Study of the adjustment of Western expatriates in Taiwan ROC with the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire

The present paper examined the validity of the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire (MPQ). As criteria of validity three levels of adjustment were used. The study took place among a sample of expatriates ( N = 102) during their assignment in Taiwan. The MPQ has scales for cultural empathy, open-mindedness, social initiative, emotional stability and flexibility. The MPQ scales appeared to be predictive of expatriates' personal, professional and social adjustment. In all three domains, emotional stability appeared most consistently as a predictor of adjustment. Social initiative was an additional strong predictor of psychological well-being, as was cultural empathy of satisfaction with life and of the amount of social support in the host country. Flexibility was a predictor of job satisfaction and social support. The study also examined the effects of marital status on adjustment. Married expatriates showed higher levels of adjustment than expatriates who were single or separated.     

Prayer Behavior in Rural Kilimanjaro,Tanzania

Theories and empirical evidence regarding prayer behavior generally emerge from studies of survey respondents in developed countries. The research we describe here adds to the literature by exploring links between demographic characteristics and the frequency and content of prayers for respondents in rural Tanzania. We surveyed 349 Christian households from six villages in the country's Kilimanjaro region. In some aspects our findings match results from survey research conducted elsewhere, and in other aspects our results differ from those commonly reported in the literature. We suggest that local cultural and socioeconomic conditions may account for the differences in outcomes. These results suggest a need for caution in applying to poor countries theories and expectations drawn from the developed country context.     

儿童对图画喻意理解的比较研究

本文针对儿童对图画中隐喻情绪的识辨和理解的发展特点 ,进行了跨文化研究。旨在探索儿童对图画喻意的敏感性的发展规律以及不同教育方式对儿童图画认知发展的影响。 3 60名 4岁到 2 0岁的中英被试参加了实验。结果表明 :在识辨作品任务及口头评价中 ,中国儿童比英国同龄儿童更早理解图画的情绪喻意 ,并很少对图画的悲伤喻意持忽略态度。提示不同文化背景下 ,儿童对图画喻意的理解存在发展上的不均衡性 ,中国的幼教方式也许促进了儿童对图画喻意理解的发展。     

Transforming and Redescribing Critical Thinking: Constructive Thinking

The author describes a published symposium which debated “Is Critical Thinking Biased?” The symposium meant to address concerns about critical thinking that are being expressed by feminist and postmodern scholars. However, through the author's critique, and the symposium respondent's, we learn the participants ended up begging the question of bias. The author maintains that the belief that critical thinking is “unbiased” is based on an assumption that knowers can be separated from what is known. She argues that critical thinking is a tool which has no life of its own, it only has meaning and purpose when fallible, biased people use it (weak sense bias). She challenges the idea of a transcendental epistemological perspective, thus all knowledge is provisional and perspectival (strong sense bias). The author begins to redescribe a transformed critical thinking as constructive thinking.     

An Assessment of Ethnocultural Beliefs Regarding the Causes of Birth Defects and Genetic Disorders

With the expansion of genetic services to various cultural groups, genetic counselors encounter clients who hold diverse beliefs inscribed by their culture about health conditions. Thus, clients may attribute the cause of a birth defect or genetic condition to a culturally-based health belief. This present study was conducted as a pilot study in order to assess the beliefs about the causes of birth defects and genetic disorders held by women of different ethnocultural backgrounds. This study proposed that women who do not have a family history of a disorder will differ in their knowledge about the cause of a birth defect or genetic disorder compared to women who have an affected child. In addition, this study determined to what extent culturally-based health beliefs are attributed to being the cause of a birth defect or genetic disorder in the 1990s.     

Malchish‐Kibalchish: cultural factors in a clinical case

In this paper, a Jungian understanding of cultural factors influencing individual analysis is illustrated with the case of a patient suffering from panic attacks. The analysis revealed that, in addition to the patient's personal background, the collectivistic attitudes of the Soviet culture, which had a moulding effect on the patient in his childhood and obstructed his individuation, should be taken into account. The concepts of the totalitarian object and the Russian cultural complex encompassing a grandiosity pole and an inferiority pole are used to explore the patient's condition, and the crucial role of creating mutual language with the patient is outlined.     

Bayley‐III: Cultural differences and language scale validity in a Danish sample

The purpose of this study was to investigate cultural differences between Danish and American children at 2 and 3 years as measured with the developmental test Bayley‐III, and to investigate the Bayley‐III Language Scale validity. The Danish children (N = 43) were tested with the Bayley‐III and their parents completed an additional language questionnaire (the MacArthur‐Bates CDI). Results showed that scores from the Danish children did not differ significantly from the American norms on the Cognitive or Motor Scale, but the Danish sample scored significantly higher on the Language Scale. A comparison of the Bayley‐III Language subtests with the CDI showed that the two measures correlated significantly, but the percentile score from the CDI was significantly higher than the percentile score from the Bayley‐III Language subtests. This could be because the two instruments measure slightly different areas of language development, or because the Bayley‐III overestimates language development in Danish children. However, due to the limitations of the current study, further research is needed to clarify this issue.     

Phantom narratives and the uncanny in cultural life: psychic presences and their shadows

Abstract

In this paper the author explores the emotional factors that are activated at the level of the cultural unconscious, that produce experiences of the uncanny that are expressed through Phantom Narratives. Phantom Narratives as a hybridized term is the author’s way of linking personal and social activity of unconscious story formation through psychic presences (images). Phantom Narratives are expressions of the unconscious at the level of the group that shows the psyche’s way of narrating its relationship to the group, through the expressions of cultural, social, and political issues. The uncanny, at the level of the social, is seen as those disturbances of feelings that alienate us from the familiar social world of others. What is uncanny about Phantom Narratives is how group emotional dynamics are represented as psychic presences. Making use of the author’s own subjectivity (i.e. psychoanalytic literary genre) he uses an approach from analytic psychology (Jungian) called amplification, which allows for the elaboration of symbolic processes, to create a meaningful (semantic) context for exploration.