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An Eye for Prices, an Eye for Souls: Americans in the Indian Subcontinent, 1784-1838
Michael Verney
Journal of the Early Republic, Fall 2013, Pages 397-431
Abstract:
Between Independence and the late 1830s, Americans' perception of India changed dramatically. Such a shift was due to the transition from merchant-mariners to missionaries as the predominant professions to visit the subcontinent. From the Treaty of Paris to the War of 1812, American trade with India boomed as Philadelphia, Boston, and Salem merchants rode the winds of neutral trade to windfall profits. Largely forbidden from trading with the houses of the East India Company, however, American businessmen had to look elsewhere for trading partners. They found them in the well-educated native Indian merchants called banians in Calcutta and dubashes in Madras. Since their success in India was predicated on the quality of their commercial relationships with native Indian merchants, American captains and supercargoes had every reason to overcome cultural differences. While early national American merchants varied in their ability to drop prejudices, many of the most successful India traders forged remarkably respectful, fair, and even friendly relationships with their indigenous counterparts. The profitability of the America India trade dropped precipitously after Congress passed new tariff legislation in 1816. By then, a new, more evangelically minded generation of Americans had begun to land in Anglo-Indian ports. The rise of American missionary labor in the subcontinent resulted in a very different image of native Indians and their civilization. Unlike merchants, missionaries had every reason to exploit cultural and religious differences, both for publicity and for reasons of funding. Their writings and publications had a profound effect on the way in which ordinary Americans thought of themselves, of non-Christian peoples, and of their destiny as a people.
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Suicide mortality gap between Francophones and Anglophones of Quebec, Canada
Stephanie Burrows et al.
Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, July 2013, Pages 1125-1132
Purpose: Few studies evaluate language-group differences in suicide mortality. This study assessed the suicide mortality gap between Francophones and Anglophones of Quebec, Canada according to age, sex, method, region and socioeconomic deprivation.
Methods: Suicide decedents were extracted from the Quebec death file for 1989-2007 (N = 24,465). Age- and sex-specific suicide mortality rates were calculated for four periods (1989-1993, 1994-1998, 1999-2003, 2004-2007) for Francophones and Anglophones aged ≥10 years. Age-standardized rates of suicide by method, region, and level of social and material deprivation were calculated for each sex. Rate ratios and rate differences were estimated.
Results: Suicide rates for Francophones were two to three times higher than rates for Anglophones, and differences were greatest for adults aged 25-64 years. Francophone males had more than two times the rate of suicide by hanging or firearms than Anglophone males. Francophone females had twice the rate of hanging, poisoning or firearm suicide as Anglophone females, although precision was low. Francophone-Anglophone suicide mortality gaps were higher in urban areas despite lower suicide rates, and varied little across levels of social and material deprivation.
Conclusions: There was a large suicide mortality gap between Francophones and Anglophones of Quebec; especially, among adults aged 25-64 years.
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Cheryl Rivers & Roger Volkema
Journal of Business Ethics, June 2013, Pages 17-31
Abstract:
How do Eastern and Western perceptions of "tricky" or ethically ambiguous negotiation tactics differ? We address this question by comparing 161 Chinese and 146 Australian participants' ratings of the appropriateness of different types of negotiation tactics. We predict that their differing cultural values (e.g., individualism/collectivism, importance of face) as well as their different implicit theories of how negotiation ought to be conducted (i.e., mental models, such as captured in The Secret Art of War: The 36 Stratagems) will be salient in their perceptions of tactics. Examining 24 tactics falling into eight categories, we found that overall the Chinese respondents saw these tactics as more appropriate than did the Australian respondents. There were, however, differences across categories of tactics. Chinese participants rated tactics related to the 36 stratagems as significantly more appropriate than did Australian participants, including diverting attention, misrepresenting information and making false promises. In some cases, the Chinese also saw feigning positive feelings/emotions as more appropriate than did the Australian participants, while an Australian preference for feigning negative feelings/emotions was partially supported. The implications of these findings for practitioners are discussed, along with opportunities for future research.
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Weber, Marx, and work values: Evidence from transition economies
Susan Linz & Yu Wei Chu
Economic Systems, forthcoming
Abstract:
Are work values a cause (Weber) or consequence (Marx) of the economic environment? The collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991 provides a unique opportunity to investigate this link. Using data collected from an employee survey conducted in over 340 workplaces in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia, we investigate generational differences in adherence to the Protestant work ethic (PWE). Our results indicate that Marx was "right" about the link between work values and economic environment. That is, despite economic and cultural differences emerging during the transformation process, in all three countries, participating workers born after 1981 adhere more strongly to PWE than workers born before 1977. Moreover, the estimate magnitudes are very similar across these economically and culturally diverse countries. More generally, PWE adherence is stronger among participating workers with an internal locus of control, and among supervisors. PWE adherence also tends to be stronger among participants with high relative earnings, as well as among those working in organizations that reward hard work with the chance to develop new skills or learn new things.
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Cultural Differences, Assimilation, and Behavior: Player Nationality and Penalties in Football
Giacomo De Luca, Jeroen Schokkaert & Johan Swinnen
Journal of Sports Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine the impact of a different cultural background on individual behavior, focusing on penalties in football matches of southern European and northern European football players in the English Premier League. Southern European football players collect on average more football penalties than their British colleagues, and northern European football players collect on average less football penalties than their British colleagues. The number of football penalties incurred by southern European players is initially higher but converges toward the local average the longer their experience in the English Premier League.
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My face, my heart: Cultural differences in integrated bodily self-awareness
Lara Maister & Manos Tsakiris
Cognitive Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
Body-awareness is produced by an integration of both interoceptive and exteroceptive bodily signals. However, previous investigations into cultural differences in bodily self-awareness have only studied these two aspects in isolation. We investigated the interaction between interoceptive and exteroceptive self-processing in East Asian and Western participants. During an interoceptive awareness task, self-face observation improved performance of those with initially low awareness in the Western group, but did not benefit the East Asian participants. These results suggest that the integrated, coherent experience of the body differs between East Asian and Western cultures. For Western participants, viewing one's own face may activate a bodily self-awareness which enhances processing of other bodily information, such as interoceptive signals. Instead, for East Asian individuals, the external appearance of the self may activate higher-level, social aspects of self-identity, reflecting the importance of the sociocultural construct of "face" in East Asian cultures.
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Acting professional: An exploration of culturally bounded norms against nonwork role referencing
Eric Luis Uhlmann et al.
Journal of Organizational Behavior, August 2013, Pages 866-886
Abstract:
This article presents three studies examining how cross-cultural variation in assumptions about the appropriateness of referencing nonwork roles while in work settings creates consequential impressions that affect professional outcomes. Study 1 reveals a perceived norm limiting the referencing of nonwork roles at work and provides evidence that it is a U.S. norm by showing that awareness of it varies as a function of tenure living in the United States. Studies 2 and 3 examine the implications of the norm for evaluations of job candidates. Study 2 finds that U.S. but not Indian participants negatively evaluate job candidates who endorse nonwork role referencing as a strategy to create rapport and shows that this cultural difference is largest among participants most familiar with norms of professionalism, those with prior recruiting experience. Study 3 finds that corporate job recruiters from the United States negatively evaluate candidates who endorse nonwork role referencing as a means of building rapport with a potential business partner. This research underlines the importance of navigating initial interactions in culturally appropriate ways to facilitate the development of longer-term collaborations and negotiation success.
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Yann Algan, Thierry Mayer & Mathias Thoenig
Sciences Po Working Paper, April 2013
Abstract:
This paper aims at studying how economic incentives influence cultural transmission. We do so in the context of naming decisions, a crucial expression of cultural identity. Our focus is on Arabic versus Non-Arabic names given by parents to their newborn babies in France over the 2003-2007 period. Our model of cultural transmission disentangles between three determinants: (i) vertical transmission of parental culture; (ii) horizontal influence from the neighborhood; (iii) economic penalty associated with names that sound culturally distinctive. Our identification is based on the sample of households being exogenously allocated across public housings dwellings. We find that economic incentives largely influence naming choices: In the absence of economic penalty, the annual number of babies born with an Arabic name would have been more than 50 percent larger. Our theory-based estimates allow us to perform a welfare analysis where we gauge the strength of cultural attachment in monetary units. We find that the vertical transmission of an Arabic name provides the same shift in parents' utility as a 3% rise in lifetime income of the child.
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Cultural Differences in the Links Between Parental Control and Children's Emotional Expressivity
Jennifer Louie, Brian Oh & Anna Lau
Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research suggests that parental control may be motivated by various socialization goals and contributes to children's adjustment in diverse ways depending on cultural context. The present study examined whether parental psychological control was differentially related to children's emotional expressivity in a sample of 127 Korean, Asian American (AA), and European American (EA) preschoolers. Results indicated that Korean and AA parents endorsed more parental control (emotion suppression, shaming) than EA parents. Similarly, Korean and AA children displayed less observable sadness and exuberance during emotion-eliciting tasks than EA children. Furthermore, moderation analyses revealed that for EA families, parental control was positively correlated with child anger and exuberance; however, the associations were not significant for AA and Korean families.
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Natalya Bazarova & Connie Yuan
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, July 2013, Pages 437-453
Abstract:
Expertise recognition is challenging in teamwork, particularly in intercultural collaboration. This research seeks to investigate how cultural differences in communication styles may affect expertise recognition and influence in face-to-face (FtF) versus text-based computer-mediated communication (CMC). Using experimental intercultural groups, we found that in FtF groups East Asian experts had a lower participation rate, and were perceived as less competent, less confident, and less influential than experts from Western culture. No such differences occurred in CMC. The results support mediated moderation effect of perceived confidence on expert influence such that changes in perceptions of Chinese and American experts' confidence accounted for their different levels of influence in CMC versus FtF. No such effect was found with participation rate.
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Do We Become a Different Person When Hitting the Road? Personality Development of Sojourners
Julia Zimmermann & Franz Neyer
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
International mobility is a prevalent life event that particularly affects university students. The aim of this longitudinal study was twofold: First, we examined the impact of international mobility on personality (Big Five) change, separating self-selection effects from socialization processes. Second, we extended prior analyses on the association between life events and personality development by investigating the mechanisms that account for socialization processes. In particular, we assessed whether individual differences in the fluctuation of support relationships serve as an explanatory link. We used a prospective control group design with 3 measurement occasions. A sample of university students, containing both short-term (i.e., 1 semester) and long-term (i.e., 1 academic year) sojourners (N = 527) along with control students (N = 607), was tracked over the course of an academic year. Multivariate latent models revealed 3 main findings: First, initial (pre-departure) levels of Extraversion and Conscientiousness predicted short-term sojourning, and Extraversion and Openness predicted long-term sojourning. Second, both forms of sojourning were associated with increases in Openness and Agreeableness and a decrease in Neuroticism above and beyond the observed self-selection. Third, the acquisition of new international support relationships largely accounted for the sojourn effects on personality change. These findings help to fill the missing link between life events and personality development by establishing social relationship fluctuation as an important mediating mechanism.
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Lora Park et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, November 2013, Pages 965-971
Abstract:
Previous research suggests that there is a fundamental link between expansive body postures and feelings of power. The current research demonstrates that this link is not universal, but depends on people's cultural background (Western vs. East Asian) and on the particular type of expansive posture enacted. Three types of expansive postures were examined in the present studies: the expansive-hands-spread-on-desk pose (Carney et al., 2010), the expansive-upright-sitting pose (Huang et al., 2011; Tiedens & Fragale, 2003), and the expansive-feet-on-desk pose (Carney et al., 2010). Of these postures, the expansive-feet-on-desk pose was perceived by both Americans and East Asians as the least consistent with East Asian cultural norms of modesty, humility, and restraint (Study 1). The expansive-hands-spread-on-desk and expansive-upright-sitting postures led to greater sense of power than a constricted posture for both Americans and East Asians (Studies 2a-2b). In contrast, the expansive-feet-on-desk pose led to greater power activation (Study 3) and action orientation (Study 4) for Americans, but not for East Asians. Indeed, East Asians in the expansive-feet-on-desk pose showed less power activation and action orientation than Americans in this pose. Together, these findings support a basic principle of embodiment - the effects of posture depend on: (a) the type of posture, and (b) the symbolic meaning of that posture.
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Sociosexuality in Mainland China
Wei Jun Zheng et al.
Archives of Sexual Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
The construct of sociosexuality or sociosexual orientation describes the extent to which people will have casual, uncommitted sexual relationships. The Sociosexual Orientation Inventory (SOI) has been used to measure sociosexuality in many countries, but not in China. The aims of this study were to explore sociosexuality in a cross-section of the Chinese adult population, to quantify sex differences in sociosexuality, and to examine the sociodemographic correlates and the impact of the high sex ratio. The study consisted of a cross-sectional survey using a self-completion questionnaire. It was administered to adults of reproductive age in three provinces: Zhejiang, Guizhou, and Yunnan. While questionnaires were received from 7,424 participants, total SOI scores could be computed only for the 4,645 (63 %) who completed all seven items of the SOI. The mean score for men and women combined was 21.0, very low compared with most other countries, indicating restricted sociosexuality. The men (n = 2,048) had a mean of 27, showing more restricted sociosexuality than in all other countries where the SOI has been used. Wealth was the strongest independent correlate of high (unrestricted) sociosexuality in men and women. The effect size for the difference between the sexes was moderate (Cohen's d = .64), and comparable to more developed countries, perhaps reflecting relative gender equality in contemporary China. Despite the very high sex ratio, which is theorized to lead to restricted sexuality, its influence was difficult to determine, since differences in sociosexuality between high and low sex ratio areas within this population were inconsistent.
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A Tear in the Iron Curtain: The Impact of Western Television on Consumption Behavior
Leonardo Bursztyn & Davide Cantoni
University of California Working Paper, August 2012
Abstract:
This paper examines the impact of exposure to foreign media on the economic behavior of agents in a totalitarian regime. We study private consumption choices focusing on former East Germany, where differential access to Western television was determined by geographic features. Using data collected after the transition to a market economy, we find no evidence of a significant impact of previous exposure to Western television on aggregate consumption levels. However, exposure to Western broadcasts affects the composition of consumption, biasing choices in favor of categories of goods with high intensity of pre-reunification advertisement. The effects vanish by 1998.
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Rikki Nouri et al.
Journal of Organizational Behavior, August 2013, Pages 739-763
Abstract:
Research on the effect of cultural diversity on team performance remains inconclusive. We propose to resolve the competing predictions of the information/decision making versus the social categorization theories by integrating two task-related theories, the situational strength theory and the circumplex model of group tasks. We propose that high task specificity enables similar interpretations and shared understanding among team members, which is needed for effective "execute" (convergent) tasks, is characterized by team cooperation and interdependence. Low task specificity, in contrast, is beneficial for "generate" (creative) tasks, because it does not place constraints on generating original ideas and does not require tight coordination among the team members. We tested the effects of situational strength and task type on the relationship between cultural diversity and team performance in two experiments with 86 and 96 dyads in the first and second experiments, respectively. In both experiments, heterogeneous (Israeli-Singaporean) and homogeneous dyads (Israeli-Israeli and Singaporean-Singaporean) worked under low or high task specificity. In Study 1, dyads performed convergent execution tasks, and in Study 2, they performed creative idea-generation tasks. The impediment of multiculturalism was reduced in execute (convergent) tasks under high task specificity and in generate (divergent) tasks under low task specificity.
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Oliver Robinson et al.
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, July 2013, Pages 719-737
Abstract:
The study investigated interrelationships among trait authenticity, context-specific authenticity, and well-being in three samples drawn from England, the United States, and Russia. Six hundred and twenty-eight adults participated: 196 from the United States, 240 from England, and 192 from Russia. The overall sample consisted of 151 men and 477 women with a mean age of 27 years (range = 18 to 56). Authenticity was rated both as a general trait and specific to four contexts: with partner, parents, friends, and work colleagues. Well-being was measured using a measure of positive mental health. English and American samples showed higher mean authenticity levels than the Russian sample. In all three subsamples, within-subjects differences in the context-specific ratings were in the same ordinal series; authenticity was rated highest with partner, followed by friends and parents, and lowest with work colleagues. Context and country showed an interaction in their effect on authenticity; United States and England were higher than Russia in partner, friend, and parent contexts but not in the work context. Trait and context-specific authenticity measures contributed unique and significant variance to a prediction of well-being in all three subsamples.
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Se Hyung Oh
Social Behavior and Personality, Summer 2013, Pages 981-994
Abstract:
Many previous researchers of conformity have found that people from collectivist cultures have stronger conformity tendencies than those from individualistic cultures. However, as most of these researchers focused on only 1 type of conformity, that is, compliance, these findings are limited. Consequently, little is known about the influence of culture on internalization, another type of conformity. In a series of virtual laboratory (e-lab) experiments in which participants were either simply exposed to choice dilemmas and opinion items or presented with a persuasive argument about each of them, I found that there was a lower level of cross-cultural differences in internalization than in compliance. Thus, only superficial cross-cultural differences may exist in conformity.