知情同意在中国不适用吗——“文化差异论”的认知错误

知情同意是在当代生命伦理学中最有影响的概念,在大多数西方国家它已成为医疗实践和涉及人体的医学科学研究的一个基本的伦理要求。不少西方和中国学者认为,由于中西文化显著而根本的差异,知情同意不适宜于中国。指出了“文化差异论”的三个认知错误,即,文化差异论是建立在对中国文化和医学道德、西方文化以及知情同意的一系列误解之上的。基于文化的差异而拒绝知情同意在中国的适用性和必要性,显然不能成立。     

基于大数据的文化心理分析

随着大数据技术与文化心理学的融合发展, 计算文化心理学作为一门新兴交叉学科逐渐兴起, 大尺度、近乎全样本的文化心理分析真正得以实现。计算文化心理学关注的文化变量主要围绕个人主义/集体主义这一文化心理学使用最为广泛的维度展开, 分析方法包括特征词典、机器学习、社会网络分析、仿真模拟等, 分析思路包括时间维度上的文化变迁效应以及空间维度上的文化地理效应。当然, 计算文化心理学在为传统文化心理研究提供新方法、新范式的同时, 也存在解码失真、样本偏差、词语多义性、隐私风险等局限, 未来研究应重视变量理论解释、文化动态演化分析、学科深度整合、生态效度等问题。     

Help-Seeking Comfort and Receiving Social Support: The Role of Ethnicity and Context of Need

Examined help-seeking comfort and receiving social support among Latinos, African Americans, and European Americans across two contexts: in a communitywide emergency (Hurricane Andrew) and 2 years later in a nonemergency situation. In general, help-seeking comfort was a strong predictor of received support. Notwithstanding many similarities between the groups, the effects of ethnicity differed according to the context. In emergency, all groups reported similarly high levels of help-seeking comfort and received support. In nonemergency, help-seeking comfort declined for blacks and whites but not for Latinos. Although all ethnic groups reported receiving less social support in nonemergency, the decline in received support across contexts was most dramatic for Latinos. Situational, cultural, and differential resource loss explanations are offered to account for the findings.     

Where Does I Stand? Reflections on Home and Identity Ensnared in a Cultural Narrative

In this paper the author explores a cultural narrative that she suggests rests on the concepts of the Feminine and Masculine as such, employing both as though they contain an agreed set of universal givens. These givens are extrapolated from an androcentric perspective on female and male bodies, in particular their biological functions regarding reproduction. The metaphors of the baby-in-womb, mother’s preoccupation with child and heteronormative sexual relations are the primary cyphers for the narrative. She suggests that remaining unconscious of this narrative, such that it is taken as a universal given, can hamper a person’s relation to themselves, the world and others. The author names two concepts, Home and Identity: Home being an hospitable and accommodating space with Identity denoting the one who inhabits the space. In the narrative these two are unhelpfully categorized as belonging to the Feminine and the Masculine respectively. For ease of understanding the author uses a capital letter to designate an abstract idea, and lower case when referring to the concrete or particular. Clinical examples are given throughout the paper to illustrate how acknowledgement and awareness of this narrative might free the analyst or therapist to think more broadly around issues pertaining to space and identity.     

Reduction of faking with the use of a forced-choice personality test: Cross-cultural comparisons between South Korea and the United States

Forced-choice format tests have been suggested as an alternative to Likert-scale measures for personnel selection due to robustness to faking and response styles. This study compared degrees of faking occurring in Likert-scale and forced-choice five-factor personality tests between South Korea and the United States. Also, it was examined whether the forced-choice format was effective at reducing faking in both countries. Data were collected from 396 incumbents participating in both honest and applicant conditions (N_SK = 179, N_US = 217). Cohen's d values for within-subjects designs (ds_within) for between the two conditions were utilized to measure magnitudes of faking occurring in each format and country. In both countries, the degrees of faking occurring in the Likert-scale were larger than those from the forced-choice format, and the magnitudes of faking across five personality traits were larger in South Korea by from 0.07 to 0.12 in ds_within. The forced-choice format appeared to successfully reduce faking for both countries as the average ds_within decreased by 0.06 in both countries. However, the patterns of faking occurring in the forced-choice format varied between the two countries. In South Korea, degrees of faking in Openness and Conscientiousness increased, whereas those in Extraversion and Agreeableness were substantially decreased. Potential factors leading to trait-specific faking under the forced-choice format were discussed in relation to cultural influence on the perception of personality traits and score estimation in Thurstonian item response theory (IRT) models. Finally, the adverse impact of using forced-choice formats on multicultural selection settings was elaborated.     

Inverting the Object of Study: Recalibrating the Frame of Reference in Study Abroad Experiences

This essay is concerned with study abroad experiences as opportunities for student cognitive development, using the interpretive lens of educational psychologist William G. Perry. A standard and often valuable assignment in courses on world religions is a site visit to a religious institution in one's local area. This may concretize otherwise abstract materials and help students reflect on ways in which the lived experience of religion differs from its presentation in course texts and other academic materials. Increasingly, study abroad trips are being offered as extended and more intensive ways of bringing this material to life, offering students opportunity to see lived religion within another cultural framework. At the heart of this paper is the contention that such study abroad experiences function not simply as longer, more intense versions of site visits but, rather, as experiences that invert the subject and object of study. The worldview of the student becomes a primary object of study, which is examined, as it were, by the particulars of the religion(s) under investigation and the cultures of which said religion(s) are a part. Where site visits offer students an opportunity to visit the strange amidst the familiar, study abroad trips provide opportunities for students to become the strange within a recalibrated familiar. The subject becomes the object and is interrogated by the context of study. While local, stateside site visits can offer a degree of such dislocation, their brevity, together with some degree of assimilation to the larger culture flows on the part of the local religious institution being visited, most often mitigates any significant inversion. Students generally see such institutions as either mildly or wildly exotic, but always within their frame of reference, which constitutes the norm. When abroad, the normative experience of students is often subverted in ways that lay bare the assumptions behind such views and makes possible another world in which to live. Simply put, the subject and object of study change places. If this inversion is carefully attended to, it can provide rich insight into not only the topics nominally being studied but also occasion opportunity for real cognitive development on the part of the student. This essay is published alongside of six other essays, including a response from John Barbour, comprising a special section of the journal (see Teaching Theology and Religion 18:1, January 2015).     

Classification of Planning and Violent Behaviours in Serial Homicide: A Cross‐National Comparison Between South Africa and the US

Recent literature suggests that different ‘styles’ of homicide will most appropriately be reflected in the different types of behaviours committed by offenders during the crime. In the last few years, there has been a move to standardise classification systems of single homicides and establish their cross‐national generalisability. Literature on serial homicide to date has mostly centred on homicides occurring in the US. However, national differences due to factors such as culture, national identity, political, and socio‐economic circumstances may decrease the applicability of these models or certain aspects thereof in other countries and thus must be evaluated. The present study tested the applicability in the South African context of a recently developed US‐based serial homicide crime scene classification framework. Specifically, this study compared the thematic differentiation in planning and violent behaviours that the offenders engage in and how this differentiation compares with that in the US. The sample consisted of 25 homicides that were in total responsible for the murder of 267 victims. Results indicated that overall, the framework is useful and applicable in the South African sample, but important environmental and contextual constraints must be taken into account. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Personal values and political activism: A cross‐national study

Using data from 28 countries in four continents, the present research addresses the question of how basic values may account for political activism. Study (N = 35,116) analyses data from representative samples in 20 countries that responded to the 21‐item version of the Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ‐21) in the European Social Survey. Study (N = 7,773) analyses data from adult samples in six of the same countries (Finland, Germany, Greece, Israel, Poland, and United Kingdom) and eight other countries (Australia, Brazil, Chile, Italy, Slovakia, Turkey, Ukraine, and United States) that completed the full 40‐item PVQ. Across both studies, political activism relates positively to self‐transcendence and openness to change values, especially to universalism and autonomy of thought, a subtype of self‐direction. Political activism relates negatively to conservation values, especially to conformity and personal security. National differences in the strength of the associations between individual values and political activism are linked to level of democratization.     

Demons,voices and virtual realities in adolescence–an exploration of zeitgeist,culture and cultural complexes

This paper contrasts two aspects of the adolescent's sojourn in the metaphorical landscape of the borderland. Either this ‘dance with death’ can prove life‐affirming and serve individuation as the intensity of being poised on the cusp between life and death negates numbing dissociation, or it can spiral into madness and suicide when the adolescent gets trapped in a mimetic hall of mirrors. This paper considers both the oscillations between mimesis and alterity, and how culture and cultural complexes may define expressions of distress. It concludes with the question of whether one can–and whether one should–make sense of the demons from the other side; and whether they are psychotic, pseudo‐psychotic or dissociative manifestations as they emerge during the course of therapy.     

Being modest makes you feel bad: Effects of the modesty norm and mortality salience on self‐esteem in a collectivistic culture

Terror management research shows that existential terror motivates people to live up to social norms. According to terror management theory (TMT), people can achieve a sense of self‐worth through compliance with social norms. However, this has not yet been empirically tested. Modesty has long been known as an important social norm in Eastern cultures, such as China, Japan, and Korea. The current research examined whether conforming to the modesty norm in response to reminders of death concerns increases self‐esteem for Chinese. In Study 1, following the modesty norm (i.e., explicit self‐effacement) led to decreased implicit self‐esteem, however, this was only the case if mortality was salient. In Study 2, violating the modesty norm (i.e., explicit self‐enhancement) increased implicit self‐esteem – however – again, this was only the case when mortality was salient. These findings indicate that self‐esteem cannot be maintained through compliance with the modesty norm. Implications of this research for understanding the interplay between self‐esteem and social norms in terror management processes are discussed.