The moderating role of emotional stability in the relationship between exposure to violence and anxiety and depression

This study investigated the associations among exposure to violence, emotional stability, and psychological symptoms. The moderating role of emotional stability in the relationship between exposure to violence and anxiety and depression was examined in a sample of 482 high school students in Hong Kong. Results showed that both witnessing violence and low levels of emotional stability were positively associated with symptoms of anxiety and depression. Low levels of emotional stability exacerbated the relation between witnessing violence and symptoms of anxiety and depression; the opposite pattern was found among adolescents with high levels of emotional stability. This study sheds light on the role of emotional stability in ameliorating the detrimental effects of witnessing violence on symptoms of anxiety and depression among adolescents. Findings of this study also have implications for the development of emotionally healthy personalities.     

The moderating effect of power distance on employee responses to psychological contract breach

Understanding how employees’ cultural values are related to their responses to promises broken by their organizations (i.e., psychological contract breach) is important given today’s global workplace. Although past research has found that psychological contract breach is positively associated with employee exit, voice and neglect and negatively associated with loyalty, we know little about the role that cultural values play in this process. We explore the role that power distance orientation—an employee’s acceptance of power differentials in society—plays in employee responses to breach. We argue that employees with high power distance orientations will be more likely to respond passively to breach (loyalty and neglect), whereas employees with low power distance orientations will be more likely to exhibit active responses to psychological contract breach (exit and voice). We tested our notions using a sample of 265 employees from different cultures across two points in time. Employees with high power distance orientations were less likely to respond to psychological contract breach with exit and voice than employees with low power distance orientations. However, power distance orientation did not significantly moderate the relationships between psychological contract breach and neglect or loyalty, respectively. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of our findings.     

Marital satisfaction of Chinese under stress: Moderating effects of personal control and social support

Stressful life events, personal control, and social support were examined relative to marital satisfaction among 1749 participants in seven Chinese cities. Stressful life events were categorized as life crises and life transitions. Life crises, rather than transitions, negatively predicted the marital satisfaction of Chinese. The moderating effects of personal control were found among women, but not men, and occurred only in the relationship between marital satisfaction and life crises, not life transitions. Social support buffers the negative effects of life crises on marital satisfaction. The results extend family stress‐coping theory in specifying two coping resources for Chinese marriages under stress.     

I'm feeling lucky: the relationship between affect and risk-seeking in the framing effect

Engagement in risky behavior has traditionally been attributed to an underestimation of the associated risks, but recent perspectives suggest that affective reactions toward a risky option may better explain risk-seeking than risk perception. However, the precise relationship between emotion and risk-seeking remains unclear. The current set of studies elucidates the relationship between emotion and risk-seeking in risky choice framing, using a gambling task. In Study 1, reliance on emotion was related to risk-seeking, but goals to regulate emotion mitigated these effects. In Study 2, positive affect was associated with risk-seeking in loss frames, but unrelated to risk aversion in gain frames. Collectively, these findings indicate a general role for emotion reliance on risk-seeking and a specific role of positive affect on risk-seeking in the loss trials of the framing effect.     

Do scientific theories affect men's evaluations of sex crimes?

Evolutionary psychology accounts of gender differences in sexual behaviors in general and men's sexual aggression, in particular, has been criticized for legitimizing males' sexual misconduct. To empirically assess such critiques, two studies examined how men's judgments of male sex crimes (solicitation of sex from a prostitute; rape) are influenced by exposure to (a) evolutionary psychological theories and (b) social‐constructivist theories. Across two studies, a consistent pattern emerged compared with a control condition (a) exposure to evolutionary psychology theories had no observable impact on male judgments of men's criminal sexual behavior, whereas (b) exposure to social‐constructivist theories did affect judgments, leading men to evaluate sex crimes more harshly. Additional results (from Study 2) indicate that this effect is mediated by perceptions of male control over sexual urges. These results have implications for journalists, educators, and scientists. Aggr. Behav. 37:440–449, 2011. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Attitudes toward cosmetic surgery patients: the role of culture and social contact

Cosmetic surgery is increasingly popular globally, but how cosmetic surgery patients are socially evaluated is largely unknown. The present research documents attitudes toward these patients in multiple cultures (Hong Kong, Japan, and the United States). Across these cultures, attitudes toward cosmetic surgery patients were predominantly negative: Participants ascribed more negative attributes to cosmetic surgery patients and found cosmetic surgery not acceptable. Also, participants in Hong Kong and Japan were not willing to form social relationships, particularly intimate ones, with these patients. These attitudes were less negative in the United States than in Hong Kong and Japan, partly because social contact, which reduced negativity in attitudes toward cosmetic surgery patients, was more prevalent in the United States. These findings bear important implications for the subjective well-being of cosmetic surgery patients, who very often expect improvement in their social relationships through the surgery.     

Orthographic and phonological activation in recognizing Chinese characters

This paper is a contribution to the study of whether visual contact with lexical units in any writing system necessarily arouses their corresponding phonological information. In two experiments it was investigated whether phonological information is automatically activated during the semantic processing of Chinese characters. In these experiments, both using a semantic-categorization task, subjects produced the same proportion of false positive categorization errors and showed the same decision latencies on homophone foils and their non-homophonic controls, thus indicating that phonological information does not seem to affect the semantic task. Experiment 2 further revealed that subjects made more errors and produced longer response times on graphemically similar foils than on the corresponding controls. The absence of phonological effects and the presence of clear effects of visual similarity for Chinese characters in semantic tasks can be taken to indicate that phonological information may not be automatically activated during the processing of meanings of Chinese characters. The present results also cast serious doubts on the hypothesis that phonological activation is a universal principle of lexical processing.     

Development of the Multi-Trait Personality Inventory (MTPI): comparison among four Chinese populations.

Anemic approach was adopted to develop a culture-specific instrument for the assessment of Chinese personality. The Multi-Trial Personality Inventory (MTPI) was administered to 1,673 men and 944 women in four major Chinese populations. It was found that Chinese in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States possess some common traits deeply rooted in the Chinese culture characterized by Confucian thoughts (e.g., self-discipline and moderation) and some additional traits nurtured by their respective environments. Consequently, findings of this study lent support to the hypothesis that, in spite of superficial discontinuities, there are basic continuities in the personality traits of mainland and overseas Chinese. The cross-cultural differences in personality were examined from a political-social perspective and also explained with a cultural-ecological model. In the development of the MTPI, a new methodology that relies on forming factor-consistent clusters was employed to deal successfully with the problem of complex factor space.     

The attitudes toward rape victims scale: Reliability and validity in a chinese context

Two studies were conducted to assess the cross-cultural applicability of Ward's Attitudes toward Rape Victims Scale (ARVS). In the first study, 202 Chinese college students took the ARVS, the Attitudes toward Women Scale, and the Traditionality-Modernity Factor Scale. Reliability and convergent validity were established for ARVS. In the second study, construct validity of the ARVS was further examined, using the known-group method. The scores of four professional groups were compared. Consistent with previous studies, women showed significantly more favorable attitudes toward the rape victims than men. The findings generally suggest that the ARVS is promising in further cross-cultural research and application.