Expatriates’ success in Ethiopia: Empirical evidence on the overlooked impact of cultural value alignment

The present study assessed the impact on the work engagement of expatriates’ personal value orientation alignment with the host country’s national culture. Participants were 231 expatriates from seven countries who are working in Ethiopia (females = 17%; mean age = 36 years, SD = 2.72 years). The expatriates completed measures of personal value orientation, cross-culture adjustment, and work engagement levels. Structural equation modelling analysis indicated expatriates with personal value orientations that align with the host country’s national culture to have a higher work engagement level. Cross-cultural adjustment mediated the relationship between personal value orientation and work engagement. Expatriates’ personal value orientation fit with the host country’s national culture is a resource to accomplish their work successfully.     

(Teen)Age is More than a Number: Generational Identity within the Context of HIV and AIDS

This study explored some of the complexities through which young adults construct and represent their sexual identities within the context of HIV/AIDS. The sample comprised a total of 136 (female = 77; male = 59) Indian and African learners, who were between the ages 15–19 years, in a co-educational school in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. The main methods of data collection employed were questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. The findings revealed that most young people understand their teenage years as transitional, hormonal and necessarily experimental, and particularly with regard to sexual experimentation. The dominance of heterosexual morality and the transitional status of the adolescents appeared to erode young adults' power to act as responsible agents.     

Students' Views on the Value of Psychological Research: A Contribution to Indigenising Psychology in Botswana

The goal of the study was to explore the value that psychology students accredit to psychological research in a country like Botswana where psychology is a relatively new discipline. Forty-five undergraduate students belonging to the first cohort of psychology students at the University of Botswana participated in the study (males = 7, females = 38, age range 18–23 years). Data were obtained from student essays and evaluated with Qualitative Content Analysis. Students were of the view that psychological research should (a) increase knowledge to better understand human beings and the world (epistemological value); (b) create awareness about psychology within society so as to to assist society in combating societal problems (societal value); (c) enhance individuals' understanding of psychology so as to to accept psychology (individual value); and (d) up-date psychological theories to ensure their applicability in present times (theoretical value). Considering students' views could play an important role in indigenising psychology in Botswana.     

In defence of the Simplicity Argument

Advocates of occasional identity have two ways of interpreting putative cases of fission and fusion. One way—we call it the Creative view—takes fission to involve an object really dividing (or being replicated), thereby creating objects which would not otherwise have existed. The more ontologically parsimonious way takes fission to involve merely the ‘separation’ of objects that were identical before: strictly speaking, no object actually divides or is replicated, no new objects are created. In this paper we recommend the Creative approach as the best way of dealing with certain problem cases involving teletransportation. Our considerations yield novel takes on psychological-continuity theories of personal identity and survival, and on the puzzle of Theseus' ship.     

The Many Faces of Self: Ego and Ethnic Identities

This study addressed how adolescents come to develop a sense of ethnic identity. The author examined ethnic identity development as a process that occurs simultaneously with the development of ego identity and attitudes toward groups other than one's own. A multiethnic sample of 297 adolescents and young adults (aged 13 to 26 years) completed the Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Scale Revision 2 (EOMEIS2; L. Bennion & G. Adams, 1986), the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM; J. Phinney, 1992), and the Other Group Orientation Scale (J. Phinney, 1992). An Age x Ethnic Group x Gender experimental design was used to determine whether these factors contributed differently to ethnic identity and ego identity. Analyses showed significant differences in the level of ethnic identity development among the ethnic groups. More pronounced age differences were found at the lower levels of ego identity development than at the more advanced levels.     

Replies

Wittgenstein's critical and constructive analysis of ostensive definition is examined. Nine fundamental logico‐metaphysical errors stemming from misapprehension of ostensive definition are identified, most of which occur in the Tractatus. The Fregean holistic conception of meaning is applied to the special case of ostension. Ostensive definition is one rule among others. It is not unequivocal, it does not link language with reality, nor does it determine its own application. The role of samples in ostensive definition of perceptual properties is analysed, and the affinities between samples and Tractarian simples stressed. Samples belong to the method of representation, and not to the substance of reality. The constructive analysis is brought to bear upon the previously identified errors. Finally, a further range of problems concerning ostensive definition is raised.     

Cultural Difference in Stereotype Perceptions and Performances in Nonverbal Deductive Reasoning and Creativity

A total of 182 undergraduate students from China and the United States participated in a study examining the presence of stereotypical perceptions regarding creativity and deductive reasoning abilities, as well as the influence of stereotype on participants' performance on deductive reasoning and creativity in nonverbal form. The results showed that participants from both China and the United States believed that Americans have better creativity abilities than Chinese and that Chinese have better deductive reasoning skills than Americans. Significant cultural difference in the performances on the measures of creativity was found. The cultural difference in deductive reasoning was found between Chinese participants in China and the Caucasian (not the Asian) participants in the United States, which were somewhat congruent to the stereotypical perceptions. However, the study did not find that stereotypic perceptions directly influenced participants' performance on deductive reasoning and creativity.     

The Position of Metapsychology in the Formation of Psychoanalytic Knowledge and the Concept of “I” (Ego)

Psychoanalysis is unique in that competence in the field can be achieved only through applying the method to oneself. Different psychoanalytic schools differ in their understanding of the unconscious, about how to approach it, or how to define the specificity of the psychoanalytic interaction. Consequently, there are differences in the criteria for the definition of the ‘good-enough analysis’. There are many different opinions about how to select candidates, organise the curriculum and length of training. To define psychoanalytic talent is difficult; the uncertainty in the definition of criteria to use for selection is great; the problematic overlap between personal analysis and training is constantly present; to achieve conditions in which learning and creativity can develop is complicated by trainee, supervisor and their relationship to the Institute. Confrontations about training are often heated and divergent, as well as repetitive. Systematic studies about psychoanalytic education are very few. After a short discussion of the different concerns about selection, personal versus training analysis and the ambiguities of the supervisory situation, the author gives a review of three studies on how psychoanalytic education—as viewed by trainers and trainees—is conducted and experienced at the Swedish Psychoanalytic Institute. Training is felt to be well grounded in theory and tradition; nonetheless most do not have a sufficiently clear picture of training as a whole. Both candidates and trainers see the development of a psychoanalytic identity as the goal of training, where the competencies to be acquired are equated with important personality qualities. The candidates have a feeling of “being chosen"; they “wish to belong to a group who share an interest and fascination for psychoanalytic thinking and theory". All praise the warm and open atmosphere, and the mutual and continuous evaluations and the deep involvement of all. The surge to be rooted in an overreaching psychoanalytic ethic, the culture of gratitude within the Institute and the devotion to the task to train psychoanalytic clinicians for the future may preserve an idealised image of psychoanalysis and the fantasy that psychoanalysts are exceptional persons and give a mystifying colour to the psychoanalytic profession. This might also stand in the way of a more radical change in the traditions of training—according to the rather drastically changing climate in which psychoanalysts of the future will have to work.     

What Matters in the Mirror of Time: Why Lucretius’ Symmetry Argument Fails

By appealing to the similarity between pre-vital and post-mortem nonexistence, Lucretius famously tried to show that our anxiety about death was irrational. His so-called Symmetry Argument has been attacked in various ways, but all of these strategies are themselves problematic. In this paper, I propose a new approach to undermining the argument: when Parfit’s distinction between identity and what matters is applied, not diachronically (as he uses it) but across possible worlds, the alleged symmetry can be broken. Although the pre-vital and posthumous time spans that we could have experienced are indeed analogous with respect to our identity, they are not analogous with respect to psychological continuity, which forms the basis of prudential concern. Lucretius even anticipated the Parfitian distinction. He did not, however, notice the significance that it has for his Symmetry Argument.     

Attitudes to cosmetic surgery among ethnic minority groups in Britain: Cultural mistrust,adherence to traditional cultural values,and ethnic identity salience as protective factors

Previous work has suggested that ethnic minority women have more negative attitudes to cosmetic surgery than British Whites, but reasons for this are not fully understood. To overcome this dearth in the literature, the present study asked 250 British Asian and 250 African Caribbean university students to complete measures of attitudes to cosmetic surgery, cultural mistrust, adherence to traditional cultural values, ethnic identity salience, self‐esteem, and demographics. Preliminary analyses showed that there were significant between‐group differences only on cultural mistrust and self‐esteem, although effect sizes were small (d values = .21–.37). Further analyses showed that more negative attitudes to cosmetic surgery were associated with greater cultural mistrust, stronger adherence to traditional values, and stronger ethnic identity salience, although these relationships were weaker for African Caribbean women than for British Asians. These results are discussed in relation to perceptions of cosmetic surgery among ethnic minority women.