The Chinese Translation of the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity: Factor Structure, Internal Consistency Reliability, and Construct Validity among Protestant Christians in Shanghai

A sample of 131 Chinese Christians attending a Protestant church in Shanghai completed the Chinese translation of the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity developed originally by Francis et al. (North American Journal of Psychology 4, 431–440, 2002) in Hong Kong. The data support the factor structure, internal the internal consistency reliability, and construct validity of this instrument and commend it for further use in studies conducted among Christians in China.     

Chinese participation in the church of Jesus Christ of latter‐day saints (Mormons) in Hong Kong

This paper shows how both intellectual and social factors motivate and sustain Chinese participation in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‐day Saints (Mormons) in Hong Kong. The data was collected from February 1996 to November 1997. Particular emphasis is placed on understanding how Chinese Mormons experience their church membership. My results show a positive relation between sustained church participation and pre‐Mormon religious involvement that has points of crucial similarity.     

Ambivalent Versus Univalent Voters: Perceived Media Influences and Third-Person Perceptions

By differentiating “ambivalent” from “univalent” voters, this study argues that ambivalent voters need information to reach a decision, which implies they are more open to persuasion through media coverage than are univalent voters. In turn, they may infer that election coverage exerts a greater influence on them, resulting in smaller self–other perceptual discrepancies in terms of their coverage susceptibility. Conversely, univalent voters have made their voting choices early during the campaign; for them, only when the intended influence seems desirable does the perceived influence of campaign news on them increase, leading to a smaller self–other perceptual gap. In other words, ambivalent voters engage in motivated inferences to reduce their ambivalence-aroused discomfort, whereas univalent voters engage in motivated inferences to avoid dissonance. The results of a survey conducted during the official campaign for the 2012 Taiwanese presidential election support these predictions, demonstrating the utility of categorizing voters as ambivalent or univalent when examining the perceived effects of election campaign news.     

Up or Down? How Culture and Color Affect Judgments

In the Mainland China stock market, an upmarket is represented by the color red, whereas a downmarket is represented by the color green. Elsewhere, including the Chinese Hong Kong stock market, the color representations are the opposite. Three studies were conducted to examine the red‐up–green‐down effect for Mainland Chinese as well as the green‐up–red‐down effect for Hong Kong people. Study 1 showed that Mainland Chinese tended to predict greater economic growth (study 1a) and higher growth in consumption trends (study 1b) when the experimental materials were presented in red than in green, whereas Hong Kong participants exhibited the opposite tendencies. Study 2 found that Mainland Chinese implicitly associated red and green with up and down, respectively; Hong Kong people, however, implicitly associated green and red with up and down, respectively. Study 3 further indicated that Mainland Chinese were more likely to predict good outcomes when scenarios were presented in red, whereas Hong Kong participants were more likely to predict good outcomes when scenarios were presented in green. These findings suggest that culturally specific environment cues could influence human prediction and judgment. Implications for judgment generally are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The adaptation of Chinese adolescents in two societies: a comparison of Chinese adolescents in Hong Kong and Australia

This study aimed to compare the adaptation of two groups of migrant Chinese adolescents with their nonmigrant peers. The migrant adolescents included 55 Chinese migrant adolescents who migrated to Australia (Chinese‐Australian) and 111 China‐born adolescents who migrated to Hong Kong (Chinese‐Hong Kong). The nonmigrant adolescents included 157 Anglo‐Australian adolescents residing in Australia and 456 Hong Kong‐born Chinese adolescents residing in Hong Kong. There were three research questions in this study. First, would there be any differences in the adaptation of Chinese migrant adolescents in different societies of settlement? Second, would migrant adolescents experience more adaptation problems than nonmigrant adolescents? Third, would there be any differences in the adaptation of adolescents in the two societies, Australia and Hong Kong? It was hypothesized that: (1) mainland Chinese migrant adolescents in Hong Kong would experience more adaptation problems than Chinese migrant adolescents in Australia; (2) migrant adolescents would report better adaptation than nonmigrant adolescents; (3) adolescents in Hong Kong would report poorer adaptation than adolescents in Australia. The participants were requested to complete a questionnaire on various adaptation outcome measures including life satisfaction, self‐esteem, psychological symptoms, academic satisfaction, and behaviour problems. The results indicated that Chinese‐Australian adolescents reported better psychological adaptation but Chinese‐Hong Kong adolescents reported better sociocultural adaptation. Adolescents resident in Australia reported higher psychological adaptation but lower sociocultural adaptation than those in Hong Kong. Migrant adolescents reported better psychological and sociocultural adaptation than their nonmigrant counterparts. The results were discussed in relation to the social and educational systems of the two societies.     

Managing Workplace Conflict in the United States and Hong Kong

We propose that managers have norms (standards of appropriate behavior) for resolving conflict, that these norms are culturally based, and that they explain cultural differences in conflict management outcomes. We confirm that the traditionally American norms of discussing parties' interests and synthesizing multiple issues were exhibited more strongly by American managers than by their Hong Kong Chinese counterparts. In addition, we confirm that the traditionally Chinese norms of concern for collective interests and concern for authority appeared more strongly among Hong Kong Chinese managers than among their American counterparts. American managers were more likely than Hong Kong Chinese managers, to resolve a greater number of issues and reach more integrative outcomes, while Hong Kong Chinese managers were more likely to involve higher management in conflict resolution. Culture had a significant effect on whether parties selected an integrative outcome rather than an outcome that involved distribution, compromise, higher management, or no resolution at all. Conflict norms explained the cultural differences that existed between reaching an integrative outcome and reaching an outcome involving distribution, compromise, or higher management; however, conflict norms did not fully explain the cultural differences that existed between reaching an integrative outcome and reaching no resolution.     

Intersubjective cultural representations predicting behaviour: The case of political culture and voting

Research has shown that cultural identification is influenced by the congruence between people's personal values and intersubjectively represented cultural values. The current research extended this finding to voter choice and behaviour. We hypothesized that people whose values and attitudes are similar to the collective representations of the political party that an election candidate belongs to would be more likely to vote for that candidate. Also, this relationship would be mediated by party identification. We found support for our hypotheses in two studies, one on the Legislative Council election in Hong Kong and the other on the 2004 US presidential election.     

Culture and decision‐making: Investigating cultural variations in the East Asian and North American online decision‐making processes

Research in cross‐cultural psychology suggests that East Asians hold holistic thinking styles whereas North Americans hold analytic thinking styles. The present study examines the influence of cultural thinking styles on the online decision‐making processes for Hong Kong Chinese and European Canadians, with and without time constraints. We investigated the online decision‐making processes in terms of (1) information search speed, (2) quantity of information used, and (3) type of information used. Results show that, without time constraints, Hong Kong Chinese, compared to European Canadians, spent less time on decisions and parsed through information more efficiently, and Hong Kong Chinese attended to both important and less important information, whereas European Canadians selectively focused on important information. No cultural differences were found in the quantity of information used. When under time constraints, all cultural variations disappeared. The dynamics of cultural differences and similarities in decision‐making are discussed.     

Maternal Child‐rearing Practices in Hong Kong and Beijing Chinese Families: A Comparative Study

The present study aimed to examine the child‐rearing practices in Chinese families in Beijing and Hong Kong. The sample consisted of 89 mothers in Beijing and 45 mothers in Hong Kong. The mothers were instructed to respond to the Child‐rearing Practice Report (CRPR) in Q‐sort format. Some of the item clusters were combined to produce the authoritarian and authoritative disciplinary styles. The results indicated that mothers in Hong Kong were more likely to adopt an authoritarian child‐rearing pattern than mothers in Beijing; however, the two groups did not differ in authoritative child‐rearing style. The results also showed that mothers in Hong Kong controlled their children more than their counterparts in Beijing, and they were less inclined to show affection towards their children; mothers in Beijing emphasized their children's achievement much more than their Hong Kong counterparts. The findings suggest that Chinese parental disciplinary styles may be quite different in various regions of Chinese societies. Such variance across different geopolitical locations within the same cultural background has been ignored in past cross‐cultural research.     

The influence of Confucianism: a narrative study of Hong Kong teachers’ understanding and practices of school guidance and counselling

School guidance seeks to promote the whole person growth of students. It is regarded as an integral part of an educational programme. In Hong Kong secondary schools, a team of teachers are responsible for school guidance. This article examines how guidance teachers made sense of their caring work in general and specifically the counselling services they offered to students. With the use of a narrative analysis and personal experience methods, the study explores the experience of guidance teachers in counselling. Twelve in-service teachers who had enrolled in the Postgraduate Diploma in Education programme at the Hong Kong Institute of Education were interviewed. The influence of the Chinese philosophy of Confucianism, emerging as a theme from the data, was prominent, as its key principles were incorporated into the teachers’ personal systems of counselling. The findings illuminate the influence of Chinese culture in Hong Kong schools. Implications for the promotion of culturally responsive approaches to counselling and culturally competent practices for helping are discussed.     

Network Size, Social Support and Happiness in Later Life: A Comparative Study of Beijing and Hong Kong

This study investigates how happiness of elderly Chinese is related to their social support networks, based on survey data collected in 2000 from Beijing and Hong Kong. These two Chinese cities share a common cultural heritage but differ in social-economic structure. It was found that in both cities, income is more significant than gender and education in determining happiness, but it is less important than personal network size and particularly perceived social support. More importantly, findings from the two cites consistently lend support to the thesis that older persons with a larger network are happier and that social support plays a mediating role. Controlling for social-demographic factors does not change this pattern of relationships. There are, however, differences between the two cities. Beijing’s elderly were found to be happier and have larger social networks than Hong Kong’s elderly. Also, our explanatory models consistently account for less variance in the happiness of older persons in Beijing. These findings are probably due to the differences between socialist Beijing and capitalist Hong Kong in degrees of modernization and urbanization and in social organization of work and community life.     

Interrelationships between anxiety,lifestyle self-reports and fitness in a sample of Hong Kong University students

Although anxiety in university students has been well documented, the influence of lifestyle and fitness status in relation to anxiety has not been investigated from a cultural perspective previously. To make recommendations regarding the avoidance or management of anxiety in this anxiety-prone cohort that are rationally based, this preliminary investigation examined the interrelationship between anxiety, lifestyle self-reports and aerobic fitness in Hong Kong Chinese University students. The State Trait Anxiety Inventory (Form Y-2) and a lifestyle questionnaire were completed by 213 students. Female students were more anxious than male students. Subjects with high anxiety reported more deleterious lifestyle behaviours including higher salt consumption and lower levels of exercise; in addition to more frequent symptoms of anxiety such as headaches and daytime somnolence. The extremes of this sample were stratified into a low anxiety group (n = 17) and a high anxiety group (n = 14) to compare their fitness status. Although both groups had below normal aerobic capacity, the higher systolic blood pressure observed for the high anxiety group is consistent with signs of anxiety, or greater deconditioning in this group or both. The results of this study have highlighted anxiety as a concern in Hong Kong University students and identified some lifestyle and fitness correlates. Understanding lifestyle and pathophysiological correlates of anxiety in Hong Kong University students that may have a cultural basis, is a crucial step toward averting or managing anxiety when these students are studying either in Hong Kong or abroad.     

Humour styles,gelotophobia and self‐esteem among Chinese and Indian university students

This study examined the relationship between humour styles, gelotophobia and self‐esteem among 102 Indian and 101 Hong Kong university students. The Humour Styles Questionnaire, the GELOPH‐15 Scale and the Rosenberg Self‐Esteem Scale were used. Indian students rated the importance of humour significantly higher than Hong Kong Chinese students and considered themselves as being significantly more humorous as well. Both Indian and Hong Kong Chinese students engaged in significantly more affiliative and self‐enhancing humour. Indian students engaged in significantly more affiliative and self‐enhancing humour and reported less gelotophobia than Hong Kong students. Gelotophobia was negatively correlated with self‐esteem and affiliative humour in both samples and was positively correlated with self‐defeating humour in the Indian sample only. Affiliate humour mediated the relationship between self‐esteem and gelotophobia in both samples whereas self‐defeating humour mediated the relationship in the Indian sample only. Taken together, both Indian students and Hong Kong students valued adaptive humour, but Indian students valued humour more than Hong Kong students. This study is a pioneering study of its kind conducted in a Chinese‐Indian sample.     

Age differences in the likelihood of destructive anger responses under different relationship contexts: a comparison of mainland and Hong Kong Chinese

This brief report examined how the likelihood of destructive anger responses varied with age across relationship contexts. Seventy-six older adults and 100 younger adults from Hong Kong and Mainland China reported their responses to anger-eliciting scenarios elicited by a kin, a close or a casual friend. Results indicated that compared with their younger counterparts, older Hong Kong Chinese were less likely to report direct aggression toward kin, but older Mainland Chinese were more likely to do so. Older Hong Kong Chinese were less likely to report malevolent and fractious motives than were younger Chinese across all relationships; Older Mainland Chinese were less likely to do so only in friendship. Findings have implications for conceptualizing age-related emotion regulation across relationships and cultures.     

The association between personality,attachment, psychological distress,church denomination and the god concept among a non-clinical sample

The association between personality, attachment, psychological distress, church denomination and the God concept was studied among a sample of 208 subjects from the normal population. Subjects were Christians, members of an Orthodox reformed church or the Pentecostal church. Negative feelings towards God were associated with a high level of harm avoidance, insecure attachment and a high level of psychological distress. Psychological distress mediated the association between personality and attachment variables and negative feelings towards God. Psychological distress and church denomination were the only two independent predictors of negative feelings towards God. Moreover, results showed that the Orthodox reformed church members hold a more negative concept of God than the Pentecostal church members do. Orthodox reformed church members see God in particular as a punitive judge, independent of personality, attachment and psychological distress, suggesting a large influence of religious culture on this particular type of God concept. Results are discussed from a psychotherapeutic point of view. Finally, several ethical issues regarding psychotherapy with religious clients are addressed.     

If they were to vote, they would vote for us

In two field studies, we examined whether voters overestimate support for their political party among nonvoters. In Study 1, voters estimated the percentage of votes their party would receive in an upcoming election, and this percentage increased when voters estimated the percentage of votes their party would receive if nonvoters also were to vote. In Study 2, participants overestimated support for their party even when we made them explicitly aware of current levels of this support by presenting them with poll-based forecasts of election results. Furthermore, Study 2 demonstrated that commitment to vote for a specific party predicted the degree of overestimation. Our results imply that highly committed voters are particularly likely to project support for their party onto nonvoters. Implications for the literature on social projection and social identity are discussed.     

Personality and Politics: Values, Traits, and Political Choice

Voters' political choices have presumably come to depend more on their personal preferences and less on their social characteristics in Western democracies. We examine two aspects of personality that may influence political choice, traits and personal values, using the Five Factor Model of personality traits and the Schwartz (1992 ) theory of basic personal values. Data from 3044 voters for the major coalitions in the Italian national election of 2001 showed that supporters of the two coalitions differed in traits and values, largely as hypothesized. Center-left voters were higher than center-right voters in the traits of friendliness and openness and lower in energy and conscientiousness. Regarding values, center-left voters were higher than center-right voters in universalism, benevolence, and self-direction and lower in security, power, achievement, conformity, and tradition. Logistic regressions revealed that values explained substantial variance in past and future voting and in change of political choice, trumping personality traits. We discuss explanations for the primacy of values and implications for the social cognitive view of personality.     

Chinese Churches and the Ecumenical Movement from an Asian Perspective

The involvement of Chinese churches and Chinese Christians with the ecumenical movement preceded the establishment of the World Council of Churches in 1948. Recurring themes in the encounter have been de‐colonization and indigenization, church unity and post‐denominationalism, and Asian regional ecumenism. There was also a determination among Chinese church leaders to reconfigure mission and relations between churches in the West and those in Asia. These concerns have their origins in the chequered history of Christian missions and their association with imperialism in the last century.     

A comparative study of personality in adults and children: Hong Kong vs England

The 90-item adult version of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire was translated into Chinese and administered to 270 male and 462 female subjects in Hong Kong. In a second study the 81-item version of the Junior EPQ (JEPQ) was translated into Chinese and given to 698 boys and 629 girls.Reasonably valid scales for use in Hong Kong are suggested for both adult and junior forms of the questionnaire. In a direct comparison of British and Chinese (Hong Kong) groups, using reduced scales comprising only items both scoring keys had in common. Hong Kong adults scored higher on Psychoticism and Social Desirability and lower on Extraversion than the British while children from Hong Kong scored lower on Extraversion and Neuroticism but higher on Social Desirability than their British counterparts. Indices of factor comparison were universally high, indicating that the major dimensions of personality were very similar in Hong Kong Chinese as in British subjects.