Pancultural self-enhancement.

The culture movement challenged the universality of the self-enhancement motive by proposing that the motive is pervasive in individualistic cultures (the West) but absent in collectivistic cultures (the East). The present research posited that Westerners and Easterners use different tactics to achieve the same goal: positive self-regard. Study 1 tested participants from differing cultural backgrounds (the United States vs. Japan), and Study 2 tested participants of differing self-construals (independent vs. interdependent). Americans and independents self-enhanced on individualistic attributes, whereas Japanese and interdependents self-enhanced on collectivistic attributes. Independents regarded individualistic attributes, whereas interdependents regarded collectivistic attributes, as personally important. Attribute importance mediated self-enhancement. Regardless of cultural background or self-construal, people self-enhance on personally important dimensions. Self-enhancement is a universal human motive. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Behaviour of quantity surveyors as organizational citizens

Understanding the individual's collectivistic orientations toward group goals and task activities is critical for developing cooperative and productive teams. The complex environment of modern construction, where the emphasis shifts from individually oriented to team‐based work, has led to many challenges. There are important issues of cooperative behaviours in a world of cultural pluralism in which interpersonal cooperation is juxtaposed with organizational citizenship behaviour. Behaviours of construction project participants are important manifestations of culture that are dependent upon norms, values and beliefs. Certain organizational cultures support individualistic behaviours while others emphasize the benefits to the collective whole. Collectivistic orientation is examined as the cultural dimension of individualism‐collectivism (IC) and found to be related to organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) where the correlations of IC and most OCB variables are significant for quantity surveyors in Hong Kong. Generally, the (more) individualistic persons are less likely to exhibit organizational citizenship behaviours.     

GENETIC ALGORITHM APPLICATION TO THE STANDARD ARABIC PHONEMES CLASSIFICATION

The goal of this article is the application of genetic algorithms (GAs) to the automatic speech recognition (ASR) domain at the acoustic sequences classification level. Speech recognition has been cast as a pattern classification problem where we would like to classify an input acoustic signal into one of all possible phonemes. Also, the supervised classification has been formulated as a function optimization problem. Thus, we have attempted to recognize Standard Arabic (SA) phonemes of continuous, naturally spoken speech by using GAs, which have several advantages in resolving complicated optimization problems. In SA, there are 40 sounds. We have analyzed a corpus that contains several sentences composed of the whole SA phoneme types in the initial, medium, and final positions, recorded by several male speakers. Furthermore, the acoustic segments classification and the GAs have been explored. Among a set of classifiers such as Bayesian, likelihood, and distance classifier, we have used the distance classifier. It is based on the classification measure criterion. Therefore, we have used the decision rule Manhattan distance as the fitness functions for our GA evaluations. The corpus phonemes were extracted and classified successfully with an overall accuracy of 90.20%.     

The radical empiricism of William James and philosophy of history.

William James's philosophy of history is explored in his classic psychological and philosophical works and in 2 articles he devoted specifically to the topic. Historical issues are set forth in terms of James's individualism, pragmatism, and radical empiricism. It is argued that a Jamesian philosophy of history provides a reasoned and believable middle way between the extremes of realism and constructionism. James believed that historical change is brought about both by the contributions of individuals and by forces in cultures and the environment that help shape the direction of things. Finally, the author explores implications of James's pluralism for history and his quarrel with absolutistic conceptual schemes that attempt to reduce all things to 1 thing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cultural psychology, a new look: Reply to Bond (2002), Fiske (2002), Kitayama (2002), and Miller (2002).

M. H. Bond (2002) (see record 2002-00183-002), A. P. Fiske (2002) (see record 2002-00183-003), S. Kitayama (2002) (see record 2002-00183-004), and J. G. Miller (2002) (see record 2002-00183-005) joined D. Oyserman, H. M. Coon, and M. Kemmelmeier (2002) (see record 2002-00183-001) in highlighting limitations of the individualism-collectivism model of culture. Concern is warranted; nevertheless, individualism-collectivism helps structure discourse on the influence of culture on the mind. To avoid level-of-analysis entanglements, Oyserman et al propose an integrative model that includes distal, proximal, and situated cultural features of societies and internalized models of these features, highlights the importance of subjective construal, and uses evolutionary perspectives to clarify the basic problems cultures address. Framed this way, it is clear that, depending on situational requirements, both individualism- and collectivism-focused strategies are adaptive; thus, it is likely that human minds have adapted to think both ways. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individualistic and collectivistic worldviews: Implications for understanding perceptions of racial discrimination in African Americans and British Caribbean Americans.

Cultural worldviews and perceived racial discrimination were examined among Americans (n = 106) and British Caribbean Americans (n = 95), both of African descent, who were recruited through university student organizations, community organizations, and snowball sampling. Consistent with public perceptions of differences in the experience of race among these 2 groups, multiple regression analyses revealed African Americans were more likely than British Caribbean Americans to perceive racial discrimination in the United States. In addition, a cultural worldview focus on individuality and equality (i.e., horizontal individualism) moderated the relationship between ethnic group and perceived racial discrimination. British Caribbean Americans who endorsed greater agreement with horizontal individualism were less likely to perceive racial discrimination. The same worldview was unrelated to African Americans' perceptions of racial discrimination. The results are discussed with respect to within-group heterogeneity among persons of African descent. Implications for counseling persons of African descent and future research directions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ethos of independence across regions in the United States: The production-adoption model of cultural change.

Contemporary U.S. culture has a highly individualistic ethos. Nevertheless, exactly how this ethos was historically fostered remains unanalyzed. A new model of dynamic cultural change maintains that sparsely populated, novel environments that impose major threats to survival, such as the Western frontier in the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries, breed strong values of independence, which in turn guide the production of new practices that encourage self-promotion and focused, competitive work. Faced with few significant threats to survival, residents in traditional areas are likely to seek social prestige by adopting existing practices of other, higher status groups. Because of both the massive economic success of the frontier and the official endorsement of the frontier by the federal government, eastern residents of the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries may have actively adopted the frontier practices of independence, thus incorporating the frontier ethos of independence to form the contemporary U.S. national culture. Available evidence is reviewed, and implications for further research on cultural change are suggested. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The work–family interface in the United States and Singapore: Conflict across cultures.

This article examines the work–family interface in a cross-cultural comparison between two nationally representative samples from the United States (n = 1,860) and Singapore (n = 1,035) with emphasis on work–family conflict. Family-to-work conflict was negatively related to marital satisfaction in both Singapore and the United States, although the effect was stronger in the United States. Similarly, family-to-work conflict was positively related to job satisfaction in the United States but was negatively related in Singapore. As expected, schedule flexibility was negatively related to depression in the United States, but in Singapore the relationship was positive. These findings suggest that theoretical relationships in the work–family interface developed in the more culturally individualistic West may need to be adapted when studying populations in the more collectivist East. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Religion's influence on culture and psychology.

Comments on E. Sampson's (see record 2001-16333-002) linking individualism and collectivism to religious origins. The author provides examples of cultures which are both Christian and collectivist, in contrast to what is predicted by Sampson's theory. The author draws upon comments made by L. S. Vygotsky on the culture of precommunist Russia to highlight the difficulty with abstracting the influence of religion on individualism and collectivism from the traditional East-West framework. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)