Psychological Similarities and Differences between Women and Men across Cultures

Most research looking at psychological similarities and differences between women and men has been carried out in North America and Western Europe. In this paper, I review a body of cross‐cultural evidence showing that it is precisely in these Western countries that women and men differ the most in terms of personality, self‐construal, values, or emotions. Much less‐pronounced gender differences are observed, if at all, in Asian and African countries. These findings are unexpected from the perspectives of the two most influential frameworks applied to sex differences coming from evolutionary psychology and social role theory. However, recent research related to social comparison and self‐categorization theories suggests a promising approach to explain why more egalitarian societies can paradoxically create greater psychological differences between women and men.     

Immigrant Sex: the Transport of Affection and Sensuality across Cultures

This paper outlines the ways in which an individual’s notions of sexuality are challenged by immigration. It describes four basic facets of sexuality and the ways in which each are rooted in culture. These include (1) the relative importance of sexuality in daily life; (2) potential or overt homosexuality; (3) marriage—whether based on arrangement or love; and (4) cross-cultural romantic and marital relationships. Immigration can stir up conflicts in each of these realms and lead to defensive retreat into familiar customs or a counterphasic plunge into new cultural avenues. Ideally, it would lead to a working-through of these conflicts and subsequent growth in the immigrant’s understanding of his or her sexual self.     

城乡高中生认知方式与创造力关系的比较研究

对随机抽取的1216名城乡高中生实施《镶嵌图形测验》,然后抽取其中766名学生分别作场独立组和场依存组,并实施《创造性思维测验》。发现:1、城乡高中各年级场独立性学生在创造力方面较场依存性学生有明显优势。2、城乡高中场依存和场独立学生在创造力三个特性上各自存在不同程度的性别差异、文理科差异,某些方面表现出较明显的城乡差异。     

聋生和听力正常学生解决加减文字题的眼动比较研究

采用EyetinkⅡ眼动记录仪,探讨了聋生与解题正确率高的听力正常学生表征和解决加减文字题的差异。被试为小学3年级学生．聋生12名．听力正常学生8名。研究结果表明：（1）在解决加减文字题时,聋生与解题正确率高的听力正常学生在阅读方式、关注关键信息上有显著差异,很多聋生阅读没规律．漏看文字题的关键信息;（2）聋生解决加减文字题的困难与其不能正确表征文字题的文本有关。     

Perceptions of intergenerational communication across cultures: an Italian case

406 Anglo-American, Italian-American, and Italian (Northern and Southern Italy) students were asked to evaluate past conversations with same-age peers, i.e., 17 to 30 years, and older adults, i.e., 65 years and older. While according older adults more deference, all cultural groups perceived older adults as more rigid and nonaccommodating than younger adults. Exchanges with older adults were reported as having more negative affect than were those with other young adults, and were also more likely to he avoided.     

Creativity: A complementary relationship between information demand and success at problem solving

Creativity, intelligence, and problem-solving tasks that varied the explicitness of problem definition and the format for an acceptable solution were administered to 100 subjects. Creativity and intelligence tasks were described as different problem-solving tasks. Two hypotheses that distinguished between concepts of creative and intelligent problem solving were presented and supported. First, the syntactical hypothesis stated that the format of an acceptable solution would define the factor structure of the problem-solving tasks more parsimoniously than the explicitness of the problem definition. The factor structure was interpreted by the type of acceptable solution format. Second, the strategic hypothesis stated that information demanded to define a problem and success at problem solving would interact. Information demanded and success at problem solving did interact producing a complementary relationship with dimensions of creativity but not intelligence. Thus, syntactical and strategic distinctions between creativity and intelligence were obtained.     

The Organization of Justificatory Discourse in Interaction: A Comparison Within and Across Cultures

Previous scholarship has focused on inductive and deductive patterns as the two predominant modes of reasoning. In this paper, we argue that there are many ways that people from diverse cultures organize their justificatory reasoning in conversation with others and that these patterns are connected, in part, to cultural beliefs and values. We report on a study of people who identify themselves as being in one of four cultural groups: African Americans, Asian Americans, Asians, and European Americans. The types of organization they used in their conversations included deductive, inductive, abductive, and narrative patterns. Abduction occurred as often as induction and deduction across groups. Narratives were used equally by all of the groups, but they occurred less frequently than the other types. Asian Americans used inductive patterns more than other types, and Asians were most likely to reason deductively. These choices did not appear to have an effect on partners' judgments, although Asians received the lowest appropriateness ratings, and both Asians and Asian Americans were given the lowest effectiveness ratings.     

Quantitative and Qualitative Research across Cultures and Languages: Cultural Metrics and their Application

Growing globalisation of the world draws attention to cultural differences between people from different countries or from different cultures within the countries. Notwithstanding the diversity of people’s worldviews, current cross-cultural research still faces the challenge of how to avoid ethnocentrism; comparing Western-driven phenomena with like variables across countries without checking their conceptual equivalence clearly is highly problematic. In the present article we argue that simple comparison of measurements (in the quantitative domain) or of semantic interpretations (in the qualitative domain) across cultures easily leads to inadequate results. Questionnaire items or text produced in interviews or via open-ended questions have culturally laden meanings and cannot be mapped onto the same semantic metric. We call the culture-specific space and relationship between variables or meanings a ’cultural metric’, that is a set of notions that are inter-related and that mutually specify each other’s meaning. We illustrate the problems and their possible solutions with examples from quantitative and qualitative research. The suggested methods allow to respect the semantic space of notions in cultures and language groups and the resulting similarities or differences between cultures can be better understood and interpreted.     

How Creativity Was Affected by Environmental Factors and Individual Characteristics: A Cross-cultural Comparison Perspective

The purpose of this study was to explore how environmental factors (family environment and school education) and individual characteristics (personality, creative attitudes, and divergent thinking) collectively affect creative achievement of American and Chinese college students. Data were collected from 378 college students in the United States (N = 193) and China (N = 185). Results showed that the US sample had significantly higher means in home resources, high-school education, Conscientiousness, creative achievement, and all four dimensions of the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults (ATTA) than the China sample. In contrast, the China sample scored significantly higher in understanding the importance of creativity. Results indicated creative attitudes and divergent thinking sequentially mediated the effects of parental values on creative achievement for the US sample, whereas Openness mediated the effect of high-school education on creative achievement for the China sample. For both samples, creative attitudes mediated the effect of Openness on divergent thinking. The results suggested cultural differences in the effects of environmental factors on creativity, yet more similar findings in the effects of individual characteristics on creativity between the two samples. The results and implications are discussed.     

时间与创造力关系框架的构建

本文从时间对主体创造力的刻画与影响以及主体加工、处理时间的方式对自身创造力所产生的影响两个方面,整合了散落在各处的时间与创造力关系的研究,并构建丁它们之间关系的框架。讨论了以后时间与创造关系研究的方向以及从该方面培养创造性的前景。     

论如何培养中小学生的创新精神

本文分析了创新与创造的本质、层次和我国教育至今未培养出获诺贝尔奖的科学家的一部分原因,论述了中小学生创新与创造的定位、创新精神的含义以及如何培养中小学生创新精神的策略与措施。     

A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Worldviews: American and Fijian Counseling Students

The Scale to Assess World Views was administered to 104 Fijians and to 109 Americans who were all enrolled in counseling programs in their respective countries. Fijians and Americans were compared in order to determine whether the worldviews of counseling students in these two countries were different. Differences were found between the Fijian and American counseling students on the Human Relationships category and the Time Orientation Category. The Fijian Counseling students scored higher than the Americans on the Lineal-Hierarchical and Collateral-Mutual subscales of the Human Relationships Category and higher than the Americans on the Past and Future subscales of the Time Orientation Category.     

Transition to Adulthood Across Italy: A Comparison Between Northern and Southern Italian Young Adults

We explored the phenomenon of the transition to adulthood, focusing on how young people cope with various developmental tasks in relation to their expectations, future projects, fears and indecision in two Italian regional areas characterized by different trends in youth employability, higher educational attainment and family formation process. We measured self-perceived adulthood, self-reported satisfaction, independence, perceived support regarding personal relationships and practical and economical issues, personal projections and future life’s choices. We also explored the perception of self-fulfillment for the future concerning personal goals in life, such as in the spheres of work, studies and economic autonomy together with expectations for the quality of personal relationships. One hundred and sixty nonworking university students (M _age = 22.6; SD = 2.77; range = 19–35) from the Universities of Turin and Palermo took part in this study. Sub-groups differed on self-perceived adulthood, self-reported satisfaction, independence, perceived support and self-fulfillment. Psychological and economic independence from the family of origin was most perceived by the participants from Turin who reported a higher degree of satisfaction regarding their choice of studies and their future perspective of self-fulfillment at work. Young people from Palermo highlighted personal relationships as an important source of perceived support.