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In the United States, Asians are commonly assumed to excel across all educational stages. We challenge this assumption by revealing the underperformance of ethnic East Asians in US law schools and business schools, two prevalent professional schools that are consequential gateways to societal influence. Whereas most educational and governmental statistics lump all Asians together, we distinguish culturally between East Asians (e.g., ethnic Chinese) and South Asians (e.g., ethnic Indians), the two largest Asian groups in the United States. We propose that East Asians--but not South Asians--underperform academically because their low verbal assertiveness is culturally incongruent with the assertive class participation prized by US law schools and business schools. Across six large studies (n = 19,194), East Asians had lower grades than South Asians and Whites despite performing well on admission tests (e.g., Law School Admission Test, Graduate Management Admissions Test). East Asians' underperformance was not explained by academic motivation but by lower assertiveness (whether assessed by self-ratings, peer ratings, or class participation scores)--after controlling for factors such as birth country and English proficiency. Consistent with the assertiveness mechanism, East Asians' underperformance was more pronounced in social courses emphasizing class participation (e.g., leadership, strategy) than in quantitative courses (e.g., accounting, finance). Notably, we found that East Asians' underperformance was mitigated in online classes conducted via Zoom, a communication medium characterized by lower social presence than in-person classes. By revealing a "Bamboo Ceiling" in the classroom, this research highlights the importance of fostering an inclusive classroom for students from diverse cultural backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Well-educated and prosperous, Asians are called the "model minority" in the United States. However, they appear disproportionately underrepresented in leadership positions, a problem known as the "bamboo ceiling." It remains unclear why this problem exists and whether it applies to all Asians or only particular Asian subgroups. To investigate the mechanisms and scope of the problem, we compared the leadership attainment of the two largest Asian subgroups in the United States: East Asians (e.g., Chinese) and South Asians (e.g., Indians). Across nine studies (n = 11,030) using mixed methods (archival analyses of chief executive officers, field surveys in large US companies, student leader nominations and elections, and experiments), East Asians were less likely than South Asians and whites to attain leadership positions, whereas South Asians were more likely than whites to do so. To understand why the bamboo ceiling exists for East Asians but not South Asians, we examined three categories of mechanisms--prejudice (intergroup), motivation (intrapersonal), and assertiveness (interpersonal)-- while controlling for demographics (e.g., birth country, English fluency, education, socioeconomic status). Analyses revealed that East Asians faced less prejudice than South Asians and were equally motivated by work and leadership as South Asians. However, East Asians were lower in assertiveness, which consistently mediated the leadership attainment gap between East Asians and South Asians. These results suggest that East Asians hit the bamboo ceiling because their low assertiveness is incongruent with American norms concerning how leaders should communicate. The bamboo ceiling is not an Asian issue, but an issue of cultural fit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decade, cultural differences in perceptual judgment and memory have been observed: Westerners attend more to focal objects, whereas East Asians attend more to contextual information. However, the underlying mechanisms for the apparent differences in cognitive processing styles have not been known. In the present study, we examined the possibility that the cultural differences arise from culturally different viewing patterns when confronted with a naturalistic scene. We measured the eye movements of American and Chinese participants while they viewed photographs with a focal object on a complex background. In fact the Americans fixated more on focal objects than did the Chinese, and the Americans tended to look at the focal object more quickly. In addition, the Chinese made more saccades to the background than did the Americans. Thus, it appears that differences in judgment and memory may have their origins in differences in what is actually attended as people view a scene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors compared East Asians' and Americans' views of everyday social events. Research suggests that Americans tend to focus more on the self and to have a greater sense of personal agency than East Asians. The authors assessed whether, com- pared to East Asians, Americans emphasize main characters even when events do not involve the self and whether they see more agency or intentionality in actions, even when the actions are not their own. Whether East Asians would observe more emotions in everyday scenarios than would Americans also was investigated. In Study 1, Chinese and Americans read alleged diary entries of another person. Americans did focus more on main characters and on characters intentionality. Study 2 replicated these results comparing Taiwanese and Americans on free recall of events concerning the self and of narratives and videos concerning others. Study 2 also found that Taiwanese made more comments about the emotional states of characters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study on how the norms characteristic of a "culture of honor," are manifested in the cognitions, emotions, behaviors and physiological reactions. The research is conducted using white southern males in the United States. Violence stemming from culture-of-honor norms is still part of the southern legacy. Thus, although southern white males were not more likely to endorse statements about violence in general, they were more willing to endorse violence when it was used to protect or to answer an affront. Southern white males were also more likely to stigmatize men, described in brief scenarios, who did not respond with violence, criticizing them for being "not much of a man" if they failed to fight or shoot the person who challenged or affronted them. Hence southern white male approval of violence is produced by culture-of-honor norms. Study showed there was a significant interaction between region and insult. If southerners were insulted, they were much more likely to end the scenario with violence, whereas northerners were unaffected by the insult.

Illustrates how institutions of the United States South and West can help perpetuate violence related to a culture of honor. Comparison of actual news stories about defense of honor in South and West regions; Justification and blameworthiness index presented at the stories; Mechanisms in which institutions perpetuate a culture of honor.

People from different cultures vary in the ways they approach social conflicts, with Japanese being more motivated to maintain interpersonal harmony and avoid conflicts than Americans are. Such cultural differences have developmental consequences for reasoning about social conflict. In the study reported here, we interviewed random samples of Americans from the Midwest United States and Japanese from the larger Tokyo area about their reactions to stories of intergroup and interpersonal conflicts. Responses showed that wisdom (e.g., recognition of multiple perspectives, the limits of personal knowledge, and the importance of compromise) increased with increasing age among Americans, but older age was not associated with wiser responses among Japanese. Younger and middle-aged Japanese showed greater use of wise-reasoning strategies than younger and middle-aged Americans did. This cultural difference was weaker for older participants' reactions to interpersonal conflicts and was actually reversed for intergroup conflicts. This research has important implications for the study of aging, cultural psychology, and wisdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although U.S. culture strongly sanctions the ideal of independence, the specific ways in which independence is realized may be variable depending, among other factors, on social class. Characterized by relative scarcity of social and material resources, working-class (WC) Americans were expected to strongly value self-reliance. In contrast, with choices among abundant resources, middle-class (MC) Americans were expected to value personal control and social expansiveness. In support of this analysis, relative to their WC counterparts, MC Americans reported more support from friends and greater likelihood of giving and receiving advice but less self-reliance (Study 1). Furthermore, we found evidence that this social difference has cognitive consequences: College students with MC backgrounds were more likely than their WC counterparts were to endorse situational attributions for others' behavior (Studies 2a and 2b) as well as to show holistic visual attention (Study 3).

Westerners' perceptions tend to focus on salient foreground objects, whereas Asians are more inclined to focus on contexts. We hypothesized that such culturally specific patterns of attention may be afforded by the perceptual environment of each culture. In order to test this hypothesis, we randomly sampled pictures of scenes from small, medium, and large cities in Japan and the United States. Using both subjective and objective measures, Study 1 demonstrated that Japanese scenes were more ambiguous and contained more elements than American scenes. Japanese scenes thus may encourage perception of the context more than American scenes. In Study 2, pictures of locations in cities were presented as primes, and participants' subsequent patterns of attention were measured. Both Japanese and American participants primed with Japanese scenes attended more to contextual information than did those primed with American scenes. These results provide evidence that culturally characteristic environments may afford distinctive patterns of perception.

Background: Cross-cultural differences in cognition suggest that Westerners use categories more than Easterners, but these differences have only been investigated in young adults., Objective: The contributions of cognitive resource and the extent of cultural exposure are explored for free recall by investigating cross-cultural differences in categorical organization in younger and older adults. Cultural differences in the use of categories should be larger for elderly than young because categorization is a well-practiced strategy for Westerners, but age-related cognitive resource limitations may make the strategy difficult for elderly Easterners to implement. Therefore, we expect that cultural differences in categorization will be magnified in elderly adults relative to younger adults, with Americans categorizing more than Chinese., Methods: Across two studies, 112 young and 112 elderly drawn from two cultures (American and Chinese) encoded words presented in their native language. One word list contained categorically-unrelated words and the other, categorically-related words; both lists were presented in the participants' native language. In experiment 1, the words were strong category associates, and in experiment 2, the words were weak category associates. Participants recalled all the words they could remember, and the number of words recalled and degree of clustering by category were analyzed., Results: As predicted, cultural differences emerged for the elderly, with East-Asians using categories less than Americans during recall of highly-associated category exemplars (experiment 1). For recall of low-associate exemplars, East-Asians overall categorized less than Americans (experiment 2). Surprisingly, these differences in the use of categories did not lead to cultural differences in the number of words recalled. The expected effects of age were apparent with elderly recalling less than young, but in contrast to previous studies, elderly also categorized less than young., Conclusion: These studies provide support for the notion that cultural differences in categorical organization are larger for elderly adults than young, although culture did not impact the amount recalled. These data suggest that culture and age interact to influence cognition.

The authors compared East Asians' and Americans' views of everyday social events. Research suggests that Americans tend to focus more on the self and to have a greater sense of personal agency than East Asians. The authors assessed whether, compared to East Asians, Americans emphasize main characters even when events do not involve the self and whether they see more agency or intentionality in actions, even when the actions are not their own. Whether East Asians would observe more emotions in everyday scenarios than would Americans also was investigated. In Study 1, Chinese and Americans read alleged diary entries of another person. Americans did focus more on main characters and on characters' intentionality. Study 2 replicated these results comparing Taiwanese and Americans on free recall of events concerning the self and of narratives and videos concerning others. Study 2 also found that Taiwanese made more comments about the emotional states of characters.