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.     

大学生人格特质对道德认同的影响：法律意识的调节作用

为探讨大学生人格特质与道德认同的关系,及其法律意识在二者关系之间的调节作用,采用法律意识量表、道德认同量表和大五人格量表对1878名大学生进行了调查。结果显示：(1)尽责性、宜人性、开放性和外向性与道德认同、法律意识呈显著的正相关;神经质与道德认同、法律意识呈显著的负相关。(2)人格特质、道德认同、法律意识表现出了显著的性别差异,同时尽责性对道德认同的影响也存在着显著的性别差异。(3)法律意识在尽责性与宜人性对大学生道德认同的影响中起着负向调节作用。本研究结果提示,应该尊重人格特质的个体特异性,在高校进行专业的法制教育和法律意识培养,提高个体的道德认同水平。     

Does snobbish service generate better sales? The case of luxury goods

The objective of this study is to explore whether a “bad” service encounter triggers a consumer's impulse purchase in a luxury goods store in an Asian emerging market. A 2 (service encounter: favorable vs. snobbish) × 2 (shopping companion: alone vs. with a close friend) between‐group factorial design was employed with 160 female consumers in an Asian emerging market to examine the antecedents of both the urge to save social identity and the impulse purchase of luxury goods. The results show that consumers in an Asian emerging market can be triggered to make an impulse purchase of a luxury good, not because they received excellent service in the store but because they encountered snobbish service, especially when shopping with a close friend. Research implications and limitations are also discussed.     

拟人化:从“它”到“他”

拟人化是将人类特征、动机、意向或心理状态赋予非人对象的心理过程或者个体差异。拟人化的产生受到激发主体知识、效能动机和社会动机的影响,现有研究包括对自然、超自然、动物、机器、品牌和产品等的拟人化。对自然的拟人化能够促进环境保护行为,对动物、机器、品牌和产品的拟人化则形式多样、后果复杂。未来研究的焦点可能在人-机器人交互以及拟人化与可爱的关系问题上。     

An exploration of courage in Chinese individuals

Definitional studies of courage have been performed by Western psychologists, but little research has examined Chinese folk courage. Two studies examined conceptions of courage in Chinese culture. In Study 1, the definitions, forms, inner traits, and reactions of courage were described by 307 individuals in China. A content analysis revealed that courage was divided into two forms: individually oriented and socially oriented; and the virtue was composed of persistence, responsibility, and breakthrough. Study 2 conducted in-depth interviews with 27 Chinese participants to explore the nature of courage further. The results suggested similar components; anger, self-confidence, support network, and social atmosphere were most likely to inspire courage; and trying something difficult was the most frequently experienced courageous event. Collectively, persistence and breakthrough were common components of both the current studies and the existing Western literature on courage, while responsibility may be more uniquely Chinese. Implications for prospective training programs are discussed.     

A quick eye to anger: An investigation of a differential effect of facial features in detecting angry and happy expressions

Detection of angry and happy faces is generally found to be easier and faster than that of faces expressing emotions other than anger or happiness. This can be explained by the threatening account and the feature account. Few empirical studies have explored the interaction between these two accounts which are seemingly, but not necessarily, mutually exclusive. The present studies hypothesised that prominent facial features are important in facilitating the detection process of both angry and happy expressions; yet the detection of happy faces was more facilitated by the prominent features than angry faces. Results confirmed the hypotheses and indicated that participants reacted faster to the emotional expressions with prominent features (in Study 1) and the detection of happy faces was more facilitated by the prominent feature than angry faces (in Study 2). The findings are compatible with evolutionary speculation which suggests that the angry expression is an alarming signal of potential threats to survival. Compared to the angry faces, the happy faces need more salient physical features to obtain a similar level of processing efficiency.     

Burnout among Finnish and Chinese university students

In this study the levels of experienced burnout of Finnish and Chinese university students are compared using School Burnout Inventory (SBI). This study is motivated by earlier studies, which suggest that the level of student burnout is different in the culturally distinct Finnish and Chinese university systems, but which are based on different research instruments for the two groups. The sample studied consisted of 3,035 Finnish students and 2,309 Chinese students. Because of the cross‐cultural nature of this study the level of structural equivalence of SBI between the cultural groups was examined and the effect of different response styles on the results was taken into account. Both standard and robust statistical methods were used for the analyses. The results showed that SBI with two extracted components is suitable for cross‐cultural analysis between Finnish and Chinese university students. Virtually no difference was found in experienced overall burnout between the Finnish and Chinese students, which means that both university systems contain factors causing similar levels of student burnout. This study also verified that controlling for the response styles is important in cross‐cultural studies as it was found to have a distinct effect on the results obtained from mean‐level comparisons.     

运动技能水平与躯体感觉输入对运动表象的影响

运动表象质量与运动技能水平有关,运动表象质量随着运动技能水平的提高而上升。器械使用可使人脑产生可塑性改变,使用者会将器械纳入身体图式。然而,两者影响运动表象的神经心理机制还不清楚。本研究采用功能性磁共振成像探析篮球运动员与新手在不同持球条件下表象投篮时脑功能活动的差异。结果表明运动员表象质量较好,镜像神经系统激活高于新手;持球条件下运动员表象质量显著高于不持球条件下,镜像神经系统激活程度显著低于不持球条件下。研究说明持器械可以显著提高运动员的表象质量,器械使用带来镜像神经系统的可塑性变化。     

Proservice or antiservice employee behaviors: A multilevel ethics perspective

We adopt a multilevel approach to investigate ethical ideology, moral leadership, and ethical climate in predicting service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and service sabotage. Data were collected from 36 food and beverage units in hotels in Taiwan. The sample comprised 504 employees and 36 supervisors. Results show that idealism is positively related with service-oriented OCB, but negatively related with service sabotage; relativism is the opposite. Moral leadership and ethical climate are both positively related with service-oriented OCB and negatively related with service sabotage. In addition, moral leadership moderates the relationship between relativism and service-oriented OCB. Ethical climate moderates the relationship between idealism and service-oriented OCB and service sabotage. The implications of this study for research and practice are discussed.