Showing papers in "Asian Journal of Social Psychology in 2014"

Meaning, grounding, and the construction of social reality

Abstract: Culture has become a critical concept for social psychology over the past quarter of a century. Yet, cultural dynamics, the process and mechanism of formation, maintenance, and transformation of culture, has begun to be investigated only recently. This article reports the current state of play of a research program that takes cultural dynamics as its central question. In this approach, humans are construed as meaning making animals that create, recreate, and exchange information, and turn it into a meaningful basis for action. The locus of meaning making and remaking is an everyday joint activity. The grounding model of cultural transmission describes how cultural information is deliberately or inadvertently transmitted in a joint activity. As we go about our business of living our daily lives, we ground information to our common ground, and construct a social reality that is mutually meaningful and yet only local. If locally grounded information is further generalized to a large collective and disseminated through social networks, repeated and iterative activations of the grounding process maintain the social reality of the collective that we take for granted. Implications of the grounding model of cultural transmission and future research directions are discussed. © 2014 Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd with the Asian Association of Social Psychology and the Japanese Group Dynamics Association.

Cyber victimization and adolescent self‐esteem: The role of communication with parents

Abstract: Internet use has increased rapidly in recent years, and has inevitably led to some negative outcomes, notably cyber bullying and cyber victimization. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of cyber victimization and parent–adolescent communication on self-esteem, and the moderating role of parent–adolescent communication in the relationship between cyber victimization and self-esteem among Turkish adolescents. The participants were 337 adolescents with a mean age of 16.37, (SD = 0.89). The results of hierarchical regression analysis reveal that self-esteem was predicted negatively by cyber victimization, but positively by mother–adolescent communication. Results also indicate the moderating roles of parent–adolescent communication in the links between cyber victimization and self-esteem. The findings indicate a need to consider the parent–adolescent relationship while working with victimized youth, and the implications for research and practice are discussed.

Work stress and employee well-being: The critical role of Zhong-Yong

Abstract: In the pursuit of well-being at work, work stress is always an inescapable challenge. However, existing research shows that the relationships between work stress and employee outcomes are inconsistent, which indicates that the concept of work stress needs further investigation. Moreover, Zhong-Yong serves as a cognitive strategy to coping with stress as well as being a pivotal life wisdom and practical rationality. Using a questionnaire survey, this study explores the relationship between work stress, employee well-being, and Zhong-Yong beliefs. The work stress was classified into challenge- and hindrance-related stress while emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction were used as well-being indicators. Using a sample of 394 employees from private enterprises in Taiwan as subjects, the results show that (1) hindrance-related stress is destructive to employee well-being; (2) challenge-related stress is positively associated with emotional exhaustion but has no significant relation with job satisfaction; (3) Zhong-Yong beliefs mitigate the harm from hindrance-related stress on employee well-being; and (4) Zhong-Yong beliefs weaken the negative effects of challenge-related stress on emotional exhaustion, and transform challenge-related stress into eustress for job satisfaction.

Culture, context and society – The underexplored potential of critical realism as a philosophical framework for theory and practice

Abstract: This article explains how the meta-theoretical framework of critical realism addresses methodological issues of concern to social psychologists and social scientists. The article outlines key tenets of critical realism – its notion of the stratified nature of reality and generative mechanisms as powers in natural and social objects that cause things; its notion of knowledge of reality as stratified rather than only empirical; its acceptance of epistemological but not judgmental relativism; and its monist ontology. The article then introduces realist social theory to provide a framework for understanding the society–person connection. It explains how issues relating to culture, context, and society raised in the indigenous psychology English literature might be addressed from a critical realist perspective. Some implications arising from adopting a critical realist perspective in research practice are outlined and social psychologists and social scientists are encouraged to explore the potential of critical realism as a meta-theoretical framework and new paradigm.

Self-construal and students’ math self-concept, anxiety and achievement: An examination of achievement goals as mediators

Abstract: This is the final draft, after peer-review, of a manuscript published in Asian Journal of Social Psychology. The published version is available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ajsp.12058

Which personality traits are associated with cognitions related to problematic Internet use

Abstract: The effects of the Big Five personality traits on cognitions regarding problematic Internet use (PIU) have not been studied. The present paper aims to evaluate the effects of personality traits on cognitions regarding PIU that are classified as loneliness/depression, diminished impulse control, distraction and social control. Additionally, the mediator effect of the Big Five personality traits on the relationship between time spent online and cognitions regarding PIU was tested in a sample of 494 Turkish university students. Hierarchical regression analysis results reveal that controlling the effects of socio-demographic variables and time spent online, higher neuroticism and lower conscientiousness were related to cognitions regarding PIU. Moreover, results of structural equation modelling indicate that the relationship between time spent online and cognitions regarding PIU was independently mediated by extraversion, openness and agreeableness. Examining the role of all of the Big Five personality traits (especially neuroticism and conscientiousness) on PIU will increase understanding in further studies.

How perceived interpersonal justice relates to job burnout and intention to leave: The role of leader–member exchange and cognition‐based trust in leaders.

Abstract: Intense competition among companies makes it particularly important for organizations to retain talented and skilled employees to maintain their competitive advantage. This study examines the linkage between employees' perceptions of the interpersonal justice demonstrated by their leaders and consequent job burnout resulting in turnover intention by focusing on the mediating role of leader–member exchange (LMX) as well as the moderating role of employees' cognition-based trust in their leaders. Data were obtained from 158 MBA students attending a large university in South Korea. Using structural equation modelling, we examined an integrative model that combines interpersonal justice, LMX, job burnout, and turnover intention. The results reveal that (a) LMX partially mediates the relationships between interpersonal justice and job burnout and (b) employees' cognition-based trust in their leaders moderates the relationship between LMX and job burnout. By examining the mediating role of LMX as well as the moderating role of cognition-based trust in the relationship between perceived interpersonal justice and employee job burnout, this study (1) provides a comprehensive explanation of employee job burnout and (2) outlines the implications for job burnout research and practice.

Social identity gratifications of social network sites and their impact on collective action participation

Abstract: Collective action has been studied by social psychologists for over a century. Social network sites such as Facebook have further extended the ability of individuals to instigate social, political and organizational change, and provide a new context in which to study collective action. Drawing on social identity theory (SIT), self-categorization theory (SCT) and uses and gratifications theory (UGT), this study explores the role of individuals’ group identification, social identity gratifications (SIG) and Facebook group use intensity on their willingness to participate in collective actions instigated through a Facebook group. Members of a Facebook group representing a cause against management completed an online survey (N = 406). Factor analyses reveal that motivations based on psychological affiliation with the group explained the most variance for Facebook group use. Moreover, compared to Facebook group use intensity, SIG were the stronger mediator between group identification and willingness to participate in collective action. The study demonstrates the utility of blending concepts from SIT, SCT and UGT to explore how socially motivated uses of the media can predict collective actions.

Moral disengagement moderates the predicted effect of trait self-control on self-reported aggression

Abstract: An increasing number of studies reveal that self-control is an important preventative factor for aggression. However, the involvement of potential explanatory variables has received less research attention. Drawing upon the feedback-loop model of self-control, the current research assumed that the preventing effect of trait self-control on aggression may be moderated by moral disengagement. Self-reported measures of trait self-control, moral disengagement and aggression were administered to 946 Chinese university students. Results show that trait self-control had a negative effect on physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger and hostility, whereas moral disengagement positively predicted each of these constructs. Of particular importance was a significant interaction between trait self-control and moral disengagement for verbal aggression and hostility. Specifically, the preventing effect of trait self-control on these two types of aggression was more pronounced in individuals with low rather than high moral disengagement. In conclusion, low conditional endorsement of transgressive acts and having high trait self-control are both important individual-difference variables that explain reduced aggression.

Social role effects on gender stereotyping in Germany and Japan

Abstract: Social role theory postulates that gender stereotypes are restrained for men and women observed in the same social role. Cultural differences in the valuation of communal attributes might moderate this effect. To examine this possibility, 288 participants (144 German, 144 Japanese) estimated the communal and agentic attributes of an average man or woman described in a male-dominated role, a female-dominated role, or without role information. We hypothesized and found that in Germany and Japan, participants perceived men as more agentic than women without role information and as similarly agentic in the same role. However, for communion, German and Japanese participants reacted differently. German participants perceived women as more communal than men without role information and in male-dominated roles and perceived men as more communal than women in female-dominated roles. Japanese participants perceived all targets as similarly communal, regardless of role or gender, suggesting that communion is generally expected in Japan.

Blue or red? The effects of colour on the emotions of Chinese people

Abstract: Two experiments were performed to examine the effects of red and blue on the emotional pleasure of Chinese people. Experiment 1 explored the effects of the ‘physical’ colours red and blue on emotion, and the results showed that red induced positive and negative emotion, while blue only induced positive emotion. Experiment 2 further explored the effects of the ‘verbal’ colours red and blue on emotion, and the results showed that red induced only positive emotion, while blue induced neither positive nor negative emotion. The findings indicate that the influence of colour on emotion is rooted in both natural and social associations. For Chinese, the associations between blue and positive emotion, and red and negative emotion, were natural associations; however, the associations between red and positive emotion were social associations. Moreover, physical colour and verbal colour stimuli induced emotions by activating different mechanisms: physical colour induced emotions via both natural and social associations, whereas verbal colour induced emotions via social associations.

The devil wears Prada: Advertisements of luxury brands evoke feelings of social exclusion

Abstract: Luxury goods symbolically represent social segregation and exclusion, thereby communicating superiority, exclusivity and distance. In three experiments, we tested the hypothesis that exposure to luxury advertisements in Chinese samples activates mental representations similar to those of social exclusion. Participants were more likely to perceive being rejected by models in the luxury advertisements than models in the non-luxury advertisements. Moreover, exposure to luxury advertisements increased participants' expectations of being rejected in a subsequent ambiguous social interaction. Finally, looking at luxury advertisements resulted in decreased life satisfaction, and this effect was more pronounced for participants with high rejection sensitivity than those with low rejection sensitivity. Overall, the results suggest that luxury advertisements evoke feelings of social exclusion in Chinese.

Humour styles, gelotophobia and self-esteem among Chinese and Indian university students

Abstract: This study examined the relationship between humour styles, gelotophobia and self-esteem among 102 Indian and 101 Hong Kong university students. The Humour Styles Questionnaire, the GELOPH-15 Scale and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale were used. Indian students rated the importance of humour significantly higher than Hong Kong Chinese students and considered themselves as being significantly more humorous as well. Both Indian and Hong Kong Chinese students engaged in significantly more affiliative and self-enhancing humour. Indian students engaged in significantly more affiliative and self-enhancing humour and reported less gelotophobia than Hong Kong students. Gelotophobia was negatively correlated with self-esteem and affiliative humour in both samples and was positively correlated with self-defeating humour in the Indian sample only. Affiliate humour mediated the relationship between self-esteem and gelotophobia in both samples whereas self-defeating humour mediated the relationship in the Indian sample only. Taken together, both Indian students and Hong Kong students valued adaptive humour, but Indian students valued humour more than Hong Kong students. This study is a pioneering study of its kind conducted in a Chinese-Indian sample.

Payback: Effects of relationship and cultural norms on reciprocity

Abstract: This experimental investigation explores differences in reciprocal norms between friends and strangers and the effects of culture on reciprocity. Based on altruistic and strong reciprocity theories, a hybrid trust-dictator game tested the influence of relationship (i.e. friends vs. strangers), treatment (i.e. positive vs. negative) and culture (i.e. collectivistic vs. individualistic) on reciprocation. The results show that participants reciprocated more positively when treated positively in general. However, the results demonstrate intercultural differences in reciprocal norms, specifically in the negative treatment condition. Participants from the individualistic culture provided stronger punishment to the norm violator, compared to participants from the collectivistic culture. We discuss implications of the impact of relationship and culture on reciprocation with respect to the olive branch response.

The role of collectivism orientation in differential normative mechanisms: A cross-national study of anti-smoking public service announcement effectiveness

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to explicate the complexities of the mechanism through which norm messages achieve their intended goals, and to examine how the normative mechanism differs according to the collectivism orientation of two culturally distinct countries. To analyze data collected from 464 US and Korean college students, it uses the O-S-O-R approach, which represents four elements of the communication process – (pre) Orientation-Stimuli-(post) Orientation-Response. Multi-group path analysis yields three major findings. First, collectivism orientation is significantly related to injunctive norm perception (INP) only among Korean respondents. Second, descriptive norm perceptions (DNP) and INP as post-orientations lead to behavioural intention through different mechanisms. That is, INP leads to behavioural intention directly regardless of types of norm messages and country, but indirectly through issue importance only in the IN message condition among the US. participants. By contrast, DNP leads to behavioural intention only directly, except for the DN message condition among the US participants in which there is no such significant relationship. Third, the normative mechanism was more rigorous and consistent among Koreans than Americans.

College students' search for sexual health information from their best friends: An application of the theory of motivated information management

Abstract: Guided by the theory of motivated information management, this study investigated the extent to which Singaporean college students' sexual health information-seeking behaviour could be accounted for by their anxiety of uncertainty discrepancy, their perceived outcomes of information seeking and their perceived confidence in seeking and coping with sexual health information acquired from their best friends. Taking into account that issue relevance may play a role in individuals' health decision-making, this study also examined the effect of perceived vulnerability on respondents' sexual health information-seeking behaviour. An online survey was conducted with 202 undergraduate students at a university in Singapore. Respondents were asked to report the frequency with which they sought four types of sexual health information from their best friends: unwanted pregnancy, abortion, HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections. Survey data showed that respondents' uncertainty discrepancy was positively associated with their anxiety. Anxiety had negative effects on efficacy and outcome expectancy. Outcome expectancy was positively associated with efficacy. Both efficacy and perceived vulnerability accounted for a significant amount of variance in respondents' sexual health information-seeking behaviour. Findings from this study contribute to a better understanding of young adults' sexual health information behaviour in a Singapore context.

Relationship of cultural values to counterproductive work behaviour: The mediating role of job stress

Abstract: The purposes of this study were to investigate how cultural values are related to counterproductive work behaviour (CWB), and to examine whether individuals' job stress acts as a mediator between cultural types and CWB. Using an anonymous questionnaire survey, the sample was comprised of 440 employees working in government institutes and private sectors in Thailand. The results show that job stress not only has a direct relationship to CWB, but also partially mediates the relationship between cultural values and CWB. The strong mediating links were between horizontal collectivism and CWB and between vertical individualism and CWB.

Communication and culture: A complexity theory approach

Abstract: In the target paper, Kashima (2014) harvests insights from communication research, shared reality theory in social psychology, diffusionism in cognitive anthropology and connectionism in cognitive psychology to propose a neodiffusionist account of culture. A major contribution of this account is that it offers a social psychological explanation of the formation, maintenance, and transformation of culture over time. According to this account, cultural ideas and practices are those that are widespread within a designated human group; they are ‘generated (largely randomly), socially transmitted, and retained within a human population due to their adaptive advantage’ (p. 81). Communication and context-specific shared reality The focus in Kashima’s analysis is thesocial transmission of knowledge through grounding of meaning in interpersonal communication. Communication is a joint activity through which socially bounded participants negotiate meanings in concrete physical, temporal, and social settings. A primary goal of communication is to attain mutual acceptance of meanings in a conversation at a sufficient level so that the conversation can move forward. Successful grounding requires perspective taking and the coordination of effort and perspectives. As a result, compared to messages intended for the self (e.g. private or internal speeches), messages intended for a social audience typically contain fewer idiosyncratic expressions and more expressions that the communicators assume to be comprehensible to the audience (audience design). Once shared meanings are established through communication, they become part of the intersubjective reality shared among the communicators. From this perspective, grounding is a dynamic, recursive process whereby communicators initiating a new conversation rely on their initial common ground to formulate messages for each other, modify their common ground as the conversation moves forward, and establish mutually accepted meanings at the conclusion of the conversation. The neo-diffusionist account resonates with the postWhorfian approach to communication and culture (Krauss & Chiu, 1998), which argues that ‘through communication, the private cognitions of individuals can be made public and directed toward a shared representation of the referent’ (p. 53). Specifically, using language to describe a state of affairs can evoke or create an internal representation that differs from and may overshadow the internal representations of the same state of affairs evoked or created by other means of encoding. Moreover, how a state of affairs is described in verbal communication is affected by the contexts of language use, including the ground rules and assumptions that govern usage, audience design, and the immediate, ongoing, and emerging properties of the communication situation. Furthermore, the linguistic representations evoked or created in communication can affect a language user’s subsequent cognitions (Chiu, Krauss & Lee, 1999; Chiu, Leung & Kwan, 2007; Lau, Chiu & Lee, 2001; Lau, Lee & Chiu, 2004). Indeed, consistent with the neo-diffusionist account, our research on referential communication shows that in the process of interpersonal communication, each communicator assesses the partner’s view of the referent based on the partner’s community membership, prior communications, the referent context, and the emergent properties of the communication situations, and tailors a message that is appropriate to the common ground (Lau, Chiu & Hong, 2001). Once consensus is reached on the meaning of the referent, the consensual meaning becomes a part of the communicators’ shared reality and may overshadow previous representations of the referent (Chiu, Krauss & Lau, 1998).

Aligning inside and outside perspectives of the self: A cross-cultural difference in self-perception

Abstract: Past research shows that European Americans tend to take a first-person perspective to understand the self and are unlikely to align the inside look with the outside gaze, whereas Asians tend to take a third-person perspective and are likely to shift their inside look in the direction of the outsize gaze. In three experiments, we compared Asians and European Americans' self-perceptions when the presence of their parents in the background of self-perception was primed or otherwise. Without the priming, both European Americans and Asians viewed themselves more positively from their own perspective than from their parents' perspective. With the priming, only Asians lowered the positivity of their self-perceptions to match the perceived positivity of the self in the parents' perspective. These results suggest that Asians do not have a static, passive tendency to assimilate their self-views into the perceived external assessments of the self. Rather, their self-views are fluid and flexible.

Intercultural interactions and cultural transformation

Abstract: Increasingly psychologists are going beyond the study of cultural differences to study cultural dynamics, the formation, maintenance, and transformation of cultural representations over time (Kashima, 2008). At the vanguard of this movement, Kashima (2014, this issue) elucidates how communication pragmatics involving ‘common ground’ work to create and then perpetuate cultural representations and identities. Common ground is ‘a set of meanings that are mutually known, believed, presupposed, or taken for granted by the participants of a joint activity’ (Kashima, 2014, this issue). People form common ground in an interaction not only through what is explicitly said but also through what they infer from the other’s affiliations and histories. In a conversational process called grounding, one interactant checks his or her interpretation of the other’s words and the other confirms this interpretation. As a result, both interactants are left with the perception that the other shares the belief. Similar results follow from broader forms of ingroup communications. When someone speaks in a way that assumes some belief (a comedian’s inside jokes, a politician’s use of coded rhetoric) and the audience acknowledges the point (laughs at the joke, claps at the political reference), everyone comes away with the sense that this belief is shared. Similarly, Anderson (2006) analyzed how mass media (nationally broadcast radio, widely circulated newspapers) contribute to citizens forming a notion of national common ground. In sum, perceptions of belief consensus (i.e. cultural representations) are the precipitate of ingroup interactions. These perceptions of belief consensus then contribute to people’s notions of what distinguishes their group from others (i.e. ingroup identities or prototypes). Speakers use assumed common ground to tailor communication and to craft statements that are easily interpretable but not obvious (Clark, 1996). Audiences also use it to disambiguate and interpret a speaker’s utterances (Sperber & Wilson, 1986). Every act of using common ground increases the sharedness of a given belief (and the mutual perception of its sharedness). In sum, everyday ingroup communication exploits shared beliefs and also perpetuates them. Although cultural formation and maintenance are underexplored problems, cultural transformation is an even greater challenge. Ultimately a science of cultural dynamics ought to strive to identify a common set of mechanisms that underlie both cultural persistence and cultural transformation. In this essay, we argue that some important forces for cultural transformation come from intercultural interactions – communicating, interacting and coping with other cultures. Kashima (2014, this issue) focuses on withinculture communication. This comes in a tradition of explaining a culture as internal to a discrete population, a view that Sperber (1996) summarized as ‘culture is the precipitate of cognition and communication in a human population.’ However, no culture is unaffected by its neighbors; cultures influence each other through the individuals who span them. So a given culture is shaped not only by within-group interactions but also by interactions across cultures. Here we analyze how some of the same processes that Kashima (2014, this issue) describes in within-group interactions play out in across-group interactions. The same communication processes that work toward cultural maintenance in within-group interactions become springs for cultural transformation in across-group interactions. First we focus on how motives relevant to common ground distort people’s retelling of stories. While they perpetuate stereotypes in communication within a cultural group, they produce stereotype-challenging messages in communication across cultural groups. Second, we review findings from several literatures on how cross-cultural interactions affect cultural identities. As social identity research has found, people construct an image of the prototypical ingroup member in part by contrasting against salient outgroups. Recent cultural psychology research explores how inflows of foreign groups give rise, under some conditions, to cultural closure – defensive psychological processes and social movements that narrow ingroup identities.

Preadolescents' borderline personality features in a non‐Western urban context: Concurrent and longitudinal associations with physical and relational aggression, friendship exclusivity and peer victimization

Abstract: The present study examined children's borderline personality features and their association with developmentally appropriate factors, including friendship exclusivity, forms of aggression and peer maltreatment with a non-Western urban sample. The participants consisted of 234 Japanese preadolescents who were in the fourth and fifth grade (50% girls; ages: 9–11). Results of correlational analyses show that borderline personality features were stable during a six-month period (r = 0.55). Moreover, results of mixed linear models indicate that friendship exclusivity was associated with elevated borderline personality features concurrently and longitudinally, after controlling for the effects of physical and relational aggression. Physical aggression (not relational aggression) and physical victimization (not relational victimization) also predicted relative increases in borderline personality features. These findings are discussed from a cultural-developmental perspective.

Convergence and divergence of individual‐level values: A study of Malaysian managers

Abstract: Malaysia is a multi-ethnic country with Malay, Chinese and Indian being the dominant ethnic groups. This paper investigates the three ethnic cultures in Malaysia by examining the individual-level values of managers and professionals. Based on 528 responses to a Schwartz Value Survey (SVS) questionnaire, the paper identifies partial convergence of the value systems of Malay, Chinese and Indian people. It was found that the three ethnic groups do not differ significantly in the individualistic value dimensions of Self-enhancement and Openness-to-change. However, Malays are found to be more conservative and less self-transcendent than Chinese or Indians, while Chinese and Indians attribute the same importance to these two sets of values.

An examination of when and how leader political skill influences team performance in China: A cultural value perspective

Abstract: This study examined the relationship between leader political skill and team performance, as well as the mediating (team cohesion) and moderating (power distance) variables of the relationship. Our theoretical model was tested using data collected from employees in a food service company. Analyses of multisource and lagged data from 59 teams and 276 members indicated that leader political skill was positively related to team performance via team cohesion. Further, both the relationship between leader political skill and team cohesion and the indirect relationship between leader political skill and team performance were stronger when teams exhibited lower power distance.

The extensibility of the endowment effect to others is mediated by degree of intimacy

Abstract: Recent studies have suggested that the endowment effect may actually be a type of self-referent cognitive bias due to the mere ownership of an object. However, it is not adequately understood how the ownership of an object affects the endowment effect. The current research is the first to explore if the endowment effect could be extended to different ownerships. The results suggest that the endowment effect extends to goods owned by their mothers, romantic partners and close friends, but not acquaintances. Furthermore, the level of intimacy between individuals and mothers/romantic partners/close friends/acquaintances mediates the relationship between the effect of ownership and the extensibility of the endowment effect. These findings are consistent with the mere ownership effect that ownership increases valuation by enhancing the salience of the self.

Face recognition as a predictor of social cognitive ability: Effects of emotion and race on face processing

Abstract: The human face conveys important social signals when people interact in social contexts. The current study investigated the relationship between face recognition and emotional intelligence, and how societal factors of emotion and race influence people's face recognition. Participants’ recognition accuracy, reaction time, sensitivity, and response bias were measured to examine their face-processing ability. Fifty Caucasian undergraduates (38 females, 12 males; average age = 21.76 years) participated in a face recognition task in which they discriminated previously presented target faces from novel distractor faces. A positive correlation between participants’ emotional intelligence scores and their performance on the face recognition task was observed, suggesting that face recognition ability was associated with emotional or social intelligence. Additionally, Caucasian participants recognized happy faces better than angry or neutral faces. It was also observed that people recognized Asian faces better than Caucasian ones, which appears to be contradictory to the classic other-race effect. The present study suggests that some societal factors could influence face processing, and face recognition ability could in turn predict social intelligence.

Is expressive suppression an effective coping strategy? A study of Chinese rescue medical staff following an earthquake

Abstract: The current study examined the function of expressive suppression among Chinese rescue medical staff following a major earthquake. We administered self-report questionnaires to (1) a sample of Chinese hospital medical staff (n = 305) who assisted victims of the Sichuan earthquake, and (2) a second sample of Chinese hospital medical staff (n = 149) who had not been exposed to a major stressor. To examine possible interaction effects among differing emotion regulation strategies, we also conducted structured interviews with a subset of rescue medical staff to obtain support for a positive function of expressive suppression and a mediating role of positive reappraisal. Structural equation modelling indicated that expressive suppression was associated with higher levels of job engagement and lower levels of job burnout among the rescue medical staff and that these effects were mediated by positive reappraisal. However, for regular medical staff (not exposed to traumatic stress), expressive suppression was associated with higher levels of both job engagement and job burnout; these effects were mediated by acceptance. These results provide preliminary evidence for the positive role of expressive suppression within Chinese culture.

Achieving commonality in interpersonal communication: Shared reality and memory processes

Abstract: In the lead article, Yoshi Kashima (2014) reviews and conceptually integrates studies on the processes underlying the construction of socially and culturally shared knowledge. The result is an assembly of research to form a bigger picture. The analyses are informed by insights into conversational, cognitive, behavioural, and motivational mechanisms, and this constellation can be informative and inspiring not only to social psychologists, but to scholars fromdifferentfields,includingcognition,psycholinguistics, sociology, and anthropology.As a social psychologist, I am particularly impressed by the keen analysis of the interplay between the relational, informational and epistemic functionsofsharedknowledge(illustratedwiththeconnectivityinformativeness dilemma), and how this interplay is fleshed out at the interpersonal, intragroup and intergroup level. Overthecourseofthearticle,thereaderlearnsaboutvarious implications of the present approach to cultural meaning making that can contribute to a better understanding of various key psychological phenomena, including the disseminationofstereotypes,thecreationofinterpersonalrela

A comparative analysis of perceptual and demographic predictors of sense of place dimensions in the State Mosques of Malaysia

Abstract: The study in this article is part of a more in-depth research investigating the architectural and physical design influences on sense of place dimensions in the context of contemporary mosques in Malaysia. The focus of this paper is human-place bonding in sacred and religious settings, based on a framework including aspects of sociality, physicality and spirituality, in addition to demographic variables such as ranges of length of experience with, and frequency of presence in, the environment of the studied mosques. The effects of the perceptions of architecture and physical design, social environment, and spiritual atmosphere on dimensions of sense of place were studied using a structural equation modelling analysis based on 302 questionnaires completed in seven state mosques across the Southeast Asian country of Malaysia. Meanwhile the socio-demographic effects on sense of place dimensions were also tested based on several analyses of variances (ANOVA) in various demographic groups through sense of place dimensions. In doing so, we adopted the multi-dimensional approach towards sense of place consisting of cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimensions. As major findings, this research provided empirical evidence for the existence of direct relationships between perceptions of the key environmental factors studied and the sense of place dimensions in contexts with extensive religious and sacred attributes; on the other hand, no interactive relationship was found between most of the socio-demographic variables and those dimensions. This article discusses in detail each of those approved and rejected relationships.

Gender‐role egalitarianism predicts desirable traits of potential marriage partners: A cross‐cultural comparison

Abstract: We examined whether gender-role egalitarianism predicted participants' rank-order preferences for traits in potential marriage partners of the opposite sex, and whether gender-role egalitarianism mediated cultural differences between participants from North America, Polynesia and East Asia. Participants completed the Sex-Role Egalitarianism Scale and ranked the following traits in terms of their importance in choosing a potential marriage partner: kindness, physical attractiveness, social level, athleticism, creativity and liveliness. Parallel analyses for male and female participants reveal that traditional males value physical attractiveness more than egalitarian males, and that traditional females value social level more and kindness less than egalitarian females. Gender-role egalitarianism fully mediated the effect of culture on kindness rankings, but no others. These results expand upon previous findings by accounting for individual differences regarding beliefs about traditional gender roles.

Cultural effects in emotion and gender recognition

Abstract: There is evidence for cultural differences in how people respond to basic properties of faces. We examined task switching between two properties of faces, emotion and gender, for individuals drawn from Western (White UK citizens) and Asian (Pakistani) cultures. There were three main results of interest. First, there was a double dissociation between gender and emotion classification across the participant populations – Western participants were faster to make gender than emotion classifications while Asian participants were faster to make emotion than gender classifications. It is argued that the different patterns of results reflect the greater attentional weight given to contrasting face dimensions in the different cultures, and the dependence on using different attributes to make gender discriminations in individuals from varying cultures. Second, Asian participants showed smaller switch costs overall than did White British participants. This result may be attributed to effects of bilingualism in the Asian participants, which results in their having greater executive resources. Third, emotion decisions showed larger switch costs than gender decisions but essentially because emotion decisions benefited from priming on non-switch trials. It is argued that emotion decisions benefit from the activation of a specific processing module across consecutive trials.