Cross Cultural Differences - Week 10

Question 1

What is culture?

Answer 1

Rohner (1984) “highly variable systems of meaning” that are learnt and shared by people from one generation to the next in an identifiable population.

The expression of group norms and values at the national, racial and ethnic level (Hogg & Vaughan, 2014, p.622).

Question 2

Why is culture important?

Answer 2

Human behaviour does not exist in a vacuum.

Culture provides a context for understanding human development and behaviour.

Existing research has challenged the universality of some prior findings.

Cross-cultural psychology is the study of relationships between cultural context and human behaviour (Berry et al., 2011).

Question 3

How do psychologists make claims about the generalisability of human behaviour?

Answer 3

based on WEIRD samples:

Western

Educated

Industrialized

Rich

Democratic

Question 4

What did Henrich, Heine & Norenzayan (2010) find?

Answer 4

96% of samples in psychology come from countries representing only 12% of the world’s population!

A randomly selected American UG is 4,000x more likely to be a participant than a randomly selected person from a country outside the West!

Question 5

How do we characterise cultures through values?

Answer 5

Factor analysis revealed:

Power Distance

Uncertainty Avoidance

Masculinity-Femininity

Individualism-Collectivism = most widely used dimension

Time Perspective*

These dimensions characterise WHOLE cultures/societies.

Question 6

How did Hofstede research factors characterisitng cultures by values?

Answer 6

questionnaire to 117,000 managers of multinational companies in 40 countries.

Question 7

What did Hofstede find about characterising cultures by values?

Answer 7

GB is individualistic and concerned with material success

Denmark is individualistic and caring/egalitarian

Hong Kong is accepting of power hierarchies and collectivistic

Question 8

What is Independent self-constural?

Answer 8

person’s identity is seen as a product of stable internal traits and is separate and unique from others.

Question 9

What is Interdependent self-constural?

Answer 9

person’s identity is intertwined with others and defined by those relationships.

Question 10

Who developed self constural theory?

Answer 10

Markus & Kitayama’s (1991)

Question 11

Characteristics of the Independent self:

Answer 11

bounded, stable autonomous
achievement oriented
formulates personal goals
responsible for own behaviour
competetive
strives to feel good about self

Question 12

Characteristics of the Interdependent self:

Answer 12

connected, fluid, flexible
oriented to the collective
conforms to norms
defines self by contributing for the collectices
is cooperative
responsible with others for joint behaviour

Question 13

What is relational self constural?

Answer 13

ndividual difference in the extent to which people define themselves in reference to close personal relationships (e.g., spouse/close friend).

NOT about group membership or social roles.

Question 14

Who is most likely to have this relational self constural?

Answer 14

Women in Western societies are more likely than men to define themselves in terms of their relationships!

Question 15

What is the measurement of self constural?

Answer 15

Questionnaires – Self-Construal Scale (Singelis, 1994) is the most commonly used.
12 items on IndSC & 12 items on InterSC
Likert scale – 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree)

interSC - i avoid arguments with my group members

indSC - i enjoy being unique

Question 16

What is the 20 statements task?

Answer 16

Twenty Statements Task – (Kuhn & McPartland, 1954):

Participants complete 20 sentence stems that start with “I am…”

Statements are coded into IndSC, InterSC and RelSC.

The number of statements in each category then serves as a measure of self-construal.

Question 17

What is the Priming Self-Construal?

Answer 17

many different priming tasks.

Trafimow, Triandis & Goto (1991) asked people to think of what makes them different from their friends and family (IndSC prime) or what makes them similar to their friends and family (InterSC prime).
It assumes that people in all cultures have both the IndSC and InterSC.
It allows cause-effect relationships to be investigated.

Question 18

How did Morris and Peng 1994 predict about culture and attribution?

Answer 18

predicted cross-cultural differences in attribution would occur in social situations due to differences in socialization.

Question 19

How did Morris and Peng 1994 research about culture and attribution?

Answer 19

Study 1: 100 Chinese & 100 American school children

Participants watched animated displays of social events (fish swimming) and physical events (football moving).

DV = ratings of the extent to which the object’s movement was influenced by internal or external factors (1-5 scale).

Question 20

What is a Compulsion Display?

Answer 20

Harmonious - group entrains, individual entrains

Discordant - Group launches, individual launches

Question 21

How did Morris and PEng replicate this finding?

Answer 21

Study 2: American newspaper made more dispositional attributions for a mass shooting, whereas Chinese newspaper made more situational attributions.

Study 3: American participants judged dispositional factors more likely as the causes for the mass shooting, whereas situational factors were judged more likely for Chinese participants.

Question 22

What did Chi and Nisbett 1998 research?

Answer 22

78 American & 94 Korean participants read a pro (anti)-capital punishment essay allegedly written by another student.

Random assignment to:

No choice condition

Exposure condition

Exposure & arguments condition

DV = rated the extent to which the essay corresponded to the student’s real attitude (1-7 scale).

Question 23

What were the results of Choi and Nibetts research?

Answer 23

Korean ppts had a higher degree of correspondence bias for the no choice question and had little correspondence bias for the argument question

American ppts had highest correspondence bias in the exposur wuestion

Question 24

What did Masdua and Nisbett 2001 find about cross cultural differences in attention?

Answer 24

a link between self-construal & attention to visual scenes.

East Asian individuals process holistically – perception of objects is bound to the social context.

Westerners process the focal object.

Assumed to stem from differences in Ancient Greek vs. Ancient Chinese societies.

Question 25

What was Masuda & Nisbett (2001)s experiment?

Answer 25

Experiment 1: Masuda & Nisbett (2001):

Participants saw 45 original objects & 45 novel objects.

The background was manipulated: (a) original (b) none (c) novel

Participants indicated whether they had seen the object (Yes/No).

DV: number correctly recalled.

Question 26

What were the results of M and N study?

Answer 26

2 (culture) X 3 (background) ANOVA revealed no interaction, but planned comparisons found on “previously seen objects”…

Question 27

Kitayama, Duffy, & Kawamura & Larsen (2003):

Answer 27

Cross-cultural differences in cognitive processing may be differentially advantageous.

Some tasks require absolute judgments (i.e., focal object is unaffected by context).

Other tasks require relative judgments (i.e., focal object is dependent on context).

Framed line task (FLT): non-social test of cognitive ability.

Answer 28

Kitayama et al. (2003) Experiment 1:

20 participants in USA & 20 in Japan.

5 combinations of FLT: x2 test frame > original; x2 test frame < original; x1 test fame & original = same size.

5 combinations given in a counterbalanced order.

DV: Mean Error across FLT trials (measured in mm)

Question 29

What are some limitations in cross cultural psychology?

Answer 29

Oyserman, Coon & Kemmelmeier’s (2002) meta-analysis of IND-COL research revealed:

IND-COL differences often assumed without measurement

Over-reliance on correlational studies

Diversity of measures used to measure the same DV

Lack of replication studies

Question 30

What are some issues with measurement in self report surveys?

Answer 30

Two factor structure (IndSC & InterSC) is not a good fit

Cronbach’s alpha reliabilities are adequate at best.

Multiple versions of the Self-Construal Scale (Singelis, 1994)

Face validity of some items questionable – “I value being in good health above everything” (IndSC item!)

Reference group effect (Heine, Lehman, Peng & Greenholtz, 2002)

Question 31

What are some issues with measurement in the 20 statements test?

Answer 31

Researchers rarely provide a detailed description of their coding scheme.

Researchers differ in their definition (& hence coding) of InterSC and RelSC.

TST does not assess the importance of self-views to the person.

Question 32

Conceptual issues

Answer 32

Güngör et al. (2014) argued that while all interdependent cultures value interpersonal connectedness, the nature of the connection differs between face and honour cultures.

‘Keeping face’ cultures = respecting others by observing norms dictated by one’s position in the social hierarchy.

Honour cultures = pride that is based on social image, reputation and others’ evaluation.

Answer 33

Güngör et al. (2014) measured 2 forms of interpersonal agency - conformity & relatedness - in 163 Japanese and 172 Turkish students.

Japanese participants described their agency more in terms of conformity than Turkish participants, whereas Turkish participants described their agency more in terms of relatedness.

COL/IND distinction would have glossed over the nuances between two interdependent cultures!