Cross Culture
Genyue Fu, Megan Brunet, Yin Lv, Xiaopan Ding, Gail Heyman, Catherine Ann Cameron & Kang Lee
Infant and Child Development, September/October 2010, Pages 498-515
Abstract:
The present study examined Chinese children's moral evaluations of truths and lies about one's own pro-social acts. Children ages 7, 9, and 11 were read vignettes in which a protagonist performs a good deed and is asked about it by a teacher, either in front of the class or in private. In response, the protagonist either tells a modest lie, which is highly valued by the Chinese culture, or tells an immodest truth, which violates the Chinese cultural norms about modesty. Children were asked to identify whether the protagonist's statement was the truth or a lie, and to evaluate how ‘good' or ‘bad' the statement was. Chinese children rated modest lies more positively than immodest truths, with this effect becoming more pronounced with age. Rural Chinese children and those with at least one nonprofessional parent rated immodest truths less positively when they were told in public rather than in private. Furthermore, Chinese children of parents with high collectivism scores valued modest lies more than did children of parents with low collectivism scores. These findings suggest that both macro- and micro-cultural factors contribute significantly to children's moral understanding of truth and lie telling.
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Yasheng Huang, Li Jin & Yi Qian
NBER Working Paper, August 2010
Abstract:
One of the most important and one of the most heavily studied ethnic networks in the world is overseas Chinese. However, almost all of the analysis on the economic dimensions of the overseas Chinese network has been about the effects of ethnic ties on the aggregate volume of trade or the effects of ethnic ties on foreign direct investment (FDI) at the country level. In this paper, we add to the large and important collection of literature on the subject by studying the profitability of foreign direct investments made by overseas Chinese in China. Our paper takes advantage of a large dataset - over 50,000 firms over a period of eight years - that is comprised of two types of foreign firms with investments in China - those owned by ethnic Chinese and those owned by non-ethnic Chinese. Against common perceptions, we find that ethnically Chinese firms in China do not outperform non-ethnically Chinese firms by a set of conventional profitability measures. We also find that the performance of ethnically Chinese firms deteriorates over time. One hypothesis explaining this result is that ethnically Chinese firms tend to under-invest in those firm attributes that may enhance long-term performance, such as human capital and technology (proxied by intangible assets in our paper). Indeed we do find evidence that ethnically Chinese firms invest far less in intangible assets and human capital as compared with non-ethnically Chinese firms of similar size, age, and other characteristics. In addition, within strata of matched firms based on their intangible assets and human capital, ethnically Chinese firms no longer display significant dynamic disadvantage relative to non-ethnic firms after controlling for other firm characteristics and fixed effects.
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Does culture count? Comparative performances of top family and non-family firms
Chris Carr & Suzanne Bateman
International Journal of Cross Cultural Management, August 2010, Pages 241-262
Abstract:
Sixty-five of the world's largest family firms were compared against with those of a matched sample of 65 non-family firms. Contrary to previous studies, family firms here displayed higher profitability and a broadly positive (if slightly inconsistent) relationship between increasing family ownership levels and performance. Sales growth was also consistently higher over 20 years when averaged worldwide. Since other studies have mainly been restricted to single countries or regions, we further analysed differences across continents and country cultures. Within both North America and Europe family and non-family firms were equally profitable (though family firms grew relatively faster in North America). The same was true for ‘high-trust' countries and also for Anglo-Saxon regions. However, in low-trust countries and also in more long-termist Asian countries, family firms performed better than non-family firms both in terms of profitability and sales growth.
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Michael Morris & Aurelia Mok
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Cross-national research on social description documents that Westerners favor more abstract linguistic categories (e.g. adjectives rather than verbs) than East Asians. Whereas culture-related schemas are assumed to underlie these differences, no research has examined this directly. The present study used the cultural priming paradigm to distinguish the role of cultural schemas from alternative country-related explanations involving linguistic structures or educational experiences. It compared Asian-Americans' descriptions of others and memory for social information following American versus Asian priming. Asian priming fostered more concrete, contextualized verb-based descriptions and reduced memory errors associated with trait inference, compared to American priming (and to separate samples of non-primed Asian-Americans and Euro-Americans). This provides the first incisive evidence that cultural schemas influence the linguistic categories used to describe and remember social targets. Implications for research on biculturals, culture-related schemas, and linguistic practices are discussed.
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Exploration of Chinese humor: Historical review, empirical findings, and critical reflections
Xiao Dong Yue
Humor - International Journal of Humor Research, August 2010, Pages 403-420
Abstract:
Humor was first documented around 2,500 BC in China when the first Chinese poetry and literary books appeared. Zhuangzi, a co-founder of Taoism, is recognized as the very first humorist in China. Chinese humor has been mostly characterized by joke-telling and funny show-performing. Humor has been traditionally given little respect in Chinese culture mainly due to the Confucian emphasis on keeping proper manners of social interactions. Confucius once ordered to execute humorists for having "improper performance" before dignitaries in 500 BC. The term humor was translated by Mr. Lin Yu-tang in 1920s and it has been increasingly popular in China. During the "Cultural Revolution" (1966-1976), however, humorists of various kinds were all criticized and even prosecuted. Since 1980s, humor got rehabilitated as an important element of creativity, personal charisma and social harmony. Important as it is, humor has rarely been studied in China. Of the few studies conducted, it was shown that (1) humor was not valued by the Chinese even though they all enjoyed it; (2) humor was often considered the least important factor in relation to creativity, and ideal Chinese personality.
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Cultural Variation in the Importance of Expected Enjoyment for Decision Making
Carl Falk, Elizabeth Dunn & Ara Norenzayan
Social Cognition, October 2010, Pages 609-629
Abstract:
In Euro-Canadian culture, individuals often base decisions on what they think will make them happy, such that affective forecasts play an important role in driving decisions. In contrast, East Asian cultures warn against excessive hedonism, suggesting that expected positive emotions may have less influence on decision making among East Asians. Consistent with this hypothesis, those with an East Asian cultural background in Study 1 were less likely than Euro-Canadians to choose an enjoyable activity over a useful one. Study 2 showed that East Asians, versus Euro-Canadians, place less weight on expected enjoyment when making hypothetical choices. In Study 3, biculturals placed less weight on expected enjoyment when primed with interdependent versus independent self-construals. We argue that expected enjoyment plays a significant role in decision making across cultures, but that this role may be attenuated for individuals from East Asian cultures due to their interdependent sense of self.
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Cultural differences in risk: The group facilitation effect
Do-Yeong Kim & Junsu Park
Judgment and Decision Making, August 2010, Pages 380-390
Abstract:
We compared South Koreans with Australians in order to characterize cultural differences in attitudes and choices regarding risk, at both the individual and group levels. Our results showed that Australians, when assessed individually, consistently self-reported higher preference for risk than South Koreans, regardless of gender. The data revealed that South Koreans, regardless of gender composition, were willing to take greater risks when making decisions in group decision-making situations than when they were alone. This is a different pattern from that seen in the Australian sample, in which a risky shift was noted only among males. This difference was attributed to the influence of various cultural orientations (independent vs. interdependent relationship styles). This study also provides a discussion of the implications of these results in terms of cultural differences in attitudes and decisions regarding risk.
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Alan Kersten, Christian Meissner, Julia Lechuga, Bennett Schwartz, Justin Albrechtsen & Adam Iglesias
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, forthcoming
Abstract:
Three experiments provide evidence that the conceptualization of moving objects and events is influenced by one's native language, consistent with linguistic relativity theory. Monolingual English speakers and bilingual Spanish/English speakers tested in an English-speaking context performed better than monolingual Spanish speakers and bilingual Spanish/English speakers tested in a Spanish-speaking context at sorting novel, animated objects and events into categories on the basis of manner of motion, an attribute that is prominently marked in English but not in Spanish. In contrast, English and Spanish speakers performed similarly at classifying on the basis of path, an attribute that is prominently marked in both languages. Similar results were obtained regardless of whether categories were labeled by novel words or numbered, suggesting that an English-speaking tendency to focus on manner of motion is a general phenomenon and not limited to word learning. Effects of age of acquisition of English were also observed on the performance of bilinguals, with early bilinguals performing similarly in the 2 language contexts and later bilinguals showing greater contextual variation.
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Stacey Doan & Qi Wang
Child Development, September/October 2010, Pages 1490-1503
Abstract:
This study examined in a cross-cultural context mothers' discussions of mental states and external behaviors in a story-telling task with their 3-year-old children and the relations of such discussions to children's emotion situation knowledge (ESK). The participants were 71 European American and 60 Chinese immigrant mother-child pairs in the United States. Mothers and children read a storybook together at home, and children's ESK was assessed. Results showed that European American mothers made more references to thoughts and emotions during storytelling than did Chinese mothers, who commented more frequently on behaviors. Regardless of culture, mothers' use of mental states language predicted children's ESK, whereas their references to behaviors were negatively related to children's ESK. Finally, mothers' emphasis on mental states over behaviors partially mediated cultural effects on children's ESK.
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The parenting dimensions of British Pakistani and White mothers of primary school children
Shama Ali & Norah Frederickson
Infant and Child Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
There is increasing emphasis internationally on the use of parenting programmes to support the development of appropriate social behaviour in children. However, in such programmes diversity is often ignored. Research into the parenting styles and practices (dimensions) of different ethnic groups is needed in order to investigate the applicability of universal programmes, to guide their design and implementation in the future. Thirty-four British Pakistani and 34 British White mothers of primary aged children, comprising equal numbers of males and females, completed English or Urdu versions of the Parental Dimensions Inventory-Short Version (PDI-S), (Power, Int. J. Behav. Dev. 67: 302-313) and a child behavioural screening instrument, the SDQ (Goodman, J. Child Psychol. Psychiatry38: 581-586). More similarities than differences between the parenting dimensions of Pakistani and White mothers were found overall. However, compared with White mothers, Pakistani mothers reported more ‘following through on discipline' as well as ‘reminding' as a disciplinary action. Further, Pakistani mothers reported following through on discipline more with boys than White mothers did and the more they reported inconsistent parenting, the more their children reportedly had behaviour problems. It is concluded that while these findings provide some support for the cross-cultural applicability of generic parenting programmes, programme efficacy studies are also needed.
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I Feel Your Voice: Cultural Differences in the Multisensory Perception of Emotion
Akihiro Tanaka, Ai Koizumi, Hisato Imai, Saori Hiramatsu, Eriko Hiramoto & Beatrice de Gelder
Psychological Science, September 2010, Pages 1259-1262
Abstract:
Cultural differences in emotion perception have been reported mainly for facial expressions and to a lesser extent for vocal expressions. However, the way in which the perceiver combines auditory and visual cues may itself be subject to cultural variability. Our study investigated cultural differences between Japanese and Dutch participants in the multisensory perception of emotion. A face and a voice, expressing either congruent or incongruent emotions, were presented on each trial. Participants were instructed to judge the emotion expressed in one of the two sources. The effect of to-be-ignored voice information on facial judgments was larger in Japanese than in Dutch participants, whereas the effect of to-be-ignored face information on vocal judgments was smaller in Japanese than in Dutch participants. This result indicates that Japanese people are more attuned than Dutch people to vocal processing in the multisensory perception of emotion. Our findings provide the first evidence that multisensory integration of affective information is modulated by perceivers' cultural background.
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Individualizing Japan: Searching for its origin in first modernity
Munenori Suzuki, Midori Ito, Mitsunori Ishida, Norihiro Nihei & Masao Maruyama
British Journal of Sociology, September 2010, Pages 513-538
Abstract:
Since the mid-1990s Japanese society has entered a period of major change. The previous patterns of social order and social integration have collapsed, and it has become increasingly difficult to envision a stable life course for oneself. The ‘secure' foundation has been weakening and anxiety has spread at an accelerated pace. Japan could enter the age of second modernity, or reflexive modernization. In Japan's first modernity, the mechanism responsible for risk management, an integrated society, and stabilized social order, was, first, private corporations that guaranteed long-term stability for employees and their families (company-centrism) and, second, land development rapidly implemented under the guidance of bureaucrats (developmentalism). From the 1990s, these systems were fundamentally destroyed by globalization and neoliberal policies. Private corporations limited the groups that could benefit from the seniority wage system, undermining in-house welfare benefits. The government abandoned its role of improving the industrial and economic conditions of surrounding areas through offering public works projects. After these risk-stabilizing mechanisms were gone, two problems became conspicuous - poverty among young workers in urban areas and the collapse of the local community in marginal areas. As the seniority wage system and lifetime employment were substitutes for the public social security system, public measures to deal with poverty remain inadequate. Now, the individualization of the family has advanced somewhat under compulsion as the rate of unmarried people and the divorce rate have climbed. The Japanese have a tendency to seek ‘self-realization'; at the same time, they also want ‘secure employment'. Thus, they are torn between individualization and the desire for security. What is now necessary is a more stable system that will ensure them adequate material and spiritual ‘elbowroom' to allow them to make their own choices.
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Understanding Economic Justice Attitudes in Two Countries: Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan
Azamat Junisbai
Social Forces, June 2010, Pages 1677-1702
Abstract:
Analyzing data from the 2007 Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan Inequality Survey, I identify and compare the determinants of economic justice attitudes in two formerly similar majority-Muslim nations that are now distinguished almost exclusively by their dissimilar economic circumstances following the collapse of the Soviet Union. In Kazakhstan, where the economy is growing rapidly, the important factors predicting economic egalitarianism are connected to people's perceived ability to do well in the future. In contrast, in Kyrgyzstan, which has stagnated in the post-Soviet era, people's immediate economic vulnerability predicts egalitarianism, while their economic prospects are irrelevant. Finally, the effect of several factors on support for egalitarianism appears impervious to the prevailing economic winds: religious orthodoxy, the urban vs. rural divide, and membership in a historically privileged ethnic group. These patterns reflect both the commonalities in the two countries' histories, demography, and religion and their divergent economic trajectories since the collapse of the USSR.
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Sociocultural Differences in the Relationship Between Bilingualism and Creative Potential
Anatoliy Kharkhurin
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, September 2010, Pages 776-783
Abstract:
The performances of Russian-English bilinguals and English monolinguals living in the United States, and Farsi-English bilinguals living in the United Arab Emirates and Farsi monolinguals living in Iran, were compared on the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults to investigate whether the sociocultural context modulates the influence of bilingualism on an individual's creativity. The findings revealed an interactive influence of bilingualism and sociocultural context on creative potential, suggesting that the contribution of bilingual development to creative potential differs across cultures.
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Social Eyes and Choice Justification: Culture and Dissonance Revisited
Toshie Imada & Shinobu Kitayama
Social Cognition, October 2010, Pages 589-608
Abstract:
Individuals are expected to justify their choice when the choice is self-threatening. However, previous cross-cultural work suggests that the conditions in which individuals justify their choices vary across cultures. The present work aimed to determine the boundary conditions for this cultural difference. Experiment 1 showed that Japanese justified their choice when an impression of "social eyes" was primed during the choice, but not when it was primed at a later point. In contrast, the pattern was reversed for Americans. Experiment 2 found a similar cross-cultural pattern as a function of each participant's perception of "social eyes" in response to an ambiguous cue presented in front of him or her. Experiment 3 found that Americans justified their choice only when an observer was perceived as noninfluential. Together, these findings support the hypothesis that perceived privacy or publicity of choice interacts with culture to determine the likelihood of choice justification.
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Juliette Schaafsma, John Nezlek, Izabela Krejtz & Magdalena Safron
European Journal of Social Psychology, October 2010, Pages 1010-1028
Abstract:
This study examined relationships between ethnic identification and ethnic minority members' interactions with majority group members. Members of Muslim minority groups, ethnic Turks and Moroccans in the Netherlands and Chechens in Poland, described the social interactions they had for two weeks using a variant of the Rochester Interaction Record (RIR). They also completed measures of ethnocultural identification that distinguished involvement with and attachment to their ethnic minority culture and to the majority culture. Relationships between ethnic identification and contact with the majority group varied as a function of the dimension and source of identification and the aspect of interaction (quantity or quality) being considered. Across the samples, involvement with the ethnic minority culture was negatively related to the quantity of contact with majority group members, whereas emotional attachment to the majority culture was positively related to the quality of interactions with majority group members. Attachment to the ethnic minority culture was not related to either the quantity of interaction with majority group members or to the quality of these interactions. These results suggest that when studying interethnic contact, it is important to distinguish different dimensions and sources of ethnic identification and different aspects of interethnic contact.
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John Manning & Bernhard Fink
Personality and Individual Differences, forthcoming
Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to consider relationships between digit ratio (2D:4D, a putative correlate of prenatal sex steroids) and aggregate personality scores across nations. Differences in national personality scores may be influenced by such factors as prevalence of the parasite Toxoplasma gondii, latitude and economics, and variation in 2D:4D has also been linked to prevalence of T. gondii and to latitude. Here we report associations of mean 2D:4D per country and latitude, gross domestic product (GDP), T. gondii prevalence and personality profiles in 23 nations of an internet study. 2D:4D was not related to latitude or to T. gondii, but was related to GDP (women only). With regard to national personality scores, 2D:4D was not related to masculinity but there were significant positive relationships of 2D:4D with uncertainty avoidance in men and women and with neuroticism in men. Male 2D:4D was significantly related to uncertainty avoidance and neuroticism independent of T. gondii, whereas female 2D:4D was not significantly related to uncertainty avoidance or neuroticism after controlling for the effect of T. gondii and GDP. We conclude that nations with high male 2D:4D (low prenatal testosterone, high prenatal oestrogen) have high scores for uncertainty avoidance and neuroticism.
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Talking like a ‘zerolingual': Ambiguous linguistic caricatures at an urban secondary school
Jürgen Jaspers
Journal of Pragmatics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The purpose of this article is to show how subordinate groups such as minority language users can enjoy and employ the linguistic possibilities afforded by the unequal structures they live in. On the basis of ethnographically collected data on linguistic practices at a secondary school in Antwerp, Belgium, I will indicate how a group of ethnic minority students engaged in making ambiguous linguistic caricatures by stylizing incompetent or broken Dutch - what they called talking Illegal (‘Illegaal spreken', in Dutch). This appeared to be a contradictory practice: students talked Illegal as a way of faking incompetence and playfully but critically highlighting the contours of the unequal social frame surrounding them; at the same time such stylizations could also involve harsh stigmatization of classmates and help construct dominant positions on the classroom floor, and in this way they were reproducing and benefiting from the very structures they were critically highlighting on other occasions.