Chapter 2 Notes

TYPES OF CROSS-CULTURAL RSEARCH

Method Validation Studies
 Validity: The degree to which a finding, measurement, or statistic is accurate, or represents
what it is supposed to (love vs. like—measure what it is intended to measure)
 Reliability: The degree to which a finding, measurement, or statistic is consistent
 Cross-cultural researchers cannot take a scale/measure that was developed and validated
in one culture and use it in another
o Data will not be comparable
 Cross-cultural validation studies: a study that examine whether a measure of a
psychological construct that was originally generated in a single culture is applicable
o Makes sure it is psychometrically equivalent (reliable and valid)
o Do not test a specific hypothesis about cultural differences but rather the
equivalence of psychological measures
o Important to conduct before cross-cultural comparisons
Indigenous Cultural Studies
 Indigenous Cultural Studies: studies that use rich, complex, and in-depth descriptions of
cultures and cultural differences to predict and test for differences in a psychological
variable
o Psychological processes and behavior can only be understood within the cultural
milieu within which it occurs
o Cultural systems produce different concepts of self, which in turn describes how
cultural systems produce different types of self concerns
o Roots of this study comes from anthropology
o Used to explain cultural differences—morality, attributional style, eye movements
when viewing scenes, the nature of unspoken thoughts, the need for high self-
esteem, and others
Cross-cultural Comparisons
 Cross-cultural comparisons: a study that compares two or more cultures on some
psychological variable of interest, often with the hypothesis that one culture will have
significantly higher scores on the variable than the others
o Backbone of cross-cultural research (most prevalent)
o Different types of cross-cultural studies are prominent at different times
TYPES OF CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISONS
Exploratory vs. Hypothesis Testing
 Exploratory studies: studies that examine the existence of cross-cultural similarities or
differences
o Stay “close to the data”
 o Strength—broad scope for identifying cross-cultural similarities/differences
o Weakness—limited capabilities to address the causes of the observed differences
 Hypothesis testing studies: studies that test why cultural differences exist
o They test the theories of similarities and differences
o Validity is threatened by cross-cultural biases and inequivalences
o Strength—more substantial contribution to theory development and explicit
attempts to deal with rival explanations
o Weakness—less likely to discover interesting differences outside of the realm of the
testes theory
Presence or Absence of Contextual Factors
 Contextual factors: any variable that can explain, partly or fully, observed cross-cultural
differences
o Socioeconomic status, education, age, economic development, religious institutions
o Factors will increase validity and rule out biases/inequivalences
o Hypothesis testing includes contextual factors
Structure vs. Level Oriented
 Structure-oriented studies: studies that examine whether constructs are conceptualized
the same way across cultures (seen/applied), the relationship of a construct to other
constructs, or the measurement of a construct
o Ex. Is depression conceptualized in the same way across cultures? Can depression
be assessed by the same constituent elements in different cultures?
o Focus on relationships among variables (identify similarities/differences)
 Level-oriented studies: studies that examine cultural differences in mean levels of
variables
o Ex. Do individuals from different cultures show the same level of depression?
o Ask whether people of different cultures have different mean levels of different
variables
Individual vs. Ecological (Cultural) Level
 Individual studies: typical type of study in psychology
o Participants provide data and are the unit of analysis
 Ecological-or cultural-level studies: a study in which countries or cultures, not individuals,
are the unit of analysis
o Data obtained from people from different cultures
o Focused on identifying the kinds of psychological dimensions that underlie cultures
in order to better understand cultures on a subjective level
 Multi-level studies: studies that involve data collection at multiple levels of analysis
(individual, context, community, and national culture)
o Consists of combined individual and ecological studies
o Use data from 2 or more levels and incorporate the use of sophisticated statistical
 techniques that examine the relationship of data at one level to data at another
DESIGNING CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARATIVE RESEARCH
Getting the Right Research Question
 Purpose of conducting research is to contribute to a body of knowledge
 Better to conduct research within a limited scope rather than to try and conduct a study
that addresses too much/not at all
 Major challenge: how to isolate the source of such differences and identify the active
cultural (vs. noncultural) ingredients that produced those differences
o Need to pay attention to the empirical documentation of those active cultural
ingredients (ex. Is the source of the differences to be explained cultural or not)
 Once differences have been identified, there is a level of analysis issue
o Different variables bring with them different theoretical and methodological
implications and require different interpretations of research literature
 Another challenge: theoretical model of how things work
o Common view: culture “produces” differences in a top-down fashion BIAS
HELD BY MANY
o How to determine that?
Designs that Establish Linkages Between Culture and Individual Mental Processes and
Behaviors
 A study that documents differences between cultures on some psychological variable
doesn’t say anything about whether the source of these differences are cultural or not
 Linkage studies: studies that attempt to measure an aspect of culture theoretically
hypothesized to produce cultural differences
o then empirically link that with the dependent variable of interest
 Unpackaging Studies:
o Studies that unpackage the contents of the global, unspecific concept of culture into
specific, measureable psychological constructs and examine their contribution to
cultural differences
o Extensions of basic cross-cultural comparisons
o Cultures are like onions—need to be peeled away until nothing is left
o Culture is viewed as an unspecified variable and is replaced by more specific
variables-- help explain cultural differences
 Context variables: variables that operationalize aspects of culture that
researchers believe produce differences in psychological variables
 Degree to which they account for differences
Individual-Level Measures of Culture
 Measures that assess a variable on the individual level that is thought to be
a product of culture
 Most common: Individualism vs. Collectivism
 Harry Triandis—argued that I.C. framework organizes and explains many
 different types of cultural differences
 Measured I.C. on the individual level by adding scenarios
 Individualism-Collectivism scale to measure an individual’s I.C.
tendencies in relation to 6 tendencies (spouse, parents and children,
kin, neighbors, friends, and coworkers and classmates)
 Viewed I.C. as a cultural syndrome that includes values, beliefs,
attitudes, and behaviors
 Multiple-method included ratings of the social content of self;
perceptions of homogeneity of ingroups and outgroups, attitude and
value ratings, and perceptions of social behavior as a function of
social distance
o Participants were identified as either individualists or
collectivist
 Triandis: idoicentrism and allocentrism (refers to individualism on the
individual level vs. refers to collectivism on the individual level)
 “Horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism”
o Horiz.: individuals see themselves as members of ingroups in
which all members are equal (autonomous and equal)
o Vert.: individuals see themselves as members of ingroups
characterized by hierarchal/status relationship (autonomous
but unequal)
 Matsumoto, Weissman, Preston, Brown, and Kupperbusch
 Developed a measure of I.C. for use on the individual level that
assess context-specific I.C. tendencies in interpersonal situations—
Interpersonal Assessment Inventory
o Americans vs. Japanese in judgments of emotion
 Both differed hoe strongly they perceived facial
expressions of emotion
Self-Construal Scales
 Markus and Kitayama
 Proposed that individualistics and collectivistic cultures differed in the
kinds of self-concepts they fostered
o Individualistic--encourage the development of in independent
self-construals
Collectivist--encourage the development of interdependent self-construals
 Led to the development of scales measuring independence and
interdependence on the individual level
Personality
 Can be used a context variable
  Differences in aggregate personality traits across cultures
 U.S. Australia, and New Zealandhigh extraversion
France, Italy, and French Swisshigh neuroticism
 Cultural differences may be a product of different levels of personality traits in each
culture
 Matsumoto: measured emotion regulation in American & Japan
 Measured several personality traits
 Personality traits—extraversion, neuroticism, and conscientiousness—
were linked to emotion regulation and accounted for differences
Cultural Practices
 Important to linkage studiesthose that assess cultural practices such as
child-rearing, the nature of interpersonal relationships, or cultural worldviews
 Ex. Heine & Renshaw: Americans and Japanese and their liking of others
o Americans--liked others that were similar or shared views
Japanese--liked others based on familiarity andinterdependence with
others
 Experiments
o Studies in which researchers create conditions to establish cause-effect relationships
o Another type of linkage study
o Participants are assigned randomly and results are compared across conditions
o Different from cross-cultural comparisonsexperiments create cultural groups and
randomly assign people to these groups
o Priming Studies:
 Studies that involve experimentally manipulating the mindsets of
participants and measuring the resulting changes in behavior
 Trying to see if people behave differently based on primed mindset
 Trafimow, Triandis, and Goto
 Chinese and American in either a private or collective, group-oriented
way
o Americans--more individual-oriented responses
Chinese--more group-oriented responses
 Behavioral Studies
 Manipulation of environments
 Observe the changes in behavior based on these environments
BIAS AND EQUIVALENCE
 Bias: differences that do not have the exact same meaning within and across cultures
 Equivalence: state or condition of similarity in conceptual meaning and empirical method
between cultures that allow comparisons to be meaningful
 Bias refers to a state of non-equivalence, and equivalence refers to a state of no bias
 If there is any bias in cross-cultural comparisons, the comparison looses its meaning
 Only if theoretical framework and hypothesis have equivalent meaning in the cultures being
compared, the results will be meaningful
 5 areas of bias: conceptual bias, method bias, response bias, and interpretational bias
 Conceptual Bias
o The degree to which a set of hypotheses/theory being compared across cultures in
equivalent (same meaning and relevance)
o Concern: equivalence in meaning of overall theoretical framework being tested and
the specific hypotheses being addressed in the first place
 If not equivalent, the data is not comparable

 Method Bias
o Sampling Bias
 Degree to which different samples in cultures are equivalent to each other
 1st Concern: whether the samples are appropriate representative of their culture
 2nd Concern: whether the samples are equivalent on noncultural
demographic variables (ex. Age, sex, religion, socioeconomic status, work, and
others)
 ex. Comparing data from 50 Americans from Los Angles, and 50
Indians from Bombay--completely different backgrounds
o need to find a way to control these noncultural demographic
factors when comparing data

o experimentally controlling: holding them constant in the

selection of participants
o statistically controlling: when analyzing data
 randomly sampling without regard to religion will result in samples that not
only differ in cultures but also religion
o Linguistic Bias
 The semantic equivalence between research protocols (instruments,
instructions, etc.) used in a cross-cultural comparison study across languages
 This bias is quickly apparent in cross-cultural research
 2 ways to establish linguistic equivalence:
 Back translation: taking the research protocol in one language,
translating it to the other language, and then having someone translate it back
to the original
o If same as original, then it is equivalent. If not, it is repeated until
met the goal
o Decentered: culture-specific concepts (meanings and
connotations) of the language are eliminated or translated
equivalently into the target language
o Comparable to cross-cultural hypothesis-testing research
 Committee approach: several bilingual informants collectively translate
a research protocol into a target language
 o The product reflects a translation that is the shared consensus of
a linguistically equivalent protocol across languages and cultures
 Researchers may combine the two approaches; protocol may be initially
translated and then back-translated
o Procedural Bias
 Decisions made by researchers in studies could mean different things in
different cultures
 Measurement Bias
o Measurement Bias: the degree to which measures used to
collect data in different
cultures are equally valid and reliable
o Linguistic equivalence doesn’t guarantee measurement
equivalence
 Just because the same word in being exactly used in 2 cultures, it doesn’t mean
they have the same meaning
 Translation would be the closest, but still not exactly the same
o If a concept means different things to people of different
cultures, or measured differently, the comparisons are meaningless
o Operationalization: the ways researchers conceptually define a
variable and measure it
o Debate: cross-cultural study on intelligence
 Different cultures have a different conception of what constitutes as
intelligence
o Psychometric equivalence: the degree to which measures
(cross- cultural study) are statistically equivalent in the cultures being
compared (valid and reliable)
 Questionnaire, determine if the structure is the same in cultures--Factor
analysis: statistical technique that allows researchers to identify groups of items
on a questionnaire
 Concern: if the same groups of items/factors would emerge in the
different culturesstructural equivalence: degree to which a measure
used in (cross-cultural study) produces the same factor analysis in
different cultures being compared
o If not, measure is nonequivalent (biased)=different mental
constructs when responding to same questionnaire=noncomparable
o Internal reliability: the degree to which different item in a
questionnaire are related to each other (consistent response)
 If measuring same mental construct, items should be related to each other--high
internal reliability
 Response Bias
o Response bias: systematic tendency to respond in a certain way to items or scales
o If response bias existsdifficult to compare data b/w cultures
o Several types: socially desirable responding, acquiescence bias, extreme response bias,
and reference group effect
 o Socially desirable responding: tendency to give answers that make oneself look good
 Self-deceptive enhancement (seeing oneself in positive light) vs. impression
management
o Acquiescence bias: tendency to agree rather than disagree with items on
questionnaires
o Extreme response bias: tendency to use the ends of a scale regardless of item content
o Reference group effect: people make implicit social comparisons with others when
making ratings on scales rather than relying on direct inferences
 Implicitly comparing yourself to others in the group
o Johnson, Kulesa, Cho, and Shavitt (2004)
 Examined biases in 19 countries and correlated indices of bias with each
country’s score on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions
 Extreme response bias occurred more in cultures that encourage
masculinity, power, and statusachieves clarity, precision, and
decisiveness in verbal statements, characteristics valued in cultures
 Interpretational Bias
o Analyzing Data:
 Use of inferential statistics (chi-square or analysis of variance) and engage in
null hypothesis significance testing
 Compare the differences observed between the groups to the differences
one would expect on basis of chance alone --then compute the
possibilities
 Differences in group means don’t provide info on practical meaningfulness of
difference b/w groups
 Statistical procedures that help to determine the degree to which differences
in mean values reflect meaningful differences among individuals
o Dealing with Nonequivalent Data:
 Impossible to create any cross-cultural study that means exactly the same
thing to all participating cultures (conceptually and empirically)
 Ways which nonequivalence of cross-cul. data can be handled:
 Preclude comparisonsdon’t make comparisons
 Reduce the nonequivalence in the data--identify equivalent and
nonequivalent parts of the methods and refocus only on equivalent
parts
 Interpret the nonequivalenceinterpret nonequivalence as a important
piece of information concerning cultural differences
 Ignore the nonequivalence
 How researchers handle the interpretation of data (nonequivalence) depends on
biases and nature of data/findings
o Interpreting findings:
 Culture can bias the ways researchers interpret their findings
 Interpret the data through their own cultural filters
 Hypothesis-testing cross-cultural studies, cultural groups are treated as
 independent variables in research design and data analysis (quasi-experiment)
 Data is correlational
 Misinterpretationsuggesting specific reasons why cultural differences
occurred even though the reasons were never measured in the study=
Cultural attribution fallacies
Class Discussion
 Deciding about quiz
o Long, indecisive
o Silence was deafening to mostbelieved those that were quiet didn’t care
 Communication
 Chapter 3
● Humans engage in cultural learning
● Enculturation and socialization
○ Socialization: the process by which we learn and internalize the rules and patterns of
behavior that are affected by culture. This process, which occurs over a long time,
involves learning and mastering societal and cultural norms, attitudes, values, and belief
systems.
○ Enculturation: the process by which individuals learn and adopt the ways and manners
of their specific culture.
○ Socialization and enculturation agents: the people, institutions, and organizations that
exist to help ensure that socialization and enculturation occurs.
● Culture, parenting, and families
○ Whiting and Whiting’s six cultures study
■ Well known study of parenting, children, and culture
■ Anthropologists collected field data in Mexico, India, Kenya, U.S., Okinawa,
and the Philippines
■ Systematically examine child rearing and children’s behavior in varied cultural
contexts
■ Naturalistic observations and interviews; how the natural environment shaped
how households were structured, which shaped how parents raised their
children to fit into that particular society
■ Women’s work roles contributed to children’s social behaviors
○ Diversity in parenting as a function of economics
■ How the broad ecological context is tied to child rearing and to children’s
development
■ Economic conditions under which child rearing takes place
○ Parenting goals and beliefs
■ Parental ethnotheories: parental cultural belief systems
○ Global parenting styles (Baumrind’s styles based on observations)
■ Authoritarian parent: a style of parenting in which the parent expects
unquestioned obedience and views the child as needing to be controlled
■ Permissive parents: a style of parenting in which parents allow children to
regulate their own lives and provide few firm guidelines
■ Authoritative parent: a style of parenting that is viewed as firm, fair, and
reasonable. This style is seen as promoting psychologically healthy,
competent, independent children who are cooperative and at ease in social
situations
■ Uninvolved parents: a style of parenting in which parents are often too absorbed
in their own lives to respond appropriately to their children and may seem
indifferent to them
○ A domain-specific approach to parenting
■ Counters the global parenting style; focuses on parenting behaviors rather than
general styles to better understand the socialization process
○ Siblings