Intercultural Understanding through Intergroup Dialogue between Japanese and Chinese University Students

This study had two purposes: (1) to develop university classes in which students can participate in intercultural dialogue by exchanging letters focusing on a topic about everyday norms implicit in each culture, and (2) to examine how students develop their intercultural understanding through participating in these classes. Twenty-two Japanese and six Chinese university students (each group in their own country) participated in three class sessions. At the beginning of the first class, students were given a dialogue theme that focused on cultural differences. The selected theme was mobile phone use while riding on public transportation, as this practice is prohibited in Tokyo but not in Beijing. Students discussed their opinions in small groups, wrote questions to their counterparts in the other country, and then reflected on and discussed the answers received. Analysis of the Japanese students’ written reflections showed that their understanding of different cultural values and beliefs changed from one based only on a Japanese cultural perspective to one that respected the relativity of cultural norms. The results suggested that the arousal of negative emotions when students are exposed to the perspectives of other cultures is closely related to their understanding of cultural relativity.     

陌生的邻居:东正教之于中俄相互认知上的障碍性角色

在中俄战略协作伙伴关系的框架下,双方的确没有出现如中美或中国与欧盟之间那样的纷争和冲突,但也缺乏中美、中欧之间相互深刻影响对方的社会进程、经济发展和生活方式变革等积极成果。造成这种矛盾现象的因素固然复杂,但俄罗斯东正教作为远远超出宗教领域的巨大存在,影响着后苏联社会进程的每个方面,却不能被中俄战略协作伙伴关系所考虑,这在客观上必然影响俄中关系,应该是这种战略实施后果不很理想的重要原因。本文探讨两个问题:俄罗斯东正教之于后苏联的超常重要性,以及,中国对俄国的认知绕开东正教因素和无神论政策是不可能的。     

关于中国、日本大学生应激行为的比较研究

本研究借助社会支持系统的研究成果 ,以调查法对当今大学生的应激源、应激行为及其机制进行了探讨 ,主要获得以下结果 :1中日被试具有相同的因素模型 ;2本研究采用的八类心理压力源基本上概括了当今中日大学生日常生活中出现的各类心理障碍 ;3心理压力与社会支持系统之间存在负相关 ,即 :越倾向于认为自己容易得到社会性支持系统帮助的学生 ,越不容易感受到心理压力 ;4中日大学生心理应激行为特征存在显著差异。     

Technology Games: Using Wittgenstein for Understanding and Evaluating Technology

In the philosophy of technology after the empirical turn, little attention has been paid to language and its relation to technology. In this programmatic and explorative paper, it is proposed to use the later Wittgenstein, not only to pay more attention to language use in philosophy of technology, but also to rethink technology itself—at least technology in its aspect of tool, technology-in-use. This is done by outlining a working account of Wittgenstein’s view of language (as articulated mainly in the Investigations) and by then applying that account to technology—turning around Wittgenstein’s metaphor of the toolbox. Using Wittgenstein’s concepts of language games and form of life and coining the term ‘technology games’, the paper proposes and argues for a use-oriented, holistic, transcendental, social, and historical approach to technology which is empirically but also normatively sensitive, and which takes into account implicit knowledge and know-how. It gives examples of interaction with social robots to support the relevance of this project for understanding and evaluating today’s technologies, makes comparisons with authors in philosophy of technology such as Winner and Ihde, and sketches the contours of a phenomenology and hermeneutics of technology use that may help us to understand but also to gain a more critical relation to specific uses of concrete technologies in everyday contexts. Ultimately, given the holism argued for, it also promises a more critical relation to the games and forms of life technologies are embedded in—to the ways we do things.     

Understanding Thai Families: A Cultural Context for Therapists Using a Structural Approach

This article describes six cultural influences that affect Thai families: religious beliefs, rural and urban considerations, family relationships, societal values, masculine and feminine roles, and sexuality. A case study of a Thai family struggling with these issues and interventions from a structural therapy perspective is presented.     

Class and Ethnicity in the Global Market for Organs: The Case of Korean Cinema

While organ transplantation has been established in the medical imagination since the 1960s, this technology is currently undergoing a popular re-imagination in the era of global capitalism. As transplantation procedures have become routine in medical centers in non-Western and developing nations and as organ sales and transplant tourism become increasingly common, organs that function as a material resource increasingly derive from subaltern bodies. This essay explores this development as represented in Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook's 2002 Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, focusing on the ethnic and class characteristics of the global market in organs and possible modes of counter-logic to transplant technologies and related ethical discourses.     

Understanding of speaker certainty and false‐belief reasoning: a comparison of Japanese and German preschoolers

It has been repeatedly shown that when asked to identify a protagonist's false belief on the basis of his false statement, English‐speaking 3‐year‐olds dismiss the statement and fail to attribute to him a false belief. In the present studies, we tested 3‐year‐old Japanese children in a similar task, using false statements accompanied by grammaticalized particles of speaker (un)certainty, as in everyday Japanese utterances. The Japanese children were directly compared with same‐aged German children, whose native language does not have grammaticalized epistemic concepts. Japanese children profited from the explicit statement of the protagonist's false belief when it was marked with the attitude of certainty in a way that German children did not – presumably because Japanese but not German children must process such marking routinely in their daily discourse. These results are discussed in the broader context of linguistic and theory of mind development.     

内外丹道之交融

我们可从以下三个层次对内外丹道之交融加以研究:一是理论层面共同的理论模型,内外丹都是本于天地宇宙的阴阳造化,都是一种天人合一的体系;都是为炼取不死之药,而致神仙。二是实践层面的相通与类比,内丹在人体内模拟外丹烧炼过程,后来也有外丹模拟内丹的情形。鼎炉,药物,火候是内外丹共同的要素。三是历史层面的兴衰消长,内外丹交融中内外丹地位的变化。本文研究内外丹道共同的理论模型,外丹术语内丹化的方式,内外丹交融关系的三种类型,由此可对内外丹道交融的理论结构与历史源流有一全面的了解。     

The relationship between pulmonary function and suicidal ideation in Korean adults: a nationwide survey

Controversy surrounds the association between lung function and mental health in the general population, and previous reported results were confounded by the effect of other chronic illnesses. This study aimed to investigate whether reduced lung function was related to mental health issues, taking into consideration the relevant potential confounders. We used data from the 2008–2013 Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to examine the relationship between lung function and three mental issues (recognized stress, depressive mood, and suicidal ideation) among 22,068 Korean adults. A multiple logistic regression with adjustment for potential covariates including chronic illnesses revealed that a .5-L decrement of forced vital capacity increased the risk for suicidal ideation in both genders, but there was no significant association with recognized stress or depressive mood. We found an inverse relationship between lung function and suicidal ideation in the Korean general population.     

Understanding general and specific connections between psychopathology and marital distress: a model based approach

Marital distress is linked to many types of mental disorders; however, no study to date has examined this link in the context of empirically based hierarchical models of psychopathology. There may be general associations between low levels of marital quality and broad groups of comorbid psychiatric disorders as well as links between marital adjustment and specific types of mental disorders. The authors examined this issue in a sample (N = 929 couples) of currently married couples from the Minnesota Twin Family Study who completed self-report measures of relationship adjustment and were also assessed for common mental disorders. Structural equation modeling indicated that (a) higher standing on latent factors of internalizing (INT) and externalizing (EXT) psychopathology was associated with lower standing on latent factors of general marital adjustment for both husbands and wives, (b) the magnitude of these effects was similar across husbands and wives, and (c) there were no residual associations between any specific mental disorder and overall relationship adjustment after controlling for the INT and EXT factors. These findings point to the utility of hierarchical models in understanding psychopathology and its correlates. Much of the link between mental disorder and marital distress operated at the level of broad spectrums of psychopathological variation (i.e., higher levels of marital distress were associated with disorder comorbidity), suggesting that the temperamental core of these spectrums contributes not only to symptoms of mental illness but to the behaviors that lead to impaired marital quality in adulthood.     

Understanding the relationships between body esteem,risk for anorexia nervosa,and domain-dependent decision-making impulsivity in a college sample

Impulsivity has been suggested to interact with low body esteem to elevate risk for anorexia nervosa. Discounting tasks are unique tools for examining impulsivity. Female college students (N = 139) at varying levels of body esteem and risk for anorexia nervosa responded to discounting scenarios depicting opportunities to lose/gain weight and to worsen/improve complexion. Multiple regression analyses were used to examine the relationships between impulsivity and risk for anorexia nervosa and body esteem in four disorder-relevant decision-making contexts. Results indicated that lower decision-making impulsivity predicted lower body esteem levels when the outcome of the task was framed as an opportunity to lose weight. It is suggested that greater self-control regarding weight-loss in women with low body esteem may be problematic, placing them at higher risk for eating- and weight-related problems. Results reiterate the need for continued attention to fostering healthy body esteem and weight-control patterns in women on college campuses.     

The relationship between degree of acculturation and adjustment difficulties among Korean immigrants living in a Western society

When immigrating to a new society individuals typically have different behavioural patterns and cultural values than the host country. These differences often lead to acculturation difficulties among immigrants. The purpose of this study was to examine how behavioural and value acculturation affects cultural adjustment problems among Korean immigrants living in a Western host country. Results of a multiple regression analysis revealed that a model combining fewer years living and being educated in the host country, less behavioural acculturation, and more strongly held traditional Asian values predicted increased cultural adjustment difficulties. Stronger adherence to traditional Asian values most significantly predicted adjustment problems among Korean immigrants. Implications for counselling are discussed.     

Constituent Length Affects Prosody and Processing for a Dative NP Ambiguity in Korean

Two sentence processing experiments on a dative NP ambiguity in Korean demonstrate effects of phrase length on overt and implicit prosody. Both experiments controlled non-prosodic length factors by using long versus short proper names that occurred before the syntactically critical material. Experiment 1 found that long phrases induce different prosodic phrasing than short phrases in a read-aloud task and change the preferred interpretation of globally ambiguous sentences. It also showed that speakers who have been told of the ambiguity can provide significantly different prosody for the two interpretations, for both lengths. Experiment 2 verified that prosodic patterns found in first-pass pronunciations predict self-paced reading patterns for silent reading. The results extend the coverage of the Implicit Prosody Hypothesis [Fodor, J Psycholinguist Res 27:285–319, 1998; Prosodic disambiguation in silent reading. In M. Hirotani (Ed.), NELS 32 (pp. 113–132). Amherst, MA: GLSA Publications, 2002] to another construction and to Korean. They further indicate that strong syntactic biases can have rapid effects on the formulation of implicit prosody.     

Constructing and Understanding an Incident as a Social Problem: A Case Study of University Entrance Exam Cheating in Japan

The recent work of Frances Chaput Waksler—The New Orleans Sniper: A Phenomenological Case Study of Constituting the Other—demonstrates, by close examination of the case of the New Orleans Sniper of 1973, how people constitute and unconstitute an “Other” in certain situations. This paper explores the process by which people constituted the Other in Japan in February of 2011 through the course of an incident that surprised Japanese people: university entrance exam cheating by use of the Internet question-and-answer bulletin board. I will further examine how the incident can be constructed as a social problem with the construction of a victim and a villain. For data, I use reports from newspapers with nationwide circulation and reports from news agencies present at the time of the event. I also cite additional data from Internet news sites. Although my research here is small and elementary and my analysis is sociological rather than phenomenological, it is inspired by Waksler’s work. I will show how peoples’ commonsense knowledge frames their understanding and construction of an event. This paper will show that Waksler’s ideas about the New Orleans Sniper and her analysis of this case are applicable to another event in a different time at a different place: contemporary Japanese society.     

Felt Understanding as a Bridge between Close Relationships and Subjective Well-Being: Antecedents and Consequences Across Individuals and Cultures

The literatures on close relationships and subjective well-being have received enormous attention in personality and social psychology over the last two decades. However, despite the well-known link between the quality of social relationships and subjective well-being, these two research traditions have developed relatively independent of one other. Research on felt understanding and misunderstanding attempts to integrate these two related but relatively distinct literatures. To this end, the current review summarizes major recent findings on the antecedents and consequences of felt understanding and misunderstanding and highlights important cultural and individual differences in the processes involving felt understanding and misunderstanding.     

Towards a Social-Structural Model for Understanding Current Disparities in Maori Health and Well-Being

Colonization has resulted in Maori occupying a vulnerable position in New Zealand society. Comparatively poor health, along with complex social and economic problems, is a reflection of this fundamental insecurity. This article aims to put forward a historical and developmental perspective for understanding some of the current health disparities experienced by Maori, by exploring the concepts of historical trauma, loss of land, and alternative theories of development from post-development theory.