Dialect
Globalization and the transmission of social values: The case of tolerance
Niclas Berggren & Therese Nilsson
Journal of Comparative Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Tolerance – respecting those who are different – is arguably of particular importance in an era of globalization, where a potential for economic, social and personal development is increasingly a function of interaction with others different from oneself. We investigate whether globalization induces parents to want to instill tolerance in their children, the main idea being that this quality would equip children for greater success in a more integrated world. Using a survey measure, we indeed find that globalization enhances the willingness to transmit such social values. More precisely, economic and social, but not to the same extent political, globalization has this effect, as shown by using the KOF Index of Globalization in regression analysis of up to 59 countries. Extreme bounds analysis and outlier tests indicate robustness. Overall, our results suggest that certain kinds of globalization seem able to shape values in ways considered desirable by many.
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Jeanne Ho-Ying Fu, Michael Morris & Ying Yi Hong
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, July 2015, Pages 24–31
Abstract:
Past research encourages expatriates to immerse themselves in the host culture, avoiding reminders of their home culture. We counter that, for expatriates still struggling to adjust, home culture stimuli might prime a sense of relational security, emboldening them to reach out to locals and hence boost cultural adjustment. In Study 1, American exchange students in Hong Kong felt more adjusted to Hong Kong after incidental exposure to iconic American practices (vs. Chinese or neutral), an effect partially mediated by relational security and not by other exchange student concerns. Study 2 surveyed exchange students from Hong Kong at three points in time: before, during and after a study abroad term. The intervention of writing about home culture (vs. host culture) symbols during their trip helped adjustment for those with pre-trip insecurities about interacting with locals but not those lacking these insecurities. The boost in adjustment from the home culture primes had a lasting impact, visible in the post-trip evaluations of the study abroad experience by students in the initially insecure group.
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Are the world's languages consolidating? The dynamics and distribution of language populations
David Clingingsmith
Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Scholars have conjectured that the return to speaking a language increases with the number of speakers. Long-run economic and political integration would accentuate this advantage, increasing the population share of the largest languages. I show that, to the contrary, language size and growth are uncorrelated except for very small languages (<35,000 speakers). I develop a model of local language coordination over a network. The steady-state distribution of language sizes follows a power law and precisely fits the empirical size distribution of languages with ≥35,000 speakers. Simulations suggest the extinction of 40% of languages with <35,000 speakers within 100 years.
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The cosmopolitan elite in Germany: Transnationalism and postmaterialism
Marc Helbling & Céline Teney
Global Networks, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this article, we investigate cosmopolitan attitudes among the people often considered the most cosmopolitan – the elite. Studying the typical class of frequent travellers provides a particularly good opportunity to study the relationship between transnational activities and cosmopolitanism. We also comprehensively investigate the link between postmaterialist values and cosmopolitan attitudes. We test our arguments using an original dataset that includes a relatively large sample of the German positional top elite in the years 2011 and 2012. A comparison between these data and data from a general population survey shows that while transnational activities affect the attitudes of ordinary citizens, increased travelling does not make elites more cosmopolitan. We discuss several reasons why this might be the case. We also observe that postmaterialist values and the ideological environment of the elite play a key role. Finally, we tentatively suggest that cosmopolitan elites do not endanger national social cohesion, as some fear they might. We show that cosmopolitanism and localism are not mutually exclusive and that members of the German elite feel even more attached to their nation than ordinary Germans.
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Yan Yu
Journal of Family and Economic Issues, March 2015, Pages 34-47
Abstract:
From in-depth interviews with Chinese immigrant wives in the United States and the Chinese couples in urban China in 2004, researcher found a surprising result in terms of their interpretations of the impact of the male-breadwinner ideal upon perceived marital stability. Over half of the sampled Chinese immigrant wives in the United States reported that they became stay-at-home mothers after their immigration, and most believed that becoming a stay-at-home mother had stabilized their marriage. The traditionally defined gender role for women was actually not as much condemned by the Chinese immigrant wives as it would be if they were in China. When asked whether or not the Chinese urban wives would like to follow the male-breadwinner ideal, a common response was “No way!” Among urban Chinese couples, wives as well as husbands strongly believed that the male-breadwinner ideal would destabilize rather than stabilize their marriage. In this paper, researcher has put forth a hypothesis that the existing familial, economic, and cultural conditions in the United States and urban China play a role in shaping the Chinese couples’ perceptions of the traditional family model and their decision to either adapt or reject it in association with their perceived marital stability.
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Culture, Ethnicity and Diversity
Klaus Desmet, Ignacio Ortuño-Ortín & Romain Wacziarg
NBER Working Paper, February 2015
Abstract:
We investigate the empirical relationship between ethnicity and culture, defined as a vector of traits reflecting norms, attitudes and preferences. Using surveys of individual values in 76 countries, we find that ethnic identity is a significant predictor of cultural values, yet that within-group variation in culture trumps between-group variation. Thus, in contrast to a commonly held view, ethnic and cultural diversity are unrelated. We explore the correlates of cultural diversity and of the overlap between culture and ethnicity, finding that the level of economic development is positively associated with cultural diversity and negatively associated with the overlap between culture and ethnicity. Finally, although only a small portion of a country's overall cultural heterogeneity occurs between groups, this does not imply that cultural differences between groups are irrelevant. Indeed, we find that civil conflict becomes more likely when there is greater overlap between ethnicity and culture.
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Anicia Peters, Heike Winschiers-Theophilus & Brian Mennecke
Computers in Human Behavior, August 2015, Pages 259–271
Abstract:
Facebook has been adopted in many countries with over 80% of its user-base being outside of the US and Canada. Yet, despite this global dominance, not much is understood of Facebook usage by individuals in non-western cultures. A cross-cultural study was conducted with undergraduate students in the United States and Namibia to examine Facebook use. The study used a mixed method of online surveys and focus groups in both countries. The research examined issues such as motivations for use, friendships, privacy and trust, and life changing events such as relationships, births, deaths, religion and politics. Findings suggest cultural influence on both online and offline practices as well as appropriation and re-contextualization to fit existing offline cultural practices. While we find that participants from the United States are changing their online behavior toward increased self-censorship, more users from Namibia, where family and community structures are important, continue to engage in online behavior that is more open and transparent. Findings also suggest an expressive privacy paradox for United States participants, who are generally less concerned with updating their privacy settings while simultaneously practicing self-censorship.
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Human language reveals a universal positivity bias
Peter Sheridan Dodds et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 24 February 2015, Pages 2389–2394
Abstract:
Using human evaluation of 100,000 words spread across 24 corpora in 10 languages diverse in origin and culture, we present evidence of a deep imprint of human sociality in language, observing that (i) the words of natural human language possess a universal positivity bias, (ii) the estimated emotional content of words is consistent between languages under translation, and (iii) this positivity bias is strongly independent of frequency of word use. Alongside these general regularities, we describe interlanguage variations in the emotional spectrum of languages that allow us to rank corpora. We also show how our word evaluations can be used to construct physical-like instruments for both real-time and offline measurement of the emotional content of large-scale texts.
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Subin Park
Journal of Adolescence, April 2015, Pages 74–77
Abstract:
Sex differences in suicide rates and suicide methods was compared among adolescents in South Korea, Japan, Finland, and the United States. This study analyzed suicide rates and suicide methods of adolescents aged 15–19 years in four countries, using the World Health Organization mortality database. Among both male and female adolescents, the most common method of suicide was jumping from heights in South Korea and hanging in Japan. In Finland, jumping in front of moving objects and firearms were frequently used by males, but not by females. In the United States, males were more likely to use firearms, and females were more likely to use poison. The male to female ratio of suicide rates was higher in the United States (3.8) and Finland (3.6) than in Korea (1.3) and Japan (1.9). Sex differences in suicide methods may contribute to differences in the suicide rates among males and female adolescents in different countries.
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Factors Influencing the Allowance of Cousin Marriages in the Standard Cross Cultural Sample
Ashley Hoben, Abraham Buunk & Maryanne Fisher
Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
The purpose of this study is to examine variance in the practice and acceptance of cousin marriage in select areas of the world. This study uses Murdock’s Standard Cross Cultural Sample (SCCS). The SCCS includes 186 societies ranging from contemporary hunter and gatherers to early historic states to contemporary industrial people. It is hypothesized that cousin marriages are more likely to occur in small, isolated communities, and in communities that experience high rates of pathogen prevalence. That is, the variance in the practice of cousin marriage may reflect functional responses to various local ecological and environmental pressures. The results demonstrate that geographic isolation and pathogen prevalence are both independent and significant positive predictors of whether or not a society practices cousin marriage. These findings suggest that consanguineous marriage may be an adaptive solution to the problem of mate selection, depending on the environment in which one lives. Consequently, the biological advantages may lead to and/or become an individual preference, which is then reinforced by the local culture. We contend that although social and cultural explanations are of obvious importance, they can only provide partial explanations, and much can be gained from incorporating an evolutionary perspective.
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Cultural differences in recognition of subdued facial expressions of emotions
Fang Zhang et al.
Motivation and Emotion, April 2015, Pages 309-319
Abstract:
A relative in-group advantage for recognizing emotional facial expressions presented at full intensity has been documented. The present study examined whether this in-group advantage also existed for the recognition of subdued expressions. American and Chinese participants judged Caucasian and Chinese angry, sad, and happy expressions at subtle, low, and moderate intensity levels. An in-group advantage was found at the low and moderate intensity levels for angry expressions (the effect was partial at moderate intensity), and at the moderate intensity level for sad expressions. But at milder expression intensities, the in-group advantage disappeared, replaced by a main cultural effect in recognition accuracy. American judges were more accurate than Chinese judges in judging both Caucasian and Chinese expressions at the subtle intensity level for angry expressions and at both the subtle and low intensity levels for sad expressions. The present findings suggest that the in-group advantage resides in recognizing expressions of mid-range intensities but diminishes in recognizing milder expressions, and when the in-group advantage stops, cultural differences in sensitivity to very subtle expressions come to fore, at least for negative emotions involving potential threats to social harmony. The present findings suggest that Americans may be better able to detect very subtle facial expressions of sadness and anger, which may have implications for our understanding of cross-cultural differences in emotion.
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Choosing Across Cultures: The Effect of Choice Complexity on Treatment Outcomes
Jill Brown et al.
Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, forthcoming
Abstract:
Prior research has revealed that having choice over treatments can improve their efficacy. However, it is currently unknown if the benefits of treatment choice hold for complex decisions and different cultures. The effects of differing numbers of treatment options were explored across two cultural contexts: United States and Japan. Participants were exposed to an uncomfortable stimulus and provided with up to 15 placebo treatment options they believed would reduce discomfort. There was a significant interaction such that participants from Japan benefited most from fewer treatment options (2 and 5) compared with more treatment options (10 and 15). Participants from the United States, however, showed either no change in discomfort or less discomfort as the number of choices increased. Additionally, participants from Japan reported less satisfaction with the decision process when they had more treatment options to choose from whereas U.S. participants reported similar, if not slightly higher, satisfaction with more treatment options. Further, a second study indicated that a positive experience with the decision process mediated the relationship between choice complexity and treatment efficacy for Japanese participants. These data demonstrate the importance of culture and choice complexity when discussing treatment choice and resulting outcomes in the medical context.
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How Do We Assign Ourselves Social Status? A Cross-Cultural Test of the Cognitive Averaging Principle
Matthew Andersson
Social Science Research, July 2015, Pages 317–329
Abstract:
Subjective social status (SSS), or one’s perceived social standing, is linked robustly to mental and physical health and is thought to be determined in part by a cognitive average of one’s past, present and expected socioeconomic status. However, this averaging principle awaits a formal test. Further, cultures differ with regard to how they perceive and discount time. In this study, I draw upon cross-sectional data from the United States and Japan (2005 MIDUS non-Hispanic whites and 2008 MIDJA), which measured subjective status in terms of one’s perceived standing within a personally defined community. I compare equal and unequal cognitive averaging models for their goodness of fit relative to a traditional present-based model. Socioeconomic status is assessed broadly, in terms of past, present and expected overall work and financial situations. In the United States, averaging models do not fit the data consistently better than a present-based model of SSS. However, in Japan, averaging models do fit SSS consistently better. These fit conclusions are robust to controlling for negative affect.
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How Facial Cues of Models Affect Attention to Websites in Asian and American Cultures
Qiuzhen Wang, Michel Wedel & Xuan Liu
University of Maryland Working Paper, November 2014
Abstract:
Gaze direction and the facial expression of emotion are the two most important facial cues in non-verbal communication. This research involves three eye tracking experiments to investigate the joint effects of facial expression (neutral/happy) and gaze direction (direct/averted) of models on websites on visual attention among American and Chinese participants. They reveal that among both cultures a gaze cue primes initial attention to the product or brand and show that positive affect from the happy expression when a model looks at the viewer carries over to the product or brand. For American participants, a model that looks at the viewer with a happy expression draws more attention to the brand, while for Chinese participants a model that looks at the product with a happy expression draws more attention to the brand. These differences are explained from a cultural difference in using the eyes and mouth as cues to recognize and interpret smiles in Asian and Western cultures, respectively. Further, the match in ethnicity between a model and the viewer exacerbated the attention effects of facial expression.