Three reasons why parental burnout is more prevalent in individualistic countries: a mediation study in 36 countries

PURPOSE

The prevalence of parental burnout, a condition that has severe consequences for both parents and children, varies dramatically across countries and is highest in Western countries characterized by high individualism.

METHOD

In this study, we examined the mediators of the relationship between individualism measured at the country level and parental burnout measured at the individual level in 36 countries (16,059 parents).

RESULTS

The results revealed three mediating mechanisms, that is, self-discrepancies between socially prescribed and actual parental selves, high agency and self-directed socialization goals, and low parental task sharing, by which individualism leads to an increased risk of burnout among parents.

CONCLUSION

The results confirm that the three mediators under consideration are all involved, and that mediation was higher for self-discrepancies between socially prescribed and actual parental selves, then parental task sharing, and lastly self-directed socialization goals. The results provide some important indications of how to prevent parental burnout at the societal level in Western countries.

Go for zero tolerance: Cultural values, trust, and acceptance of zero-COVID policy in two Chinese societies

This study seeks to explain the wide acceptance of the stringent zero-COVID policy in two Chinese societies—Mainland China (n = 2,184) and Taiwan (n = 1,128)—from perspectives of cultural values and trust. By employing the efficacy mechanism, this study identifies significant indirect effects of trust in government and key opinion leaders (KOL) on people’s policy acceptance in both societies. Namely, people who interpret the pandemic as a collectivist issue and who trust in government will be more accepting of the zero-COVID policy, whereas those who framed the pandemic as an individual issue tend to refuse the policy. Trust in government and KOLs foster these direct relationships, but trust in government functions as a more important mediator in both societies. The different contexts of the two Chinese societies make the difference when shaping these relationships. These findings provide practical considerations for governmental agencies and public institutions that promote the acceptance of the zero-COVID policy during the pandemic.

Three methodological core issues of comparative personality research

Comparative personality research in human and nonhuman species advances many areas of empirical and theoretical research. The methodological foundations underlying these attempts to explain personality, however, remain an unpopular and often ignored topic. The target paper and this rejoinder explore three methodological core issues in the philosophy of science for comparative personality research: Conceptualising personality variation, identifying domains of variation and measuring variation. Clear distinctions among these issues may help to avoid misunderstandings among different disciplines concerned with personality. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Three components of individualism

In this article, following an assumption that individualism and collectivism are separate factors, we have further established that three central components of individualism can be distinguished. In the first part of the article we examined whether the three proposed components of individualism—autonomy, mature self‐responsibility, and uniqueness—can be distinguished from each other in one cultural context, Estonia. A new scale was developed to measure the three aspects of individualism which demonstrated both the reasonable internal‐consistency reliability as well as convergent and divergent validity with several other measures of individualism and collectivism and related constructs. In the second part of the article we studied whether individualism generalizes across specific contexts or domains of social relationships, namely, across relations with family and close others; friends and peers; state and nation. The results of the three‐mode principal component analysis showed that the individualistic tendencies of the respondents did not differ much while measured toward the three types of social relation. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Are Individuals Perceived as More Attractive within a Group? A Confirmative Study of Group Attractiveness Effect and the Cheerleader Effect in China

The stereotype "what is beautiful is good" suggests that having an attractive physical appearance is very important to people's lives. Physical attractiveness, as an important personal trait, plays vital roles for shaping one's first impression, and for influencing one's subsequent evaluation and selection, based on obvious visual features. However, the contextual difference of the physical attractiveness between a group and its group members has been given less attention. For this reason, Van Osch et al. proposed and tested that the perceived physical attractiveness of a group is greater than the average attractiveness of its members (GA-effect), while Walker and Vul found that an individual as a group member is perceived to be more attractive in group context than in isolation (cheerleader effect). Our present work seeks to replicate these two effects on a sample of 1005 Chinese participants to check whether such effects also exist in China, a collectivist culture. Participants were asked to rate the degree of attractiveness presented in each photo stimuli and in each rating condition, and the results show that: (a) the participants' ratings of physical attractiveness of a group was significantly higher than the average attractiveness of its members (i.e., replicating the GA-effect); (b) the participants' ratings of physical attractiveness of an individual was evaluated higher in a group than in isolation (i.e., replicating the cheerleader effect); and (c) the larger the group size, the larger the GA-effect. This validating study may aid in understanding human behavior, judgments, and perceptions according to the GA-effect and the cheerleader effect used in a different context in China.

Zoom Out Camera! The Reflexive Character of an Enactive Account

The reflexive character of enactive theory is spelled out, in an effort to make explicit that which is usually implicit in debate: that we are responsible for the distinctions we draw, and that ultimately, the world that we collectively characterize is a joint production. Enaction, as treated here, is not a positivist scientific field, but an epistemologically self-conscious way to ground our understanding of the value-saturated lives of embodied beings. This stance is seen as entirely congruent with the scientific field of ecological psychology, which is itself then cast as a specific example of the kind of science that can be done in an enactive mode.

How situational activation of values evokes positive and negative feelings: Theory and experimental findings

We propose a theory of how situational activation of values evokes positive and negative feelings. In conjunction we present a re-conceptualization of Schwartz’ et al. (J Personal Soc Psychol 103:663–688, 2012. 10.1037/a029393) value set including additional values. In our new value set, we posit contrastive values having opposite values and central values having no opposite values. As a consequence, balanced access to salient opposite contrastive values and maximal access to central values evoke the strongest positive and weakest negative feelings. Study 1 shows, as hypothesized, that contrastive values form a circumplex structure with central values located inside its periphery. Study 2 supports theoretically derived hypotheses of how positive and negative feelings are evoked by different degrees of access to values, salience of opposite values, and centrality of values.

Assessing the Measurement Invariance of the Children's Hope Scale in Chinese and American Adolescents

Previous studies of the Children's Hope Scale (CHS) have not compared its factor structure using samples of Chinese early adolescents and American early adolescents. Contrary to expectations, the one-factor model revealed a better fit for the Chinese sample (N = 1184) whereas the two-factor model revealed a better fit for the American sample (N = 1049). Full measurement invariance was not demonstrated for the two-factor model of the CHS with the Chinese adolescents. This finding indicated that researchers should not make mean level comparisons between the two factors of agency and pathways across early adolescents from these two nations. Partial scalar invariance was achieved for the one-factor model, which suggested that researchers may tentatively make comparisons between Chinese and American early adolescents using CHS total scores. Although caution should be exercised in interpreting the mean differences, Chinese adolescents reported a lower total mean level of hope than American adolescents. Differences in the findings are discussed within the collectivism-individualism framework.

Within-Group Agreement (rWG): Two Theoretical Parameters and their Estimators

When measuring group-level psychological properties (e.g., organizational climate, leadership, team motivation), researchers typically aggregate individual perceptions to represent the group. L. R. James provided the groundbreaking insight that, in order to justify aggregating individual perceptions to represent a group-level property, one must first establish that there exist shared perceptions—or shared psychological meaning—within the group. Here we label and describe two distinct theoretical parameters that can both be used to define within-group agreement: (a) [Formula: see text] (i.e., a parameter that defines within-group agreement as Individual True-Score Consensus), which arises from the theoretical work of L. R. James and colleagues in the 1970s, and (b) [Formula: see text] (i.e., a parameter that treats within-group agreement as a Group True-Score Reliability Analog), which forms the theoretical basis for the [Formula: see text] index. We extend the work of L. R. James by offering a systematic comparison of different estimators of the two within-group agreement parameters ([Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]). Recommendations are provided for estimating within-group agreement, to continue the legacy of justified measurement of group-level psychological properties.

A Giant of Cultural Research: Seeing Further from the Shoulders of Kwok Leung

This is a special issue in honor of Kwok Leung, whose path-breaking career in social psychology, cross-cultural psychology, organizational behavior, and international management was cut short by his untimely death in 2015. Newton said, ‘If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants’. In cultural research, it's Kwok's shoulders that enable us to see further.

Factorial Structure of Individualism-Collectivism in Sri Lanka

This study investigated the dimensionality of a 21-item questionnaire measure of idiocentrism-allocentrism (the within-culture measure of individualism-collectivism) within the context of Sri Lankan culture. A survey of 438 Sri Lankan respondents, sampled from a wide variety of demographic contexts, provided data. Factor analysis indicated that idiocentrism and allocentrism are two independent, unipolar factors, rather than opposite poles of a single, bipolar dimension. The implications are discussed in the context of existing and future cross-cultural (etic) and within-cultural (emic) research on individualism-collectivism.

Temporal Relationships Between Individualism–Collectivism and the Economy in Soviet Russia

Collectivism and individualism are commonly used to delineate societies that differ in their cultural values and patterns of social behavior, prioritizing the relative importance of the group and the individual, respectively. Collectivist and individualist expression is likely to be intricately linked with the political and economic history of a society. Scholars have proposed mechanisms for both positive and negative correlations between economic growth and a culture of either individualism or collectivism. Here, we consider these relationships across the dramatic history of 20th- and early 21st-century Russia (1901-2009), spanning the late Russian Empire, the communist state, and the growth of capitalism. We sample Russian speakers to identify common Russian words expressing individualism or collectivism, and examine the changing frequencies of these terms in Russian publications collected in Google’s Ngram corpus. We correlate normalized individualism and collectivism expression against published estimates of economic growth (GDP and net material product [NMP]) available between 1961 and 1995, finding high collectivist expression and economic growth rate followed by the correlated decline of both prior to the end of Soviet system. Temporal trends in the published expression of individualism and collectivism, in addition to their correlations with estimated economic growth rates, are examined in relation to the change in economic and political structures, ideology and public discourse. We also compare our sampled Russian-language terms for individualism and collectivism with Twenge et al.’s equivalent collection from American English speakers.

Communication In Intercultural Interaction

This study examined the communication styles of East Asians and Anglo-European New Zealanders (Pakeha). Results indicated that in general, Asians exhibited more sociocentric communication behavior whereas Pakeha exhibited more idiocentric behavior. In intercultural interactions, both the frequency and intensity of these behavior styles were exacerbated. Results further indicated that task accomplishment required more time in the intercultural condition as compared to homogeneous conditions. Implications for international management research and practice are discussed.

Cross-Cultural Differences in Perceptions of Distributive Justice

Respondents in Hong Kong and Indonesia rated a hypothetical allocator depicted as distributing resources based on merit or need in either a positive (reward) or negative (cutback) resource context. Hong Kong respondents perceived that the use of merit was fairer and more principled than the use of need, but they also perceived that the allocator who favored merit was less nice, more selfish, and acted less because of concern for others’welfare. Indonesian respondents saw the use of need as being fairer than the use of merit, and they perceived that the allocator who favored the needy was nicer and acted more out of concern for others. Cultural differences in respondents’ perceptions were greater for the use of merit than for the use of need. Respondents from both cultures tended to rate the allocator more positively when resources were being given out than when resources were being taken away.

Glasnost and the Art of Conversation

Despite extensive research in the field of self-disclosure, little is known about the impact of a formerly repressive regime on disclosure or the manner in which culture, demographic variables, and individual worldviews combine to affect disclosure. Building on the previous literature on social penetration processes and uncertainty reduction, the authors generated nine hypotheses about the impact of these variables on intimate disclosure. Worldview and disclosure data were collected from 450 participants in three cultures (Russia, Georgia, and Hungary) and from three occupational groups (manual workers, business people, and students). Significant effects on disclosure were found for culture, interaction target, age of respondent, and their level of fatalism, with interaction effects for the topic discussed and the occupation and gender of the respondent. Results are discussed in terms of the development of personal relationships in the emerging economies of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the context of a wider debate about the contribution of different levels of variables in understanding close personal relationships.

Emotional Expression in Costa Rica and the United States

This study examined three hypotheses concerning differences between collectivistic and individualistic-cultures using samples from Costa Rica and the United States. The first hypothesis was that people in individualistic cultures would express emotions affirming independent self-conceptions, whereas people in collectivistic cultures would express emotions affirming interdependent self-conceptions. The first part of this hypothesis was confirmed, but the second part was not. The second hypothesis was that people in collectivistic cultures would make a greater distinction in the degree to which they expressed emotions toward in-group and out-group members than would people in individualistic cultures. This hypothesis was not supported. The third hypothesis was that people in collectivistic cultures would feel less comfortable expressing negative emotions than people in individualistic cultures. The data provided strong support for this hypothesis. The results are discussed in terms of differences between these two cultures and their significance for intercultural communication and individualism-collectivism.

Measurement of Definitions of Success among Chinese and Australian Girls

This predominately methodological article reports the development of an approach to measure definitions of success. The method is designed to determine definitions of success as a cross-cultural phenomenon. The present approach overcomes the problems of imposing cultural constructs on other groups and response sets as encountered in cross-cultural research. Participants were 65 Australian and 113 Chinese immigrant girls living in Australia. Participants listed their definitions of success and those of significant others in response to open-ended questions. Their responses were grouped into five categories and based on these categories, a questionnaire (using closed-format 5-point scales) was developed. Four judges rated the original responses of the participants on the questionnaire. Interrater reliability was above .7. Validity was examined in terms of content validity and criterion validity, using the method of contrasted groups, comparing the scores of Chinese and Australian girls.

Demographic Correlates of Individualism and Collectivism

The demographic correlates of idiocentrism and allocentrism (the within-culture measures of individualism and collectivism) were investigated in Sri Lanka. A sample of 438 Sri Lankan respondents, from a wide variety of demographic contexts, provided data for the study. Factor analysis revealed that idiocentrism and allocentrism in Sri Lanka are independent, unipolar factors, rather than opposites on a single, bipolar dimension. Socioeconomic status was a strong negative correlate of allocentrism, and urban residence was a strong positive correlate of idiocentrism; English language fluency, overseas experience, age, occupational status, and educational level were also correlated with the value syndromes. The findings were discussed both within the context of Sri Lankan culture and in terms of their applicability to other cultural settings.

Happiness

This cross-cultural study explored the perceptions of people about what can make a person happy. A total of 215 students answered one of three open-ended questions: from Canada, French-speakers (n = 57) and English-speakers (n = 54), from El Salvador (n = 42), and from the United States (n = 62). Content and correspondence analyses revealed that factors contributing to happiness were perceived similarly across the four groups. The most stated factors overall were the importance of family relationships, of pursuing and reaching valued goals, and of a positive attitude toward self. On the other hand, whereas the Salvadoran participants referred specifically to religious values and sociopolitical conditions, the North American samples referred more to hedonistic factors (enjoying activities and life's little pleasures) and personal sources of power on their happiness (positive attitude toward life, personal strengths). Cross-cultural differences are discussed in relation to collectivism and individualism.

Assessing Cross-Cultural Item Bias in Questionnaires

A method is presented for evaluating the presence and size of cross-cultural item biases. The examined items concern parental support and family cohesion in a Likert-type questionnaire for adolescents in The Netherlands. Each evaluated item has two versions, a collectivist and an individualistic one, that measure the same theoretical construct. The standardized difference between the score means of the item versions, called the Δe score, gives an indication of the cultural bias of the item. As expected, most items were found to yield a higher Δe when respondents scored low on an individualistic scale for acculturation or originated from countries that are (more) collectivist. This procedure is recommended for use in testing items in pilot studies.

The Relationship of Family Bonds to Family Structure and Function Across Cultures

This study, using a contextual approach, explores the relationship of family bonds to family structure and function across five cultures: Greece, Cyprus, the Netherlands, Britain, and Germany. Its long-term goal is the construction of measures of family structure and functioning that are useful in cross-cultural research. Differences in emotional closeness, geographic proximity to relatives, and frequency of telephone contacts and meetings were not found among the five cultures with respect to members of the nuclear family. Differences between Greece and Cyprus, selected as relatively collectivist cultures, and Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, individualist cultures, on these variables were found with respect to members of the extended family. By showing a pattern of cross-cultural similarity and differences, although moderate, among extended family members, this study shows that family structure and function are context variables that can explain variability between psychological variables and thus add to the explanatory power of cross-cultural psychology.

Emotional Expression in Japan and the United States

In this study, the impact of individualism-collectivism at the cultural and individual level on the expression of emotion in Japan and the United States was examined. Individualism-collectivism expectations at the cultural level were partially supported, and only weak effects of individualism-collectivism at the individual level were found. The data are consistent with socialization into individualistic and collectivistic values as well as the lessening of these influences in U.S. and Japanese society. They support the idea that individualism-collectivism is not a comprehensive and precise dimension but rather a loose collection of many different cultural characteristics.

Standardization to Account for Cross-Cultural Response Bias

The article reviews standardization methods commonly employed to adjust for response bias in cross-cultural research. First, different standardization procedures are reviewed and a classification scheme is provided. Standardization procedures are classified according to the statistical information used (means, standard deviation) and the source of this information (individual, group, or culture). Second, empirical research in JCCP between 1970 and 2002 is reviewed. Standardization has become more common in the 1990s, and there is a trend to rely more on standardized data. Most studies used standardization prior to analysis of variance and factor analytical techniques. However, an analysis of statistical properties of standardized measures indicates that results based on standardization are ambiguous. The use of statistical techniques and the interpretation of results based on standardized data are discussed.

Individualist-Collectivist Tendencies in a Turkish Sample

In this research, we aimed to find out to what extent social behaviors related to individualism-collectivism are exhibited in the Turkish culture. The individualism-collectivism scale used in this research was developed by Hui and Triandis, and a total of 316 subjects were questioned. Main effects for behavior categories and target groups were significant. Post hoc significance tests were then conducted. There were significant differences between all target groups in their average IND-COL scores except between mother and siblings. In the social behavior categories, all categories were significantly different from each other in their IND-COL scores.

Cultural Values Among African-Descended Persons in the United Kingdom: Comparisons With European-Descended and Asian-Descended Persons

In this study, conducted within the United Kingdom, the authors compared scores on five cultural values—namely, individualism, collectivism, familism, romanticism, and spiritualism—(a) between African-descended persons and European-descended persons and (b) between African-descended persons and Asian-descended persons. We predicted that African-descended persons would score higher than European-descended and Asian-descended persons on collectivism, lower than European-descended persons on individualism, and lower than Asian-descended persons on spiritualism. A total of 227 individuals (92 men, 132 women, and 3 individuals who did not indicate their gender) participated in the present study. Results of a multivariate analysis of variance followed by a series of one way analyses of variance and planned comparisons indicated that African-descended persons scored significantly higher than European-descended persons on collectivism, familism, and romanticism; African-descended persons did not differ from European-descended persons on individualism or spiritualism; and African-descended persons did not differ from Asian-descended persons on any of the cultural values. Implications for the study of ethnicity and cultural values across nations are discussed.

Compliance with a Request in Two Cultures: The Differential Influence of Social Proof and Commitment/Consistency on Collectivists and Individualists

University students in Poland and the United States, two countries that differ in individualistic-collectivistic orientation, indicated their willingness to comply with a request to participate without pay in a marketing survey. Half were asked to do so after considering information regarding their own history of compliance with such requests, whereas the other half were asked to do so after considering information regarding their peers’ history of such compliance. This was designed to assess the impact of two social influence principles (commitment/consistency and social proof, respectively) on participants’ decisions. As expected, although both principles were influential across cultures, the commitment/consistency principle had greater impact on Americans, whereas the social proof principle had greater impact on Poles. Additional analyses indicated that this effect was due principally, but not entirely, to participants’ personal individualistic-collectivistic orientations rather than to the dominant individualistic-collectivistic orientation of their cultures.

An Attribution-Value Model of Prejudice: Anti-Fat Attitudes in Six Nations

The authors propose an Attribution-Value model of prejudice, which hypothesizes that people are prejudiced against groups that they feel have some negative attribute for which they are held responsible. The structure of prejudice against fat people was compared in six nations: Australia, India, Poland, Turkey, the United States of America, and Venezuela. Both a negative cultural value for fatness and a tendency to hold people responsible predicts anti-fat prejudice. Most important, a multiplicative hypothesis was supported—people with both a negative value for fatness and a tendency to hold people responsible were more anti-fat than could be predicted from cultural value and attributions alone. These effects were more pronounced in individualist cultures. The authors develop the Attribution-Value model of prejudice that can apply to prejudice of many sorts across many cultures.

Global self-esteem, ethnic self-esteem, and family integrity: Turkish and Dutch early adolescents in The Netherlands

The relationship between ethnic minority identity and global self-esteem continues to be an important topic. In two studies among Turkish and Dutch early adolescents in The Netherlands, it was found that both groups did not differ in global self-esteem. However, the Turks indicated more positive ethnic self-esteem than the Dutch and they more strongly endorsed family integrity as an individual tendency towards collectivism. In addition, ethnic self-esteem was found to have a stronger positive relation with global self-esteem among Turkish than Dutch participants. Further, only among the Turks was family integrity positively related to ethnic self-esteem and global self-esteem. Both the esteem derived from ethnic group membership as well as family integrity contributed independently to global personal self-esteem among the Turks. Among both ethnic groups boys had a more positive global (two studies) and ethnic self-esteem (one study) than girls.

How emotional climate in teams affects workplace effectiveness in individualistic and collectivistic contexts

Despite a prolific research literature on the question of what makes teams effective, the literature is still limited on the role that team level emotions play in this process. In this article, we argue that the construct of workgroup emotional climate (WEC) provides a useful perspective from which to examine this matter. Following a discussion of the importance of considering emotions in organizational studies generally and team research, specifically, we draw on evidence of cultural differences in emotional experience and expression to develop a model explicating how cultural orientation can impact on the relationship between WEC and workgroup effectiveness. The model presented in the paper represents a significant development in our understanding of the role of cultural differences, specifically the influence of the individualism–collectivism identity orientation, in WEC and its relationship to workgroup effectiveness. Future directions for research and practice arising from the model are also presented.

How emotional climate in teams affects workplace effectiveness in individualistic and collectivistic contexts

Despite a prolific research literature on the question of what makes teams effective, the literature is still limited on the role that team level emotions play in this process. In this article, we argue that the construct of workgroup emotional climate (WEC) provides a useful perspective from which to examine this matter. Following a discussion of the importance of considering emotions in organizational studies generally and team research, specifically, we draw on evidence of cultural differences in emotional experience and expression to develop a model explicating how cultural orientation can impact on the relationship between WEC and workgroup effectiveness. The model presented in the paper represents a significant development in our understanding of the role of cultural differences, specifically the influence of the individualism–collectivism identity orientation, in WEC and its relationship to workgroup effectiveness. Future directions for research and practice arising from the model are also presented.

The role of self-concept in cross-cultural communication

Empirical evidence supports the notion that communication behaviors in intercultural encounters are effectively extensions of cultural values as well as epistemologies. Study 1 established communication behaviors of Asians and New Zealanders (NZs) as consistent with vertical collectivism and horizontal individualism, respectively. In particular, argumentativeness is positively related to independent self-construal (SC) and negatively related to interdependent SC. This supports Markus and Kitayama’s SC theory. Study 2 showed that NZs exhibited more idiocentric and argumentative behavior, while Asians displayed more sociocentric and less argumentative behavior during two actual interactions; specifically, participants diverged in their communication styles to be more consistent with their cultural values during intercultural interactions. Analyses of decision outcomes provide support that culture moderates cognitive consistency behaviors such that NZs exhibited more inconsistency-reduction behaviors, which is rooted in adherence to noncontradiction. In contrast, Asians exhibited more inconsistency-support behaviors, suggesting that naive dialecticism rooted in acceptance of contradiction is customary in Asian social interaction.

International business and trust

There is academic consensus that trust facilitates economic cooperation since it helps to mobilize resources, acts as a mechanism to cope with uncertainty, diminishes transaction costs and reduces system complexity. In cross-cultural management, trust has been acknowledged as a facilitator of economic relations. Nevertheless, its nature, definition and sources are still debated from antagonistic and sometimes exclusive perspectives. Additionally, trust research has been pointed out as acontextual, which limits trust understanding across the cultures that interact in a global economy. This article attempts to enrich this debate by analysing the sources of trust within a cross-cultural case study: the Sino-Chilean economic exchange. Using a qualitative methodology, and based on empirical research, the article examines the contextual setting in which the Sino-Chilean relationship is embedded and proposes sinicization as an alternative source for trust, understood here as a rationally driven, restricted form of cultural adaptation adopted by the weakest party in the relationship, which is able to embrace different perspectives on trust building.

Sekerka L. Taking time for patience in organizations

Purpose

– Patience is underestimated in organizations. The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of patience and the individual and organizational benefits it confers. Then, the paper discuses emotional self-regulation and explain how two self-regulatory techniques can affect the patience of individuals in organizations.

Design/methodology/approach

– The paper considers religious, philosophical, and psychological perspectives on patience; and highlight the emotional underpinnings of patience.

Findings

– The paper argues that patience plays an important role in organizations and that individuals can use emotional self-regulation to enhance their patience. The paper offers two key points about the relationship between self-regulation strategies and patience: first, situation selection mitigates the need for patience and second cognitive reappraisal facilitates the execution of patient responses and the development of the virtue itself.

Practical implications

– The paper provides recommendations for increasing individuals’ patience in organizational settings.

Originality/value

– The virtue of patience has received scant research attention. This paper focusses on the importance of patience in the workplace and examines how emotional self-regulation can facilitate its activation.

Mother–Child Relations in Adulthood

Based on the Model of Family Change, the authors examined how mother–child relations among non-Western immigrants and natives were characterized by patterns of solidarity. Latent Class Analysis was applied to data from the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study (2004) on the practical and emotional support that Dutch, Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese, and Antillean adult children gave and received from their mother ( N = 1,267). A similar five-class typology in all origin groups revealed three types of full-interdependence (“reciprocal,” “upward,” and “downward”), emotional-interdependent, and independent mother–child relationship. Whereas full-interdependence prevailed among immigrants, Dutch were more characterized by downward-interdependence and emotional-interdependence. Irrespective of the child’s origin, independent relationships were uncommon. The results evidence the importance of emotional intergenerational ties in adulthood across families of different origins.

Climato-Economic Imprints on Chinese Collectivism

A still unsolved question is why humans create collectivism. A new theory proposes that poorer populations coping with more demanding winters or summers become more collectivist. Preliminary support comes from a province-level analysis of survey data from 1,662 native residents of 15 Chinese provinces. Collectivism is weakest in provinces with temperate climates irrespective of income (e.g., Guangdong), negligibly stronger in higher income provinces with demanding climates (e.g., Hunan), and strongest in lower income provinces with demanding climates (e.g., Heilongjiang). Multilevel analysis consolidates the results by demonstrating that collectivism at the provincial level fully mediates the interactive impact of climato-economic hardships on collectivist orientations at the individual level, suggesting that culture building is a collective top-down rather than bottom-up process.

The effect of self-construals on perceptions of organizational events

This empirical research examines the effect of culture on the way people perceive and assign causes to events in organizations. It explores the idea that attributional biases and errors are moderated by a person’s culture. Results supported proposed hypotheses; they showed that Indonesians, New Zealanders, and Canadians perceived their interdependent self-construal as salient, moderately salient, and least salient, respectively. Furthermore, self-construals moderated and mediated people’s perceptions of organizational events. High-interdependents attributed negative organizational events to factors that are external, less controllable, thus had a more fatalistic outlook compared to Moderate-interdependents and Low-interdependents, respectively. In contrast, Low-interdependents attributed positive organizational events to more internal and stable factors compared to Moderate- and High-interdependents, respectively; they also perceived positive events as being controllable and caused by their own actions compared to High-interdependents. Implications for management practices in multinational organizations are discussed.

Acculturation Process and Distress

The present study applied the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to unfold the social cognitive antecedents of acculturation and investigated the effects of acculturation on psychological distress using a longitudinal design. A total of 180 mainland Chinese university students studying in Hong Kong completed three sets of questionnaires every 2 months for a period of 6 months. Findings from structural equation modeling (CFI = 0.97, NNFI = 0.96, RMSEA = 0.05) confirmed the explanatory power of TPB on acculturation. The effect of acculturation on psychological distress was mediated by sociocultural adaptation and acculturative stress. The results highlight the importance of sociocultural adaptation in the course of acculturation and confirm acculturation as an identifier of risk rather than a direct predictor of psychological distress. Practical implications for university counseling centers in facilitating better cultural adjustment among students with a different cultural background are suggested.