). Children ranked the importance of the goals listed by their mothers and explained why they were or were not important to them. American mothers placed heightened emphasis on their children maintaining feelings of worth and pursuing what they enjoy. Chinese mothers stressed their children achieving outcomes, as did African American mothers. European American children's rankings of importance were the least similar to those of their mothers, and they gave the fewest autonomous reasons for importance, suggesting that their adoption of mothers' goals was weakest.
----------------------
Karina Linnell, Serge Caparos & Jules Davidoff
Frontiers in Psychology, October 2014
Abstract:
Urbanization impairs attentional selection and increases distraction from task-irrelevant contextual information, consistent with a reduction in attentional engagement with the task in hand. Previously, we proposed an attentional-state account of these findings, suggesting that urbanization increases intrinsic alertness and with it exploration of the wider environment at the cost of engagement with the task in hand. Here, we compare urbanized people with a remote people on a line-bisection paradigm. We show that urbanized people have a left spatial bias where remote people have no significant bias. These findings are consistent with the alertness account and provide the first test of why remote peoples have such an extraordinary capacity to concentrate.
----------------------
Lindie Liang, Wendi Adair & Ivona Hideg
Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, November 2014, Pages 282-289
Abstract:
Along with recent research uncovering distinctly Asian approaches to conflict management, we examine the experience and effect of relationship conflict on team identity in culturally homogeneous North American versus East Asian teams. In a longitudinal field experiment with student teams, we found that East Asian teams, compared to North American teams, experienced more relationship conflict at later stages of team tenure. We further found that, while relationship conflict undermined team identity in North American teams, relationship conflict did not influence team identity in East Asian teams. Our study counterintuitively finds that East Asian teams may be less influenced by relationship conflict than North American teams, despite their relationship maintenance orientation. We present several possible future avenues to unpack the psychological mechanisms underlying the distinct temporal patterns and outcome effects of relationship conflict in East Asian teams and implications for cross-cultural East Asian and North American teams.
----------------------
Cultural Variations in Global Versus Local Processing: A Developmental Perspective
Shigehiro Oishi et al.
Developmental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
We conducted 3 studies to explore cultural differences in global versus local processing and their developmental trajectories. In Study 1 (N = 363), we found that Japanese college students were less globally oriented in their processing than American or Argentine participants. We replicated this effect in Study 2 (N = 1,843) using a nationally representative sample of Japanese and American adults ages 20 to 69, and found further that adults in both cultures became more globally oriented with age. In Study 3 (N = 133), we investigated the developmental course of the cultural difference using Japanese and American children, and found it was evident by 4 years of age. Cultural variations in global versus local processing emerge by early childhood, and remain throughout adulthood. At the same time, both Japanese and Americans become increasingly global processors with age.
----------------------
Ko Kuwabara et al.
Social Psychology Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine how the timing of trust violations affects cooperation and solidarity, including trust and relational cohesion. Past studies that used repeated Prisoner's Dilemmas suggest that trust violations are more harmful when they occur in early rather than later interactions. We argue that this effect of early trust violations depends on cultural and individual differences in generalized trust. A laboratory study from high- and low-trust cultures (the United States vs. Japan) supported our claim. First, early trust violations were more harmful than late trust violations, but only for Americans; the pattern reversed for Japanese. Second, these patterns were mediated by individual differences in generalized trust. Finally, generalized trust also moderated the effect of trust violations in the United States but not Japan. By demonstrating that generalized trust is not only lower but also less important in low-trust cultures, our research advances our understanding of how culture affects the development of solidarity in exchange relations.
----------------------
Impartial Institutions, Pathogen Stress and the Expanding Social Network
Daniel Hruschka et al.
Human Nature, forthcoming
Abstract:
Anthropologists have documented substantial cross-society variation in people's willingness to treat strangers with impartial, universal norms versus favoring members of their local community. Researchers have proposed several adaptive accounts for these differences. One variant of the pathogen stress hypothesis predicts that people will be more likely to favor local in-group members when they are under greater infectious disease threat. The material security hypothesis instead proposes that institutions that permit people to meet their basic needs through impartial interactions with strangers reinforce a tendency toward impartiality, whereas people lacking such institutions must rely on local community members to meet their basic needs. Some studies have examined these hypotheses using self-reported preferences, but not with behavioral measures. We conducted behavioral experiments in eight diverse societies that measure individuals' willingness to favor in-group members by ignoring an impartial rule. Consistent with the material security hypothesis, members of societies enjoying better-quality government services and food security show a stronger preference for following an impartial rule over investing in their local in-group. Our data show no support for the pathogen stress hypothesis as applied to favoring in-groups and instead suggest that favoring in-group members more closely reflects a general adaptive fit with social institutions that have arisen in each society.
----------------------
Happiness, economic freedom and culture
Ayse Evrensel
Applied Economics Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
The cultural dimension of the subjective well-being (SWB)-economic freedom relationship has been largely absent from the current literature. This article's argument for the inclusion of culture is twofold. First, culturally distinct groups may view the desirability of freedom in general and economic freedom in particular differently. Second, the inclusion of culture may explain some of the results presented in the existing research, such as positive contributions of freedom to SWB being confined to mostly developed countries. In this article, the respondent-based results use the World Values Survey (WVS) data with over 180 000 subjects in 86 countries and indicate that freedom of choice felt by individuals is an important determinant of SWB along with health and satisfaction with finances. While the respondent-based estimations do not show any variation in the effect of freedom of choice on SWB among different religious affiliations, the cross-section data-set that contains the same countries as in the WVS data yields different results. When the latter data-set is used, the interaction terms between economic freedom and religious affiliations indicate that higher economic freedom increases SWB in mainly Christian countries, while this effect is negative for mainly Muslim and Buddhist/Hindu countries.
----------------------
Evolution of cultural traits occurs at similar relative rates in different world regions
Thomas Currie & Ruth Mace
Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 22 November 2014
Abstract:
A fundamental issue in understanding human diversity is whether or not there are regular patterns and processes involved in cultural change. Theoretical and mathematical models of cultural evolution have been developed and are increasingly being used and assessed in empirical analyses. Here, we test the hypothesis that the rates of change of features of human socio-cultural organization are governed by general rules. One prediction of this hypothesis is that different cultural traits will tend to evolve at similar relative rates in different world regions, despite the unique historical backgrounds of groups inhabiting these regions. We used phylogenetic comparative methods and systematic cross-cultural data to assess how different socio-cultural traits changed in (i) island southeast Asia and the Pacific, and (ii) sub-Saharan Africa. The relative rates of change in these two regions are significantly correlated. Furthermore, cultural traits that are more directly related to external environmental conditions evolve more slowly than traits related to social structures. This is consistent with the idea that a form of purifying selection is acting with greater strength on these more environmentally linked traits. These results suggest that despite contingent historical events and the role of humans as active agents in the historical process, culture does indeed evolve in ways that can be predicted from general principles.
----------------------
Olga Chapa et al.
Journal of International Consumer Marketing, Fall 2014, Pages 373-390
Abstract:
Understanding the consumer complaint patterns of response and the cultural underpinnings of their characteristics may facilitate the customization and timing of response to such consumer demands. We investigated complaint behavior differences between collectivist and individualist societies. Specifically, our study compared three consumer complaint patterns of response (voice, private response, and third party) across the individualism/collectivism continuum. We opted for the mall intercept technique in surveying our participants in four countries (United States, Egypt, Mexico, and Turkey). Our most salient findings revealed that the individualist consumer is very likely to demand redress and very likely practice speaking to others about their dissatisfaction. Collectivists would avoid the product before switching companies. All participants who voiced their dissatisfaction privately showed significant exit intentions. Interesting differences were also found among collectivist countries. Managerial implications are annotated.
----------------------
Inari Sakki
International Journal of Intercultural Relations, forthcoming
Abstract:
Social representations of European integration in the school textbooks of five European countries (France, England, Germany, Finland and Sweden) are analyzed. By analyzing the history and civics textbooks of major educational publishers and by presenting a double content analysis of textbooks of five European countries, this study aims to demonstrate what is written on European integration and how it is portrayed. The study shows how textbooks function to shape the identity space through articulations of the symbology of history and identity. The results show how European identity is only very rarely portrayed as an end in itself, but dominantly as an instrument for the nations to gain power in the globalizing world or even as a threat. Despite the efforts to Europeanize educational systems in the EU-countries, the story of European integration is told from a national perspective in each country and textbooks are used as vehicles of nationalism.