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While globalisation brings opportunities for cultural enrichment, it may also present challenges as individuals attempt to make sense of and integrate fragmented and often conflicting cultural influences into a coherent self‐concept. A qualitative inquiry into contemporary Australians' cultural identity experiences indicated that some people perceive themselves as a product of multiple influences from diverse contacts and learnings, and they mix and reconcile these influences into their self‐concept. Building on this prior work, the current study developed and tested a new quantitative measure of polycultural identity. Using two diverse Australian samples (N = 301; N = 525) recruited from Prolific, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported a single‐factor structure and a high Cronbach's α among the final 10 items. Correlational analyses revealed that, as expected, the Polycultural Identity Scale (PIS) was more strongly linked with the endorsement of polycultural ideology than multicultural ideology and was uncorrelated with colourblind ideology. Also, as expected, the PIS correlated moderately with generalised identity blendedness, interest in diverse contact and endorsement of global citizenship but not with identity compartmentalisation or generalised identity harmony. The PIS has the potential to provide valuable insights into the dynamics of multifaceted cultural identity and how individuals organise and synthesise a breadth of cultural influences into a meaningful self‐concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Despite concerns about animal welfare, and health and environmental issues associated with eating meat, meat consumption continues to increase in many countries around the world. The aim of this pre-registered study was to identify predictors of meat consumption among 399 Germans and 399 Australians. Participants reported current and intended meat consumption, reasons for eating meat, attitudes towards animals, and perceptions of animal farming. In both countries, the more people enjoyed the taste of meat, the more often they ate it, and the more empathy they had towards farmed animals, the less often they ate it. People who thought they would find it easy to reduce meat consumption had greater intentions to do so. Campaigns to reduce meat consumption should focus on increasing empathy towards farmed animals, highlighting tasty plant-based alternatives and outlining ways to make the transition easier. Despite concerns about animal welfare, and health and environmental issues associated with eating meat, meat consumption has continued to increase worldwide, including in Australia. One exception to this is Germany, with 2021 meat consumption levels being the lowest in the last 30 years. This pre-registered study investigated socio-cultural variables associated with meat consumption in Germany (n = 399) and Australia (n = 399) in a cross-sectional online survey. Participants reported levels of current and intended meat consumption, and they completed measures of speciesism, motivations to eat meat, empathy, animal farming perceptions, perceived behavioural control (PBC) over meat eating, and avoidance and dissociation regarding the animal origins of meat. In both Australia and Germany, enjoying the taste of meat positively predicted consumption and empathy towards farmed animals negatively predicted consumption. PBC was a strong positive predictor of intentions to reduce meat consumption in both countries. Empathy and liking the taste of meat were among the best predictors of red meat and poultry consumption, suggesting that interventions to reduce meat consumption may work best by targeting these factors while also increasing people's sense of control over their food choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People hold different perspectives about how they think the world is changing or should change. We examined five of these "worldviews" about change: Progress, Golden Age, Endless Cycle, Maintenance, and Balance. In Studies 1–4 (total N = 2733) we established reliable measures of each change worldview, and showed how these help explain when people will support or oppose social change in contexts spanning sustainability, technological innovations, and political elections. In mapping out these relationships we identify how the importance of different change worldviews varies across contexts, with Balance most critical for understanding support for sustainability, Progress/Golden Age important for understanding responses to innovations, and Golden Age uniquely important for preferring Trump/Republicans in the 2016 US election. These relationships were independent of prominent individual differences (e.g., values, political orientation for elections) or context‐specific factors (e.g., self‐reported innovativeness for responses to innovations). Study 5 (N = 2140) examined generalizability in 10 countries/regions spanning five continents, establishing that these worldviews exhibited metric invariance, but with country/region differences in how change worldviews were related to support for sustainability. These findings show that change worldviews can act as a general "lens" people use to help determine whether to support or oppose social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the introduction of commercial video games in the 1970s, video game players have attracted the perhaps undeserving but negative stereotype of being unpopular and socially dysfunctional. However, with gamers increasing in numbers that now reach billions worldwide, the contents of gamer stereotypes may be in flux. The current study investigated the content of gamer stereotypes along the dimensions of physical/social attractiveness, warmth, competence, and morality as a function of genre violence level and gamer identity. Male and female participants (656 U.S. and 428 Indian) completed an online survey on the MTurk platform, rating social stereotypes of gamers in high‐violence and low‐violence genres on 22 adjective pairs and answering questions about gamer identity. Results revealed positive gamer stereotypes, especially in the low‐violence genres in both the United States and India. Low‐identifiers' stereotypes were less favourable in the high‐violence than in the low‐violence genres; this tendency diminished among high‐identifiers. This study suggests that, whereas once gamers were seen negatively, they are now seen remarkably positively. The implications of such positive views of those engaging in violent gaming are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Western folk theory of social change, modernization of societies causes them to become less warm but more competent over time. Since WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) societies are often at the forefront of modernization (with some exceptions, most notably China), these societies may also be most prone to internalizing this folk theory. In this research, we test this idea by making a comparison across a sample group of Western and Asian societies, using a self-report measure of perceived societal warmth and competence: The Social Change Perception Scale (SCPS). We found the scale to be metrically invariant among university students from a set of Western and Asian countries (United States, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, The Philippines, China, and Malaysia). In all seven countries, people expected their society to become more competent over time. In most countries, people also expected their society to become colder over time, although this tendency was slight and insignificant among New Zealanders and Americans. The perceived social cooling tended to be more prevalent in Asian countries rather than in Western countries. The countries' degrees of WEIRDness, as reflected in their country-level indicators of individualism, education, industrialization, wealth, and democracy, did not adequately account for the observed variation. Though there is still much work to be done in applying the SCPS to broader samples and contexts, this study provides a starting point for measuring and understanding how people experience the social implications of modernization around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnic similarity often generates positive interactions between host‐country nationals (HCNs) and co‐ethnic expatriates in multinational corporations (MNCs), but the potential causes of conflict between these groups are under‐studied. In two studies, we tested whether Chinese HCNs' attitudes towards expatriates are associated with the implicit theories of ethnicity held by HCNs—essentialism (i.e., believing ethnicity has an immutable essence) versus constructivism (i.e., believing ethnicity to be malleable/socially constructed)—as well as expatriates' ethnicity, which we operationalised as Chinese (co‐ethnic) versus Scottish (other‐ethnic), and expatriates' cultural upbringing, operationalised as Chinese (local) versus American (foreign). In Study 1, HCNs who endorsed an essentialist perspective of ethnicity expected co‐ethnic (vs. other‐ethnic) expatriates to demonstrate greater ingroup identification and favouritism towards them irrespective of the expatriates' cultural upbringing. In Study 2, HCNs primed with the essentialist view expected co‐ethnic (vs. other‐ethnic) expatriates to demonstrate greater ingroup identification and favouritism towards them irrespective of the expatriates' upbringing, whereas those primed with the constructivist view expected expatriates with local (vs. foreign) upbringing to demonstrate greater ingroup identification and favouritism towards them irrespective of their ethnicity. These findings advance international management literature by providing a nuanced understanding of the interactions between HCNs and co‐ethnic expatriates that are influenced by essentialist beliefs about ethnicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Societal threats that face the world today seem overpowering, especially for young generations who will need to develop creative solutions. The present study examined the relationships between societal threats and social motives. Social motives function to orient individuals toward the social world and prepare them to engage socially. This adaptive function of social motives may be particularly useful when threats are looming in the environment. We thus expected that perceived societal threats would correlate positively with activation of social motives, especially among individuals with lower self‐esteem, who tend to show higher interdependency when threatened. Our cross‐cultural samples from Australia, the United States, New Zealand, the Philippines, China (Macao), Malaysia (Sabah), and Austria (N = 1,269) showed evidence to support these expectations. Perceived societal threats correlated positively with all social motives (Belong, Understand, Control, Esteem, and Trust); however, the link was most vital for the Control motive, and especially in the United States and China. In line with our expectations, higher perceived societal threats were associated with more robust social motives, especially among those with low self‐esteem. Potential mechanisms through which social motives assist adaptation to societal threats and country‐specific contents of threats are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new scale to measure core social motives was developed based on the BUC(K)ET framework (Belong, Understand, Control, Esteem, and Trust). The scale was completed by 1,516 university students from seven countries: Australia, the United States, New Zealand, the Philippines, Malaysia, China (Macao), and Austria. Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis supported the scale's full scalar invariance between Australia and the United States and between Australia and Austria. Partial scalar invariance was established for all countries after omitting the Understand motive, suggesting that the remaining four subscales can be used to compare levels of social motives across diverse cultural groups with caution. We further established the scale's construct validity by examining its correlations in the nomological networks involving several individual difference variables. The profile of social motives was remarkably similar across countries and gender groups, although three Asian groups showed higher motives to belong than non‐Asian groups, and women showed generally stronger core social motives than men, especially the Belong motive. Implications and possible directions of research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An experiment examined the potency of nostalgia—a sentimental longing for one's past—to facilitate detection of death-related stimuli, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and behavioral techniques (i.e., judgmental accuracy, reaction times). We hypothesized and found that, at the neural level, nostalgic (relative to control) participants evinced more intense activation in right amygdala in response to death-related (vs. neutral) words. We also hypothesized and found that, at the behavioral level, nostalgic (relative to control) participants manifested greater accuracy in judging whether two death-related (vs. neutral) words belonged in the same category. Exploratory analyses indicated that nostalgic (relative to control) participants did not show faster reaction times to death-related (vs. neutral) words. In all, nostalgia appeared to aid in death threat detection. We consider implications for the relevant literatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the universality of cultural worldviews and self-esteem in providing people with general protection against death anxiety, recent empirical and anecdotal evidence suggests that death anxiety is more pronounced in East-Asian collectivist cultures than in Western individualist cultures. We propose that collectivists are encumbered by the additive concerns for the mortal well-being of close others in addition to their own, whereas individualists are primarily concerned with their own mortality, which would explain the reported differential death anxiety between cultures. Focusing on individual differences in attachment avoidance, we predicted that avoidant collectivists, with disinterest in interpersonal relationships and staunch independence despite living in a collectivist culture, would report less death anxiety on par with enculturated individualists. Results from our study support the contention that elevated levels of death anxiety among collectivists are explained by their cultural predilection toward interdependence, which attachment avoidance undermines, thus leading to reduced death anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing efforts have been made to pool coronavirus data and control measures from countries and regions to compare the effectiveness of government policies. We examine whether these strategies can explain East Asia's effective control of the COVID‐19 pandemic based on time‐series data with cross‐correlations between the Stringency Index and number of confirmed cases during the early period of outbreaks. We suggest that multidisciplinary empirical research in healthcare and social sciences, personality, and social psychology is needed for a clear understanding of how cultural values, social norms, and individual predispositions interact with policy to affect life‐saving behavioural changes in different societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terror management theory posits that close relationships assuage existential mortality concerns because they foster attachment-based felt security, enhance self-esteem, and validate shared cultural worldviews. However, the relative buffering influence of these mechanisms remains relatively unknown and has sparked theoretical debate. Some theorists argue that felt security is central, whereas others suggest it does not offer unique protection from death awareness, independent of self-esteem and worldview validation. We conducted two experiments to clarify felt security's role. Testing felt security on its own, it significantly mediated the association between death awareness and increased intimacy striving (Study 1). However, when tested alongside relational self-esteem and worldview validation, felt security again exerted a significant mediating effect in parallel with relational self-esteem, although only among female participants (Study 2). These results provide initial support for the subordinate tripartite model and functional independence claim put forth in recent years. We discuss the implications of these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to examine the relationship between migrants' psychological well-being and the extent to which they keep in touch with people in their country of origin. Design/methodology/approach: An online survey completed by 1,328 Australian migrants from 4 cultural groups (Anglo, Southern Asian, Confucian Asian and other European) assessed 2 facets of well-being, namely, flourishing and psychological distress and the use of 3 modes of online communication, namely, social media, messaging services and phone/video services. Findings: Overall, keeping in touch with family and friends in their country of origin was associated with more flourishing and less distress amongst migrants. Nonetheless, the preferred modes of communication and how those usages relate with well-being varied considerably across cultural groups. In the Anglo group, communicating through messaging and phone/video services was associated with lower distress and communicating in all modes was associated with higher flourishing. Furthermore, the latter link was accounted for by having a meaningful conversation. Originality/value: These findings suggest that the psychological well-being of migrant populations may be supported by an understanding of the distinct roles played by specific communication modes that are used to stay in touch with family and friends back home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International education provides students with an opportunity to develop new social networks while they fit in to the new culture. In a three-wave longitudinal study, we investigated how social networks and psychological adjustment coevolve within a group of international students enrolled in a coursework degree at the tertiary level. Using the Stochastic Actor-Oriented Model (SAOM), we identified the occurrences of social selection based on the levels of psychological and sociocultural adjustment. More specifically, students tended to deselect classmates who were dissimilar in their level of psychological adjustment and to befriend those who differed in their levels of sociocultural adjustment. In contrast, little evidence was found to suggest that features of social networks influenced students' adjustment. Potential applications of this new method to future acculturation research are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the access that culturally diverse migrant groups in Australia have to different sources of social support and how this access, or lack thereof, is associated with psychological flourishing and distress. A national online survey was conducted with 1334 migrants in Australia, examining 11 different sources of social support, including family, friends, relationship partner, acquaintances, work colleagues, health professionals, government agencies, community organisations, religious groups, social groups and online groups. We also examined migrants from different cultural groups. All sources of support were significantly associated with mental health, but somewhat differently for the dimensions of distress and flourishing. Flourishing was linked to higher support from all 11 sources, though not for all cultural groups. High psychological distress was linked to lower support only from family, friends, a partner, acquaintances, work colleagues and social groups, and only for some cultural groups. In particular, for distress, there was no link between migrants from Southern Asia and family support, as well as Confucian Asia groups and friend support. Understanding where migrants from different cultural origins draw their support from could help policymakers and support workers improve health and well-being in migrant populations, especially by focusing on sources of support that are linked to lower distress and greater flourishing, as indicated in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The happiness or flourishing of migrants in their new country has important implications for health and social costs. Most migrant well-being studies only focus on psychological distress. Here, we specifically examine demographic, social, and psychological factors related to a broader spectrum of well-being, not only distress but also flourishing. A national online survey was conducted involving 1446 migrants to Australia. Drawing on the Dual Continuum Model, we examined flourishing and distress as separate outcomes. Numerous factors were associated with both outcomes, including experiences of racism or discrimination, being satisfied with new friendships and wishing to go back to one's home country. However, some factors varied by outcome, including younger age linked to distress but not to flourishing. Also, identifying with being Australian and the source of income were some factors specifically linked to a greater likelihood of flourishing. Promoting flourishing appears to depend on a range of different factors than simply preventing distress. These findings provide a greater understanding of the unique challenges that migrants can face in mental health outcomes, and can help prevent distress and promote flourishing and happiness as goals in migrant well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terror management theory outlines how humans seek self-esteem and worldview validation to manage death-related anxiety. Accumulating evidence reveals that close relationships serve a similar role. However, to date, there has been no synthesis of the literature that delineates when close relationships buffer mortality concerns, under what conditions, on which specific outcomes, and for whom. This systematic review presents over two decades of research to address these questions. Findings from 73 reviewed studies revealed that close relationships serve an important role in buffering death-related anxiety. A range of dispositional and situational moderating factors influence either the activation or inhibition of relational strivings to manage heightened death awareness, the most influential being attachment, gender, and relationship-contingent self-esteem. These findings were integrated into an overarching model that highlights some of the conditions under which mortality salience (MS) influences relational outcomes. We conclude by highlighting a range of theoretical and methodological concerns to be addressed by future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student attainment of capabilities associated with global citizenship remains a priority for higher education institutions. We report on a scoping review of empirical studies to explore how global citizenship is understood and enacted in higher education. The 29 included studies span the arts, psychology and social sciences, professional degrees, purpose-designed global citizenship courses, and community development, service, and educational travel programs. Notwithstanding considerable diversity in study aims, methodology, and how global citizenship was described, we were able to discern an overarching framework to describe the theoretical contributions to global citizenship education. Our findings contribute to building conceptual clarity both for educators charged with developing curricula and for higher education researchers seeking to explore and evaluate the outcomes of global citizenship education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia, the number of refugee youth has increased significantly over the last five years. Australia presents a unique resettlement context for refugees due the country's simultaneous adoption of positive multicultural policies yet hardline immigration laws and negative popular opinion towards refugees. Little is known about the acculturation experiences and wellbeing of refugee youth in Australia. The present study investigated refugee youth's acculturation preferences, measured through the vignettes and bilineal methods, and how these preferences comparatively relate to refugee youth's subjective and social wellbeing. One hundred and six first-generation refugee youth participated in this study. Participants ranged in age from 13 years to 21 years (M=16.82; SD=1.91) and completed self-report questionnaires. Results revealed a strong endorsement of the integration acculturation preference among refugee youth, as measured by both the vignette and bilineal methods. Interestingly, results revealed a positive association between the two underlying acculturation dimensions (ethnic and Australian), which is in contrast to Berry's (1997) original acculturation model which posits that the two dimensions should be independent. This suggests refugee youth may have two primary acculturation options: integration or marginalization. Moreover, results also suggested these acculturation preferences might be differentially related to wellbeing, with integration associated with better social wellbeing and marginalization associated with worse subjective wellbeing. Theoretical and methodological implications of the study are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Languages are strong markers of social identity. Multiple features of language and speech, from accent to lexis to grammatical constructions, mark speakers as members of specific cultural groups. In the current article, we present two confederate-scripted studies that investigated the social effects of the Australian hypocoristic use (e.g., uggie, uni, derro)—a lexical category emblematic of Australian culture. Participants took turns with a confederate directing each other through locations on a map. In their directions, the confederate used either hypocoristic (e.g., uni) or standard forms (e.g., university). The confederate’s cultural group membership and member prototypicality were manipulated by ethnic background and accent: In a highly prototypical in-group condition, the confederate had an Anglo-Celtic background and Australian English (AusE) accent; in a low prototypical in-group condition, the confederate had an Asian background and AusE accent; and in the out-group condition, the confederate had an Asian background and non-AusE accent. Hypocoristic use resulted in significantly higher participant-rated perceived common ground with the confederate when the confederate was an in-group but not an out-group member, which in some instances was moderated by in-group identification. The results suggest that like accents, culturally significant lexical categories function as markers of in-group identity, which influence perceived social closeness during interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Life satisfaction of migrants to Australia from 17 countries, assessed at 4–5 months, 16–17 months and 3½ years after arrival, was analyzed with a longitudinal, multilevel analysis. The results indicated that migrants were more satisfied, if the national average life satisfaction was higher in their country of origin, after adjustment for individual-level income, age, and sex and a linear temporal trend. Simultaneously, the migrants were also happier if people in their country of origin had a higher frequency of 5-HTT long allele, a genotype known to be associated with resilience under life stresses. These two relationships were independent, suggesting that both culture and gene matter in international transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Folk theory of social change (FTSC) is a generic knowledge structure that frames societal perceptions. According to FTSC, society develops from a traditional community where people are trustworthy though unsophisticated to a more sophisticated, but less warm-hearted modern society. People make future forecast about society within this generic structure while flexibly incorporating particular information about the past history and the present social trend. We report evidence for the proposition that globalization provides particular information that people incorporate in forming their future societal perceptions. We take an intranational perspective by examining people's beliefs about globalization (Study 1) and a cross-national perspective by comparing future societal perceptions in People's Republic of China, Japan, and Australia (Study 2). We suggest that future societal perceptions may play a constitutive role in the future of humanity, and FTSC and folk beliefs about globalization are a significant part of this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interplay of culture and self has been one of the most active areas of research in self and identity. It has provided a number of theoretical concepts and research methodologies that have advanced the psychological understanding about self processes. This paper provides a concise review of the field's underlying assumptions, and points to its contemporary issues and future directions. In particular, we begin by reviewing the work of Triandis Psychological Review, 96, 506-520, () and Markus and Kitayama Psychological Review, 98, 224-253, (), point to questions about the content and process surrounding culture and self, and end with a description of a new research program that expands on the current culture and self literature by posing a broader question of the cultural conception of what it means to be human and the interplay between humanness conception and self conception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With a sample of Asian international students, the consequences of perceiving pervasive discrimination against one's in-group were examined by experimentally manipulating perceived discrimination (pervasive vs rare) and group identification (low vs high). We report evidence that supports and integrates aspects of two contrasted models; namely, the discounting model and the rejection–identification model. Consistent with both models, the effects of perceiving discrimination on one's psychological well-being depended on the level of group identification. Nevertheless, after reading about pervasive discrimination, low ( vs high) identifiers reported less depressed affect, consistent with the discounting model. However, they also reported lower self-esteem, consistent with the rejection–identification model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Essentialism is an ontological belief that there exists an underlying essence to a category. This article advances and tests in three studies the hypothesis that communication about a social category, and expected or actual mutual validation, promotes essentialism about a social category. In Study 1, people who wrote communications about a social category to their ingroup audiences essentialized it more strongly than those who simply memorized about it. In Study 2, communicators whose messages about a novel social category were more elaborately discussed with a confederate showed a stronger tendency to essentialize it. In Study 3, communicators who elaborately talked about a social category with a naive conversant also essentialized the social category. A meta-analysis of the results supported the hypothesis that communication promotes essentialism. Although essentialism has been discussed primarily in perceptual and cognitive domains, the role of social processes as its antecedent deserves greater attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparison of social identification processes in Australia and Japan found some similarities and differences. In both countries, identification with smaller face-to-face groups was found to be stronger than identification with larger social categories; however, Australians scored higher on the affective dimension of social identification, whereas Japanese scored higher on the cognitive dimension. Moreover, positive situations from Australia and negative situations from Japan were estimated by respondents from both cultures to be more influential in determining how much they identify with their ingroups, showing a cultural situation-bias effect. Situational affordances of social identification across cultures are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the role of trust in group processes has been well established, less is known about the role of trust in social network processes. Trust, conceptualized to have generalized and particularistic aspects, was measured by generalized trust (people can be trusted in general) and relationism (people can be trusted if one has relationships), and their relations with social network characteristics of network homogeneity (extent to which one has a number of friends with similar attitudes) and network closure (extent to which one's social network is closed) were examined in three Western (Australia, Germany, and the United Kingdom) and two East Asian countries (Japan and Korea). Although generalized trust was shown to be positively related to network closure across the five countries, generalized trust and relationism had different relations with network homogeneity in different cultures. The results were interpreted in terms of social institutional and cultural differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regulatory focus theory proposes that people can have a promotion or a prevention focus when pursuing goals and choosing strategies. The Regulatory Focus Strategies Scale (RFSS), a scale that assesses the endorsement of promotion and prevention strategies for goal pursuit, is developed and validated in three studies. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses in Australia and Japan showed that promotion- and prevention-focused strategic endorsement formed two largely uncorrelated factors. The RFSS exhibits adequate reliability, and discriminant and convergent validity. A cross-cultural comparison showed that Australians were more promotion- but less prevention-focused than Japanese students. The RFSS provides an additional measure that is useful in future research on self-regulatory strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationships between cultural dimensions and the language use involving pronoun drop (whether the subject of a sentence can be dropped when it is a personal pronoun) and the number of second-person singular pronouns (2PS) available in a language (one or multiple) reported by Kashima and Kashima were reexamined by using a new, correct coding for Hindi and Urdu. The reanalysis reconfirmed the major part of our previous results but indicated the need to revise the previous report that the availability of multiple 2PS pronouns was associated with higher Integration, namely, harmonious interpersonal relationships. The new analysis showed that availability of multiple 2PS and Integration were independent of each other. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Social representations of world history were assessed using the open-ended questions, “What are the most important events in world history?” and “Who are the most influential persons in world history in the last 1,000 years?”Data from six Asian and six Western samples showed cross-cultural consensus. Historical representations were (a) focused on the recent past, (b) centered around politics and war, and (c) dominated by the events of the World Wars and (d) the individual Hitler, who was universally perceived as negative. (e) Representations were more Eurocentric than ethnocentric.(f) The importance of economics and science was underrepresented.(g) Most cultures nominated people (more than events) idiosyncratic to their own culture. These data reflect power relations in the world and provide resources and constraints for the conduct of international relations. The degree of cross-cultural consensus suggests that hybridity across Eastern and Western cultures in the representation of knowledge may be underestimated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Are human individuals universally seen to be more real entities (or more entitative, to use Campbell's, 1958, term) than social groups? Although the individual may be seen to be more entitative than social groups in the West, it is unclear whether this is the case in other cultures, especially in East Asia. Two aspects of perceived entitativity are distinguished: psychological essentialism (belief in the presence of essence-like unchangeable properties) and agency (perception that a social entity is an agent), and examined for four social targets (individual, family, friendship group, and society) in three English-speaking cultures (Australia, UK, and USA), three East Asian cultures (Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea), and two continental European cultures (Belgium and Germany). In all cultures, the individual person was seen to possess essence-like unchangeable characteristics more than social groups (i.e. essentialized). As for agency, the individual person was seen to be more agentic than groups in Western cultures, but both individuals and groups were conferred an equal level of agency in East Asia. Individuals may be universally more essentialized than friendship groups and societies, but not always seen to be more agentic, than social groups. Implications of the results for conceptions of individualism and collectivism are discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theoretical framework of the tripartite self was used to explore the links between relational (R), individual (I) and collective (C) self-aspects, corresponding sources of stress and uplifts, and health outcomes in a sample of 355 Australians (147 men, 208 women). Results supported a self-uplift congruence model of well-being, whereby the strength of a self-aspect guided the experience of recent uplifts in a corresponding R, I or C domain, which, in turn, contributed to well-being. There was partial support for a self-stress incongruence model of ill-being, whereby a strong self-aspect combined with recent stress in a mismatched domain contributed to ill-being. These findings, which highlight the role of the self and the importance of identifying relational, individual and collective sources of stress and uplifts, provide a promising new approach to understanding psychosocial influences on health and illness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the authors report an investigation of the relationship between terror management and social identity processes by testing for the effects of social identity salience on worldview validation. Two studies, with distinct populations, were conducted to test the hypothesis that mortality salience would lead to worldview validation of values related to a salient social identity. In Study 1, reasonable support for this hypothesis was found with bicultural Aboriginal Australian participants (N = 97). It was found that thoughts of death led participants to validate ingroup and reject outgroup values depending on the social identity that had been made salient. In Study 2, when their student and Australian identities were primed, respectively, Anglo-Australian students (N = 119) validated values related to those identities, exclusively. The implications of the findings for identity-based worldview validation are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although differences in self-conception across cultures have been well researched, regional differences within a culture have escaped attention. The present study examined individual, relational, and collective selves, which capture people's conceptions of themselves in relation to their goals, significant others, and ingroups, comparing Australians and Japanese participants living in regional cities and metropolitan areas. Culture, gender, and urbanism were found to be related to individual, relational, and collective selves, respectively. Australians emphasized individual self more than Japanese, women stressed relational self more than men, and residents in regional cities regarded collective self as more important than their counterparts in metropolitan areas. These findings provide support for the tripartite division of the self and suggest a need to construct a culture theory that links self and societal processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-concepts change from context to context. The experience that one's self is context-sensitive may be universal, however the amount and meaning of context-sensitive self vary across cultures. Cross-cultural differences in the amount and meaning of context-sensitive self were investigated in three Western cultures (Australia, Germany, and UK) and two East Asian cultures (Japan and Korea). The amount of context-sensitivity of self was greater in Japan than in Western cultures and Korea. The meaning of context-sensitive self also varied across cultures. In the Western cultures, a context-invariant self was seen to be clear and true; however, these patterns were not observed in the East Asian cultures. In Korea, a context-invariant self was interpreted to be exhibiting a relational self, which adheres to the ethics of care. In Japan, it was a context-sensitive self that was seen to be true, implying that the true self in Japan may mean to be true to the self-in-context, rather than the transcendental, decontextualized self. The results suggest the importance of differentiating East Asian cultures such as Japan and Korea. The utility of quantitative methods in explicating cultural meaning was highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Affluence and climate are related to individualism, suggesting the importance of the material environment on culture. However, the symbolic environment, as represented by language, may also play a significant role. The effects of gross national product (GNP) per capita, latitude, and pronoun drop (whether the subject of a sentence can be dropped) as variables that tap the material and symbolic environments on Hofstede's individualism were examined. GNP per capita and latitude had overall positive effects on individualism, but they were moderated by pronoun drop. The effect of economic affluence on culture was greater, but the effect of climate smaller, in the countries whose language does not permit pronoun drop than in those countries where pronouns can be dropped in utterances. A moderating effect of symbolic factors on the material environment-culture relationship was discussed.

There is recognition that an understanding of the situation is essential to our understanding of behavior, but that there is a scarcity of resources for situational analysis. Most studies use individual perceptions of behaviors as input for situational analysis. Such analyses, however, make the situation a projection of personality processes. To identify one aspect of the objective situation, this study extends the work of Marwell and Hage by developing culture-level taxonomies of role dyads, defined in terms of objective context variables, in two cultures: Hong Kong and Australia. The results reveal similarity of culture-level relational space defined by four dimensions: complexity, equality, adversarialness, and containment. Cultural differences are expressed in the location of role dyads within this space. These differing positions of any given role dyad may be combined with personality variables in the future to help explain differences in social behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In individualistic English-speaking cultures such as Australia, the United Kingdom, or the United States, attitudes and behaviours are often believed to be consistent. By contrast, in the Japanese culture, people may be primarily conceptualized as embedded within social contexts; the belief in consistency between attitudes and behaviour (the ABC belief) may be less strong and behaviours seen to be less consistent with attitudes. In this paper, we report two studies designed to examine the hypothesis that the strength of ABC beliefs underlies inferences in attributions of behaviour to attitudes. In Study 1, the relation of ABC beliefs to attitude attributions was examined in a sample of Australian undergraduate students. In Study 2, ABC beliefs and attitude attributions were compared in Australia and in Japan. As predicted, the ABC beliefs of Australians were related to the extremity of attributions for unconstrained behaviours and the Australians had stronger ABC beliefs than the Japanese. The results are discussed in relation to global cultural dimensions of individualism and collectivism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the relationship between culture and language across 39 languages spoken in 71 cultures. Proposal of the linguistic practice of pronoun drop; Types of personal pronouns used in different languages; Correlation of personal pronouns with cultural dimensions.

We examined individual differences in the formation of behavioral intentions by American female students. Within the frameworks of the Fishbein-Ajzen and Triandis models of behavioral intentions, we measured the relative emphasis given to intention predictors for 40 behavioral intentions and examined how this emphasis was related to authoritarianism. In addition, empirical evidence was sought for the conceptual distinction between a personal norm (internalized norm) and a subjective norm (perceptions of significant others' opinions concerning a given action). Relative to low authoritarians, high authoritarians took subjective norms less into account, placed greater emphasis on personal norms, and emphasized less the consequences of action in forming behavioral intentions. The results suggest that subjective and personal norms can be distinguished empirically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although applauding Pickering & Garrod's (P&G's) attempt to ground language use in the ideomotor perception-action link, which provides an “infrastructure” of embodied social interaction, we suggest that it needs to be complemented by an additional control mechanism that modulates its operation in the service of the language users' communicative intentions. Implications for intergroup relationships and intercultural communication are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction is presented in which the author discusses the trend, changes and improvement of the editorial team of the journal.