People of the World
Economic inequality is linked to biased self-perception
Steve Loughnan et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
People are often biased in their self-perception, seeing themselves as better than the average person ("self-enhancement"). This bias varies across cultures and variations are typically explained using cultural variables such as individualism vs. collectivism. We propose that socioeconomic differences between societies, specifically economic inequality, play a more important but unrecognized role in how people evaluate themselves. Evidence for self-enhancement was found in fifteen diverse nations, but the magnitude of the bias varied. Greater self-enhancement was found in societies with more unequal incomes and inequality predicted cross-cultural differences better than individualism/collectivism. These results indicate that macro-social differences in the distribution of economic goods are linked to micro-social processes of perceiving the self.
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Nicholas Rule et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Across cultures, people converge in some behaviors and diverge in others. As little is known about the accuracy of judgments across cultures outside of the domain of emotion recognition, the present study investigated the influence of culture in another area: the social categorization of men's sexual orientations. Participants from nations varying in their acceptance of homosexuality (United States, Japan, and Spain) categorized the faces of men from all three cultures significantly better than chance guessing. Moreover, categorizations of individual faces were significantly correlated among the three groups of perceivers. Americans were significantly faster and more accurate than the Japanese and Spanish perceivers. Categorization strategies (i.e., response bias) also varied such that perceivers from cultures less accepting of homosexuality were more likely to categorize targets as straight. Male sexual orientation therefore appears to be legible across cultures.
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Support for the death penalty: Chinese and American college students compared
Yuning Wu, Ivan Sun & Zongxian Wu
Punishment & Society, July 2011, Pages 354-376
Abstract:
While a substantial number of studies have examined public opinion on the death penalty in the USA, very little research effort has been devoted to assessing Chinese attitudes toward the death penalty in general or comparing Chinese and American attitudes in particular. Using survey data collected from college students in several universities, this study compares and contrasts Chinese and American attitudes toward the death penalty and identifies factors that have similar or distinctive effects on such attitudes. The results indicate that Chinese students display a higher level of support for capital punishment than their US counterparts. Gender, victimization, and criminal justice-oriented concerns significantly shape both Chinese and American students' attitudes toward the death penalty. Country differences are also identified, with fear of crime influencing Chinese but not American students' support for the death penalty and crime control orientation affecting American but not Chinese support for the ultimate punishment. Implications for policy and future research are discussed.
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Gender differences in competitiveness and risk taking: Comparing children in Colombia and Sweden
Juan-Camilo Cárdenas et al.
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
We explore gender differences in preferences for competition and risk among children aged 9-12 in Colombia and Sweden, two countries differing in gender equality according to macro indices. We include four types of tasks that vary in gender stereotyping when looking at competitiveness: running, skipping rope, math and word search. We find that boys and girls are equally competitive in all tasks and all measures in Colombia. Unlike the consistent results in Colombia, the results in Sweden are mixed, with some indication of girls being more competitive than boys in some tasks in terms of performance change, whereas boys are more likely to choose to compete in general. Boys in both countries are more risk taking than girls, with a smaller gender gap in Sweden.
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A Cross-Cultural Study of Observed Conflicts Between Young Children
Virginia Martínez-Lozano, José Sánchez-Medina & Paul Goudena
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, August 2011, Pages 895-907
Abstract:
Young children (5 to 6 years old) from an individualistic (the Netherlands) culture and a collectivistic (South of Spain: Andalusia) culture were videotaped during leisure time on their school playground. Based on the perspective of individualism-collectivism (IND-COL), cultural differences were expected with respect to observed conflict behaviors. Conflict episodes were analyzed with respect to conflict issues, strategies, and outcomes. In Andalusia, an unexpected high number of conflicts were observed, about three times higher than in the Netherlands. As expected, Andalusian children turned out to be more concerned with control of play and behavior and Dutch children more with control of objects and space. With respect to strategy use, Andalusian children used negotiation more often than Dutch children. The latter included more often nonverbal and directive ingredients in their strategies. Dutch children ended their conflicts by means of social or physical rupture much more often than Andalusian children. The latter preferred to continue the interaction, even if this required submission to others' wishes. Results are discussed from the perspective of IND-COL, with particular emphasis on four characteristics of studies of peer conflicts: definition of conflict, method of data collection, age of participants, and social setting of the participants.
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Ethnic differences during social interactions of preschoolers in same-ethnic and cross-ethnic dyads
Nadine Girouard, Dale Stack & Monica O'Neill-Gilbert
European Journal of Developmental Psychology, March/April 2011, Pages 185-202
Abstract:
Dyadic interactions of 30 Asian-Canadian and 30 French-Canadian preschool children were analyzed in term of social participation, initiation, responses strategies and social interchange. Results showed a preference for same-ethnic partners to play more interactively together, while with a cross-ethnic partner they played more solitarily in the presence of the peer. To initiate their interactions, Asian-Canadian children made more co-operative initiations (helping or assisting the peer largely nonverbally) whereas French-Canadian children used more affiliative verbalizations to initiate the interaction. Moreover, Asian-Canadian children initiated more conflictual interactions, during same-ethnic interactions, by taking an object from the other child, and they used more of both submission and counter-attack behaviours than French-Canadian children. Finally, children of both groups showed synchronous activity regardless of the ethnicity of the play partner. Consistent with studies with older children, findings from the present study revealed that the quality of preschoolers' social interactions is influenced by the ethnicity of the playmate.
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Self-Promoting and Modest Job Applicants in Different Cultures
Marianne Schmid Mast, Denise Frauendorfer & Laurence Popovic
Journal of Personnel Psychology, Spring 2011, Pages 70-77
Abstract:
The goal of this study was to investigate the influence of the recruiter's cultural background on the evaluation of a job applicant's presentation style (self-promoting or modest) in an interview situation. We expected that recruiters from cultures that value self-promotion (e.g., Canada) will be more inclined to hire self-promoting as compared to modest applicants and that recruiters from cultures that value modesty (e.g., Switzerland) will be less inclined to hire self-promoting applicants than recruiters from cultures that value self-promotion. We therefore investigated 44 native French speaking recruiters from Switzerland and 40 native French speaking recruiters from Canada who judged either a self-promoting or a modest videotaped applicant in terms of hireability. Results confirmed that Canadian recruiters were more inclined to hire self-promoting compared to modest applicants and that Canadian recruiters were more inclined than Swiss recruiters to hire self-promoting applicants. Also, we showed that self-promotion was related to a higher intention to hire because self-promoting applicants are perceived as being competent.
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Consequences of Interpersonal Rejection: A Cross-Cultural Experimental Study
Christopher Garris et al.
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, August 2011, Pages 1066-1083
Abstract:
A cross-cultural experimental study was conducted to investigate cultural differences in the consequences of interpersonal rejection, specifically focusing on the effect of rejection on affect, human needs, aggression, and prosocial behavior. One hundred and thirty-two American and 55 Japanese undergraduates were led to believe that they were either rejected or accepted by other participants. As predicted, significant differences emerged regarding affect and human needs, with both Japanese participants and rejected participants reporting less positive affect, more depressive affect, less belonging, less meaningful existence, and less self-esteem than American participants and accepted participants, respectively. Additional analyses revealed culture-based partial mediations of affect differences and that Japanese participants reported more rejection sensitivity and a greater history of past rejection than American participants. The results have important implications for the way in which rejection is experienced across cultures.
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Spontaneous Trait Inference Is Culture-Specific: Behavioral and Neural Evidence
Jinkyung Na & Shinobu Kitayama
Psychological Science, August 2011, Pages 1025-1032
Abstract:
People with an independent model of the self may be expected to develop a spontaneous tendency to infer a personality trait from another person's behavior, but those with an interdependent model of the self may not show such a tendency. We tested this prediction by assessing the cumulative effect of both trait activation and trait binding in a diagnostic task that required no trait inference. Participants first memorized pairings of facial photos with trait-implying behavior. In a subsequent lexical decision task, European Americans showed clear evidence of spontaneous trait inference: When they were primed with a previously studied face, lexical decision for the word for the implied trait associated with that face was facilitated, and the antonym of the implied trait elicited an electrophysiological sign associated with processing of semantically inconsistent information (i.e., the N400). As predicted, however, neither effect was observed for Asian Americans. The cultural difference was mediated by independent self-construal.
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Cross-cultural impressions of leaders' faces: Consensus and predictive validity
Nicholas Rule, Keiko Ishii & Nalini Ambady
International Journal of Intercultural Relations, forthcoming
Abstract:
Across cultures, people tend to show high agreement in their impressions of others. But do these impressions predict external outcomes? Here we tested the predictive validity of trait judgments of the faces of Japanese and American targets, as rated by Japanese and American perceivers. Participants rated the faces of Japanese and American Chief Executive Officers of major companies. These judgments showed high agreement within and across cultures. In addition, judgments of power-related traits predicted the company profits of American CEOs, whereas judgments of warmth-related traits did not. However, neither power nor warmth predicted the company profits of Japanese CEOs, implicating longstanding cultural differences in company organization and business practices in the US versus Japan. Together, these data show both cross-cultural agreement between perceivers and targets but also cross-cultural differences in the relevance or application of particular trait information based on facial judgments.
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The Impact of Adopting Ethnic or Civic Conceptions of National Belonging for Others' Treatment
Juliet Wakefield et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
National belonging is often defined in terms of "ethnic" ancestry and "civic" commitment (with the latter typically implying a more inclusive conception of belonging). The authors report three Scottish studies manipulating the prominence of these criteria. In Study 1 (N = 80), a Chinese-heritage target was judged more Scottish (and his criticisms of Scotland better received) when Scotland was defined in civic terms. In Study 2 (N = 40), a similar manipulation in a naturalistic setting showed a civic conception of belonging resulted in more help being given to a Chinese-heritage confederate. Study 3 (N = 71) replicated Study 2 and showed the effect was mediated by judgments of the confederate's Scottishness. These studies emphasize the importance of exploring how ingroup identity is defined.
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Kimberly Rios Morrison, Camille Johnson & Christian Wheeler
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Three experiments and a pilot study demonstrated that uncertainty about the self is uncomfortable (Pilot Study) and causes people to change their self-concepts in response to primes (Experiments 1-3), depending on both the nature of the uncertainty and how the self is defined. In Experiment 1, Asian Americans assimilated to a stereotype prime when made to feel uncertain about their collective selves, whereas European Americans assimilated to the prime when made to feel uncertain about their individual selves. Experiments 2 and 3 replicated the assimilation effect with a trait prime, and using individualism-collectivism instead of ethnicity as the moderator.
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Takeshi Hamamura
Personality and Social Psychology Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Individualism-collectivism is one of the best researched dimensions of culture in psychology. One frequently asked but underexamined question regards its cross-temporal changes: Are cultures becoming individualistic? One influential theory of cultural change, modernization theory, predicts the rise of individualism as a consequence of economic growth. Findings from past research are generally consistent with this theory, but there is also a body of evidence suggesting its limitations. To examine these issues, cross-temporal analyses of individualism-collectivism in the United States and Japan were conducted. Diverging patterns of cultural changes were found across indices: In both countries, some of the obtained indices showed rising individualism over the past several decades, supporting the modernization theory. However, other indices showed patterns that are best understood within the frameworks of a shifting focus of social relationships and a persisting cultural heritage. A comprehensive theory of cultural change requires considerations of these factors in addition to the modernization effect.
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Local Convergence and Global Diversity: From Interpersonal to Social Influence
Andreas Flache & Michael Macy
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
How can minority cultures resist assimilation into a global monolith in an increasingly "small world"? Paradoxically, Axelrod found that local convergence can actually preserve global diversity if cultural influence is combined with homophily, the principle that "likes attract." However, follow-up studies showed that this diversity collapses under random cultural perturbation. The authors discovered a new source of this fragility-the assumption in Axelrod's model that cultural influence is interpersonal (dyadic). The authors replicated previous models but with the more empirically plausible assumption that influence is social-people can be simultaneously influenced by several network neighbors. Computational experiments show that cultural diversity then becomes much more robust than in Axelrod's original model or in published variations that included either social influence or homophily but not both. The authors conclude that global diversity may be sustained not by cultural experimentation and innovation but by the ability of cultural groups to discourage those activities.
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José Soto et al.
Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
The habitual use of expressive suppression as an emotion regulation strategy has been consistently linked to adverse outcomes in a number of domains, including psychological functioning. The present study aimed to uncover whether the suppression-health relationship is dependent on cultural context, given differing cultural norms surrounding the value of suppressing emotional displays. We hypothesized that the negative associations between suppression and psychological functioning seen in European Americans would not be seen among members of East Asian cultures, in which emotional restraint is relatively encouraged over emotional expression. To test this hypothesis, we asked 71 European American students and 100 Chinese students from Hong Kong to report on their use of expressive suppression, life satisfaction, and depressed mood. A moderation analysis revealed that expressive suppression was associated with adverse psychological functioning for European Americans, but not for Chinese participants. These findings highlight the importance of context in understanding the suppression-health relationship.
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The Structure of Trust in China and the U.S.
Ho-Kong Chan, Kit-Chun Joanna Lam & Pak-Wai Liu
Journal of Business Ethics, June 2011, Pages 553-566
Abstract:
This article investigates the structure of trust in China and compares it with the U.S., using the 2000 and 2005 waves of the World Value Survey (WVS). We analyze two dimensions of trust - trust in people and trust in major companies. It is found that the level of trust has remained stable in China within the 5-year period. On the other hand, trust in major companies has declined dramatically in U.S. while trust in people has increased slightly. The structure of trust in companies is different from trust in people. For both countries, individuals with higher education tend to have a higher level of trust. Individuals who are divorced tend to have lower trust in people. Individuals who think that other people are fair are more likely to trust in people. Preference for competition has a positive effect on trust in major companies. On the other hand, some differences between the two countries are observed. Perception of fairness does not affect trust in major companies in China, while it has a positive effect in U.S. in year 2006. Preference for equality has a negative effect on trust in major companies in U.S. but no significant effect in China. The pattern of trust and its changes over time may reflect differences in market conditions in the two economies.
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Multicultural attitudes among adolescents: The role of ethnic diversity in the classroom
Mitch van Geel & Paul Vedder
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, July 2011, Pages 549-558
Abstract:
In this study predictors of multiculturalism at the individual and classroom level are tested in a multilevel model. Previous studies attempting to find predictors of multiculturalism focused only on the individual level, possibly risking an attribution error. Multiculturalism is presented in this study as a notion stressing equal opportunities and minimizing discrimination as well as the conviction that the access to other cultures enriches ones own life. Using a sample of 448 adolescents from junior vocational education it was found that more ethnic diversity at the classroom level is positively related to adolescents' support for multiculturalism. As such, this study supports the intergroup contact theory.
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Cultural differences in strategic behavior: A study in computational estimation
Ineke Imbo & Jo-Anne LeFevre
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, forthcoming
Abstract:
Imbo and LeFevre (2009) observed that Asians (responding in their 2nd language) selected strategies less adaptively than did non-Asians (responding in their 1st language). In the present research, we tested whether adaptive strategy selection is (a) really more resource demanding for Asians than for non-Asians or (b) more resource demanding for participants answering in a nonpreferred language. Three groups of participants were tested on a computational estimation task (e.g., 42 × 57 ≈ ?) in no-load and load conditions: 40 Belgian-educated adults who answered in their first language (Dutch), 40 Chinese-educated adults who answered in their first language (Chinese), and 40 Chinese-educated adults who answered in their second language (English). Although the Chinese were faster and more accurate than the Belgians, they selected strategies less adaptively. That is, the Chinese were less likely to choose the strategy that produced the best estimate; this was especially so when their working memory was loaded. Further, we also observed that the Chinese who answered in English were slower than the Chinese who answered in Chinese; this difference was larger for difficult strategies and under working memory load. These results are interpreted in terms of the encoding complex model, whereas the explanation for the adaptivity results is based on cultural differences in educational history.