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Lenore Loeb Adler (ICCCES & Molloy C), S. Patricia Clark (Molloy C), Florence L. Denmark (Pace U), Meline Karakashian (Private Practice), Ramadan A. Ahmed (Menoufia U, Egypt)), Tae Lyon Kim (Ewha Women's U, South Korea), Suneetha S. de Silva (Southern Illinois U at Edwardsville)
Cross-Cultural Comparisons of Attitudes on Living and Dying,
Attitudes toward living and dying were compared in five cultures/countries, that included: Armenai, Kuwait (prewar), Sri Lanka, South Korea, and the USA. The participants, both men and women, were categorized by three age groups. All answered the questionnaires, which were translated for the non-English speaking populations. Only a few pertinent questions are discussed here. While the cultural backgrounds differed, so did the languages and the religious affiliations of these five populations, the overall responses resulted in great similarities of the participants cross-culturally. Great differences were found among the age categories, but these were again similar in all participating populations.
Linda Line Alipuria (Claremont Graduate U)
Ethnic, Racial, and Cultural Identity/Self
Identity research and theorizing in psychology has begun only recently (the last 10 years or so) to consider ethnicity, race, and culture. The theorists and researchers in these areas of identity do not always agree on the meanings and primacy of these three aspects of a larger
group-related identity. My paper will attempt to make distinctions between the ethnic, racial, and cultural aspects of identity/self in order to address the unique challenges and responses each contributes to the psychological confrontation with group differences. The differences, changes, and interactions among these three constructs will be illustrated from interviews.
Kermyt G. Anderson (U of New Mexico)
Parental investment in Xhosa children in Cape Town, South Africa
Approximately 600 high school students in a Xhosa township in Cape Town, South Africa were interviewed to obtain data on the care they receive from their parents and parental figures. A biosocial perspective predicts differential levels of care by resident genetic fathers, non-resident (i.e., divorced) genetic fathers, and resident step fathers, as the benefits males receive from providing care will differ across type of father. Levels of
care (time and money) reported by Xhosa high school students confirm the predictions, providing insight into the motivation of male parental investment.
Lewis Aptekar (San Jose State University)
PROVIDING MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES TO REFUGEES:
UNDERSTANDING THE CHANGING ROLES OF GENDER AND
AGE AMONG THE DISPLACED IN ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (VIDEO)
Under the auspices of the Transcultural Psychosocial Organization in Amsterdam and Addis Ababa University, the author together with Ethiopian colleagues carried out an 18-month psychosocial study of displaced Ethiopians living in a camp outside of Addis Ababa. Data was collected by engaging in the daily struggles of the camp members as they were engaged in acquiring medical care, food, shelter, and trying to come to terms with their losses and traumas. The approximately 2,500 people living in this camp were forced nearly 7 years ago to abruptly leave their homes in what is now Eritrea. They were made to march, often without their families, through the Danakil depression, arguable the earth's most inhospitable terrain. More than half of the original group died of thirst and hunger, others lost family members, and a quarter were tortured. Once they arrived in the camp, they were forced to live without the insurance that their food would be forthcoming or that they would receive medical care. Deaths from malnutrition and disease were common. The data from the camps also revealed a variety of coping strategies that warded off mental disorders. These included strong social bonds in the community, a de-emphasis on ethnic differences within the camp, a reduction of having to deal with the everyday problems of life by developing a strong dependency on aid organizations, and adopting selective memories of past events. To understand what role if any mental health program would have in situations like this, the author established mental health training programs. The results from this program and the coping strategies are used to make recommendations for community mental health for people working in traumatized refugee communities with few financial resources.
Olga Yu. Artemova (Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Moscow)
MONOPOLIZATION OF INFORMATION AND INEQUALITY: A CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON
Various types or displays of social inequality may have their roots in quite different phenomena: in material production and property relations, on the one hand, and in some factors outside this sphere, on the other. In the latter case, monopolization of special knowledge and occupations (closely connected with ideology) by certain social groups is a powerful force that often had shaped and still shapes social inequality and even could have given rise to it at the early stages of human evolution. To test this idea, cross-cultural data on some prestate societies - where such mechanisms of social differentiation existed in the most pure and uncomplicated forms are used. (The research is supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project # 97-06-80272); gratitude is also expressed to the Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation, Moscow) whose travel grant has made it possible to present this paper at the Meeting.)
Herbert Barry, III (U of Pittsburgh)
CHOICE OF SPOUSE BY ADOLESCENTS OR ADULT RELATIVES
The standard sample of 186 societies contains 75 sedentary, politically subordinate
communities. These 75 communities are divided approximately equally into two categories: the adolescent or an adult family member as the usual source of the initiative in finding a spouse. Communities where the initiative is by the adolescent tend to permit rather than prohibit premarital sexual intercourse and tend to have several types of low cultural complexity, including low population density and absence of indigenous coins or paper money. A gender difference is indicated by a more consistent relationship of sexual permissiveness with initiative by adolescent girls than by adolescent boys.
John Bock (U of New Mexico) and Sara E. Johnson (U of New Mexico)
ECOLOGICAL, SOCIAL, AND DEMOGRAPHIC FACTORS AFFECTING VARIATION IN CHILDREN'S GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE OKAVANGO DELTA, BOTSWANA)
Children's growth and development is examined in two remote communities in the Okavango Delta of Botswana differing with respect to their level of integration into
national level political, social, and economic institutions. Height, weight and arm strength are used to compare acute and long term nutritional status and health across communities. Socioecological conditions such as household reliance on traditional subsistence, mixed agriculture and pastoralism, or wage labor as well as demographic factors such as family composition are independent variables in the analysis of the variation in children's
growth. This analysis suggests that standard epidemiological approaches to the study of growth and development benefit from an understanding of the interplay between ecology and parental decision-making.
Ralph Bolton (Pomona C)
A SYSTEMS APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF AGGRESSION: THE QOLLA CASE REVISITED
In an effort to explain forms and levels of aggressive behavior in Peruvian villages, the author conducted fieldwork among the Qolla in the late 1960's. The resultant explanatory model, the "hypoglycemia-aggression hypothesis," incorporated a set of biological, environmental and social variables which appear to be systemically linked in this setting. This paper offers a retrospective examination of this work as a case study in the application of systems thinking to the analysis of culture and human behavior.
Dmitri Bondarenko (Russian Academy of Sciences) and Andrey Korotayev (Russian State U for the Humanities)
FAMILY STRUCTURES AND COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION: A CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON, Friday, 8:15 am (Exchange)
The communal democraticity is shown to be significantly and negatively correlated with the family size and polygyny. In its turn the communal democraticity is demonstrated to be positively correlated with the democraticity of the supracommunal structures. Consequently, it is suggested that the fact that the modern democracy developed in Europe (i.e., that the region which already in the Late Middle Ages was charachterized by the highest proportion of complex societies with small monogamic families and democratic communities) might not be a coincidence. (The research is supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project # 97-06-80272); gratitude is also expressed to the Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation, Moscow) whose travel grant has made it possible to present this paper at the Meeting.)
Donald E. Brown (U of California, Santa Barbara)
THE PLURAL SOCIETY, ETHNOCENTRISM, AND IRRATIONALITY
The primary aim of this paper is to lay out the evidence for an alternative or complementary explanation for instability (and conflict) in ethnically plural societies. Specifically, it will be argued that various forms of irrationality bred by ethnocentrism must be added to the clash of values that are presently considered to be the cause of this instability. To make this case, I will review (1) a systems approach to the plural society and (2) certain features of the ethnocentric syndrome. I will then argue that consideration of the latter (as micro elements) yields a better understanding of the (macro) dynamics of plural societies. Finally, I will indicate some directions for future research.
Gustavo Campos (Colorado State U)
Biculturalism, Self-Perception of Otherness, and Social Perspective taking among Mexican-American Adults
This study evaluated the hypothesis that being bicultural and experiencing oneself as being different from others are related to dexterous social perspective-taking ability. One-hundred and seventy-seven college students and university employees from 5 schools in the state of Colorado completed versions of the Cognitive Response subscale (CRS) from the Social Decentering scale and the Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican Americans-II (ARSMA-II). A third measure was developed for self-perception of otherness in terms of Mexican Heritage. The Mexican Heritage Otherness scale (MHOS) produced an Alpha of .836. Contrary to what expected, biculturalism was not positively correlated with social perspective taking ability. However, there was a significant and negative association with
social perspective taking ability for individuals who ranged from being Mexican oriented to approximately balanced bicultural. Also, labeling oneself as Mexican was significantly and positively correlated with social perspective taking ability. These two results lead us to believe that identity acculturation may be more related to social perspective taking
ability than behavioral acculturation is. Individuals who perceived themselves as being discriminated against because of their Mexican Heritage tended to score significantly higher in the social perspective-taking ability measure. In the same manner, perceiving oneself as minority in the high school setting was significantly and positively correlated with social
-taking ability. In general, feeling singled out seemed to be more predictive of dexterous social perspective taking ability than being bicultural.
Sandra Carpenter (U of Alabama, Huntsville) and Phanikiran Radhakrishnan (U of Texas, El Paso)
NEED FOR BELONGING: PERCEPTIONS OF FAMILY, FRIENDS, ETHNICITY, AND GENDER GROUPS
Perceptions of groups were examined, using both ethnic group comparisons (U.S. samples of Hispanics and non-Hispanic Whites were compared) and individual difference comparisons within these groups. Three measures of group perceptions (importance, entitativity, and homogeneity) indicated the degree to which groups satisfy members' need for inclusion (labeled "assimilation value" of groups). Results showed that assimilation value varied as a function of two variables. Individuals with a greater need for belonging perceived groups as more important, entitative, and homogeneous. Second, interpersonal groups (friends and family) were perceived as having greater assimilation value than were collective groups (ethnicity and gender).
Candice C. Carter (U of North Florida)
Conflict Mediation at Middle School: Diversity and Outcomes
This study employed a multi-method procedure to identify factors that influenced diverse students‚ experiences in conflict mediation (CM) at school. The subjects were all the middle school students at two schools who participated in conflict mediation during one school year. Half of the subjects were Caucasians and 30 percent were Latinos including
English-Language-Development students. Data analysis showed ethnic minorities had lower levels of satisfaction with, and less access to participation in, the intervention than Caucasians.
Douglas Caulkins (Grinnell C)
Consensus, Clines, and Edges in Celtic Cultures
Using data from three peripheral Celtic nations (Wales, Ireland, and Scotland) and one peripheral non-Celtic region (Northeast England), this paper explores a conception of culture that emphasizes clines rather than boundaries. Here, societies are considered as sites of repertories of cultural schema, many of which may be shared across socially constructed boundaries such as that of nation, ethnic group, and class. Consensus analysis provides a tool for exploring areas of greater or lesser sharing of cultural schema. The approach is illustrated with data from 6 Celtic and one adjacent non-Celtic site, in which "Celtic" cultural schema were incorporated in 21 brief narratives. More than 500 informants were asked to judge, on a 5 point Likert scale, first, whether the practices in the narratives were typical or characteristic of their location, and second, whether the practices in the narratives were good or desirable. With a high consensus in each site about both typical and desirable practices, it was possible to compare the "culturally correct" profiles of responses within and between each of the sites. The comparison reveals incremental changes from site to site within the Celtic region, and a steeper drop to the non-Celtic site. All sites had similar high profiles of agreement on desirable practices, however, suggesting a different pattern of clines than for typical practices. Edges, or the conjunction of clines, in repertories of cultural schema, if they exist, might be mapped using consensus analysis.
Xinyin Chen (University of Western Ontario)
SELF-CONTROL IN CHINESE AND CANADIAN TODDLERS: A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY
An important aspect of socialization during early childhood is to help children learn voluntary control and regulation over their behavior in accordance with societal expectations and standards (Maccoby & Martin, 1983). Self-control in the early years may have significance for later social interactions and adjustment. The purpose of this study was to examine cultural involvement in the development of self-control and restraint in Chinese and Canadian children. Observational data concerning child self-control were collected from samples of two-year-olds from P.R. China and Canada. Information on child-rearing attitudes and beliefs was obtained from the children's parents. Chinese toddlers had higher scores on voluntary self-control than their Canadian counterparts. In contrast, Canadian children had higher scores on externally imposed or situational self-control than Chinese children. Parental warmth and induction were positively associated with voluntary self-control in Chinese children and situational self-control in Canadian children. Parental power-assertive parenting style such as punishment orientation was positively associated with situational control in Chinese children, and a lack of self-control in Canadian children. The results indicate cross-cultural differences in toddlers' self-control and the role of socialization experiences.
Garry Chick (Penn State U)
THE DEBATE OVER THE UNITS OF CULTURE: AN INTRODUCTION
Two issues have long smoldered beneath the surface of anthropological discourse regarding the nature of culture, cross-cultural comparisons, and cultural transmission, diffusion, change, and evolution. The first of these involves the culture-bearing unit itself; that is, how is one culture (or "tribe" or "society") to be distinguished from others? The second deals with the units of culture itself, i.e., in what sort of units is cultural information encoded? Or, is the concept of units of culture needed or even reasonable? Over the past 150 years numerous labels have been applied to the "parts" of culture. Some of these, including "themes," "configurations," "complexes," and "patterns" are macro level. Micro level terms include "ideas," "beliefs," "values," "rules," "principles," "symbols," "concepts," and a few others. Several units of cultural selection or transmission have been proposed in recent years. The two most prominent of these are Lumsden and Wilson's (1981) "culturgen" and the "meme," originally suggested by Dawkins (1976). Of these two, the meme has apparently been "selected." Durham (1991), for example, has adopted it as the unit of cultural transmission as part of his theory of coevolution while influential individuals outside of anthropology (e.g., Dennett 1994) have embraced the notion. A "science of memes" has even been proposed (Lynch 1996). The papers in this session will explore the following issues. First, is it possible to define an empirically useful culture-bearing unit? Second, are there operationalizable and empirically useful units of culture itself and are such units necessary?
Kip Coggins (U of Texas, El Paso) and Edith Williams (Jackson State U)
The Traditional Tribal Values of Ojibwa Parents and the School Performance of their Children: An Exploratory Study
This study of 19 northern Michigan Ojibwa families examined the relationship between mothers' and fathers' levels of holding traditional values and their children's academic and social functioning in elementary school. Results indicated that identification with more traditional American Indian values by mothers had a beneficial impact on their children's academic and social performance in school. However, fathers' level of holding traditional values was not significantly associated with his children's academic and social outcomes. Results suggest that culture should be viewed as a tool, not an obstacle, in enhancing the school performance of American Indian children.
James William Coleman (California Polytechnic State U) and Linda L. Ramos (U of Colorado, Boulder)
Buddhism East and West
Using survey and interview data, this paper compares the new Buddhism emerging in the West with its traditional Asian counterpart. We find many doctrinal continuities but sweeping differences social organization. Traditionally, Buddhism's highest spiritual practices have been the province of a small monastic elite. The lay community's principal goal was to gain merit through ethical behavior and by supporting the monastic sangha, while the pursuit of enlightenment was left to the monks. In Western Buddhism, the path of liberation is open to everyone and meditation is a virtually universal practice. Moreover, the lay/monastic hierarchy and the patriarchal structure of religious authority in which it is embedded in Asia are of far less significance in the West. The origins of these differences are traced both to the underlying cultural environment, and the unique circumstance of life in postmodern societies.
Anna L. Comunian (Padua University) and Uwe P. Gielen (St. Francis College)
PERCEPTIONS OF PARENTAL ACCEPTANCE AND REJECTION: AN ITALIAN STUDY
Research on the Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire (PARQ) has shown that parental acceptance-rejection (the so-called warmth dimension of parenting) tends to be expressed in similar ways across various cultures (Rohner, 1994). The three major versions of the PARQ--the child, adult, and parent versions--were adapted to Italian culture. The purpose of this study is to determine the extent to which Italian responses to the PARQ reveal meanings comparable to concepts of parental acceptance and parental rejection in other cultures. Factor analyses provided consistent support for the construct validity of the Italian PARQ as a cross-cultural measure of the warmth dimension of parenting. Cultural and cross-cultural aspects of family interaction are discussed in light of the Italian finding.
Roy G. D'Andrade (U of California, San Diego)
THE SAD STORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY, 1950-1999
Within the social sciences, anthropology appears to have been more strongly affected by external political trends than its sister disciplines. The trends affecting anthropology appear to reflect primarily ideas and attitudes of the intellectual left in American universities and colleges. As the intellectual left moved from the anti-government activism of the early sixties to Marxism and expectations the death of capitalism in the seventies, through the disenchantment with socialist communism and alienation from Western culture expressed by post-modernism in the eighties and nineties, the centrality of these attitudes in the anthropology professorate of the elite universities resulted in profound changes in the research organization of anthropology and its choice of methods. This paper will attempt to outline these changes and their impact on the effectiveness of anthropology as science.
Roy G. D'Andrade (U of California, San Diego)
A COGNITIVIST'S VIEW OF THE UNITS OF CULTURE
Interest and debate about the basic units of culture is a continuing theme in anthropology and the social sciences. This paper will review several cognitive based proposals concerning units of culture, including the classic feature approach, the Roschian prototype approach, the cognitive linguistic approach of Langacker, Talmy and others, and the universalist language approach of Wierzbicka. These will be contrasted with the 'culture as discourse' approach central to much current research in cultural anthropology and the 'culture as memes' approach of evolutionists.
Marion E. Davis, Richard E. Nisbett, Norbet Schwarz and Beom Jun Kim (U of Michigan)
Cultural Construals of the Self and the Third-Person Effect
The Third-Person Effect hypothesis predicts that individuals tend to overestimate the influence of the mass media on the attitudes and behavior of others. When individuals believe that: (1) others will be significantly more influenced by the negative content in the mass media than themselves and (2) they will be significantly more influenced than others by the positive content in the mass media, they may be engaging in a self-enhancing strategy. Research indicates that cultural construals of the self may have a marked effect on whether or not individuals engage in self-enhancing strategies as a means of either maintaining or increasing their levels of self-esteem. Individualists are more likely to engage in self-enhancing strategies than collectivists. If the use of self-enhancing strategies is moderated by cultural construals of the self, then we may expect that the third-person effect may be more or less likely to occur depending on the individual. Our results indicate that Koreans, who tend to have a collectivist self construal, did not believe that other college students would be significantly more influenced than themselves by negative media content. Koreans also did not believe that they would be significantly more influenced than other college students by positive media content or by a public service announcement. They did, however, believe that other college students would be significantly more influenced than themselves by an advertisement. The American subjects, who tend to have an individualist construal of the self, believed that other college students would be significantly more influenced than themselves by negative media content and that other college students would be significantly more influenced than themselves by an advertisement. The implications of cultural construals of the self for beliefs about media effects will be discussed.
Steve Derné (SUNY-Geneseo) and Lisa Jadwin (St. John Fisher C)
Culture, Family Structure and Psyche: The "Fit" and the "Inconsistencies"
At the outset of The Inner World, Kakar describes his project as an elaboration on the "'fit' between psychological themes, cultural style and social institutions." In exploring the correspondence between structure, culture, and psyche, Kakar helps us understand the persistence of social patterns in India. But in elaborating on the "fit" between family structure, psyche, and cultural values, Kakar bracketed inconsistencies in Indian society. This essay notes the existence of contradictory tendencies among the upper-case Hindu men that Kakar focused on, and argues that the psychological orientation of women tends to differ from the dominant one among men.
Eric S. De Vos (Saginaw Valley State)
Quantitative Thematic Analysis in Cross-Cultural Research: The Value of Manifest Content
Although the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) remains a popular clinical tool for inferential and interpretive exploration of clients' personalities, the usefulness of the TAT for cross-cultural research has been questioned. Yet the interpretive uses of TAT data in the clinic are similar to other interpretive uses of a variety of narrative data by social scientists, where an immediate move to rich interpretation may interfere with systematic cross-cultural comparisons. We suggest initial documentation and quantitative reporting of the expressed or "manifest" content prior to interpretation. We will describe a comprehensive system for coding the presence of narrative themes from a variety of narrative sources.
George A. De Vos (U of California at Berkeley)
Cultural Patterns in Fantasy: Comparative Research with the TAT
In preparing a volume on use of the Thematic Apperception Test cross-culturally, we have pulled together a series of research findings derived from the analysis of stories obtained from a number of highly divergent contemporary societies. I shall provide illustrations of how problems with achievement motivation and social authority can be identified by analysis of narrative material using the Interpersonal Concerns Scoring System (ICSS). The presentation will include a comparison of data collected from several ethnic groups in Japan and Brazil. The continuity of culture is particularly notable when one compares material collected from Japanese samples over a period of forty years.
William Divale (York C, CUNY)
Stress Reducers for Morning Sickness and Labor Pain
This research is about various stress resistance resources that cultures develop to assist women in the reproductive process. Two cultural behavior complexes are examined: morning sickness and childbirth labor pain tolerance. Various hypotheses to be tested suggest that many of the customs and behaviors associated with these activities are resistance resources whose purpose is to reduce stress in the lives of women, particularly as they become expectant mothers. Many behaviors and practices related to morning sickness, e.g., food cravings, isolation, bizarre requests of the mother, taboos against cooking, touching male implements, children, and concepts of pollution, etc. have been interpreted as suppressing women and part of the complex of male supremacy found in traditional and developing societies (Divale and Harris 1976). In contrast, we suggest that just the opposite occurs: these practices which take women out of their daily routine and trigger the help of those around them provide social supports for women during stressful and dangerous times, provide regular periods of rest, and re-affirm their worth to those around them. Many studies report differences in childbirth pain tolerance by women from different cultures. Labor pain is investigated here not as a physiological phenomenon, but as an experience which is basically an emotional phenomenon. It is suggested that the experience of childbirth pain is related to (1) the status of women (and indirectly the amount of chronic stress) in different cultures, and (2) to the social supports or lack of them that women have during pregnancy and childbirth. The more social supports women have, the greater will be their tolerance of labor pain. These hypotheses about morning sickness and childbirth pain are tested using the cross-cultural method on a sample of 186 societies worldwide. The societies in the sample range from simple hunter-gatherers and tribal cultures to modern states. Results are applicable to the reproductive health of women worldwide, especially in traditional and developing countries, and to many immigrant populations in the U.S.
William Divale (York C, CUNY) and Albert Seda (Hunter C, CUNY)
Modernization and Cultural Evolution: New Cross-Cultural Measures and Comparisons
A series of eleven cross-cultural sub-scales of modernization are presented for one hundred and thirty six societies in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample. The operational definition of modernization is a change from traditional customs to ones that are forced or voluntary borrowed from a dominant society that results in changes in behavior or customs. The sub-scales cover such areas as: trade, technology, agriculture, transportation, government, family and social organization, body toilet (including adornment and dress), behavior, information and education, health, and religion. We also compare our modernization measures with Murdock and Provost's (1971) measures of Cultural Complexity. Cultural complexity is correlated with changes in government and education but not other aspects of modernization.
Nina Eduljee (St. Joseph's C, Maine)
Personal Characteristic Variables as predictors of College Students' Attitudes towards Computers: A Comparison Between the U.S. and India
Computer use is on the increase in both the United States and India. Thus, examining student's attitudes towards computers is essential. Attitudes towards computers of 341 students in the United States and 264 students in India were studied. The present study examined: (a) the impact of age, gender, computer experience, locus of control, and computer efficacy on attitudes, and (b) the individual and collective contributions of the variables above with regard to predicting overall computer attitudes. The results indicated that students with more computer experience, an internal locus of control, and high computer efficacy tended to have more positive attitudes towards computers. Regression analyses indicated that both locus of control and computer efficacy were the best predictors of computer attitudes for the two groups. Implications of these results are discussed.
Carol R. Ember and Melvin Ember (HRAF)
A Re-examination of the Relationship between Matrilocal Residence and Internal Peace
Previous cross-cultural research (Ember and Ember 1971 and Divale 1974) has found that matrilocal and patrilocal societies have significantly different types of warfare'matrilocal societies tend to have internal peace or purely external war while patrilocal societies usually have some internal war. Matrilocal societies are also more participatory in the sense of having more adults involved in decision-making and in staying together despite disagreements. This latter relationship sheds new light on the relationship between matrilocal societies and internal peace.
Emmit Bud Evans (California Polytechnic State U)
Omens of Future Ills: The Prognostic Value of the TAT in Quantitative Cross-Cultural Reseach
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) responses were gathered from a national sample of 699 secondary school students in Kenya in 1973, as part of research to assess the sociopolitical implications of the widening gap between the students' aspirations and the socioeconomic realities of post-independence Kenya. Quantitative analysis of the TAT records suggested that crime would become a significant mode of adaptation in the face of the limited availability of legitimate avenues for achievement. Over the past 25 years, crime among unemployed school leavers has constituted an ever-worsening source of social instability in Kenya, demonstrating the prognostic value of the TAT in cross-cultural research.
R. Scott Evans (Goldfarb Consultants Ltd.)
Segmenting Cultural Cleavages in Canada: The Affect of Alienation and Disassociation on a Canadian National Identity
This paper examines the evolution of national identity found in the last five years of the annual Goldfarb survey. The syndicated Goldfarb Report provides a rich tapestry for analyzing changes in Canadian culture throughout the 1990s. The longitudinal data from the Goldfarb Report enables segment tracking, which standard cross-sectional studies do not permit. This provides a useful analytical tool for understanding the current cultural spaces and their relation to a national identity. Moreover, the derived segments help map the way in which alienation and disassociation are affecting the Canadian political landscape. Using Goldfarb data for cultural segmentation provides a critical tool for assessing how political parties and governments can address an increasingly skeptical electorate. Cultural segmentation helps map cultural cleavages that affect the formation of common identity. Cultural segmentation, in this context, helps explain the enormous difficulty confronting federal political parties trying to build national campaign strategies. Identifying core themes in a national identity, and the concomitant variations associated with different segments, helps identify natural constituencies and their connection with a common national agenda. Better mapping of the alienated and disassociated tendencies of each segment is essential for understanding the national identity of the 1990s. It is in the political landscape of failed constitutional initiatives, a bitter restructuring of social programs, and a perpetual separatist feud that alienated and disassociated characteristics influence the face of a Canadian national identity.
Anna Figueira (Arizona State U)
Caring Teachers: Exploring Teacher Empathy in American Indian Classrooms
For American Indians, and most ethnic minority groups in this country, formal education has not bestowed equitable benefits. Throughout history, the literature has pointed to a variety of causes for this educational failure, placing it first within the learner and more recently attributing it to dissonance between the culture of the learner and that of the school. Research emanating from cultural difference theory frequently points to the key role of "caring" teachers as they affect the educational success or failure of American Indian students. This paper offers an initial exploration of the concept of "empathetic caring" as it has been attributed to effective teachers of American Indian students.
Daniel G. Freedman (U of Chicago) and Jane Gorman (New Mexico Highlands U)
Attachment theory and cross-cultural continuity/discontinuity
Videotaped examples of mother-toddler interactions, Q-sort and interview data will be presented from several cultures. The discussion will focus on the complex but unique attachment styles within each culture, and how each style approaches understandability as it is contextualized within a variety of materials, including essays, myths, and novels. The Americanization process (middle-class Caucasian) was observed in a sample of adopted Korean children, and that draws some broad reflections on biosocial developmental issues.
Harry Gardiner (U of Wisconsin-La Crosse)
Understanding Cross-Cultural Adolescent Research: A Developmental Niche Approach
Ecological and contextual approaches to understanding human development have been receiving increased attention in recent years. This paper will attempt to show how the developmental niche approach of Harkness and Super and the ecological systems model of Bronfenbrenner can be systematically applied to cross-cultural adolescent research in unique ways that help to integrate and illuminate research findings. Theoretical concepts from Piaget, Kohlberg, Erikson, and others will be applied to such topics as socialization, development of self and identity, and cognition. Areas in need of further research will be suggested.
Linda C. Garro (UCLA)
Using Cultural Consensus Theory and Schema Theory in a Three Community Study of Knowledge About Diabetes
Cultural consensus theory and schema (or cultural model) theory are based in distinctive assumptions about the nature of cultural knowledge. These theoretical perspectives are examined using data obtained in three Canadian Aninishinaabe (Ojibway) communities in interviews with individuals diagnosed with diabetes (both open-ended and true-false interview formats). It is argued that the findings present difficulties for both perspectives. While schema theory is limited in assessing the extent of variation and sharing, cultural consensus theory has difficulty accounting for other aspects.
John B. Gatewood (Lehigh U)
Reflections on the Nature of Cultural Distributions and the Units of Culture Problem
In many fields of inquiry, the analytical approach has proved to be remarkably successful: note the foundational importance of the periodic chart for modern chemistry, the particulate theory of inheritance for evolutionary biology, articulatory phonetics for historical linguistics, and so forth. In these successful applications, researchers were able to identify units that were sufficiently stable through time and space to exhibit virtually homogeneous properties wherever the units were encountered. This way of understanding phenomena is familiar, powerful, and compelling, but not all scientific understanding builds upon discrete elemental units and their combinatorics. For example, much of physics has grown from a different set of intuitions based on continuous mathematics. So, what approach is appropriate for the study of human culture? Does culture have clearly identifiable, distributionally stable parts sufficient to justify the particulate mode of understanding? Is culture comprised of elemental units, or is it merely convenient to think this way? And, if culture does not consist of discrete parts, then what? This paper suggests that the quest for natural 'units of culture' is pretty much a doomed undertaking. There will be no periodic chart for culture grounded in stable, essential properties ' either at the level of culture traits and complexes or at the cognitive level of ideas and schemata. On the other hand, various methods of data elicitation can produce replicable and superficially discrete results, which gives some hope for the possibility of a methodological particulate-ism.
Judith L Gibbons (St. Louis U) and Deborah A. Stiles (Webster U).
An International Perspective on the Importance of Physical Attractiveness to Adolescents
Changes in the physical self during adolescence induce concern with
appearance among adolescents internationally. Adolescents from 16 countries (6364, ages 11-16) rated good looks as moderately important for the ideal man and woman. However, there were differences among participants, with appearance rated as more important by boys rating the ideal woman, and less important by adolescents rating the same sex ideal. In four countries (Iceland, Mexico, Spain, and USA) egalitarian attitudes about women's roles were negatively correlated with the importance of appearance. This study explores possible reasons for the persistence of gender stereotypes and expectations about physical attractiveness.
Uwe Gielen (St. Francis College)
THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF PSYCHOLOGY, Friday, 4:30 pm (S. Ballroom)
Michael Gurven (U of New Mexico)
Transitions in Food Sharing Patterns from Nomadic Foraging to Sedentary Horticultural Contexts
The widespread sharing of food pervades ethnographic accounts of egalitarian hunter-gatherers and other traditional groups with subsistence economies. Closer inspection of the cross-cultural record reveals consistent patterns in food sharing behavior that highlight its importance as a risk-reduction mechanism, producing and reinforcing observed patterns
of egalitarianism. I discuss various aspects of local ecology that shape the breadth and intensity of sharing in different populations, such as the relative contributions of luck, skill, and work effort in acquiring food, the potential for food storage, economies of scale, and group size.
Yoko Haberling, Phanikiran Radhakrishnan, Stephan Ahadi (U of Texas at El Paso), Ulrich Schimmack, and Shige Oishi (U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Traits, Discrepancies, Culture, and Adjustment
Participants from the US, Mexico, Germany, and Japan completed the NEO-PI from their own perspective and from their parents' perspective. Participants also completed spontaneous trait listings to compute traditional measures of self-discrepancy. Depression and anxiety were both related to low levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness. Anxiety was related to culture such that US participants scored higher on anxiety than participants from Mexico, but lower on anxiety than participants from Japan. Own-parent discrepancy on the NEO significantly predicted depression and anxiety even after the main effects for personality and culture were covaried, whereas the traditional self-discrepancy measure did not.
Frank B .W. Hawkinshire (New York U)
Role of the University in Determining Community Properties
The University's purpose is to influence the world through training students, as the University thinks they should be schooled. Faculty members find training experiences in local facilities for students, because practicing on nearby citizens sharpens professional skills. This arrangement permits the University to meet the responsibility of sending into the world competent graduates. However, nothing in their charters requires Academy members to go to surrounding communities and employ their expertise to establish model facilities. It is not the responsibility of the University to make things better for the community, simply because the town is in need. If the University considered the "wall" really semipermeable so that things flowed in and out, what would this look like? How would this process influence the quality of life of the community? University towns would not be places just to house victims of teaching activities, or audiences for cultural activities.
Lewellyn Hendrix and Mark Schneider (Southern Illinois U)
Assumptions of the Biosocial Theory of Incest Taboos
The core of the biosocial theory of incest holds that the universal aspect of the incest taboo grows from innate sexual inhibitions triggered by intimacy in early childhood relations. Much evidence indicates that this inhibition does exist. However, the theory contains problematic assumptions about family patterns and about the innate sexual inhibition. Some biosocial proponents have dealt with the assumptions, but not adequately. We argue that the assumptions on family patterns are empirically questionable and that they suggest limits to the applicability of the theory. The assumptions about the innate inhibition interfere with the logic of the theory itself.
Douglas Herrmann, Dana Plude, Carol Yoder, and Tracey Lopp (Indiana State U)
Systems Underlying Human Cognition
Cognitive science proposes that cognition (perception, learning, retention, remembering, reasoning, problem solving, decision making, and communication) occur in cognitive systems that process mental representations - a proposal that might be called the mono-cognitive approach. In recent years, it has been shown that cognition not only involves cognitive systems but also a complex set of physiological and emotional systems, a multisystem approach. This presentation will review and evaluate support for a multisystem approach to cognition.
Alice Sterling Honig (Syracuse University)
CROSS-CULTURAL STUDIES OF INFANTS AND TODDLERS
Cross-cultural researches reveal "universals" vs. society-specific parent-infant interactions, as well as the range of variability for early behaviors, such as neonatal postural control, age at weaning, or proportions of secure vs. insecure attachment. Cultural inquiry reveals the impact of different childrearing strategies on children's emotional well-being as well as child temperament effects on caregivers. Gender preferences and valuing of language communications with infants differ cross-culturally and may relate to children's later competence. Wide variations in fathering involvement with infants are reported. Cross-cultural studies illuminate commonalities and differences in discipline as parents respond to infant fears, joys, dangerous behaviors, and requests for interaction.
William Jankowiak and Angela Ramsey (U of Nevada)
Title: Femme Fatale and Status Fatale: A Cross-Cultural Perspective
The figures of the status fatale who shamelessly and ruthlessly conquers women and the femme fatale who gleefully seduces men are at bottom metaphors for the darkest impulses in the human psyche. These figures are symbols of the dangers that arise when people seek to manipulate the need for affection to achieve sexual ends or use erotic enticements to satisfy their own emotional calculations. These figures misuse love for one-sided sex and for one-sided love. In another slant, sexual desire and romantic love are stirred to create a seductive brew. In this paper we will present the results of a cross-cultural survey of 106 cultures that sought to document the presence or absence of the femme fatale and status fatale around the world. The theoretical significance of the study will be related to contemporary debates in evolutionary psychology and cultural anthropology.
Li-Jun Ji and Richard E. Nisbett (U of Michigan)
Field Dependence and Culture
Field dependence was examined with European-American and East Asian college students. The classic Rod-and-Frame test showed that American participants, compared to Asian participants, tended to make fewer mistakes and spend less time on the test, indicating they were less field dependent. The data confirmed the idea that Americans are more sensitive to the object, or self, and good at ignoring the field whereas East Asians are more sensitive to the field, and to the relationship between the object and the field.
Joseph G. Jorgensen (U of California, Irvine)
An Empirical Procedure for defining and Sampling Culture Bearing Units in Continuous Geographic Areas
As the last spate of discussions addressing the definition and measurement of culture bearing units came to a closwe nearly 30 years ago, Harold Drive and I drew a sample of 172 culture bearing units from among perhaps ten times that number throughout western North America. Driver's previous comparative studies in North America and my own on the Northwest Coast of North America prompted us to eschew a single definition of culture bearing unit as empirically unwarranted. Among some culture bearing units, language was the key criterion in distinguishing those units from others. Among some it was territory. And among some it was political. Needless to say, those three factors are not mutually incompatible. Simple Boolean logic describes the possibilities: political organization and/or territory; territory and/or language, political organization and/or language, political organization and/or territory and/or language. The empirical analyses that informed our decision to sample as we did, and the results of our Q-mode analyses of the relations among culture bearing units will be summarized.
Alexander Kazankov and Andrey Korotayev (Russian State U for the Humanities)
REGIONS BASED ON SOCIAL STRUCTURES: A RECONSIDERATION
Our main suggestions regarding the world regionalization based on social structure, proposed by Burton et al. (1996) are:
1. Some Burton's (et al.) regions can be united in broader macro-regions; first of all, the Middle Old World, Circumpolar Eurasian and (probably) Canada-West may be considered as belonging to one macro-region. These regions are united not only by common patricentric patterns, but also by the fact that the overwhelming majority of this mega-region population speaks languages of three linguistic macro-families (Nostratic, Afrasian and Sino-Caucasian [including Nostratic Eskimos and Sino-Caucasian Na Dene]) belonging (according to recent research) to one mega-family which we propose to denote as NASCa. The societies of the region not only cluster closely together, but also as a whole they display a statistically significant difference from the rest of the world in the matricentric/patricentric dimension. A t-test which we performed produced t=6.4 (significant at a much less than 0.001 level).
2. A new subdivision of the NASCa mega -region is proposed: we consider Europe as a separate region which split from the Middle Old World in the 1st millennium CE. The Circumpolar is regarded as a "pseudoregion" formed through the convergent adaptations to a similar environment, rather than through historical connectedness. It is also suggested to separate from the Circumpolar region Extreme East Asia (Japanese, Okinawa, Koreans and Ainu).
3. The other suggested mega-region is "Austronesia", uniting Burton's [et al.] Southeast Asia and Insular Pacific (most of whose ethnic groups are Austronesian) and Austronesian part of "Sahul" (which according to Burton et al. unites Australia, New Guinea, and Melanesia), charcterized in general by a strongly matricentric pattern.
4. It is suggested that the initial spread of the patricentric pattern of social organization in Eurasia, was connected with the early spread of the speakers of at least one of the mentioned linguistic macro-families (Nostratic), whereas the formation of the above-mentioned matricentric mega-region appears to be connected with the diffusion of Austronesian-speaking peoples. (The research is supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project # 97-06-80272); the gratitude is also expressed to the Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation, Moscow) whose travel grant has made it possible to present this paper at the Meeting.)
Robert J. Kleiner (Temple U) and Tom Sørensen (U of Oslo)
WHAT DETERMINES WHEN A COMMUNITY IS "HEALTHY" OR "SICK?"
Although one doesn't always have to deal with "health" when trying to catch the properties of a community, this paper will deal with this issue. It allows us to put certain relevant issues in their proper perspective. When one thinks of "Healthy" or "Sick," we tend to look at the properties of individuals, and aggregates of individuals living in a particular community, i.e., the individual is the unit of analysis for the task. But, when we look at communities in different and more significant ways, the units of analysis change, and they are defined and measured in very different terms. This general issue is important because it deals with theoretical and empirically verifiable explanations of why communities have the effects they do. In the analyses presented, we will make innovative uses of such procedures as "factor analysis," in explaining the linkages between migration and community on the one hand, and mental health and quality of life generated by the communities being studied.
Andrey Vitalyevich Korotayev (Institute of Cultural Anthropology, Russian State U for the Humanities)
Political Centralization and Cultural Complexity: A Cross-Cultural Comparison
It is shown that the correlation between the communal complexity (measured by the number of integration levels within the community) and the political centralization (measured by the number of political integration levels above the community) is not linear and positive, but rather basically curvilinear. Actually, it is even more complex. The basic contingency table can be split into four (each with its own specific correlation), roughly corresponding to four main alternatives of sociopolitical evolution. One of them is studied in more detail. This is the alternative when the growth of cultural complexity is not accompanied by supracommunal political centralization. This alternative appears to be correlated with the community complexity and the natural environment creating objective obstacles for the political centralization (first of all [but not only] the rugged terrain). There are grounds to believe that this alternative played a rather important role in the history of the world, as it is this alternative through which the Classical world can be adequately understood the Classical Greece is precisely the case when the societies reach a very high level of cultural complexity through the development of communal (polis) structures in the absence of any effective supracommunal administration within the environment characterized by the rugged terrain providing strong obstacles for the political centralization. (This research is supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project # 97-06-80272); gratitude is also expressed to the Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation, Moscow) whose travel grant has made it possible to present this paper at the Meeting.)
Christina Kotchemidova (American U in Bulgaria)
Enculturation in Teaching Journalism to Roma
The Roma (Gypsy) are an ethnic minority of distinctive culture, but low social status, typically uneducated and living in poverty in segregated communities. There are no Roma journalists in Bulgaria. In training a group of Roma in journalism I applied different methodologies from the normal. Doing this I discovered a process of enculturation accompanied the education. My Roma students underwent linguistic liberation, cultural liberation and self-emancipation. They adopted the values of individualism, rationality, public interest and work. By the end of the course some of them noticed they had begun to be perceived as strange and impertinent by their kin. Thus, the education entailed enculturation into the standards of another cultural group, viz. West European/American that has come to define journalism as practiced today. In a less obvious manner, the same has been true for my regional college students and for Bulgarian journalists in general after the political reforms of 1989. Is journalism then, a tool of cultural imperialism? Can we talk about preserving a cultural identity while going through the process of education? These are some of the questions my paper will raise.
Karen Kramer and James Boone (U of New Mexico)
Foragers and Farmers: Children's Work and Maternal Tradeoffs
The shift in subsistence strategy from foraging to farming is thought to be associated with an increase in fertility. This paper looks at this transition from the perspective of fundamental changes in the maternal tradeoff between somatic and reproductive effort. Data from a modern Maya agricultural community show that Maya children become net producers at young age, and much younger than documented cases for foragers, largely due the range of tasks in which agriculturalist children can successfully participate. These comparisons provide insight into the relationship between subsistence strategy, task difficulty, the duration of maternal care and family size.
Julia Lechuga, Phanikiran Radhakrishnan (U of Texas, El Paso) and Sandra Carpenter (U of Alabama, Huntsville)
Availability of Self and Group Representations among Collectivists
We examined the availability of self and group representations among 65 Hispanics. Participants, in a computer task, evaluated either and out-group or an in-group along 60 trait dimensions. They indicated whether each trait was descriptive only of the self, only of the group, shared by the group and the self or irrelevant to both. Those who scored high on vertical collectivism endorsed fewer traits as being unique to the self when rating the in-group but assigned more traits as being unique to the self when rating the out-group. All participants attributed more traits as being unique to the in-group when judging the in-group.
Roy S. Malpass (U of Texas at El Paso)
Cultural Issues in the Assessment of Legal Responsibility
Cultural conventions dictate contrasting behavior in similar situations in different cultures. Sometimes these differences are in areas of life that are particularly inflamatory in one society but not in another. This can lead to criminal charges against a person for a "crime" from one cultural perspective but not the other. This poses special problems for complex, multi-ethnic societies. Legal defense based on cultural interpretations has sometimes been successful. Indeed, cultural defenses seem preferable to a biological defense (e.g. for infanticide). Cultural and biological bases for criminal defense are discussed.
Robert F. Manlove (City C of San Francisco)
A Taxonomy of Esteem Values in the Phillipines
Values concerning personal esteem in the Philippines, such as amor propio, are well known. Analysis of a random stratified sample and the use of TAT and SCT protocols reveal the existence of a taxonomy that organizes the manner in which individuals address matters of esteem. The understanding of this taxonomy is crucial to the understanding of the Philippine culture. But the results of this study have much wider implications in the confirmation of the universal applicability of George De Vos' concepts of the modularity of human thought. The results of the study thus suggest the evolutionary basis of human psychology as the nexus between biology and culture.
Gail Marchessault (U of Manitoba)
Comparing Weight Statements of Urban and Rural, Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal Mothers and Daughters
This presentation will compare understandings about weight in a number of diverse settings in Manitoba, Canada. Structured and semi-structured interviews were carried out with 79
grade 8 girls and their mothers. Cultural consensus analysis will be used to explore the extent of agreement and disagreement in the responses to the structured questionnaire. Both kinds of interview data will be used to broadly characterize the group and explain patterns in participants' understandings about weight.
Ana Marjanovic-Shane (Dept. of Public Health, Philadelphia)
ENVIRONMENTS FOR CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT
In his article on "Role of Play in Development" (1978:93), Vygotsky wrote that "...imagination in adolescents and school children is play without action." This assumption is a starting point in an attempt to describe basic characteristics of a pyschosocial environment that would foster mental development and mental health. Drawing parallels between children's play and conditions necessary for play, on the one hand, and larger conditions, practices and situations on the other, I hope to explore possibilities of using concepts and knowledge gained through the study of play for better understanding larger social phenomena My aim is to show that we could use concepts developed in the study of play to describe healthy social environments in the society.
Gerald E. Markle (Western Michigan U) and Frances B. McCrea (Grand Valley State U)
The Future of Nation States: A Cross-Cultural Analysis
The nation state, a creation of the modern era, is at a crossroad. Which ever route it travels, the traditional structure as we know it is likely to be altered. One path leads through Western Europe. In what we term the "Maastricht model," postmodern technologies have destabilized the traditional nation state. Electronic information crosses old borders without visas; and new modes of banking and finance, especially credit cards, have in effect become international currency, challenging the autonomy of local tender. The result is that traditional nation states lose at least some of their sovereignty to larger aggregates. The second road, just a few hundred miles to the east, leads through the former Soviet empire. We term this pathway the "Balkan model." Here, amidst international instability, established nation states experience fierce civil wars and split apart. New and smaller nations form, especially along the narrowest ethnic lines. Local elites assert their power and declare irredentist ideologies. Wars with neighboring states are likely. Ethnic cleansing becomes a common tactic to assure cultural homogeneity. Further splitting is possible. Political and economic uncertainty characterizes these new units. We note that both models have long histories, and that each contains the others. In the Western model, splitting threatens countries from Canada to Spain; and eventual agglomeration is possible at sites in the east (e.g., Moldova and Rumania).
Smita Mathur (State University of New York - Oneonta)
ETHNIC SELF-IDENTIFICATION OF ASIAN INDIANS IN USA AND INDIA
The study examines cross-cultural differences in ethnic self-identification among Asian
Indians from USA and India. 90 parents and 90 children from India and 72 parents and 45 children from USA responded to a modified version of the Suinn Lew Asian Self-Identity Acculturation Scale. The subjects from the two countries were matched on socio-economic status, age, religion, family structure and family size. Four measures of ethnic identity were examined. The study shows that in all four measures of ethnic identity, most first and second generation Asian Indian immigrants retained strong Indian identity. Some adopted bicultural identities. Western or alienated identities were not acquired by Asian Indians. Reasons that contribute to formation and retention of Indian identity are examined.
Garnett P. McMillan (U of New Mexico)
The Ache Cooperative Paca Hunt
The evolution of cooperative behavior is a problem of particular interest to social scientists. Numerous theoretical models developed in political science, anthropology, psychology, and biology show that cooperation, defined as the sacrifice of personal resources for a common good, can only evolve under certain unusual circumstances. As such, however, few empirical studies among humans have confirmed these models. Data is presented on the Ache cooperative paca hunt. The Ache Indians of South America have developed a complex cooperative technique for obtaining this valued meat resource. This paper
explores the motivation behind cooperation in Ache hunting behavior.
Leigh Minturn (U of Colorado)
The Relative Antiquity of Weaving and Metallurgy
The Murdock & Provost codes, of HRAF societies list 57 societies
that have metal working but no weaving. These reports are puzzling because
archeologists generally regard metal working as more complex, and of later
origin than weaving. This paper reports on the results of a re-analysis of Murdock's
codes for the 57 societies coded as having metal working but no weaving.
Winifred L. Mitchell (Minnesota St. U, Mankato)
Title: Refinements and Corollaries in the Quest for Patterns in Gender Relations
This paper reanalyzes Martin Whyte's excellent work, The Status of Women in Preindustrial Societies, (1979). Reducing the number of Whyte's cases (cultures) by 66% to those with adequate gender information in the HRAF and the number of his variables by 50% to those based on the most reliable ethnographic information reveals three factors that predict gender relations: gendered power in economics; in kinship; and the ideology of gender equality or dominance. The paper discusses these results and the interesting non-linear relationships between factors that suggest a few corollaries to add to and strengthen a cross-culturally applicable statement about gender relations.
Fathali M. Moghaddam and Nikki Slocum (Georgetown University)
My Right is Your Duty
Evidence has accumulated in support of the proposition that people do not apply "principled reasoning" independent of situational factors, and that culture has a powerful influence on moral reasoning generally. This paper outlines steps toward a cultural account of human rights and duties, proposing certain limits to relativism. Second, evidence is presented on how within cultures the interpretation of rights and duties can depend on self involvement. We postulate that people in individualistic societies are more prone to follow the dictum, "My right is your duty."
Ilina Moreno (Fontbonne C)
I’ll Sing Them a Song: Yugoslavian National and Refugee Children's Perceptions of the War and Its Resolution
In 1991/92 at the beginning of war in Croatia/Bosnia, 527 children from Yugoslavia (ages 3 through 10) were asked about their perceptions of the war. Their answers (and drawings) revealed some of the qualities of children's thinking, including egocentrism, centration and rigidity about the causes of the war and sides involved, reflecting children's vulnerability to the culture of war. Their proposed solutions of the conflict (over 80% peaceful), however, were creative, intuitively suggesting a variety of reconciliation strategies with expressed empathy, forgiveness, kindness, and charity.
Carol C. Mukhopadhyay, (San Jose State U)
Women's Education and the Changing Construction of Womanhood in India: Implications for Psychoanalytic Theorizing
Changes in Indian society since Independence, such as urbanization, increased education, and demographic changes (longer life span, later marriage, fewer children, smaller households) are well-documented in the literature. Less fully explored are the complex interrelationships between these phenomena, especially between women's education, demographics, and what Mukhopadhyay and Seymour (1994) have called patrifocal family structure and ideology . Data from a long-term study of academic decision making among Indian students will be used to explore these interrelationships. The paper will utilize data from a culturally-meaningfully Student Background and Academic Choice Questionnaire [the "SAQ"] I created and administered to over 1600 students [6th, 9th, 11th graders], in 3 different languages, at 12 schools (central government, municipal, private) in 4 Indian cities (1989-1991). The SAQ contains data on students [current academic achievements and choices, future expectations about study, jobs, marriage, family arrangements and responsibilities]; and on their families [SES, demographics, and several potential measures of patrifocality such as attitudes towards coeducation, arranged marriage, and dowry]. These data will allow us to explore current and projected relationships between demographics-women's education-and patrifocality, and the implications for current psychoanalytic theorizing.
Victor de Munck (SUNY, Paltz)
Re-analysis of Rosenblatt's Cross Cultural Study of the Function of Romance
In a cross-cultural analysis of 75 pre-industrial societies, Rosenblatt (1967) found a positive correlation between the importance of romantic love as a basis for marriage and non neolocal post marital residence. This paper re-analyzes his results using a two-pronged strategy. First, I will discuss the eleven criteria Rosenblatt used for measuring "the importance of love." Second, I will examine whether measures of gender equality may not better explain his findings. My working assumption is that romantic love is culturally acceptable under the condition when males and females can mutually express sexual desire for one another without sanctions. Using the same set of 75 societies, I will use pre- and extra-marital criteria to test this assumption.
Lee Munroe (Pitzer C)
Aggression Among Children in Four Cultures
Findings are presented concerning behavioral aggression, and especially sex differences in aggression, among 3- to 9-year-old children in four traditional cultures (in Belize, Kenya,
Nepal, and American Samoa). On the basis of data from more than 6,000 observational protocols, we describe the frequency, types, and (some) correlates of aggression in everyday social behavior. Aiding interpretation of the findings is the fact that a consistent and reliable methodology was employed, and that the data-gathering at all sites was conducted under the control of the same two investigators.
Akop P. Nazaretyan (The Moscow State U)
A Synergetic Model of Cultural Evolution and Crises: The Techno-Humanitarian Balance Hypothesis
Interdisciplinary investigations carried out recently by Russian scientists, discovered a cross-cultural pattern, named the law of techno-humanitarian balance: the higher technological power, the more refined the aggression-retention mechanisms that are required for social sustainability. The pattern is deduced from the combination of synthetic self-organization models (cybernetical systems theory, synergetics, non-linear thermodynamics) and heterogeneous data of comparative history, historical psychology and cultural anthropology, concerning a broad range of regions, epochs and civilizations. It contains descriptions of both the self-destroying historical situations (including the mechanisms of ecological and geopolitical self-destruction) and the mechanisms of favorable cultural transformations that tend to reestablish the techno-humanitarian balance. So, the law is responsible, on the one hand, for the dramatic destinies of many flourishing societies and, on the other hand, for the fact that the civilization on our planet is still living on, in spite of progressive development of war and production technologies and most acute anthropogenic crises. Despite multiple empirical testimonies and some productive conceptual applications, the pattern is still considered as a hypothesis that is subject for further falsification / verification procedures in the continuing research. The non-trivial corollaries of the hypothesis are studied. The correlation between the amount of population and the number of violence victims in similar timepieces of different historical and cultural epochs is being estimated. Equations are proposed to estimate quantitatively the factors of internal and external social sustainability in regional and global scales. (This research is supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project
# 97-06-80272)).
Dung Ngo and Judith L. Gibbons (St. Louis U)
Sources of Intergenerational Conflict in the Vietnamese Community
In an open forum among members of the Vietnamese community in St. Louis, the issue of
intergenerational conflict was addressed. Both written answers to a questionnaire and the tape recorded transcript were examined for perspectives across generations. From the older generation the major complaints identified were too much freedom and too little respect among the younger generation. The younger generation cited too much control and oversight from parents and a lack of trust. Domains of conflict included dating and friendship. Both generations saw positive aspects to both Vietnamese and U.S. cultures - respect and good manners, and education and freedom respectively.
Robin O'Brian (UCLA)
Complexity or Commodity? The Roles of Trade and Technology on Weavers
Murdock and Provost (1973) argued that in some instances the gender of the laborer changes as a task becomes more complex. Recently Minturn (1996) argued that weaving appears strongly related to women's labor until the presence of market demand for cloth. I test both assumptions, finding that degree of loom complexity and weaver's gender do not correlate; rather, the presence of trade is strongly correlated with the shift in weaver's gender. I also examine the African case, where weaving is often performed by men, and suggest that trade correlates with weaver's gender in this regionally different case as well.
Barnabas I. Okeke (Dept. of Public Health, Phila.), Robert J. Kleiner (Temple U), and Ben Skeku (Dept. of Public Health, Phila.)
CULTURAL/COMMUNITY MILIEUS AND CHANGE
Studies of cultural/community milieus have been driven, in the main, by the researcher's discipline and its research methodology. In one sense, this can yield very useful information. On the other hand, it suffers from being narrow in scope and misses the scope and dynamic of the total milieu. It is our view that such studies require what we have come to call the Triple Reality Model and an interdisciplinary perspective. This becomes clearer with one conceives of the milieu as a total environment which has structural and dynamic properties that cannot be grasped without the approach we are discussing. They dynamic aspect also emphasizes the need to see the milieu, not only in terms of its properties at one point in time, but also as it is changing over time. Planning in such situations requires one to anticipate the changes that will take place, if the planning is to be successful. Using "Field Theory" and the "Law of Opposites" taken from African science, some of the problems and solutions will be discussed.
Albert Pepitone (U of Pennsylvania)
A SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE ON CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH: STEPS TOWARD REVEALING SCCR'S MULTICULTURALISM
The issue addressed - of special interest to SCCR - concerns barriers to interdisciplinary exchange, particularly between psychology and the study of cultures. We offer a diagnosis from the perspective of social psychology, examining the devious logic of hypothesis-testing, the universalism-relativism argument, the society-linked concept of culture in ethnographic research, and other impediments. Finally, a preliminary analysis of mass cultures defines a common ground for fruitful interaction between the disciplines.
Douglas Raybeck (Hamilton College) and Paul Ngo (St. Norbert College)
BEHAVIOR AND THE BRAIN: MEDIATION OF ACQUIRED SKILLS
Employing a systems approach that emphasizes interaction between differing levels of analysis, the authors explore the interrelationships between child rearing patterns in different cultures and the effects that these may have on the development of neural pathways and resulting adult skill clusters. A cross-cultural study utilizing materials from the HRAF, and examinations of selected cultural cases are employed to evaluate the hypothesis that patterns of childhood learning can promote the creation of neural pathways that can promote proficiency in activities often designated as left vs. right hemisphere.
John M. Roberts Jr. (U of New Mexico) and Devon D. Brewer (U of Washington)
Heaping in Quantitative Responses to Open-Ended Interview Questions
Interviews in social, behavioral, and health research often involve open-ended questions that require quantitative responses (e.g., "how many times did you go to church in the last 6 months?", "how many people have you had sex with in the last year?", "how long did you breastfeed your child?", etc.). The distributions of such responses typically exhibit heaping, or especially high frequencies, on systematically patterned values (e.g., multiples of 5). In most cases, heaping is a methodological artifact that increases measurement error and reflects respondents' estimation strategies (e.g., picking "round" numbers). We describe some measures and tests for heaping, illustrate them with data on sexual behavior and drug use, and propose cross-cultural research on this aspect of response behavior.
A. Kimball Romney and Carmella C. Moore (U of California, Irvine)
Systematic Culture Patterns as Basic Units of Cultural Transmission and Evolution
We suggest that with slight modifications the concept of systemic culture pattern as originally defined by Kroeber (1943, 1948) provides one ideal basic unit of study for culture. Prototypic examples of systemic culture patterns include paradigms for kinship terminology and phonemic systems. The significant elements in each may be partitioned in terms of a limited number of universal features (Kroeber 1909; Jakobson, Fant, and Halle 1952). Some coherent substructures, characterized by a subset of features, may themselves be treated as basic units as well. Paradigms may be mapped perfectly into Euclidean spatial models. The elements of cultural patterns with large numbers of features may be mapped directly into Euclidean spatial models on the basis of data such as judged similarity.
Jaipaul Roopnarine (Syracuse U)
Kakar's Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Indian Childhood: A Disregard for the Father and Non-Traditional Multiple Caregiving in a Changing India
Kakar's psychoanalytic analysis of the role of the father in the East Indian child's socio-emotional development during the early childhood period is challenged. Further, maternal employment and multiple caregiving are examined in broad terms. Using findings from observational studies of parent-infant interactions and care in diverse cultures around the world, it is argued that fathers are more centrally involved in the Indian child's life than psychoanalysts have been willing to admit. Psychoanalysts need to reshape their theoretical bent on maternal enthrallment and pathological relationships with the father in the direction of detailing the role of the father within the changing ecology of Indian childhood.
Jaipaul L. Roopnarine (Syracuse U) and Preeti Suppal (Northwest Missouri State U)
Paternal Involvement in Childcare as a Function of Maternal Employment Status in Nuclear and Extended Families in India
Paternal involvement in childcare as a function of family structure and maternal employment status was assessed in 92 dual-wage and 103 single-wage Indian families with preschool-aged children residing in different areas of New Delhi, India. Mothers and fathers completed Radin's Paternal Involvement in Child Care Index (PICCI). Data showed that mothers in single-wage families spent more time in primary caregiving when compared with women in dual-wage families or fathers in either group of families. Fathers' involvement scores on the different components of the PICCI did not vary as a function of mother's employment status or family structure. Data are discussed with respect to the rigidity of men's roles in a historically patriarchal society.
Abe Ruttenberg (U of New Mexico) and Matthew McIntyre (Harvard U)
Temporary Father Absence Among Ache Indians: Effects on Children and Young Adults
Paternal investment has been theorized as critical in augmenting the well-being of children in monogamous societies. However, the exact nature of paternal care, particularly when indirect, and its impact on children are still unclear. This study analyzes the responses of children and young adults to short-term father absence in a subtropical indigenous population of Ache Indians. When fathers temporarily leave the reservation settlement for variable periods of time, children are found to adjust their social patterns of behavior, including number of social partners, intensity of interactions, and frequency of play behavior. Alternative hypotheses for the importance of paternal presence/absence are evaluated.
Ulrich Schimmack (U of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) and Julia Lechuga (U of Texas, El Paso)
BILINGUALS' REPRESENTATIONS OF EMOTIONS: DISGUST VERSUS ASCO
English-Spanish bilinguals at the University of Texas, El Paso, rated the intensity of 12 emotions in 20 scenarios. After a distraction task, participants judged the frequency of emotions in the scenarios and recalled scenarios related to the 12 emotions (cf. Schimmack & Hartmann, 1997). The language in scenario rating and memory task was varied in 2 (English Spanish) x 2 (English Spanish) design. Participants rated disgust to occur more frequently than asco. The memory measures show an interaction between language during the scenario ratings and during the memory task. The implications for cross-cultural research on emotions are discussed.
Robert W. Schrauf (Duke U)
Mother Tongue Maintenance Among North American Ethnic Groups
Research among groups of immigrants to the United States and Canada has isolated a number of possible factors for both loss and persistence of the mother tongue in subsequent generations. These include: practice of the religion of the homeland,
residential concentration, within-group marriage, occupational specialization, visits to the homeland, and others. The research reported in this paper is based on data in the Human Relations Area Files from 11 immigrant groups to North America. The research suggests that residential pattern and religious practice are the principal factors accounting for
mother tongue maintenance into the third generation. Appeal is made to the childhood language socialization paradigm in explaining this finding.
Susan Seymour (Pitzer C)
HOUSEHOLD SIZE AND INFANT INDULGENCE IN AN INDIAN TOWN
The hypothesis that infants will receive greater indulgence in societies where large, extended households predominate rather than small, nuclear ones or mother-child households was raised many decades ago by Murdock and Whiting (1951) and again by Whiting (1961), the underlying assumption being that high indulgence occurs where there are "many hands to care for the infant." Ruth and Robert L. Munroe have tested this hypothesis in several different societies--East Africa, Samoa, and Nepal--with mixed results. This paper will further explore the relationship between household size and infant indulgence, using data from my longitudinal study of families and children in Bhubaneswar, India, in order more carefully to refine the variables "household size" and "structure" and the effect "infant indulgence." It will also address the issue of maternal vs. multiple caretakers of infants that is implicit in the Murdock/Whiting hypothesis and that is highly pertinent to contemporary debates around socialization and developmental processes in India.
Dinesh Sharma (Columbia U)
Infancy and Childhood in India: A Critical Review
Empirical or ethnographic observations have lagged behind the pace of theoretical observations on Hindu child and personality development. The evidence on childhood socialization in India is limited in developmental psychology, psychoanalysis and anthropology. This review examines demographic changes and cultural continuities related to socialization practices, exploring child rearing practices in Hindu India from an interdisciplinary perspective. First, the psychoanalytic perspective, particularly the work of Kakar (1978), Roland (1989) and Carstairs (1957) on childhood in India is discussed. Second, ethnographic studies of Hindu childhood socialization, including the works of Seymour (1971, 1980), Das (1989), Freeds (1981), Trawick (1990) and Kurtz (1992) are examined. Finally, studies exploring the content and contours of early childhood in India are examined from the perspective of developmental psychology (Roopnarine, 1989; Sharma, 1996; Sharma and LeVine, 1998). I examine research only on the care of infants and young children in the preschool years since this phase of childhood is least studied. As an introduction to the panel, this paper will focus on substantive issues related to childhood and society in India, specifically, child care, family process, women's development, and sociocultural change.
Laura S. Sidorowicz (Nassau Community C)
A Cross-Cultural Exploration of Person Perception in Relation to Self-Disclosure, Liking, and Trustworthiness
Self-disclosure is the important act of voluntarily revealing personal information about oneself to another individual. It is an essential and crucial element in interpersonal attraction, person perception, and impression management. This research investigated the effects of initial self-disclosure on attributions of trustworthiness and liking. In an attempt to better understand the cross-cultural implications of self-disclosure, American and Asian subjects were asked to evaluate each other based on their type of self-disclosure. The results will be examined in relation to individualistic and collectivistic cultures.
Tom Sørensen (U of Oslo) and Robert J Kleiner (Temple U)
Multiple Realities, Community Properties and Planning
With the development of "Community Psychiatry" and the concern for community diagnosis, a critical concept has emerged which we may refer to as the "social network strategy." This concept draws attention to the nature of the social networks that individuals relate to at the community level, i.e., his proximal social world. How many are there that are important? How integrated are they? How supportive are they? How cohesive are they. etc. Our research has shown that we need to know how individuals evaluate their network, how the members of the network(s) evaluate their networks, and what the properties of the networks are objectively, if we are to make use of these proximal worlds in dealing with community problems. But we also know that there more dimensions of these levels to know if we are to be able to determine community resources, thus requiring an interdisciplinary perspective. We will discuss these issues in dealing with planning and changing communities.
Richard Sosis (U of Connecticut)
RELIGION AND INTRA-GROUP COOPERATION: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF UTOPIAN COMMUNITIES
In recent efforts to explain the origins and evolution of morality, several authors (e.g., Cronk 1994; Irons 1996) have argued that religious beliefs are a way of communicating commitment and loyalty to other group members. The advantage of commitment signals is that they can promote intra-group cooperation by overcoming the free-rider problems that plague most cooperative pursuits. The histories of utopian communities provide an interesting database to test this idea, since the economic success and thus survival of these communities were dependent upon solving the collective action problem posed by cooperative labor. If religious beliefs foster commitment and loyalty among individuals who share those beliefs, communes which were formed out of religious conviction should have greater economic success and longevity than communes which were motivated by secular ideologies such as socialism. Results from comparative analyses of 19th century U.S. cooperative colonies and 20th century Israeli kibbutzim suggest that religious communities were more successful at promoting long-term intra-group cooperation.
B. James Starr and Adisa A. Ajamu (Howard U)
Setting Your Science Toward Expansive Methodical Search
The nature of some of social sciences' epistemological roots are briefly reviewed in the context of a model of the structure of disciplines developed by Starr (1983a, 1983b). Issues of current Zeitgeist (examined in Starr, 1995; Wilson, 1998a, 1998b) that helped to create the conditions permitting various departures from the norm (such as this symposium) are also addressed. Some suggestions for specific retooling of elements of the "Structure of Disciplines" model are offered with a view toward using systems concepts and tactics to expand our armamentarium of approaches to understanding the complex phenomena of our disciplines.
Deborah A. Stiles (Webster U) and Alice Boateng (Washington U)
Multiple Perspectives on Human Figure Drawings by Adolescents from Ghana
Human Figure Drawings illustrating "ideal" men and women were produced by 300 adolescents (11 to 17 years) who were attending rural schools in Ghana. Many of the drawings were puzzling and not easily interpretable by standard scoring systems. Non-standard features included square torsos, profile and frontal views presented in the same drawings, very large heads and drawings of the ideal woman pregnant and ideal man smoking. The symbolic significances of non-standard features were interpreted by adolescent students and adult social scientists and artists from Ghana and the United States. Each interpreter provided a distinctive perspective.
Deborah A. Stiles (Webster U). and Judith L. Gibbons (St. Louis U)
An International Perspective on the Importance of Leisure and Sports to Adolescents
Adolescents from 16 countries (6364, ages 11-16) often described the ideal man and woman as fun and drew pictures of the ideal person playing sports or engaged in other leisurely pursuits. Differences in responses were that girls more often than boys drew the ideal person working rather than playing, and the ideal man was more often than the ideal woman depicted in leisure activities. Adolescents from more affluent countries gave higher ratings to the qualities of being fun and sexy and drew more pictures of the ideal man as an athlete than did adolescents from poorer countries.
Marc J. Swartz (U of California, San Diego)
Cultural units, yes, same size and nature, probably no
Behavior is directly observable but culture is not. This limits our establishing the size or generality of culture's irreducible elements, but there may be advantage in examining the differences between types of elements. There are several different sorts of understandings: those that are high specific and serve as guidance in specific situations and those that are more general and, among other things, affect the choice among the first sort. These two types appear to have fundamental parts that differ in their nature. The natures of these two different kinds of elements bears investigation, including investigation of their elements.
Donald M. Taylor (McGill U)
Valueless Colonialism and the Plight of Disadvantaged Ethnic Minorities
To explain the plight of disadvantaged ethnic minorities, I argue that cultural difference theories, in the form of genetics, cultural deficit, and cultural discontinuity, are incomplete and misguided. A theory of "self" is proposed that focuses on collective identity as the primary psychological process, even taking precedent over self-esteem. Intergroup theories are applied to explain the problems confronting society's most disadvantaged groups, leading to a theory of valueless colonialism. An outcome of valueless colonialism is the destruction of collective identity for certain groups. In conclusion, I highlight cultural facets that nurture valueless colonialism.
W. Troy Tucker, Hillard Kaplan, and Jane B. Lancaster (U of New Mexico)
A LIFE-HISTORY THEORY OF MALE CHILDLESSNESS
Individual life histories result from a series of investments of time and resources in personal growth, self-maintenance, mating, fertility, and offspring quality. Kaplan (1996, 1997) coined the term "embodied capital" to describe the result of investment of time and resources in growth. Studying childlessness from a life-history perspective focuses attention on the tradeoff between investment in embodied capital verses investment in maintenance or reproduction. Application of a life-history model to data collected from Albuquerque men supports the theory and provides insight into variation in male childlessness over time and across ethnic and cultural boundaries.
Rob Veneziano (Saint Joseph C)
ARE CROSS-CULTURAL CODES FOR PATERNAL PROXIMITY AND PATERNAL WARMTH MEASURING SIMILAR PHENOMENA?
Recent tests of the relationships between paternal proximity, paternal warmth, and offspring behavior suggest that codes for paternal warmth more than codes for paternal proximity are salient for understanding parent-child relations in comparative research. However, the strong correlation between the proximity and warmth codes raises the possibility that the codes may reflect similar phenomena. To address this possibility, the author will examine the warmth and proximity codes and recode a random subsample drawn from the SCCS. Implications for comparative research will be discussed.
David Waynforth, A. Magdalena Hurtado and Kim Hill (U of New Mexico)
Psychosocial stress and reproduction in the Maya and Ache
The idea that humans fit their reproductive strategy to their environment partly by modeling their behavior on the stability of their parents' marriage has recently received attention from evolutionary psychologists trying to understand the timing of sexual maturity and first reproduction. This theory seemed plausible given findings that children from father-absent homes or stressful family environments tend to mature early. In this talk we present data on father-absence and reproduction in Mayan villagers and Ache hunter-gatherers, then, considering the pattern of findings for these traditional societies, we critically evaluate this theoretical perspective.
Robert Weigle (Franklin Institute)
Welcoming Latinos to Stay..........In Their Place
I describe how Anglo and Latino political and cultural differences emerged in bold relief in one metropolitan U.S. community which set out intentionally to include new Latino residents. What all thought was a liberal offer of inclusion operated in practice to consign Latinos to low status and exclusion from mainstream society. I describe a research project and an experimental social intervention, through which important cultural and justice-related aspects of this Latino-Anglo relationship are highlighted. Finally, I explore some implications for the cultural construction of justice.
Susan C. Weller (U Texas Medical Branch) and R. Baer (U of South Florida)
HIGH CONCORDANCE CODES?
Data from a cross-cultural study of illness concepts are used to test a simple hypothesis: are items with the highest agreement within a locality more likely to be shared across localities? Four diverse groups of Latinos were interviewed (in Guatemala, Mexico, Texas, and Connecticut). Information about illness features (symptoms, causes, treatments) was collected in a series of yes/no questions for each of eight illnesses. Illnesses varied in the degree of intra- and inter-sample variation in responses. Responses were examined to see if features with a strong majority response were more likely to be agreed upon across samples.
Edith Williams (Jackson State U) and Kip Coggins (U of Texas, El Paso)
Grandfather Involvement in Childrearing and the School Performance of Ojibwa Children
This study of nineteen Ojibwa families examined the relationship between quantity and quality of grandfather involvement in rearing their grandchildren and the grandchildren's academic and social school performance. Data were analyzed for the whole group and for males. The amount of grandfather involvement correlated with the cognitive competence of the children, especially boys, and with teacher ratings of social adaptive functioning particularly in terms of American Indian values. The results are discussed primarily in terms of the traditional role of the grandfather in American Indian families.
Lawrence R. Zeitlin (CUNY and U of Wales-Bangor)
GENDER, RACE AND CITIZENSHIP DIFFERENCES IN WORK RELATED VALUES
A finding of gender, race and citizenship differences in work related values was a serendipitous result of a replication of Hofstede's (1980-83) study of national values in the ethnically and racially diverse college student population of New York City. A factor analysis of the work value items on 780 questionnaires suggested that two factors, broadly defined as WORK SUCCESS and LIFE STYLE, accounted for most of the response variance. Group differences appeared predominantly on the LIFE STYLES factor. Males showed marked deviation from one group to another in values as a function of race/ethnicity and citizenship status while females, regardless of group, exhibited considerably less deviation of values. Most of the female dispersion was within one standard deviation of the male group mean. Generally speaking, women regardless of citizenship, race, or ethnicity have values much more like each other than the males of comparable groups. Practical implications of these differences in motivating persons in an organizational setting are discussed. Interpretation of the data is facilitated by a novel graphic mapping technique.
Keith Zvoch (U of New Mexico)
Parental Investment: Testing for Structural Invariance in Cross Ethnic Comparisons
Using data from the probablistically sampled National Education Longitudinal Survey, patterns of parental investment were investigated in cross ethnic comparisons. To accomplish the objective, a structural model was designed, assessed, and then tested for invariance. Control for potential inequities in access to resources was accomplished by holding socio-economic status constant. After a brief discussion of the data set, sample, and modeling technique, the results of the analyses are interpreted by explicitly acknowledging that expression of species-typical design varies in response to local ecological conditions.
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