Search

The benefits of religion have predominantly focused on personal religious identities and experiences, while the broader context of religious worldviews remains understudied. Across two quantitative studies, we showed the incremental predictive power of religious worldview and its mechanism among young adults in two societies—the USA (N = 179) and Hong Kong (N = 164). The mediation mechanism with social connectedness was further inferred from a 12-month study among Hong Kong Chinese (N = 133). This research has laid important groundwork for a deeper understanding of how religion shapes our perception of the world and its impact on our well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization has increased connectivity across national borders and contributed to cultural diversity within countries. In this context, the ability to adapt to diverse cultural contexts, known as cultural intelligence, has become increasingly important. However, there is insufficient research examining the impact of cultural intelligence on life satisfaction, as well as its underlying mechanisms. To address this gap, we suggest that general self-efficacy could function between cultural intelligence and life satisfaction. Our study targeted people from three different cultures that experience varying degrees of globalization: Hong Kong (N = 123), Mainland China (N = 134), and the United States (N = 193). The findings, gathered from university students who regularly interacted with individuals from different cultures in their daily lives, supported the positive associations among cultural intelligence, self-efficacy, and life satisfaction and the role of self-efficacy in the impact of cultural intelligence on life satisfaction. Moreover, we found that Hong Kong Chinese rated themselves highest in cultural intelligence, followed by Mainland Chinese (sample from Beijing), whereas Americans (sample from Iowa) scored the lowest. This research not only enriches the understanding of cultural intelligence but also provides valuable insights into fostering psychological well-being in the current era of globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Based upon a mixed methods follow-up explanation model, the present research examined the relationships between global orientations and the attitudes toward integration policies among both locals (majority group) and South Asians (minority group) in Hong Kong. Methods: In Study 1, quantitative data were collected from a community sample of 1,614 adults comprising 1,007 locals and 607 South Asians in three minority groups (Indians, Nepalese, and Pakistanis). In Study 2, a follow-up explanation phase of qualitative investigation was conducted, with 12 in-depth semistructured focus group discussions among seven locals and 49 South Asians, generating three main themes and six subthemes. Results: Quantitative results showed that the positive link between multicultural acquisition and instrumental integration policies was significantly stronger for South Asians than for locals, and that ethnic protection was negatively associated with a positive attitude toward symbolic integration policies in the majority group but had no effects in the minority group. The three main themes generated from the qualitative results include alleviating minority disadvantage, preserving majority privilege, and embracing diversity for the common good. Conclusions: The combined quantitative and qualitative results suggest that the differential relationships of multicultural acquisition and ethnic protection with support for specific integration policies can be understood with the underlying structural power asymmetry between the majority and minority groups. Public Significance Statement: Intergroup relations have been studied extensively from an acculturation perspective. We investigate majority and minority group members' attitudes toward social integration in the context of globalization. Their global orientations have differential relationships with symbolic and instrumental integration policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Personality research has been focused on different aspects of the self, including traits, attitudes, beliefs, goals, and motivation. These aspects of the self are used to explain and predict social behaviour. The present research assessed generalized beliefs about the world, termed 'social axioms' (Leung et al., ), and examined their additive power over beliefs about the self in explaining a communal behaviour, that is, modesty. Three studies predicted reported modest behaviour among Mainland Chinese, Hong Kong Chinese, East Asian Canadians, and European Canadians. In addition to self-reports in Studies 1 and 2, informant reports from participants' parents and close friends were collected in Study 3 to construct a behavioural composite after examining the resulting multitrait-multimethod matrix and intraclass correlations. World views (operationalized as social axioms) explained additional variance in modest behaviour over and above self-views (operationalized as self-efficacy, self-construals, and trait modesty) in both Eastern and Western cultures. Variation in reports on three factors of modest behaviour was found across self-, parent, and friend perspectives, with significant differences across perspectives in self-effacement and other-enhancement, but not in avoidance of attention-seeking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on acculturation has documented that adaptation to a receiving society is affected by both the immigrants’ acculturation strategies and the dominant group's expectations about how immigrants should acculturate. However, the acculturation expectations have received relatively less attention from researchers, and support for multiculturalism has rarely been examined from the perspective of immigrants. The present study used the framework of the Mutual Intercultural Relations in Plural Societies (MIRIPS) project to investigate the acculturation experiences and intercultural relations in Hong Kong by incorporating mutual views of both the dominant and non-dominant groups. It also tested the mediating role of the dominant group's tolerance towards different cultural groups and the non-dominant group's perceived discrimination. Two community samples were recruited, including Hong Kong residents ( N = 181) and immigrants from Mainland China ( N = 182). Among Mainland immigrants, the integration strategy predicted both psychological adaptation and sociocultural adaptation. Multicultural ideology predicted psychological adaptation and played a significant role in intercultural contact with Hong Kong people through the mediation of lower perceived discrimination. Among Hong Kong residents, the integration expectation predicted psychological adaptation. Multicultural ideology indirectly affected intercultural contact with Mainland immigrants through the mediation of greater tolerance. These results suggest that the integration strategy and expectation are more important to intrapersonal functioning, whereas multicultural ideology may be more crucial in facilitating social interactions between members of the society of settlement and immigrants in culturally plural milieus. Future research should test the proposed models of dominant and non-dominant groups in other cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An investigation of early peak-experiences among 116 Hong Kong college students, all born in Hong Kong or mainland China, generated 161 retrospective reports. The most frequent peak-experiences involved interpersonal joy, followed by those of external achievement and materialism. Implications of the findings for fostering Chinese youth development from a strength-based perspective are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Two studies examined how members of Chinese subgroups, namely Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese, perceived attributes reflected by acts in positive and negative news about the Sichuan earthquake in China as prototypical of the superordinate category of Chinese as a whole. Mainland Chinese, but not Hong Kong Chinese, perceived positive acts as more prototypical of Chinese than negative acts, and identification with the superordinate category mediated this effect of subgroup membership on perceived prototypicality. In addition, cynical beliefs moderated the interaction between group identification and event valence on perceived prototypicality. When social cynicism was high, positive versus negative acts were considered as more prototypical of Chinese among high identifiers whereas the reverse pattern was found among low identifiers. However, when social cynicism was low, positive and negative acts were considered as equally prototypical regardless of Chinese identification. These results revealed the motivational and cognitive forces underlying the construction of group prototypes, and underscored the added value of social axioms in understanding perceptions of culturally salient events. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This research was designed to examine the moderation roles of common social identity and multiculturalism on the established relationship between Mainland Chinese''s perceived value incongruence with Hong Kong Chinese and their negative attitude towards Hong Kong Chinese. A survey study was conducted among 202 college students in Mainland China and the results showed Mainland Chinese''s value incongruence with Hong Kong Chinese significantly predicted their negative intergroup attitude. In addition, the results also revealed that among participants with high identification with the super-ordinate Chinese national group, this negative relation was significantly weaker than those with low Chinese identification. In addition, among participants with high multiculturalism endorsement, the relation between value incongruence and intergroup attitude was significantly weaker than those with low level of multiculturalism. Implications of this research and future directions were discussed based on these findings. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The present study tested a mediation model to predict adolescents' academic achievement in Hong Kong. Generalized expectancies, including personal beliefs about agency and competence (i.e., self-efficacy) and social beliefs about effort and outcome (i.e., reward for application and fate control), were found to be significant antecedents of academic aspiration, a domain-specific mediator that predicted academic achievement positively. Self-efficacy and reward for application were positively related to academic aspiration. The indirect effect of fate control was negative on academic aspiration, but its direct effect was positive on academic achievement. These findings were used to make sense of the equivocal patterns of general self-efficacy, social axioms, and academic outcomes in the extant literature on learning and achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examined the applicability of social beliefs in school-aged children and investigated factors contributing to the formation of their views about the world. As an extension of the authors' previous work on family dysfunction and social axioms, they hypothesized a mediation model to identify personal and interpersonal antecedents for two dimensions of social axioms, namely, social cynicism and reward for application. Data on general family functioning were collected from elementary school students in Hong Kong. Results of path analysis showed that family dysfunction predicted self-esteem and relationship harmony negatively; in turn, self-esteem predicted social cynicism negatively and relationship harmony predicted reward for application positively. These findings confirmed the mediating effect of self-esteem on personal development and that of relationship harmony on interpersonal development, with both leading from the quality of family functioning to different beliefs on the dimensional profile of a person's social axioms. The direct effect of family dysfunction was also significant on the two axioms. Together, these results support the position that familial influences shape the formation of a child's worldview. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examined the applicability of social beliefs in schoolaged children and investigated factors contributing to the formation of their views about the world. As an extension of the authors' previous work on family dysfunction and social axioms, they hypothesized a mediation model to identify personal and interpersonal antecedents for two dimensions of social axioms, namely, social cynicism and reward for application. Data on general family functioning were collected from elementary school students in Hong Kong. Results of path analysis showed that family dysfunction predicted self-esteem and relationship harmony negatively; in turn, self-esteem predicted social cynicism negatively and relationship harmony predicted reward for application positively. These findings confirmed the mediating effect of self-esteem on personal development and that of relationship harmony on interpersonal development, with both leading from the quality of family functioning to different beliefs on the dimensional profile of a person's social axioms. The direct effect of family dysfunction was also significant on the two axioms. Together, these results support the position that familial influences shape the formation of a child's worldview. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study tested a mediation model to predict adolescents' academic achievement in Hong Kong. Generalized expectancies, including personal beliefs about agency and competence (i.e., self-efficacy) and social beliefs about effort and outcome (i.e., reward for application and fate control), were found to be significant antecedents of academic aspiration, a domain-specific mediator that predicted academic achievement positively. Self-efficacy and reward for application were positively related to academic aspiration. The indirect effect of fate control was negative on academic aspiration, but its direct effect was positive on academic achievement. These findings were used to make sense of the equivocal patterns of general self-efficacy, social axioms, and academic outcomes in the extant literature on learning and achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present investigation examined the impact of bicultural identity, bilingualism, and social context on the psychological adjustment of multicultural individuals. Our studies targeted three distinct types of biculturals: Mainland Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong, Filipino domestic workers (i.e., sojourners) in Hong Kong, and Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese college students. Individual differences in Bicultural Identity Integration (BII; Benet-Martínez, Leu, Lee, & Morris, 2002 ) positively predicted psychological adjustment for all the samples except sojourners even after controlling for the personality traits of neuroticism and self-efficacy. Cultural identification and language abilities also predicted adjustment, although these associations varied across the samples in meaningful ways. We concluded that, in the process of managing multiple cultural environments and group loyalties, bilingual competence, and perceiving one's two cultural identities as integrated are important antecedents of beneficial psychological outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]