Once in contact, always in contact: contagious essence and conceptions of purification in American and Hindu Indian children

Cultural and age differences in responses to contamination and conceptions of purification were examined in Hindu Indian (N = 125) and American (N = 106) 4- to 5-year-olds and 8-year-olds, who were provided with stories of juice contaminated by contact with a cockroach, a human hair, and a stranger (via sipping). Children who rejected the juice as being fit to drink were probed to determine whether their rejection was based on material essence (reduced by boiling), association (reduced by color change), or spiritual essence (reduced by sipping by the mother). A majority of 4- to 5-year-olds showed some form of contamination response, as did the great majority of 8-year-olds. Younger children's judgments were often based on spiritual essence or association, whereas material essence was more important for the older children, particularly Americans. However, for many children in both cultures, no purifiers were effective. In keeping with Hindu culture, the Indian children responded significantly more strongly to stranger or cockroach contamination and, with increasing age, viewed contamination as more impervious to any kind of purification.     

Marital Conflict Among Parents: Implications for Family Therapy with Adolescent Conduct Disorder

Conduct disorder is associated with several causative and maintaining factors, with family functioning being an important one. This is especially true in the Indian context, where a lot of the problem behaviors manifested by adolescents with conduct disorders are in the family context. Marital relationship of the parents is a key aspect of family functioning, affecting a number of other dimensions of family functioning, including adolescent adjustment. The paper highlights the role of parents’ marital conflict in the emergence and maintenance of adolescent conduct problems. The importance of family therapy in managing adolescent conduct disorder is discussed through case examples from India. Shalini Anant, MPhil, PhD Scholar, Department of Clinical Psychology, National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore 560029, India. Ahalya Raguram, PhD, Additional Professor, Department of Clinical Psychology, NIMHANS, Bangalore 560029, India. Address correspondence to Shalini Anant (shalinianant@gmail.com).     

Exploring Hindu Indian emotion expressions: evidence for accurate recognition by Americans and Indians

Subjects were presented with videotaped expressions of 10 classic Hindu emotions. The 10 emotions were (in rough translation from Sanskrit) anger, disgust, fear, heroism, humor-amusement, love, peace, sadness, shame-embarrassment, and wonder. These emotions (except for shame) and their portrayal were described about 2,000 years ago in the Natyasastra, and are enacted in the contemporary Hindu classical dance. The expressions are dynamic and include both the face and the body, especially the hands. Three different expressive versions of each emotion were presented, along with 15 neutral expressions. American and Indian college students responded to each of these 45 expressions using either a fixed-response format (10 emotion names and "neutral/no emotion") or a totally free response format. Participants from both countries were quite accurate in identifying emotions correctly using both fixed-choice (65% correct, expected value of 9%) and free-response (61% correct, expected value close to zero) methods.     

Gender Differences in Fear of Success Imagery and Other Achievement-Related Background Variables Among Medical Students

Gender differences in the background variablesof 95 male and 94 female (85 Asian-American and 104primarily Caucasian non-Asian American) medical studentsenrolled in Phase I of a BS/MD six-year medical program were investigated. Fear of successimagery, resultant achievement motivation and severaldemographic and achievement-related home, school,personal motivational variables were analyzed. Therewere no significant gender differences in most ofthe variables. However, during high school, women spentless time in watching TV (p < .000), more time instudying (p < .000), and perceived that their chores were minimized before examinations (p< .002), while during their medical study, their useof conversation with someone to cope with theirpressures and their perception of unique parentalsupport were higher than those of men (p < .05 andp < .01, respectively). Hours spent in studying andin watching TV during high school, and parents'minimizing chores before tests can discriminate about two-thirds of the students in their appropriategender (p < .000).