Problems Caused for Mental Health Professionals Worldwide by Increasing Multicultural Populations and Proposed Solutions

Psychiatric disorders on a global scale, combined with rapid national population diversification, demand that mental health professionals worldwide become more informed about the realities of diagnosing and treating a multicultural patient population. Recommendations are offered to enable such professionals to most efficaciously diagnose and treat patients from diverse sociocultural backgrounds.     

The interactive effects of duality expertise and coping frames on responses to ambivalent messages

We examine the interactive effects of biculturals' duality expertise and externally provided coping resources on attitudinal responses to ambivalence. Three studies reveal that ambivalence is associated with greater discomfort for biculturals more (vs. less) conflicted about their cultural duality and with limited exposure to accessing their two cultural knowledge systems simultaneously. Among biculturals with lower duality expertise, coping frames lower their negative evaluation of messages that elicit ambivalence because coping frames help these biculturals resolve the discomfort associated with ambivalence. Provision of coping frames does not impact attitudes of biculturals with greater levels of duality expertise.     

Goblet Words and Indeterminacy：A Writing Style that Is Free of Commitment

The Zhuangzi is a collection of ancient Chinese anecdotes and fables that serves as a foundational Daoist text. The style in which it is written is significant because it obscures rather than reveals the text’s philosophic positions. If the text cannot be translated into plain language while preserving its content, as the Mozi or the Mencius generally can be, then the writing style is not merely rhetorical. The style is itself indispensable to the content. In this study, I analyse a linguistic device mentioned in the Zhuangzi and use it to reflect the text’s writing style—namely, “goblet words” (zhi yan 巵言). I argue that various logical forms of goblet words defy the act of fixing a definite answer in any conceptual distinction or disputation. The forms, which include dilemmatic questions, oxymora and double denial, all serve to preserve indeterminacy. Reading goblet words may affect readers by making them more open-minded towards distinctions. However, readers cannot ascertain that the text’s authors produced this effect intentionally. Therefore, the text may cause readers to be open-minded while the authors remain free of commitment.     

Predicting the psychological health of older adults: Interaction of age-based rejection sensitivity and discriminative facility

We hypothesize that older adults who anxiously expect, readily perceive, and intensely react to social rejection because of their old age (i.e., have high age-based rejection sensitivity) are vulnerable to depression and poor social functioning. We further hypothesize that the association between age-based rejection sensitivity and poor psychological health would be attenuated among older adults who possess adequate cognitive coping ability—they can discern and respond discriminatively to subtle variations in situational demands (i.e., have high discriminative facility). Based on the results of a focus group study, we constructed an age-based rejection sensitivity measure, which predicts greater depression, poorer social functioning, greater loneliness, and lower life satisfaction among individuals in late adulthood. As hypothesized, the relationship between age-based rejection sensitivity and poor psychological health was weaker among older adults with high (vs. low) discriminative facility.     

Epistemic motives and cultural conformity: need for closure, culture, and context as determinants of conflict judgments

Three studies support the proposal that need for closure (NFC) involves a desire for consensual validation that leads to cultural conformity. Individual differences in NFC interact with cultural group variables to determine East Asian versus Western differences in conflict style and procedural preferences (Study 1), information gathering in disputes (Study 2), and fairness judgment in reward allocations (Study 3). Results from experimental tests indicate that the relevance of NFC to cultural conformity reflects consensus motives rather than effort minimization (Study 2) or political conservatism (Study 3). Implications for research on conflict resolution and motivated cultural cognition are discussed.     

Toward a Social Psychology of Culture and Globalization: Some Social Cognitive Consequences of Activating Two Cultures Simultaneously

Despite the increased attention given to cultural phenomena in social psychology, the field has neglected issues related to globalization's cultural impacts. Meanwhile, opinions in the debates over these issues are divided, polarized, and often motivated by political and ideological commitments. Globalization has brought symbols of diverse cultures together and provided ample opportunities for the simultaneous activation of two or more cultural representations. Using our research on the social cognitive consequences of activating two cultural representations simultaneously as an example, we argue for constructing a social psychology of globalization that offers nuanced understandings of people's psychological responses to globalization. Although simultaneous activation of cultural representations does not determine an individual's cultural identity, it enlarges the felt distinctions between different identity options and magnifies the effects of identity choice. Furthermore, in situations that emphasize appropriating intellectual resources from diverse cultures to foster creativity, simultaneous activation of cultural representations may facilitate creative performance.     

Sex-Dimorphic Color Preference in Children with Gender Identity Disorder: A Comparison to Clinical and Community Controls

The present study was designed to assess sex-dimorphic color preferences in children with gender identity disorder (47 boys, 18 girls), clinical controls (65 boys, 35 girls), and community controls (65 boys, 35 girls). The mean age of the children was 7.63 years (range?=?3–12 years). Children were shown a hexagon-shaped display of 144 colors extracted from PowerPoint?. Each child was asked to choose his or her three favorite colors (Trials 1–3) by pointing to them, naming them, and then to provide a justification for each choice. From the entire array, children labeled a total of 11 different colors: black, blue, brown, gray, green, orange, pink, purple, red, white, and yellow. For three of the colors (blue, pink/purple, and red), there was evidence for normative sex differences in color preference, and, for the colors blue and pink/purple, the gender-referred children showed inverted patterns of color preference. For the color blue, luminance values showed that the gender-referred boys and control girls preferred lighter shades, whereas the gender-referred girls and control boys preferred darker shades. Qualitative analysis indicated that gender-specific justifications were uncommon, even for the sex-dimorphic colors. Gender-referred children showed inverted gender-stereotyped color preferences, which are likely related to their more general pattern of cross-gender identification. Principles of gender-differentiated development derived from gender-schema theory are used to explain the group differences in color preferences.     

Blazing the trail versus trailing the group: Culture and perceptions of the leader’s position

Research suggests that power triggers assertive action. However, people from different cultures might expect different types of action from powerful individuals such as leaders. In comparing cultural differences in leadership imagery, we find that Americans represent leaders standing ahead of groups, whereas Asians also represent leaders behind groups. We propose that front versus back positions embody two faces of leader action: individual assertion versus group-focused action. Studies 1a and 1b respectively employed etic and emic methods to demonstrate that Singaporeans were more likely than Americans to represent leaders behind groups. In Study 2, Singaporeans evaluated back leaders more favorably than Americans did, and group focus mediated cultural differences. Simulating the conditions under which cultural differences arise, Study 3 demonstrates that a primarily Western managerial sample primed with threat (versus opportunity) preferred back leaders. By describing cultural variations in imagery, we reveal more nuanced implicit theories of leader action.     

Asians as the model minority: Implications for US Government's policies

Asian Americans are often perceived as a 'model minority'– an ethnic minority that are high achieving, hardworking, self-reliant, law-abiding, as well as having few social and mental health problems. Although the impact of the model minority image on the US government's redistributive policies is a widely contested topic in public discourses, there has been little research on the association between the model minority image, people's worldviews, and attitudes towards the US government's redistributive policies. In an experiment that measured American participants' worldviews and manipulated the salience of the model minority image, we have demonstrated that those who believed in a malleable social reality were relatively unsupportive of government policies that help the Asian American ( vs African American) communities. Theoretical and practical implications of this finding are discussed.     

Cognitive Diagnosis for Small Educational Programs: The General Nonparametric Classification Method

The focus of cognitive diagnosis (CD) is on evaluating an examinee’s strengths and weaknesses in terms of cognitive skills learned and skills that need study. Current methods for fitting CD models (CDMs) work well for large-scale assessments, where the data of hundreds or thousands of examinees are available. However, the development of CD-based assessment tools that can be used in small-scale test settings, say, for monitoring the instruction and learning process at the classroom level has not kept up with the rapid pace at which research and development proceeded for large-scale assessments. The main reason is that the sample sizes of the small-scale test settings are simply too small to guarantee the reliable estimation of item parameters and examinees’ proficiency class membership. In this article, a general nonparametric classification (GNPC) method that allows for assigning examinees to the correct proficiency classes with a high rate when sample sizes are at the classroom level is proposed as an extension of the nonparametric classification (NPC) method (Chiu and Douglas in J Classif 30:225–250, 2013). The proposed method remedies the shortcomings of the NPC method and can accommodate any CDM. The theoretical justification and the empirical studies are presented based on the saturated general CDMs, supporting the legitimacy of using the GNPC method with any CDM. The results from the simulation studies and real data analysis show that the GNPC method outperforms the general CDMs when samples are small.