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Research finds that going far from home has many positive psychological outcomes such as enhanced creative thinking, and research on creativity reveals that nonconformity can be a useful tool to stimulate innovation. Merging these findings, we theorise that foreign experiences increase nonconformist attitudes and behaviours. In Studies 1 and 2, surveys of Chinese university students and non-student adults consistently showed that multicultural experiences were negatively related to conformity tendencies. Study 3 found that American students who were studying in China demonstrated a lower conformity tendency than American students without multicultural experiences, which suggests that the multicultural experience – conformity link cannot be accounted for by the effects of culture. Results from Study 4 indicated that compared with participants who had planned to go abroad but had not left their home country yet, participants who had lived abroad reported lower levels of conformity. Lastly, experimentally manipulating a focus on foreign experiences (vs. home experiences) facilitates non-conforming ways of thinking in terms of product preference (Study 5). Together, these findings provide evidence that exposure to diverse cultures not only produces divergent psychological consequences as have been found by other researchers, but also leads to the emergence of nonconformity attitudes and behaviours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Motivated by the perceived disparity between supply and demand for skilled workers in STEM fields, namely, science, technology, engineering and math, the purpose of this paper is to conduct an empirical study of attitude and readiness for STEM education and careers among American and Chinese college students in business disciplines. The authors' findings point out that students in China and the USA have some significantly different perspectives of STEM maybe because they are prepared and inspired differently. These differences may have fundamentally impacted their attitude and readiness for pursuing a STEM career. Implications from this research project should be noteworthy to educators and academic administrators so that appropriate curricula and cultivation can be offered. Design/methodology/approach: The authors have decided to look into the situation using a comparison approach by surveying a randomly chosen group of college students from China and another from the USA and then analyzed their responses to the authors' delicately constructed survey in a hope of finding any patterns that may cause the authors to rethink about the authors' approaches to cultivating interest in STEM. Findings: The findings described in the paper should offer us some significant, though still preliminary, implications as follows: both American and Chinese students admire STEM careers, but feel rewarding differently; American students may have other career choices that may be equal or more rewarding while Chinese students choose STEM fields by following a cultural norm; having early exposure to science subjects and gaining relevant experience help grow interest in STEM among American students, but such exposure may bring about negative effect on career choices; American female students are at least as capable of succeeding in STEM as their male counterparts; American students seek more advice on their career choices than Chinese students who may follow a cultural norm. Advisory service from teachers and parents may impact differently from peer influence does; extracurricular activities can more positively affect interest in STEM than taking science courses. Research limitations/implications: Although the survey has collected responses from only business students in both countries, the resulting implications should reflect what a sizable segment of college students feel and think about STEM and thus should allow educators and institutional administrators to use as evidence in pursuing innovative curricula and advisory services that would better prepare our future students for STEM education and beyond, especially in those disciplines, like business administration, in which STEM skills are increasingly in demand. Practical implications: Some significant, though still preliminary, implications should be readily drawn from the study: first, both American and Chinese students admire STEM careers, but rewarding may mean different things to them. American students may have other career choices that may be equal or more rewarding per their definition of rewarding while Chinese students may pursue STEM fields by following a cultural norm rather than by considering it rewarding. Second, having early exposure to science subjects and gaining relevant experience can help grow interest in STEM among American students, but such exposure, especially taking science courses, may bring about negative effect on career choices. Extracurricular activities can more positively affect interest in STEM than taking science courses. Third, female students are at least as equally interested and capable of succeeding in STEM as their male counterparts, but their interest and confidence may be more vulnerable to challenges imposed by market reality and cultural bias. Fourth, American students seek more advice when available on their career choices than Chinese students do as the former may face more competing career choices and possess less preparation for STEM than the latter does. Finally, advisory service from teachers and parents may impact differently than the influence peers can perpetrate. Club activities when peers can naturally influence each other may be quite effective in promoting interest in and preparing readiness for STEM, and these activities are more effective to American students than Chinese students and to male students than female students. Originality/value: Nine hypotheses are proposed to validate through this empirical study. These hypotheses reflect thoughts upon the literature review and pertain to the factors that should impact STEM education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is the first to evaluate evidence for measurement invariance and the psychometric properties of the Suicide Resilience Inventory-25 ( SRI-25; Osman et al., ) in college-age samples in both the United States and China. We found strong support for full measurement invariance of the three-factor structure of the SRI-25 in the U. S. (113 men and 238 women) and Chinese (121 men and 205 women) samples. In addition, we found that the U. S. sample scored significantly higher than the Chinese sample on all the individual scale scores. Composite scale reliability estimates ranged from moderate (ρ = .83) to high (ρ = .93) across the groups. Although not an aim of the current study, we examined estimates of internal consistency of the SRI-25 scales for men and women within each sample. Differential correlates of the SRI-25 scales were explored further for each sample. These results provide support for the use of the SRI-25 in U. S. and Chinese student samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the potential effects of individualism/collectivism on the use of typical Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 applications between Chinese and American students. Results show American students scored higher on horizontal individualism and collectivism, but lower on vertical individualism than their Chinese counterparts. The cultural dimensions of individualism/collectivism are mostly indicative of social media use rather than online news consumption, and these cultural factors make a bigger difference in social media use among Chinese students than American students. It is clear that horizontal and vertical individualism/collectivism operate differently at the individual level in these cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparison has been made of productive vocabulary in some normal university English majors' theses in China and American final-year undergraduates' papers. The research demonstrates that with family as the measurement unit, Chinese students proportionally use fewer words of the 1st, 8th to 10th 1000 frequency level words than American students, while in terms of the 2nd to 4th 1000 frequency band words, Chinese students use more than American students and there is no difference in the usage of the words of the rest word lists. In terms of lexical words complexity: American students repeatedly use the 1st 1000 high-frequency words in a higher proportion, use more inflectional forms than Chinese students but use fewer derivational forms than Chinese students. Chinese students use the 2nd 1000 frequency band words repeatedly in a greater proportion than American students; use more inflectional and derivational forms than American students. Chinese students use low-frequency words repeatedly in a greater proportion, more inflectional forms, but use the derivational forms in the same proportion as American students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although cross-cultural research indicates that Chinese people demonstrate less humor than do Americans, little research addresses the reasons. This cross-cultural difference may be largely due to different implicit attitudes toward humor held by Chinese and Americans, deeply rooted in the two cultural traditions. Both self-report evaluation and the Implicit Association Test (IAT) were used to compare Chinese and American attitudes toward humor. Although 60 Chinese undergraduate students showed no significant difference from 33 American exchange students in explicit attitudes toward humor, the former associated humor more frequently with unpleasant adjectives and seriousness with pleasant adjectives on the IAT; the opposite pattern was found for the American group. This indicated a negative implicit attitude toward humor among the Chinese students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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While a number of previous studies have examined citizens' attitudes towards police response to domestic violence, very few have approached the topic from an international, comparative perspective. Using survey data collected from more than 600 students in a Hong Kong university and an American university, this study empirically assesses students' attitudes towards proactive and reactive police responses to domestic violence incidents, controlling for students' demographic characteristics, personal and vicarious experiences with crime including domestic violence and perceptions of gender roles and violence. The results showed that Chinese students were less likely to support proactive police response and more likely to favour reactive police response, compared with their US counterparts. Chinese students' attitudes towards police response were shaped mainly by their attitudes towards gender equality, whereas American students' attitudes were influenced chiefly by their background characteristics and attitudes towards violence. Implications for policy and future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Little is known about how components of executive function (EF) jointly and uniquely predict different aspects of academic achievement and how this may vary across cultural contexts. In the current study, 119 Chinese and 139 American preschoolers were tested on a battery of EF tasks (i.e., inhibition, working memory, and attentional control) as well as academic achievement tasks (i.e., reading and mathematics). Results demonstrate that although working memory performance in both cultures was comparable, Chinese children outperformed American children on inhibition and attentional control tasks. In addition, the relation between components of EF and achievement was similar in the two countries. Working memory uniquely predicted academic achievement, with some intriguing patterns in regard to tasks requiring complex processing. Inhibition uniquely predicted counting but did not uniquely predict calculation. Attentional control predicted most aspects of achievement uniformly and was the most robust predictor for reading in both countries. In sum, the data provide insight into both cultural variability and consistency in the development of EF during early childhood. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article focuses on the announcement of U.S. President Barack Obama on sending 100,000 American students to China to learn Mandarin Chinese, experience Chinese culture and learn about the hospitality of the Chinese people. It notes that the announced goal is a public diplomacy initiative of the U.S. to promote mutual understanding with China. Furthermore, there are approximately 100,000 Chinese students who are studying in the U.S. and less than 2,000 American students studying in China.

This study explored cultural differences in the criteria young people have for becoming an adult. Specifically, the study sought (a) to compare Chinese and American responses concerning whether they believe they have reached adulthood; (b) to examine whether adulthood criteria could fit a common statistical model for both cultures; and (c) after estimating this model, to compare the importance of adulthood criteria for Chinese and Americans. Results indicated that Chinese students considered themselves to be adults more than did American students. Also, Chinese students ascribed greater importance to criteria that reflect obligations toward others than did the Americans. The influence of culture in the transition to adulthood was discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compares the awareness of American and Chinese second-grade children about each other's country and culture. Similarities and differences between types of information children provided in expressing their knowledge of each other's culture; Factors that affect the children's knowledge and awareness; Strategies recommended for promoting international education; Need for the exposure of young children to different cultures in order to learn more about the world.

The purpose of this study was to compare the knowledge, attitudes and practice regarding tobacco use of college students in China and the United States (US). A modified existing questionnaire originally developed for use on the US was adopted. A Chinese version of the final questionnaire was approved by a bilingual panel of scholars. American participants were students at a large Midwestern University, while Chinese participants were selected from a large south-east China university. A total of 2131 usable surveys were collected. Both descriptive and inferential statistical tests were employed in data analysis. Compared with Chinese college students, American students scored higher in knowledge but lower on the attitude scale of the questionnaire. American respondents also were more likely to smoke cigarettes and use other tobacco products. Chinese students, on the other hand, had a higher rate of starting smoking at age 13 years or younger and were less likely to have tried to quit. The findings should provide exploratory information for health educators in understanding tobacco use and its prevention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the kinds of helping behaviors given and received by Chinese college students and the kinds of explanations offered for these behaviors. It defines helping as one person's bringing about a benefit to another person. It also explores people's perceptions of helping intentions. It describes that to understand how helping intentions are perceived, one must first postulate a typology. The egoistic-altruistic dimension and the dichotomy of intrinsic-extrinsic motives are prevalent in helping and motivation research, but a typology specially devised for perceived helping intentions is missing. Such a typology is attempted in the article through a descriptive analysis of the participants' responses to the question of why help is given. It further informs that a questionnaire survey explored the kinds of helping behaviors given and received by Chinese college students and the kinds of explanations offered for these behaviors. It adds that helping behaviors reported by the Chinese students paralleled those of U.S. college students in McGuire; the behaviors were sorted, according to her typology, into casual, substantial personal, emotional, and emergency helping. Four categories of perceived intentions behind helping behaviors were identified: altruistic, normative, relationship, and exchange.

The role of women in the People's Republic of China has changed dramatically in the last 40 years. This study assesses what impact these changes have had on the attitudes of Chinese youth. The sample consisted of 164 subjects (77 men and 87 women) who completed the Bern Sex Role Inventory, the Objective Fear of Success Measure, a locus of control scale, and a personal goals questionnaire. They also evaluated a painting attributed to artists of different gender and status. The results indicate that the sex role orientations of Chinese students were similar to those of American students. On the Bern inventory, the direction of the sex differences on the sex role scales was the same for U.S. and Chinese students, but the latter had a sex role orientation that, in our culture, is regarded as more ‘traditional.’ Chinese women were significantly more likely to endorse statements expressing fear of success than were Chinese men. On the locus of control measures, Chinese women were more likely than men to attribute their achievement successes to luck and failures to a lack of ability. The women students also attributed affiliation outcomes more to luck than did the men. The most important personal goal cited by both men and women was that of career success. Chinese men placed greater importance than women on achieving wealth, and their expectancy of actually becoming wealthy was higher. Finally, in an evaluation of a painting, Chinese men, but not the women, devalued a painting when it was supposedly the work of a female student artist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the experiences of the author and other people in the Cultural Revolution, which she describes in her book "Red Scarf Girl." She relates the story of her father's former colleague from Shanghai Children's Theater named Ming, who was a prodigy during the said period in China. She discusses her visit to American schools where she talked about the experiences describes in the book, such as the detention and torture of her father at the children's theater where he works.

The article reports on the of the U.S. Educational Foundation to stopped the promotion of a cultural exchange between Chinese and American students because of the lack of funds in China. The promotion is part of the Fulbright Act agreed between the two countries. The created cultural exchange funds allocated to the promotion have been extinguished because of the dominance of communism in some parts of the country.