Know your place
Climato-Economic Imprints on Chinese Collectivism
Evert Van de Vliert et al.
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, May 2013, Pages 589-605
Abstract:
A still unsolved question is why humans create collectivism. A new theory proposes that poorer populations coping with more demanding winters or summers become more collectivist. Preliminary support comes from a province-level analysis of survey data from 1,662 native residents of 15 Chinese provinces. Collectivism is weakest in provinces with temperate climates irrespective of income (e.g., Guangdong), negligibly stronger in higher income provinces with demanding climates (e.g., Hunan), and strongest in lower income provinces with demanding climates (e.g., Heilongjiang). Multilevel analysis consolidates the results by demonstrating that collectivism at the provincial level fully mediates the interactive impact of climato-economic hardships on collectivist orientations at the individual level, suggesting that culture building is a collective top-down rather than bottom-up process.
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How Macro-Historical Change Shapes Cultural Taste: Legacies of Democratization in Spain and Portugal
Robert Fishman & Omar Lizardo
American Sociological Review, April 2013, Pages 213-239
Abstract:
In this article, we show that large-scale macro-political change can powerfully condition how institutional practices shape individual cultural choice. We study the paired comparison of Portugal and Spain, two long-similar societies that moved from authoritarianism to democracy through divergent pathways in the 1970s. Data from the 2001 Eurobarometer indicate that while the cultural choices of persons born before democratic transition are comparable across the two cases, Portuguese youth born under democracy are substantially more omnivorous than their Spanish counterparts. We shed light on this puzzle through a structured, focused comparison. Our argument is that whereas revolution in Portugal overturned hierarchies in numerous social institutions and unleashed an ambitious program of cultural transformation, Spain's consensus-oriented transition was largely limited to remaking political institutions. We show that this macro-political divergence resulted in a key cross-case difference at the institutional level. Whereas pedagogical practices in Portugal encourage young people to adopt the post-canonical, anti-hierarchical orientation toward aesthetics constitutive of the omnivorous orientation, corresponding practices in Spain restrict omnivorousness by instilling a hierarchical, largely canonical attitude toward cultural works.
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A Different Look at Lenin's Legacy: Social Capital and Risk Taking in the two Germanies
Guido Heineck & Bernd Süssmuth
Journal of Comparative Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
What are the long-term effects of Communism on economically relevant notions such as social trust, fairness, and scope of cooperation? To answer this question, we study the post-unification trajectory of convergence between East and West German individuals with regard to trust, cooperation, and risk. Our hypotheses are derived from a model of German unification that incorporates individual responses both to incentives and to values inherited from earlier generations as recently suggested in the literature. Using two waves of balanced panel data, we find that despite twenty years of unification East Germans are still characterized by a persistent level of social distrust. In comparison to West Germans, they are less inclined to see others as cooperative. East Germans are also found to have been more risk loving than West Germans. However, risk attitudes fully converged recently.
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Dejun Tony Kong
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, May 2013, Pages 574-588
Abstract:
Social science research has focused on polieconomic factors for generalized social trust. Yet psychological research has shown that ecological factors can influence cognition, mood, and behavior. Following Van de Vliert's climatic demands-resources theory, I proposed the view of a climatoeconomic contextualization of generalized social trust. Specifically, I found that the interplay of thermal climates (harshness) and wealth (GDP per capita) was related to generalized social trust, mediated by uncertainty avoidance rather than other cultural dimensions such as individualism-collectivism, masculinity-femininity, and power distance. These findings render direct support to Hofstede's hypothesis that societal cultures are first-stage outcomes of climatic factors and second-stage intermediaries between these climatic factors and the sociopsychological functioning of markets, organizations, groups, and individuals. They also provide important implications for trust theory and climatic demands-resources theory.
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Disgust and contamination: A cross-national comparison of Ghana and the United States
Alexander Skolnick & Vivian Dzokoto
Frontiers in Psychology, February 2013
Abstract:
The emotion of disgust, with feelings of revulsion and behavioral withdrawal, make it a prime emotion to aid in the avoidance of sources of contamination, including sources of potential infectious disease. We tested the theory that living in a region with a historically high prevalence of infectious diseases would promote higher levels of disgust and contamination sensitivity as a protective measure. A sample of undergraduates from Ghana (n = 103, 57 women), a country with a historically high prevalence of infectious diseases, showed significantly higher scores on scales assessing disgust, contamination, and disease susceptibility than a sample of undergraduates from the United States (n = 96, 58 women), a country with lower levels of disease threat. Contamination sensitivity mediated the national differences in disgust. Disgust connoting contamination also produced larger cross-national effect sizes than other types of disgust. Finally, a factor analysis on the Ghanaian responses to one of the disgust scales did not resemble the usual three-factor solution found in West. Taken together, the results were consistent with the hypothesis that a region with a higher prevalence of infectious disease threats would produce greater sensitivity to disgust and contamination than seen in lower disease threat regions. This first study on disgust in Africa showed that disgust sensitivity could differ considerably from that in the West.
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Choice and dissonance in a European cultural context: The case of Western and Eastern Europeans
Michail Kokkoris & Ulrich Kühnen
International Journal of Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Prior research demonstrates that members of collectivistic cultures are less likely to reduce cognitive dissonance after making a choice, compared to members of individualistic cultures. This difference has been attributed to different conceptualizations of choice that derive from different self-construals across cultures. In individualistic cultures, choice leads to stronger commitment to the chosen option compared to collectivistic cultures, because it implicates core aspects of the independent self, such as personal preferences. However, this cultural variation in postchoice dissonance has thus far been studied exclusively by comparing East Asians and North Americans. Building on the assumption that this difference is due to different construals of the self, we conducted an experiment with movie choices using the classic free-choice paradigm to examine differences in dissonance reduction between Western and Eastern Europeans, two populations known to differ with respect to interdependence. The results show that Eastern Europeans are less likely than Western Europeans to reduce postchoice dissonance by spreading their alternatives. Our findings speak to the generalizability of the hypothesis that in cultures differing in independence or interdependence people also differ in the way they construe choice, as well as in the way the act of choosing affects their self-concept.
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Yat Laam Lau et al.
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, April 2013, Pages 461-477
Abstract:
Chinese, Chinese-Canadian, and Euro-Canadian children 7, 9, and 11 years of age were presented scenarios in which story characters either lied or told the truth to help themselves but harm a collective, or vice versa. Children classified, evaluated, and justified their evaluations of the truthful or untruthful statements in each scenario. Cultural differences emerged in the children's evaluations but were especially apparent in their justifications. Chinese children rated more positively statements that helped a collective and harmed an individual than vice versa, and they showed concerns for a group over the self when evaluating moral statements, thus reflecting collectivist inclinations. Euro-Canadian children did the reverse, demonstrating individualistic tendencies. Bicultural, Chinese-Canadian, children's judgments and justifications were situation specific, offering preliminary evidence for the possibility that bicultural individuals shift, at a relatively early age, between cultural frames in their interpretations and evaluations of moral dilemmas, depending upon the context.
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Increasing Rejection of Intimate Partner Violence: Evidence of Global Cultural Diffusion
Rachael Pierotti
American Sociological Review, April 2013, Pages 240-265
Abstract:
This study extends existing world society research on ideational diffusion by going beyond examinations of national policy change to investigate the spread of ideas among nonelite individuals. Specifically, I test whether recent trends in women's attitudes about intimate partner violence are converging toward global cultural scripts. Results suggest that global norms regarding violence against women are reaching citizens worldwide, including in some of the least privileged parts of the globe. During the first decade of the 2000s, women in 23 of the 26 countries studied became more likely to reject intimate partner violence. Structural socioeconomic or demographic changes, such as urbanization, rising educational attainment, increasing media access, and cohort replacement, fail to explain the majority of the observed trend. Rather, women of all ages and social locations became less likely to accept justifications for intimate partner violence. The near uniformity of the trend and speed of the change in attitudes about intimate partner violence suggest that global cultural diffusion has played an important role.
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Cultural Variation in the Focus on Goals Versus Processes of Actions
Yuri Miyamoto et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Everyday actions (e.g., riding a bike) can be described in ways that emphasize either the goals of the action by adapting a higher level identification (e.g., getting exercise) or the processes of the action by adapting a lower level identification (e.g., pedaling). In Studies 1 and 2, we demonstrate cultural differences in focusing on the process or goal of actions at the individual level: Americans are more likely than Japanese to focus on the goal (rather than the process) of actions. Study 3 recruited Chinese participants in addition to American and Japanese participants and found that cultural differences in action identification are partly explained by cultural differences in self-consistency. Study 4 further showed cultural differences at the collective level: American media presents more goal-oriented information and less process-oriented information than does Japanese media. These findings highlight the role of culture in shaping how people attend to different aspects of actions.
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Eva Dreikurs Ferguson et al.
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Does culture shape reported parenting styles and cognitive processes like transitive reasoning, of choosing A over B, B over C, and then A over C (transitivity)? Asian-American, Caucasian-American, and Indian university students differed significantly in transitivity and in reported parental styles. India participants were more intransitive and, contrary to traditional findings in the literature, reported their parents as more laissez-faire, individualistic, and competitive than did Caucasian-Americans. Recent technological and industrial advances in India likely explain some of these obtained differences. Predictions from Adlerian theory and work of Kurt Lewin, that parenting styles would relate to transitivity of choices, were indirectly supported. Stronger evidence was found that culture impacts both reported parental styles and transitivity of simple choices.
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Xinfa Yi et al.
Creativity Research Journal, Winter 2013, Pages 97-108
Abstract:
Empirical research on the relationship between culture and creativity has thus far yielded no consistent results. Investigations of the differences are mostly post-hoc, and results are inconclusive. A creativity-value-oriented theory is proposed to explain cultural differences, as an alternative to ethnic and language effects. This study was conducted to compare the performances of artistic creativity of Germans and Chinese. Results revealed that the four groups of students examined (German students of Caucasian descent, German students of Asian descent, Chinese students studying abroad, and Chinese students studying in China) differed in their artistic creativity. German participants (Caucasian Germans and Asian Germans) produced more creative and aesthetically pleasing artwork than did their Chinese counterparts (Chinese studying abroad and domestic Chinese). This difference was observed by both German and Chinese judges. There no significant subgroup differences in creative performances - no difference between the two German groups, and no difference between the two Chinese groups. Finally, although there were significant differences between German judges, Chinese judges studying abroad, and domestic Chinese judges in judging the artworks, these were not due to a preference for artwork from students from their own cultural background. Chinese and German judges roughly agreed on what constitutes creativity. These results suggest that cultural differences affect creative performances.
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A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Pretend Play in U.S. and Italian Children
Daphne Chessa et al.
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, May 2013, Pages 640-656
Abstract:
Pretend play reflects cognitive, representational, and affective expression abilities in children. Cross-cultural studies stress the importance of culture-specific practices involved in shaping the context for play. Differences in the cultural environment and the parental care-giving system could influence children's pretend play activities. There is a need for cross-cultural comparisons of play that use the same standardized measure of play. The current study was a cross-cultural comparison of two samples of American and Italian children 6 to 8 years old. All children were administered the Affect in Play Scale. As hypothesized, Italian children had significantly more types of affect expression in play than children in the United States, showing a medium effect size. Children in the United States had more imagination in their play, although with a small effect size. Implications of these findings are discussed.
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Error-Related Brain Activity Reveals Self-Centric Motivation: Culture Matters
Shinobu Kitayama & Jiyoung Park
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
To secure the interest of the personal self (vs. social others) is considered a fundamental human motive, but the nature of the motivation to secure the self-interest is not well understood. To address this issue, we assessed electrocortical responses of European Americans and Asians as they performed a flanker task while instructed to earn as many reward points as possible either for the self or for their same-sex friend. For European Americans, error-related negativity (ERN) - an event-related-potential component contingent on error responses - was significantly greater in the self condition than in the friend condition. Moreover, post-error slowing - an index of cognitive control to reduce errors - was observed in the self condition but not in the friend condition. Neither of these self-centric effects was observed among Asians, consistent with prior cross-cultural behavioral evidence. Interdependent self-construal mediated the effect of culture on the ERN self-centric effect. Our findings provide the first evidence for a neural correlate of self-centric motivation, which becomes more salient outside of interdependent social relations.
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Explaining the World Heritage List: An empirical study
Bruno Frey, Paolo Pamini & Lasse Steiner
International Review of Economics, March 2013, Pages 1-19
Abstract:
The UNESCO World Heritage List is designed to protect the global heritage. We show that, with respect to countries and continents, the existing World Heritage List is highly imbalanced. Major econometric determinants of this imbalance are historical GDP, historical population, area in square kilometers of a country, and number of years of high civilization. Surprisingly, economic and political factors, such as membership on the UN Security Council, which should be unrelated to the value of a country's heritage and therefore should have no impact, are shown to have a systematic impact on the composition of the World Heritage List.
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Condoned or Condemned: The Situational Affordance of Anger and Shame in the United States and Japan
Michael Boiger et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, April 2013, Pages 540-553
Abstract:
Two studies tested the idea that the situations that people encounter frequently and the situations that they associate most strongly with an emotion differ across cultures in ways that can be understood from what a culture condones or condemns. In a questionnaire study, N = 163 students from the United States and Japan perceived situations as more frequent to the extent that they elicited condoned emotions (anger in the United States, shame in Japan), and they perceived situations as less frequent to the extent that they elicited condemned emotions (shame in the United States, anger in Japan). In a second study, N = 160 students from the United States and Japan free-sorted the same situations. For each emotion, the situations could be organized along two cross-culturally common dimensions. Those situations that touched upon central cultural concerns were perceived to elicit stronger emotions. The largest cultural differences were found for shame; smaller, yet meaningful, differences were found for anger.
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Perceived social image and life satisfaction across cultures
Patricia Rodriguez Mosquera & Toshie Imada
Cognition & Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
We studied the relationship between perceived social image and life satisfaction in four different cultural groups. One-hundred nine Indian (63 females, 46 males), 67 Pakistani/Bangladeshi (36 females, 31 males), 76 White British (43 females, 33 males), and 94 European Americans (43 females, 48 males) completed measures on the cultural importance of social image, positive and negative emotions, academic achievement, and perceived social image. Indian and Pakistani/Bangladeshi participants valued social image more than White British and European-American participants. Consistent with this value difference, a positive perceived social image predicted life satisfaction among Indian and Pakistani/Bangladeshi participants only. For these participants, perceived social image predicted life satisfaction above and beyond the effects of emotions and academic achievement. Academic achievement only predicted life satisfaction among White British and European Americans. Emotions were significant predictors of life satisfaction for all participants.
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Need Satisfaction and Well-Being: Testing Self-Determination Theory in Eight Cultures
Timothy Church et al.
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, May 2013, Pages 507-534
Abstract:
According to Self-Determination Theory (SDT), satisfaction of needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness is a universal requirement for psychological well-being. We tested this hypothesis with college students in the United States, Australia, Mexico, Venezuela, the Philippines, Malaysia, China, and Japan. Participants rated the extent to which these needs, plus needs for self-actualization and pleasure-stimulation, were satisfied in various roles and reported their general hedonic (i.e., positive and negative affect) and eudaimonic (e.g., meaning in life, personal growth) well-being. Asian participants averaged lower than non-Asian participants in perceived satisfaction of autonomy, competence, and self-actualization needs and in most aspects of eudaimonic well-being, and these differences were partially accounted for by differences in dialecticism and independent self-construals. Nonetheless, perceived need satisfaction predicted overall well-being to a similar degree in all cultures and in most cultures provided incremental prediction beyond the Big Five traits. Perceived imbalance in the satisfaction of different needs also modestly predicted well-being, particularly negative affect. The study extended support for the universal importance of SDT need satisfaction to several new cultures.
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Agency and Facial Emotion Judgment in Context
Kenichi Ito, Takahiko Masuda & Liman Man Wai Li
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Past research showed that East Asians' belief in holism was expressed as their tendencies to include background facial emotions into the evaluation of target faces more than North Americans. However, this pattern can be interpreted as North Americans' tendency to downplay background facial emotions due to their conceptualization of facial emotion as volitional expression of internal states. Examining this alternative explanation, we investigated whether different types of contextual information produce varying degrees of effect on one's face evaluation across cultures. In three studies, European Canadians and East Asians rated the intensity of target facial emotions surrounded with either affectively salient landscape sceneries or background facial emotions. The results showed that, although affectively salient landscapes influenced the judgment of both cultural groups, only European Canadians downplayed the background facial emotions. The role of agency as differently conceptualized across cultures and multilayered systems of cultural meanings are discussed.
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The Construction of the Multilingual Internet: Unicode, Hebrew, and Globalization
Nicholas John
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, April 2013, Pages 321-338
Abstract:
This paper examines the technologies that enable the representation of Hebrew on websites. Hebrew is written from right to left and in non-Latin characters, issues shared by a number of languages which seem to be converging on a shared solution - Unicode. Regarding the case of Hebrew, I show how competing solutions have given way to one dominant technology. I link processes in the Israeli context with broader questions about the ‘multilingual Internet,' asking whether the commonly accepted solution for representing non-Latin texts on computer screens is an instance of cultural imperialism and convergence around a western artifact. It is argued that while minority languages are given an online voice by Unicode, the context is still one of western power.
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Hummus: The making of an Israeli culinary cult
Dafna Hirsch & Ofra Tene
Journal of Consumer Culture, March 2013, Pages 25-45
Abstract:
Hummus - an Arab dish adopted by Jews in Israel and made into a ‘national dish' and a culinary cult - was first industrialized in Israel in 1958. In this article we look at the impact of the food industry on shaping both consumption patterns and the signification of the dish. Contrary to accounts that contrast mass production to authenticity and tradition, fast to slow food, globalized trade to local production, we regard the industrial and the artisanal as interdependent and mutually constitutive realms of production and consumption. We argue, first, that the Israeli food industry has played a crucial role in turning hummus into a national symbol and a culinary cult. Second, we argue that the growing popularity of industrial hummus not only did not replace the consumption of artisanal hummus, but the other way around. Third, we argue that the industry is simultaneously an agent of globalization and of localization of hummus: it expands the spread of hummus globally and at the same time it sometimes tries to fix to it a local (‘national') identity.