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Calls for papers for a special issue of the 'Asian Journal of Social Psychology,' devoted to recent conceptual advances and empirical research on psychological aspects of traditionality and modernity in Asia.

The article calls for the submission of papers that can stimulate debate regarding how the relationships between brain and the culture may offer challenges to Asian social psychology. The bicultural and crosscultural empirical studies that contain Asian element are likewise recognized. It suggests that papers should be prepared according to the Author Guidelines and should be submitted.

Life experience appears to be transforming in contemporary societies, with changes taking place in Asia being particularly substantial. There is strong public interest in understanding how these changes affect individual psyches. Scientific understanding of this issue, however, has not kept pace with change. Research findings from Western societies, the USA in particular, provide a model for understanding and predicting patterns of cultural change in Asia. However, the applicability of the model in this region requires critical examination. This article presents an overview of the available evidence in this research field, reviewing available psychological research that examines cultural change in the USA, China, Japan, and Australia. This paper's aim is to stimulate interest in this research area within the community of Asian social psychologists as our Asia-based insights have much to contribute to the fundamental research question at stake, and the nature of the interplay between a changing social ecology, cultural environment, and participating psyches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the cultural revolution in psychology, focusing on the articles of Kim (2000) and Yang (2000) in the context of Asian social psychology. Indigenous approach to psychology; Comparison of the culture-related psychologies contributing to cultural revolution in psychology; Incorporation of cultural context into the explanation of human behavior.

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How culture-proof are the social sciences? Travelling in another continent, one meets culture's influences not only in the objects of social science research, but at least as much in the minds of the researchers. Researchers' problem definitions and choices of issues to be addressed and questions to be asked limit what they will find; they are a potential source of ethnocentric bias. A case example of the discovery of such a bias was the emergence of a fifth dimension of national cultures supplementing Hofstede's four, through Bond's Chinese Value Survey. In the area of personality research, a number of newer and older findings by Asian and European researchers suggest the need for expanding the ‘Big Five’ model of personality traits with a sixth factor, Dependence on Others, in order to make the model culturally universal. In general, researchers recognize primarily those aspects of culture for which their own culture differs most from others. For escaping from the cultural constraints in our own research we therefore need to trade ideas with colleagues from other parts of the world. In this respect, Asian researchers have an important role to play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study proposes the future trends of Asian social psychology by taking into account its possible contribution to broad cultural and historical contexts of Asia. First, I locate social psychology in a two (nomothetic vs narrative) by two (epistemic vs design) paradigm of sciences. Second, I propose that different research perspectives in social psychology (i.e. so-called mainstream and narrative-design social psychology) may be considered as fraternal twins of the same mother, classic social psychology, and describe where each of the twins is heading. Third, I introduce two modes of research activities, Mode I and Mode II, based on previous research, and examine each twin in both modes of research. Finally, I focus on the broad context of Asia and propose that we should expand two wings, especially, the second wing over the context of the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article is inspired by the provocative ideas of Atsumi, Hofstede, Leung, and Ward expressed in this Special Issue on the past achievements, current status, and future opportunities and challenges of Asian social psychology as an international ( vs a regional) endeavour. I believe that the success of Asian social psychology as a new voice and emerging perspective in social psychology hinges upon several factors: (i) adoption of an international ( vs regional) outlook; (ii) not letting arbitrary geographical or intellectual boundaries restrict creative expansion of research ideas; and (iii) striving to craft a global identity with an Asian character by developing communicable theories that describe and explain important Asian social psychological phenomena for the benefits of Asia and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the 'Asian Journal of Social Psychology' incoming editor Kwok Leung's preface or welcome address which focused on social psychology in Asia. Asian perspectives in social psychology; Visions and plans for the journal; Kinds of articles and topics that will appear in the journal.

The author argues that a mature Asian social psychology is marked by the characteristic ways in which it generates knowledge about social behavior in general, rather than by the body of knowledge it obtains about Asians. Methodological relationalism, grounded in dialectics, is explicated as a conceptual framework for the analysis of human though and action; it is transformed by Asian views reflecting the omnipresence of self-other relations in all social life. A classification of interpersonal relationships, categorized according to the basis of their formation, is provided. Cultural contrasts are explored, with reference to: (a) the formation of relationships, (b) cultural roots of how interpersonal relationships are defined in myths and legends, and (c) the dominance of specific relationships in different cultures. Finally, Confucian heritage cultures are described in terms of the construct relationship dominance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]