Visualizing the Good Life: A Cross-Cultural Analysis

How can we visualize similarity and difference across cultural conceptions of a good or worthy life? To examine the internal structure of such conceptions, we asked 584 university students from mainland China and Canada to indicate the relative importance of 30 elements or criteria commonly used in defining a good life. Statistical comparison and multidimensional scaling were used to reveal the form and extent of group commonalities and differences on the criteria and their meaning in relation to underlying dimensions of individual and cultural variation. The results suggested that South Asian Canadians were more oriented towards moral, spiritual, and beneficent concerns in envisioning a good life than were the mainland Chinese and Western European Canadians. The Chinese, for their part, tended to emphasize practical, prudential, and socially defined goods. This contrasted with the Western European Canadians, who showed more preference for personally defined, internal goods. East Asian Canadians fell between Chinese and Western European Canadians in overall orientation, reflecting their biculturality. All groups placed heavy emphasis on close and enduring relationships.     

Standing out in Canada and Japan

The need for separation or individuation is held to be a prime motive in Western psychology. Varied accounts of the meaning of selfhood in Japan indicate that separation may be much less important-or as important-for understanding the construction of self-identity in that culture. We focus here on personal distinctiveness, one vehicle for separation from others. We propose that the desire for distinctiveness is not absent or negligible in Japan, but is subject to more constrained expression than in the West. The results of two studies comparing Japanese and Canadian students suggest that Japanese are less desirous of standing out for their own sake and more likely to experience this form of distinctiveness as aversive. The results also suggest that although Japanese and Canadians derive positive distinctiveness from much the same sources, Japanese are less gratified by this type of experience.     

On the cultural guises of cognitive dissonance: the case of easterners and westerners

Cognitive dissonance and effects of self-affirmation on dissonance arousal were examined cross-culturally. In Studies 1 and 2, European Canadians justified their choices more when they made them for themselves, whereas Asian Canadians (Study 1) or Japanese (Study 2) justified their choices more when they made them for a friend. In Study 3, an interdependent self-affirmation reduced dissonance for Asian Canadians but not for European Canadians. In Study 4, when Asian Canadians made choices for a friend, an independent self-affirmation reduced dissonance for bicultural Asian Canadians but not for monocultural Asian Canadians. These studies demonstrate that both Easterners and Westerners can experience dissonance, but culture shapes the situations in which dissonance is aroused and reduced. Implications of these cultural differences for theories of cognitive dissonance and self-affirmation are discussed.     

Cultural Variations in Reasons for Advice Seeking

Five studies examined cultural differences in reasons for advice‐seeking behaviors. Content analyses in Study 1A and self‐ratings in Study 1B consistently revealed that Euro‐Canadians were more likely than East Asians (mainly Chinese) to seek advice for informational reasons, whereas East Asians were more likely than Euro‐Canadians to seek advice for relational reasons. Study 2A showed that Chinese displayed a higher level of relationship concern than Euro‐Canadians in deciding from whom to seek advice in a decision dilemma. Study 2B found that, although Chinese and Euro‐Canadians did not differ from each other on willingness to pay for informational advice, Chinese were willing to pay more for building a relationship with the advisor through advice seeking than Euro‐Canadians were. Study 3 explored how the advice giver might perceive an advice seeker in terms of their competence and the closeness of their relationship after advice was sought for various reasons. We found that relationally oriented advice seeking increased the perceived competence of the advice seeker among Chinese more than among Euro‐Canadians. Information‐oriented advice seeking increased the perceived closeness between the advice seeker and advice giver among Chinese more than among Euro‐Canadians. Implications for other aspects of advice exchange are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Optimism across cultures: In response to the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak

Based on our early research, we predicted that the Chinese may be more optimistic and less pessimistic than North Americans in response to negative life events. A survey was conducted to investigate optimism cross culturally in the context of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreaks in Canada and China. Chinese students in Beijing and European Canadians in Toronto answered questions about their perceptions of SARS. No significant cultural difference was found on dispositional optimism, as measured by the Revised Life Orientation Test (LOT-R). Unrealistic optimism was measured in the context of SARS. Both groups demonstrated unrealistic optimism (i.e. reporting that the self was less likely than an average person to get infected with SARS). Such optimistic bias was stronger among Chinese than among Canadians. Compared to the actual infection rates in Beijing and Toronto, both Chinese and Canadian participants overestimated their own chances of getting infected, indicating that they were being pessimistic. Indeed, Chinese were less pessimistic than Canadians. In addition, even though the Chinese reported more inconvenience brought by SARS than did Canadians, they also reported more positive changes brought by SARS, reflecting the Chinese dialectical views of events. Implications for research on optimism in context are discussed.     

INDIAN AND CANADIAN CHOICE BEHAVIOUR IN A MAXIMIZING DIFFERENCE GAME AND IN A GAME OF CHICKEN1

The behaviour of Indian and Canadian male university undergraduates was observed in a mixed-motive maximizing difference game (MDG) and in a game of chicken. It was found that the Indians were more competitive than the Canadians in the MDG and that this difference was considerably reduced in the chicken game. Relative to their choices in the MDG the Canadians were more likely than the Indians to choose competitively in the chicken game. It was suggested that this was due to the Indians greater reluctance to take risks. Other differences based on conditional probabilities of responding also were found and it was argued that the Canadians' cooperation might have been related to their greater propensity to use a “tit-for-tat” response strategy.     

Why best cannot last: Cultural differences in predicting regression toward the mean

Four studies were conducted to investigate cultural differences in predicting and understanding regression toward the mean. We demonstrated, with tasks in such domains as athletic competition, health and weather, that Chinese are more likely than Canadians to make predictions that are consistent with regression toward the mean. In addition, Chinese are more likely than Canadians to choose a regression‐consistent explanation to account for regression toward the mean. The findings are consistent with cultural differences in lay theories about how people, objects and events develop over time.     

Cultural differences related to positive and negative valence

Differences between North American and East Asian cultures were examined in terms of the valence of psychological constructs. Americans were more likely than Japanese to focus on positive things. In contrast, Japanese ( vs Americans) were more likely to attend to negative information of the self, but not more or less likely to focus on negative things about others. Based on within-culture analyses, the Americans' data were better described by their tendency to focus on positive things over negative things than by their tendency for self-enhancement. In contrast, the Japanese data were better described by their self-critical tendency. This result was replicated in a second study. In addition, correlations between constructs with opposite valences were negative in the USA, but positive or absent in Japan.     

Adolescents', parents', and teachers' distress over adolescents' behavior

This study evaluated adolescents', parents', and teachers' self-reported distress and wishes to change adolescents' emotional/behavioral problems in a sample of clinically referred adolescents. Parents reported being bothered more than adolescents or teachers by adolescents' internalizing behavior. Both parents and teachers rated adolescents' externalizing behavior as more bothersome than did adolescents. Adolescents were significantly less likely to want to change their behavior than were parents or teachers. In addition, adolescents were significantly more likely to want to change their internalizing problems than their externalizing problems. For all three informants, being bothered by adolescents' behaviors was strongly associated with a desire to change the behaviors. Clinical implications of these findings are discussed.The authors wish to thank John Iriye and Alisa Waldman for their invaluable help as research assistants.     

Development of learning-disabled and normally achieving children's causal attributions

The causal attributions of learning-disabled (LD) and normally achieving (NA) children in grades 3 through 8 were compared. Attributions were measured by two scales that asked children to attribute hypothetical academic failure situations to factors that were either within (e.g., insufficient effort) or beyond (e.g., insufficient ability, blaming others) their control. Consistent with a learned helplessness hypothesis, LD girls, regardless of age, were more likely than NA children to attribute their failures to factors beyond their control. In contrast, LD boys' explanations for their failures paralleled those of NA children. That is, with increasing age the LD boys were more likely to attribute their failures to insufficient effort. Explanations and implications of sex differences in developmental patterns of LD children's causal attributions are discussed.The authors wish to thank Ruth Dusseault and Betty Wallace for their help in conducting this research. We also wish to thank the teachers, children, and administrators from the Leon County Schools for their cooperation.     

When Is Perception Top‐Down and When Is It Not? Culture,Narrative, and Attention

Previous findings in cultural psychology indicated that East Asians are more likely than North Americans to be attentive to contextual information (e.g., Nisbett & Masuda, 2003 ). However, to what extent and in which conditions culture influences patterns of attention has not been fully examined. As a result, universal patterns of attention may be obscured, and culturally unique patterns may be wrongly assumed to be constant across situations. By carrying out two cross‐cultural studies, we demonstrated that (a) both European Canadians and Japanese attended to moving objects similarly when the task was to simply observe the visual information; however, (b) there were cultural variations in patterns of attention when participants actively engaged in the task by constructing narratives of their observation (narrative construction). These findings suggest that cultural effects are most pronounced in narrative construction conditions, where the need to act in accordance with a culturally shared meaning system is elicited.     

Culture,gender and self–close‐other(s) connectedness in Canadian and Chinese samples

Founded upon the theories of Independent–Interdependent Self‐Construal and I–C, the main goal of this study was to test, via an adapted IOS Scale, whether Anglo‐Canadians were more independent than Mainland Chinese in construing their relationship with family members and friends. Strong cultural differences were found in self–family connectedness, but not in self–friends connectedness. Chinese were closer to their family members than Canadians, but Canadians were as close to their friends as Chinese. In both samples, gender difference was found in self–friends connectedness, but not in self–family connectedness. In the Canadian sample, females were closer to their friends than males, while in the Chinese sample, males were closer to their friends than females. In conclusion, this study contributes to the field in three ways. First, the finding that Canadians are as connected as Chinese to their close friends unprecedentedly contests one fundamental assumption of the theories of independent‐interdependent self‐construal (Markus & Kitayama, 1991 ) and I–C (Hofstede, 1980 ; Triandis, Bontempo, Villareal, Asia & Lucca, 1988 ) that individualists (e.g. Anglo‐Canadians) are more independent than collectivists (e.g. Chinese) on all dimensions of human relations. Second, the proposition (Cross & Madson, 1997 ) that Western males and females differ in the same way individualists and collectivists differ in their self‐construal is not supported. Finally, the adaptation of the IOS Scale proposes a refreshing direction in cross‐cultural research. Graphic representations may be less susceptible to cross‐cultural misconstrual than verbal statements since the former involves little or no translation from one language to another. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Flow Experience,Culture, and Well-being: How Do Autotelic Japanese College Students Feel,Behave, and Think in Their Daily Lives?

This study attempted to show how autotelic people who live in a non-Western culture feel, behave, and think in their daily lives. Using a sample of 315 Japanese college students, a series of correlation analyses were conducted between the frequency of flow experience as an indicator of autotelic personality and a broad range of well-being measures. A distribution analysis revealed that on average Japanese college students experienced flow more than a “few times a year,” but less than “once a month.” In the examination of relations between flow and well-being measures, autotelic Japanese college students, or those who experienced flow more often in their daily lives, were more likely to show higher self-esteem and lower anxiety, use active coping strategies more often and use passive coping strategies less often, as compared to their less autotelic counterparts. They were more likely to report active commitments to college life, search for future career, and daily activities in general. They also reported more Jujitsu-kan, a Japanese sense of fulfillment, and greater satisfaction with their lives. Implications of these findings are discussed in terms of what experiencing flow means and what effects flow potentially has for college students in a non-Western culture.     

Aspirations,Attainments, and Satisfaction: Life Cycle Differences Between American Women and Men

Aspirations, along with attainments, play an important role in shaping well-being. Early in adult life women are more likely than men to fulfill their material goods and family life aspirations; their satisfaction in these domains is correspondingly higher; and so too is their overall happiness. Material goods aspirations refer here to desires for a number of big-ticket consumer goods, such as a home, car, travel abroad and vacation home. In later life these gender differences turn around. Men come closer than women to fulfilling their material goods and family life aspirations, are more satisfied with their financial situation and family life, and are the happier of the two genders. An important factor underlying the turnaround in fulfillment of aspirations for material goods and family life is probably the shift over the course of the life cycle in the relative proportion of women and men in marital and non-marital unions.     

Buyer's remorse or missed opportunity? Differential regrets for material and experiential purchases

Previous research has established that experiential purchases tend to yield greater enduring satisfaction than material purchases. The present work suggests that this difference in satisfaction is paralleled by a tendency for material and experiential purchases to differ in the types of regrets they elicit. In 5 studies, we find that people's material purchase decisions are more likely to generate regrets of action (buyer's remorse) and their experiential purchase decisions are more likely to lead to regrets of inaction (missed opportunities). These results were not attributable to differences in the desirability of or satisfaction provided by the two purchase types. Demonstrating the robustness of this effect, we found that focusing participants on the material versus experiential properties of the very same purchase was enough to shift its dominant type of regret. This pattern of regret is driven by the tendency for experiences to be seen as more singular--less interchangeable--than material purchases; interchangeable goods tend to yield regrets of action, whereas singular goods tend to yield regrets of inaction.     

Inter‐ and intra‐cultural variations in self‐other boundary: A qualitative‐quantitative approach

Past research on the theories of self‐construal and individualism‐collectivism in cross‐cultural contexts presents inconsistent and inconclusive results. Some researchers have seriously questioned the validity of major instruments measuring self‐construal across cultural groups. To address the validity issue, this study developed quantitative measures from ethnographic data. In five scenarios mapping self to close‐other boundaries, 171 Anglo‐Canadians and 224 Mainland Chinese were asked to make a decision and offer a reason for the decision. Two intriguing findings emerged from the data. (1) In comparison with Anglo‐Canadians, Mainland Chinese were more likely to share material belongings with close‐others and less likely to share their thoughts/opinions. The first part of this finding provides unequivocal support for the theories of self‐construal and individualism‐collectivism, whereas the latter part challenges an important assumption of these theories, which contends that collectivists should be more likely than individualists to share everything they own (including opinions) with close‐others. This unconventional finding proposes the division of material belongings and thoughts/opinions sharing of the self‐other boundary in future cross‐cultural self‐construal research. (2) There were significant differences in the reasons Canadians and Chinese offered for what they would or would not do in a specific situation. For example, the reasons for not telling the truth about a roommate's nonmatching outfit were “tastes differ from person to person” for a Canadian and “I don't tell others what I think of them” for a Chinese. The Canadians clearly show respect for the other's personal preference and the Chinese were thinking “what can I benefit from telling her the truth?” It was reasoned that underneath the giving and generous Chinese lies a shrewd mind, and underneath the frank Canadian lies a materialistic mind. In conclusion, this article contributes to the field in that it reports pioneering research, via both qualitative and quantitative means, on sharing material belongings and opinions/thoughts in samples from individualistic and collectivistic cultures. The findings of this study illustrate, specify, and challenge the universal utility of the theories of self‐construal and individualism‐collectivism.     

Age differences in coping with chronic illness

We examined the correlation between age and six coping strategies in a sample of 151 middle-aged and older chronically ill adults. Coping strategies included cognitive restructuring, emotional expression, wish fulfilling fantasy, self-blame, information seeking, and threat minimization. Older adults were less likely to use emotional expression or information seeking than were middle-aged adults in their efforts to cope with the illness. These strategies were related to age even when numerous illness characteristics (e.g., physical limitations) were used as control variables. Interaction effects showed that older adults who perceived their illnesses as highly serious were less likely than were others to cope by seeking information, reconstruing their illness as having positive aspects, or engaging in wishfulfilling fantasies, and more likely to cope by simply minimizing the illness's threat. Consideration of related research studies suggests that the age differences in emotional expression may be due to age-related shifts in the types of stresses experienced, whereas the age differences in information seeking may be more strongly linked to cohort phenomena.     

Ambivalence and Response Amplification Toward Native Peoples1

This study determined whether ambivalence toward Native peoples would result in amplified, or polarized, responses to members of the group, as assessed in terms of both general attitudes and social policy endorsements. In addition, it examined whether priming would mediate these effects, based on the notion that ambivalent attitudes contain both positive and negative dimensions that may be activated at different times. Induction of different mood states was used as an indirect priming manipulation. One hundred thirty-eight Canadian participants completed measures of ambivalence toward Native peoples and Canadians. One week later, these participants underwent a positive, neutral, or negative mood induction procedure. They then indicated their attitudes toward Native peoples and Canadians, and responded to social policy questions involving both groups. Participants who were highly ambivalent or not ambivalent toward Native peoples were retained for analysis; participants generally displayed low ambivalence toward Canadians. It was predicted and the results confirmed that only participants who were ambivalent toward Native peoples would display a relative response amplification effect: a greater difference between positive and negative mood states in their responses to Native peoples than in their responses to Canadians.     

Processing idioms with multiple meanings

Three experiments are presented that examine understanding of idioms with one or more meaning. The results of Experiment 1 showed that subjects took longer to read and make paraphrase judgments for idioms when both their idiomatic and literal meanings are intended than it did to comprehend idioms meant only literally or idiomatically. In Experiments 2 and 3, subjects were faster at making phrase classification judgments for idioms with several different nonliteral interpretations than they were to make the same judgments for idioms with only one idiomatic interpretation. These findings suggest that idioms with more entries in the mental lexicon are accessed faster because it is more likely that one of their meanings will be encountered in a short time. The data overall support the idea that idioms are represented differently depending on their number of associated meanings.This research was supported by a Faculty Research Grant from the University of California, Santa Cruz. We wish to thank Dennis Johnston for his assistance in running subjects.