Communication rules regarding support seeking in patients with a physical illness, according to people with a Surinamese or a Dutch cultural background

Objective

People with different cultural backgrounds can evaluate the appropriateness of direct and indirect support seeking differently. In this study we explored how direct and indirect communication rules for verbal support seeking by patients with diabetes were perceived among Dutch and Surinamese female participants, and whether the appropriateness differed for the ingroup, outgroup and intercultural support seeker-support provider interactions.

Methods

The study applied a 2 (direct versus indirect support seeking) X 2 (Surinamese patient versus Dutch patient) X 2 (Surinamese support provider versus Dutch support provider)-design. Dutch and Surinamese participants (N = 686) were randomly assigned to one of the eight conditions in which they were provided with a depiction of the patient, the direct or indirect request for help, and the help provider. The main outcome was the rated appropriateness of the help-seeking request in the specific context.

Results

The results revealed a significant main effect of communication style: both, Surinamese and Dutch participants evaluated the direct help-seeking as more appropriate compared to indirect help-seeking, independent of patient or provider culture. This effect was particularly strong in participants who scored high on the individual difference in independent self, as shown by a significant interaction.

Discussion

Literature usually identifies that Surinamese and Dutch populations have different cultural backgrounds and values that express themselves in different attitudes, in general more collectivistic and more individualistic, respectively. However, with regard to help seeking preferences the study results did not verify this expectation. These findings underscore the importance of the support providers' role in assessing and understanding the individuals' communication style with regard to help-seeking, rather than assuming communication preferences on the basis of cultural background.

Who shapes the self of independents and interdependents? Explicit and implicit measures of the self's relatedness to family, friends and partner

We suggest that social relationships shape the self in different ways, depending on whether persons define themselves as independent or interdependent. While the self of independents is most strongly associated with mental representations of others to whom they are related because of their own deliberate action (e.g. friends), the self of interdependents is most strongly connected with representations of others with whom they share allocated group memberships (e.g. family members). We took both explicit (Study 1) and implicit measures (Studies 2, 3 and 4) on how strongly independent and interdependent selves are associated with self‐chosen versus allocated close others. In Studies 3 and 4, we additionally primed the independent or interdependent self. Both explicit and implicit measures indicated that mental representations of family members were more strongly associated with the interdependent self than with the independent self, while romantic partners and friends were connected with both the independent and interdependent self. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Culture and neuroscience: How Japanese and European Canadians process social context in close and acquaintance relationships

Recent cultural psychology findings suggest that social orientation affects neural social attention. Whereas independent cultures process people as separate from social context, interdependent cultures process people as dependent on social context. This research expands upon these findings, investigating what role culture plays in people's neural processing of social context for two relationship contexts, close and acquaintance relationships. To investigate, we had European Canadian and Japanese participants rate the emotions of center faces in face lineups while collecting ERP data. Lineups were either congruent, with all faces showing similar emotions, or incongruent, with center face emotions differing from background faces. To investigate relationship types, we framed face lineups to be in close or acquaintance relationships. We found that for acquaintances, only Japanese processed incongruent social context as meaningful, as seen through N400 incongruity effects. Contrasting with these patterns, only European Canadians showed N400 incongruity effects for close relationships. These patterns were seen whether or not the two groups noticed the emotional conflict, as seen by N2 incongruity effects. Finally, we found that social orientation was differentially related to the neural incongruity effects for the two relationships. These findings further elucidate the nuances of how culture affects neural social attention.

Harmony in Life Scale - Turkish version: Studies of validity and reliability

This article presents the adaptation and psychometric evaluation of the Turkish version of Harmony in Life Scale (Turkish-HiL). The present paper investigates (study 1; N₁ = 253) confirmatory factor analysis, measurement invariance; (study 2; N₂ = 231) concurrent validity; (study 3; N₃ = 260) convergent and known-group validities; (study 4; N_t − t = 50) test-retest, Cronbach alpha, and composite reliabilities of the Turkish-HiL. In study 1, based on a confirmatory factor analysis, results confirmed that unidimensional-factor structure. The results suggested that the model demonstrated a configural and metric invariance across the gender groups. In study 2, Turkish-HiL significantly correlated with measures of satisfaction with life, subjective happiness, positive affect, and negative affect. In study 3, Turkish-HiL was predicted positively by flourishing, conversely, negatively predicted by depression, anxiety, and stress. Finally, in study 4, alpha, composite and test-retest reliabilities are acceptable. Overall, the scale presented here may prove useful for satisfactorily assessing, in Turkish, the harmony in life of the university students.

Individual and Cultural Differences On Status Differentiation

The concept of status differentiation is introduced along with a description of the development and initial validation of an individual-difference measure called the Status Differentiation Scale (SDS). This is followed by reports of cross-cultural differences on the SDS in three countries. Study 1 used American participants and established the scoring procedure for the SDS, its internal reliability and structural relationships, and construct validity. Study 2 used American and Japanese participants and demonstrated its internal reliability, structural relationships, and construct validity with a measure of allocentrism in both countries and predictable country differences that could not be accounted for by collectivism. Study 3 used American and South Korean participants and documented its internal reliability, structural relationships, and construct validity with a measure of values in both countries and predictable country differences that could not be accounted for by values. The concept of status differentiation, and the availability of the SDS, can have important theoretical and empirical ramifications for future studies of culture.

Psychological Sense of University Membership: An Adaptation Study of the PSSM Scale for Turkish University Students

The Psychological Sense of School Membership Scale (PSSM) is a widely used instrument to assess the sense of belonging to a school among adolescents. Despite its widespread use in middle and high school students, to date no particular adaptation study has been conducted for its use among university students. For this reason, the present study conducted an adaptation of the PSSM scale for these students. Five hundred and nine students at a Turkish university voluntarily participated in the study, and the PSSM Scale's factor structure was examined by exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, identifying three factors representing the students' sense of university membership with acceptable internal consistencies: acceptance by faculty members (.70), belonging (.75), and acceptance by students (.76). The internal consistency of the 18-item scale was calculated as .84. As hypothesized, the convergent and discriminant validity of the scale was also tested. The self-report sense of belonging and degree of satisfaction with the university were positively correlated with the three dimensions of the scale. Also, the scores regarding the students' intention to drop out of university along with loneliness were negatively correlated with all the dimension of the PSSM scale.

Is it what you do, or when you do it? The roles of contingency and similarity in pro-social effects of imitation

Being imitated has a wide range of pro-social effects, but it is not clear how these effects are mediated. Naturalistic studies of the effects of being imitated have not established whether pro-social outcomes are due to the similarity and/or the contingency between the movements performed by the actor and those of the imitator. Similarity is often assumed to be the active ingredient, but we hypothesized that contingency might also be important, as it produces positive affect in infants and can be detected by phylogenetically ancient mechanisms of associative learning. We manipulated similarity and contingency between performed and observed actions in a computerized task. Similarity had no positive effects; however, contingency resulted in greater enjoyment of the task, reported closeness to others, and helping behavior. These results suggest that the pro-social effects of being imitated may rely on associative mechanisms.

Confrontation versus withdrawal: Cultural differences in responses to threats to honor

This study compares evaluations by members of an honor culture (Turkey) and a dignity culture (northern USA) of honor threat scenarios, in which a target was the victim of either a rude affront or a false accusation, and the target chose to withdraw or confront the attacker. Turkish participants were more likely than American participants to evaluate positively the person who withdrew from the rude affront and the person who confronted the false accusation. Participants in both societies perceived that others in their society would endorse confrontation more than withdrawal in both types of scenarios, but this effect was larger for Turkish than American participants. Honor values were associated with evaluations of the targets most strongly among Turkish participants who read about a person who confronted their attacker. These findings provide insight into the role of cultural norms and individual differences in the ways honor influences behavior.

Perceived discrimination, social connectedness, and other predictors of adjustment difficulties among Turkish international students

This study examined the role of perceived discrimination, social connectedness, age, gender, years of study in the US, English language competency, and social contact patterns on adjustment difficulties among a sample of 229 Turkish international students studying in the United States. Findings indicated that students who reported higher levels of social connectedness, lower levels of perceived discrimination, more years of study in the US, and higher levels of English language competency reported lower levels of adjustment difficulties. Other results showed that (lack of) social connectedness and perceived discrimination were predictors of adjustment difficulties. In addition, results indicated that students who socialized with individuals from the US had lower levels of adjustment difficulties than did those who socialized with coculture members. Implications are discussed and suggestions for interventions are provided.

Maintaining Harmony Across the Globe

Although previous research shows that relationship closeness plays a central role in an individual’s willingness to forgive an offender, it is based exclusively on data from Western, individualistic cultures. In the current study, the authors examined the association between relationship closeness and forgiveness across six countries, including both traditionally individualistic—Italy, the Netherlands, the United States—and collectivistic cultures—Japan, China (and one country, Turkey, with both individualistic and collectivistic features). Results demonstrated that, cross-culturally, there was a robust positive association between closeness toward the offender and level of forgiveness, both for trait-forgiveness and offense-specific forgiveness. However, this association was weaker in the collectivistic countries, which may suggest that strong norms in these countries to maintain social harmony may partly weaken the role of closeness in forgiveness. Overall, the present findings are discussed in terms of the possible evolutionary origins of forgiveness and the role of individualism/collectivism in forgiveness.

The importance of relationships with parents and best friends for adolescents’ romantic relationship quality: Differences between indigenous and ethnic Dutch adolescents

This study examined how the quality of relationships with parents and friends were related to intimacy, commitment, and passion in adolescents’ romantic relationships for indigenous Dutch and ethnic Dutch adolescents. Self-report survey data were used from 444 (88.9%) indigenous Dutch and 55 (11.1%) ethnic Dutch adolescents between 12 and 18 years of age (M = 15.34, SD = 1.14), all of whom were involved in a romantic relationship. About 61.6% (n = 307) were girls. For both indigenous and ethnic Dutch youths, the quality of the parent—adolescent relationship was positively associated with romantic relationship intimacy, whereas the quality of one’s best friendship was related to higher commitment to one’s romantic partner. Significant interactions in hierarchical regression analyses revealed that only ethnic Dutch adolescents who experienced low-quality parent—adolescent relationships showed more commitment to their romantic relationships. Additionally, ethnic Dutch adolescents who experienced low-quality best friendships showed more passion in their romantic relationships as compared to indigenous Dutch adolescents. These findings are indicative of ethnic differences in the roles that parents and friends play in the romantic lives of Dutch adolescents.

The thermometer of social relations: mapping social proximity on temperature

"Holding warm feelings toward someone" and "giving someone the cold shoulder" indicate different levels of social proximity. In this article, we show effects of temperature that go beyond these metaphors people live by. In three experiments, warmer conditions, compared with colder conditions, induced (a) greater social proximity, (b) use of more concrete language, and (c) a more relational focus. Different temperature conditions were created by either handing participants warm or cold beverages (Experiment 1) or placing them in comfortable warm or cold ambient conditions (Experiments 2 and 3). These studies corroborate recent findings in the field of grounded cognition revealing that concrete experiences ground abstract concepts with which they are coexperienced. Our studies show a systemic interdependence among language, perception, and social proximity: Environmentally induced conditions shape not only language use, but also the perception and construal of social relationships.

OCD cognitions and symptoms in different religious contexts

Religious themes commonly feature in obsessions. Some theorists view religiosity as a potential risk factor, due to the hypothesized influence of religious acculturation on appraisals of unwanted intrusive thoughts. Several studies revealed that the relationship between religiosity and some OCD cognitions might change among various religions, possibly because of the differences in religious doctrines and teachings. The present study examined the relationship between religiosity and OCD symptoms and cognitions in different religious contexts. In this study, Muslim and Christian subjects from Turkey and Canada, respectively, were compared on OCD features by taking their level of religiosity into consideration. The results showed that having scored higher in OCD symptoms, Muslim participants reported more concerns on their thoughts and controlling them, and they also seemed to use worry strategy to manage their unwanted thoughts. On the other hand, regardless of religion category, high religious subjects reported to experience more obsessional thoughts and checking, while sensitivity on thoughts and emphases on control of thoughts and psychological fusion in morality were more salient for this group. Indeed, degree of religiosity also made a significant difference on thought-action fusion in morality domain especially for Christian subjects. In line with previous findings, the results of the present study support the association between religiosity and OCD even across two monotheistic religions. Besides, the characteristics of the religion might account for the differences in OCD cognitions and symptoms across both religions.

Self-Construals and Values in Different Cultural and Socioeconomic Contexts

In this study the authors investigated (a) how individuational and relational self-orientations, as well as self-directed and other-directed values, are related to one another, and (b) how these self- and value orientations differ across 2 cultural (i.e., 422 Turkish and 441 American university students) and 2 socioeconomic status (SES) groups (i.e., 186 lower SES and 167 upper SES Turkish high school students). Across cross-cultural and SES groups, individuational and relational self-orientations appeared to be not opposite but distinct orientations, as predicted by the Balanced Integration-Differentiation (BID) model (E. O. Imamoglu, 2003). Furthermore, both Turkish and American students with similar self-construal types, as suggested by the BID model, showed similar value orientations, pointing to both cross-cultural similarities and within-cultural diversity. Individuational and relational self-orientations showed weak to moderate associations with the respective value domains of self-directedness and other-directedness, which seemed to represent separate but somewhat positively correlated orientations. In both cross-cultural and SES groups, students tended to be high in both relational and individuational self-orientations; those trends were particularly strong among the Turkish and American women compared with men and among the upper SES Turkish adolescents compared with lower SES adolescents. Results are discussed as contesting the assumptions that regard the individuational and relational orientations as opposites and as supporting the search for invariant aspects of psychological functioning across contexts.

Self, Identity, and Emotional Well-Being Among Turkish University Students

The aim of the present study was to identify indigenous or emic domains of self-descriptions and to investigate identity orientations among urban middle-upper socioeconomic status Turkish university students. The relationships between emotional wellbeing, self-descriptions, and identity orientations, as well as the gender differences in these variables, were also explored. The 205 participants (mean age of 20.35) found independent and relational-interdependent aspects of the self and identity more descriptive than the collective or interdependent aspects. Significant gender differences were found between independent and collective-interdependent aspects of the self. Specifically, women reported more Personal Identity and more Social Influencability and less Traditionalism and Openness and Creativity-related self-definitions than did men. Finally, emotional well-being was positively associated with all types of identity orientations as well as with independent and relational-interdependent domains of self-descriptions. The results are discussed with reference to the studies of self-concept in the literature and the existing social change in Turkish society.