Adapting the Career Development Inventory-Australia for cross-cultural research

This paper describes the adaptation of the Career Planning and Career Exploration scales of the Career Development Inventory-Australia for use in a Thai cultural context. One hundred and fifty-nine Thai high school students participated in the study. The results were compared with data from Australian students collected in earlier studies and from a group of Australian students participating in a career education program. The results indicate that only the Career Planning scale minus one biased item was found to be equivalent across Thai and Australian cultural contexts. The Career Exploration scale was found to be an unreliable measure of career exploration of Thai Year 11 males and its structure was found to be incongruent across Thai and Australian cultural contexts.     

仪式崇拜与文化传播--古代书院祭祀的社会空间

现有的书院研究注重于其教学、藏书功能方面,而对于祭祀活动及其社会意义,缺乏必要的关照。书院并非单纯的教学组织,应该是具有多重功能的社会组织。书院祭祀仪式中的符号崇拜和符号消费,展现了书院在传播社会文化方面的重要作用。书院祭祀所体现的文化载体功能,表明了它作为社会组织在文化传播活动中的独特地位。     

《论语》中"耻"字小议——兼论原始儒家重耻观念的现代意义

本文认为中国耻感文化可以追根溯源到儒家文明,并从儒家的开创者———孔子的言论中总结耻的内涵:耻与道德相联系;耻不信;耻体现一种担当精神;其次对知耻的作用进行详细的阐发;再次,对现代社会的“无耻”倾向进行了反思并申明研究耻文化的社会现实意义;最后针对中国文化为耻文化还是乐文化问题,对两种观点作一粗浅的比较分析,最后得出结论:两种文化的目标都是追求理想人格的实现。     

European Management Selection Methods: A Comparison of Five Countries

There is some disagreement in the recent literature on how similar or different are the methods used to select employees in different European countries. The confusion comes about in part because different samples and questions have been used in different countries to investigate this issue, making comparison between countries very difficult. This study investigates managerial selection methods in three members of the European Community, Belgium, Germany and Italy, using the same questionnaire and sample characteristics previously used in Britain and France. This allows a direct comparison between the five countries. The samples comprised 250 companies randomly drawn from the top 1,000 in each country. Questionnaires sent to the companies asked a range of questions concerning the frequency of use of selection methods and attitudes towards their use. Results show major differences in frequency of use of different methods. Some of these differences are: British and German companies tend to use assessment centres much more often than other countries, while Germany and Italy are relatively infrequent users of psychological tests. Companies in the Flemish (Dutch speaking) part of Belgium are the most likely to use biodata, while their French speaking compatriots are similar to the French in their liking for graphology. Both Belgium and France make much less use of references than do Britain, Germany and Italy. Results suggest that harmonization of selection practice in Europe is a long way off. Habit, tradition and culture determine the choice of selection method much more than do the relative predictive validities of the techniques.     

Culture and Japanese Citizen Influence on the Transboundary Air Pollution Issue in Northeast Asia

This paper outlines a general approach for analyzing the role of culture in international environmental policymaking. It draws on work in anthropology and foreign policy analysis. The first step is to view culture as a “toolkit of environmental ideas.” The second step, relative to a given research topic, is to delimit broad definitions of culture to more workable forms. Three forms are offered (following Hudson, 1997a): culture as organization of environmental meaning, as shared value preferences in environmental matters, and as templates for environmental action. The third step is to answer three basic questions relative to the specific definition of culture used: (a) Who draws what environmentally related ideas from the ideas toolkit? (b) How are these ideas used in the political arena? (c) How do these ideas, originally drawn upon for political purposes, change and in turn lead to changes in the set of environmentally related ideas in the culture? Ideas, once they have entered the political arena, are assumed to be embodied in a “discourse.” The terminology of discourse (and the body of theory built up around it) is used as a vehicle for examining the role of culture in international environmental policymaking. A practical application of this approach is presented in relation to the role of culture in the Japanese public's influence in Japan on policymaking on the northeast Asian transboundary air pollution issue.     

成人期人格的年龄特征:中美比较研究

本研究运用加州心理量表（ＣＰＩ）对中美两国成人的人格特征进行比较。对ＣＰＩ做因素分析得到了四种人格因子。复方差分析结果发现人格特征上存在显著的年龄、文化主效应以及年龄与文化、性别与文化的交互作用。随年龄增长,个体较少表现出外倾性与灵活性,而较多表现出控制／规范定向,并且这一模式在中国样本中表现得更为突出。     

传统文化价值的四类解读方式

19世纪中期以来,在西方文化的冲击下,中国先进知识分子开始了对中国传统文化价值的解读,并因此形成了公例主义、科学主义、唯物主义和实用主义四类解读方式。四类解读方式的形成及运用,不仅使丰富多彩的传统文化价值被发掘出来,而且赋予传统文化新的意义;同时为建构更为科学、合理的解读传统文化价值的方法体系准备了思想和经验的基础。     

There's something about obesity: culture, contagion, rationality, and children's responses to drinks "created" by obese children

Theories of the development of obesity stereotypes cannot easily explain the stigma associated with being obese. Evidence that important similarities exist between the symptoms of obesity and contagious illnesses, young children have "theories" of illnesses, and obesity stereotypes are among the earliest that children develop led to the hypothesis that children would find beverages purportedly created by obese children less tasteful and more memorable than beverages created by average weight children. After assignment to two story conditions in which a child became ill after eating an unfamiliar food, Caucasian-American and Chinese 7- and 10-year-olds sampled identically flavored "obese-created" and "average-created" beverages. Taste ratings were lower, ratings of the chances of feeling sick were higher, and memory was superior for obese-created drinks than for average-created drinks, particularly when the character in the story contracted a contagious illness and memory was scored for "gist." Finally, children often created the false memory that the story character was an obese beverage creator. The roles of contagion and magical beliefs are discussed, as are the rationality of children's responses and the relevance of the findings for theories of obesity stereotypes.     

Cultural variations in achievement motivation despite equivalent motivational strength: Motivational concerns among Indian and American corporate professionals

We explored the possibility that persons from two cultures, Indian and American, might be similar in overall levels of motivational strength yet differ significantly in their experience and expression of achievement motivation. We anticipated that Indian, more than American, corporate professionals would incorporate not only self-based but also other-oriented concerns (e.g., for the welfare of co-workers and community members) into their experience of achievement motivation in the workplace. American and Indian corporate professionals responded to an online survey that included a novel measure tapping interpersonal concerns in achievement motivation. Despite the groups being equivalent on multiple demographic indicators and on traditional indices of both motivational strength and motivational orientation, Americans and Indians differed substantially in motivational concerns, with Indians grounding their sense of achievement motivation more strongly in concerns for extended family, co-workers and community. Implications for the study of cultural variations in personality processes are discussed.     

Mizuko kuyō in the abortion cultural wars: The rhetorical appropriation of Japanese Buddhism by non-Buddhist Americans

Mizuko kuyō, the popular Japanese Buddhist memorial service for aborted fetuses, has been increasingly appropriated by both sides of the contentious American abortion debate. In the wake of exposure to the idea of mizuko kuyō, both pro-life and pro-choice Buddhist appropriators resort to discussions of the ritual because they feel it helps them strengthen the weaknesses of their own sides and undermine the positions of their opponents. Pro-life Americans use mizuko kuyō to prove that they care about women, not just fetuses, and that their convictions do not arise simply out of private religious feelings but objective psychological and medical facts. Pro-choice Americans, on the other hand, use mizuko kuyō to demonstrate that they care about families and children, not just women, and that they are sensitive not only to the secular but also the religious aspects of life and abortion. In the process, pro-life Christians, who seem to be primarily motivated by their exclusivist and authoritarian Biblical convictions, turn for support to a non-theistic religion they otherwise oppose; pro-choice feminists, who seem to have chiefly secular reasons for supporting abortion rights, turn for support to a supernatural entity and his retinue of angry fetal ghosts.