Motivation in an asymmetric bargaining situation : A cross-cultural study(1)

Canadian and East Indian dyads played a temporally limited bargaining game with a two by five payoff matrix. There were three experimental conditions: (a) Equality condition: each player had an equal range of possible payoffs, (b) Topdog condition: each player ostensibly had a larger payoff range than the other, and (c) Underdog condition: each player ostensibly had a smaller payoff range than the other. The actual payoff range was identical across players and conditions. Canadians were more cooperative in the Topdog condition than in the Underdog condition whereas for the Indians, there was evidence that the opposite was the case. Among the Indians in the Underdog condition, a dominance-submission order apparently formed which may reflect the rigid social hierarchy in Indian society.     

How iconic gestures enhance communication: an ERP study

EEG was recorded as adults watched short segments of spontaneous discourse in which the speaker's gestures and utterances contained complementary information. Videos were followed by one of four types of picture probes: cross-modal related probes were congruent with both speech and gestures; speech-only related probes were congruent with information in the speech, but not the gesture; and two sorts of unrelated probes were created by pairing each related probe with a different discourse prime. Event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by picture probes were measured within the time windows of the N300 (250-350 ms post-stimulus) and N400 (350-550 ms post-stimulus). Cross-modal related probes elicited smaller N300 and N400 than speech-only related ones, indicating that pictures were easier to interpret when they corresponded with gestures. N300 and N400 effects were not due to differences in the visual complexity of each probe type, since the same cross-modal and speech-only picture probes elicited N300 and N400 with similar amplitudes when they appeared as unrelated items. These findings extend previous research on gesture comprehension by revealing how iconic co-speech gestures modulate conceptualization, enabling listeners to better represent visuo-spatial aspects of the speaker's meaning.     

The cognitive representation of political personalities. A cross-cultural comparison(1)

The cognitive representation of salient political personalities was studied in a British and a German student sample, using a multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) procedure. Separate MDS analyses for the two samples yielded a readily interpetable three dimensional stimulus space in each case. These cognitive spaces for political figures were interpreted as reflecting the attributes of political potency, evaluation and intelligence in the case of the British sample, and evaluation, conservatism and political potency in the case of the German sample. An additional joint analysis of data from both subject groups indicated significant cross-cultural differences in the cognitive representations of political leaders. The results were discussed in terms of the socio-cultural differences between the two subsamples, and the utility of a multi-dimensional approach to political perception and behaviour.     

Further investigation on the mnemonic effect of gestures: Their meaning matters

Three experiments are reported that examine the nature of knowledge underlying performance in the invariant learning task. Previous research (Bright & Burton, 1994; McGeorge & Burton, 1990) has supported an account of performance based on the implicit abstraction and application of a rule pertaining to the invariant feature. In contrast, we found effects in both the digit and clock invariant tasks that are difficult to explain solely in terms of subjects acquiring the experimenters' rule. In all three experiments, manipulation of test item properties that are independent of the invariant feature led to a detriment in performance that is not predicted by an account based on the experimenters' rules. Furthermore, the use of an on-line measure of awareness (confidence ratings) provided some evidence that performance is mediated by low confidence explicit knowledge.     

A cross-cultural study of rape

Rape is often considered a crime and, as such. is subject to punishment. This paper reports a test of a “deterence theory” of rape with a cross-cultural study which uses a sample of societies drawn from the Human Relations Area Files. Fraternal interest group theory is also tested. This theory argues that the presence of fraternal interest groups, power groups of related males, predicts the occurrence of rape in a society. Although the results support both theories, a composite theory, using both deterrence and fraternal interest group theories, was found to provide a better explanation for the occurrence of rape than either theory alone.     

A cross-cultural study of family functioning

The Family Assessment Device (FAD) was used to compare patterns of family functioning in two cultural settings, North America and Hungary. The sample size consisted of 95 nonclinical North American families and 58 nonclinical Hungarian families. No cross-cultural differences were found in the families' general functioning nor in their affective involvement or affective responsiveness as measured by the FAD. Hungarian families, however, perceived their functioning as significantly better than the North American families in problem-solving and in communication. North American families rated themselves significantly better than the Hungarians in setting family rules and boundaries and in meeting their family responsibilities. Results from this study suggest that cultural values can affect a family's functioning and that differences in areas of family functioning can be captured using the FAD. A discussion of broad societal values of the two cultures was used to interpret the contrasting patterns of family functioning.Cross-cultural studies serve many purposes. In general they provide knowledge about the different cultures under investigation. As such, they broaden and enrich our perspectives of ourselves and the world around us. More specifically they highlight similarities and differences across cultures, information that can be helpful in further refining our understanding of the impact of diverse and varying socio-political forces.A topic of particular interest to family therapists and researchers is family functioning in different cultural settings. In spite of continuing research in this area, few studies examine cross-cultural patterns of family interactions and even fewer do so with instruments specifically designed to assess family functioning.From a family perspective, particularly looking at pathology in family functioning, cross-cultural comparisons can be used to highlight areas of dysfunction common to families irrespective of the cultural context. From a cross-cultural perspective, family comparisons can be used to point out the cultural effects and emphases given to different dimensions of functioning within a common system (i.e., the family unit).Both conceptual and methodological problems have contributed to shortcomings in previous cross-cultural studies (Fabrega, 1974; Kleinman, 1987; Flaherty et al., 1988; Rogler, 1989). A basic criticism of such studies has been the assumption that meanings and values in one culture are equivalent to those in another.Another issue, which is particularly pertinent to our study, is the use of an instrument which is developed in one culture and administered in another cultural setting. A potential problem this raises is inferring cultural differences between groups when the translated and the original instruments are not actually comparable in meaning. In fact, one objective of the study was to see whether our own self-report measure of family functioning, the Family Assessment Device (FAD, Epstein et al., 1978, 1983), could be successfully used in another cultural setting.The following report is part of a larger research project, conducted in 1986–87, that compared depressed and nonclinical families across two cultures. The findings presented here are comparisons between nonclinical Hungarian and nonclinical North American families. In our earlier study differences in family interactions between clinically depressed and nonclinical families were evident in both cultural settings (Keitner et al., in press). It was not clear, however, if significant cross-cultural differences in family functioning would be found for the normal group of families and, if so, how these would differ from their ill counterparts. Inclusion of the normal families thus served two purposes, as controls in the larger study to test within cultural differences and as comparison groups in a separate analysis to test between cultural differences.A specific objective of this study was to contrast patterns of perceived family functioning in nonclinical Hungarian families and North American families. Another objective was to determine if the Family Assessment Device (FAD), a self-report measure of family functioning, could be successfully used in different cultural contexts. Hungary was chosen as an appropriate country of study for several reasons. It is at the crossroads of East and West, sharing enough similarities with western culture to validate comparisons, yet different enough in both its cultural and sociopolitical system that some differences could be expected to emerge. Because it is likely that the Hungarian social system is less familiar to readers than that of North American, the results are discussed with particular reference to Hungary.We would like to thank Drs. J. Furedi and T. Kurimay for help in translating the Family Assessment Device and Professors J. Szilard and Muszong-Kovacs for their support of this study. This work was supported in part by the Firan Foundation.     

A cross-cultural investigation of the communication of suicidal intent in Swedish and Turkish adolescents

A recent study found that Swedish adolescents were more disapproving of a suicidal disclosure by a fictional friend than their Turkish counterparts. Given this finding, the present study investigated whether or not more adolescents in Turkey than in Sweden disclose their own suicidal thoughts to someone, to whom adolescents disclose their suicidal thoughts, what reactions such disclosures produce, and reasons for not disclosing suicidal feelings among 966 Swedish and 956 Turkish high school students. A questionnaire was used to collect information about different aspects of suicidal disclosures. More Turkish than Swedish adolescent suicide ideators disclosed their thoughts. More Turkish than Swedish students believed also that young people thinking about and planning suicide tell others of their plans and thereby ask for help. An overwhelming majority of adolescents in both groups revealed their thoughts to peers. The social reactions to suicidal disclosures in both samples were mainly positive. The two most common reasons for not disclosing in both groups involved interpersonal hopelessness. Adolescents who disclosed their past suicidal thoughts to someone reported having lower current suicidal ideation than those who had not. In line with favorable social attitudes towards suicidal disclosures and lower suicidal mortality rates in Turkey compared with Sweden, more Turkish than Swedish adolescents reported having disclosed their own suicidal thoughts to someone in their social milieu.     

A cross-cultural examination of the relation of marital communication behavior to marital satisfaction.

Numerous studies have examined the communication behaviors of Western, primarily North American, couples and have demonstrated a robust and reliable association between marital satisfaction and couple communication. However, there has been relatively less attention given to the generalizability of these findings to non-Western couples. To address this issue, the authors conducted an observational study of marital communication among couples from 3 different cultural groups: 50 White American couples, 52 Pakistani couples in Pakistan, and 48 immigrant Pakistani couples in America. The results show that positive and negative communication behaviors were associated with marital satisfaction within each of the 3 cultural groups. However, the American group's marital satisfaction was more strongly related to marital communication behaviors than was that of the Pakistani group and, to a lesser extent, the immigrant group.     

A cross-cultural test of the personality integration hypothesis1

This study attempted to validate the psychological integration hypothesis by comparing the levels of psychological functioning of individuals from four cultural groups on three dimensions of personality. The personality attributes investigated were field-dependence/independence cognitive style, tolerance of ambiguity (an affective style variable) and machiavellianism (an index of stylistic orientation in interpersonal relationships). Subjects were 218 first-level supervisors from five industrial plants in Auckland, New Zealand. Comparisons of mean group scores on each personality variable showed that a similar rank order among the groups held for each personality variable. It was also found that, for the sample as a whole, there were positive intercorrelations between the personality variables. The symmetrical rank ordering of the groups on the personality variables was considered to indicate that members of each group had attained relatively similar levels of psychological development on each personality attribute. The relatively low levels of intercorrelations between the personality variables were held to indicate that they were measuring separate areas of psychological functioning.     

Embodying gestures: The Social Orienting Model and the study of early gestures in autism

Autistic spectrum disorders impair the ability to interact socially. Detecting and understanding their onset is not only an empirical enterprise, but also a theoretical one, often linked to studies on intersubjectivity. Different theoretical perspectives have been elaborated in the past to account for the deficit. The main purpose of this paper is to reinforce and offer empirical grounding to a recent approach, termed Social Orienting Model, by presenting the main theoretical approaches to autism and contrasting them to this view, as well as considering its possible effect on empirical research, focusing on current literature analyzing gestures in children with autism.

Crying and mood change: A cross-cultural study

This study was designed to determine the influence of crying-related variables and country characteristics on mood change after crying. It was hypothesized that mood improvement would be positively associated to crying frequency, Individualism-Collectivism, and the extent of gender empowerment in a country. Masculinity-Femininity and shame were expected to have a negative relation with mood change. Self-report data were collected in 30 countries (1680 male and 2323 female students). Although bivariate associations yielded inconsistent results, in a regression analysis Masculinity-Femininity, national income, shame, and crying frequency emerged as significant predictors of mood change, all in the anticipated direction. The results suggest that how one feels after a crying episode depends on how common crying is in one's culture and on general feelings of shame over crying. It also seems that (perceptions of) role patterns may play an important part in the experience of mood change.     

A cross-cultural study of suicide intent in parasuicide patients

As part of the WHO/EURO Multicentre Study on Parasuicide, the level of suicide intent among female and male parasuicide patients from various European regions was compared. From nine regions, a total of 1,212 parasuicide patients, 752 females and 460 males, were included in the study. Although some statistical significant differences in level of suicide intent between the regions and genders were found, the effect sizes of these relationships were so small that the differences have neither theoretical nor practical significance. As far as level of suicide intent is concerned, the WHO study has succeeded in recruiting a relatively homogeneous group of self-harming patients across borders of region, culture, and country.     

Dogs' (Canis familiaris) responsiveness to human pointing gestures

In a series of 3 experiments, dogs (Canis familiaris) were presented with variations of the human pointing gesture: gestures with reversed direction of movement, cross-pointing, and different arm extensions. Dogs performed at above chance level if they could see the hand (and index finger) protruding from the human body contour. If these minimum requirements were not accessible, dogs still could rely on the body position of the signaler. The direction of movement of the pointing arm did not influence the performance. In summary, these observations suggest that dogs are able to rely on relatively novel gestural forms of the human communicative pointing gesture and that they are able to comprehend to some extent the referential nature of human pointing.