Cultural, Gender, and Socioeconomic Contexts in Therapeutic and Social Policy Work

The contention of this paper is that the context of social and therapeutic problems is critical to their resolution, and that many of them stem from historical and structural injustice. It focuses on the contextual issues of cultural, gender, and socioeconomic equity as providing important insights into authentic notions of social inclusion and well-being, and encourages therapists, service providers, researchers, and policy makers to take responsibility to ensure that these injustices are addressed, and become part of the public discourse about the sources and solutions of endemic social problems. Critique and deconstruction of institutional power in our public, private, and voluntary services is encouraged in a manner that honors diversity and enables sensitive therapy, other forms of service delivery and policy making that genuinely reflect the range of cultural, gender, and socioeconomic experiences of citizens.     

A developmental examination of the conceptual structure of animal, artifact, and human social categories across two cultural contexts

Previous research indicates that the ontological status that adults attribute to categories varies systematically by domain. For example, adults view distinctions between different animal species as natural and objective, but view distinctions between different kinds of furniture as more conventionalized and subjective. The present work (N = 435; ages 5-18) examined the effects of domain, age, and cultural context on beliefs about the naturalness vs. conventionality of categories. Results demonstrate that young children, like adults, view animal categories as natural kinds, but artifact categories as more conventionalized. For human social categories (gender and race), beliefs about naturalness and conventionality were predicted by interactions between cultural context and age. Implications for the origins of social categories and theories of conceptual development will be discussed.     

Church and Culture: Protestant and CatholicModernities

This article reviews the church and culture relationship developed in Gaudium et Spes and Lumen Gentium and proposes a Catholic account of modernity as a way in which the contemporary mission of the church in today's culture can be creatively and faithfully carried forward. After an initial outlining of the definitions of church and culture proposed by the Vatican documents, I then go on to position my proposal of a Catholic modernity in relation to some important current accounts of the church and culture relationship that tend towards a rejection of secular culture. I argue that Protestant accounts of modernity have dominated in philosophical and sociological theories and draw on my previous work on Max Weber to illustrate the significance of this for developing a Catholic account of modernity. I conclude by sketching some of the important issues which would need to be addressed in formulating a systematic account of a Catholic modernity.     

HR practices as a mediator between organizational culture and transformational leadership: Implications for employee performance

Studies pertaining to human resource (HR) management in India have revealed a variety of factors that significantly affect employee performance not the least of which are organizational culture and leadership issues. The present study posits firm level HR practices as a mediator between organizational culture and transformational leadership whose outcomes are hypothesized as lower levels of individual employees’ intention to quit the organization and higher level of performance. For this purpose, data were collected from mangers/executives (N=357) and subjected to multivariate analysis. The results reveal that culture and leadership are significant predictors of intention to quit and employee performance. The results also show that HR practices are important mediators in transmitting the influence of the predictor variables to the criterion variables.     

Nature and Nationhood: Danish Perspectives

In this paper, I shall discuss Danish perspectives on nature, showing the interdependence of conceptions of ‘nature’ and ‘nationhood’ in the formations of a particular cultural community. Nature, thus construed, is never innocent of culture and cannot therefore simply be ‘restored’ to some pristine, pre-lapsarian state. On the other hand, invocations of nature are effectively calls to action, often of a sort that involves a degree of (limited) restoration and conservation.     

Examining Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis as One of the Main Views on the Relationship Between Language and Thought

One of those features that set human societies apart from animal societies is the use of language. Language is a vital part of every human culture and is a powerful social tool that we master at an early age. A second feature of humans is our ability to solve complex problems. For centuries philosophers have questioned whether these two abilities are related and, if so, what the nature of the relationship between language and thought is. At the beginning of the last century psychologists joined this debate and it is a topic that is currently generating a lot of research. Another factor in the study of language and thought is the role of culture. When we study a language from another country we see that it is not just the words and grammar that are different but the customs and traditions as well. Even the ideas of that culture and the way of dealing with life can be different. There are a number of views on the nature of the relationship between language and thought. But here we are going to explore one of those views, the linguistic relativity hypothesis (LRH), concerning that the language a speaker uses influences the way the speaker thinks.     

Cultural Expectations of One's Own and Other Nations' Foreign Policy Action Templates

One useful conceptualization of culture is that of a preestablished set of behavioral competencies, which in turn form behavioral dispositions. According to this variant of culture theory, decision-makers faced with new situations will rely on established behavioral competencies in forming an initial policy response. This assumption can also be applied at the nation-state level, where established behavioral predispositions may lessen uncertainty and stress in ambiguous yet salient foreign policy situations. Likewise, observers in one nation-state may be able to identify such behavioral dispositions in other nation-states, lending greater transparency and predictability to international interactions. Do such culturally based action templates exist? Are they recognizable even to ordinary citizens? Citizens in Russia, Japan, and the United States were asked to posit the most likely and least likely behavioral responses to a variety of foreign policy situations by their own nation and by the other two nations in the sample. The results indicate that recognition of such templates takes place, and that recognition of one nation's template content by citizens of the other nations typically matches recognition of template content by the nation's own citizens. The research also shows that such action templates can be eroded and become unrecognizable over time, both to insiders and to outsiders.     

Memory and mystery: the cultural selection of minimally counterintuitive narratives

We hypothesize that cultural narratives such as myths and folktales are more likely to achieve cultural stability if they correspond to a minimally counterintuitive (MCI) cognitive template that includes mostly intuitive concepts combined with a minority of counterintuitive ones. Two studies tested this hypothesis, examining whether this template produces a memory advantage, and whether this memory advantage explains the cultural success of folktales. In a controlled laboratory setting, Study 1 found that an MCI template produces a memory advantage after a 1-week delay, relative to entirely intuitive or maximally counterintuitive cognitive templates. Using archival methods, Study 2 examined the cognitive structure of Grimm Brothers folktales. Compared to culturally unsuccessful folktales, those that were demonstrably successful were especially likely to fit an MCI template. These findings highlight the role of human memory processes in cultural evolution.     

A systemic social-cognitive perspective on doping

Objectives

The present article provides a theoretically sound framework (i.e., a social-cognitive approach), using conceptual models and concrete examples, to aid our understanding of why some people dope.

Design

Recognizing that sports occur in a social environment, the current article is grounded in social-cognitive theory. Additionally, since many studies investigating doping have attempted to use cause-and-effect or correlational methods, this article emphasized the systemic nature of doping behavior.

Method

The present article succinctly clarifies why some people take greater risks than others (e.g., dope), and specifically discusses the roles of history, obedience to authority, brain development, culture, stereotypes, and reinforcement, as they relate with doping.

Results

Although likely possible, it is difficult to provide an example of an effective intervention that adequately addresses the deletion of doping. However, an example based on social-cognitive principles is provided.

Conclusions

Future research that emphasizes a social-cognitive approach to doping is needed. Interventions built from such research likely will lead to effective anti-doping interventions.     

Cultural differences in the primacy effect for person perception

Previous work has shown there are robust differences in how North Americans and East Asians form impressions of people. The present research examines whether the tendency to weigh initial information more heavily—the primacy effect—may be another component of these cultural differences. Specifically, we tested whether Americans would be more likely to use first impressions to guide person perception, compared to Japanese participants. In this experiment, participants read a vignette that described a target person's behaviour, then rated the target's personality. Before reading the vignette, some trait information was given to create an expectation about the target's personality. The data revealed that Americans used this initial information to guide their judgments of the target, whereas the Japanese sample based their judgments on all the information more evenly. Thus, Americans showed a stronger primacy effect in their impression formation than Japanese participants, who engaged in more data‐driven processing.