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This study examined the factors that are likely to be associated with preferred behavioural and emotional responses to honour-threatening situations and possible differences between a dignity culture (United Kingdom) and an honour culture (Turkey). We examined the role of cultural background, type of social setting, and participants' causality orientation in preferred emotional and behavioural responses to honour-threatening situations. We first found that Turkish participants reported significantly higher levels of negative emotional response compared to British participants in the false accusation (not humiliation) scenario and in the public (not private) setting. Second, we found that Turkish participants reported a higher preference for retaliatory responses than did British participants when they imagined themselves being humiliated by one of their peers. Third, autonomy-oriented participants in the Turkish sample reported significantly higher levels of negative feeling (but not higher retaliatory intentions) compared with autonomy-oriented participants in the British sample, whereas controlled-oriented participants in the Turkish sample tended to report lower levels of negative feeling compared with controlled-oriented participants in the British sample. This interaction effect suggests that controlled- and autonomy-orientations may serve different functions in the Turkish and British settings.

The worldwide spread of a new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) since December 2019 has posed a severe threat to individuals well-being. While the world at large is waiting that the released vaccines immunize most citizens, public health experts suggest that, in the meantime, it is only through behavior change that the spread of COVID-19 can be controlled. Importantly, the required behaviors are aimed not only at safeguarding one s own health. Instead, individuals are asked to adapt their behaviors to protect the community at large. This raises the question of which social concerns and moral principles make people willing to do so. We considered in 23 countries (N = 6948) individuals willingness to engage in prescribed and discretionary behaviors, as well as country-level and individual-level factors that might drive such behavioral intentions. Results from multilevel multiple regressions, with country as the nesting variable, showed that publicized number of infections were not significantly related to individual intentions to comply with the prescribed measures and intentions to engage in discretionary prosocial behaviors. Instead, psychological differences in terms of trust in government, citizens, and in particular toward science predicted individuals behavioral intentions across countries. The more people endorsed moral principles of fairness and care (vs. loyalty and authority), the more they were inclined to report trust in science, which, in turn, statistically predicted prescribed and discretionary behavioral intentions. Results have implications for the type of intervention and public communication strategies that should be most effective to induce the behavioral changes that are needed to control the COVID-19 outbreak. Fil: Pagliaro, Stefano. Universidad de Chieti Pescara; Italia Fil: Sacchi, Simona. University of Milano Bicocca; Italia Fil: Pacilli, Maria Giuseppina. Università di Perugia; Italia Fil: Brambilla, Marco. Università degli Studi di Milano; Italia Fil: Lionetti, Francesca. Universidad de Chieti Pescara; Italia Fil: Bettache, Karim. Monash University; Australia Fil: Bianchi, Mauro. Universidade Lusófona; Portugal Fil: Biella, Marco. Eberhard Karls Universitat Tubingen; Alemania Fil: Bonnot, Virginie. Universite de Paris; Francia Fil: Boza, Mihaela. University Alexandru Ioan Cuza; Rumania Fil: Butera, Fabrizio. Universite de Lausanne; Suiza Fil: Batur, Suzan Ceylan. University of Economics and Technology; Turquía Fil: Chong, Kristy. Monash University; Australia Fil: Chopova, Tatiana. Utrecht University; Países Bajos Fil: Crimston, Charlie R.. University of Queensland; Australia Fil: Alvarez, Belen. University of Queensland; Australia Fil: Cuadrado, Isabel. Universidad de Almería; España Fil: Ellemers, Naomi. University of Utrecht; Países Bajos Fil: Formanowicz, Magdalena. University Social Sciences and Humanities; Polonia. Nicolaus Copernicus University; Polonia Fil: Graupmann, Verena. DePaul University; Estados Unidos Fil: Gkinopoulos, Theofilos. University of Greenwich; Reino Unido Fil: Jeong, Evelyn Hye Kyung. University of Limerick; Irlanda Fil: Lahti, Inga Jasinskaja. University of Helsinki; Finlandia Fil: Jetten, Jolanda. University of Queensland; Australia Fil: Bin, Kabir Muhib. University of Limerick; Irlanda Fil: Mao, Yanhui. Southwest Jiaotong University; China Fil: McCoy, Christine. The University of Queensland; Australia Fil: Mehnaz, Farah. University of Limerick; Irlanda Fil: Minescu, Anca. University of Limerick; Irlanda Fil: Sirlopu, David. Universidad del Desarrollo; Chile Fil: Simic, Andrej. Università degli Studi di Milano; Italia Fil: Travaglino, Giovanni. University Of Kent; Reino Unido. Chinese University Of Hong Kong; Hong Kong Fil: Uskul, Ayse K.. University Of Kent; Reino Unido Fil: Zanetti, Cinzia. Universite de Lausanne; Suiza Fil: Zinn, Anna. University of Exeter; Reino Unido Fil: Zubieta, Elena Mercedes. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Psicología; Argentina

In honour cultures, such as Turkey, reputation management is emphasised, whereas in dignity cultures such as northern US, self-respect and personal achievements are central. Turkey is also a collectivistic culture, where relationship harmony is as important as reputation management. When Turkish people's reputation is threatened, they may experience an internal conflict between these two motives and display helplessness. The purpose of the present study was to examine how people from Turkey (an honour culture; n = 52) and northern US (a dignity culture; n = 48) would perceive and respond to reputation threats as opposed to self-respect threats. As predicted, Turkish participants anticipated stronger anger, shame, and helplessness in response to reputation threats than self-respect threats, whereas differences were smaller or non-existent in northern US. Moreover, shame was a mediator between appraisal and helplessness for reputation threats in Turkey (shame positively predicted helplessness); anger was a mediator between appraisal and helplessness for self-respect threats in northern US (anger negatively predicted helplessness). These results are novel in their inclusion of helplessness and appraisal theory of emotions when examining responses to threats in honour and dignity cultures.

PurposeThis study aims to examine the role of deviant status (lower vs higher rank) and organizational structure (vertical vs horizontal) on individuals’ responses to workplace deviance.Design/methodology/approachTwo studies (N= 472) were designed to examine the role of deviant status and organizational structure in responses to workplace deviance. Study 1 (N= 272) manipulated deviant status and organizational structure. Study 2 (N= 200) also manipulated deviant status but focused on participants’ subjective evaluations of the organizational structure of their workplace.FindingsStudy 1 found that participants reported lower job satisfaction and organizational commitment, and higher turnover intentions when they imagined being confronted with deviant behaviors displayed by a manager (vs by a subordinate), regardless of the type of organizational structure. Study 2 extended this finding by showing that the indirect effect of organizational structure (vertical vs horizontal) on turnover intention via job satisfaction and organizational commitment was moderated by deviant status: when the deviant’s status was higher, working in a vertical (vs horizontal) organization was associated with decreased job satisfaction and commitment, which, in turn, was associated with a higher level of turnover intentions.Originality/valueThe findings broaden our understanding of how individuals respond to deviance at the workplace, by simultaneously considering the effects of organizational structure (vertical vs horizontal) and deviant status (upward vs downward directions of deviance).

A growing literature in social and cultural psychology has examined cultures of honour primarily focusing on southern states in the US and on Mediterranean countries of southern Europe. In this article, we review a programme of research that has extended theories of cultures of honour to an under-researched context: Turkey. We first describe research that assessed lay reports of the situations that enhance or attack a person’s honour and lay prototypes of honour. Next, we review research that built on this foundation and examined emotional implications, actual retaliatory responses, and preferences for different types of actions (e.g., attack vs. withdrawal) in the face of honour threats. We then briefly comment on our current research focused on the ways that honour threats can impede goal pursuit, on the distinction between different types of honour threats, and on acculturation processes in immigrant groups from cultures of honour. We conclude by highlighting the contributions of this programme of research to the literature on cultures of honour and discuss future directions. (167 words)

The present research sought to establish how cultural settings create a normative context that determines individuals’ reactions to subtle forms of mistreatment. Two experimental studies (n = 449) examined individuals’ perceptions of high- and low-ranking individuals’ incivility in two national (Study 1) and two organizational (Study 2) cultural settings that varied in power distance. Consistent across studies, the uncivil actions of a high-ranking perpetrator were deemed more acceptable than the uncivil actions of a low-ranking perpetrator in the large power distance cultural settings, but not in a small power distance cultural setting. Differing injunctive norms (acceptability), but not descriptive norms (perceived likelihood of occurrence), contributed to cultural variations in the level of discomfort caused by incivility. In addition, perceptions of descriptive and injunctive norms coincided, but differed markedly in their associations with discomfort. We discuss the practical and theoretical implications of these findings.

Despite the rising number of men and women in counter-stereotypical roles, primary caregiver fathers and primary breadwinner mothers is a rare role division within families with dependent children. Previous analyses suggest that men’s lower contribution to childcare is due to their lack of interest in performing these tasks, which are primarily influenced by stereotypical expectations and men’s concern with reputation threat. Drawing our predictions from social role theory, shifting standards model, and masculine honor theories, in two studies conducted with British participants (N = 412), we examined people’s judgments of male and female targets who are caregivers and breadwinners, and their evaluative reactions to these targets. We further examined the moderating role of a perceiver characteristic – endorsement of masculine honor ideals – and the role of potential mediators of these relationships. Study 1 showed that male caregivers were rated higher on communal traits than female caregivers, and female breadwinners higher on agentic traits than male breadwinners, indicating gender stereotyping effects through mental shifts to within-sex judgement standards. Studies 1 and 2 showed that men reacted with more negative and less positive emotions to male caregivers (vs. breadwinners) as their endorsement of masculine honor ideals increased. Moderated mediation results of Study 2 further showed that higher endorsement of masculine honor ideals was linked with less positive and more negative emotional reactions to being a caregiver (vs. breadwinner), which was driven by perceived loss of reputation among male friends, whereas lower endorsement of masculine honor ideals was linked with more positive and less negative emotional reactions to being a caregiver (vs. breadwinner), which was driven by perceived gain of wife’s admiration. These findings offer nuanced explanations for why some men may react negatively whereas others may react positively to serving as caregiver fathers, when the stereotyped expectations are still in operation in society.

The goal of the present study was to examine dating preferences across three different out-group backgrounds (race/culture/ethnic, religious, socio-economic status) in three different cultural settings (the United Kingdom, the United States, India). A second goal was to explore the role of social psychological factors (social approval, social identity, previous dating experience) in out-group dating preferences. Findings from an online study (nUK = 227, nUS = 245, nIndia = 220) revealed that participants were less willing to date individuals from religious out-groups than individuals from other race/culture/ethnic or socio-economic status out-groups. Individuals’ perceptions of approval from friends and family positively predicted out-group dating preference for all backgrounds and samples. How much individuals identified with their in-groups and whether they have previous experience dating someone from an out-group varied across outgroup backgrounds and samples in predicting out-group dating preferences. Together, the findings provide valuable insight into intergroup relations and reveal the importance of studying out-group dating preferences across different out-group backgrounds and samples.

Anti-effeminacy bias follows a specific pattern with men showing stronger anti-effeminacy bias against male targets than women. Previous explanations focused on men’s higher tendency to stigmatize feminine men as homosexual and motives to maintain a dominant group status. Here, we suggest that certain expressions of anti-effeminacy bias may rather be a manifestation of men’s reputation management motives for coalition formation, and be amplified among high (vs. low) masculine honor-oriented men. In three studies with samples from the United Kingdom and Turkey, we showed that men perceived feminine (vs. masculine) male targets as lower on coalitional value and were more reluctant to befriend them, yet this applied only to high (not low) honor-oriented men. Honor-oriented men’s friendship reluctance was mediated by concern with losing reputation by association with targets lacking coalitional value. These findings extend understanding of anti-effeminacy bias by drawing attention to men’s reputation concerns for coalitional reasons and individual differences.

Although politeness is an important concern in communications across cultures, a prevalent assumption in psychology is that East Asians are more inclined to be polite than members of other cultural groups due to prevalent cultural norms. Yet, evidence for this assumption is mixed. The present research examined this issue by considering the role of social hierarchy in interpersonal communications of Korean and British participants (N = 220) using an experimental task that involved writing an email to decline a request made by a junior or a senior person. The results showed that Korean participants’ emails were more polite when addressing a senior colleague compared with a junior colleague in work contexts. In contrast, recipient status did not impact British participants’ politeness. Crucially, cultural differences in politeness only emerged when participants addressed a senior colleague, but not when participants addressed a junior colleague. We discuss the implications of these findings and directions for future research.

Special issue article Copyright © The Author(s) 2018.The intent of this Special Issue is to be a starting point for a broadly-defined European cultural psychology. Across seven research articles, the authors of this Special Issue explore what European culture(s) and European identity entail, how acculturation within the European cultural contexts takes place and under what conditions a multicultural Europe might be possible. The Special Issue also discusses what is currently missing from the research agenda. Therein, the findings of this Special Issue constitute an important starting point for future psychological research that accompanies Europe along its journey into the 21st century.

Two studies investigated retaliatory responses to actual honor threats among members of an honor culture (Turkey) and a dignity culture (northern United States). The honor threat in these studies was based on previous research which has shown that honesty is a key element of the conception of honor and that accusations of dishonesty are threatening to one's honor. In both studies, participants wrote an essay describing the role of honesty in their lives and received feedback on their essay accusing them of being dishonest (vs. neutral feedback). Turkish participants retaliated more strongly than did northern U.S. participants against the person who challenged their honesty by assigning him/her to solve more difficult tangrams over easy ones (Study 1) and by choosing sensory tasks of a higher level of intensity to complete (Study 2). Study 2 added a relational honor condition, in which participants wrote about honesty in their parents' lives and examined the role of individual differences in honor values in retaliation. Endorsement of honor values significantly predicted retaliation among Turkish participants in the relational honor attack condition, but not among northern U.S. participants.

Although previous research shows that relationship closeness plays a central role in an individual’s willingness to forgive an offender, it is based exclusively on data from Western, individualistic cultures. In the current study, the authors examined the association between relationship closeness and forgiveness across six countries, including both traditionally individualistic—Italy, the Netherlands, the United States—and collectivistic cultures—Japan, China (and one country, Turkey, with both individualistic and collectivistic features). Results demonstrated that, cross-culturally, there was a robust positive association between closeness toward the offender and level of forgiveness, both for trait-forgiveness and offense-specific forgiveness. However, this association was weaker in the collectivistic countries, which may suggest that strong norms in these countries to maintain social harmony may partly weaken the role of closeness in forgiveness. Overall, the present findings are discussed in terms of the possible evolutionary origins of forgiveness and the role of individualism/collectivism in forgiveness.

In 2 studies, we examined the relationship between self-construal and illness-related concerns. In Study 1, participants imagined themselves experiencing a health problem described in a scenario and answered closed-ended questions about the concerns that this situation would likely elicit. The experience of social illness concerns was predicted by collective self-construal, and the experience of personal illness concerns tended to be predicted by endorsement of individual self-construal. In Study 2, participants recalled a past health problem and related consequences, which were content-coded. Collective self-construal predicted the extent to which people mentioned issues related to others in their free-recall illness descriptions and the number of other-related consequences that were generated when specifically asked about them. Sarah falls ill. She is told that she must stay in bed for a while to get better. She starts worrying, because staying in bed might mean not being able to finish her ongoing project at work, thereby putting her at a disadvantage for the promotion for which she has been hoping. She also feels that lying in bed threatens her independence, as she dislikes being dependent on other people for her needs. Julie, who is also ill, is told that she needs to rest in bed in order to recover more quickly. She is worried because her mother must take time off work to care for her. She feels that she is a burden to her family. In addition, this situation prevents her from being able to take care of her younger sister. When people experience a health problem, they tend to feel concerned about its consequences. Their concerns may be related to how they will catch

Listeners have to pay close attention to a speaker's tone of voice (prosody) during daily conversations. This is particularly important when trying to infer the emotional state of the speaker. Although a growing body of research has explored how emotions are processed from speech in general, little is known about how psychosocial factors such as social power can shape the perception of vocal emotional attributes. Thus, the present studies explored how social power affects emotional prosody recognition. In a correlational study (Study 1) and an experimental study (Study 2), we show that high power is associated with lower accuracy in emotional prosody recognition than low power. These results, for the first time, suggest that individuals experiencing high or low power perceive emotional tone of voice differently.

Culture is a broad term with a plethora of meanings. Thus any discussion of how it shapes human psychology must lay the groundwork by denning the parameters of the analysis. In this chapter, I situate culture within economic environments, asking how certain socioeco-logical features in a given economic community shape interactions to affect social psychological and cognitive outcomes. Instead of situating culture within individuals and considering how culture is perceived or construed by them, I focus on culture as it exists in objective circumstances that are observable to anyone (for a similar distinction, see Jahoda, 2011). This approach draws on Oishi’sdiscussion of socioecolog-ical psychology (Oishi, 2010, 2014; Oishi & Graham, 2010) and Medin’s references to a cultural ecosystem (e.g. Medin et al., 2013), both of which emphasize the systemic interactions between, or mutual constitution of, social/ecological environments and human mind/behaviour. It also bears a resemblance to cultural-ecological (e.g. Berry, 1979; Whiting & Edwards, 1988; Keller, 2011; Adams et al, 2012) and socio-cultural (e.g. Plaut et al., 2002; Maynard & Greenfield, 2003; Adams, 2005) approaches to the study of the interplay between culture and psychology.

Evidence for gender differences in physicians' communication with their patients comes primarily from Western countries. Little is known about whether these gender differences would also be observed in Turkey, where there are explicit rules about male-female conduct. The purpose of this study was to observe male and female gynecologists' communication with their patients in a gynecology clinic at a state hospital in Istanbul, Turkey. Four male and three female gynecologists were observed in their interaction with 70 patients over 10 days. The observations were conducted during both the history taking and the actual examination sessions by a woman researcher. The results reported in this paper are based on the extensive field notes taken during the observations. Important differences were revealed in interactions between male vs female gynecologists and their patients. Namely, interactions differed in terms of conversation initiation, communication style, use of technical and colloquial language, frequency of eye contact, patience, and provision of information. Communication characteristics specific to interactions between male gynecologists and their patients included a 'blaming the victim' approach, differential treatment of patients, and underestimation of patients' abilities. Environmental factors that affected physicians' interaction with their patients are reported in conjunction with physicians' use of these external factors to explain the problems they experienced in physician-patient interaction. The discussion focuses on alternative explanations for and future research implications of the observed differences between male and female gynecologists in this setting.

The main goal of the current research is to investigate emotional reactions to situations that implicate honour in Turkish and northern American cultural groups. In Studies 1A and 1B, participants rated the degree to which a variety of events fit their prototypes for honour-related situations. Both Turkish and American participants evaluated situations generated by their co-nationals as most central to their prototypes of honour-related situations. Study 2 examined emotional responses to Turkish or US-generated situations that varied in centrality to the prototype. Highly central situations and Turkish-generated situations elicited stronger emotions than less central situations and US-generated situations. Americans reported higher levels of positive emotions in response to honour-enhancing situations than did Turkish participants. These findings demonstrate that the prototypes of honour relevant situations differ for Turkish and northern American people, and that Turkish honour relevant situations are more emotion-laden than are northern American honour relevant situations.

This cross-cultural study of emotional tone of voice recognition tests the in-group advantage hypothesis (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002) employing a quasi-balanced design. Individuals of Chinese and British background were asked to recognize pseudo-sentences produced by Chinese and British native speakers, displaying one of seven emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happy, neutral tone of voice, sad, and surprise). Findings revealed that emotional displays were recognized at rates higher than predicted by chance; however, members of each cultural group were more accurate in recognizing the displays communicated by a member of their own cultural group than a member of the other cultural group. Moreover, the evaluation of error matrices indicates that both culture groups relied on similar mechanism when recognizing emotional displays from the voice. Overall, the study reveals evidence for both universal and culture-specific principles in vocal emotion recognition.

In two studies, we examined the relationship between self-aspects and socially engaging and socially disengaging emotions elicited by imagined and real physical health problems. In Study 1, participants imagined themselves experiencing a health problem described in a hypothetical scenario and rated the extent to which they would experience a list of emotions. The experience of socially engaging emotions such as shame and embarrassment was predicted by the endorsement of collective self. In Study 2, participants recalled a past health problem and emotions they experienced during its course. Again, collective self predicted the extent to which people mentioned socially engaging emotions in their free recall of emotions. Independent self was not related to the imagined experience of socially disengaging emotions in Study 1 or the recollection of such emotions in Study 2.

This study compares evaluations by members of an honor culture (Turkey) and a dignity culture (northern USA) of honor threat scenarios, in which a target was the victim of either a rude affront or a false accusation, and the target chose to withdraw or confront the attacker. Turkish participants were more likely than American participants to evaluate positively the person who withdrew from the rude affront and the person who confronted the false accusation. Participants in both societies perceived that others in their society would endorse confrontation more than withdrawal in both types of scenarios, but this effect was larger for Turkish than American participants. Honor values were associated with evaluations of the targets most strongly among Turkish participants who read about a person who confronted their attacker. These findings provide insight into the role of cultural norms and individual differences in the ways honor influences behavior.

The authors tested the hypotheses that Turkish and (Northern) American cultures afford different honor-relevant situations and different responses to these situations. In Study 1, the authors found that honor-attacking situations generated by American participants focused more on the individual than did situations generated by Turkish participants, whereas situations generated by Turkish participants focused more on close others and involved more references to an audience than did situations generated by American participants. Moreover, the situations most frequently generated by both groups tended to also differ in nature. In Study 2, new participants evaluated these situations for their impact on the self, close others, and acquaintances’ feelings about their family. Turkish participants tended to evaluate situations as having greater impact on all targets than did American participants. Turkish participants also evaluated all situations to have a similar impact on their own feelings and close others’ feelings about themselves, whereas Americans evaluated the situations to have more extreme impact on their own feelings than on the feelings of close others. Situations generated by Turkish participants were evaluated to have stronger impact on all targets.

This study examined cultural and generational differences in views on intergroup dating relationships among members of younger and older generation South Asian and European Canadians and the role of mainstream and heritage cultural identities in shaping these views. In response to a scenario describing an intergroup dating conflict between a young adult and his or her parents, as well as on self-report measures of attitudes toward intergroup dating, South Asian Canadians and members of the older generation exhibited less favorable views on intergroup dating compared to European Canadians and members of the younger generation. Moreover, Canadian identity was consistently associated with more favorable views on intergroup dating, and this relationship was stronger for the South Asians. By comparing members of younger and older generation immigrants to their majority culture counterparts, the study adds a developmental layer to views on minority-majority group romantic relationships.

To the extent that cultures vary in how they shape individuals’ self-construal, it is important to consider a cultural perspective to understand the role of the self in health persuasion. We review recent research that has adopted a cultural perspective on how to frame health communications to be congruent with important, culturally variant, aspects of the self. Matching features of a health message to approach vs. avoidance orientation and independent vs. interdependent self-construal can lead to greater message acceptance and health behavior change. Discussion centers on the theoretical and applied value of the self as an organizing framework for constructing persuasive health communications.

The present study examines the persuasive effects of tailored health messages comparing those tailored to match (versus not match) both chronic cultural frame and momentarily salient cultural frame. Evidence from two studies (Study 1: n = 72 European Americans; Study 2: n = 48 Asian Americans) supports the hypothesis that message persuasiveness increases when chronic cultural frame, health message tailoring and momentarily salient cultural frame all match. The hypothesis was tested using a message about health risks of caffeine consumption among individuals prescreened to be regular caffeine consumers. After being primed for individualism, European Americans who read a health message that focused on the personal self were more likely to accept the message–they found it more persuasive, believed they were more at risk and engaged in more message-congruent behaviour. These effects were also found among Asian Americans who were primed for collectivism and who read a health message that focused on relational obligations. The findings point to the importance of investigating the role of situational cues in persuasive effects of health messages and suggest that matching content to primed frame consistent with the chronic frame may be a way to know what to match messages to.

Informed by a new theoretical framework that assigns a key role to cultural tasks (culturally prescribed means to achieve cultural mandates such as independence and interdependence) in mediating the mutual influences between culture and psychological processes, the authors predicted and found that North Americans are more likely than Western Europeans (British and Germans) to (a) exhibit focused (vs. holistic) attention, (b) experience emotions associated with independence (vs. interdependence), (c) associate happiness with personal achievement (vs. communal harmony), and (d) show an inflated symbolic self. In no cases were the 2 Western European groups significantly different from one another. All Western groups showed (e) an equally strong dispositional bias in attribution. Across all of the implicit indicators of independence, Japanese were substantially less independent (or more interdependent) than the three Western groups. An explicit self-belief measure of independence and interdependence showed an anomalous pattern. These data were interpreted to suggest that the contemporary American ethos has a significant root in both Western cultural heritage and a history of voluntary settlement. Further analysis offered unique support for the cultural task analysis.

The present study contributes a cultural analysis to the literature on the persuasive effects of matching message frame to individuals’ motivational orientations. One experiment examines how members of cul- tural groups that are likely to differ in their regulatory focus respond to health messages focusing on either the benefits of flossing or the costs of not flossing. White British participants, who had a stronger promotion focus, were more persuaded by the gain-framed message, whereas East-Asian participants, who had a stronger prevention focus, were more persuaded by the loss-framed message. This cultural dif- ference in persuasion was mediated by an interaction between individuals’ self-regulatory focus and type of health message. Thus health messages framed to be culturally congruent led participants to have more positive attitudes and stronger intentions to perform the health behaviors, and the interaction between self-regulatory focus and message frame emerged as the pathway through which the observed cultural difference occurs. Discussion focuses on the integration of individual difference, socio-cultural, and situ- ational factors into models of health persuasion.

The present research examined the relationship between individual differences in self-regulatory mechanisms as outlined in regulatory focus theory (promotion- and prevention-focused self-regulation) and aggressiveness. Two studies revealed that the more individuals’ habitual self-regulatory orientation is dominated by a prevention-focus, the more likely they are to score high on measures of cynical hostility, reciprocity norm endorsement, and aggressiveness. An additional study involving the manipulation of perceived violation of a reciprocity norm showed that predominantly prevention-focused participants were particularly sensitive to the experience of a norm violation and reacted in a hostile and aggressive manner following the norm violation experience. Findings indicate that a prevention-focused style of self-regulation is associated with aggressiveness and suggest that endorsement of (negative) reciprocity norms and sensitivity to norm violations are relevant factors that help explain the differences in aggressiveness observed among individuals with a predominantly prevention-focused style of self-regulation.

It has been proposed that social interdependence fosters holistic cognition, that is, a tendency to attend to the broad perceptual and cognitive field, rather than to a focal object and its properties, and a tendency to reason in terms of relationships and similarities, rather than rules and categories. This hypothesis has been supported mostly by demonstrations showing that East Asians, who are relatively interdependent, reason and perceive in a more holistic fashion than do Westerners. We examined holistic cognitive tendencies in attention, categorization, and reasoning in three types of communities that belong to the same national, geographic, ethnic, and linguistic regions and yet vary in their degree of social interdependence: farming, fishing, and herding communities in Turkey's eastern Black Sea region. As predicted, members of farming and fishing communities, which emphasize harmonious social interdependence, exhibited greater holistic tendencies than members of herding communities, which emphasize individual decision making and foster social independence. Our findings have implications for how ecocultural factors may have lasting consequences on important aspects of cognition.

It has been hypothesized that interdependent (versus independent) social orientations breed more holistic (versus analytic) cognitions. If so, farming and small-scale fishing, which require more cooperation (and represent a more interdependent mode of being) than does herding, may encourage a more holistic mode of cognition. To test this hypothesis we compared responses to tasks measuring categorization, reasoning and attention by members of herding, fishing and farming communities in the eastern Black Sea Region of Turkey. The samples did not differ from each other in important demographic variables such as nationality, ethnicity, language and religion, as well as age and education. As hypothesized, in all three tasks, results indicated a greater degree of holistic mode of cognition exhibited by the members of fishing and farming communities than members of herding communities. The findings support the notion that level of special interdependence fostered by ecocultural settings is likely to shape the ways in which individuals perceive and attend to their surrounding world.

Everyone prefers health to ill-health, though some worry more about ill health than others and for others abstract health concerns seem to pale compared with the prospect of immediate hedonic pleasures. Two studies (n = 90, n = 70) utilized a 'fit' in self-regulatory focus approach (Higgins, 2000 ) to describe when and how worrying about health (versus focus on hedonic pleasure) is likely to lead to distinct health behaviors. According to this model, individuals differ in their self-regulatory focus-some focus on reaching safety and security through vigilant and careful action (prevention focus) and others focus on opportunities to eagerly approach hopes and aspirations (promotion focus). We proposed that likelihood of engaging in health care-taking behaviors is higher among individuals who experience 'prevention fit'--who are prevention-focused and are chronically or temporarily worried about health--whereas likelihood of engaging in eagerness-related behaviors that may be detrimental to health is higher among individuals who experience 'promotion fit'--who are promotion-focused and chronically or temporarily experience thrill seeking. Prevention fit correlated with health care-taking behaviors (Study 1) and with readiness to engage in cancer detection behaviors (Study 2). Promotion fit correlated with using stimulants to overcome physical weakness (Study 1).

The study examined predictors of psychological wellbeing in a sample of 181 Turkish immigrants living in Toronto, Canada. Depression and life satisfaction were employed as indicators of psychological wellbeing. A model was put forth in which proactive coping and optimism were hypothesized to predict negatively to depression and positively to life satisfaction. Proactive coping consists of efforts to build up general resources that facilitate the achievement of challenging goals and promotes personal growth and was expected to contribute to the prediction of psychological wellbeing over and above the effects of optimism. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted with life satisfaction and depression as criteria and demographics, optimism, and proactive coping as predictors. In general, the results supported the hypotheses; the model fit better when the criterion was depression than when life satisfaction was the criterion.

This paper reports on the findings of a focus group study that examines how women have experienced menarche at the personal level and in relation to the larger cultural, religious, and societal environment. Fifty-three women from 34 different countries were recruited in 13 focus groups. On the one hand, at the personal level, menarche stories shared in this study revealed salient themes concerning feelings experienced at the time of menarche, the importance of mother's reactions to their daughter's first menstruation, difficulties around understanding the meanings attached to menarche by others, managing menstrual products, as well as making sense of formal education related to menstruation, and the age of menarche. On the other hand, the discussions concerning how women experienced menarche in relation to the larger cultural, religious, and societal environment revealed secrecy to be a defining feature of many stories. Cultural expectations of learning, and following the rules and regulations surrounding menstruation led to different reactions in women at the time of their menarche. Very few women mentioned a ritual or celebration at the time of their menarche. Findings are discussed in terms of similarities and differences in menarche stories of women from different cultural backgrounds. Limitations of the study are mentioned and suggestions for future research are provided.

The present study examines cross-cultural differences in interpersonal closeness to different people and whether these differences can be explained by independent and interdependent self-construal. Turkish and Euro-Canadian samples of university students were asked to indicate how close they feel and how close they ideally would like to be to family members, romantic partners, friends, and acquaintances. As predicted, Turkish participants scored higher on interdependent self-construal, whereas there was no culture difference on independent self-construal scores. Turkish participants rated their actual and ideal closeness with others higher than Euro-Canadian participants did. Both Turkish and Euro-Canadian participants reported feeling closest and ideally wanting to be closest to their romantic partner, and then to their families and friends, followed by acquaintances. Turkish participants desired more closeness with family members and acquaintances than Euro-Canadian participants did. Interdependent self-construal was found to partially mediate the relationships between culture and actual closeness scores forfamily, friends, and acquaintances and between culture and ideal scores for family and acquaintances.

Visualizing oneself engaging in future actions has been shown to increase the likelihood of actually engaging in the visualized action. In three studies, we examined the effect of perspective taken to visualize a future action (first-person vs. third-person) as a function of the degree to which individuals worry about others' evaluation of themselves (face) and whether the visualized behavior is public or private. Across all studies, the effect of visual perspective was present only for participants with a high level of face. In this group, the third-person visualization induced stronger intentions to engage in the behavior when the imagined behavior was public (Study 1), whereas the first-person visualization induced stronger intentions and greater likelihood to engage in that behavior when it was private (Study 2). The influence of the first-person perspective on flossing behavior was eliminated when people with high levels of face were encouraged to consider inter-personal consequences of the action (Study 3). Results are discussed in the light of recent theorizing on the cognitive consequences of taking a third-person versus a first-person perspective in visual imagery.