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Informed by a new theoretical framework that assigns a key role to cultural tasks (culturally prescribed means to achieve cultural mandates such as independence and interdependence) in mediating the mutual influences between culture and psychological processes, the authors predicted and found that North Americans are more likely than Western Europeans (British and Germans) to (a) exhibit focused (vs. holistic) attention, (b) experience emotions associated with independence (vs. interdependence), (c) associate happiness with personal achievement (vs. communal harmony), and (d) show an inflated symbolic self. In no cases were the 2 Western European groups significantly different from one another. All Western groups showed (e) an equally strong dispositional bias in attribution. Across all of the implicit indicators of independence, Japanese were substantially less independent (or more interdependent) than the three Western groups. An explicit self-belief measure of independence and interdependence showed an anomalous pattern. These data were interpreted to suggest that the contemporary American ethos has a significant root in both Western cultural heritage and a history of voluntary settlement. Further analysis offered unique support for the cultural task analysis. Keywords: independence and interdependence, culture and self, American individualism, frontier thesis

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2007.00283.x Byline: Ayse K. Uskul (a2), Michaela Hynie (b) Abstract: In 2 studies, we examined the relationship between self-construal and illness-related concerns. In Study 1, participants imagined themselves experiencing a health problem described in a scenario and answered closed-ended questions about the concerns that this situation would likely elicit. The experience of social illness concerns was predicted by collective self-construal, and the experience of personal illness concerns tended to be predicted by endorsement of individual self-construal. In Study 2, participants recalled a past health problem and related consequences, which were content-coded. Collective self-construal predicted the extent to which people mentioned issues related to others in their free-recall illness descriptions and the number of other-related consequences that were generated when specifically asked about them. Author Affiliation: (a)University of MichiganAnn Arbor, MI (b)York UniversityToronto, Ontario, Canada Article note: (2) Ayse K. Uskul is now at the University of Essex. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ayse K. Uskul, University of Essex, Department of Psychology, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, CO4 3SQ United Kingdom. E-mail: auskul@essex.ac.uk

This paper reports on the findings of a focus group study that examines how women have experienced menarche at the personal level and in relation to the larger cultural, religious, and societal environment. Fifty-three women from 34 different countries were recruited in 13 focus groups. On the one hand, at the personal level, menarche stories shared in this study revealed salient themes concerning feelings experienced at the time of menarche, the importance of mother's reactions to their daughter's first menstruation, difficulties around understanding the meanings attached to menarche by others, managing menstrual products, as well as making sense of formal education related to menstruation, and the age of menarche. On the other hand, the discussions concerning how women experienced menarche in relation to the larger cultural, religious, and societal environment revealed secrecy to be a defining feature of many stories. Cultural expectations of learning, and following the rules and regulations surrounding menstruation led to different reactions in women at the time of their menarche. Very few women mentioned a ritual or celebration at the time of their menarche. Findings are discussed in terms of similarities and differences in menarche stories of women from different cultural backgrounds. Limitations of the study are mentioned and suggestions for future research are provided. Keywords: Menarche; Culture; Focus groups; Women's health

The present study examines cross-cultural differences in interpersonal closeness to different people and whether these differences can be explained by independent and interdependent self-construal. Turkish and Euro-Canadian samples of university students were asked to indicate how close they feel and how close they ideally would like to be to family members, romantic partners, friends, and acquaintances. As predicted, Turkish participants scored higher on interdependent self-construal, whereas there was no culture difference on independent self-construal scores. Turkish participants rated their actual and ideal closeness with others higher than Euro-Canadian participants did. Both Turkish and Euro-Canadian participants reported feeling closest and ideally wanting to be closest to their romantic partner, and then to their families and friends, followed by acquaintances. Turkish participants desired more closeness with family members and acquaintances than Euro-Canadian participants did. Interdependent self-construal was found to partially mediate the relationships between culture and actual closeness scores for family, friends, and acquaintances and between culture and ideal scores for family and acquaintances. Keywords: actual and interpreted ideal closeness; culture; interdependent and independent self-construal; Turkish and Euro-Canadian sample

Evidence for gender differences in physicians' communication with their patients comes primarily from Western countries. Little is known about whether these gender differences would also be observed in Turkey, where there are explicit rules about male-female conduct. The purpose of this study was to observe male and female gynecologists' communication with their patients in a gynecology clinic at a state hospital in Istanbul, Turkey. Four male and three female gynecologists were observed in their interaction with 70 patients over l0 days. The observations were conducted during both the history taking and the actual examination sessions by a woman researcher. The results reported in this paper are based on the extensive field notes taken during the observations. Important differences were revealed in interactions between male vs female gynecologists and their patients. Namely, interactions differed in terms of conversation initiation, communication style, use of technical and colloquial language, frequency of eye contact, patience, and provision of information. Communication characteristics specific to interactions between male gynecologists and their patients included a 'blaming the victim' approach, differential treatment of patients, and underestimation of patients' abilities. Environmental factors that affected physicians' interaction with their patients are reported in conjunction with physicians' use of these external factors to explain the problems they experienced in physician-patient interaction. The discussion focuses on alternative explanations for and future research implications of the observed differences between male and female gynecologists in this setting. Keywords: Physician-patient communication; Gynecology clinic; Turkey

This study examined the factors that are likely to be associated with preferred behavioural and emotional responses to honour‐threatening situations and possible differences between a dignity culture (United Kingdom) and an honour culture (Turkey). We examined the role of cultural background, type of social setting, and participants' causality orientation in preferred emotional and behavioural responses to honour‐threatening situations. We first found that Turkish participants reported significantly higher levels of negative emotional response compared to British participants in the false accusation (not humiliation) scenario and in the public (not private) setting. Second, we found that Turkish participants reported a higher preference for retaliatory responses than did British participants when they imagined themselves being humiliated by one of their peers. Third, autonomy‐oriented participants in the Turkish sample reported significantly higher levels of negative feeling (but not higher retaliatory intentions) compared with autonomy‐oriented participants in the British sample, whereas controlled‐oriented participants in the Turkish sample tended to report lower levels of negative feeling compared with controlled‐oriented participants in the British sample. This interaction effect suggests that controlled‐ and autonomy‐orientations may serve different functions in the Turkish and British settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anti-effeminacy bias follows a specific pattern with men showing stronger anti-effeminacy bias against male targets than women. Previous explanations focused on men's higher tendency to stigmatize feminine men as homosexual and motives to maintain a dominant group status. Here, we suggest that certain expressions of anti-effeminacy bias may rather be a manifestation of men's reputation management motives for coalition formation, and be amplified among high (vs. low) masculine honor-oriented men. In three studies with samples from the United Kingdom and Turkey, we showed that men perceived feminine (vs. masculine) male targets as lower on coalitional value and were more reluctant to befriend them, yet this applied only to high (not low) honor-oriented men. Honor-oriented men's friendship reluctance was mediated by concern with losing reputation by association with targets lacking coalitional value. These findings extend understanding of anti-effeminacy bias by drawing attention to men's reputation concerns for coalitional reasons and individual differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In honour cultures, such as Turkey, reputation management is emphasised, whereas in dignity cultures such as northern US, self‐respect and personal achievements are central. Turkey is also a collectivistic culture, where relationship harmony is as important as reputation management. When Turkish people's reputation is threatened, they may experience an internal conflict between these two motives and display helplessness. The purpose of the present study was to examine how people from Turkey (an honour culture; n = 52) and northern US (a dignity culture; n = 48) would perceive and respond to reputation threats as opposed to self‐respect threats. As predicted, Turkish participants anticipated stronger anger, shame, and helplessness in response to reputation threats than self‐respect threats, whereas differences were smaller or non‐existent in northern US. Moreover, shame was a mediator between appraisal and helplessness for reputation threats in Turkey (shame positively predicted helplessness); anger was a mediator between appraisal and helplessness for self‐respect threats in northern US (anger negatively predicted helplessness). These results are novel in their inclusion of helplessness and appraisal theory of emotions when examining responses to threats in honour and dignity cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An attempt is made to understand the perception of and responses to unfair treatment in both academic and workplace contexts, focusing on self-regulatory systems that have psychological and physiological effects. The findings show that making salient stigmatized category membership activates prevention focus, which ultimately affects the concentration on the goal at hand.

A growing literature in social and cultural psychology has examined cultures of honour primarily focusing on southern states in the United States and on Mediterranean countries of southern Europe. In this article, we review a programme of research that has extended theories of cultures of honour to an under-researched context: Turkey. We first describe research that assessed lay reports of the situations that enhance or attack a person's honour and lay prototypes of honour. Next, we review research that built on this foundation and examined emotional implications, actual retaliatory responses, and preferences for different types of actions (e.g., attack vs. withdrawal) in the face of honour threats. We then briefly comment on our current research focused on the ways that honour threats can impede goal pursuit, on the distinction between different types of honour threats, and on acculturation processes in immigrant groups from cultures of honour. We conclude by highlighting the contributions of this programme of research to the literature on cultures of honour and discuss future directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]