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One hundred fifty-nine male African adults from the Belgian Congo were given a paper-and-pencil perceptual task devised by A. Rey and consisting of drawing lines between randomly arranged black dots so as to isolate simple geometrical figures. A practice task, where the perceptual difficulty was reduced by printing in different colors the dots corresponding to the different figures, was always given first. Both tasks were given without time-limit. Scores were number of correct patterns on the black test, and time taken to complete each of the two tasks. Both time scores were combined by Hotelling's principal components method. Two independent variables were obtained, one of which (J) expresses the general tendency to be slow on both tasks and the other the tendency to be slower on the (difficult) black patterns than on the (easier) color ones. The relationship of these components to accuracy on the black patterns was determined. Africans were compared on both time components with Belgian Ss at the same accuracy level. (It was necessary to use children because European adults are too accurate en this test.) It appears that, for the same degree of accuracy, Africans are always slower on J, but no difference is apparent on B. It is concluded that, as far as these tasks are considered, the slowness of the Africans--defined by comparison with Europeans of the same level of accuracy--is not related to task difficulty. This finding is more easily explained by a general lack of interest in speed performance than by a slower operation of mental functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the American personality tests in cross-cultural research. In a large number of cross-cultural studies, paper-and-pencil personality tests originally developed in the United States have been translated and administered within some other culture. Translations developed solely in this manner and not further evaluated may not be usable for making valid cross-cultural comparisons. It is the purpose of this paper to discuss certain problems associated with the translation of personality tests for use in cross-cultural research, and with the interpretation of cross-cultural findings obtained through the use of such translations. Personality tests most appropriately and widely used in cross-cultural research are those that measure particular constructs. The items in such tests represent samplings from a universe of items that help define the constructs, and test results are interpreted in terms of the constructs rather than the specific items that happen to be used. Thus, before a translation is undertaken there should be good reason to believe that the construct, as measured by the items in the American instrument, is meaningful within the second culture.

The article presents a cross-cultural study of the behavioral aspects of the concept of religion. The problem with which this study was concerned was the dynamic connotation of the concept of religion for individuals and groups. The best index of the meaning of any concept to a person would be his behavioral responses to the incarnation of that concept. Such a response would be structured by the person's expectations concerning the impact of the structured stimulus on him. A meaning which retains some of the vitality of that index and has the virtue of being much more accessible is to ask people to describe the behavior which they suppose is structured by the concept. This was the mode of operation adopted for the present study. In the light of the nature of the actions ascribed to the religious person it seems reasonable to suppose that the guesses of the subjects regarding the percentage of people in such countries who so act reflect or even help determine the attitude of the subjects toward the country. It should not be supposed, however, that this belief is the total determinant of the attitude.

Comparisons between matched pairs of closely related societies maximize the relative degree of independence of the different pairs in relation to the similarity between the members of each pair. A relationship between child training and subsistence economy, previously demonstrated for a sample of 79 societies, was likewise found in comparisons between 12 matched pairs of closely related societies from the same sample. The member of the pair with stronger pressure toward compliance rather than assertion in child training generally also had a greater emphasis on food producing than on food collecting in the subsistence economy. Since the matched pairs of societies generally had become differentiated from their common ancestry within the past 1000 years and remained closely similar in most respects, an accurate, sensitive measure with a wide range of variation in scores was needed to show consistent differences between the pairs. However, the close relationship between the matched pairs of societies enhances the likelihood that the difference in one of these variables causes the other instead of both being due to a common relationship with a third variable. Either of the opposite directions of causation seems plausible. A greater satisfaction of dependence needs may account for the further finding that the member of the pair with stronger compliance training and food production generally was characterized by high infant indulgence and low frequency of drunkenness. The opposite, negative correlation between food production and infant indulgence, found in tests of these variables without regard to matched pairs of societies, is apparently due to a common, inverse relationship of both variables to a third variable, at a more advanced stage of cultural differentiation. Such a causative variable might be social stratification or governmental authority beyond the local community, both of which are correlated positively with food production and negatively with infant indulgence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses translation problems in cross-cultural research. This article argues that translation is always a potential problem for sociological research. It also illustrate the difficulties arising from inattention to the translation problem in mono-cultural investigations with reference to a widely known published research report and suggests some parallels between techniques for coping with translation problems in cross-cultural research and those appropriate for mono-cultural use. Comparative research is much more common than frequently assumed. Comparison may be either explicit or implicit. Explicit comparison would involve actual study of organizations in two or more societies and direct comparison of observed characteristics. The distinction, clearly, is one of the degree of relative explicitness in particular instances. This is an important distinction, since investigators whose comparison is largely implicit may fail to recognize the comparative nature of their analysis.

The Porteus Maze has been used as a cross-cultural test for more than 50 years. The Maze may be of use to the cross-cultural researcher or cross-cultural practitioner because it is a performance test, has high intrinsic interest for most persons from various cultural groups, has simple instructions, is easy to administer, and has ease and objectivity of scoring. Variables that may have confounded the results of the cross-cultural studies of the Maze consist of background factors, prior learning, inherited factors, physiological factors, and sampling problems. Other difficulties of equating cultural groups were discussed. It was suggested that the future use of the Maze be in conjunction with various environmental variables and measures of performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A cross-cultural comparison was made between Dogmatism scores of British and Hong Kong Chinese students. The mean D score of Hong Kong subjects was significantly higher than the mean score of British subjects. It is suggested that Hong Kong subjects may be more closed-minded than British subjects, or they may be more acquiescent. For Chinese-English bilingual subjects the mean score on a Chinese translation of the D scale was significantly higher than the mean score on the English language scale. This last finding is considered to have important implications for cross-cultural measurement using verbal instruments, and it may also be relevant to studies in linguistic relativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a cross-cultural study of childhood experience and adult personality using the concept of ego strength. Ego strength is a general aspect of adult personality whose relationship with childhood experience can be studied. Simply, ego strength refers to one's ability to cope with one's environment and to deal adequately, directly, and realistically with problems that arise. This study requires a definition of childhood gratification and of ego strength, not as a characteristic that each individual possesses in varying degrees, but as a characteristic of a society. For childhood gratification, this has already been done in other cross-cultural studies. For ego strength, this was done by first examining all of the attempts to measure the ego strength of individuals, and from these, as well as from psychoanalytic theory, to construct an ego-strength scale and then translate the components from instances of individual behavior to those of cultural behavior. First, each new cultural category was defined similarly to the individual category. Then ethnographic reports of cultures were examined to see if these new categories could be constructed in terms of the data available.

The prediction that Kibbutz children, because of more diffuse and less intense identification, show less severity of guilt upon violation of social norms than non-Kibbutz children was made. Two different series of four incomplete stories that deal with the violation of social norms (theft, disobedience, death wishes, and sabotage of group effort) were administered to groups of Kibbutz and non-Kibbutz boys and girls respectively. The results indicate support for the hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that the decision to utilize the social set as the rating frame in the Japanese cross-cultural comparison of the social-desirability (S-D) of trait-descriptive terms was a highly arbitrary one. Indeed, from the larger body of literature, somewhat discrepant findings have been reported with respect to the effects of variations in instructional set upon S-D ratings. Several investigations have reported that differing instructional sets produce substantial rating differences. Illustratively, college students have made rather low correlations for S-D ratings under a social and personal set. Other investigations, however, report the opposite--i.e. a very high degree of relationship among S-D ratings across diverse sets. For example, some scholars have found that found a 0.90 correlation between "personal" and "social" desirability ratings of personality-test items. It is difficult to know whether such discrepant findings reflect true differences in rating sets, or whether they may, at least in part, result from differences in testing conditions, content, etc.

The article presents information about a survey and evaluation of the use of the Thematic Apperception Test in cross-cultural research. The subjects included in the study were 60 Arab male students, 40 Moslems and 20 Christians. The test was originally administered to 92 students taking a course in the Psychology of Adjustment at the American University of Beirut. Only one of the 92 refused to take the test. The average age of these students was 21.2 years. Over half of the subjects came from Lebanon; the remainder, mainly from Jordan and Syria; and a few, from Iraq and Bahrain. The tests were administered individually. The sexual identification given to the figures, the relationship ascribed to them, as well as the attention paid to details were recorded for each picture. The results pertaining to the four criteria for determining whether Arabs and Americans perceive the same social situation in the selected cards are discussed. The table showing frequency of the sexual confusion of figures by Arabs and Americans is also included.

In previous cross-cultural research, relationships were established between child training variables, game playing, and general cultural variables. Using three national surveys with adults the following hypotheses derived from the cross-cultural study were confirmed within this culture: 1. Because games of strategy are associated cross-culturally with severe primary socialization, psychological discipline, high obedience training, and complex cultures, they will be preferred in this culture by the persons who have had greater experience of such a child training pattern, that is by the higher status groups as compared with the lower and by women as compared with men. 2. Because games of chance are associated cross-culturally with high routine-responsibility training, punishment for the display of initiative, and a belief in the benevolence of the gods, they will be preferred in this culture by members of the lower status groups as compared with the higher and by women as compared with men. 3. Because games of physical skill are associated cross-culturally with high achievement training, they will be preferred in this culture by the upper as compared with the lower status groups and by men as compared with women. The results were conceptualized in terms of a conflict-enculturation theory of games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a probe of the validity of generalizing from cross-cultural studies to the level of intracultural individual differences, hypotheses were derived from a cross-cultural study. It was predicted that those who are more interested in mastering their social environment will report greater participation in, enjoyment of, and mastery of games of strategy. It was further predicted that those who are more interested in mastering the supernatural or who believe more in its benevolence will report greater participation in, enjoyment of, and mastery of games of chance. Because the data do not support the hypotheses, it is concluded that individual difference generalizations based on cross-cultural findings are of limited validity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vocational Orientations, expressed in answer to a number of questions, were compared for a sample of Australian and English male adolescents. Vocational choice, i.e., expectations of type and level of occupation to be entered, appeared to be made on a realistic assessment of life chances. Similarly occupational plans thereafter reflect this realism. The greater proportion of both samples indicate orientations to the future which do not reflect acceptance on an "Ideology of Success," Instead no change throughout the working life is expected. There is an absence of an aspirational framework in which improvement in status acts as a major stimulant. A minority of both samples, with a significantly higher proportion of the Australian sample, expect status mobility. It is suggested that the difference between the two samples reflects a major difference in the cultural frame of reference. The Australian adolescent being more exposed to an aspirational frame of reference in which the achievement of mobility in the sphere of work, is seen as both desirable and possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on information related to cultural orientation of Pakistan's children. The researcher, W. Dennis compared the responses of American, Lebanese, and Sudanese children as to the use of universally present objects. He was able to demonstrate that children of different cultures differ in their ideas as early as five years of age. With the use of this technique it seems possible to build up hypotheses regarding the interests, values, and beliefs which are being learned by children in different cultures. The list of common objects used as stimulus words also was the same and was used in the same order. The subjects responded orally in Bengali (the local language) and their responses were translated and recorded by the interviewer in English. The uses of common objects do indicate the general cultural pattern of a group. The present data also indicate certain similarities of the present subjects with Sudanese and other Arab children and certain dissimilarities with the American children. It might be suggested in conclusion that the present technique is useful and valuable in the cross-cultural study of children.

The article compares the findings of previous studies on the perception of physiognomy and personality from male photographs with the findings of male pictures from a sample of 156 students from three gymnasia in Oslo, Norway. A study by T.M. Stritch confirmed these findings on a new set of photographs. Twenty-one photographs from old issues of "Time" magazine, which were employed in the investigation by psychologists were used here as stimulus material. To obtain quantitative measurements of physiognomy and personality the seven-point rating scales from the same study were also used. Separate groups of judges rated physiognomy and personality; no judge rated both. In general, it seems fair to say that the two groups of judges perceive the physiognomic characteristics of these photographs in much the same fashion. An over-all inspection of the profiles in search of differences on a single trait which were consistent from cluster to cluster revealed only one difference: on six of the seven clusters Norwegians rated lips thicker than did Americans. Possibly the use by Norwegians of their own population as a mid-point in their frame of reference for judgment might lead to this result.

The article presents a cross-cultural study of stereotypes of American and Latin American students. It compares the authentic views of one cultural group with the authentic views of the other using a Chi square routine. It also differentiates the projected stereotypes response of the first group with the authentic views of the second group. The findings show that the American stereotype predictions of how the Latinos would respond to the statements were much more accurate than the Latino predictions of how the Americans would respond. There is also a gap between the Latino-held stereotype and the American reality. It indicates that two cultural groups can share common views on a problematic situation.

This article presents a study that makes a cross-cultural comparison of managerial behavior in England and France. A successful manager is a very efficient learning system. He uses the values that he inherits from his culture to forge conditions sufficiently strong for the execution of business. Very often the desired goal, or sub-goal. is not achieved, and this may cause the manager to modify his beliefs--within the limits of his culturally determined value system--and thus his future behavior. According to the model used in the article, the notion of profit is an intellectual abstraction for the French, whereas for the English manager it is more the result of a personal effort. In the French model, if the organization is efficient then profit ensues automatically; if there is no profit, it is due to malformation of some part of the system. In England, personality is brought into play. Lack of profit implies personal failure, which is traceable to managerial weakness, or perversity, an excessive preoccupation with boundary defense perhaps, or lack of cooperation. The Frenchman will react to defeat with detachment or resignation, the Englishman with aggression and defiance. In neither case is such a reaction necessarily logical. The logic of the reaction depends upon a careful a priori evaluation of the value of goal achievement.

The examined cross-cultural evidence indicates that women may come to have many options in very different types of societies and through very different combinations of social, political, cultural and economic reasons. Furthermore, there is no linear relationship between a country's level of economic development and the range of women's options in different life sectors. Thus, the option not to marry becomes much more of an option for men and women in the less economically developed countries. Women, on the other hand, have much more the options to work in general, to work after marriage and to enroll in college when a country is at a medium high level of economic development (GNP-$ 1,000-$ 1,500) than at higher or lower levels. Finally, a wide range of occupational choices for women can be achieved in countries at either a medium high or a medium low level of economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to analyze a case of cross-cultural interaction as it bears on attitude formation and attitude change. Three hypotheses on the relationship between interaction, perception, and attitude are tested. Two sets of survey data on the Arab students' experience in the United States were collected before and after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. In absence of conflict the Arab students' attitudes toward Americans seemed to be a function of (a) the students' perception of Americans' attitude toward the Arabs, and (b) the extent to which the students interact with Americans. The immediate effects of interaction and perceived attitudes on shaping attitudes toward other groups seem fairly well substantiated by authors' research evidence as well as by others. It is more difficult to measure long-range effects, especially in the case of cross-cultural education. The experience and attitudes foreign students take back to their home countries may be more crucial in the process of social change and global alignment than can be assessed in studies confined to probing the immediate consequences of such experiences.

The article reports a pilot study relating psychosocial modernity to the initial cross-cultural accommodation of foreign visitors to the U.S. Since the U.S. is a highly developed nation, it was hypothesized that being psychosocially modern would facilitate the visitors' accommodation. Modernity data were collected as an adjunct to the authors' evaluation of an orientation program that the foreign visitors began three to six days after their arrival in the U.S. Modernity was measured by a group-administered 15-item scale. A typical item was a question related to years of education children should have. The pilot study sample consisted of 137 government-sponsored, English-speaking trainees from 25 developing nations. The average respondent, a married male in his early 30's with 16 years of education, came to the U.S. for academic or technical training. All of the significant correlations between modernity and sojourn variables were in the direction suggested by the modernity syndrome. Since the modernity scale is multidimensional, it is understandable that correlations with the visitors' experiences were not high.

Presents a preface to the publication of cross-cultural research.

This article focuses on a cross-cultural study of stereotypes, that hypothesized and found that the amount and frequency of contact with the stereotyped group was related to both clarity and favorability-unfavorability of the stereotypes. The results of a recent study by the author, and their comparison with those of an earlier study, do not support the above hypothesis. The 10 most frequently checked traits for each group were rank ordered and analyzed in terms of the proportion of favorable versus unfavorable traits. The above findings tend to indicate that the favorability of the stereotypes may be a function of the degree of acceptability of the group. The acceptability of a group is likely to be influenced by sociopolitical factors. This is evident in the stereotypes about Americans, Russians, and English, in general, and in the traits attributed to Chinese and Pakistanis in particular. Further support for findings comes from a study of the stereotypes of Pakistani students, in which the groups classified as friendly received 100% favorable and those classified as Indians and outgroups received 100% unfavorable trait.