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Leonore Loeb Adler (Molloy College),Ramadan A. Ahmed, Florence Denmark, Stephen Salbold, & Gerald Knoblauch. KUWAITI WOMEN'S ATTITUDES ON LIVING AND DYING: PREWAR AND POSTWAR COMPARISONS. In most traditional cultures and modern countries, women have a subordinate status to men. Most often they have no voice in current events, politics, or economics. However, they are involved in most of the affairs and the events of their own families and communities. And, in case of war, women are delegated to be the "home-front" and most often have no choice how to deal with such circumstances. However, women are free to have autonomous thoughts and attitudes. The present research concerned Kuwaiti women's attitudes toward living and dying. Would these change because of war? Comparisons of prewar and postwar answers to the same questionnaire are reported.
Ramadan A. Ahmed (Menoufia University, Egypt & Kuwait University). FUTURE PROBLEMS AND POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN EGYPT, KUWAIT, AND SAUDIA ARABIA. In this study, university students (18-23 years old) from Egypt, Kuwait, and Saudia Arabia responded to questions related to future societal problems and the professional groups they thought would be most likely to provide solutions. Results showed gender and cultural differences.
Ramadan A. Ahmed, see Leonore Loeb Adler
Susan Arnold, see Emily Diggins
Keisha N. Arrowood, see Deborah L. Best
Aparna Bagdi (Le Moyne College) "IT'S NOT FAIR!" STRESSORS AND COPING ACTIONS OF CHILDREN FROM BOMBAY. The present paper examined Indian children's perspectives of stressful events and how they try to deal with upsetting situations. Findings indicate that a number of situations (major life events as well as daily life hassles) are stressful to children. Coping actions range from thinking about worrisome incidents to actively doing something to improve the situation. Examples of children's quotes in the themes for stressors and coping actions indicate that children are able to think about what worries or upsets them and discuss various ways in which they help themselves feel better.
Douglas Barnett, see Rashmi Bhandari
Herbert Barry, III & Brian L. Yoder (U of Pittsburgh) CULTURAL CUSTOMS ASSOCIATED WITH AGRICULTURE BY FEMALES. In 108 societies where agriculture is the principal source of food, a regression analysis identified three cultural conditions as the main predictors of high female contribution to agricultural work: (1) polygynous marriage, (2) residence that is not patrilocal, and (3) small population of the local community. These three variables enhance the need and valuation by males for agricultural participation by women. Additional correlates with high female contribution include permissiveness toward premarital sexual intercourse by females, matrilineal decent, and choice of wife by adolescent boys rather than by their relatives.
Beatrice Boufoy-Bastick (University of the West Indies) STORYING
CULTURAL SPECIFICITIES OF ESL TEACHING IN FIJI: a GROUNDED NARRATIVE. This paper utilises a grounded narrative to report on the most culturally Fijian characteristics of teaching. The grounded narrative is a qualitative reporting methodology used to convey vividly and authentically the Fijian educational setting. It highlights the salient cultural characteristics which typify Fijian teaching by depicting the most culturally extreme Fijian rural school, the 'ideal type'. This description effectively highlights the sociocultural determinant of Fijian school ethos by reporting on extreme aspects of English teaching and daily school management.
Beatrice Boufoy-Bastick (University of the West Indies) THE CULTURAL INDEX AS A PREDICTOR OF CULTURALLY-DETERMINED BEHAVIOURS IN MULTICULTURAL SOCIETIES. This paper introduces the Cultural Index - a grounded index used to predict behaviours which are culturally-determined. These behaviours are often associated with ethnicity which has been used as a predictor of culturally-defined behaviours. The author posits that ethnicity is not a well-defined category in multicultural societies where ethnic groups influence each other's culturally-determined behaviours, sometimes borrowing more effective behaviours and sometimes marking their separate identity by emphasising differential behaviours. This paper describes how to calculate the Cultural Index and uses ethnographic data from a four-year long comparative study of native Fijians and Indo-Fijians to support its further use.
Tony Bastick (University of the West Indies) DIFFERENCES BETWEEN
ANTI-SOCIAL ADOLESCENT BEHAVIOR IN SINGLE SEX SCHOOLS AND
CO-EDUCATIONAL SCHOOLS IN JAMAICA. Anti-social adolescent behavior is reported to be a growing problem in the schools systems of different countries. This research compared anti-social adolescent behavior between single sex schools and co-educational schools in Jamaica. The most prevalent school discipline problems were identified from 15 minute interviews with each of 112 students from the 6 different types of secondary school in Jamaica. A random sample of 1193 adolescents from 16 representative schools were then surveyed to discover the prevalence of anti-social adolescent behavior in the Jamaican school system. The results, which were unexpected, are then compared with those from similar cultural contexts in other countries.
Tony Bastick (University of the West Indies) A MODEL FOR COMPARING TEACHER MOTIVATION ACROSS CULTURES. This paper introduces a new model for assessing teacher motivation and uses it to explore the motivations of male and female teacher trainees in Jamaica by age and pre-training experience. The results are then contrasted with gendered motivations of teachers from other cultures. The model is based on a 13-item questionnaire that can easily be used by cross-cultural researchers. The items were developed from 130 interviews with teacher trainees and educators and the model tested on a sample of 1444 teacher trainees, representing one-third of teacher trainees in Jamaica. The results are applicable to recruitment policies for reducing teacher attrition across cultures.
Ece Batchelder (University of California, Irvine) MULTINOMIAL MODELS OF SOURCE MEMORY AND INFERENCE IN SOCIAL STRUCTURES. A number of studies have been published arguing that graph-theoretic balance facilitates learning and memory of dyadic social relations. In our studies, subjects read stories about the friendship relations about pairs of actors in a social unit. The structure of the stories was represented as an incomplete signed graph, and groups differed as to whether stories did or did not satisfy balance. Later, they were tested for source memory of which pairs were described in the story and whether or not the relationship for a pair was (or was inferred to be) friendly or unfriendly. A family of multinomial processing tree models was developed for the paradigm that included item detection and source discrimination, as well as inference processes for unpresented pairs. The analyses revealed that at one level the balanced group had better source memory and more predictable inferences. However, a closer look revealed that dyadic attributes of the graph, such as positive and negative degrees, rather than the triadic property of balance explained much of the data. Finally, earlier published studies claiming a benefit of balance on learning and memory were reexamined, and it was found that often dyadic factors could explain the data rather than graph-theoretic balance.
Daniel Bekele (Harvard University) AN EXPLORATORY STUDY OF THE ACHIEVEMENT BELIEFS OF AMHARA SCHOOLED TEENAGERS OF ETHIOPIA. The study of the achievement beliefs of African children is alarmingly poor. This paper attempts to integrate literature from a variety of disciplines as it relates to beliefs of African and Ethiopian children. Using written TAT stories (for Cards 1, 2, and 4) from more than 80 Ethiopian students, the author describes the various meanings the adolescents associate with achievement, their most cited means to achieve, and the variations of themes across gender to expose the inadequacy of existing empirical and theoretical work that dominates the discourse on achievement beliefs in Ethiopian contexts.
Giovanni Bennardo (College of Charleston) REPRESENTATIONAL DISTORTION OF FAMILIAR ENVIRONMENTS: CULTURAL STRATEGIES FOR MAP DRAWING IN TONGA, POLYNESIA. Informants on the Tongan island of Vava'u drew maps of their village and the island they lived on. Most adopted a specific allocentric or absolute perspective-taking frame of reference i.e. they chose a culturally relevant place in their environment and used it as a fixed point of reference, drawing other objects (houses, villages, towns, etc.) in a radial way, centripetally, away from it. This suggests that Tongans privilege a 'radial' subtype of an absolute frame of reference (or perspective taking) in mentally representing spatial relationships. Support for this hypothesis is provided by results from a number of cognitive tests showing a marked preference for encoding of spatial relationships in long term memory by using an absolute frame of reference (Bennardo, 1996). Discussion focuses on intra-informant differences and idiosyncrasies as well as variations in the construction of the village and island maps. Analysis reveals connections between certain drawing strategies and specific mental representations of the environment.
Deborah L. Best (Wake Forest University) & Keisha N. Arrowood (Wake Forest University). THE HIDDEN CULTURE IN EMPIRICAL RESEARCH. Using the scientific method presumably results in reliable, valid descriptions of behavior and its causes that are not influenced by researcher bias or intuition and that can be evaluated and replicated by others. While empirical science is more objective than armchair observation, it is guided by a researcher who is a product of his/her training and culture. The questions that are studied, the participants and methodology used, the sorts of data collected and analyzed, and the interpretations of findings are shaped by the culture and orientation of the researcher. Examples from cross-cultural studies illustrate the hidden role of the researcher's culture.
Rashmi Bhandari, Joel Pittaway, Kenya Murphy, & Douglas Barnett (Wayne State University). COMPARING PARENTING AND ITS RELATION TO CHILD OUTCOMES AMONG LOW-INCOME AFRICAN-AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN AMERICAN FAMILIES. Eighty-two 4- to 5 year-old children and their primary caregivers participated in a comparative study of demographically similar low-income African American and Caucasian American samples. Multiple assessments of parenting included self-report, as well as observations in the home, and videotaped observations in the laboratory. Preliminary analysis supported previous studies that found African American parents to be more likely to report using corporal punishment than were European American parents. Contrary to reports from previous studies, the groups did not differ in the use of warmth or control. Parenting and its relationship to child adjustment across the two ethnic groups will be discussed.
Ralph Bolton (Pomona College) REAL AND RAW: SEXUAL DEFINITIONS AND MOTIVATIONS IN GAY BAREBACKING. The late 1990's has produced a new sexual subculture among American gay men. Although the emergence of HIV/AIDS produced dramatic increases in the use of condoms during anal intercourse, some men continued to engage in unprotected anal sex. Rejecting safe sex admonitions and the stigma associated with "real" sex or "raw" sex, participants in the new barebacking subculture advocate unprotected sex. This paper examines how barebackers talk about sex, the concepts and definition they employ, and their expressed motivations for engaging in barebacking.
Marc H. Bornstein & Marie-Anne P. Suizzo (NICHD) WHAT MOTHERS KNOW: A COMPARISON OF MOTHERS' IDEAS ABOUT INFANT CARE AND DEVELOPMENT ACROSS CULTURES. This paper reports a cross-cultural study of mothers' knowledge about infants and examines the cultural variability of
this knowledge. A questionnaire was completed by 588 mothers of first-born, 20-month-old infants living in Argentina, Belgium, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, and the United States. Four domains of knowledge were measured: developmental milestones, knowledge about health, ideas about infant development, and infant-care strategies. The authors highlight areas of cultural concurrence as well as areas of significant variation as well as discuss relations between knowledge and sociodemographic characteristics. A brief discussion of the implications of this research conclusions the presentation.
Timothy J. Brazill (Mercer University) & Bernard Grofman (University of California, Irvine) FACTOR ANALYSIS VS. MDS, CORRESPONDENCE ANALYSIS, AND CLUSTERING: BINARY CHOICE ROLL-CALL DATA. The authors evaluate factor analysis, multi-dimensional scaling (MDS), correspondence analysis and clustering algorithms as tools for the analysis of voter decisions over a series of dichotomous choices. They simulate binary voting data with a known form and illustrate that standard factor analyses of these types of data yield additional artifactual dimensions. This effect may be exacerbated by the choice of inter-voter measures of similarity used as input. These results call in question the conclusions of others based on standard factor analyses of empirical voting data from the U.S. Supreme Court. The paper concludes with a demonstration that other methods produce more parsimonious descriptions of these data.
Devon D. Brewer (University of Washington) SUPPLEMENTAL INTERVIEWING TECHNIQUES TO MAXIMIZE OUTPUT IN FREE LISTING TASKS. Free listing is an important ethnographic tool for identifying items that belong to a semantic domain. However, when free listing items from a particular domain, informants often are not able to recall all items they know in that domain. In this paper, the author review results from recent studies on three supplemental interviewing techniques to enhance recall in such tasks (nonspecific prompting, reading back the free listed items to the informant, and using free listed items as semantic cues). These methods increase substantially the number of items elicited from individual informants and the number of items in a domain identified from informants in the aggregate.
Paul Brunswick, see William Divale
Raymond Buriel, see Terri L. De Ment
Michael Burton (University of California, Irvine), Karen L. Nero (University of Aukland), & Jim Hess (U of California, Irvine) CORRESPONDENCE ANALYSIS OF HOUSEHOLD RESOURCES IN MARSHALLESE COMMUNITIES. Correspondence analysis has been used for cross-cultural comparisons of semantic domains, where the individual respondent is the unit, and in analysis of large cross-cultural data sets, where the society or culture is the unit. Here we extend the method to enhance the power of the comparative method when the units are households and communities. We will use correspondence analysis and other relevant statistical methods to represent variations in household demography and household resources across 4 Marshallese communities.
Sandra Carpenter (The University of Alabama in Huntsville) CULTURE (ETHNICITY) DIFFERENCES IN PERCEPTIONS OF GROUP HOMOGENEITY AND ENTITATIVITY. Groups can be perceived as coherent entities (i.e., as "entitative") or as mere aggregates of people. As collectivists more greatly value group membership than do individualists, we predicted that groups would be perceived as homogeneous entities (e.g., with group goals and values) by collectivists. We hypothesized and found that collectivists (i.e., Mexican Americans) perceive their in-groups to be more homogeneous and entitative than do individualists (i.e., European Americans). Our speculation that individual differences in allocentrism would mediate this relation was also supported. These differences in perceptions of groups have implications for self-esteem, stereotyping, and political activism.
Alison S. Carson (Boston College) CONCEPTIONS OF FAIRNESS IN URBAN POOR FILIPINO COMMUNITY. Individuals from an urban poor community in Metro Manila participated in interviews investigating distributive justice decision-making in hypothetical scenarios. Participants were asked to discuss how a resource should be divided and why within the context of the scenarios. Responses to the interviews were qualitatively analyzed focusing on examples of culturally influenced fairness reasoning. A number of themes were extracted from the interviews. The effects of the social relationship embedded in the scenario and relative scarcity of the resource being divided were also investigated.
Charita L. Castro, see Robert G. Hayden
Douglas Caulkins, see Christina Peters
Ruth K. Chao (U of California, Riverside) THE ROLE OF CHILDREN’S LANGUAGE BROKERING IN IMMIGRANT CHINESE AND MEXICAN FAMILIES. This study examines an important acculturative challenge faced by immigrant children and their families--the acculturation of language. Because children often acculturate to a new country and learn to speak English more quickly than their parents, children often act as language and cultural brokers through the translating they provide to their parents. Data from 60 Chinese- and Mexican-descent adolescents and their parents will be presented examining whether adolescents’ participation in language brokering affects their relationships with their parents in terms of relationship closeness, satisfaction, and respect for and identity with parents.
Garry Chick (Pennsylvania State University) CULTURAL AND BEHAVIORAL CONSENSUS IN A TLAXCALAN FESTIVAL SYSTEM. In 1940, C. Wright Mills noted that the principal problem faced by the social sciences is that what people say and what they do are so different. Since consensus analysis provides quantitative and culturally "correct" models of systemic patterns (as in Kroeber’s [1948] use of the term), it also encourages comparison of those models with behavioral data, when such data is available. In this paper, the author compares a consensus model of participation in the festival (cargo) system in a small village in Tlaxcala, Mexico, with church records of participation. Mills’ view is generally vindicated. Though there is strong consensus on how the system operates, participants’ actual behavior deviates substantially from the shared cultural model.
Anna L. Comunian (University of Padua, Italy) & Uwe P. Gielen (St. Francis College, NY) AN ITALIAN STUDY OF ROHNER'S PARENTAL ACCEPTANCE-REJECTION TESTS. The authors investigated the cross-cultural usefulness of Rohner's Parental Acceptance measure and its psychometric characteristics. Both the Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire and the Personality Assessment Questionnaire were administered to samples of Italian respondents. Three main areas of parental rejection-acceptance perception were investigated: children's perception, mothers' perception, and adults' perception. The results suggest that the questionnaires can be used with Italian groups and that useful comparisons can be drawn between studies conducted in Italy and in other countries. Analyses of internal bias show that the adapted Italian questionnaires measure the same dimensions as those suggested by Rohner and that the proportion of biased items is small. A comprehensive review of Italian research on the PARQ and the PAQ questionnaires from 1997 to 1999 is provided including a discussion of its theoretical and practical implications.
Roy G. D'Andrade, see Kimberly A. Jameson
Sophie Daniel, see Sharon Glazer
Makiko Deguchi & Ramsey Liem (Boston College) QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF "SHAME SHARING" EXPERIENCES AMONG ASIAN AMERICANS AND EUROPEAN AMERICANS. This study investigates the experience of "shame sharing", a phenomenon rarely examined in Western psychological research. "Shame sharing" is experienced when one's actions cause shame in others or one is shamed by the actions of others with whom one is closely identified. Preliminary analysis of interviews indicates that European Americans appear to view shame as something to outgrow, whereas Asian Americans experience it across the life cycle. European Americans also tend to associate shame sharing more often with temporary group contexts and the failure to fulfill individual responsibilities than do Asian Americans. A number of issues are discussed, including greater difficulties in eliciting shame sharing episodes from European Americans as well as production of more abstract narratives.
Terri L. De Ment (Claremont Graduate School) & Raymond Buriel (Pomona College) CHILDREN AS LANGUAGE BROKERS: RECOLLECTIONS OF COLLEGE STUDENTS. Presently, there are thousands of children in the United States who have the responsibility of translating for their immigrant parents. Children who act as interpreters for their non-English speaking parents are referred to as language brokers. Language brokers often have broad roles as mediators and decision-makers. Focus groups composed of college students discussed their role as language brokers, their feelings about this role, and their unique relationships to their parents and siblings.
Florence L. Denmark, see Leonore Loeb Adler
Eric De Vos (Saginaw Valley State University) SOCIAL SUPPORT. INTERPERSONAL STYLES, AND REACTIONS TO THE PREGNANCY AMONG AFRICAN-AMERICAN EXPECTANT MOTHERS. Eighty-one African-American expectant mothers were interviewed about social support and status concerns, and about reactions to their pregnancy. Interviews were scored using the Interpersonal Concerns Scoring System (ICSS). Their interpersonal relationships (with the father of the baby and with others were assessed) with a Relational Styles Questionnaire that is derived from the ICSS. Questions about social-support most frequently elicited concerns with affiliation and nurturance, with substantial emphasis on dependency issues. Reactions to the pregnancy were mostly frequently expressed in terms of either positive pleasure or unresolved pleasure, with relatively few expressions of instrumental concerns.
Eric De Vos (Saginaw Valley State University) FAMILY RESPONSIBILITY, CONFLICT RESOLUTION AND ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION AMONG TIBETAN REFUGEES. Tibetan adults and adolescents living in the United States were interviewed regarding their experiences as refugees in the U.S. and in India. They also provided responses to a selected set of images from the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). Concerns about family responsibility and the maintenance of family harmony, as well as achievement-related themes were consistently revealed in the interview material as well as in the TAT responses. Themes obtained from this ample will be discussed in light of those identified by others who have previously obtained TAT-like stories from Tibetans and Tibetan refugees in India.
George A. De Vos (U of California, Berkeley) FAMILY FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO DELINQUENCY. Family interaction patterns found to be associated with youth delinquency across cultural contexts and regardless of ethnic-minority status will be discussed. The discussion will be based on Japanese and Italian data collected in the 1960’s and 1970’s using Glueck’s five-factor scoring scale for predicting delinquency. The author will also report how the Interpersonal Concerns Scoring System (ICSS) has been used for scoring interpersonal difficulties involving nurture, neglect and erratic forms of discipline. Implications for contemporary research on family systems, the roles of dysfunctional family interactions, patterns of neglect, withholding and erratic discipline as contributors to deviant development will be discussed.
Emily Diggins (University of Maryland) & Susan Arnold (University of North Florida) RACIAL DIFFERENCES IN RESTAURANT TIPPING. Two studies tested the hypothesis that Black restaurant customers were more likely than White customers to tip less than 15 percent. In the first study, 99 servers from suburban Maryland and Florida completed questionnaires regarding typical tip sizes of various customer groups. Average tip reported for Blacks (M=1.25) was less than that for Whites (M=2.24; t(87)=15.52, p<.001) and less than 15 percent (M=2.00; z=16.30, p<.001). The second study examined actual tipping among 151 dining parties in a Duval County, Florida restaurant. On average, Blacks (M=14.29) tipped less than Whites (M=17.27, t(130)=1.94, p=.054) and, excluding one extreme case (M=11.97), tipped less than 15 percent (z=1.99, p<.02). The need for future research to examine the generalizability of these findings, and possible reasons for the racial difference, are discussed along with implications of the findings for race relations.
William Divale (York College, CUNY) & Paul Brunswick (University of Florida). INDIVIDUALISM AND COLLECTIVISM: NEW CROSS-CULTURAL CODES AND HYPOTHESIS TESTS. Harry Triandis has called Individualism versus Collectivism the "single most important dimension of cultural difference in social behavior." This study represents a first attempt at coding Individualism and Collectivism using 136 societies in the Standard Cross-Cultural sample. Previous researchers used the Individualism-Collectivism concept in samples of two or three societies, and an entire literature of postulations and hypotheses has developed based on two society comparisons. We also test some of the hypotheses using variables previously measured for the SCCS.
Aryn Dotterer, see Emanual van Bolden
Jeanne Edman (University of Hawaii-KCC) ILLNESS BELIEFS AMONG FILIPINO CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS. Children's illness perceptions are of interest to both cognitive development researchers and health practitioners. The present study examines the illness beliefs of 50 high school students and 50 grade school students residing in a rural community in the Philippines. Students of all grades stated a variety of illness responses including biomedical congruent responses, as well as natural and non-natural indigenous responses. Adolescents appeared to have more knowledge concerning certain types of casual factors including nutrition and sorcery. Younger children expressed a larger number of home remedies and were also more likely to express fatalistic illness attributions. The results suggest that the combination of more varied illness experiences and greater cognitive maturity resulted in the adolescents' greater knowledge of certain illness attributions. The results support the need to consider the cultural context in examining age differences in illness beliefs.
Nina Eduljee (St. Joseph's College, ME) A COMPARISON OF COLLEGE STUDENTS ATTITUDES TOWARDS COMPUTERS -UNITED STATES AND INDIA: A FIVE-YEAR ANALYSIS. Computer use by students in the United States and India continues to increase at a rapid pace. This paper focuses on five years of computer-related data collected from college students in the United States (n=541) and India (n=464). Variables examined include academic major, age, gender, amount and extent of computer use, type of computer used, and anxiety. Results indicate that increased computer use is related to decreased computer anxiety. Age and gender did not appear to be significant variables. Discussion focuses on implications of these findings.
Carol R. Ember & Melvin Ember (Human Relations Area Files) FATHER-ABSENCE AND MALE AGGRESSION: A RE-EXAMINATION OF THE COMPARATIVE EVIDENCE. In 1965, Beatrice B. Whiting published an article on sex identity conflict and its association with physical violence. While subsequent worldwide cross-cultural research has been equivocal regarding the "sex-identity conflict" hypothesis, the authors suggest that this may be because
researchers have failed to pay attention to B. Whiting's contingent conditions - how powerful men in their society compared to women and the degree to which aggression is considered a component of the male adult role.
Using multiple regression, the authors examine how homicide/assault rates are affected by sleeping arrangements, the degree to which aggression is explicitly encouraged, the degree of physical punishment, and whether the mother or father is the main punisher.
Melvin Ember, see Carol R. Ember
Frank Eyetsemitan (McKendree College) PRECEPTION OF ELDERLY TRAITS AND UNDERGRADUATES' HELPING TENDENCIES IN THE U.S., IRELAND, BRAZIL, AND NIGERIA. An individual's positive and negative traits can either attract or repel others in interpersonal relationships. The "attractive" traits of elderly persons, or any group of persons, are more likely to cause others to help than their "unattractive" traits would. In Western societies, help toward the elderly is borne out of affection while in non-Western societies, it is mostly out of obligation or duty. Therefore, helping the elderly in non-Western societies is expected and normative while it is not in Western societies. Thus, are elderly "attractive" and "unattractive" traits more important in influencing the helping behavior of others toward the elderly in Western than in non-western societies? Are there differences when it comes to helping parents? These questions will be addressed by data collected from undergraduates in two Western societies (U.S. & Ireland) and in two non-Western societies (Nigeria & Brazil). Discussion will focus on has implications for caregiver stress and for a cross-cultural understanding of intergenerational helping relationships.
Stephen L. Eyre (U of California, San Francisco) THE ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP TRAJECTORY OF AFRICAN AMERICAN GAY/BISEXUAL ADOLESCENTS. Based on biographical interviews with 15 African American gay/bisexual adolescents, this paper traces the romantic relationship trajectory of this group through its various phases: (1) exposure to the gay/bisexual social environment, (2) meeting a male sexual partner, (3) "talking to" the partner over a period of days or weeks, (4) initiation of sex and initiation of a sustained relationship, (5) conflict over infidelity followed by breakup, and (6) aftermath. The paper explores the question: Why are romantic relationships described by this group as having a consistently negative outcome?
Katherine Faust (University of South Carolina), Karin E. Willert (University of South Carolina) & David D. Rowlee (University of South Carolina) SCALING AND STATISTICAL MODELS FOR AFFILIATION NETWORKS: COALITION FORMATION AMONG SOVIET POLITICIANS DURING THE BREZHNEV ERA. Scaling and statistical models are used to study coalitions among Soviet politicians during the Brezhnev Era. The data consist of observations made
by the National Foreign Assessment Center of the Central Intelligence Agency of appearances of Soviet political elites at official and social events for eight years during the height of the Brezhnev Era. Correspondence analysis of this affiliation network reveals coalitions of politicians, with the dominant group centered around Brezhnev and future Soviet political leaders. Random graph models confirm the importance of joint participation for consolidating coalitions and provide tests of hypotheses about structural features of the network.
William K. Gabrenya, Jr. (Florida Institute of Technology) UNDERSTANDING INDIGENOUS PSYCHOLOGIES FROM A SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE PERSPECTIVE: THE TAIWAN INDIGENOUS PSYCHOLOGY MOVEMENT. The Taiwan Indigenous Psychology Movement was examined from a sociology of science perspective. Quantitative and qualitative research methods were employed to assess the Movement's evolving epistemological, social and organizational characteristics, and to understand the dynamics driving its development. Support was found for the hypothesis that the Movement is motivated by five dynamics: (1) the need for locally-relevant research and methods; (2) the need to actualize an academic career under local conditions; (3) the desire to establish a Taiwanese, non-Western identity in social science; (4) the influence a powerful leaders; and (5) the internal political forces of a social movement.
Harry W. Gardiner (U of Wisconsin-La Crosse) CROSS-CULTURAL HUMAN DEVELOPMENT IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM. In this paper, the author briefly discusses the origins of cross-cultural development, evaluates its present status, and speculates about the directions it might take in the first years of the 21st century. Emphasis is placed on links between theory, research, and applications that combine the theories and methodologies of the psychologist, the ethnographic approaches of the anthropologist, and the social policy concerns of the sociologist.
Mary Gauvain, see Robert L. Munroe
Judith Gibbons, see Deborah Stiles
Uwe P. Gielen, see Anna L. Comunian
Sharon Glazer (Central Michigan University), Sophie Daniel (Northern Kentucky University), & Matthew Short (Northern Kentucky University). A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT AND HUMAN VALUES. The concept of organizational commitment, defined as a bond between employees and the employing organization, has
overtones of human values. In this study, the authors seek to determine what values reflect on the way nurses in each of several countries perceive organizational commitment. Correlations between values, and continuance (CC) and affective commitment (AC) are examined using data collected from 1,396 nurses from Hungary, England, Italy, and USA. It is expected that the correlations between values and both AC and CC will differ between countries. Significant correlations may indicate which values are most important in shaping nurses’ commitment to their organization.
Bernard Grofman, see Timothy J. Brazill
Robert G. Hayden (Tulane University), Chizuko Izawa (Tulane University, & Charita L. Castro (George Washington University) INCISIVE ROLE OF CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH: AN ILLUSTRATION WITH EATING DISORDER RISK FACTORS. Women's studies in Western countries attribute eating disorders (ED) to gender-factors e.g. hyperfemininity (Kashubeck et al, 1991; Szmanski, 1990), or to ED-thinking, attitudes, and behavior (Cantrell & Ellis, 1991; Herkov et al, 1994). These theories were examined via inclusionary sampling by culture and gender, employing 77 male and female college students -- 56 Americans and 21 Japanese. The Bem Sex Role Inventory and Eating Disorder Inventory-2 disclosed new, theoretically significant differences between cultures and between genders. Hyperfemininity theory was supported by Japanese women and the opposing perspective by American women. Clearly, inattention to cross-cultural facts thwarts knowledge.
Valerie Hoffman (U of California, Los Angeles) PARTNER ASSESSMENT AMONG YOUNG MSMs IN LOS ANGELES. Partner assessments and sexual decision-making were investigated among a sample of young MSMs recruited in Los Angeles. Participants were between 18-25 and recruited from bars, coffeehouses, gyms, juice bars, video stores, a drop-in center in West Hollywood, and a university listserv. To be eligible for the study, young men had to have engaged in sex with a new partner within the previous two months. Qualitative data were analyzed using Grounded Theory. Preliminary qualitative findings and results of a survey will be presented. Suggestions for how information about the partner assessment process might be incorporated into AIDS educational programs will also be discussed.
Anita L. Iannucci, see Cynthia M. Webster
Chizuko Izawa, see Robert G. Hayden
Kimberly A. Jameson & Roy G. D’Andrade (University of California, San Diego) CULTURE, COGNITION, AND QUANTITATIVE METHODS: MODELING THE REPRESENTATION OF COLOR EXPERIENCE. The study of color sensation and color naming is a multidisciplinary endeavor involving such seemingly disparate disciplines as molecular genetics, cognitive science, mathematical modeling, anthropology and ethnography. Initially some of the most influential anthropological and ethnographic work was produced through psycholinguistic studies of color-naming (e.g., Berlin & Kay 1969). More recently, quantitative anthropological studies using mathematical models of behavior have yielded insights into the cognitive processing underlying color-naming behaviors, and developed general methodological advances for cross-cultural studies of cognitive representation (e.g., Romney & Moore 1998). This paper reviews work on cognition and color-naming, focusing on advances made through quantitative studies of cognitive anthropology, and considers how new results point towards a more comprehensive understanding of cognition and color-naming behaviors.
Jeffrey C. Johnson (East Carolina University) & Michael K. Orbach (Duke University) PATTERNED BIAS IN COGNITIVE SOCIAL NETWORKS. Recent studies have found that individuals tend to see themselves as more central in a network than they really are. This body of work has generally been done among small groups of less than 30 actors. Additionally, settings have usually been in an office context focusing on friendship or work relations. Other related work has found links between activity and influence in a network and accurate knowledge of the network. This paper brings together this work on bias, influence and accuracy in the study of a relatively larger legislative political network involving legislators, agency heads, lobbyists and agency and legislative staff. In a setting where accuracy in an understanding of the political landscape has important implications, the study finds variation in cognitive network bias is patterned with respect to an actor's role in the political network and power in the political process.
Martin E. Judd, see Shelly McCallum
Margaret M. Kieffer (Cognitive Enterprise, New Delhi, India) JOHNNY CAN LEARN: ANTHROPOLOGY AND A PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION. As America moved into the technological age, the methods of delivering education have constantly been rethought, reworked, rejected and revived. From education in pre-industrial societies through the foundations of western education to current delivery systems, the essential goals of education are summarized. Changing trends in education are examined for effectiveness and affectiveness. The rise in awareness and incident of children with "learning disabilities" and the resulting development in instructional methods are examined. A rethinking of a philosophy of education in regard to primary educational objectives and basic effective instructional methods is suggested.
Kyoungho Kim (Korea Institute for Youth Development) & Ronald P. Rohner (University of Connecticut) PARENTAL WARMTH, CONTROL, AND INVOLVEMENT IN SCHOOLING: PREDICTING ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT AMONG KOREAN AMERICAN ADOLESCENTS. Three questions are addressed in this paper: (1) Is Baumrind's authoritative style of parenting associated with optimum academic achievement among Korean American adolescents as it tends to be among European American youths? (2) Insofar as the answer is yes, what relative contribution does parental (maternal and paternal) warmth vs. control--the two central components of the authoritative style--make to youths academic achievement? Finally, (3) does parental (mothers' vs. fathers') involvement in the youths' schooling mediate any of these relationships among Korean American adolescents as it does among European American youths? A sample of 245 Korean American adolescents helps provide answers to these questions.
Randall R. Kleinhesselink (Washington State University) A LATENT VARIABLE MODEL OF THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN U.S. AND JAPANESE CITIZENS IN THE PERCEPTION OF NUCLEAR DISASTERS. Risk perception of 70 environmental risks survey data was collected simultaneously in Japan and the United States. Using standard factor-analytic techniques of the psychometric paradigm (Slovic), cognitive maps were created. Of interest, a subset of 7 nuclear risks were perceived as moderately "unknown" to U.S. citizens, while Japanese citizens perceived them to be moderately to highly "known." A latent variable model (LISREL) was iteratively fitted to alternative models until a "best fit" solution emerged. Dread and catastrophy dimensions are separate contracts in both cultures. The key difference between the U.S. and Japanese model is individual knowledge. Foe the Japanese, catastrophic images are a function of individual knowledge and lack of control. Unlike the Japanese, the catastrophic images of Americans are a function of a lack of scientific knowledge and, like the Japanese, lack of control.
Gerald Knobelauch, see Leonore Loeb Adler
Andrey Korotayev (Russian State University for the Humanities) COMMUNAL COMPLEXITY AND ECOLOGICAL ENVIRONMENT: A CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON.
Andrey Korotayev (Russian State University for the Humanities) DEMOCRACY, CHRISTIANIZATION AND UNILINEAL DESCENT GROUPS: A CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON. It is shown that the presence of the unilineal descent groups is negatively correlated with the communal democracy; this correlation is especially strong for the complex traditional societies (Phi=-0.49; Gamma=-0.84). As the "deep christianization" (i.e. the christianization which lasted for a few centuries making a deep impact on the respective cultures) of complex societies correlates negatively and strongly with the presence of the unilineal descent organization (Phi=Rho=-0.7) and as the communal democracy correlates positively with the supracommunal one, this suggests that the christianization of Europe might have contributed to the development of the modern democracy there through the important role
which it played in the destruction of the unilineal descent organization in this region.
David Krackhardt (Carnegie Mellon University) THE METRIC SCALING OF HYPERGRAPHS: UNDERSTANDING THE STRUCTURE OF CULTURE IN ORGANIZATIONS. It is a common premise in organizational theory that individuals' direct ties to others (structure) influence their beliefs and understanding of rules and roles (culture). That is, there is a structure to the culture itself. This paper extends this thinking by examining the structure as defined by a hypergraph of relations. Four organizational sites are examined through SVD methods suggested by Weller and Romney (1990) and Kumbasar, Romney and Batchelder (1994). The domain of cultural objects is the set of relations as perceived by the organizational members (cognitive social structures of both advice and friendship relations). The "collectives" used to find cultural agreement is the set of informal groups (cliques) within the organization. A hypergraph is created of order persons-by-sets-of-people based on the clique definitions. An SVD is applied to the hypergraph, yielding structural patterns among actors and cliques in all four organizational sites. These patterns of similarity in the hypergraphs are demonstrated to be substantially more predictive of cultural agreement than patterns based on the raw networks themselves.
David B. Kronenfeld (University of California, Riverside) CROSS AND PARALLEL PARENTS. Important for our understanding of and classification of kin terminologies has been the distinguishing (or not) of cross from parallel cousins and the ways the distinction is defined. Lounsbury, in generalizing the distinction out from cousins to relatives in the central 3 generations, was particularly concerned with Iroquois-type systems, and only treated Dravidian-type ones by way of comparison. In offering an alternative, the author suggests that, in systematic treatments of Dravidian-type terminologies, the carrying over of Lounsbury's G1cross-parallel feature has made systemic treatments needlessly complicated and has impaired our analytic understanding.
Tracy Lehnertz, see Shelly McCallum
Ramsey Liem, see Makiko Deguchi
William T. Mangan, see Shelly McCallum
Robert F. Manlove (City College of San Francisco) LOVE AND LOATHING IN
THE PHILIPPINES. The author presents a theoretical framework for understanding affiliation (love, friendship) which explores the instrumental and expressive underpinnings of affiliation, the internal taxonomic structure of affiliation and its potential development toward rapture. This framework is subsequently demonstrated by Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) and Sentence Completion Test (SCT) data from the Philippines in which both the culturally unique and universal aspects of affiliation are revealed.
Gerald E. Markle, see Frances McCrea
Smita Mathur (SUNY-New Paltz) ACCULTURATION AMONG ASIAN INDIAN IMMIGRANT PARENTS: ISSUES RELATED TO MATE SELECTION. This study examines parental attitudes related to marriage and mate selection through intra-cultural comparisons among Asian Indian immigrant parents in the United States and Indian parents residing in India. A total of 180 parents were interviewed. It emerges that immigrant parents in the United States have made insignificant shifts in their attitudes related to mate selection. They prefer to perpetuate the traditional Indian value of arranged marriages like their Indian counterparts. The theory of cultural pluralism and exchange theory is used to explain the stability of parental attitudes in view of external pressures to assimilate to life in the United States.
Shelly Y. McCallum, Jay D. Mutter, William T. Mangan, Martin
E. Judd, & Tracy Lehnertz (Saint Mary's University of MN) VALIDATING MEASURE OF AN UNDERGRADUATE SEMESTER ABROAD EXPERIENCE USING THE ASCD. Since 1992, Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota has been developing and refining the validation of the Assessment of Sensitivity to Cultural Differences (ASCD) inventory. This instrument is designed to assess the extent to which students possess and demonstrate the attributes of cultural sensitivity. As one approach to its validation, the ASCD was used as a measure of success of SMU undergraduate students in developing cross-cultural sensitivity through participation in a study abroad experience. By tracking a cohort of undergraduate students, the ASCD provided a pre and post measure of change in the cultural sensitivity of students and the influence of study abroad experiences. Implications for pre-departure training and re-entry
adjustment are offered.
Frances B. McCrea (Grand Valley State University, MI) & Gerald E. Markle (Western Michigan University) WAR IN KOSOVO: A SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS. In the Spring of 1999, as the crisis in Kosovo deepened, Western officials began to use new language and props to describe the problems in this Serbian province. In this paper, the authors offer a semiotic analysis of the attempt (notably in President Clinton's televised address to the American people) to construct a new nation-state. Examples of signs and symbols used to legitimize claims-making, discussed in this presentation, include references to "Kosova" (the Shqiper or Albanian pronunciation) and "Kosovars" (a new term to identify ethnic Albanian citizens of the province). Other claims-making efforts include a Manichean view of Balkan politics, the "Hilterization" pf the Yugoslav President, and the romanticization of the ethnic Albanian population.
Marc L. Miller (University of Washington) PALAUAN COGNITIONS OF FOOD FISH AND ACTION FISH. In the Micronesian Republic of Palau, small-scale fishermen who fish for subsistence--and, to a limited degree, money-- now consider charter boat fishing. A charter captain/expert fisherman (chadra omenged) would guide international clients to choice sportfishing destinations. For this occupational transition to succeed, captains must communicate about the Western meaning of "fishing action," and the Palauan dimensions of fishing for food. Multidimensional scaling and clustering results of pile-sort data (33 species of fish, 23 subjects) isolate which fish have action value and which have food value.
Winifred L. Mitchell (Minnesota State University-Mankato) WOMEN'S ECONOMIC AND KIN POWER AND THE IDEOLOGY OF GENDER EQUALITY IN PREINDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES. This paper re-analyzes Martin Whyte's excellent work, The Status of Women in Pre-Industrial Societies, 1979. In a project begun at the Summer Institute, I reduced the number of Whyte's cases (cultures) and variables to those with adequate gendered information. In the analysis, three factors emerge for predicting gender relations: gendered power in economics and in kinship; and the ideology of gender equality or dominance. The paper discusses these results and the interesting non-linear relationships among factors that suggest a stronger, cross-culturally applicable statement about gender relations.
Robert L. Moore (Rollins College) SLANG LEXEMES AS MARKERS OF EMERGING EMOTIONAL STYLES. It is the thesis of this paper that the emotional style of a youth subculture, when distinct from emotional styles of the dominant culture, is typically indexed by a single, enduring key slang term. This term has the potential, should the youth style take root and "grow up," to evolve into a pervasive and long-lived lexeme in adult vocabulary e.g. the American slang terms "swell" (ca. 1920) and "cool" (ca. 1960). The Mandarin slang lexeme "ku" (as of ca. 1996) may follow a similar path.
Robert L. Munroe (Pitzer College) & Mary Gauvain (U of California, Riverside) WHY THE PARAPHILIAS? DOMESTICATING STRANGE SEX .
Paraphilias (e.g., pedophilia, fetishism) are said to be eradicable once established. Particular paraphilic fantasies seem "related... to a personalized experience of early sexual arousal" (Money, 1985). The authors propose that the motivational state known as the Zeigarnik Effect, according to which interrupted tasks are better recalled than completed tasks, may provide understanding of this process, especially its later addictive-compulsive quality. Reasoning from Zeigarnik-type research, the authors predict a relation between early sexual arousal, its frustration, and subsequent fixation on events associated with such arousal. They examine the cross-cultural literature, propose some testable predictions, and discuss why almost all paraphilias are associated nearly-exclusively with males.
Kenya Murphy, see Rashmi Bhandari
Jay D. Mutter, see Shelly McCallum
Karen Nero, see Michael Burton
Michael K. Orbach, see Jeffrey C. Johnson
Susan Parman (California State University, Fullerton) LOT'S WIFE AND THE OLD SALT: CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISONS OF ATTITUDES TOWARD SALT IN RELATION TO DIET. Although salt is a fundamental requirement in human biology, societies differ in the access they have to salt, and in their attitudes toward it. This paper uses the Human Relations Area Files to explore the relationship between diet (defined by a scoring system that identifies the customary diet as primarily vegetarian or primarily animal byproducts, or some variation thereof) and positive and negative valuation (defined by the presence of explicit or implicit statements about the value of salt, its uses in ritual, folklore, metaphor).
Christina Peters (Grinnell College) & Douglas Caulkins (Grinnell College) GRID/GROUP ANALYSIS, ENTERPRISE CULTURES, AND NORTH AMERICAN ETHNIC GROUPS. The prevailing hypothesis among social scientists is that a high degree of social capital within immigrant groups promotes the development of self-employment or entrepreneurship, particularly in the first generation of immigrants. We identify social capital with "high group" placement in Mary Douglas’ grid/group analysis. Using the Electronic Human Relations Area Files sample of North American Immigrant Groups, we coded each culture on six measures of grid and group. Using, income, self-employment, and education data from the 1990 census, we found a negative correlation between high group and high self-employment, particularly for the first generation. This finding suggests that high levels of social capital may not be as supportive of entrepreneurship as previously asserted.
Joel Pittaway, see Rashmi Bhandari
Douglas Raybeck (Hamilton College) DEVIANCE, BELIEFS AND SUB-CULTURAL DIFFERENCES: THE KELANTAN EXAMPLE. Utilizing both traditional anthropological techniques and the semantic differential, the author examined the value structures of four Malay sub-cultural populations: traditional villagers, taxi drivers, high school students, and prostitutes. The resulting analysis suggests that the beliefs of high school students deviate from the norm, significantly more than do those of a classically stigmatized deviant population, such as prostitutes.
Douglas Raybeck (Hamilton College) CONTINUITIES AND CONTRASTS: WHAT YOU BRING TO THE TABLE. It is an anthropological cliché that we are, each of us, the product of our culture. However, within most cultures are significant differences that can produce divergences in perception among people who wear a common cultural label. This paper examines the utility of attending to what might be termed 'biographical backgrounds' in assessing the role of our own experiences in conducting fieldwork. The author draws upon his experiences both in Malaysia and in Nevis, to discuss commonalties and inconsistencies that can be found in the two fieldwork experiences.
John M. Roberts, Jr. (University of New Mexico) CONNECTIONS BETWEEN EARLY ENDOGAMY MODELS AND LATER DEVELOPMENTS IN LOG-LINEAR MODELS. A. K. Romney developed early models for square frequency tables classifying married couples by group or status membership of the husband and of the wife. Although many of the later developments applying log-linear models in sociology have focused on social mobility tables, the context is similar. There are common strands in the early models for endogamy and in many of these later models applied to social mobility data. This paper will explore some of these connections, and some of the most relevant recent developments.
Ronald P. Rohner (University of Connecticut) & Kyoungho Kim (Korea Institute for Youth Development) IS DIANA BAUMRIND'S PARENTING SCHEME ETHNOCENTRIC? EVIDENCE FROM KOREAN AMERICAN PARENTS. Diana Baumrind's claim is widely accepted that the authoritative style of parenting is associated with the most competent, academically successful, and psychologically well-adjusted youths in America. Empirical evidence tends to support this claim for European American youths. But a serious question is being raised by some as to (1) whether her parenting prototypes are always relevant to American ethnic groups and (2) whether the authoritative style necessarily produces the most optimum outcomes for ethnic-minority youths. This doubt is deepened by evidence presented here showing that Baumrind's parenting prototypes are only marginally appropriate to Korean American immigrants.
A. Kimball Romney, see Cynthia M. Webster
David D. Rowlee, see Katherine Faust
Craig D. Rusch (Vanguard University) CUMULATIVE KNOWLEDGE AND THE SEMANTIC DOMAIN OF EMOTION TERMS: THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE METHODOLOGY OF A. KIMBALL ROMNEY. The accumulation of knowledge in the natural sciences happens at a staggering rate. A. K. Romney (1989, 1994, 1999) discusses some of the elements that make this success possible, including systematic observation, quantification, comparison, and replication, and argues, unlike most other anthropologists, that the development of scientific anthropology is possible. Recently, Romney has applied this approach to the study of semantic structures developing quantitative methods to compare different linguistic groups and to estimate the degree of universality and cultural specificity to the semantic structures. This paper extends the study of the semantic domain of emotion terms, testing the replicability of the semantic structure in English, and the hypothesis that Japanese "shame" (hazukashii) is more similar in meaning to English "embarrass", than to English "shame".
Stephen Salbold, see Leonore Loeb Adler
Robert W. Schrauf (McGaw Medical Center-Northwestern University) Immigrant Children's Inner Speech: Does Thinking in Spanish Affect Problem Solving in English? How does childhood immigration affect the development of inner speech? Pre-schoolers (3-6 years old) engage in private speech, "talking to oneself out loud" while problem solving. Private speech is silenced and internalized as inner speech at ages 7-8. What happens to the inner speech of a child whose private speech developed in a language other than English and who immigrates at the time of speech internalization? Ten-year old Latin American immigrant children engaged in problem solving while Thinking-Aloud in both Spanish and English. Performance was below that of English monolinguals in both languages - perhaps a temporary slowing during development of automaticity of calculation in both languages.
Henry A. Selby (University of Texas) THE GREATEST PAPER NEVER PUBLISHED. In the 1970s,I wrote a paper that was designed to get me a job. It was the result of 15 years of field work in Mexico, especially in one village. The paper was called "Men make the Rules and Women the Decisions". It adduced 400 years of historical data (that Wayne Kappel had dug up), and a very jazzy algorithm that we ran on some old fashioned computer to show that in the villages Men made the rules (about patrilocal residence), and women made the decisions (about who their kids should marry). A Markovian analysis showed that the analysis was highly stable. The paper offended every single party of any importance in the profession, and got the most hostile reviews from the journals that I have ever received. in this paper I would like to explore why in an essay on the sociology of knowledge.
Matthew Short, see Sharon Glazer
Laura S. Sidorowicz (Nassau Community College) A FULBRIGHT-HAYS EXPERIENCE IN MOROCCO AND SENEGAL. During the summer of 1999, the author was awarded a Fulbright-Hays Scholarship to participate in "The Faces of Islam" program studying and exploring the culture, customs, and religion of Morocco and Senegal. The paper discusses this cross-cultural, social psychological, exploration of Islam, illustrated with slides. Various aspects of Moroccan and Senegalese life is examined including the people, customs, art, music, religion, and cuisine.
Theresita Escaro Solomon (Wright Institute) FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS AMONG PHILIPINA ADOLESCENT MOTHERS. The author discusses mother/child attachment, psychosocial development, and current emotional relatedness in a subsample of 21 Pilina-American mothers from a multi-ethnic sample (61 primipara adolescent mothers of Pilino, Latino, and African-American ancestry). The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) and the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) as well as other measures were used. The Pilina mothers differed from the other groups on issues of parental control and family adaptation to adolescent motherhood. TAT responses revealed that they were more concerned with issues of parental dominance, more pessimistic in regard to love relationships, and more highly achievement oriented than the other mothers.
Theresita Escaro Solomon (Wright Institute) EMOTIONAL RELATEDNESS IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN ADOLESCENT MOTHERS. Data were collected from twenty African-American adolescent mothers (a sub-sample from a larger multi-ethnic study). Family cohesion, socio-economic class, and other childhood social contexts played critical roles in the development of women's subsequent relationships. The Interpersonal Concerns Scoring System for comparative analyses of Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) and Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) responses were used. Although most mothers reported positive attachments during childhood on the AAI, the TAT stories, in contrast, revealed themes of parent/child conflict and internal conflict. The AAI alone does not identify psychosocial variants related to mother-child interaction and social support patterns found in different class/ethnic groups.
Deborah Stiles (Webster University) & Judith Gibbons (Saint Louis University) CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN ADOLESCENTS' CONCEPTIONS OF SELF AND IDENTITY. According to traditional theories, achieving a distinct personal identity is the primary developmental task of adolescence. In most textbooks, the psychologically healthy adolescent is defined by a Western notion of self as independent and autonomous. The authors' research with 416 adolescents (ages 11 - 17 years) from Sri Lanka, the U.S., and Norway has revealed cultural differences in self-conceptions. Norwegian and U.S. adolescents were more likely to emphasize their individuality, their preferences, and their independence. Sri Lankan and Third World immigrant adolescents living in Norway were more likely to think in terms of interdependence and more likely to mention ascribed characteristics, affiliations and social categories.
Marie-Anne P. Suizzo, see Marc H. Bornstein
Vivian Tseng (New York University) FAMILY OBLIGATIONS AND ADJUSTMENT AMONG YOUTHS FROM IMMIGRANT AND NON-IMMIGRANT FAMILIES. The current study examined how youths from immigrant families balance their family's collectivistic values within a highly individualistic society. Survey responses were collected from over 1200 college students with Asian, Latin American, European and Caribbean backgrounds. Findings indicated that youths with the greatest emphasis on assisting and respecting their families had the highest levels of academic and social adjustment. These youths with the strongest sense of family obligations also reported more emotional distress than did their peers with a more moderate emphasis on family obligations. Additional analyses will examine why family obligations are associated with disparate outcomes across academic and social versus emotional adjustment. Discussion will focus on implications of the findings for acculturation processes.
Emanuel Van Bolden (Wayne State University) ASSESSING REPRESENTATIONS OF SOCIAL SUPPORT AMONG AFRICAN AMERICAN YOUTH USING PROJECTIVE STORY TELLING. Children's representations of relationships (specifically negative aspects of relationships and expectations of support from others) were studied among sixty-eight African-American sixth graders and their caretakers. Children's internal representations were assessed using a TAT-like set of photographs depicting African-American children and adults both alone and in social situations. Standardized scoring criteria were used and validated with parent reports of the family life, including parenting warmth, exposure to stressors such as marital discord and parental depression, reports of youth adjustment, and self-reports of social support and defensiveness. Results highlight the utility of projective based assessments particularly among youth who respond to self-reports instruments defensively.
Rob Veneziano (Saint Joseph's College, CT) SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES IN AFRICAN AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN AMWERICAN FATHERS' BELIEFS ABOUT THEIR PARENTAL ROLES, RESPONSIBILITIES, AND VALUES. African American and European American fathers’ responses to a series of structured, open ended questions revealed significant cross-ethnic agreement about the importance of fathers for children’s development. Cross-ethnic differences in fathers’ beliefs appear to reflect differences in the cultural and sociohistorical experiences of each ethnic group. Children’s and mothers’ reports of fathers’ warmth and involvement suggest that fathers’ parenting behaviors are consistent with fathers’ self-reported beliefs.
Cynthia M. Webster (University of New South Wales), Anita L. Iannucci (University of California, Irvine), & A. Kimball Romney (University of California, Irvine) CAN CONSENSUS ANALYSIS VALIDATE SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE? In this paper, the authors present the results of a series of studies showing that informants exhibit consistent consensus in judging selected traits of people they know. They investigate the extent to which these judgements are veridical in the sense that they measure differences among people that correspond to independent and external criteria. Following a review of relevant literature from a variety of fields, discussion focuses on the implications for future research.
Yujie Wei (Georgetown University) & Yali Zhao (Beijing University
of Science & Technology). Social Changes and Communication in China: The Last Twenty Years and the Next. Great changes have taken place in China during the last two decades. This paper focuses on an analysis of social and cultural changes that have caused or are causing changes in communication on the interpersonal and collective level. Included are cultural notions, awareness, scope, and styles of communication within the Chinese culture.
Weigl, Robert (George Washington University) THE MASKED CULTURE OF THE CROSS-CULTURALIST. This program encourages SCCR's membership to question the wisdom of leaving subjectivity and reflexivity in cultural studies as the exclusive province of deconstructionists. As cross-culturalists, we may adhere to strict scientific rules for conducting and presenting our research, but very often become haphazard, anecdotal, and extremely private in describing ourselves as cultural beings. This symposium builds from a related premise: if we are to reduce error and bias in our research, and if we are to understand adequately culture as a lived reality, we must learn to become more disciplined, explicit, and public in efforts to discern our own cultural make-up. Panelists and discussant will draw from the range of contexts for their lives and work, both academic and field related, to explore phenomenon of cultural self-masking among cross-culturalists and to begin the defining of approaches for cultural self-study and self-report. Paper presenters and the discussant are asking for the active contribution of ideas and opinions from those attending the program. We hope that the program will establish parameters for continuing dialog and will provide practical suggestions for trial use in home teaching and research contexts. It is our intention that the symposium and roundtable should blend a commitment to rigorous research with sensitivity to the very personal and human sides of generating cross-cultural knowledge.
Weigl, Robert (George Washington University) SETTING-UP EXERCISES FOR CULTURAL SELF-STUDY. After describing field experiences that poignantly suggest the need for cultural self-knowledge, the author recommends some essential elements for rigorous cultural self-study among professional cross-culturalists and their students. Though there will be substantial debate about what is essential and what methods of self-study are to be used, this debate will not be the one most critical for the future of this undertaking. It is crucial to understand the complex web of barriers, many of which operate beneath awareness, which may prevent cultural reflexivity from becoming a legitimate area for learning. The author identifies several of these barriers.
Susan C. Weller (U of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston) MEASURING WITHIN AND BETWEEN GROUP AGREEMENT. Questions about culture sharing and uniqueness can be addressed by measuring the amount of agreement within and between groups. Recently Moore, Romney, and Hsia (1999) compared similarity judgments of emotion terms across three distinct language/culture groups: Japanese, Chinese, and American English. They found agreement between the groups as to the relative meaning of the terms. Weller and Baer (1999) used Moore et al's approach to examine within and between group agreement for four Latino samples for beliefs about each of five illnesses (AIDS, diabetes, the common cold, empacho, and mal de ojo). Weller and Baer also found a good deal of agreement between groups, again with proportionately little information distinctive of the individual samples. This paper describes methods to measure within and between sample agreement, with particular emphasis on finding, using, and interpreting agreement.
Karin E. Willert, see Katherine Faust
Dolores Finger Wright (Delaware State University) IF WE STAND STILL, WILL IT SOON GO AWAY?: THE CHALLENGES IN FACING FEDERAL AGENCIES IN IMPLEMENTING CULTURAL COMPETENCE POLICIES. As a result of President Clinton's Initiative on Race, June 14, 1997, there has been a flurry of activities within federal agencies to come into compliance by developing initiatives, mandates, and strategic plans designed to eliminate racial, ethnic, and SES disparities in service delivery. This is especially evident in those agencies responsible for providing health care. This paper discusses the systemic barriers to making this happen, beginning with the difficulty in defining cultural competence to whether or not there is a commitment to engage in the "get hands dirty, toe stepping" processes necessary to bring about social change.
Brian L. Yoder, see Herbert Barry III
Yali Zhao, see Yujie Wei
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