Understanding Cultural Differences
Priya Nalkur, Patrick Jamieson & Daniel Romer
Journal of Adolescent Health, forthcoming
Context: Youth exposure to explicit film violence and sex is linked to adverse health outcomes and is a serious public health concern. The Motion Picture Association of America's (MPAA's) rating system's effectiveness in reducing youth exposure to harmful content has been questioned.
Purpose: To determine the MPAA's rating system's effectiveness in screening explicit violence and sex since the system's initiation (1968) and the introduction of the PG-13 category (1984). Also, to examine evidence of less restrictive ratings over time ("ratings creep").
Design: Top-grossing movies from 1950 to 2006 (N = 855) were coded for explicitness of violent and sexual content. Trends in rating assignments and in the content of different rating categories since 1968 were assessed.
Results: The explicitness of violent and sexual content significantly increased following the rating system's initiation. The system did not differentiate violent content as well as sexual content, and ratings creep was only evident for violent films. Explicit violence in R-rated films increased, while films that would previously have been rated R were increasingly assigned to PG-13. This pattern was not evident for sex; only R-rated films exhibited higher levels of explicit sex compared to preratings period.
Conclusions: While relatively effective for screening explicit sex, the rating system has allowed increasingly violent content into PG-13 films, thereby increasing youth access to more harmful content. Assignment of films in the current rating system should be more sensitive to the link between violent media exposure and youth violence.
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Universal biases in self-perception: Better and more human than average
Steve Loughnan, Bernhard Leidner, Guy Doron, Nick Haslam, Yoshihisa Kashima, Jennifer Tong & Victoria Yeung
British Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
There is a well-established tendency for people to see themselves as better than average (self-enhancement), although the universality of this phenomenon is contested. Much less well-known is the tendency for people to see themselves as more human than average (self-humanizing). We examined these biases in six diverse nations: Australia, Germany, Israel, Japan, Singapore, and the USA. Both biases were found in all nations. The self-humanizing effect was obtained independent of self-enhancement, and was stronger than self-enhancement in two nations (Germany and Japan). Self-humanizing was not specific to Western or English-speaking cultures and its magnitude was less cross-culturally variable than self-enhancement. Implications of these findings for research on the self and its biases are discussed.
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A cross-cultural study of reference point adaptation: Evidence from China, Korea, and the US
Hal Arkes, David Hirshleifer, Danling Jiang & Sonya Lim
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examined reference point adaptation following gains or losses in security trading using participants from China, Korea, and the US. In both questionnaire studies and trading experiments with real money incentives, reference point adaptation was larger for Asians than for Americans. Subjects in all countries adapted their reference points more after a gain than after an equal-sized loss. When we introduced a forced sale intervention that is designed to close the mental account for a prior outcome, Americans showed greater adaptation toward the new price than their Asian counterparts. We offer possible explanations both for the cross-cultural similarities and the cross-cultural differences.
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Mass Media and Religious Identity: A Case Study of Young Witches
Helen Berger & Douglas Ezzy
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, September 2009, Pages 501-514
Abstract:
Drawing on interviews with 90 young people who have become Witches, we explore the visual media's influence on identity formation and maintenance. Witchcraft is a late modern religion that is highly individualistic and many young people report they have become a Witch without any interaction with other Witches. The rapid growth of interest in this religion among the young since The Craft was first shown provides an important example of the mass media's role in formation of contemporary religious identity. We argue that representations of Witchcraft in the visual mass media (along with other cultural trends such as environmentalism, feminism, and individualism) and cultural resources such as books, Internet sites, and magazines provide a mediated form of social interaction that sustains the plausibility of Witchcraft as a religion. It also helps the young to develop and legitimate their beliefs and practices and develop their Witchcraft persona.
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Individualism, collectivism, and Chinese adolescents' aggression: Intracultural variations
Yan Li, Mo Wang, Cixin Wang & Junqi Shi
Aggressive Behavior, May/June 2010, Pages 187-194
Abstract:
This study examined the relations between cultural values (i.e., individualism and collectivism) and aggression among 460 (234 girls) Chinese adolescents. Conflict level and social status insecurity were examined as potential explaining mechanisms for these relations. The results showed that adolescents' endorsement of collectivism was negatively related to their use of overt and relational aggression as reported by teachers and peers, whereas positive associations were found between the endorsement of individualism and adolescent aggression. Adolescents' conflict level and social status insecurity accounted for a significant part of these associations. Findings of this study demonstrate the importance of examining intracultural variations of cultural values in relation to adolescent aggression as well as the process variables in explaining the relations.
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Cultural differences are not always reducible to individual differences
Jinkyung Na, Igor Grossmann, Michael Varnum, Shinobu Kitayama, Richard Gonzalez & Richard Nisbett
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 6 April 2010, Pages 6192-6197
Abstract:
We show that differences in social orientation and in cognition that exist between cultures and social classes do not necessarily have counterparts in individual differences within those groups. Evidence comes from a large-scale study conducted with 10 measures of independent vs. interdependent social orientation and 10 measures of analytic vs. holistic cognitive style. The social measures successfully distinguish between interdependence (viewing oneself as embedded in relations with others) and independence (viewing oneself as disconnected from others) at the group level. However, the correlations among the measures were negligible. Similar results were obtained for the cognitive measures, for which there are no coherent individual differences despite the validity of the construct at the group level. We conclude that behavioral constructs that distinguish among groups need not be valid as measures of individual differences.
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Wayne Fu & Achikannoo Govindaraju
Communication Research, April 2010, Pages 215-238
Abstract:
This study examines the cross-country homogeneity of audience tastes in theatrical consumption of Hollywood films. It constructs empirical schemes to measure and explain similarities between national cinema audiences in box-office acceptance of common sets of Hollywood movies, using annual 2002-2007 panel data of ticket-sales receipts worldwide at the country-by-film level. The results show that countries more culturally like the United States tend to have box-office tastes more closely resembling those of American audiences for the same Hollywood titles than other countries do. The similarity in movie taste is also positively related to an importing country's cinema market size. Moreover, the tastes of individual countries have converged with those of American audiences over the years. Also, correlational statistics calculated from the country-by-film cross-tabulations of box-office sales uncover the trend that the world's tastes have become increasingly homogeneous.
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(Re)presenting: Muslims on North American television
Amir Hussain
Contemporary Islam, April 2010, Pages 55-75
Abstract:
This article describes and analyzes the portrayal of Muslims on several North American television shows. Greatest detail is given to the two seasons of Sleeper Cell, the first show on American television created to deal with Muslim lives post 9/11. I deal briefly with Muslim characters on Oz for a look at portrayals of Muslim life pre 9/11. I also mention Muslim characters in Lost and 24 as well as some films to add further insights to my argument. These television dramas are compared with two comedies, Aliens in America as well as Little Mosque on the Prairie, the first Canadian television show to examine Muslim lives. The conclusion is that in dramas, Muslims are not recognized on American television as citizens of their own country, but instead are portrayed as dangerous immigrants with a religion that is both alien and wicked. Moreover, the religion as it is lived out on the television drama is one of violence-there seems to be no other substantive practice that embodies Islamic faith. The case is very different with regard to the television comedy.
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Afterimages of savages: Implicit associations between primitives, animals and children
Annick Saminaden, Stephen Loughnan & Nick Haslam
British Journal of Social Psychology, March 2010, Pages 91-105
Abstract:
Historically, traditional people have often been likened to animals and children. A study employing implicit social cognition methods examined whether these associations endure in a more subtle, implicit form. Consistent with colonial era portrayals of indigenous and other traditional people as `primitives' or `savages', participants continued to associate them with animal- and child-related stimuli more readily than people from modern, industrialized societies. In addition, traditional people were ascribed fewer uniquely human attributes than their modern counterparts. These findings, replicated with verbal and pictorial representations of the traditional/modern distinction, were independent of any positive or negative evaluation of traditional people. They imply that colonial `images of savages' persist in contemporary western society as a cultural residue.
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‘He cannot get away from us': Tautologies in police chases
Tom Zoellner
International Journal of Cultural Studies, March 2010, Pages 205-216
Abstract:
The live police chase has become a staple - if not a cliché - of local television news in the United States in the last 20 years. But what are the psychoanalytical dynamics of this event? Why does an otherwise unremarkable property felony become elevated to a matter of instant civic importance merely by virtue of being broadcast, and why do viewers' sympathies often feel tugged toward the criminal rather than the state? This article examines one notorious case in Seattle and outlines the ‘stages' of a police chase, as delineated by law enforcement, as an essential dramatic pattern redolent of Girardian release. The police chase is a live-broadcast panopticon in which every viewer is a participant in a triangulated tautology: the subject is running because he is being chased, and we are watching because he is running and he is being broadcast live because he is being chased.
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‘Ziegfeld Girls Coming Down A Runway': Exhibiting Minerals at the Smithsonian
Elizabeth Emma Ferry
Journal of Material Culture, March 2010, Pages 30-63
Abstract:
Between 1876 and 1997, the exhibition policies and practices of the mineralogical collections of the Smithsonian Institution went through a number of shifts. Focusing on the social and intellectual contexts of these shifts and their reception by museum-goers and reviewers, this article looks at the process by which natural history museums capture, discipline and display natural objects. The article builds on the premise that natural history museums and exhibitions exist, in part, to teach people how they should look at and think about nature. The author draws on Arturo Escobar's idea of ‘regimes of nature' to examine how shifts in exhibitionary practices manifest shifting understandings of nature in the United States. From 1876 to 1997, she identifies four different nature regimes represented in the Smithsonian mineral exhibits. These regimes propose different articulations between nature, the nation-state, US capital and the museum-going public and the author labels them ‘nature as resource', ‘nature as order', ‘nature as spectacle' and ‘nature as fine art'.
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Mow ‘em all down grandma: The "weapon" of humor in two Danish World War II occupation scrapbooks
Nathaniel Hong
Humor - International Journal of Humor Research, February 2010, Pages 27-64
Abstract:
The article examines the assumption that humour is wielded as a potent political weapon during political conflict. The rebellious character and ubiquity of the body of humor in a conflict is often marshalled as evidence of its power and efficacy. The question of whether oppositional humour operates as a weapon or not is examined through the use of anti-occupation humor in two extensive sets of Danish scrapbooks created during German occupation, 1940-1945. The differences discovered suggest that humor can be used both as a secondary reinforcement in the process of developing critical political consciousness necessary for challenge and resistance, and that it can also be a surrogate for conflict that ultimately contributes to escapism and acquiescence.
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American and Arab Perceptions of an Arabic Turn-Taking Cue
Nigel Ward & Yaffa Al Bayyari
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, March 2010, Pages 270-275
Abstract:
Languages differ in the way that speakers coordinate their interaction moment by moment, and this can cause intercultural misunderstandings. The authors explore this in the domain of listening behavior. One way that listeners show interest and attention is by producing back-channel feedback (short utterances such as okay and hmm) at appropriate times, and these times are determined, in part, by the interlocutor, who signals when such feedback is welcome with various cues. In Arabic these cues include a prosodic feature in the form of a steep continuous drop in pitch. This article shows that English speakers can misinterpret this, perceiving it as an expression of negative affect, and that this tendency can be substantially alleviated by training.
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Carolina Acosta-Alzuru
International Journal of Cultural Studies, March 2010, Pages 185-203
Abstract:
Consumed in over 130 countries, telenovelas are media products particularly suitable for the examination of the dialogue between media, culture and society. In 2003-4, Venezuelan telenovela Cosita Rica took the stage alongside the country's political crisis and deep polarization around President Hugo Chávez. Cosita Rica both straddled and blurred the line between fact and fiction through its multiple plots framed by Venezuela's political and socioeconomic crises. I focus on the production and reception of Cosita Rica's representations of three of Venezuela's socio-cultural issues: obsession with physical beauty, machismo, and street children. The article looks closely at the dialogue between television and country at a critical and historical time, and provides clues to the reception of entertainment media content when such content includes critical stances towards the social formation's cultural fabric.