Commonsense notions of unfairness in Japan and the United States.

The concept of fairness has been centrally situated within justice and legal discourses, yet some have suggested that a deeper understanding is possible by looking at the injustice end because those instantiations tend to be clear, concise, hot, passionate, insistent, and have primacy. In this cross-cultural work, the authors apply this suggestion by deconstructing instantiations of unfairness from American and Japanese samples of students and their parents. Although all major types of unfairness were invoked in both countries, significant differences emerged in the frequency distribution patterns and quantitative severity ratings of unfairness by culture; to a lesser extent, by generation within culture; and to a still lesser extent, by gender. Why discriminatory treatment instantiations were significantly more salient for Japanese than American respondents (and why the reverse was so for misfortune instantiations) is discussed, along with foundational links of unfairness notions to communal relationships and society. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Environmental and genetic influences on prereading skills in Australia, Scandinavia, and the United States.

Individual differences in measures of prereading skills and in questionnaire measures of 4-5-year-old twins' print environments in Australia, Scandinavia, and the United States were explored with a behavioral-genetic design. Modest phenotypic correlations were found between environmental measures and the twins' print knowledge, general verbal ability, and phoneme awareness. Lower print knowledge in Scandinavian twins was related to country differences in preschool print environment. Latent-trait behavioral-genetic analyses indicated very strong shared-environment influences on individual differences in Print Knowledge. Genetic influence was also significant. Several other prereading skills varied in their environmental and genetic influence, including a significant contrast between Phonological Awareness and Print Knowledge. Rapid Naming also revealed very strong genetic influence, as did Verbal Memory. Stronger shared-environment influences were found for Vocabulary and Grammar/Morphology. Genetic and environmental correlations among latent traits for General Verbal Ability, Phonological Awareness, and Print Knowledge were high, but there were also significant independent genetic and environmental contributions to each skill. Practical implications include the need for substantial and sustained instructional support for children hampered by genetic constraints on early literacy development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cultural values and employee attitudes: United States and Japan.

Often overlooked in industrial motivation studies is the influence of cultural orientation upon employee attitudes. This is particularly true with respect to the way workers feel about reciprocal obligations in employee-employer relations. Attitudes concerning a broad range of such obligations are influenced strongly by the cultural values indigenous to a given society. For example, such values have been shown to influence worker perception of such matters as employment continuity, economic involvement and personal involvement of management, identification with organization, status transfer, sources of motivation, and other aspects of the work situation. Mutual satisfaction in human relations in industry depends partially upon management understanding of and willingness to work through cultural values and the employee attitudes they engender. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Culture and egocentric perceptions of fairness in conflict and negotiation.

In this article, the authors advanced a cultural view of judgment biases in conflict and negotiation. The authors predicted that disputants' self-serving biases of fairness would be more prevalent in individualistic cultures, such as the United States, in which the self is served by focusing on one's positive attributes to "stand out" and be better than others, yet would be attenuated in collectivistic cultures, such as Japan, where the self is served by focusing on one's negative characteristics to "blend in" (S. J. Heine, D. R. Lehman, H. R. Markus, & S. Kitayama. 1999). Four studies that used different methodologies (free recall, scenarios, and a laboratory experiment) supported this notion. Implications for the science and practice of negotiation are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Culture and mixed emotions: Co-occurrence of positive and negative emotions in Japan and the United States.

Previous cross-cultural comparisons of correlations between positive and negative emotions found that East Asians are more likely than Americans to feel dialectical emotions. However, not much is known about the co-occurrence of positive and negative emotions in a given situation. When asked to describe situations in which they felt mixed emotions, Japanese and American respondents listed mostly similar situations. By presenting these situations to another group of respondents, we found that Japanese reported more mixed emotions than Americans in the predominantly pleasant situations, whereas there were no cultural differences in mixed emotions in the predominantly unpleasant situations or the mixed situations. The appraisal of self-agency mediated cultural differences in mixed emotions in the predominantly pleasant situations. Study 2 replicated the findings by asking participants to recall how they felt in their past pleasant, unpleasant, and mixed situations. The findings suggest that both Americans and Japanese feel mixed emotions, but the kinds of situation in which they typically do so depends on culture. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cultural influence on the perception of movement: The trapezoidal illusion among Zulus.

In cross-cultural studies it was noted that "the perception of motion as represented in the rotating trapezoidal window is governed, under optimal conditions, by nativistic determinants or by the unconscious utilization of residual (but not immediately relevant) experience, or both… . At the same time, object connotation (meaning) based on closely relevant cultural experience helps to determine the nature of the perceived movement under marginal conditions." 24 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Proud Americans and lucky Japanese: Cultural differences in appraisal and corresponding emotion.

Appraisal theories of emotion propose that the emotions people experience correspond to their appraisals of their situation. In other words, individual differences in emotional experiences reflect differing interpretations of the situation. We hypothesized that in similar situations, people in individualist and collectivist cultures experience different emotions because of culturally divergent causal attributions for success and failure (i.e., agency appraisals). In a test of this hypothesis, American and Japanese participants recalled a personal experience (Study 1) or imagined themselves to be in a situation (Study 2) in which they succeeded or failed, and then reported their agency appraisals and emotions. Supporting our hypothesis, cultural differences in emotions corresponded to differences in attributions. For example, in success situations, Americans reported stronger self-agency emotions (e.g., proud) than did Japanese, whereas Japanese reported a stronger situation-agency emotion (lucky). Also, cultural differences in attribution and emotion were largely explained by differences in self-enhancing motivation. When Japanese and Americans were induced to make the same attribution (Study 2), cultural differences in emotions became either nonsignificant or were markedly reduced. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Public understanding of climate change in the United States.

This article considers scientific and public understandings of climate change and addresses the following question: Why is it that while scientific evidence has accumulated to document global climate change and scientific opinion has solidified about its existence and causes, U.S. public opinion has not and has instead become more polarized? Our review supports a constructivist account of human judgment. Public understanding is affected by the inherent difficulty of understanding climate change, the mismatch between people's usual modes of understanding and the task, and, particularly in the United States, a continuing societal struggle to shape the frames and mental models people use to understand the phenomena. We conclude by discussing ways in which psychology can help to improve public understanding of climate change and link a better understanding to action. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interparental conflict and children's school adjustment: The explanatory role of children's internal representations of interparental and parent-child relationships.

This study examined how children's insecure internal representations of interparental and parent-child relationships served as explanatory mechanisms in multiple pathways linking interparental conflict and parent emotional unavailability with the emotional and classroom engagement difficulties the children had in their adjustment to school. With their parents, 229 kindergarten children (127 girls and 102 boys, mean age = 6.0 years, SD = .50, at Wave 1) participated in this multimethod, 3-year longitudinal investigation. Findings revealed that children's insecure representations of the interparental relationship were a significant intervening mechanism in associations between observational ratings of interparental conflict and child and teacher reports on children's emotional and classroom difficulties in school over a 2-year period. Moreover, increased parental emotional unavailability accompanying high levels of interparental conflict was associated with children's insecure representations of the parent-child relationship and children's difficulties in classroom engagement at school entry. The findings highlight the importance of understanding the intrinsic processes that contribute to difficulties with stage-salient tasks for children who are experiencing interparental discord. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anterior cingulate activity and level of cognitive conflict: Explicit comparisons.

The role of anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in attention is a matter of debate. One hypothesis suggests that its role is to monitor response-level conflict, but explicit evidence is somewhat lacking. In this study, the activation of ACC was compared in (a) color and number standard Stroop tasks in which response preparation and interference shared modality (response-level conflict) and (b) color and number matching Stroop tasks in which response preparation and interference did not share modality (non-response-level conflict). In the congruent conditions, there was no effect of task type. In the interference conditions, anterior cingulate activity in the matching tasks was less than that in the standard tasks. These results support the hypothesis that ACC specifically mediates generalized modality-independent selection processes invoked by response competition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the cultural guises of cognitive dissonance: The case of Easterners and Westerners.

Cognitive dissonance and effects of self-affirmation on dissonance arousal were examined cross-culturally. In Studies 1 and 2, European Canadians justified their choices more when they made them for themselves, whereas Asian Canadians (Study 1) or Japanese (Study 2) justified their choices more when they made them for a friend. In Study 3, an interdependent self-affirmation reduced dissonance for Asian Canadians but not for European Canadians. In Study 4, when Asian Canadians made choices for a friend, an independent self-affirmation reduced dissonance for bicultural Asian Canadians but not for monocultural Asian Canadians. These studies demonstrate that both Easterners and Westerners can experience dissonance, but culture shapes the situations in which dissonance is aroused and reduced. Implications of these cultural differences for theories of cognitive dissonance and self-affirmation are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cultural affordances and emotional experience: Socially engaging and disengaging emotions in Japan and the United States.

The authors hypothesized that whereas Japanese culture encourages socially engaging emotions (e.g., friendly feelings and guilt), North American culture fosters socially disengaging emotions (e.g., pride and anger). In two cross-cultural studies, the authors measured engaging and disengaging emotions repeatedly over different social situations and found support for this hypothesis. As predicted, Japanese showed a pervasive tendency to reportedly experience engaging emotions more strongly than they experienced disengaging emotions, but Americans showed a reversed tendency. Moreover, as also predicted, Japanese subjective well-being (i.e., the experience of general positive feelings) was more closely associated with the experience of engaging positive emotions than with that of disengaging emotions. Americans tended to show the reversed pattern. The established cultural differences in the patterns of emotion suggest the consistent and systematic cultural shaping of emotion over time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Australian influences on Elton Mayo: The construct of revery in industrial society.

Elton Mayo was born in Australia and spent most of his first 42 years living in that country. This article explores the Australian context in which he developed his views of industrial society. There are key differences between the political context of Australia compared with that of the United States during the time that Mayo developed his approach to psychology and the role of workers in industry. In addition, the social context in which Mayo established his career was shaped by significant political events in Australia. The construct of revery, which describes a specific state of consciousness, is central to Mayo's early theorizing and was developed by Mayo partly in reaction to political and industrial conflict occurring in Australia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Effect of Category Learning on the Representation of Shape: Dimensions Can Be Biased but Not Differentiated.

Recent studies have suggested a profound influence of category learning on visual perception, resulting in independent processing of previously integral dimensions. The authors reinvestigate this issue for shape dimensions. They first extend previous findings that some shape dimensions (aspect ratio and curvature) are processed in a separable way, whereas others (radial frequency components) are not. They then show that a category-learning phase improved the discrimination of a relevant with respect to an irrelevant dimension, but only for separable dimensions. No similar effect was found on the relative sensitivity for integral shape dimensions. Thus, category learning is capable of biasing separable shape dimensions but does not alter the status of dimensions in the visual system as either separable or integral. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How negotiators get to yes: Predicting the constellation of strategies used across cultures to negotiate conflict.

Individualism, hierarchy, polychronicity, and explicit-contracting values explain why managers from Germany, Japan, and the United States use a different mix of strategies to negotiate workplace conflict. Hypotheses extend prior research in showing that conflict behavior is multiply determined and that each culture uses a variety of interests, regulations, and power-based conflict management strategies. Results of actual (rather than survey-based) conflict resolution behavior suggest several fruitful avenues for future research, including examining the inferred meaning of negotiation arguments, analyzing interaction effects of cultural value dimensions, studying the effectiveness of different strategies across cultures, and examining whether strategic adjustments are made during intercultural conflict management. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Grief Processing and Deliberate Grief Avoidance: A Prospective Comparison of Bereaved Spouses and Parents in the United States and the People's Republic of China.

In this study, the authors measured grief processing and deliberate grief avoidance and examined their relationship to adjustment at 4 and 18 months of bereavement for 2 types of losses (spouse, child) in 2 cultures (People's Republic of China, United States). Three hypotheses were compared: the traditional grief work assumption, a conditional grief work hypothesis, and a view of grief processing as a form of rumination absent among resilient individuals. Although cultural differences in grief processing and avoidance were observed, the factor structure of these measures proved invariant across cultures. Consistent with the grief work as rumination hypothesis, both grief processing and deliberate grief avoidance predicted poor long-term adjustment for U.S. participants. Furthermore, initial grief processing predicted later grief processing in both cultures. However, among the participants in the People's Republic of China, neither grief processing nor deliberate avoidance evidenced clear psychological consequences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age-related differences in the course of cognitive skill acquisition: The role of regional cortical shrinkage and cognitive resources.

This study examined the impact of age-related differences in regional cerebral volumes and cognitive resources on acquisition of a cognitive skill. Volumes of brain regions were measured on magnetic resonance images of healthy adults (aged 22-80). At the early stage of learning to solve the Tower of Hanoi puzzle, speed and efficiency were associated with age, prefrontal cortex volume, and working memory. A similar pattern of brain-behavior associations was observed with perseveration measured on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. None of the examined structural brain variables were important at the later stages of skill acquisition. When hypertensive participants were excluded, the effect of prefrontal shrinkage on executive aspects of performance was no longer significant, but the effect of working memory remained. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Epistemic motives and cultural conformity: Need for closure, culture, and context as determinants of conflict judgments.

Three studies support the proposal that need for closure (NFC) involves a desire for consensual validation that leads to cultural conformity. Individual differences in NFC interact with cultural group variables to determine East Asian versus Western differences in conflict style and procedural preferences (Study 1), information gathering in disputes (Study 2), and fairness judgment in reward allocations (Study 3). Results from experimental tests indicate that the relevance of NFC to cultural conformity reflects consensus motives rather than effort minimization (Study 2) or political conservatism (Study 3). Implications for research on conflict resolution and motivated cultural cognition are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cultural and contextual influences in mental health help seeking: A focus on ethnic minority youth.

In this article, a mental health help-seeking model is offered as a framework for understanding cultural and contextual factors that affect ethnic minority adolescents' pathways into mental health services. The effects of culture and context are profound across the entire help-seeking pathway, from problem identification to choice of treatment providers. The authors argue that an understanding of these help-seeking pathways provides insights into ethnic group differences in mental health care utilization and that further research in this area is needed, (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The interaction of job autonomy and conflict with supervisor in China and the United States: A qualitative and quantitative comparison.

We examined employees' conflict with their supervisors in cross-cultural work settings. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected from 332 and 302 university employees in the United States and China, respectively. First, the qualitative data revealed that 54% versus 42% of supervisor conflicts were attributable to low job control in the United States and China, respectively. The quantitative data indicated that job autonomy was negatively related to supervisor conflict in the United States but not in China. Second, both quantitative and qualitative data showed that Chinese employees had more supervisor conflict than their U.S. counterparts. Third, both type of data suggested that supervisor conflict was more strongly related to job strains in China than in the United States. Finally, job autonomy played different roles in these two countries. It buffered supervisor conflict—job strain relations in the United States but exaggerated such relations in China. Therefore, our study provided a possible explanation to the inconsistent findings regarding the buffering effect of job autonomy on job stressors. Employees' cultural background may complicate the process. The qualitative data largely supported the quantitative findings and provided detailed information on employees' job stress experience in the cross-cultural context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)