Search

Essentialist theories are the beliefs that there are immutable essences underlying observed differences between social groups (e.g. racial group, cultural group). This paper reviews the intergroup dynamics and intrapersonal processes associated with essentialism. It also explores the interplay between the two. By explicating the intricate relationship between these psychological processes, the current paper aims to advance our understanding of intergroup relations and identify their implications for the study of multiculturalism. We posit that although the commonly observed negative intergroup outcomes, such as prejudices and biases, can be the byproducts of basic cognitive processes associated with essentialist theories, the social power dynamics in a given society also play important roles in shaping the relationships between essentialism and intergroup outcomes. We then discuss the implications of this understanding to our increasingly multicultural world.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a model for individual social behavior, B, that incorporates the contributions of both the personality of the actor, P, and the relevant features of the situation, S, in which he or she is performing. In analyzing the original formula by Lewin, viz., B = f(P.S), the paper first considers the importance accorded the situation in previous theorizing about ‘Asianness’. It then analyzes the contributions of the actor's personality, noting in particular that actors come to develop broad expectancies for situational outcomes, P(S), associated with situations they encounter. Those situations are glossed for social psychological purposes in terms of their affordances for potential yields relative to the actor's motivations for sociality and status. These situational affordances are defined by the normative prescriptions believed to be operative in that situation for acceptable enactments of behaviors aimed at attaining the actor's goals for sociality and status. That normative pressure is objective, though it may be judged by the actor, and is termed the O(S) component of the situation. It is held with some degree of consensus, CO(S), by others in, or observers of, the situation. These two components specify the ‘strength’ of the situation for social psychological purposes, yielding an elaborated Lewinian formula B = f(P.P[S].O[S].CO[S]). The culture of the participants, national, organizational, familial or dyadic, will determine the beta weights linking the components of the formula.

The Beijing Olympic Games, one of the most significant social events for contemporary China, is a milestone for China's efforts for globalization. ‘One World, One Dream’, the motto of the Beijing Olympic Games, is an embodiment of the encounter between Chinese culture and Western civilization, and a symbol of integration between China and the rest of the world. This Special Section seeks to address the psychosocial ramifications of the Beijing Olympic Games and, thereby, to shed light on China's domestic situation and its international relations from a social psychological perspective. Moving beyond the psychology of athletic excellence, the four papers included use a wide range of methods, ranging from longitudinal tracking to priming, to examining self-construal and volunteering, to representations of China's past and future, competition towards foreigners, and perceived intercultural differences. Consistently found across the papers, patriotism was associated with ingroup cohesion, whereas nationalism was associated with competition and differentiation towards outgroups. This Special Section thereby pays tribute to the social psychological significance of the Beijing Olympic Games to China and the world.

Social network analysis is a large and growing body of research on the measurement and analysis of relational structure. Here, we review the fundamental concepts of network analysis, as well as a range of methods currently used in the field. Issues pertaining to data collection, analysis of single networks, network comparison, and analysis of individual-level covariates are discussed, and a number of suggestions are made for avoiding common pitfalls in the application of network methods to substantive questions. those seeking to add a structural component to their own work. Although many classical methods are discussed, more emphasis is placed on recent, statistical approaches to network analysis, as these are somewhat less well covered by existing reviews. Finally, an effort has been made throughout to highlight common pitfalls which can await the unwary researcher, and to suggest how these may be avoided. The result, it is hoped, is a basic reference that offers a rigorous treatment of essential concepts and methods, without assuming prior background in this area. The overall structure of this paper is as follows. After a brief comment on some things which are not discussed here (the field being too large to admit treatment in a single paper), an overview of core concepts and notation is pre- sented. Following this is a discussion of network data, including basic issues involving representation, boundary definition, sampling schemes, instruments, and visualiza- tion. I then proceed to an overview of common approaches to the measurement and modelling of structural properties within single networks, followed by sections on methods for network comparison and modelling of individual attributes. Finally, I conclude with a discussion of some additional issues which affect the use of network analysis in practical settings. Topics not discussed

In a Journal of Personality and Social Psychology article, Sedikides, Gaertner and Vevea (2005) presented two meta-analyses that included eight papers to investigate the question of whether people from Eastern cultures self-enhance more for traits that they view to be important compared to those that they view as unimportant. The results supported their hypothesis: Self-enhancement appears to be pancultural. However, this conclusion is severely compromised by six relevant papers that are not included in their meta-analyses. Importantly, all of these six studies contradicted their hypothesis. When complete meta-analyses are conducted which include all of the relevant papers, a very different pattern of results emerges. Eastern and Western cultures do not differ from each other in the pattern of their self-enhancement of independent and interdependent traits. Furthermore, whereas Westerners self-enhanced significantly more for traits that they viewed to be especially important, East Asians did not. Contrary to the Sedikides et al. (2005) suggestion, the existing evidence suggests substantial cross-cultural variation in self-enhancement, with Westerners being far more self-enhancing than Easterners. Reasons for the conflicting pattern of findings across methods and meta-analyses are discussed.

Heine, Kitayama and Hamamura (2007) attributed the Sedikides, Gaertner and Vevea (2005) findings to the exclusion of six papers. We report a meta-analysis that includes those six papers. The Heine et al. conclusions are faulty, because of a misspecified meta-analysis that failed to consider two moderators central to the theory. First, some of their effect sizes originated from studies that did not empirically validate comparison dimensions. Inclusion of this moderator evidences pancultural self-enhancement: Westerners enhance more strongly on individualistic dimensions, Easterners on collectivistic dimensions. Second, some of their effect sizes were irrelevant to whether enhancement is correlated with dimension importance. Inclusion of this moderator evidences pancultural self-enhancement: Both Westerners and Easterners enhance on personally important dimensions. The Sedikides et al. conclusions are valid: Tactical self-enhancement is pancultural.

The purpose of the present paper is to provide an integrated analysis of indigenous psychologies and to outline the epistemological foundation of indigenous psychologies. In the first part of this paper, the authors provide commentary of the four articles in this Special Issue. In the second section, the epistemological foundation of general psychology is reviewed. General psychology has adopted positivism in search of abstract and universal laws of human behavior and eliminated the subjective aspects of human functioning (i.e. agency, meaning, intention and goals) and the influence of context and culture. In the third section, the authors introduce the transactional model of science. In this approach, human beings are viewed as agents of their own action and are motivated to control and manage their environment. In the fourth section, indigenous psychologies and culture are defined. Cultural differences exist due to the diverse goals that cultures pursue, the methods people use to attain the goals, and the differential use of natural and human resources. In the fifth section, a review of empirical studies focusing on academic achievement is provided to highlight the scientific merits of indigenous psychologies. In the final section, the authors distinguish between the speculative analyses of indigenous concepts from systematic indigenous analyses. Indigenous psychologies represent a scientific paradigm in which the goal is to create a more rigorous, systematic and universal science that can be theoretically and empirically verified.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was first reported in China, and spread to 29 regions, affecting over 8000 people worldwide. For the general public, the psychological impact of SARS may have been greater than the physical health danger of the disease. The present paper proposes the influence of psychological factors on people's cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses during the SARS outbreak. The various papers in this special issue of the Journal reveal how people have reacted during the SARS outbreak: People's general coping styles may be related to their health behavior during the outbreak. Cultural differences were evident in the perception of SARS, and individuals' perceptual styles may have influenced their ability to cope with the outbreak. The way in which individuals coped with SARS-related stressful events was different from their usual practices of managing daily stress. Individual differences in the adoption of preventive measures were related to the distinct susceptibility to several social-cognitive biases.

This paper aims to present a critical analysis of the development of indigenous psychologies within the western and non–western contexts. The rhetoric of indigenous psychologies is cross–examined to include historical perspectives, cultural interdependence and institutional regulations. The paper also examines the processes of psychologizing indigenous views that are largely regulated by the powerful social agencies. The paper endeavors to draw a link between historical perspectives and post–historical cultural interdependence in order to explicate the contentious issues of ‘micro and macro indigenous psychologies’, both within and beyond western indigenous psychologies. The importance of the cross–fertilization of knowledge from diverse indigenous psychologies for the development of a global indigenous psychology is reaffirmed.

Rumor research, in general, and its delayed incorporation of the work, of rumor researcher Jamuna Prasad, in particular, exemplify how the intellectual climate of American social psychology discouraged the development of social approaches. In the present paper, we explain his conceptualization of how rumors start and spread, and explore findings from subsequent research supporting or negating his propositions. It is our contention that, although Prasad had identified the basic variables involved in rumor generation and transmission correctly, mainstream social psychological research in the 1940s did not incorporate his contributions. Instead, mirroring the Zeitgeist of American social psychology, rumor research was approached from a predominantly individual level of analysis. In the present paper, the authors have tried to resurrect some of the group-level variables from Prasad's treatment of rumor and to suggest that social psychology adopt a more 'social' approach to rumor.

This paper reviews the literature on the "crisis" in social psychology. Although the symptoms of the crisis are various, the basic problem can be identified as the inappropriate emulation of the natural sciences model. Within this approach, psychologists attempted to discover objective, abstract, universal laws of human behavior, but have largely failed to do so. The second part of this paper analyzes misconceptions that many psychologists have about objectivity and scientific methods and outlines an alternative perspective. In the third part of the paper, a comparative analysis of physical, biological, and human sciences are provided. In the final section, an alternative scientific paradigm – the transactional model, is presented. In this approach, human consciousness, agency, and creativity, both at the individual and collective level, are considered as key constructs in explaining psychological functioning. Subjective elements such as human consciousness and agency and the influences of context and meaning are explicitly integrated in the research model in search of dynamic and emergent properties of human functioning.

This paper reinterprets the findings of previous empirical research on moral reasoning and moral judgment conducted in Taiwan using Kohlberg’s research paradigm. It consists of three major parts. The first part explores Kohlberg's theory of moral development and its limitations. Gibb’s (1979) two-phase model is used to emphasize the necessity of studying cultural heritage in understanding the prevalent moral reasoning of existential phase adults in a given society. The second part presents an analysis of Confucian ethics (Hwang, 1995), and proposes a conceptual scheme for discerning the significant features of Confucian ethics by referring to distinctions between positive/negative and imperfect/perfect duties. The discretionary features of Confucian ethics are further analyzed in terms of Shweder et al.’s (1990) scheme for discerning a rationally defensible moral code. In addition, the Confucian moral dilemma and its modern fate in the New-Culture Movement of the May Fourth period on mainland China, and the 1960s Gong De Movement in Taiwan are discussed. The third part of this paper reinterprets the findings of several empirical studies on moral reasoning in Taiwanese society. Special attention is paid to Cheng’s (1991) data from interviews with a group of college students using Kohlberg’s moral dilemma. The implication of her findings is discussed on the basis of the new conceptual scheme.

In this paper I present an argument that culture of collectivism which characterizes Japanese society is to be conceived in terms of an equilibrium between socio-relational and cognitive traits in which people have acquired expectations for generalized reciprocity within, not across, group boundaries. Maintenance of harmony among group members and voluntary cooperation toward group goals – the characteristics of collectivist culture – are often considered to be fundamentally psychological in nature. It is usually considered that members of a collectivist culture like to maintain harmony and cooperate toward group goals, or that “culture” sneaks into the minds of people and drives them to behave in such a manner. According to this view, culture is a fundamentally psychological or subjective matter. This is the view that I want to challenge in this paper.

In the last one hundred plus years, China, under the impact of modernization, has undergone the most significant change in the past 5,000 years. Modernization is a continuous process of protest and change. At each stage of modernization, outcomes may be regarded as the result of complex strategies and responses to those demands. This paper will address the strategies and responses that Chinese have adopted in their attempt to deal with the pressure and challenge of modernization. As a background to understanding these strategies and responses, the following four perspectives will be delineated. First, my perspective is mainly at the micro level, but I will occasionally shift to the macro level when needed. Second, my analyses will largely rely on results from empirical research. They will be supplemented by daily-life observations and appropriate conceptual or theoretical analyses. Third, Chinese intellectuals have been playing a guiding role of enlightenment, criticism, and promotion and their responses have been influential in formulating, directing, or channeling the views of the general public. A comprehensive analysis of relevant ideologies and strategies endorsed by Chinese intellectuals will be provided. Finally, the analysis of Chinese responses to modernization will be based upon the relevant literature from all the three major Chinese societies (Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China). In addition, this paper will clarify the basic modes and specific mechanisms of adaptation to drastic environmental changes. They will be applied as conceptual tools for the analysis of Chinese intellectuals’ ideological responses to modernization and psychological processes involved in accommodating cognitive and behavioral changes in their daily lives.

The present study describes the development and validation of a new instrument to measure the well-being of Indonesian people. Items were generated by taking into account the recent cross-cultural developments in the literature. Participants (N = 1,028) from a number of provinces in Indonesia completed an online or a paper questionnaire containing a battery of measures, including the new well-being instrument. The total sample was randomly split into two equal groups. An exploratory factor analysis (n = 516) was conducted on one half to explore the factor structure of the new scale, which resulted in a 24-item scale with a fourfactor solution. The four factors were (a) Basic Needs, (b) Social Relation, (c) Acceptance, and (d) Spirituality. A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted on the second half (n = 516), which confirmed the four-factor structure with 20 items emerging as the best and most parsimonious fit of the data. The psychometric properties of the final scale were tested on the whole sample. The new scale displayed sound internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and divergent, convergent, and discriminant validity. The scale has the potential to be used in future research which examines well-being in the Indonesia context. Future directions and limitations of the study are discussed.

The world is growing more interconnected, and Asian societies are increasingly able to play leading roles in global society. However, Asian psychologists and social scientists have yet to draw from their cultural roots to create social sciences able to make a difference in their home societies. This paper articulates an epistemology for the aspirational practice of Height Psychology as a human science informed by Kantian epistemology in dialogue with other philosophies, especially Confucianism and Taoism. The possibility of ‘intellectual intuition’ (direct knowledge of thing-in-itself, or noumenon) is allowed in Eastern philosophical traditions that open a more agentic and human-centred philosophy of science for action that goes beyond natural science epistemologies originating in Cartesian dualism. Kant's practical postulates are invoked to develop a moral and ethical philosophy that through civilizational dialogue can lead to a philosophy of science robustly incorporating culture and human agency. A thought experiment is offered where practical postulates of Chinese culture are held to be yin-yang cosmology, human-heartedness, and relationalism. It is argued that these facilitate an holistic science of practice that complements the sophistication of Western methods. Principles and an approach to theory-building for human science are proposed.

The present article is inspired by Liu's (2017) idea on how Asian philosophy can, in general, and Confucianism, in particular, contribute to psychological science and practice. We first clarify potential misunderstandings of Liu's (2017) paper as a theoretical argument for indigenous psychology or as a debate on philosophy or the philosophy of science. To interpret and develop Liu's idea, we then conceptualize the concept of culture as canonic (abstract, philosophical and as it appears in classical books or articles) vs. popular (concrete, experiential and as it appears in people's daily lives). Further, since Liu's main point is about canonic rather than popular culture, we focus on canonic culture and propose three principles of it, namely the principle of diversity, the principle of hermeneutics and the principle of inspiration. These principles respectively reveal the characteristics, the interpretation process and the beneficial function of a canonic culture like Confucianism.

This study tests whether individuals' reliance on ease-of-retrieval processes when forming procedural justice judgements are moderated by informational and personal uncertainty. In Studies 1 and 2 we examined the predicted effects of informational uncertainty. Results indicated that participants in information-uncertain conditions relied on ease-of-retrieval, whereas those in information-certain conditions relied on content information to make procedural justice judgements. In Study 3 we examined the combined effects of informational uncertainty and personal uncertainty on reliance on ease-of-retrieval when forming procedural justice judgements. The findings of Study 3 indicated that personal uncertain participants who were in informational certain conditions based their procedural justice judgements on content information, whereas all other participants based their procedural justice judgements on ease-of-retrieval. This is the first paper to demonstrate that the joint effect of informational uncertainty and personal uncertainty on reliance on ease-of-retrieval is different from the two uncertainties acting alone.

This paper examines the spillover and crossover effects of emotional exhaustion on marital satisfaction for both employees and partners as well as on employee work–family conflict and partner family–work conflict. It investigates how the transmission of psychological strain from the workplace to the family domain mediates these relationships. In a sample of 226 employee–partner dyads from manufacturing, electronics, banking, service industries and public organizations, the results support the notion that employees' emotional exhaustion spawns negative strain in the home. More specifically, the results of spillover mediation analyses show the relationships between emotional exhaustion and employee marital satisfaction/work–family conflict in the home. In a crossover model, the results indicate that employee psychological strain mediates the relationships between emotional exhaustion and the marital satisfaction of partners/family–work conflict in partners. These findings provide supports for spillover and crossover models to investigate a direction for the effectiveness of emotional exhaustion on family issues. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed, and directions for future research are offered.

The intricate interactions between language and culture shape bilingual and bicultural individuals' psychological responses to social contexts. Language carries cultural scripts, ideals, and practices, which can be activated by situational cues. In the process of managing two acquired languages, bilinguals shift their self-perception and self-presentation to accommodate the prototypical norms characteristic of the culture being primed by language use. Cultural mindset can explain such language priming effects. In the process of negotiating two intersecting cultures, integrating bicultural identities is central to psychological adjustment among individuals experiencing immigration-based and globalization-based acculturation, whereas bilingual or trilingual competence is important to sojourners' adjustment. The present paper reviews empirical work along these lines of research and suggests that it is possible for alternation and integration to coexist within the same individuals who integrate their bicultural identities and alternate their behavioural responses.

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.

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.

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).

Chinese society is characterized by emerging fragmentation and by the coexistence of traditional and Western values, goals and norms. In this multifaceted environment bi-cultural selves, which encompass social and individual orientations, may emerge. The aim of this paper is to explore if features of bi-cultural selves concerning interactions, emotions, and values are reflected in online public discussions in China. In order to address this question, we explored two of the most popular bulletin board systems (BBSs): Tian Ya and Feng Huang Forums. BBSs attract almost one third of Internet users in China and provide these users with a forum to carry out public dialogue; BBSs are thus an ideal place to study how the self is socially shaped in public communication. A sample of 6109 messages was subjected to quantitative content analysis. Results show that twofold self-construal, corresponding to the individual- and social-oriented self, are (also) detected in BBSs forum content: direct and polemic content coexist with conciliatory content; ego-focused and other-focused emotions are almost equally as frequent as one another; and traditional values are evoked together with the quest for truth and individual rights. Moreover, three typologies of Internet users (proactive, ambivalent, and follower), which were identified on the basis of the quality of their online interactions, show different patterns of emotions and values. We may thus conclude that alternative ways of constructing self-other and self-society relationships currently coexist in China and that these alternative views confront each other on BBS forums.

Cultural identity refers to the psychological connection between an individual's self and a culture. In this paper, we identify three components that make up an individual's cultural identity – cultural knowledge, category label, and social connections. The cultural knowledge component connects an individual with a culture through the individual's direct endorsement of what are widely known to be the culture's central characteristics. The category label component connects an individual with a culture through the individual's depersonalized membership in a cultural collective. The social connections component connects an individual with a culture through networks of specific social relationships. The three components are conceptually distinct, and yet may have interconnections in influencing the development of cultural identity. We examine the implications of the three components on cultural identification processes in the context of multiculturalism and global cultural contact.

Interpersonal communication plays a significant role in the maintenance of culturally shared stereotypes. This paper reports on two experiments in which two different stories were transmitted conversationally through communication chains. In both experiments, people tended to emphasize more stereotype consistent than stereotype inconsistent (SI) information, thus rendering the stories more confirming, rather than challenging, of the stereotypes. Although SI information sometimes attracted more attention in conversation, this did not translate into a greater likelihood of passing on SI information, thus keeping the story character's impression largely stereotypical even after a second retelling of the story. Asian Journal of Social Psychology © 2012 Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd with the Asian Association of Social Psychology and the Japanese Group Dynamics Association.

This paper investigated the effects of a paternalistic and empowering leadership style on organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) in an experimental design using 100 Turkish and 100 Dutch students who held part-time jobs. Confirming our expectations, a paternalistic leadership style had a more positive effect on job dedication and organizational support in Turkey than in the Netherlands. Contradicting our expectations, an empowering leadership style did not have a more positive effect on any of the OCB dimensions in the Netherlands than it did in Turkey. However, in the Netherlands an empowering leadership style had a stronger effect on interpersonal facilitation, job dedication, and organizational support than a paternalistic leadership style. Paternalistic and empowering leadership styles both had positive effects on OCB dimensions in Turkey. As expected, collectivism moderated the relationship between paternalistic leadership style and other oriented OCB (i.e., interpersonal facilitation). Specifically, people who had more collectivistic tendencies were more positively influenced by a paternalistic leader than people who had low collectivistic tendencies in both countries. However, individualism did not have any moderating effects on the relationship between empowering leadership style and self-oriented OCB (i.e., job dedication). Our findings are relevant for understanding the effects of leadership styles and cultural orientations on self- versus other-oriented OCB in Turkey and the Netherlands.

We administered a paper-and-pencil questionnaire to 133 female and 99 male Japanese high school students 13–18 years old (M = 15.9, SD = 1.57) from the Kansai area to examine cultural influences on their body image and body change behaviours. Our aim was to ascertain the independent and combined influences from traditional Japanese, modern Japanese, and Western values. Cluster analyses identified four ‘acculturative’ groups: ‘anti-modern’, ‘traditional’, ‘pro-modern/anti-traditional’, and ‘pro-Western/anti-Japanese’. Pro-modern and pro-Western adolescents were most dissatisfied with their bodies, and pro-Western adolescents were also most likely to attempt weight loss. The results demonstrate the value of assessing cultural interactions in Japan along three dimensions.

This paper focuses on interethnic relations in Malaysia and examines survey data collected among Malay (n = 405), Chinese (n = 90), and Indian (n = 53) participants. In agreement with the Common In-group Identity Model, inclusive nationhood was related to more positive out-group attitudes. Relative in-group indispensability was related to higher bias as predicted by the In-group Projection Model. Furthermore, the dominant group of Malay had higher in-group indispensability, more strongly endorsed an inclusive national representation, had stronger ethnic and national identification, and a stronger association between both identifications.

A major evolutionary advance of humans is a mind that is capable of constructing, perpetuating, adapting to, and exploiting culture. The birth of cultural neuroscience reflects the growing realization that a full account of the human mind requires understanding of the multiple and reciprocal influences between the biological and the sociocultural. In the present paper, we illustrate how attention to the brain, as exemplified in functional magnetic resonance neuroimaging (fMRI) studies of sociocultural processes, contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the human mind. We end by discussing a set of challenges facing researchers using fMRI and the possible means for dealing with these challenges.

The present study examined whether the scale called Coping Strategies in Chinese Social Context (CSCSC) developed in this paper is better at predicting individual mental health than the COPE Scale, which focuses on ‘active-passive’ coping. Two hundred and 51 university students were recruited and measured on the CSCSC, COPE and five mental health inventories. The results demonstrated that the CSCSC predicted mental health better than the COPE. ‘Active-prosocial’ and ‘passive-prosocial’ are two suitable coping strategies, whereas ‘passive-antisocial’ is not a suitable coping strategy. Studies exploring coping processes in Chinese culture should consider social interactions and connection with others as a significant aspect of coping.

Social psychology and social network research are both centrally concerned with human sociality. Despite some historically significant interactions between the two, these areas of investigation have not been usefully deployed together in recent research endeavours. The present paper attempts to bring out some points of both theoretical and methodological contentions, to characterize the gap between them, to traverse briefly the trajectories of their historical development, and to provide some concrete instances of these differences. Intellectual resources available to Asian social psychology are reviewed, which may help bridge the gap between the two areas of research. We conclude by calling for a greater integration of social psychology and social network perspectives in future research. © 2008 The Authors.

In the sociological tradition, status characteristics and patterns of interpersonal relations within a social network are considered important in explaining organizational behaviour (e.g. influence, cooperation). In the social identity tradition, perceptions of shared psychological group membership and group prototypicality are considered important in explaining many of the same organizational behaviours. The present paper explores core variables within each of these perspectives as predictors of advice seeking among supervisors in a manufacturing facility. Dyadic measures of group assignment are found to better predict advice seeking than measures taken at the individual level. Identification with work groups predicted advice seeking from those perceived to be in the same group, and also from structural equivalents. Implications for theory and further research are discussed.

The current paper examines the psychological characteristics of people who link tightly connected cliques to each other with friendship ties. Based on the work of sociologist Georg Simmel, I argue that these people are characterized by two separate motivations, which I call entrepreneurial and relationship-building motivations. Using a complete network from a heterogeneous class of Jewish-, Arab-, and Druze-Israelis, I provide the first empirical evidence of their existence. Gould and Fernandez's brokerage roles were calculated for each participant, and triad proportions from each brokerage type were correlated with well-established psychological questionnaires. Results indicate the existence of two psychologically distinct network orientations, easily interpretable in terms of Simmel's analysis of processes in triads.

Studies on above-average and unrealistic-optimism effects have recently claimed that they are the consequence of an over-utilization of self-relevant and under-utilization of peer-relevant information, despite the assumption that people would refer to both themselves and their average peer to make a comparative judgment. However, there is a possibility that these tendencies are prevalent only in Western cultures. The present paper reports on three studies of comparative self-other judgments conducted with Japanese university students. The results consistently showed that participants tended to focus simply on their own abilities, traits, or the likelihood of experiencing future life events, without paying much attention to their peers. These findings suggest first that there is a consistent tendency for people to place a greater weight on the self than normative standards when considering their comparative position in a group, and that this tendency is independent of the size or direction of comparative biases.

A scan of citation impact suggests that Asian social psychologists have made significant contributions in three areas: indigenous research, culture and social behaviour, and in several topics in social psychology. An analysis of the most cited articles published in Asian Journal of Social Psychology (AJSP) in 1998–2002 in March 2005 reveals that most papers are concerned with culture, with a focus on either popular topics in the West or indigenous concepts. Asian social psychology seems to be closely associated with cultural issues, but it still lacks unique theoretical contributions, and the number of internationally visible scholars is limited and is mostly confined to East Asia. However, Asian cultures provide a fertile ground for identifying new constructs. Many Asian universities are now under pressure to internationalize, which will motivate more academics to participate in Asian conferences and publish in AJSP. To develop Asian social psychology, effort should be focused on nurturing the next generation of Asian social psychologists, who not only need an international perspective, but also ambition and creativity.

The present paper examines the role, status and development of Asian social psychology from four perspectives: (i) looking back; (ii) looking in; (iii) looking out; and (iv) looking forward. Looking back elaborates early attempts to ‘add Asians’ to social psychology and replicate classic social psychological research in Asian contexts. Looking in describes more sophisticated developments in Asian social psychology including the indigenization of theory, methods and measurements. Looking out critically examines the position of Asian social psychology in the international arena and discusses its impact on the discipline more broadly. Finally, looking forward makes some cautious predictions about the future of Asian social psychology in both regional and international spheres.

This Special Issue (SI), which marks the 10th anniversary of the Asian Journal of Social Psychology, carries the triple roles of taking stock of the past, scouting the present, and envisioning the future. In so doing, it connects with the 6th biennial conference of the Asian Association of Social Psychology held in 2005, in which several keynote speakers (Atsumi, Hofstede, Leung, and Ward) addressed the same troika of concerns. Together with invited commentary from Chiu and Matsumoto they form the substance of this SI. As SI Editors, we read the papers several times, for what they were and, just as enlightening, for what they were not. In the process, we reflected on what is social about Asian social psychology and, equally intriguing, on what is Asian about it. The (tentative) conclusion that we have reached is that a practical and creative social psychology that is in, of, and for Asia, and defines itself as a network of like-minded collaborators gathered around a central purpose rather than as a geographic or genetic entity will have the best chance of realizing the potential of Asian social psychology.

In the present paper, a preliminary statement on the traditional-modern bicultural self in contemporary Taiwan was proposed and our presentation was organized in four parts. First, a theoretical and conceptual analysis was attempted to describe the emergence and composition of the traditional-modern bicultural self of the contemporary Taiwanese people. The cultural and social roots of such a bicultural self were explored, and its constituting elements delineated and their interrelations analyzed. Second, relevant empirical evidence pertaining to this particular model of the Chinese bicultural self was reviewed. Third, our present model was related and compared against various existing bicultural self models. Finally, directions and issues for future research on the Chinese bicultural self were discussed.

The present paper proposes a model of knowledge sharing, in which coworker congruence, outcome interdependence, perceived organizational support, and procedural justice influence knowledge sharing indirectly through the mediation of instrumental ties and expressive ties, and examined gender differences in causal connections within the model. In a sample of employees in Taiwan, it was shown that the influence of instrumental ties on knowledge sharing is stronger for females than for males; the influence of expressive ties on knowledge sharing is stronger for males than for females; the influence of coworker congruence on expressive ties is stronger for females than for males; the influence of outcome interdependence on instrumental ties is stronger for females than for males; and the influence of perceived organizational support on instrumental ties is stronger for males than for females.

The present paper reports a case study about public deliberations in three Israeli kibbutzim regarding a disputed school issue: whether to maintain a traditional in-kibbutz high school despite a heavy financial burden or to close it and send kibbutz youths to a public regional school The results served as a demonstration of a ‘thinking group’ (i.e. of how the collective aims of a group are achieved by the coordinated rhetorical behaviour of individuals according to the formal rules of the collective deliberations). First, video-recordings of six general assembly meetings in which the issue was discussed was analyzed as to their argumentative content. Second, the extracted arguments were presented to a sample of 342 kibbutz members to capture the distribution of opinions in the population. It is proposed that most kibbutz members were willing to preserve their collective living and saw the closure of their in-kibbutz school as a threat to their traditional collective identity. We observed a distinct form of public rhetoric during the deliberations in the general meetings which provides a podium for the disputed opinions, preserves the kibbutz shared identity representation and avoids social friction.

When communicating, a general tendency exists for people to transmit more stereotype consistent (SC) than inconsistent (SI) information. Although some communicative factors have been shown to play a role, it is still not yet known the extent to which general memory biases (i.e. independent of communicative context) contribute to this phenomenon. To examine this issue, and to explore further mechanisms of the bias, the present paper presents quantitative and qualitative data of an experiment involving the transmission of a stereotype-relevant story through 20 four-person chains using the method of serial reproduction. An SC bias emerged when participants had an intention to communicate but not when they reproduced the story from memory with no such intention. Results also suggest that trying to tell a coherent story may be one further factor that contributes to the bias. These and other findings were discussed in terms of the role of communicative processes in maintaining stereotypes. © Blackwell Publishing Ltd with the Asian Association of Social Psychology and the Japanese Group Dynamics Association 2006.

The present paper endeavours to discuss some of the potential issues inherent in the developmental work for indigenous psychologies, especially in the Western context. The discussion is made around two topical issues, sustainability and local knowledge. The developmental processes in indigenous psychologies are influenced by the inter- and intracommunity environment. It is important to trace the development of local knowledge in a sustained community environment. The cross-fertilization of ecological perspectives with indigenous psychological knowledge can enlighten our understandings of global issues in psychology as well as the applications of psychological knowledge to a local context. A theoretical model is proposed to highlight major social psychological processes in a participatory community environment − the model is expected to address essential contentious issues to the future of a globalized psychology, especially the way integrated local knowledge can lay the foundations of a globalized indigenous psychology.

Culture has been regarded as an anathema to psychology as an empiricist research tradition. Despite the explosive growth of research on culture and psychology over the last decade of the 20th century and its importance in Asian social psychology, the ontological and epistemological tension between psychology as a science and psychology as a cultural/historical discipline introduced in the writings of the thinkers of the Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment still lingers on in the contemporary discourse of psychology. Clifford Geertz once ominously suggested that cultural psychology may have chewed more than it can. In the present paper, the interpretive turn in social science as exemplified by writings of Charles Taylor and Paul Ricoeur is reviewed and how it may impinge on the practice of Asian social psychology as an empirical science in methodological, epistemological, and ontological respects is discussed. It is argued here that the current practice of Asian social psychology is largely, though not entirely, free of the challenges mounted by these theorists, and that Asian social psychology has an advantage of not being encumbered by this traditional tension due to a monist ontology that is prevalent in Asia. © Blackwell Publishing Ltd with the Asian Association of Social Psychology and the Japanese Group Dynamics Association 2005.

The present paper examined the validity of the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire (MPQ). As criteria of validity three levels of adjustment were used. The study took place among a sample of expatriates (N = 102) during their assignment in Taiwan. The MPQ has scales for cultural empathy, open-mindedness, social initiative, emotional stability and flexibility. The MPQ scales appeared to be predictive of expatriates' personal, professional and social adjustment. In all three domains, emotional stability appeared most consistently as a predictor of adjustment. Social initiative was an additional strong predictor of psychological well-being, as was cultural empathy of satisfaction with life and of the amount of social support in the host country. Flexibility was a predictor of job satisfaction and social support. The study also examined the effects of marital status on adjustment. Married expatriates showed higher levels of adjustment than expatriates who were single or separated.