The multifaceted phenomenon of ‘happy victimizers’: A cross‐cultural comparison of moral emotions

This study examines whether German and Portuguese 5‐ to 6‐, and 8‐ to 9‐year‐old children distinguish between the feelings attributed to a victimizer or to themselves if they were the victimizers in two hypothetical moral violations (stealing and breaking a promise), and how they morally evaluate the emotions they attribute to victimizers and the person of the victimizer. The results showed that in spite of some developmental and cultural differences, children's attribution of negative emotions was substantively more frequent when they made attributions to themselves. Furthermore, most children judged the positive (immoral) emotions they had attributed to victimizers as not right and evaluated the person of the hypothetical victimizer negatively. The results clarify contradictory findings in the field and may provide a better understanding of the moral and developmental meaning of the positive and negative emotions attributed in acts of victimization.     

Social reasoning about ‘second‐shift’ parenting

The present study investigated children's and adolescents’ social reasoning about parenting roles in the home, specifically ‘second‐shift parenting’ by a mother or father. Surveys were administered to children (age 10) and adolescents (age 13), nearly evenly divided by gender (N= 200) in which two hypothetical scenarios were evaluated. Participants were asked to evaluate and justify second‐shift parenting arrangements for the family overall, for the parent in the role, and for the child in the family. Results showed that participants expected mothers rather than fathers to take on the second‐shift role, and second‐shift parenting was evaluated as more unfair for fathers than for mothers. Personal choice reasoning was used for justifying arrangements for the second‐shift parent and moral reasoning was used for justifying arrangements for the child. Social reasoning about the context of parental caretaking roles was multifaceted and varied by age and gender of participant more so than by self‐reported personal family arrangements.     

Attachment and preschool children's understanding of maternal versus non‐maternal psychological states

There is growing evidence that insecurely attached children are less advanced in their social understanding than their secure counterparts. However, attachment may also predict how individual children use their social understanding across different relationships. For instance, the insecure child's social‐cognitive difficulties may be more pronounced when the psychological states of an attachment figure are being considered. In the current study, forty‐eight 4‐ to 5‐year‐old children were asked about their mothers' emotions and false beliefs, as well as those of non‐attachment figures. The Separation Anxiety Test (SAT) was administered to assess children's attachment representations. Children's SAT scores predicted their overall performance on the false belief and causes of emotion tasks, even after controlling for age and verbal ability. More interestingly, however, children with high scores on the Avoidance dimension of the SAT experienced greater difficulty understanding maternal false beliefs relative to those of an unfamiliar adult female. Thus, although attachment insecurity may hinder social‐cognitive development in general, the findings suggest that there are more specific effects as well. Attachment representations that are characterized by high levels of avoidance appear to interfere with children's ability to fully engage their social‐cognitive skills when reasoning about maternal mental states.     

Kinship and altruism: A cross‐cultural experimental study

Humans are characterized by an unusual level of prosociality. Despite this, considerable indirect evidence suggests that biological kinship plays an important role in altruistic behaviour. All previous reports of the influence of kin selection on human altruism have, however, used correlational (rather than experimental) designs, or imposed only a hypothetical or negligible time cost on participants. Since these research designs fail either to control for confounding variables or to meet the criteria required as a test of Hamilton's rule for kin selection (that the altruist pays a true cost), they fail to establish unequivocally whether kin selection plays a role. We show that individuals from two different cultures behave in accordance with Hamilton's rule by acting more altruistically (imposing a higher physical cost upon themselves) towards more closely related individuals. Three possible sources of confound were ruled out: generational effects, sexual attraction and reciprocity. Performance on the task however did not exhibit a perfect linear relationship with relatedness, which might reflect either the intrusion of other variables (e.g. cultural differences in the way kinship is costed) or that our behavioural measure is insufficiently sensitive to fine‐tuned differences in the way individuals view their social world. These findings provide the first unequivocal experimental evidence that kinship plays a role in moderating altruistic behaviour. Kinship thus represents a baseline against which individuals pitch other criteria (including reciprocity, prosociality, obligation and a moral sense) when deciding how to behave towards others.     

The psychological representation of corporate ‘personality’

As with any other object, people represent companies along a number of dimensions. But what are the key psychological dimensions that best describe companies, organizations, or brands? We apply research methods initially developed for studying attitudes, including attitudes to other people, to look at how the public represents corporate ‘personality’. The major dimensions that psychologically differentiate companies resemble human factors of personality and can be labelled Honesty, Prestige, Innovation, and Power. These dimensions are confirmed after a time gap of 1 year, also capturing specific changes in the rating of individual companies. The proposed methodology not only has substantial commercial value in helping companies understand and track their public perception, but scales of this type can potentially guide and manage the decision‐making of individuals or groups inside and outside rated organizations, thus influencing their organizational culture. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The cross‐cultural generalizability of personality types: a Philippine study

Research on personality types was extended to a non‐Western culture, the Philippines. In two large samples of Filipino college students, cluster analyses of self‐rated trait adjectives revealed interpretable three‐cluster solutions (i.e. types) for each gender. The types differed on indigenous measures of ego resiliency and ego control and exhibited sensible configurations of Big Five traits, indigenous Filipino traits, and behavioural indicators. Most types were interpretable in terms of the concepts of ego resiliency and ego control of Block and Block ( 1980 ) and resembled types identified in other cultures. Two of three male and female types were fairly comparable and some types replicated across data sets. The results provided some support for the cross‐cultural comparability of personality types and for typological research in general. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dialogical journal writing as ‘self‐therapy’: ‘I matter’

Aim: This case study of one woman's (Jane's) experience of dialogical journal writing presents a way of finding a ‘compassionate image’ for self‐therapy. Various theoretical analyses are indicated with Mindfulness‐based conceptualisations at the forefront. Methodology: Based on three recorded interviews, the narrative inquiry took place over a year. Methodologically, this paper is also one contribution to an ongoing debate about different research approaches in therapeutic writing research. Participants: This study took place in Aotearoa New Zealand, where both Jane and I are migrants. Discussion: This account draws on a report of self‐directed writing for well‐being, seen as an alternative to counselling or medication for depression and anxiety. It focuses on how a particular style of writing evolved and how the motivation to write continues.     

‘Crossing culture’: a multi‐method enquiry into consumer behaviour and the experience of cultural transition

Visitors, travellers and migrants have a range of reactions to ‘crossing culture’, ie moving from one cultural environment to another. This paper reports a two‐stage multi‐method study that examines how visitors' consumer behaviour and use of material possessions influence resolution of cultural fracture during periods of cultural transition. The research consisted of a quantitative survey (n = 598) and a qualitative ethnoconsumerist study of visitors to the UK. Analysis of the survey data shows that nationality is a poor indicator of crossing‐culture experiences. A Six Typology Model of Cultural Fracture identified six cluster groups using combinations of three types of cultural fracture experience: symbolic fracture, emotional fracture and functional fracture. The six clusters vary by consumer behaviour and possession use. The ethnoconsumerist study illustrates that consumer‐related activities and possession used together provide an important resource that visitors can use to make sense of crossing‐culture experiences. Product categories, retail formats and shopping conventions are also implicated in experiences of cultural fracture to varying degrees. The paper concludes by considering the limitations of importing a priori assumptions regarding nationality and ethnic differences in cross‐cultural consumer research, and discusses some of the potential benefits of multi‐method research in this context. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications.     

Female physical attractiveness in Britain and Japan: a cross‐cultural study

Two purported cues to female physical attractiveness are body mass index (BMI) and body shape as measured by the waist‐to‐hip ratio (WHR). This study examined the relative contribution of both cues in two culturally distinct populations. Eighty‐two male participants from Britain and Japan were asked to rate a set of images of real women with known BMI and WHR. Results showed that BMI is the primary determinant of female physical attractiveness, whereas WHR failed to emerge as a significant predictor. Results also showed that there were significant differences in preferences for physical attractiveness, with Japanese participants preferring images of women with significantly lower BMIs than Britons. Finally, results showed that the Japanese are more reliant on body shape than Britons when judging physical attractiveness. The findings are discussed in terms of evolutionary psychological explanations of mate selection, and sociocultural theories which emphasise the learning of preferences in social and cultural contexts. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Identification of objects in 9‐month‐old infants: integrating ‘what’ and ‘where’ information

Following Leslie, Xu, Tremoulet and Scholl (1998) , we distinguish between individuation (the establishment of an object representation) and identification (the use of information stored in the object representation to decide which previously individuated object is being encountered). Although there has been much work on how infants individuate objects, there is relatively little on the question of when and how property information is used to identify objects. Experiment 1 shows that 9‐month‐old infants use shape, but apparently not color, information in identifying objects that are each moved behind spatially separated screens. Infants could not simply have associated a shape with a location or a screen without regard to objecthood, because on alternate trials the objects switched locations/screens. Infants therefore had to bind shape information to the object representation while tracking the objects’ changing location. In Experiment 2, we tested if infants represented both objects rather than ‘sampled’ only one of them. Using the same alternation procedure, infants again succeeded in using shape (but not color) information when only one of the screens was removed – the screen that occluded the first‐hidden object (requiring the longer time in memory). Finally, we relate our behavioral findings both to a cognitive model and to recent neuroscientific studies, concluding that ventral ‘what’ and dorsal ‘where’ pathways may be functionally integrated by 9 months.     

What does it mean to ‘live’ and ‘die’? A cross‐linguistic analysis of parent–child conversations in English and Indonesian

Previous work on children's intuitive knowledge about the natural world has documented their difficulty in acquiring an overarching concept of biological life that includes plants as well as humans and non‐human animals. It has also suggested that the acquisition of fundamental biological concepts like alive and die may be influenced by the language used to describe them, as evidenced by differences between English‐ and Indonesian‐speaking children's performance in tasks involving these concepts. Here, we examine one particularly important source of linguistic information available to children during this acquisition process: everyday conversations with their parents. We take a cross‐linguistic approach in analysing the evidence available to English‐ and Indonesian‐speaking children as they acquire meanings for words corresponding to the concepts alive and die . Our analysis illustrates that young children acquiring English and Indonesian are faced with distinct problems, but that parental input in both languages does little to support the acquisition of broad, inclusive biological concepts.     

Social axioms and values: a cross‐cultural examination

The relationships between social axioms, general beliefs that people hold about the social world, and values, defined as desirable goals for life, were examined in five cultural groups. Results show that the correlations between social axioms and Schwartz's (1992) values are generally low, suggesting that they represent two distinct types of construct. Based on a structural equation modelling approach, results further show that generally speaking, the five axiom dimensions are related to the value types in a meaningful and interpretable manner, and that these relationships are generally similar across the five cultural groups. Implications of these results and directions for future research are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘Undesirable’ and ‘desirable’ shifts in children's responses to repeated questions: age differences in the effect of providing a rationale for repetition

This study examined factors influencing children's tendency to shift responses when questions are repeated within an interview. Forty nine 4–5‐year‐olds and 40 7–8‐year‐olds were questioned about a video they had seen, with questions repeated by the same or a different interviewer. Half the children were given a rationale for question repetition, and half were not. Overall, the older children shifted less than the younger children, and, unlike the younger children, more to misleading than unbiased questions. The rationale did not affect overall shifting, but reduced the probability of ‘undesirable’ shifts (towards inaccuracy) in the younger children, and increased ‘desirable’ shifts (towards accuracy) at both ages. In the younger children, the rationale reduced total number of shifts, but only with the same interviewer, while in the older children the reverse applied. The results suggest developmental progression in the relative contributions of memorial and social/motivational factors to shifting. Implications for investigative interviewing with children are discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The closed mind: ‘Experience’ and ‘cognition’ aspects of openness to experience and need for closure as psychological bases for right‐wing attitudes

Openness to Experience and Need for Closure (NFC) are dispositional variables related to social‐cultural right‐wing attitudes. The present study investigated their joint effects. Factor analysis revealed an ‘experiential’ dimension with high loading openness items, and a ‘cognition’ dimension with high loadings for most NFC items and about a quarter of the openness item set. The experiential openness items were weakly related to right‐wing attitudes, demonstrating little predictive value. Conversely, the cognitive openness and NFC items were powerful predictors of right‐wing attitudes, and also played an important role in integrative models, both as a predictor of authoritarianism‐based racism and as a mediator of age related increments in right‐wing attitudes. It is concluded that right‐wing attitudes should be primarily understood in terms of (motivated) cognition, and to a smaller extent in terms of experiential openness. The distinction between ‘experiential’ and ‘cognitive’ openness is critically assessed, and it is asserted that because cognition is a multifaceted construct openness contains more than one cognitive dimension. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The circle of life: A cross‐cultural comparison of children's attribution of life‐cycle traits

Do children attribute mortality and other life‐cycle traits to all minded beings? The present study examined whether culture influences young children's ability to conceptualize and differentiate human beings from supernatural beings (such as God) in terms of life‐cycle traits. Three‐to‐5‐year‐old Israeli and British children were questioned whether their mother, a friend, and God would be subject to various life‐cycle processes: Birth, death, ageing, existence/longevity, and parentage. Children did not anthropomorphize but differentiated among human and supernatural beings, attributing life‐cycle traits to humans, but not to God. Although 3‐year‐olds differentiated significantly among agents, 5‐year‐olds attributed correct life‐cycle traits more consistently than younger children. The results also indicated some cross‐cultural variation in these attributions. Implications for biological conceptual development are discussed.     

The dialogical self in a cultural contact zone: Exploring the perceived ‘cultural correction’ function of schooling

This paper discusses a qualitative study that explores the impact the development of a cultural contact zone has upon identity processes in the Dialogical Self. The analysis draws upon interviews with Irish nationals, immigrants and asylum seekers in a new cultural contact zone. The findings illustrate uncertainty experienced as a result of immigration, suggesting that the development of the contact zone caused cultural discontinuity. The individuals' uncertainty for their cultural identities' future viability demanded the development of identity strategies to maintain continuity with their perceived cultural future, where they were faced with cultural others. Identity repositionings and a strategy to maintain continuity will be explored in the current paper. The Irish and asylum seeker participants' unprompted focus on schooling will be explored as a continuity strategy. The participants constructed schooling as a tool for the ‘cultural correction’ of migrant children and a means for the assimilation of migrants into the Irish community. The paper discusses the function of this strategy for the two groups, and the theoretical integration of cultural level processes in the theory of the Dialogical Self. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Bidirectional influences between maternal parenting and children's peer problems: a longitudinal monozygotic twin difference study

This twin study examined the bidirectional relationship between maternal parenting behaviors and children's peer problems that were not confounded by genetic and family environmental factors. Mothers of 259 monozygotic twin pairs reported parenting behaviors and peer problems when twins were 42 and 48 months. Path analyses on monozygotic twin difference scores revealed that authoritative parenting (the presence of consistent discipline and lack of harsh parenting) and peer problems simultaneously influenced each other. Authoritative parenting reduced peer problems, and peer problems increased authoritative parenting. Neither consistent discipline nor harsh parenting alone was associated with peer problems. These results suggest that maternal authoritative parenting works protectively in regard to children's peer problems, and peer problems can evoke such effective parenting.