State and trait anxiety: A cross-cultural comparison of Chinese and Caucasian students in Canada

Chinese people immigrating to North America are subject to specific Stressors in moving to a new country, and, furthermore, these factors interact with their cultural background to produce higher levels of anxiety than are commonly believed to exist. The present study compared the responses of 60 Chinese and 60 Caucasian Canadian students to questionnaires measuring multidimensional trait and state anxiety. As predicted, the Chinese students endorsed significantly higher levels of trait anxiety for ambiguous situations and daily routines than did the Caucasians. Moreover, they were also significantly more likely than the Caucasians to rate the research situation as being ambiguous and threatening. Of all the possible background variables tested, English fluency was the single most powerful covariate that was predictive of the results, with those students who indicated a lowered English proficiency tending to score higher across all four facets of trait anxiety. As the Chinese students were also significantly more likely than the Caucasians to indicate a lower level of English fluency, the present results are supportive of the likelihood that lack of familiarity with the adopted culture and language may contribute to adjustment difficulties in Chinese immigrants. This paper is based in part on an M.A. thesis in psychology at York University by the first author under the supervision of the second author. This research was supported in part by a research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) to the second author (Grant No. 410-94-1473).     

State and trait anxiety: A cross-cultural comparison of Chinese and Caucasian students in Canada

Chinese people immigrating to North America are subject to specific Stressors in moving to a new country, and, furthermore, these factors interact with their cultural background to produce higher levels of anxiety than are commonly believed to exist. The present study compared the responses of 60 Chinese and 60 Caucasian Canadian students to questionnaires measuring multidimensional trait and state anxiety. As predicted, the Chinese students endorsed significantly higher levels of trait anxiety for ambiguous situations and daily routines than did the Caucasians. Moreover, they were also significantly more likely than the Caucasians to rate the research situation as being ambiguous and threatening. Of all the possible background variables tested, English fluency was the single most powerful covariate that was predictive of the results, with those students who indicated a lowered English proficiency tending to score higher across all four facets of trait anxiety. As the Chinese students were also significantly more likely than the Caucasians to indicate a lower level of English fluency, the present results are supportive of the likelihood that lack of familiarity with the adopted culture and language may contribute to adjustment difficulties in Chinese immigrants.     

A cross-cultural study of the test anxiety levels in Iranian and Indian students

This study compared the test anxiety levels of Iranian (N = 160) and Indian (N = 160) school and college students. Significant main effects of Culture, Educational Level and Sex indicated that the Iranian students had higher Test Anxiety scores than their Indian counterparts, and females reported higher test anxiety than males. A significant Culture x Educational Level x Sex interaction revealed, however, that level of education had opposite effects within the Indian culture: Indian school females reported more test anxiety than their college counterparts; Indian college males had higher test anxiety than their school counterparts. Iranian school males and females both reported higher test anxiety than their college counterparts. Tricultural differences in the test anxiety levels of comparable student groups in Iran, India and the U.S. were interpreted as reflecting East-West cultural factors that influenced reactions to objective examinations, resulting in greater test anxiety in Eastern cultures.     

Dialectical thinking: A cross-cultural study of Japanese,Chinese, and British students

Peng and Nisbett found that Chinese people are more apt to engage in dialectical thinking (DT) than Americans. We gave the Dialectical Self Scale questionnaire and 10 pairs of opposing opinions to high school and university students of Japanese, Chinese, and British nationality. We asked them to fill in the questionnaire, to rate how strongly they agreed with each opinion, and to rate how wise it is to think dialectically. The scores on the questionnaire were higher among Easterners than among Westerners and higher among university students than among high school students. But the results of opinion agreement indicated that the dialectical tendency was stronger among the Chinese and British than among the Japanese. Furthermore, however, Japanese participants judged DT as wiser than Chinese and British did, and Chinese university students believed it was wiser than Chinese high school students did. We propose that this effect is attributed to Marxist education in China.     

A comparison between American and Chinese college students on suicide-related behavior parameters

Background/ObjectiveThe United States (US) and China are the two largest economies, but recent and directly comparable studies on suicide-related behaviors in the two countries are lacking. By using the Suicidal Behaviors Questionnaire-Revised (SBQ-R), item-level comparison was performed in assessing self-reported suicide-related behaviors between the US and Chinese undergraduates.MethodThis study involved a total of 3,185 college students aged between 18 to 24 years (1,185 US college students, and 2,000 Chinese students who were randomly selected from a large sample of 11,806 Chinese college students). Participants filled out the 4-item SBQ-R.ResultsParticipants’ responses were compared by country and sex. There was a higher overall risk of suicide-related behaviors among US students (24.3%) compared to Chinese students (17.0%). US students also reported higher lifetime attempt, past-year ideation, and lifetime threat. US female college students reported the highest suicide-related behaviors compared to other sub-groups.ConclusionsThere is a need to tailor specific interventions to alleviate college students’ suicide-related behaviors in the US and China, with a particular focus on US females.     

Comparing Chinese youth with American youth on adjustment: An illustration of measurement issues in cross-cultural research

In this article, we used results from two studies to show the need to go beyond linguistic equivalence to establish construct validity and measurement invariance in cross-cultural research. Study 1 examined Rosenberg Self-Esteem (RSE; 10 items) data from 156 Mainland Chinese youth (M = 13.8 years, SD = .53) and 213 Chinese-American youth (M = 13.6 years, SD = 2.1) from high socioeconomic status (SES) families. The Chinese translation of the RSE has been widely used. Study 2 included 1060 Mainland Chinese youth (M = 15.6 years, SD = 2.3) and 412 racially diverse American youth (M = 16.0, SD = 2.9) from all SES backgrounds. Data were collected with the third and newest edition of the Behavioural Assessment System for Children-Self Report of Personality (BASC-3-SRP; 189 items). We translated and back-translated the BASC-3-SRP between English and Chinese to establish linguistic equivalence. All participants were females. Study 1 showed that the RSE had acceptable internal consistency but lacked construct validity. Study 2 showed that the original and the translated BASC-3-SRP had good internal consistency and construct validity, but nine of its 16 subscales lacked measurement invariance. These results highlight measurement issues facing international and cross-cultural research.     

Facial emotion recognition: a cross-cultural comparison of Chinese,Chinese living in Australia,and Anglo-Australians

This study investigated how the cultural match or mismatch between observer and perceiver can affect the accuracy of judgements of facial emotion, and how acculturation can affect cross-cultural recognition accuracy. The sample consisted of 51 Caucasian-Australians, 51 people of Chinese heritage living in Australia (PCHA) and 51 Mainland Chinese. Participants were required to identify the emotions of happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust displayed in photographs of Caucasian and Chinese faces. The PCHA group also responded to an acculturation measure that assessed their adoption of Australian cultural values and adherence to heritage (Chinese) cultural values. Counter to the hypotheses, the Caucasian-Australian and PCHA groups were found to be significantly more accurate at identifying both the Chinese and Caucasian facial expressions than the Mainland Chinese group. Adoption of Australian culture was found to predict greater accuracy in recognising the emotions displayed on Caucasian faces for the PCHA group.     

Self-esteem,personality and Internet Addiction: A cross-cultural comparison study

Previous work from Germany and Austria highlighted the importance of personality and excessive private Internet usage for Internet Addiction (IA). In a cross-cultural approach we tried to replicate a negative association between IA and the personality trait of self-directedness in Bulgaria, Germany, Spain, Colombia, China, Taiwan and Sweden and as well the finding that persons with a damaged self-esteem have a higher proclivity for becoming Internet addicted in Bulgaria, Spain, Germany and Colombia. In total N = 989 took part in the study. Results show that the personality dimension self-directedness was negatively correlated to the IA score of the participants in all samples. In contrast, no interaction effect between implicit and explicit self-esteem on IA could be observed.     

A cross-cultural analysis of achievement and social goals among Chinese and Filipino students

We examined how achievement (mastery and performance) and social goals (affiliation, approval, concern, and status) influenced various learning outcomes in two collectivist cultures. Filipino (n \(\,=\,\) 355) and Hong Kong Chinese (n \(\,=\,\) 697) secondary students answered the relevant questionnaires. Regression analyses using mastery, performance, and social goals as predictors and learning outcomes as criterion variables were done separately for the HK and Filipino samples. Results indicated that the all the social goals were positively associated with adaptive learning. Mastery goal emerged as a positive predictor of deep learning and self-regulation across both contexts. To understand the relative importance of different goals, causal dominance analysis was used. Different types of goals were causally dominant for the HK and Filipino students. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Career decision-making profiles and career decision-making difficulties: A cross-cultural comparison among US,Israeli, and Chinese samples

Assessing individuals' career decision-making difficulties and career decision-making profile (style) allows counselors to help them make better career decisions. The present study focused on the associations between the Career Decision-Making Profiles (CDMP) questionnaire and the Career Decision-making Difficulties Questionnaire (CDDQ) in four large samples: American adults (N = 601), Israeli young adults (N = 623), American students (N = 915), and Chinese students (N = 929). The pattern of associations between the 12 CDMP dimensions and the 10 CDDQ scales was generally replicated across the four samples, and indicated that certain CDMP dimensions were associated with career decision-making difficulties. Additionally, in all four samples, the higher an individual's career decision-making adaptability, as derived from the CDMP, the fewer difficulties he or she encountered prior to and during the career decision-making process. However, a few unique patterns of associations between the CDMP and the CDDQ emerged in some samples.     

Different attitudes toward humor between Chinese and American students: evidence from the Implicit Association Test

Although cross-cultural research indicates that Chinese people demonstrate less humor than do Americans, little research addresses the reasons. This cross-cultural difference may be largely due to different implicit attitudes toward humor held by Chinese and Americans, deeply rooted in the two cultural traditions. Both self-report evaluation and the Implicit Association Test (IAT) were used to compare Chinese and American attitudes toward humor. Although 60 Chinese undergraduate students showed no significant difference from 33 American exchange students in explicit attitudes toward humor, the former associated humor more frequently with unpleasant adjectives and seriousness with pleasant adjectives on the IAT; the opposite pattern was found for the American group. This indicated a negative implicit attitude toward humor among the Chinese students.     

Beliefs about the cause,manifestation, and cure of schizophrenia: A cross-cultural comparison

This study set out to compare British and Sri Lankan young people's (students) beliefs concerning the causes, manifestations, and cures of schizophrenia. One hundred and seventy-five British and Sri Lankan participants completed the three-part questionnaire in their mother tongue. It was hypothesized that the Sri Lankans would have more negative and uninformed attitudes and beliefs about schizophrenia than the British. It was also hypothesized that the Sri Lankans would favour superstitious, family, and sociological causes to explain the development of schizophrenia, while the British would favour more biological explanations. These two hypotheses were confirmed after factor-analysing the internal structure of the three sections of the questionnaire. Even well-educated young people remain ignorant about one of the most challenging mental illnesses.     

Familiarity overrides complexity in rhythm perception: a cross-cultural comparison of American and Turkish listeners

Despite the ubiquity of dancing and synchronized movement to music, relatively few studies have examined cognitive representations of musical rhythm and meter among listeners from contrasting cultures. We aimed to disentangle the contributions of culture-general and culture-specific influences by examining American and Turkish listeners' detection of temporal disruptions (varying in size from 50-250 ms in duration) to three types of stimuli: simple rhythms found in both American and Turkish music, complex rhythms found only in Turkish music, and highly complex rhythms that are rare in all cultures. Americans were most accurate when detecting disruptions to the simple rhythm. However, they performed less accurately but comparably in both the complex and highly complex conditions. By contrast, Turkish participants performed accurately and indistinguishably in both simple and complex conditions. However, they performed less accurately in the unfamiliar, highly complex condition. Together, these experiments implicate a crucial role of culture-specific listening experience and acquired musical knowledge in rhythmic pattern perception.     

Mental models in word problem-solving: A comparison between American and Korean sixth-grade students

Mental model analysis was conducted in word problem solving using American (n = 42) and Korean (n = 44) sixth-graders. Two levels of mental models–the problem model and the mathematical model–constructed in the process of word problem solving were investigated. Categories for correct and incorrect models were developed to be used in think-aloud protocol analysis. The majority of students who constructed correct problem models classified the problems rapidly according to solution procedures as they read the problems, or restated the problems focusing on the specific words relating them to other statements in the problems. However, significant differences were found between American and Korean sixth-graders' in some categories of problem and mathematical models. While many Korean sixth-graders' problem-solving process steps were proceduralized, this was not the case for American sixth-graders, even for those who had a readily accessible knowledge base of basic mathematical facts.