An Evaluation of the Cross-Cultural Validity of Holland's Theory: Career Choices by Workers in India

The current study evaluated the cross-cultural validity of Holland's (1985) theory through internal and external analyses based on the responses of 172 natives of India who completed the Vocational Preference Inventory (VPI) and measures of job and occupational satisfaction. Internal consistency estimates for Holland dimensions, intercorrelations among participants' vocational interest scales, and the results of a randomization test (Tracey, 1997) all provide evidence for the internal structure of the VPI with Indians. However, the VPI did not exhibit high external validity. Further, multiple regression results indicated that congruence, consistency, and differentiation did not predict job or occupational satisfaction, suggesting cross-cultural boundaries on Holland's theory itself. Finally, we assessed and found limited conceptual and linguistic equivalence of measurement of the VPI in India. The assumptions of Holland's theory in light of the current findings are discussed.     

Participants' reactions to “Equity with the world”

According to traditional Equity theory, the injustices that an individual encounters in one relationship should not affect his other relationships. By definition, the equitableness of one relationship (say the AB relationship) depends entirely on how much Participants A and B contribute to the relationship and how much they get out of it.Austin, in Austin and Walster (1973), however, argues that Equity theory must make transrelational predictions. He argues that persons attempt to maintain both “Person-specific Equity” and “Equity with the World” (e.g., Equity with others in general). The authors predicted (and found) that whether a person focuses on “Person-specific Equity” or “Equity with the World” depends on whether or not he feels “accountable” for his behavior. When participants knew they could not be held accountable for their actions, they routinely sacrificed Person-specific Equity in order to maintain Equity with the World. However, when they knew they would have to confront their second partner eventually, they rarely sacrificed Person-specific Equity. (Evidently, they assumed their partners would not sympathize with their desire to maintain transrelational equity.)In this experiment, we predicted (and found) that such pessimism (by persons wishing to restore “Equity with the World”) is not justified. Inequitably treated partners' dissatisfaction and hostility were markedly blunted when individuals believed that their “unfair” partner was attempting to restore “Equity with the World“.     

Balance,positivity, and agreement in the Jordan Paradigm: A defense of balance theory

It was argued that Heider's p?o?x triad can best be conceptualized according to a three- factor analysis of variance model in which the p?o, p?x, and o?x bands are all factors. From this perspective the balance effect is the triple interaction, the positivity effect a main effect for the p?o factor, and the agreement effect a p?x by o?x interaction. Although the existence of the latter two effects has previously been regarded as damaging to balance theory, it was shown that these effects could be interpreted from a balance perspective and that balance theory could be used to generate supportable propositions regarding these effects. Thus in agreement with a unit-relation interpretation it was shown, in accordance with balance theory, that positivity effects are obtained when the subject, or p, assumes future contact with o, that reverse positivity effects are obtained when the subject anticipates breaking off contact with o, and that no positivity effect is obtained when there is absolutely no contact, past or future. It was also demonstrated in an experiment involving the p?o?q triad that, in accordance with balance theory, positivity effects may be produced by the assumption or inference of same-sign reciprocation in sentiment. Evidence for two balance processes underlying agreement effects was also found. One of these processes was based on the assumption that the subject would have or reveal psycho-logical reasons for the disagreement and thus produce imbalance. Consistent with this interpretation it was found that the agreement effect was significantly larger when future contact with discussion of x was assumed than when future contact without discussion of x was assumed. The other, or unit-relation interpretation was supported by evidence indicating that the breaking off of contact resulted in a reversed agreement effect. In general, it was argued that balance theory did quite well in such phenomenological investigations when attention was not narrowly restricted to the three-sign pattern but considered other potential cognitive bands.     

Aggressive Children and Effective Communication

Testing a component of a theoretical model which postulates that low levels of communication effectiveness accompany the social and affective problems presented by aggressive children, the study compared the communication skills of a group of aggressive (n = 49) and nonaggressive (n = 49) elementary school children (selected on the basis of teacher ratings) in a structured and cooperative communication task. Based on direct observational measures of communication effectiveness and aggression, and on teacher, peer, and self-rating measures of peer rejection and depressive symptoms, results showed that (a) aggressive children exhibited less effective communication skills and more disruptive communication skills than nonaggressive peers; (b) aggressive children experienced higher levels of peer rejection and depressive symptoms than nonaggressive peers; and (c) group differences in communication effectiveness could not be accounted for by differences in observed aggression and remained significant, even after controlling for differences in peer status and affective functioning. These findings highlight the role that ineffective communication may play in the development and maintenance of aggression and have important theoretical and applied implications, which are briefly discussed. © 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Trait anxiety and perceptual load as determinants of emotion processing in a fear conditioning paradigm

The impact of trait anxiety and perceptual load on selective attention was examined in a fear conditioning paradigm. A fear-conditioned angry face (CS+), an unconditioned angry face (CS-), or an unconditioned face with a neutral or happy expression were used in distractor interference and attentional probe tasks. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants classified centrally presented letters under two conditions of perceptual load. When perceptual load was high, distractors had no effect on selective attention, even with aversive conditioning. However, when perceptual load was low, strong response interference effects for CS+ face distractors were found for low trait-anxious participants. Across both experiments, this enhanced distractor interference reversed to strong facilitation effects for those reporting high trait anxiety. Thus, high trait-anxious participants were faster, rather than slower, when ignoring CS+ distractors. Using an attentional probe task in Experiment 3, it was found that fear conditioning resulted in strong attentional avoidance in a high trait-anxious group, which contrasted with enhanced vigilance in a low trait-anxious group. These results demonstrate that the impact of fear conditioning on attention is modulated by individual variation in trait anxiety when perceptual load is low. Fear conditioning elicits an avoidance of threat-relevant stimuli in high trait-anxious participants.     

Integrating cross-cultural psychology research methods into ethnic minority psychology

Multicultural psychology has 2 related but often disconnected streams, namely cross-cultural psychology and racial and ethnic minority psychology (Hall & Maramba, 2001). We propose that advances in both fields will be facilitated if there is greater cross-fertilization, especially in methodological approaches given that proponents in both fields are interested in studying and understanding the role and impact of culture on human behavior. To facilitate this cross-fertilization, we present 3 methodological approaches that would be of value in racial and ethnic minority psychology. First, we present an overview of the importance of and the approaches to evaluating and establishing measurement equivalence. Second, we discuss recent advances in the understanding of conceptual equivalence in light of indigenous approaches, cultural manipulation, and multilevel analysis. Third, we present a combined etic-emic approach to cross-cultural personality research as illustrated by the Cross-Cultural Personality Assessment Inventory developed by Fanny Cheung and her colleagues.     

Speeded multielement decision-making as diffusion in a hypersphere: Theory and application to double-target detection

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - We generalize the circular 2D diffusion model of Smith (Psychological Review, 123, 425–451: 2016) to provide a new model of speeded decision-making in...     

Academic entitlement: its relationship with academic behaviors and attitudes

Social Psychology of Education - The current study examined the relationship of academic entitlement with student attitudes (e.g., locus of control, motivation) and academic behavior. Participants...     

Neural correlates of conventional and harm/welfare-based moral decision-making

The degree to which social norms are processed by a unitary system or dissociable systems remains debated. Much research on children’s social-cognitive judgments has supported the distinction between “moral” (harm/welfare-based) and “conventional” norms. However, the extent to which these norms are processed by dissociable neural systems remains unclear. To address this issue, 23 healthy participants were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they rated the wrongness of harm/welfare-based and conventional transgressions and neutral vignettes. Activation significantly greater than the neutral vignette baseline was observed in regions implicated in decision-making regions including rostral/ventral medial frontal, anterior insula and dorsomedial frontal cortices when evaluating both harm/welfare-based and social-conventional transgressions. Greater activation when rating harm/welfare-based relative to social-conventional transgressions was seen through much of ACC and bilateral inferior frontal gyrus. Greater activation was observed in superior temporal gyrus, bilateral middle temporal gyrus, left PCC, and temporal-parietal junction when rating social-conventional transgressions relative to harm/welfare-based transgressions. These data suggest that decisions regarding the wrongness of actions, irrespective of whether they involve care/harm-based or conventional transgressions, recruit regions generally implicated in affect-based decision-making. However, there is neural differentiation between harm/welfare-based and conventional transgressions. This may reflect the particular importance of processing the intent of transgressors of conventional norms and perhaps the greater emotional content or salience of harm/welfare-based transgressions.     

Individual differences in skewed financial risk-taking across the adult life span

Older adults are disproportionately targeted by fraud schemes that advertise unlikely but large returns (positively skewed risks). We examined adult age differences in choice and neural activity as individuals considered risky gambles. Gambles were symmetric (50% chance of modest win or loss), positively skewed (25% chance of large gain), or negatively skewed (25% chance of large loss). The willingness to accept positively skewed relative to symmetric gambles increased with age, and this effect replicated in an independent behavioral study. Whole-brain functional magnetic resonance imaging analyses comparing positively (vs. negatively) skewed trials revealed that relative to younger adults, older adults showed increased anticipatory activity for negatively skewed gambles but reduced activity for positively skewed gambles in the anterior cingulate and lateral prefrontal regions. Individuals who were more biased toward positively skewed gambles showed increased activity in a network of regions including the nucleus accumbens. These results reveal age biases toward positively skewed gambles and age differences in corticostriatal regions during skewed risk-taking, and have implications for identifying financial decision biases across adulthood.