Cultural background and coping with loneliness

The present study is an examination of the influence of cultural background on an individual's ability to cope with loneliness. Participants were from 3 cultural backgrounds: North American, South Asian, and West Indian. A total of 679 participants (318 men and 361 women) answered an 18-item loneliness questionnaire. Results revealed significant differences in the coping strategies that the participants used. Gender differences were also found across the cultures and within each culture.     

Risk Factors for Adolescent Marijuana Use Across Cultures and Across Time

An integrated analysis of the data from 3 different studies was conducted to examine the early psychosocial predictors of later marijuana use among adolescents. Longitudinal analysis of interview data was performed. The data used in the analysis were derived from (a) a sample of 739 predominantly White adolescents representative of the northeastern United States, (b) a sample of 1,190 minority adolescents from the East Harlem section of New York City, and (c) a sample of 1,374 Colombian adolescents from two cities in Colombia. South America. In 2 of the samples, participants were interviewed in their homes, and in the 3rd study, participants were assessed in school. The predictors included a number of variables from (a) the personality domain, reflecting the adolescents' conventionality and intrapsychic functioning; (b) the family domain, representing the parent-child mutual attachment relationship and parental substance use; (c) the peer domain, reflecting the peer group's delinquency and substance use; and (d) the adolescents' own use of legal drugs. The dependent variable was adolescent marijuana use. The results of the analysis demonstrated remarkable consistency in the risk and protective factors for later marijuana use across the 3 samples, attesting to the robust nature of these predictors and their generalizability across gender, time, location, and ethnic/cultural background. These findings have important implications for designing intervention programs. Programs aimed at preventing adolescent marijuana use can be designed to incorporate universal features and still incorporate specific components that address the unique needs of adolescents from different groups.     

VALUE SYSTEMS AND ANOMIE IN THREE CULTURES

The Rokeach Value Survey was administrated to three equivalent groups of South Africans - Africans (Blacks), Indians (Browns), and Europeans (Whites) - along with the Srole Anomie Scale. It was hypothesized that a number of differences would occur between these groups based on socio-economic structure of the country, their respective affluence, and traditional cultural differences. Values assigned relatively high importance by the Africans concerned equality and peace, while the Europeans place higher value on friendship and love. Although there were large significant differences between the Black and White groups on anomie, these scores did not correlate very highly with the instrumental or terminal values. These results were interpreted in terms of the history and culture of the three groups and the socio-political structure of the society in which they live. Limitations of research of this kind are also noted.     

Political socialization: A multivariate analysis of Swedish political attitude and preference data

Studied the socio-political attitudes and political party preferences of 532 Swedish high school students as a function of seven background variables: (I) the mother's political party preference, (2) the father's political party preference, (3) the mother's education, (4) the father's education, (5) the mother's income, (6) the father's income and (7) social class identification. Multiple classification analysis and multivariate nominal analysis were used to uncover the most important possible determinants of political socialization of the youth in both bivariate and multivariate aspects. The results showed that, of the seven predictor or background variables studied, only three had any substantial relationship with socio-political attitudes and political party preferences of the youth: (a) the mother's political party preference, (b) class identification and (c) the father's political party preference in that general order of importance. Furthermore, the superiority of the mother's political party preference over the father's political party preference was especially marked for girls. Among other things, the results also disclosed that ‘left-wing’ youth tended to be more loyal to parental political beliefs than ‘moderate’ and ‘right-wing’ youth. Several alternative explanations were proposed for these findings.     

The Development of the Conception of Socioeconomic Mobility in Children From Mexico and Spain

The authors studied the developmental stages of children's understanding of upward socioeconomic mobility. They interviewed one hundred 6- to 14-year-old participants from Mexico and Spain and asked them about sources of wealth and factors related to socioeconomic mobility. Categorical analyses of the responses showed few age-related changes but noted some cross-national differences. A different analysis designed to identify levels of understanding showed a significant association between age and type of explanation of socioeconomic mobility. Overall, cross-national comparisons yielded similarities in children's developmental trends, and only slight differences were found with regard to cultural background. The present results contrast with those of studies conducted from the perspective of the social representation theory.     

The role of situational goals and audience on self‐reported emotion experience and expression: Dutch and South Korean children compared

Previous research demonstrates that cultural concerns affect emotional lives. However, the question remains to what extent salient cultural concerns influence emotion experience and expression. In the present study, the role of (i) individualistic versus collectivistic goals and (ii) presence of an authority figure (father) versus an equal status figure (peer), were systematically investigated in 24 Dutch and 23 South Korean children's (a) negative emotion experience and (b) emotion expression and motives using hypothetical conflict situations. The results reveal that for children from both cultures emotion experience did not vary between situational goals and the audience present, however their emotion expression did. More specifically, cultural differences in how negative emotions would be expressed appeared in ‘father’ situations and not in ‘peer’ situations. Cultural differences in children's motives for emotion expression were revealed in situations with a collectivistic goal and not when an individualistic goal was presented. Moreover, within group analyses indicate that Dutch children's emotion expressions were more context‐sensitive than those of South Korean children. These results indicate that some situational features corresponding to cultural concerns partly explained cultural differences, whereas other features did not, helping to improve our understanding about variation in the emotional lives of different cultural groups. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Metacognition in argument generation: the misperceived relationship between emotional investment and argument quality

Overestimation of one’s ability to argue their position on socio-political issues may partially underlie the current climate of political extremism in the U.S. Yet very little is known about what factors influence overestimation in argumentation of socio-political issues. Across three experiments, emotional investment substantially increased participants’ overestimation. Potential confounding factors like topic complexity and familiarity were ruled out as alternative explanations (Experiments 1–3). Belief-based cues were established as a mechanism underlying the relationship between emotional investment and overestimation in a measurement-of-mediation (Experiment 2) and manipulation-of-mediator (Experiment 3) design. Representing a new bias blind spot, participants believed emotional investment helps them argue better than it helps others (Experiments 2 and 3); where in reality emotional investment harmed or had no effect on argument quality. These studies highlight misguided beliefs about emotional investment as a factor underlying metacognitive miscalibration in the context of socio-political issues.     

Bodily perspective taking goes social: the role of personal,interpersonal, and intercultural factors

Mentally placing the self in the physical position of another person might engage social perspective taking because participants have to match their own position with that of another. We investigated the influence of personal (sex), interpersonal (siblings, parental marital status), and cultural (individualistic, collectivistic) factors on individuals' abilities to mentally take the position of front‐facing and back‐facing figures in an online study (369 participants). Replicating findings from laboratory studies responses were slower for front‐facing than back‐facing figures. Having siblings, parents' marital status, and cultural background influenced task performance in theoretically predictable ways. The present perspective‐taking task is a promising experimental paradigm to assess social perspective taking and one that is free from the response biases inherent in self‐report.     

Dispositional optimism and physical wellbeing: The relevance of culture,gender, and socioeconomic status

The present study examined the relationship between dispositional optimism and physical wellbeing (as reflected in physical symptom reporting) in two groups of American and Jordanian college students. It also assessed moderation effects of culture, gender, and socioeconomic status (SES). Participants were administered a questionnaire consisting of items pertaining to dispositional optimism (as measured by the Revised Life Orientation Test, LOT‐R) along with items assessing physical symptom reporting and sociodemographic factors (e.g., gender, socioeconomic status). The results revealed significant negative correlations between dispositional optimism and physical symptom reporting for both American and Jordanian participants, although the magnitude of the correlation for the American group was noticeably larger than that for the Jordanian group. The results also showed that women, especially Jordanians, were more likely than men to report physical symptoms. Among Jordanians, physical symptom reporting was more common among those of lower SES. No statistically significant differences in physical symptom reporting were found between American men and women or between the two cultural groups. Multiple regression analyses revealed no statistically significant interactions between optimism and cultural background, optimism and gender, or optimism and SES. Overall, the results suggest that optimism is the factor most predictive of physical symptom reporting, followed by SES and gender. These results corroborate previous findings on the relationship between dispositional optimism and physical wellbeing, and point to crosscultural differences in relationship patterns. These differences suggest that although personality characteristics such as optimism may play an important role in the physical wellbeing of both Western and non‐Western groups, the influence of sociodemographic factors such as gender and SES and their interaction with cultural variables must not be overlooked.     

Conceptualizing Creativity: General and Cultural Biases in Gough's Creative Personality Scale

This study analyzes the validity of Gough's Creative Personality Scale (CPS) for the Adjective Check List (ACL) by using 1773 Swiss, South Korean, and Mainland Chinese students as a sample. Four sources of potential bias were identified in Gough's CPS, two of which are general and two cultural in nature. The two general biases were investigated by conducting correlation analyses and evaluating alternative scoring methods for the CPS. As a result of the first bias, checking a large number of adjectives was found to be more important for achieving a high score than checking the relevant ones. Due to the second bias, the CPS score mostly depends on the number of positive adjectives checked while negative items have little impact. The two cultural biases were analyzed using an implicit version of the CPS (iCPS) and factor analysis. The latter revealed three different clusters of creativity type: exploratory‐type, socially responsible‐type, and intellectual‐type creativity. Based on cultural background, they are all weighted differently, causing a potential experiential bias in the CPS. Findings indicate that in South Korea and Mainland China socially responsible‐type creativity dominates whereas in Switzerland exploratory‐type creativity prevails. Findings from the iCPS suggest the second cultural bias, the socially desirable responding bias arising from differences in responding styles among the three cultures.     

背景表情对目标表情知觉的影响：中美跨文化比较

随机选取中美大学生各30名,探讨在中西方文化背景下,背景表情对个体知觉目标表情是否会产生影响。结果:（1）当有背景表情时,中国被试对目标表情强度评定的时间比无背景表情时的评定时间长;且背景表情与目标表情一致时,中国被试判断目标表情的强度最强;不一致时,则最弱;而美国被试对目标表情强度的评分及反应时不受背景表情的影响。（2）当背景表情发生变化时,中国被试对于图片的再认正确率显著高于美国被试。结论：美国被试会将注意力放在目标表情上,不易受背景表情的影响,而中国被试对目标表情的判断会受到背景表情的影响。     

Parenting Styles Affecting the Social Behaviour of Five-Year Olds

The main aim of the study was to explore the relationship between parenting styles as a correlate of social behaviour among five-year olds. Participants were 30 parents of 25 pre-primary students of a school in Northern Province of South Africa, and the children's teacher. The participants were mostly of the indigenous African ethnic background. The parents completed the Parental Styles Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ: Robinson, Mandleco, Olsen & Hart, 2001). The teacher rated the five-year olds' social behaviour using the Behavioural Questionnaire (BQ: Latouf, 2008). These results indicated primarily that an authoritative parenting style was most endorsed by the parents of the five-year olds. Parents self-rating on parenting style were significantly associated with teacher ratings of the student's social behaviour.     

Judgments of marital rape as a function of honor culture,masculine reputation threat,and observer gender: A cross-cultural comparison between Turkey,Germany, and the UK

Previous research has shown that there is higher tolerance of violence against women in cultures with salient gender-specific honor norms, especially when the violence occurs in intimate relationships and in response to threat to male honor. The present cross-cultural study (N = 398) extended these findings to sexual aggression (i.e., marital rape) by comparing participants from a culture that emphasizes honor (Turkey) and participants from cultures without strong honor traditions (Germany and Britain). Turkish participants blamed the victim and exonerated the perpetrator more than did German and British participants. In all cultural groups, participants blamed the victim and exonerated the perpetrator more when the husband's reputation was threatened than in the absence of such threat, and in all cultural groups, men blamed the victim and exonerated the perpetrator more than women. Yet, the effect of masculine reputation threat and this pattern of gender differences were somewhat more pronounced among Turkish than German or British participants. Results exploring the predictive role of honor norms at the individual level beyond rape myth acceptance and traditional gender role attitudes revealed that honor norms were the primary predictor of rape perceptions and blame attributions in Turkey (an honor culture), but not in Germany and Britain (dignity cultures) where rape myth acceptance was the strongest predictor. These results provide insights into the cultural factors influencing marital rape judgments in ways that may undermine victim's well-being and fair handling of rape cases, and highlight the domains most urgently in need of potential intervention.     

How does context affect assessments of facial emotion? The role of culture and age

People from Asian cultures are more influenced by context in their visual processing than people from Western cultures. In this study, we examined how these cultural differences in context processing affect how people interpret facial emotions. We found that younger Koreans were more influenced than younger Americans by emotional background pictures when rating the emotion of a central face, especially those younger Koreans with low self-rated stress. In contrast, among older adults, neither Koreans nor Americans showed significant influences of context in their face emotion ratings. These findings suggest that cultural differences in reliance on context to interpret others' emotions depend on perceptual integration processes that decline with age, leading to fewer cultural differences in perception among older adults than among younger adults. Furthermore, when asked to recall the background pictures, younger participants recalled more negative pictures than positive pictures, whereas older participants recalled similar numbers of positive and negative pictures. These age differences in the valence of memory were consistent across culture.     

The Cross‐Cultural Relevance of Person‐Centered Counseling in Postapartheid South Africa

In this article, the need for effective cross‐cultural counseling in South Africa is emphasized against the background of the country's sociocultural context. The characteristics of person‐centered counseling that make it cross‐culturally suitable in the South African situation are discussed. Rogers's cross‐cultural group work during his visits to South Africa is briefly described. The ways in which specific cross‐cultural obstacles can be overcome by means of the person‐centered approach are pointed out. The relationship between person‐centered counseling and traditional African healing practices is described. Finally, ways to address the language barriers in cross‐cultural counseling in South Africa are discussed.     

Ecological Effects in Cross‐Cultural Differences Between U.S. and Japanese Color Preferences

We investigated cultural differences between U.S. and Japanese color preferences and the ecological factors that might influence them. Japanese and U.S. color preferences have both similarities (e.g., peaks around blue, troughs around dark‐yellow, and preferences for saturated colors) and differences (Japanese participants like darker colors less than U.S. participants do). Complex gender differences were also evident that did not conform to previously reported effects. Palmer and Schloss's (2010) weighted affective valence estimate (WAVE) procedure was used to test the Ecological Valence Theory's (EVT's) prediction that within‐culture WAVE‐preference correlations should be higher than between‐culture WAVE‐preference correlations. The results supported several, but not all, predictions. In the second experiment, we tested color preferences of Japanese–U.S. multicultural participants who could read and speak both Japanese and English. Multicultural color preferences were intermediate between U.S. and Japanese preferences, consistent with the hypothesis that culturally specific personal experiences during one's lifetime influence color preferences.     

Ethical Decision-Making Differences Between Philippines and United States Students

In today's global marketplace, the Philippines provide a unique example of an Asian culture with established economic ties to the West. In this study, Philippine and United States undergraduate business students responded to 13 vignettes describing questionable ethical actions in business situations. Results reveal significant differences between groups for 9 of the 13 vignettes. For 4 vignettes, Philippine participants were more disapproving of the actions, and for another 5, United States participants were more disapproving. The study suggests that cultural differences continue and the implications of these differences should be considered in today's global economy.     

Considering boundaries when doing therapeutic work with people who are seeking asylum: a reflective case study

People who are seeking asylum often have lived experience of their personal boundaries and human rights being violated. For this reason, it is especially important that we consider the impact of boundaries in therapeutic work with this population. This paper explores work with a woman with a severe trauma history who was seeking asylum in England. Examples of perceived boundary crossings in the therapeutic relationship are examined. Considerations for other clinicians working with asylum seekers are discussed. These include: addressing socio-political factors; being sensitive to cultural differences; the importance of supervision and reflective practice; the personal impact of such work; and using critical thinking and warmth to manage boundaries rather than rigidly following rules.     

Assessing Representations of Close Relationships Among Chinese and Japanese Adolescents and Young Adults: Commonalities and Differences in the Two Confucian Cultures

This article proposed an affective relationships model with its assessment instrument and examined how Chinese and Japanese adolescents and young adults construct mental representations of their close relationships, and the influence of Confucian cultural beliefs on these representations. The participants were 1,565 students aged 14 to 24 years living in China or Japan. The students were asked about their relationships with four figures: mother, father, closest friend, and romantic partner. We found that: (a) adolescents and young adults in both cultures constructed constellations of relationships containing multiple figures, and they articulated reasons for each figure's significance; and (b) there were between-group differences in the relationships with the father and the romantic partner for Chinese versus Japanese adolescents and young adults. These differences were partly explained by the influence of Confucianism on the Chinese participants’ cultural beliefs that retained the patriarchal values.     

Emotional Intelligence and Career Decision‐Making Self‐Efficacy: National and Gender Differences

This study examined the effect of emotional intelligence (EI) on career decision‐making self‐efficacy (CDMSE) in an East Asian context, as well as the moderating roles of gender and country. Data were collected from undergraduate students from China (N = 149) and South Korea (N = 218). The results showed that all 4 factors of EI were positively related to CDMSE. Moreover, while the effects of 3 EI factors on CDMSE were found to be greater among the Chinese students than the South Korean students, no gender differences were detected. By introducing cultural influences, the findings provide important implications for career counseling.