Home About us Contact
|
Home About us Contact | ||
|
|
||
Western Culture (western + culture)
Selected AbstractsFor a Missiology of Western CultureINTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF MISSION, Issue 378-379 2006Jean-Françoid Zorn First page of article [source] The Sexual Politics of Cooking: A Feminist Analysis of Culinary Hierarchy in Western CultureJOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 4 2002Vicki A. Swinbank It is often assumed that culinary influence has been ,top down', that is, that haute cuisine and professional cooking by male chefs has influenced popular cooking, especially once literacy became commonplace, and particularly with the publication of cookery books directed at the middle,class ,housewife'. Whilst it is certainly true that professional cooking has influenced domestic cooking as a ,trickle,down' effect, there is an area of serious neglect or oversight , namely, the denial or ignoring of the culinary influence in the other direction, that is, the influence of female domestic cooking on haute cuisine. [source] Family Relationships and Adolescent Psychosocial Outcomes: Converging Findings From Eastern and Western CulturesJOURNAL OF RESEARCH ON ADOLESCENCE, Issue 4 2004Julia Dmitrieva This study investigated the role of parent,adolescent relationships in mediating the association between family-related negative life events and adolescent depressive symptoms and problem behaviors among 1,696 eleventh graders from the United States (n=201), China (n=502), Korea (n=497), and Czech Republic (n=496). Results indicated that perceived parental involvement and parent,adolescent conflict mediated the link between family-related life events and adolescent depressed mood. The path from family-related life events to adolescent problem behaviors was mediated by perceived parental involvement, parent,adolescent conflict, and perceived parental sanctions of adolescent misconduct. With the exception of minor cross-cultural differences in the magnitude of associations among variables, this study revealed considerable similarity in the association of family factors with adolescent internalizing and externalizing symptomatology. The findings contribute to the growing literature on culture-general developmental processes. [source] Swazi Concepts of intelligence: The Universal versus the LocalETHOS, Issue 4 2002Professor Margaret Zoller Booth The Swazi concept of "intelligence " is analyzed in this article from both a historical and a contemporary perspective. It investigates the meanings of hlakaniphile (the closest translation for "intelligence") and how and why perceptions of this term have changed throughout the 20th century and continue to vary today. Utilizing historical and anthropological sources with contemporary local parental ethnotheories regarding intelligent behaviors, the article analyzes the impact of Western culture on meanings of the Swazi concept. Throughout history, as Swazi and Western societies have influenced each other, hlakaniphile continues to include a local perception of social skills. However, the definition has begun to incorporate more Western notions of intellectual competence, as reflected in academic achievement [source] Cross-cultural differences in the macronutrient intakes of women with anorexia nervosa in Australia and SingaporeEUROPEAN EATING DISORDERS REVIEW, Issue 6 2008Nerissa Li-Wey Soh Abstract Aim To compare the macronutrient intakes of women with and without anorexia nervosa (AN) across cultures. Method Participants were women with AN (n,=,39) and without AN (n,=,89) of North European and East Asian backgrounds recruited in Australia and Singapore. Energy and the percentage energy contributed by protein (%protein), fat (%fat) and carbohydrate (%CHO) were assessed from participant's diet histories and analysed in terms of cultural group, acculturation, socio-economic status (SES) and education level. Results AN status was associated with lower energy and higher %CHO. Greater %protein was associated with greater acculturation to Western culture and lower SES, but not AN. Greater %fat was associated with lower SES and lower acculturation in women with AN, but with higher acculturation in controls. Greater %CHO was also associated with higher SES. Conclusion The findings may represent Western diets' higher protein and fat contents, ,Western' knowledge of weight-loss diets, and affordability of low fat foods. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association. [source] The Hand that Rocks the Cradle: Maternity, Agency and Community in Women's Writing in German of the 1970s and 1980sGERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS, Issue 1 2002Emily Jeremiah This article puts forth the idea of ,maternal performativity' as a way of going beyond pre-existing feminist conceptions of maternal agency. ,Agency' is important because, as numerous feminists have pointed out, the mother in Western culture has traditionally been conceived as passive and mute. I argue that challenging the traditional public/private divide is vital to the project of developing and enacting this maternal performativity, as the novels in question demonstrate. Where this opposition is left unquestioned, the texts suggest, mothers are marginal to the point of abjection. I look firstly at three texts in which mothers are depicted as utterly abject (Elsner, Pedretti, Beutler), then at two in which the idea of maternal agency is approached but ultimately jettisoned in favour of a resigned kind of essentialism (Struck and Frischmuth), and finally at one in which the mother is active and performative, but is still shown as hampered by traditional structures (Schroeder). The novels, and my article, thus performatively reveal the need for a maternal performativity to be acknowledged and practised. [source] Challenging East,West value dichotomies and essentialising discourse on culture and social workINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WELFARE, Issue 4 2007Vishanthie SewpaulArticle first published online: 22 MAR 200 All discourse, whether universalistic and/or particularistic, must be subject to contestation, so that we are held accountable for the thinking that we articulate in our writings, and so that we do not reinforce much of the taken for granted assumptions about the world. Critiques such as those of Hutchings and Taylor in this issue of IJSW remind us of social work's commitment to reflexivity and the need to contest discourse that might not be in the interests of particular groups of people. It is not the debate itself contained in the article that is an issue, but the framing of the debate and the assumptions upon which they are predicated. The discourse on human rights within the liberal democratic framework, in a rapidly globalising world characterised by neoliberal capitalism, needs to be critiqued on a global level. Hutchings and Taylor's article assumes the applicability and suitability of liberal democracy for the West and not for the East, with an assumption that the West is characterised by liberalism and the East by tradition and a bureaucratic authoritarianism. It is these assumptions, and the tendency to essentialise Chinese and Western culture and to reinforce the dichotomy between the West and the East, that I contest in this article. [source] Corporate political action in China and America: a comparative perspectiveJOURNAL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, Issue 2 2006Yongqiang Gao Corporate political action (CPA) is always an interesting topic for management scholars since 1980s. There are a large plenty of literatures from different disciplines focus on this topic. But till now, studies on this topic are almost conducted under the Western culture and taking the Western countries as objective, very few studies are conducted in non-Western countries, and specifically, the CPA in China is nearly untouched. Due to the differences of culture and political economy between China and the West, CPA in China may be very different from the West's. This article discusses the similarities and differences of CPA in China and America. The result shows that due to the differences in culture and political economical system between China and America, CPA in China is very different from America. This study will help to understand the CPA in China for outsiders, especially for Americans. It also helps multinational enterprises (MNEs) in China to take suitable political actions to support their interests. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Contextualising Recent Tensions in Seventh-day Adventism: "A Constant Process of Struggle and Rebirth"?JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY, Issue 3 2010ARTHUR PATRICK Between 1844 and 1863, fragments of disappointed Millerism developed the landmark ideas, the denominational name and the basic structure of what is now the Seventh-day Adventist Church with fifteen million members (2008) in 201 countries. This article contextualises the struggle of recent decades between continuity and change in Adventist teaching, suggesting that a score of doctoral theses/dissertations and other studies offer a coherence that is deeply disturbing for some believers, insufficient for some others, but satisfying for many. The demands in Western culture for faith to be shaped by evidence and to offer existential meaning have elicited three stances in relation to traditional Adventist thought: reversion, alienation, and transformation. Whereas the consequent tensions may be viewed as evidence of "growth, vitality and increased understanding," they also constitute an urgent call for effective internal and external dialogue. [source] From blog to bebo and beyond: text, risk, participationJOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN READING, Issue 1 2009Victoria Carrington This paper broadly explores the notion that text is an artefact that encodes and displays the tensions, resistances, positioning and affinities of its producer and, further, that many of these drivers have their source in quite significant shifts in the broad contours of contemporary Western culture. Against this background, two different artefacts are analysed in this paper: a blog and a bebo page. The blog has been produced by an adult female academic and the bebo page by an early adolescent girl. These text producers and users are positioned quite differently in terms of geography, education, life experience, identity, social class and interests. They also have differential access to and experience of digital technologies. However, they both make use of the affordances of technologies, in particular Internet-connected laptops and desktops, to create and disseminate these texts to do ,work' on their behalf in particular social domains. [source] Rogues of Modernity: Picaresque Variations in the Postcolonial Genre of the Enlightenment MissionaryORBIS LITERARUM, Issue 2 2006Ian Almond The article examines the representation of the ,Enlightenment missionary' in a number of postcolonial texts, both Indian and Turkish. Moments where the individual becomes so enamoured of a certain aspect of Western culture - Freud, Proust, Chopin - that he seeks, upon his return, to disseminate this ,new' knowledge to as many of his fellow villagers as possible. The figure of the picaro, traditionally understood as an alienated, roguish, rootless protagonist, thereby finds in postcolonial literature a new manifestation. This article examines not only how the arrival in India of ,enlightenment' thought created such picaresque figures, but also how novelists such as Upamanyu Chatterjee depict the failure of the Enlightenment project as producing a similar genre of disillusioned protagonist. [source] Lessons from Kipling and Rao: How to Re-Appropriate Another CultureORBIS LITERARUM, Issue 4 2002Ian Almond This brief study will examine Anglo-Indian Rudyard Kipling and Indo-Anglian Raja Rao's, attempts to re-appropriate a foreign culture in terms of their own wills. The novelist Rao's conviction of India's position as the origin of all Western culture, alongside Kipling's own curious tale of a tribe of distant "Englishmen" rediscovered in Northwest Afghanistan, both offer examples of attempts to re-describe and ultimately re-locate radically different cultures within the authors' own more familiar vocabularies. How does this cultural re-appropriation take place, and what happens to the author's parent culture when something as radically ,other' as an Afghan tribe or a medieval French heresy is suddenly and unexpectedly re-incorporated into the ,family'? The often unsettling consequences of this operation are considered as they manifest themselves in both texts in similar ways, advancing the possibility that cultural-appropriation affects the appropriator as much as the appropriated. And so strong is the inclination that is rooted in Mankind to the Love of their Country, that some learned and witty Men , have used great Art and Industry to represent them with such advantage to the World, as though Paradise were but another Name for their native Country. Bishop Stillingfleet1 [source] Forms of Our Life: Wittgenstein and the Later HeideggerPHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS, Issue 3 2010Michael Weston The paper argues that an internal debate within Wittgensteinian philosophy leads to issues associated rather with the later philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Rush Rhees's identification of the limitations of the notion of a "language game" to illuminate the relation between language and reality leads to his discussion of what is involved in the "reality" of language: "anything that is said has sense-if living has sense, not otherwise." But what is it for living to have sense? Peter Winch provides an interpretation and application of Rhees's argument in his discussion of the "reality" of Zande witchcraft and magic in "Understanding a Primitive Society". There he argues that such sense is provided by a language game concerned with the ineradicable contingency of human life, such as (he claims) Zande witchcraft to be. I argue, however, that Winch's account fails to answer the question why Zande witchcraft can find no application within our lives. I suggest that answering this requires us to raise the question of why Zande witchcraft "fits" with their other practices but cannot with ours, a question of "sense" which cannot be answered by reference to another language game. I use Joseph Epes Brown's account of Native American cultures (in Epes Brown 2001) as an exemplification of a form of coherence that constitutes what we may call a "world". I then discuss what is involved in this, relating this coherence to a relation to the temporal, which provides an internal connection between the senses of the "real" embodied in the different linguistic practices of these cultures. I relate this to the later Heidegger's account of the "History of Being", of the historical worlds of Western culture and increasingly of the planet. I conclude with an indication of concerns and issues this approach raises, ones characteristic of "Continental" rather than Wittgensteinian philosophy. [source] Reactions of Developing-Country Elites to International Population PolicyPOPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 4 2002Nancy Luke The authors examine the global diffusion of international population policy, which they consider a cultural item. The process of cultural diffusion is often seen as spontaneous: items of Western culture are in demand because they are universally attractive. Yet cultural flows may also be directed, they may be unattractive to their intended recipients, and their acceptance may depend on persuasion and material incentives. The authors consider the range of responses of national elites to the new population policy adopted by the United Nations at Cairo in 1994. Strongly influenced by feminists, the Cairo Program of Action promotes gender equity and reproductive health and demotes previous concerns with population growth. The data are interviews with representatives of governmental and nongovernmental organizations involved in population and health in five developing countries. To interpret the interviews, the authors draw on two theoretical frameworks. The first emphasizes the attractiveness of new cultural items and the creation of a normative consensus about their value. The second emphasizes differentials in power and resources among global actors and argues that the diffusion of cultural items can be directed by powerful donor states. Interviews in Bangladesh, Ghana, Jordan, Malawi, and Senegal portray a mixed reception to Cairo: enthusiastic embrace of certain aspects of the Cairo policy by some members of the national elite and a realistic assessment of donor power by virtually all. Strategies of rhetoric and action appear to be aimed at maintaining and directing the flows of donor funds. [source] Anima(l)s: women, nature and JungPSYCHOTHERAPY AND POLITICS INTERNATIONAL, Issue 1 2006Liz Evans Abstract In this paper I attempt to find ways in which Jungian theory can support ecofeminism in its attempt to bring about a new, non-dualistic consciousness in order to balance up the current masculine economy. I begin with an exploration of Luce Irigaray's reading of Jacques Lacan's symbolic order, which Irigaray claims has denied women subjectivity within Western culture. Her solution, shared by Hélène Cixous and contemporary ecofeminists, is for women to resubmit themselves to the symbolic via maternal geneaology and nature, with nature offering the most effective means of critiquing and subverting the masculine economy. This suggestion has engendered accusations of essentialism, which I also explore and deconstruct using the theories of ecofeminist Susan Griffin and feminist writer Diana Fuss, as well as CG Jung's theory of archetypes. I then move on to consider Jung's notion of the anima, attempting to show how this controversial concept, together with certain types of ecofeminist theory, can open up possibilities for a new symbolic order for both men and women via a more embodied, embedded connection with nature. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] CONVERSION AND THE NEW EVANGELIZATION: A PERSPECTIVE FROM LONERGANTHE HEYTHROP JOURNAL, Issue 5 2010RICHARD RYMARZ A key legacy of the pontificate of Pope John Paul II was the concept of the new evangelization. This, amongst other things, was seen as a response to rising levels of religious indifference especially in countries that share a Western culture. This paper discusses the new evangelization in the light of two seminal ideas from the work of Lonergan, namely conversion and transcendence. It argues that these perspectives help explain and enrich the concept of the new evangelization. The second part of the paper explores some of the factors that can assist conversion, especially religious conversion. [source] ORIGINAL RESEARCH,PSYCHOLOGY: Age of First Sexual Intercourse and Acculturation: Effects on Adult Sexual RespondingTHE JOURNAL OF SEXUAL MEDICINE, Issue 3 2008Jane S.T. Woo MA ABSTRACT Introduction., Although age of first intercourse and the emotional aspects of that experience are often a target in assessment because they are thought to contribute to later sexual functioning, research to date on how sexual debut relates to adult sexual functioning has been limited and contradictory. Aim., The goal of this study was to explore the association between age of first intercourse and adult sexual function in a sample of Euro-Canadian and Asian Canadian university students. In addition, culture-based comparisons of sexual complaints were made to clarify the role of culture in sexual response. Methods., Euro-Canadian (N = 299) and Asian Canadian (N = 329) university students completed the Golombok-Rust Inventory of Sexual Satisfaction and the Vancouver Index of Acculturation. Main Outcome Measures., Self-reported sexual problems and bidimensional acculturation. Results., Ethnic group comparisons revealed that Asians reported more sexual complaints including sexual avoidance, dissatisfaction and non-sensuality. Among the women, Asians reported higher scores on the Vaginismus and Anorgasmia subscales whereas the ethnic groups did not differ on the male-specific measures of sexual complaints. In the overall sample, older age of first intercourse was associated with more sexual problems as an adult, including more sexual infrequency, sexual avoidance, and non-sensuality. Among the Asian Canadians, less identification with Western culture was predictive of more sexual complaints overall, more sexual noncommunication, more sexual avoidance, and more non-sensuality. For Asian women, acculturation interacted with age of first intercourse to predict Vaginismus scores. Conclusions., Overall, these data replicate prior research that found that a university sample of individuals of Asian descent have higher rates of sexual problems and that this effect can be explained by acculturation. Earlier sexual debut was associated with fewer sexual complaints in adulthood. Woo JST, and Brotto LA. Age of first sexual intercourse and acculturation: Effects on adult sexual responding. J Sex Med 2008;5:571,582. [source] Collective Conscious Experience Across TimeANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS, Issue 1 2002Axel A. Randrup The notion of collective conscious experience is here seen as an alternative or complement to themore familiar notion of individual conscious experience. Much evidence supports the concept of collective experience in the present. But what about time? Can a conscious experience which, whenregarded as individual, is referred to the past be considered a collectiveexperience extended in both past and present ? My answer is yes, and this answer is supported by evidence about conceptions of time and conscious experience in various cultures, including Western culture and science, and by evidence about the psychological Now. Egoless conscious experience is an alternative to both individual and collective experience; it is often connected with experience of timelessness, andis then unrestricted by time. [source] Rural-urban differences in generation of Chinese and Western exemplary persons: The case of ChinaASIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 1 2010Xia Chen Chinese adolescents in urban cities (Beijing, Chengdu) and rural towns (Wei Shan Zhuang, Zheng Xing) generated Chinese and Western exemplary persons and rated the values these exemplary persons represent. The results showed that the tendency to differentiate Chinese culture from Western culture was greater among urban (vs rural) Chinese. Specifically, only urban Chinese consistently attributed Chinese moral values (more than other types of values) to self-generated Chinese exemplary persons and Western moral values (more than other types of values) to self-generated Western exemplary persons. Because urban Chinese have more frequent exposure to foreign cultures, our results suggest that frequent exposure to foreign cultures can lead to enhanced perceptions of cultural differences. [source] Freud's Oedipus and Kristeva's Narcissus: Three HeterogeneitiesHYPATIA, Issue 1 2005SARA BEARDSWORTH The paper shows that three heterogeneities in Freud and Kristeva (unconscious/conscious, semiotic/symbolic, and imaginary/symbolic) expose the historical emergence, significance, and demise of psychic structures that present obstacles to our progressive political thinking. The oedipal and narcissistic structures of subjectivity represent the persistence of two past, bad forms of authority: paternal law and maternal authority. Contemporary psychoanalysis reveals a humankind going through the loss of this past in a process that opens up a different future of sexual difference in Western cultures. [source] Nurses' attitudes towards adult patients who are obese: literature reviewJOURNAL OF ADVANCED NURSING, Issue 2 2006Ian Brown BSc RGN RHV PhD PGCE Aims., This paper presents a review of all empirical studies focusing on nurses' attitudes towards adult overweight or obese patients, with the aim of clarifying the dimensions and patterns of these attitudes and the methods by which they have been studied. Background., Obesity has become a common condition and a major public health concern, but it is often associated with negative attitudes and discrimination. Nurses play a key role in providing support and care to patients who are obese. Methods., Electronic searches were carried out on seven databases from inception to December 2004, along with hand-searching of references in relevant studies. The search terms were built around obesity (and related terms), nursing (and its branches) and attitudes (and related terms). Eleven studies met the inclusion criteria. Data were extracted and summarized in tabular form and analysed in relation to the aims of this review during January 2005. Findings., There is relatively little research about nurses' attitudes towards obese patients, and the studies reviewed mostly have weaknesses of sampling and measurement. However, they do consistently suggest that a proportion of nurses have negative attitudes and beliefs, reflecting wider stereotypes within Western cultures. There is also a hint of a more complex mix of attitudes among nurses, some of which may counter the consequences of negative attitudes, but these have not been adequately investigated. A number of variables that influence attitudes of nurses can be identified, including age, gender, experience and the weight/body mass index of the nurse. Conclusion., Further research (both qualitative and quantitative) is needed with more rigorous sampling and, where appropriate, more consistency of measurement. A shift in focus towards the sets of attitudes (positive as well as negative) and behaviours that influence health service quality and outcomes for obese persons would be useful. [source] Caring for patients of Islamic denomination: critical care nurses' experiences in Saudi ArabiaJOURNAL OF CLINICAL NURSING, Issue 12 2006ITU cert., Phil Halligan MSc Aim., To describe the critical care nurses' experiences in caring for patients of Muslim denomination in Saudi Arabia. Background., Caring is known to be the essence of nursing but many health-care settings have become more culturally diverse. Caring has been examined mainly in the context of Western cultures. Muslims form one of the largest ethnic minority communities in Britain but to date, empirical studies relating to caring from an Islamic perspective is not well documented. Research conducted within the home of Islam would provide essential truths about the reality of caring for Muslim patients. Design., Phenomenological descriptive. Methods., Six critical care nurses were interviewed from a hospital in Saudi Arabia. The narratives were analysed using Colaizzi's framework. Results., The meaning of the nurses' experiences emerged as three themes: family and kinship ties, cultural and religious influences and nurse,patient relationship. The results indicated the importance of the role of the family and religion in providing care. In the process of caring, the participants felt stressed and frustrated and they all experienced emotional labour. Communicating with the patients and the families was a constant battle and this acted as a further stressor in meeting the needs of their patients. Conclusions., The concept of the family and the importance and meaning of religion and culture were central in the provision of caring. The beliefs and practices of patients who follow Islam, as perceived by expatriate nurses, may have an effect on the patient's health care in ways that are not apparent to many health-care professionals and policy makers internationally. Relevance to clinical practice., Readers should be prompted to reflect on their clinical practice and to understand the impact of religious and cultural differences in their encounters with patients of Islam denomination. Policy and all actions, decisions and judgments should be culturally derived. [source] Culture and Women's SexualitiesJOURNAL OF SOCIAL ISSUES, Issue 2 2000Evelyn Blackwood Anthropological studies of women's same-sex relations in non-Western societies provide an important source for theorizing women's sexuality because they allow us to go beyond a narrow focus on Western cultures and concepts. Looking at studies from groups other than the dominant societies of Europe and America, I explore the diversity of women's sexualities and the sociocultural factors that produce sexual beliefs and practices. This article argues that sexual practices take their meaning from particular cultures and their beliefs about the self and the world. Cultural systems of gender, in particular, construct different sexual beliefs and practices for men and women. I conclude the article by suggesting some broad patterns at work in the production of women's sexualities across cultures. [source] Feminism and Women's Autonomy: the Challenge of Female Genital CuttingMETAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 5 2000Diana Tietjens Meyers Feminist studies of female genital cutting (FGC) provide ample evidence that many women exercise effective agency with respect to this practice, both as accommodators and as resisters. The influence of culture on autonomy is ambiguous: women who resist cultural mandates for FGC do not necessarily enjoy greater autonomy than do those women who accommodate the practice, yet it is clear that some social contexts are more conducive to autonomy than others. In this paper, I explore the implications for autonomy theory of these understandings of the relation between culture, FGC, and women's agency. I review the range of worldwide FGC practices , including "corrective" surgery for "ambiguous genitalia" in Western cultures as well as the various initiation rites observed in some African and Asian cultures , and the diverse cultural rationales for different forms of FGC. I argue that neither latitudinarian, value-neutral accounts of autonomy nor restrictive, value-saturated accounts adequately explain women's agentic position with respect to FGC. I then analyze a number of educational programs that have enhanced women's autonomy, especially by strengthening their introspection, empathy, and imagination. Such programs, which engage women's autonomy skills without exposing them to autonomy-disabling cultural alienation, promote autonomy-within-culture. This understanding of autonomy as socially situated, however, entails neither endorsement of FGC nor resignation to its persistence. [source] Fathers in situational crisis: A comparison of Asian and Western culturesNURSING & HEALTH SCIENCES, Issue 3 2008Yun-Shan Tseng Abstract The purpose of this synthesis was to compare the difference between Asian and Western fathers' perceptions of their roles when confronted with situational crises involving their children. Twenty-two studies were reviewed and assigned to one of two categories: the father experiencing a situational crisis related to his child's illness or cultural influences on the paternal role. The results indicated that Asian and Western fathers' perceptions of crises do not differ greatly. It was concluded that there exists a gap in the literature with respect to the knowledge of Asian fathers' situational crisis surrounding their child's illness, their coping strategies when faced with their child's illness, as well as their emotional reactions toward family health. Future research should investigate the single or same-gender father's perceptions and emotional reactions in both Asian and Western cultures. [source] Terror management among Taiwanese: Worldview defence or resigning to fate?ASIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 3 2010Chih-Long Yen Terror management theory (TMT) proposes that people who are reminded of their mortality should be motivated to defend their cultural worldview. Studies 1 and 2 examined whether the TMT worldview defence-buffering effect found in Western cultures could be generalized to Asians in Taiwan. No such effect was found in the present studies. This non-significant result was robust when either a stronger distraction task was used (study 1) or when a subliminal manipulation of mortality salience was utilized (study 2). A meta-analysis, including 24 TMT experiments in East Asia, was also conducted (study 3). The average effect size (d = 0.11, r = 0.055) of worldview defence among these experiments was not significantly different from zero. Study 4 found that mortality salience manipulation also did not change Taiwanese participants' view of reincarnation; however, it did make them more inclined to resign to fate, suggesting that they might be using this symbolic means to defend their anxiety of death. The issue of the generality of TMT to Asians was discussed. [source] Which should you use, intuition or logic?ASIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 4 2008Cultural differences in injunctive norms about reasoning Past research has shown that tendencies to engage in holistic and analytical reasoning are differentially encouraged by East Asian and Western cultures. But little is known about cultural differences in the perceived value of analytic versus intuitive reasoning. In Study 1, Koreans and Americans ranked the importance of traits including ,intuitive' and ,logical' in work and family contexts. In Study 2, Euro-Canadians and East-Asian-Canadians read scenarios of intuitive versus rule-following business decisions. Relative to Western participants, East Asians rated intuitive reasoning as more important and reasonable than analytic reasoning. Implications for the epistemic status of reasoning modes, culture's effect on values about reasoning, and multiculturalism are discussed. [source] Optimistic and pessimistic biases and comparative judgmental processes in Japan: Do people really compare themselves to their peers?ASIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 4 2007Yumi EndoArticle first published online: 31 OCT 200 Studies on above-average and unrealistic-optimism effects have recently claimed that they are the consequence of an over-utilization of self-relevant and under-utilization of peer-relevant information, despite the assumption that people would refer to both themselves and their average peer to make a comparative judgment. However, there is a possibility that these tendencies are prevalent only in Western cultures. The present paper reports on three studies of comparative self-other judgments conducted with Japanese university students. The results consistently showed that participants tended to focus simply on their own abilities, traits, or the likelihood of experiencing future life events, without paying much attention to their peers. These findings suggest first that there is a consistent tendency for people to place a greater weight on the self than normative standards when considering their comparative position in a group, and that this tendency is independent of the size or direction of comparative biases. [source] Vulnerability factors in OCD symptoms: cross-cultural comparisons between Turkish and Canadian samplesCLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHOTHERAPY (AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THEORY & PRACTICE), Issue 2 2010Orçun Yorulmaz Abstract Recent findings have suggested some potential psychological vulnerability factors for development of obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms, including cognitive factors of appraisal and thought control, religiosity, self-esteem and personality characteristics such as neuroticism. Studies demonstrating these associations usually come from Western cultures, but there may be cultural differences relevant to these vulnerability factors and OC symptoms. The present study examined the relationship between putative vulnerability factors and OC symptoms by comparing non-clinical samples from Turkey and Canada, two countries with quite different cultural characteristics. The findings revealed some common correlates such as neuroticism and certain types of metacognition, including appraisals of responsibility/threat estimation and perfectionism/need for certainty, as well as thought,action fusion. However, culture-specific factors were also indicated in the type of thought control participants used. For OC disorder symptoms, Turkish participants were more likely to utilize worry and thought suppression, while Canadian participants tended to use self-punishment more frequently. The association with common factors supports the cross-cultural validity of some factors, whereas unique factors suggest cultural features that may be operative in cognitive processes relevant to OC symptoms.,Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key Practitioner Message: , Despite cross-cultural validity in the cognitive accounts for OCD, there are some evidences implying the impact of cultural characteristics on some cognitive factors across different cultures. Thus, it is important for clinicians who work with people from different cultural backgrounds to be vigilant for possible variations in the cognitive processes during psychotherapy and psychological assessment. [source] The Metabolic Syndrome: A Modern Plague Spread by Modern TechnologyJOURNAL OF CLINICAL HYPERTENSION, Issue 12 2009Aaron Spalding MD Malnutrition and infectious disease represent the most common health threats facing the developing world. However, increasing technological developments and the expansion of western culture have contributed to the increasing prevalence of the metabolic syndrome. The epidemiologic significance and potential costs to governmental health care systems of an increasing incidence of metabolic syndrome could become high. The role of environmental influences that lead to the development of the metabolic syndrome needs to be explored. Because the metabolic syndrome becomes more common as nations develop, investigations into the ramifications of this disease often come too late. [source] | |||||||||||||||||||