Volume 1, Spring 2008

8/9/2019 Volume 1, Spring 2008

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/volume-1-spring-2008 1/85

Psychology at Berkeley

University of California, BerkeleySpring 2008 - Volume 1



PSYCHOLOGY AT BERKELEY is an Associated Students of the University of Califor-nia (ASUC) sponsored publication. The ideas and opinions contained in this publica-tion solely reect those of the authors and not the University of California.



Staff

Editors-in-Chief Bonnie LeRodolfo Cortes

EditorsMinh-Chau Do

Corrie FukudaMelissa GreenbergAngela Huizi Sun





Table of Contents

Editor’s Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

The Vagus Nerve as a Biological Basis of Prosocial Behavior by Scott Sitrin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

The Culture of Emotion in America and Chinaby Angela Huizi Sun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

The Prosocial Benets of Transference: Promoting Benevolent

Behavior toward Out-group Membersby Vicky Lee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

The Production of Cultural Difference: Paradigm Enforcement in

Cultural Psychology

by Chris Cochran . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74





Editor’s NoteDuring my fourth and nal year at Berkeley, I decided to embark on one of

the most challenging academic endeavors an undergraduate can undertake: a senior honors thesis. Throughout the year (and a half...) long experience, I learned a lot about

what it means to conduct research. Perhaps more importantly, I began to realize that

not only was the quality and signicance of the research conducted important, but also

how the information is disseminated to others.As of yet, theses written by undergraduates in the Berkeley psychology de-

partment are generally read by only three people: the writer herself, the writer’s faculty

sponsor, and a second faculty member, who, along with the faculty sponsor, is respon-sible for determining an honors level. As I sat in my honors seminar week after week,

I was consistently inspired and impressed by the caliber of research my classmates

undertook.Though the experience of conducting a senior honors thesis was invaluable

within itself, I began to ask myself what purpose my work served. In my opinion, the

theses that I and my fellow thesis writers completed were not meant to be packed away

in the le cabinets of Tolman Hall after only being read by three people; rather, the nd-ings of our studies should be shared with the psychological community at large.Of the approximately 850 undergraduate psychology majors at Berkeley, some com-plete senior honors theses, the majority take part in departmental research, and allcomplete a research project in a required statistical methods class. With hundreds of research papers being produced a semester, our department had yet to provide an

outlet for undergraduates to share their work with one another. This is why I decided tocreate Psychology at Berkeley .

My vision for Psychology at Berkeley is to encourage excellent psychologicalresearch by undergraduates as well as facilitate them in sharing their work with thecampus community. Research has no meaning unless its ndings are made known,

and my hope is that Psychology at Berkeley will be the outlet for meaningful psycho-logical research conducted by undergraduates at Berkeley. Furthermore, I hope this

journal will not only publish great theses, but psychological research in all forms, fromscientic studies to theoretical and review papers.

Our rst volume of Psychology at Berkeley contains three theses and one the-oretical paper. Scott Sitrin argues that the vagus nerve plays a role in prosociality. Hisstudy is not only innovative, but also reects a trend towards studying the physiological

bases of behavior, as the discipline of psychology is increasingly incorporating biologyas a factor in determining human behavior. Vicky Lee also investigates prosociality.Her study on prosocial transference reveals an inspirational nding that, regardless of

social groups we generally relate and adhere to, friendships can transcend differencesif commonalities are forged.

Two of the papers in our journal examine cultural psychology. In “The Culture

of Emotion in America and China,” Angela Sun reveals that differences in emotions are

expressed by those who have been raised in different cultures. Angela nds that Chi-nese participants, compared to American participants, express lower levels of emotionson a number of measures.

Cultural studies in psychology must be considered critically, though. Culturaland ethnic comparisons are made often in psychology, especially in Berkeley, where



a large population of Asian students has made this a popular demographic for com-parison. In Chris Cochran’s theoretical paper “The Production of Cultural Difference:

Paradigm Enforcement in Cultural Psychology,” he documents the history of culturalpsychology, explaining why we have come to favor this comparison between Americans

and Asians. Chris also contests the methods of the subeld as a whole, reminding usthat although psychology is a discipline built on scientic principles, we must acknowl-edge its history and question its methods to ensure that we adequately understand theresults of our studies.

It is my pleasure to present to you the rst volume of Psychology at Berkeley .I hope that you nd its contents as enjoyable as I have, and more importantly, I hope

the contents of this journal in some way enlighten you and challenge the ideas that youhave known and learned about psychology.

Bonnie LeMay 2008



Preface

We’re in a new area of psychological science with vigorous attention to culture and the

brain and genetics which represent new frontiers of empirical discovery. Very often thebest discoveries in new areas of inquiry come from young people, young scientists,and young minds. Berkeley has a long-standing commitment to rigorous thesis work inlaboratories by undergraduate students, and many of our best undergrads have goneon to exciting careers as professors and research scientists. This journal is really thefruition of that commitment to new developments in psychological science by Berkeleyundergradutes. I hope that Psychology at Berkeley grows, prospers, and fullls its noble

mission.

Dacher Keltner

Professor, Department of PsychologyUniversity of California at Berkeley





The Vagus Nerve as a Biological Basis of Prosocial Behavior

Scott Sitrin

I investigated the vagus nerve as a biological basis of prosocial be-havior. 50 participants (30 female, 19 male, 1 unreported) played 16rounds of an economic exchange game known as the trust game,each with a different coplayer whose cardiac vagal tone, an indexof the activity of the vagus nerve, had been assessed in a previousstudy. Prior to each round of the game, participants watched a short video clip

of the coplayer listening to another person tell a story of hardship and also indi-cated the degree to which they believed their coplayer to be prosocial. As pre-dicted, coplayers with high levels of cardiac vagal tone were perceived as moreprosocial than coplayers with low levels of cardiac vagal tone. In addition, as a

result of this perception, participants acted more prosocially towards coplayerswith high levels of cardiac vagal tone and less prosocially towards coplayers withlow levels of cardiac vagal tone. These results imply that prosocial behaviors arethe product of evolution and that the vagus nerve is a basis of prosocial behavior.

Why do individuals donate bone marrow to complete strangers or risk their own

lives by running into burning buildings to save a stranger’s life? These otherorientedbehaviors are puzzling for those who contend that social behavior at its core is motivatedby selnterest. As a result, it is still unclear why individuals act prosocially. In the past

50 years, evolutionary psychologists have developed several theories, from kin selec-tion to reciprocal altruism, all of which claim that prosocial behaviors are the productof evolution (Hamilton, 1964; Trivers, 1971). More recently, evolutionary psychologists

have discovered several biological bases of prosocial behavior, such as oxytocin, thusproviding further support to the claim that prosocial behaviors are the product of evo-lution. These biological ndings are limited in number though, and in order to ll this

void, my current study aspires to document a biological basis of prosocial behavior.

Prosocial behavior

With selsh behavior, the focus is on the self, and how actions satisfy the individ-ual’s selnterest. With prosocial behavior, the focus is on others, and how actions advance

the interests of others (Batson, Fultz, & Schoenrade, 1987). Though there are severaltypes of prosocial behavior, this paper will focus on three: trust, altruism, and cooperation.

Trust can be dened as condence in, or reliance on another person or thing. As

an illustration, suppose that an individual, person A, lends his friend, person B, $100,000.

Person A’s behavior is an instance of trust, as he or she has put him or herself at risk in order to provide benets to another (Berg, Dickhaut, & McCabe, 1995). The behavior of trust is dif -ferent from that of trustworthiness, as to be trustworthy is to cooperate after Vagus nerve andprosociality another has placed trust in you (Zak, in press). Returning to the previous exam-ple, if person B were to pay back the $100,000 loan, he or she would be acting trustworthy.



Another prosocial behavior is altruism, which can be dened as “unselsh be-havior that benets others without regard to the consequences for the self” (Gilovich,

Keltner, & Nisbett, 2006). As an example, imagine that a man runs into a burning apart-ment complex in order to save the life of a stranger. This act benets the stranger while

coming at a great risk to the man who could be injured or killed by the re himself.The last prosocial behavior to be discussed is cooperation, which can be dened

as the process of two individuals working together in hopes of achieving a shared goal. In

general, those who cooperate sometimes pay some sort of cost in order to provide ben-ets to another (Frank, 2002). As an illustration, picture two students, A and B, studying

together for a nal examination. Though this study session could benet both students

if each was equally prepared, it could also be counterproductive and a waste of time if one student is more prepared than the other. If, for instance, student A is more prepared

than student B, the study session will benet only student B while coming at a cost to

student A who must devote time to reviewing material he or she no longer needs to study.

Theoretical bases of prosocial behavior

Within evolutionist accounts of social behaviors, prosocial actions ultimatelybenet selnterest. For example, in an attempt to explain the basis of altruistic behav-ior, William Hamilton developed his theory of kin selection. According to this theory, anindividual will act altruistically if the beneciary of this altruistic act is his or her genetic

kin. This altruistic behavior is accounted for by the concept of inclusive tness, which

states that an evolutionary minded individual is not just interested in his or her own sur-

vival, but also in the survival of any kin who possess his or her genes (Hamilton,1964).As an illustration of this theory, imagine that an individual sacri-ces his or her life in order to save the lives of 3 of his of her genetic kin. Accord -ing to Hamilton, this individual acted altruistically in order to preserve the great-est number of his or her genes, even though this act cost the rescuer his or her life.

In order to account for prosocial behaviors that occur among nonkin, sev-eral additional theories have been developed, most notably, Robert Triver’s theo-ry of reciprocal altruism. According to this theory, an individual will act altruisticallyif he or she believes that his or her altruistic act will be reciprocated at a future time(Trivers,1971). For instance, an individual may save his or her friend from drown-

ing in the ocean in the hope that this same friend will attempt to save the individu-al’s life at a future time. This prosocial act clearly benets the drowning friend, but it

also serves the interests of the rescuer, as he or she too may need help in the future.Furthermore, an individual will also act prosocially in order to gain so-

cial rewards and enhancement of his or her reputation. As a whole, social re-wards refer to “benets like praise, positive attention, tangible rewards, honors,

and gratitude” (Gilovich et al., 2006). As an example, imagine that an individualon a crowded subway gives up his or her seat to an elderly woman not because heor she wants to help the woman, but rather to gain the admiration of the other sub-way patrons. This seemingly altruistic act, thus, is in part motivated by selnterest.

Another theory on the basis of prosocial behavior postulates that individuals per-form prosocial behavior in order to reduce personal distress. Personal distress refers tothe negative feelings one experiences in response to witnessing the suffering of another (Gilovich et al., 2006). As an example, imagine that two individuals are in a classroom whena high magnitude earthquake occurs. The shaking damages the classroom, and one of the

Vagus Nerve and Prosocial Behavior 2 ______________________________________________________________________________



individual’s legs is badly hurt, as the shin bone is broken and is piercing through the skin inseveral places. The uninjured person may be disturbed and distressed by this image, andin order to reduce these feelings, may provide help to the injured individual. This behav-ior is a prosocial act, though the uninjured person is also serving his or her own interests.

Alongside these more selsh motives for prosocial action, recent empiricalstudies suggest that individuals also act prosocially because they feel empathy (Bat-son, O’Quin, Fultz, Venderplas, & Isen, 1983; Eisenberg & Miller, 1987). Empathy,

also known as compassion, sympathy, softheartedness, and tenderness, is an emo-tion felt in response to witnessing the suffering of another (Batson et al., 1987; Haidt,

2003; Oveis, Horberg, & Keltner, 2007). As a result of experiencing this emotion, in-dividuals are motivated to help the suffering individual (Haidt, 2003). Though the elici-tors and action tendencies of empathy based altruism are similar to those of personaldistressbased altruism, the two forms of altruism are distinct ( Batson, Fultz, & Schoe-nrade, 1987). As an illustration of empathybased altruism, picture a homeless womanand her newborn sitting on the sidewalk, asking for spare change. This image of suf-fering could possibly evoke feelings of empathy from passing pedestrians who mayfeel compelled to offer some form of assistance to the woman and her child. Of all of the theoretical bases of prosocial behavior, empathybased altruism is the most self-less, and accordingly, is regarded as a pure form of altruism (Gilovich et al., 2006).

Biological bases of prosocial behavior

Within the last 10 years, scientists have turned their attention to the

study of the biological bases of prosocial behavior. Specically, it has beenfound that brain regions, hormones, and biologicallybased environmental fac-tors are related to the prosocial behaviors of trust, altruism, and cooperation.

In an attempt to investigate pertinent brain regions, Decety, Jackson, Som-merville, Chaminade, and Meltzoff (2004) explored the neural bases of the so-cial cognitive processes of competition and cooperation. In this study, subjects were

scanned by an fMRI as they played a computer game with a confederate. This game,

in which the goal was to arrange tokens so that they matched a target congura -tion, was played under 3 different conditions. In the rst condition, subjects and con-federates played the game independently, whereas in the other two conditions, sub-

jects and confederates played together, either in a cooperative or competitive setting.The results showed that the cooperation and competition conditions acti-

vated different brain regions. In the cooperation condition, the orbitofrontal cortex,

a region associated with reward processing, was activated, whereas in the com-petition condition, this region was not activated. This nding led the investigators

to conclude that individuals cooperate because such an experience is rewarding.These ndings are compatible with a previous study conducted by Rilling et al.

(2002). In this study, Riling et al. investigated the neural substrates of cooperation by having

subjects play the prisoner’s dilemma game while in an fMRI scanner. In this game, there

are two players who independently choose to cooperate or to defect, with the combina-

tion of the two players’ decisions determining each player’s payout (Gilovich et al., 2006).Similar to the ndings of Decety et al. (2004), this study found that when there

was mutual cooperation in the prisoner’s dilemma game, brain regions related to re-ward processing were activated. These brain regions included the anteroventral stria-tum, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and rostral anterior cingulate cortex. These ndings,

Sitrin 3 ______________________________________________________________________________





tween two individuals, thus enabling the investigators to explore the effects of reputation.The results indicated that acts of reciprocity by the investor predicted changes

in acts of trust by the trustee. For instance, if an investor reciprocated a generous trans-fer by the trustee, the trustee would act more trusting towards that investor, whereas if

an investor did not reciprocate a generous transfer by the trustee, the trustee would actless trusting towards that investor. This relationship between acts of reciprocity and actsof trust was related to activity in the dorsal striatum. In the trustee’s brain, this region was

activated in response to the reciprocating or nonreciprocating acts of the investor. Thissignal was called an “intention to trust” and through the multiple rounds of the trust game,

this signal had a temporal transfer, as it no longer occurred after the investor’s transfer,but rather, now occurred prior to the decision by the investor. With this result, the investi-gators, concluded that this temporal transfer indicated that the investor had formed a rep-utation as either prosocial or not, and that this reputation affected the trustees’ behavior.

Not only are brain regions related to prosocial behavior, but the hormoneoxytocin is as well. Among nonhuman mammals, previous studies have documentedthis hormone’s role in facilitating several social behaviors, including social recogni-tion, maternal attachment, and pair bonding (Zak, Kurzban, & Matzner, 2004). In hu-mans though, oxytocin’s role in facilitating social behaviors is less known, a voidthat prompted Zak et al. to investigate oxytocin’s role in the human behavior of trust.

In their study, subjects’ levels of endogenous oxytocin were measured while

they played the trust game under two different conditions. In the rst condition, the inten-tion condition, subjects played the trust game in its standard form. In the second condi-tion, the random draw condition, the investor did not get to choose how much of his or

her show up fee to send to the trustee. Rather, in a public manner, the investor drew anumbered ball from an urn. In this urn, there were 11 balls, numbered from 010, and the

ball that the investor chose was the amount that he or she sent to the trustee. In this

condition, the investor’s transfer was not an act of trust, but rather, an act of randomness.In accordance with the author’s hypothesis, the trustees who received a signal

of trust had higher levels of endogenous oxytocin than the trustees who did not. Fur-thermore, the trustees with high levels of endogenous oxytocin acted trustworthy, thusreciprocating the trusting actions of the investors. Taken together, these results providedproof that oxytocin serves as a biological basis of cooperative behavior, and thus thisstudy provided the rst evidence that oxytocin is related to human social behaviors.

Motivated by these ndings, Kosfeld, Heinrichs, Zak, Fischbacher, and Fehr (2005) further investigated the role of oxytocin. These authors hypothesized that theadministration of exogenous oxytocin would promote the behavior of trust. In order to

test this hypothesis, the investigators gave subjects either a single intranasal dose of oxytocin or placebo prior to playing the trust game.

As predicted, the administration of exogenous oxytocin caused the investor to act trusting. In a follow up experiment, the investigators found that oxytocin oper -ated by motivating the investor to accept the risks associated with trusting another person. In elaboration, oxytocin enabled the investor to send money to a trustee

that may or may not send any money back. As a caveat, the investigators discov-

ered that oxytocin’s effects only occurred if the trustee was a person, whereas therewas no increase in trust when the trustee was a computer. These results, thus, pro-vided further evidence that oxytocin is a biological basis of the behavior of trust.

Beyond brain regions and hormones, Zak and Fakharb (2006) have also dis-covered that biologicallybased environmental factors also affect prosocial behaviors. In

Sitrin 5 ______________________________________________________________________________



their study, Zak and Fakharb collected data from 41 countries, evaluating how eachcountry’s biological environment affected levels of generalized trust. To assess thebiological environment, the investigators examined 31 variables that were correlated withthe hormone oxytocin. In order to obtain levels of generalized trust, which is dened as “the

probability that two randomly chosen people will trust each other in a onetime interaction”(Zak, in press), the researchers used participants’ responses to the following question fromthe 1996 World Values Survey: “Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be

trusted, or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people?” (WVS) (Inglehart et al., 2000).

Since the 31 variables were highly correlated, the investigators performed afactor analysis. This analysis yielded 3 factors, which were termed phyto, ecopoor, andbiosocial. The phyto factor was an index of the consumption of several types of phy-toestrogens, which are plantbased estrogens found in, for example, soybeans and le-gumes. This factor was positively related to levels of generalized trust (Zak, in press).

The next factor, the ecopoor factor, was an index of the quality of the natu-ral environment. Among other things, this factor reected levels of “xenoestrogens”,

which are synthetic estrogen mimics. Example “xenoestrogens” include DDT, and as a

whole, these pollutants and the overall eco factor were negatively correlated with levelsof generalized trust. The last factor, the biosocial factor, was not statistically related togeneralized trust (Zak, in press). Though these results did not prove that the biologicalenvironment causes varying levels of trust, they did provide further support that oxy-tocin and its related hormones serve as a neuroendocrinological basis of trust.

Vagus Nerve

As evident in the studies of the previous section, there are biological bases of prosocial behavior, though as a whole, the number of these ndings is relatively limited.

The current study investigated the tenth cranial nerve, the vagus nerve (Porges, 1995;

Oveis et al., 2007) as a biological basis of prosocial behavior. Originating in the brainstem and projecting to many peripheral organs, this nerve controls facial expressions,sucking, swallowing, breathing, vocalizations, and motor behaviors, such as tactile con-tact (Porges, 1995; Porges, 1997; Oveis et al., 2006; Oveis et al., 2007). More impor -tantly, the vagus nerve is the primary nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system, afunction that has led many evolutionary psychologists to claim that the vagus nerve facili-

tates prosocial behavior (Porges, 1995; Porges, 1997; Porges, 1998; Porges, 2003;Oveis, Sherman, & Haidt, 2006; Oveis et al., 2006). More specically, it is believed

that activation of the vagus nerve creates a calming effect that is conducive to prosocialbehavior.

In support of this claim, there is evidence that low levels of cardiac vagal tone,

an index of the activity of the vagus nerve, are associated with selforiented emotionsand behaviors, whereas high levels of cardiac vagal tone are associated with otherori-ented emotions and behaviors. Clinical depression, for instance, is a psychopathologycharacterized by selffocus and low levels of cardiac vagal tone (Light, Kothanda-pini, & Allen, 1998; Rechlin, Weis, Spitzer, & Kaschka, 1994; Carney et al., 1995;

Krittayaphong et al., 1997). On the other hand, high levels of cardiac vagal tone re-activity, another index of the activity of the vagus nerve, are related to high lev-els of compassion, which is an otheroriented emotion that promotes prosocial be-havior (Oveis et al., 2007). Further, high levels of baseline cardiac vagal tone arerelated to otheroriented behaviors, as children with high levels of cardiac vagal tone re




spond more prosocially to a crying infant than did children with low levels of cardiacvagal tone (Fabes, Eisenberg, Karbon, Troyer, & Switzer, 1994; Beauchaine, 2001).

Given that high levels of cardiac vagal tone promote prosocial behavior whereas low levels of cardiac vagal tone do not, I hypothesized that individuals with

high levels of cardiac vagal tone would be perceived as more prosocial than individu-als with low levels of cardiac vagal tone. In addition, and as a result of this percep-tion, I also hypothesized that individuals would act more prosocially towards others

with high levels of cardiac vagal tone whereas they would act less prosocially towardsothers with low levels of cardiac vagal tone. This particular hypothesis was in partbased on Robert Triver’s theory of reciprocal altruism, in that an individual will actmore prosocially towards another who is perceived as prosocial because it is morelikely that this type of individual will reciprocate the prosocial behavior at a future time.

METHOD

Participants and procedure

Fifty (30 female, 19 male, 1 unknown) University of California, Berkeley un-dergraduates participated in the study. After obtaining informed consent, participantsreceived a written and oral explanation of a series of trust games they were to play, whichwere modeled after a procedure employed by Kosfeld et al. (2005). In the trust game, an

“investor” makes contributions to a “trustee”, who is then responsible for keeping or allo-cating back to the investor as much or as little of the contribution as he or she desires. The

investor’s contributions are tripled upon transfer to the trustee; therefore, cooperativeactions by both the investor and the trustee result in mutual gains for both participants.

All participants were told that they had been randomly assigned to play therole of the investor, and it was explained that they would interact via email with 16 dif-ferent trustees who had been videotaped while listening to another person describe astory of hardship on a prior visit to the lab. The investors were told that they wouldwatch a video clip of each trustee prior to deciding how many tickets to allocate tothat trustee. After completing all 16 allocation portions of the trust game, the investorswould ostensibly learn how each trustee responded. In reality, the 16 trustees had been

videotaped in a separate study and were not contacted to participate in the current

study. The 16 trustee video clips were presented in random order for each participant.To begin each of the 16 rounds of the trust game, participants were given 20

rafe tickets and also informed that the trustees had also been given 20 rafe tickets.

It was explained that each rafe ticket would be worth one opportunity to win a rafe

award of $25 at the end of the study, and the trust game was explained as follows. Theinvestors were required to allocate between 1 and 20 rafe tickets to each trustee and

to keep the remaining amount, but were not allowed to distribute the same amount of rafe tickets to more than one trustee. Upon transfer to the trustees, the value of each

rafe ticket would triple, and the trustees were responsible for deciding how many tick -ets to keep, and how many tickets to transfer back to the investors, from zero to the

total amount received. A back transfer from the trustees to the investors would incur novalue increase. For example, if the investor sent all 20 tickets to the trustee, the trusteewould then have 80 (20 rafe ticket initial endowment + 3 X 20 rafe ticket transfer)

tickets to distribute between the investor and him or herself. If the trustee were to divide

this amount equally between the investor and him or herself, then both would end up

Sitrin 7 ______________________________________________________________________________



with 40 tickets each. In this way, cooperative activities on the part of both the investor

and the trustee result in mutual gains for both players. However, if the trustee doesnot return the cooperative behavior of the investor, the investor stands to end up withfewer tickets than if he or she had acted selshly in the original allocation. Thus, it is

in the interest of the investor to gauge the trustworthiness of the trustee before acting.

Measures

The investors’ perceptions of the trustees. To test for the potential mediat-ing role of prosocial perceptions in trust game allocation, participants (investors) com-pleted a 13item questionnaire assessing their perceptions of each trustee’s traits af-ter viewing each trustee’s video clip, and prior to allocating tickets to that trustee.For each of the 13 traits, participants responded to the following prompt: “I believe

that the individual from the video (the trustee) is…” using a 1 (strongly disagree)to 7 (strongly agree) Likert scale (Keltner, unpublished manuscript). A prosocialperceptions scale was formed from the mean rating of the items trust, compassion-ate, cooperative, altruistic, generous, deceptive, cold, and meanspirited a = .88). Video clips of the trustees. Displays of vulnerability and suffering havebeen shown to be a compelling elicitor of cooperative behavior (Oveis et al., 2007).In a separate study, we videotaped 77 samesex dyads of unacquainted partici-pants while they took turns describing to one another a powerful moment of suf-fering and distress from their past. At the University of California, Berkeley, Chi-nese American and European American individuals represent the majority of the

student population. Accordingly, we randomly selected 4 Chinese American male,4 Chinese American female, 4 European American male, and 4 European Ameri-can female participants from this separate study as “trustees” for the current study.

Based on the proposition that thin slices of behavior reveal core components of an individual’s dispositions (Ambady, 1999), a 20 second clip of each trustee was playedfor the investors, which portrayed the trustee in the role of the listener. Each 20 secondclipbegan as the talker described the most dramatic part of his or her story as rated by ateam of coders. For example, one talker described his close relationship with his father who was diagnosed with cancer, and the 20second segment began after the talker said,“He passed away last November”. In each video clip, only the face and torso of the trustee

was visible. Audio was removed from all video clips in order to make the stimuli a stronger test of my hypothesis that vagus nerve activity could be discerned by visual cues alone.For an explanation of how each 20 second video clip was chosen, please see Appendix A. Assessment of levels of cardiac vagal tone in the trustees. The degree of Respiration linked variability in heart rate, or respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), wasassessed as a measure of cardiac vagal tone (Berntson, Cacioppo, & Quigley, 1993).RSA was gathered during a two minute resting baseline task in a welllit, soundattenu-ated experimental chamber measuring approximately 2 X 3 meters. Participants were

given 15 minutes to acclimate to the physiological apparatus while seated in a com-fortable chair prior to the assessment, and remained seated during the assessment.

Electrocardiogram recordings were sampled at 1,000 Hz using an AmbulatoryMonitoring System (Vrije University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands), with leads placedon the torso in the modied Lead II conguration. All data were inspected ofine and

corrected for artifacts. RSA was calculated in the .12Hz . 40Hz band of the Rwave toRwave interbeat interval series using CMET cardiac metric software (available from




http://apsychoserver.psych.arizona.edu).

RESULTS

Non-independence controls

The experimental paradigm resulted in a two level hierarchical dataset, witheach participant representing a level 2 data point, and each video trial (i.e. individual tar-get (trustee)) representing a level 1 data point. The video trials were nested within sub-

jects, and therefore could not be considered independent; thus, we utilized hierarchical

linear modeling (HLM) to control for nonindependence. For all models, cardiac vagal toneand ratings of prosociality were groupmean centered, resulting in withinsubject effects.

Cardiac vagal tone

To investigate the hypothesis that cardiac vagal tone is a detectable bio-logical basis of prosociality, we conducted several HLM analyses. The rst model

tested whether the trustees’ cardiac vagal tone predicted the investors’ percep-tions of the trustee’s prosocial traits. Here, cardiac vagal tone signicantly and

positively predicted perceptions of prosociality, ß = .22, t (541) = 4.61, p < .001.

Next I investigated to see whether the trustees’ levels of car

diac vagal tone predicted the number of tickets allocated by the inves-tors. Here, I found that levels of cardiac vagal tone signicantly and positive-ly predicted the number of tickets allocated, ß = 1.25, t (538) = 4.19, p < .001.

Sitrin 9 ______________________________________________________________________________



I predicted that perceptions of prosocial traits would mediate the inuence of

cardiac vagal tone on ticket allocation. To test this hypothesis, I constructed a mediationmodel analysis using a Sobel test (Sobel, 1982). A Sobel test was appropriate even thoughnonindependence cannot be assumed because all of the variables were level 1 predictors.




The Sobel test revealed that perceptions of prosociality signicantly medi-ated the inuence of the trustees’ levels of cardiac vagal tone on the investors’ tick-et allocation, z = 4.45, p < .001. Also, it was shown that perceptions of prosocial-ity signicantly and positively predicted the number of tickets allocated, ß =3.92,

t (537) = 17.21, p=.000. Further, when ticket allocation was simultaneously re-gressed onto cardiac vagal tone and ratings of prosociality, cardiac vagal toneno longer signicantly predicted ticket allocation, ß = .39, t (537) = 1.62, p = .105.

DISCUSSION

Motivated by a relative void in the literature, my current study aspired to docu-ment a new biological basis of prosocial behavior. There is evidence that the vagusnerve, the primary nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system, facilitates prosocialbehavior, and accordingly, I hypothesized that individuals with high levels of cardiac

vagal tone would be perceived as more prosocial than individuals with low levels of car-diac vagal tone. In addition, and as a result of this perception, I also hypothesized that

individuals would act more prosocially towards others with high levels of cardiac vagaltone whereas they would act less prosocially towards others with low levels of cardiacvagal tone.

In order to investigate these hypotheses, I had participants play 16 rounds

of the trust game, each with a different trustee whose cardiac vagal tone data hadbeen collected in a previous study. Prior to each round of the game, participantswatched a short video clip of the trustee listening to another person describe a hard-

ship and also assessed how prosocial they thought each trustee was. As predicted,individuals with high levels of cardiac vagal tone were perceived as more prosocialthan individuals with low levels of cardiac vagal tone. Further, as a result of this per-ception, individuals acted more prosocially towards others with high levels of cardiacvagal tone and less prosocially towards others with low levels of cardiac vagal tone.

These results further support the claim that prosocial behaviors are the prod-uct of evolution. The vagus nerve, as well as the rest of the human body, is the productof evolutionary processes, such as natural selection, in which genes and their relat-ed traits and behaviors that increase the chances of survival are passed onto subse-quent generations, whereas genes and their related traits and behaviors that do not

increase the chances of survival become extinct. As noted, one of the functions of thevagus nerve is to facilitate prosocial behavior, and since this feature has not becomeextinct, it can be inferred that prosocial behaviors increase an individual’s chances of survival. Exactly how prosocial behaviors increase an individual’s chances of survivalis not known, though evolutionary psychologists have developed some theories, suchas Robert Triver’s theory of reciprocal altruism. With this theory, it is possible that twoindividuals could continually reciprocate each other’s acts of altruism, thereby creat-ing a cooperative relationship that could increase each individual’s chances of survival.

Further, the results of my study also support the claim that the vagus nervefacilitates prosocial behavior. Previous research has shown that low levels of cardiac

vagal tone are associated with selforiented emotions and behaviors, whereas high levelsof cardiac vagal tone are associated with otheroriented emotions and behaviors. In my

study, individuals with high levels of cardiac vagal tone were perceived as more prosocialthan individuals with low levels of cardiac vagal tone, a perception which presumablyresulted from individuals with high levels of cardiac vagal tone acting more prosocially

Sitrin 11 ______________________________________________________________________________



than individuals with low levels of cardiac vagal tone. This study, though, was not able toidentify the exact nonverbal behaviors that led participants to perceive some individualsas more prosocial than others, an unknown that could be addressed in future research.

Limitations and future directions

Though the implications of this study are quite spectacular, further research isrequired as our study had at least two shortcomings. Firstly, due to a lack of a manipulationcheck, it is not known if the study’s deception worked, and that participants expected backtransfers from each of the 16 trustees. If this deception did not work, and participants did

not expect back transfers, then the participants may have no longer been under the pre-tense that they were playing the trust game, and thus their transfers may not have beenacts of trust. If participants did not believe that they were playing the trust game though,

they at the very least knew they had to distribute rafe tickets that had monetary value to

16 different people. Even though participants’ behaviors may not have been acts of trust,participants still acted more prosocially towards the trustees with high levels of cardiacvagal tone by giving more rafe tickets to them than to the trustees with low levels of

cardiac vagal tone. Further, it is equally possible that participants believed the deception,and in order to clarify this issue, future research should include a manipulation check.

Secondly, another shortcoming is that in my study, participant’s played thetrust game via email with a trustee that was not in the same room as the investor,but rather, whose image was projected onto a screen in front of the participants. In

previous research that has used the trust game, the investor and the trustee played

the game in the same room, or at least in the same building. The fact that my studydid not follow trust game protocol actually makes my results even stronger, as I dis -covered signicant relationships between the vagus nerve and prosociality even

though participant’s exposure to the trustee was a 20 second video clip. Neverthe-less, future research should use the trust game according to protocol, and thushave the investor and the trustee play the complete game while in the same room.

Conclusions

In spite of these shortcomings and in conclusion, my study has document-

ed a biological basis of prosocial behavior. Specically, it was shown that individualswith high levels of cardiac vagal tone evoked more prosocial behaviors than individu-als with low levels of cardiac vagal tone, a nding that supports both the claim that

prosocial behaviors are the product of evolution and also the claim that the vagusnerve facilitates prosocial behavior. Though prosocial behaviors are still in part an enig-ma for those who contend that social behavior at its core is motivated by selnterest,

this study has made giant strides forward as we are now one step closer in understanding ex-actly why an individual would run into a burning building in order to save the life of a stranger.

REFERENCES

Batson, C.D., Fultz, J., & Schoenrade, P.A. (1987) Distress and empathy: two

qualitatively distinct vicarious emotions with different motivationalconsequences. Journal of Personality, 55, 1939.




Batson, C.D., O’Quin, K., Fultz, J., Vanderplas, M., & Isen, A.M. (1983). Inuence of

Selfreported distress and empathy on egoistic versus altruistic motivation tohelp. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, 706718.

Beauchaine, T. P. (2001). Vagal tone, development, and Gray’s motivational theory:

Toward an integrated model of autonomic nervous system functioning in psychopathology. Development and Psychopathology, 13, 183214.

Berg, J. , Dickhaut, J. & McCabe, K. (1995). Trust, reciprocity and social history.

Games and Economic Behavior, 10, 122-142.

Berntson, G.G., Caciopoo, J.T., & Quigley, K.S. (1993). Respiratory sinus arrhythmia:

Autonomic origins, physiological mechanisms, and psychophysiologicalimplications. Psychophysiology, 30, 183–196.

Carney, R. M., Saunders, R. D., Freedland, K. E., Stein, P., Rich, M.W., & Jaffe, A. S.

(1995). Association of depression with reduced heart rate variability incoronary artery disease. American Journal of Cardiology, 76, 562–564.

Decety, J., Jackson, P. L., Sommerville, J. A., Chaminade, T., & Meltzoff, A.N. (2004).

The neural bases of cooperation and competition: an fMRI investigation.

NeuroImage, 23, 744775.

Eisenberg, N., & Miller, P.A. (1987) The relation of empathy to prosocial and relatedbehaviors. Psychological Bulletin, 101, 91119.

Fabes, R. A., Eisenberg, N., Karbon, N., Troyer, D., & Switzer, G. (1994). The relationof children’s emotion regulation to their vicarious emotional responses andcomforting behaviors. Child Development, 65, 16781693.

Frank, R. H. (2002). Altruism in competitive environments. In R. J. Davidson & A.

Harrington (Eds.), Visions of compassion: Western scientists and Tibetan

Buddhists examine human nature (pp. 182-211). London: Oxford UniversityPress.

Gallagher, H.L., Jack, A.I., Roepstorff, A., & Frith, C.D. (2002). Imaging the intentional

stance in a competitive game. NeuroImage, 16, 814–821.

Gilovich, T., Keltner, D., & Nisbett, R.E. (2006). Social Psychology. New York, NY: W.W.

Norton and Company.

Haidt, J. (2003). The moral emotions. In R.J. Davidson, K.R. Scherer, & H.H. Goldsmith

(Eds.), Handbook of affective sciences (pp. 852870). Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

Hamilton, W.D. (1964). The genetical evolution of social behavior I. Journal of

Theoretical Biology, 7, 116.

Sitrin 13 ______________________________________________________________________________



Hamilton, W.D. (1964). The genetical evolution of social behavior II. Journal of

Theoretical Biology, 7, 1752.

Inglehart, R., et al., 2000. World values surveys and European values surveys.1981-1984,1990-1993, and 1995-1997. ICPSR Study No. 2790. InterUniver

sity. Consortium for Political and Social Research, Institute for Social

Research.

KingCasas, B., Tomlin, D., Anen, C., Camerer, C.F., Quartz, S.R., & Montague, P. (2005). Getting to know you: reputation and trust in a twoperson economic

exchange. Science, 308, 7883.

Kosfeld, M., Heinrichs, M., Zak, P.J. U. Fischbacher, & Fehr, E. (2005). Oxytocin

increases trust in humans. Nature, 435, 673-676.

Krittayaphong, R., Cascio, W. E., Light, K. C., Shefeld, D., Golden, R. N., Finkel, J.

B., Glekas, G.G., & Sheps, D. S. (1997). Heart rate variability in patientswith coronary artery disease: Differences in patients with higher and lower

depression scores. Psychosomatic Medicine, 59, 231–235.

Light, K. C., Kothandapani, R. V., & Allen, M. T. (1998). Enhanced cardiovascular andchatecholamine responses in women with depressive symptoms. International

Journal of Psychophysiology, 28, 157 – 166.

McCabe, K., Houser, D., Ryan, L., Smith, V., & Trouard, T. (2001). A functional imagingstudy of cooperation in twoperson reciprocal exchange. Proceedings of theNational Academy of Sciences of the USA, 98, 11832-11835.

Oveis, C., Cohen, A.B., Gruber, J., Shiota, M.N., Haidt, J., & Keltner, D. (e.d.). Vagal

tone as a physiological marker of social connection. Unpublished manuscript,University of California, Berkeley.

Oveis, C., Horberg, L., & Keltner, D. (2007e.d.). Compassion as a moral intuition. Un

published manuscript, University of California, Berkeley.

Oveis, C., Sherman, G. D., & Haidt, J. (e.d.). Vagal tone response during the

experience of social and nonsocial positive emotions. Unpublishedmanuscript, University of Virginia.

Pittinsky, T.L., Shih, M., & Ambady, N. (1999). Identity Adaptiveness: Affect Across

Multiple Identities. Journal of Social Issues, 55, 503-518.

Porges, S. W. (1995). Orienting in a defensive world: Mammalian modications of our

evolutionary heritage. A polyvagal theory. Psychophysiology, 32, 301–318.

Porges, S. W. (1997). Emotion: An evolutionary byproduct of the neural regulation of

the autonomic nervous system. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences,807, 62–77.




Porges, S. W. (1998). Love: An emergent property of the mammalian autonomic

nervous system. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 23, 837-861.

Porges, S.W. (2003). The polyvagal theory: phylogenetic contributions to socialbehavior. Physiology & Behavior, 79, 503-513.

Rechlin, T., Weis, M., Spitzer, A., & Kaschka, W. P. (1994). Are affective disordersassociated with alterations of heart rate variability? Journal of Affective

Disorders, 32, 271–275.

Rilling, J.K., Gutman, D.A., Zeh, T.R., Pagnoni, G., Berns, G.S., & Kitts, C.D. (2002). A

neural basis for social cooperation. Neuron 35, 395–405.

Rilling, J.K., Sanfey, A.G., Aronson, J.A., Nystrom, L.E., & Cohen, J.D. (2004).

Opposing BOLD responses to reciprocated and unreciprocated altruism inputative rewards pathways. NeuroReport, 15, 2539-2543.

Sobel, M. E. (1982). Asymptotic intervals for indirect effects in structural equationsmodels. In S. Leinhart (Ed.), Sociological methodology (pp. 290312). San

Francisco, CA: JosseyBass.

Trivers, R.L. (1971). The evolution of reciprocal altruism. Quarterly Review of Biology,

46, 35–57.

Zak, P.J. (in press). The neuroeconomics of trust. In R. Frantz (Ed.), Two minds,

intuition and analysis in the history of economic thought (pp. 123). London:

Springer.

Zak, P.J., Fakharb, A. (2006). Neuroactive hormones and interpersonal trust:

International evidence. Economics and Human Biology, 4, 412-429.

Zak, P.J., Kurzban, R., & Matzner, W.T. (2004). The Neurobiology of Trust. Annals of

the New York Academy of Sciences, 1032, 224-227.

APPENDIX

Appendix A:

- High Compassion Chinese and European American Male and Female Listeners

(Trustees)

High Compassion Chinese Male Listener (Trustee) #1

Topic of the story told :

•The talker was unsure of his future occupation. Originally,

he wanted to pursue a high prestige career as a doctor or as an academic. With further exploration though, herealized that these occupations were not for him.

Sitrin 15 ______________________________________________________________________________



Most dramatic part of the story (20 second video clip began after thispart of the story):

•The talker said, “I feel lost”.

High Compassion Chinese Male Listener (Trustee) #2

Topic of the story told:• The talker witnessed the results of a brawl outside of a

Safeway in which 3 individuals were stabbed. As the talker approached the scene, he observed one of the victims whowas lying in a pool of his own blood. As the talker recalls,the victim looked as if he was wishing that he was notgoing to die, continually repeating how much he loved hisbrother and parents.


• Talker thought about what he would do and say if he knew

he was about to die. High Compassion European American Male Listener (Trustee) #1

Topic of the story told:

• The talker described his freshman year in which he was

an engineer major. He did not like this major as he didn’tdo well and felt that he couldn’t stay up with the material.His parents felt that he just wasn’t trying hard enough, andthat if he didn’t major in engineering, he would have no

future. His friends too did not understand his dislike of themajor. Most dramatic part of the story (20 second video clip began after this

part of the story):

• Even though the talker realized that his parents may

nancially cut him off and that he may have to support

himself, he changed his major to Molecular and Cellular Biology.

High Compassion European American Listener (Trustee) #2


• The talker described a former long term relationship. Hefell out of love with the girl though she was still very much inlove with him.


• The talker described how the situation was difcult. She

was still in love and he had to gure out a way to break up

with her that would best enable her to deal with thesituation.

High Compassion Chinese Female Listener (Trustee) #1


• For insurance purposes, the talker’s grandfather put one

of his houses under his son’s name. Later, the grandpawanted to divide the value of the house among his 4children, his one son and three daughters. The son refused




even though his sisters were near bankruptcy. Thesesisters, the talker’s aunts, detested their brother, and

excluded him and his family from holiday gatherings. Most dramatic part of the story (20 second video clip began after this

part of the story):• The talker said that the hardest part is that she is unable

to see her cousins, who she regards as sisters. High Compassion Chinese Female Listener (Trustee) #2


• The talker’s parents were separated and she developed

a close relationship with her father. Her father began datingone of the talker’s church teachers. This teacher and thetalker did not get along as the teacher actively disliked thetalker, and had degraded her during class periods. Thefather was aware of this, yet nevertheless continued to datethe church teacher and inadvertently destroyed therelationship he had with his daughter.


• The talker said, “I felt betrayed [by my father].”

High Compassion European American Female #1


• In college, the talker dated a boy who she had a crush on

ever since middle school. The two dated over summer andfell in love. Most dramatic part of the story (20 second video clip began after this

part of the story):

• After the couple slept together for the rst time and while

the two were still lying in bed, the boy said, “I don’t think I

can be with you anymore.” High Compassion European American Female #2


• The talker described an uncle who passed away three

years ago. The talker did not see the uncle that much whilehe was alive, and his death had little impact on her life.Later though, when the talker was visiting her grandmother who had previously been taken care of by the deceaseduncle, the death of the uncle set in.


• The talker expected to see her uncle at her grandmother’s

house, but he wasn’t there.- Low Compassion Chinese and European American Male and Female Listeners

(Trustees)

Low Compassion Chinese Male Listener (Trustee) #1


• The talker had a very close relationship with his father.

The father was diagnosed with cancer and the son acted as

Sitrin 17 ______________________________________________________________________________



the caretaker for the year before the father passed away.Most dramatic part of the story (20 second video clip began after thispart of the story):

• The talker said, “He passed away last November.”

Low Compassion Chinese Male Listener (Trustee) #2 Topic of the story told:

• In his rst year at UC Berkeley, the talker received less

then a 2.0 GPA and was put on academic probation. In re

sponse, the talker temporarily raised his GPA, but then later began obsessively playing video games, the exact behavior that had given him the low GPA.


• The talker described how the rst few weeks of school

were alight. Then in July, he started slipping back into

playing video games. Low Compassion European American Male Listener (Trustee) #1


• The talker had a girlfriend of a year and three months.

The girlfriend went to school in Los Angeles and they arecurrently in a long distance relationship.

Dramatic part of the story (20 second video clip began after this partof the story):

• The talker said, “When I came to school I had to leave mygirlfriend.”

Low Compassion European American Male Listener (Trustee) #2


• The dad of a family who the talker was close to passed

away. Most dramatic part of the story (20 second video clip began after this

part of the story):

• The hardest part for the talker was that his own dad, a

close friend of the deceased and someone to whom the

talker looked up to, was very depressed. Low Compassion Chinese Female Listener (Trustee) #1


• The talker and her family had moved from China to

Singapore and then to the US. The talker’s mother, whowas clinically depressed, was not adjusting to life in the US.Consequently, she had a depressive episode. Previously, inSingapore, the mother had a similar episode.


•The talker was worried that her mother’s condition may

prompt her family to move back to Singapore. Low Compassion Chinese Female Listener (Trustee) #2


• Since childhood, the talker has wanted to go to the






The Culture of Emotion in America and China

Angela Huizi Sun

Research on emotion across cultures suggests that there are differences in theexperience, expression, and affective quality of Westerners and East Asians. I

hypothesize that cultural factors, such as tolerance for contradiction, and inde-pendent and interdependent self-concepts, are responsible for differences inpositivity and ambivalence in emotional experience, and different frequenciesof experience and expression. Participants at UC Berkeley (n = 97) and Bei- jing University (n = 95) completed a survey about their most frequently experi-enced emotions, reporting valence, experience, expression, and understand-ing of these emotions. I nd that in comparison with American participants,

Chinese participants report lower positivity, lower arousal, and lower frequencyin emotional experience and expression, and that these differences are close-

ly related to their propensity for dialectical thinking and their self-construals.

To what extent does culture inuence emotional experience? Both

lay concepts and stereotypes suggest that Westerners experience and ex-press more intense emotions than individuals from East Asian cultures. In ad-dition, Western cultures’ emphasis on happiness and positivity suggeststhat Westerners may experience more positive emotions than East Asians.

Do people from Western cultures have stronger, more positive, polarized emo-tional experiences than people from East Asian cultures? Do they experience and expressemotions more frequently in everyday life? Do Westerners differ from East Asians in theconception and understanding of their frequently experienced emotions? Indeed, cross-

cultural research suggests that Easterners and Westerners differ in their experience andexpression of emotion. In addition, research suggests that Westerners emphasize positiv-ity over balance and intensity over moderation. In this paper, I explore the extent to which

these differences occur in American and Chinese descriptions of frequent emotional experi-

ences. I also examine whether two well-established cultural theories relate to these culturaldifferences in emotional experience. In doing so, I hope to provide a deeper understanding

of why Westerners and East Asians differ so dramatically in their emotional experiences.I argue that the different emotional experiences that are associated with cul-

turally different self-construals (e.g., independent vs. interdependent) and reasoningstyles (e.g. dialectical vs. non-dialectical thinking) together reect a larger discrep-ancy in the role that emotions play in the lives of Westerners and Easterners. Whenasked to report and judge the valence, intensity, frequency of experience and ex-pression of their everyday emotions, American individuals (as prototypical represen-tatives of Western culture) should differ from Chinese individuals in ways that reect

the different culture of emotion valued and practiced in these respective countries.

Past Findings on Eastern and Western Emotions

Cross-cultural research has found signicant differences between Westerners



and East Asians in their experience, expression, and understanding of everyday emo-tions. Americans tend to emphasize positivity and intensity of experience in their emo-tional lives. When rating the frequency of experience of a variety of emotions, Americansreported more frequent experiences of positive emotions in comparison with Japanese

(Kitayama, Markus & Kurokawa, 2000). Americans also rated emotional events in their lives as being more pleasant than did Japanese (Mesquita & Karasawa, 2002). Other

research found that Americans report higher frequency and intensity of both positiveand negative emotional experiences in comparison with Chinese (Eid & Diener, 2001).

The tendency towards positivity and intensity appears to map onto Americans’attitudes towards affective experiences. In a study on ideal affect, American individuals

were found to prefer the experience of high-arousal, positive affective states (e.g., excite-ment) signicantly more than did Chinese individuals, who idealized low-arousal positive

states (e.g., calmness) (Tsai, Knutson, & Fung, 2006). These differences in ideal affectwere found early on in childhood as well; American preschoolers showed a preference for

high-arousal states, and were more likely to interpret such states as positive, in comparisonwith preschoolers in Taiwan (Tsai, Louie, Chen, & Uchida, 2007). East Asians and West-erners also seem to differ in the importance placed on emotions in recalling past events.When asked to recount the details of their earliest childhood memories, Americans weremuch more spontaneous in mentioning and elaborating upon emotional dimensions of their remembered experiences than Chinese, whose mentions of emotions were lessrelevant and signicant in their recall and understanding of past events (Wang, 2001).

In addition, a variety of studies have found that East Asians and Westerners

show different patterns of association between positive and negative emotions (e.g., Ki-

tayama et al., 2000; Bagozzi, Wong, & Yi, 1999). Whereas Americans tend to inverselyassociate the experience of positive and negative feelings, Japanese tend to associate

positive together with negative experiences (Kitayama et al., 2000). Another study foundthat Chinese and Koreans were more likely to report the experience of both positive andnegative affect in assessing the intensity and frequency of their emotional feelings. In

comparison, Americans tended to assess the experience of their positive and negativeaffect in bipolar ways (Bagozzi et al., 1999). It seems that while Americans tend to see

good and bad feelings as opposite and incompatible experiences, East Asians may con-ceptualize positive and negative affect as independent, co-occurring systems of affect.

Americans also report that they experience pleasant and unpleasant emotions

together less frequently than East Asians (Schimmack, Oishi, & Diener, 2002). In ad-dition, Westerners and East Asians differ in their affective appraisals of mixed, or am-bivalent emotional experiences. The reported experience of complex emotional events(involving the co-occurrence of positive and negative emotions) may be less comfortablefor American individuals than simple emotional experiences (Goetz, English, Peng &Wang, 2007). This differential pattern in the degree of felt discomfort towards ambiva-lent emotional states appears to be true when Americans are compared with those of Asian descent and acculturation as well. When exposed to mixed emotional appeals,Anglo Americans were shown to be less at ease with the experience of co-existingpositive and negative emotions than were Asian Americans (Williams & Aaker, 2002).

In summary, there are broad differences in the emotional experiences of Ameri-cans, and East Asians and those of Asian descent. While Americans tend to emphasizeand value the frequent experience and expression of positive emotions, East Asianstend to value and exhibit more balance and moderation in the frequency and inten-sity of their experiences and expressions. In addition, Westerners consistently exhibit

Sun 21 ______________________________________________________________________________



dichotomy or bipolarity in their orientation towards emotional categories, while EastAsians tend to accept the coexistence of contradictory emotions in affective experience.

Cultural Epistemologies and Self-Concepts

What is so different about Western and East Asian cultures that produce thesebroad differences in emotional experience? Researchers have proposed two broad the-oretical frameworks for understanding differences in Western and East Asian culture: di-alectical vs. non-dialectical thinking, and independent vs. interdependent self-construals. Dialecticism. East Asian thinking has been described as dialectical in na-ture, while Western thinking has been described as linear and analytical (Peng &Nisbett, 1999). Dialecticism is characterized by a holistic worldview and a pro-pensity to recognize and accept contradictory elements in an object, while West-ern, nondialectical thinking, is characterized by noncontradiction and polarization.

Dialectical thinking focuses on the interrelatedness of all things and re-ects a propensity for the recognition and acceptance of duality (Peng & Nisbett,

1999). In Chinese philosophical and lay thought, dialectical thinking is illustrated by

three principles: 1) change, 2) contradiction, and 3) relationship or holism. The prin-ciple of change posits that reality is dynamic and its underlying concepts constantlyin ux. The uidity of reality in Chinese philosophical thought gives rise to a system

of assumptions in constant conict. This is the principle of contradiction, under which

objects or events can have dual, often opposing natures. The third principle, holism,arises from the assumption that reality is relative, that truth is context-dependent.

Objects and events are only meaningful, and moreover can be dichotomous in na-ture, when seen as part of a larger picture. This is the essence of dialectical thinking.Western, nondialectical thinking, characterized as linear, analytical, and syn-

thetic, is thought to be derivative of ancient Greek philosophies (e.g., Peng & Nisbett,1999; Hansen, 1995). In particular, Aristotelian laws of formal logic have been theorized

as highly inuential on the cognitive orientations of the modern Westerner. Aristotelian

logic emphasizes three different laws: 1) identity, 2) noncontradiction, and 3) the exclud-ed middle. The law of identity states that everything what it is, and cannot be anythingelse. This is connected to the next law, noncontradiction, which holds that it is impossi-ble for something to be both itself and not-itself; for example, if one is happy, one cannot

also logically be not happy. Finally, the law of the excluded middle states that anythingis either itself or not itself, either true or false; but it is not both. In this model of thought, if

given two contradictory statements, the veracity of one statement must mean the falsityof the other; there is no middle way in which the two can coexist (Peng & Nisbett, 1999).

This tradition of noncontradiction in Western thought stands in sharp con-trast to the propensity to accept duality that is inherent in dialectical thinking. For Westerners, contradictions or dualities remain temporary and are resolved throughthe negation of opposing elements or through the integration of dichotomous ele-ments to form a new thesis. They are more likely to differentiate an object from itsenvironment, and based on their behavior, infer xed attributes and categorize it (Peng

& Nisbett, 1999). They may be less accepting of the coexistence of seeming oppo-sites and tend to be more polarized in their appraisals; something is either positive or

negative--but not both. Ultimately the goal is to have a single, essentialized resolutionthat can be used in logical proofs in order to establish a clear, stable, and differenti-ated understanding of the world (Hansen, 1995). The de/construction of reality in West

Culture of Emotion22 ______________________________________________________________________________



ern thought thus rests upon xed, noncontradictory attributes in its building blocks.

Dialectically oriented thinkers, on the other hand, are more likely to ac-cept the presence of both positive and negative elements in an object. Theyare more likely to take a compromising or mediating approach to resolve so-

cial and logical contradictions, and tend to make holistic evaluations about anobject with attention to the mercurial nature of context (Peng & Nisbett, 1999).

These two different cognitive styles result in different orientations and attitudestowards contradictions in daily life and in self-views. Individuals in Western cultures have

been shown to be uncomfortable when faced with incongruous or opposing realities and aremotivated to resolve perceived conicts between incoming information in order to reduce

uncertainty and attitudinal ambiguity towards an object or event (Festinger, 1957). Althoughattitudes towards objects can be complex, they are generally conceptualized in scientic

and lay thought as bipolar or dichotomous in nature, and there is a cognitive preferencefor noncontradictory elements (Spencer-Rodgers et al., 2004; Williams & Aaker, 2002).

Individuals in East Asian cultures, however, hold much more ambivalent, di-chotomous attitudes towards objects, and consistently show higher tolerance for contra-dictions in daily life and in their self-views (Peng & Nisbett, 1999; Spencer-Rodgers et al.,

2004). In four studies on self-esteem and well-being, East Asians, more than European

Americans and individuals of other ethnicities, held simultaneously positive and negativeviews of the self, described themselves in evaluatively contradictory terms, and exhibitedhigher self-concept instability. In comparison, Western individuals tended to hold more

polarized self-views, as reected by the lower ratio of positive to negative self-evaluations.

The tendency to accept or reject duality in daily life and in self-concept

should also affect the emotional experiences of dialectical vs. nondialectical think-ers, especially the experience of ambivalent emotions. While nondialectical think-ing should reect a preference for clearly dened and polarized emotional experi-ences (either positive or negative), the emotional lives of dialectical thinkers shouldreect a higher propensity for ambivalence (both positive and negative). In addi-tion the polarization of emotional experiences should be towards positivity, as thereis a cultural valuation of positive self-regard (Heine, Lehman, Markus & Kitayama,1999). We would expect that, compared with East Asian individuals, Western in-dividuals would report more pleasant emotions and higher positivity in everyday life.

The same holistic epistemology that inuences East Asian’s ambivalence to-

wards the self also inuences the way East Asians see themselves in relation to others.As a classic Daoist text, the Dao De Jing (attributed to the philosopher Lao-zi) says,

“When the people of the world all know beauty as beauty, there arises the recognition

of ugliness; when they all know the good as good, there arises the recognition of evil.

And so, being and non-being produce each other” (deBary & Bloom, 1999, p. 80). Onlyby labeling something as good or beautiful do the mental concepts and categorizationsof evil and ugly arise. Although contradictory or oppositional in nature, one would notexist without the other. This understanding of mutual interdependency exemplies the

tradition of Chinese epistemology in which nothing exist as objective, isolated catego-ries free of inuence, and there is no need to be any one thing (Zhuang-zi). The ten-

dency to see objects in relation to context, as well as social proscriptions that empha-size harmony between individuals, leads to a construction of self-other relations in EastAsians that emphasizes interdependence. In the west, however, the apotheosis of indi-vidualism has produced a much more autonomous construction of self-other relations. Independent and Interdependent Self-Construals. In addition to the dialectical

Sun 23 ______________________________________________________________________________



tolerance for contradiction, East Asians have been shown to differ from Westerners in their conceptualization of self. That is, while American individuals tend to see the self as inde-pendent and distinct from the outside world and others, East Asians conceptualize the self as interdependent and linked to relationships and context around them. Consequentially,

Westerners value and are motivated to pursue and achieve individual goals, realize per-sonal attributes, and express the individual self. East Asian individuals, on the other hand,are characterized as having interdependent self-construals (e.g., Triandis, 1989; Markus &

Kitayama, 1991). They tend to see themselves as embedded within a larger social frame-work and to interpret themselves and their actions in terms of others and the social context.

These differences in self-other relations can shape an individual’s emotionalexperiences in many ways. Since emotions are important in appraising social eventsand interactions, as well as provide the impetus for subsequent social actions, differentself-other relations should produce different kinds of emotional experiences (Markus &Kitayama, 1991). Individuals who grow up in independent societies, socialized from

a young age to be unique and self-sufcient, to express and validate personal attri-butes, and to see the self as separated from the social context, are more likely to em-phasize and express ego-focused emotions (e.g., joy, anger) which highlights the inde-pendence of the individual. In comparison, interdependent individuals, socialized from

a young age to value and promote in-group harmony and stability, are more likely tovalue and express other-focused emotions (e.g., sympathy). This emphasis on lessautonomous expressions of the self may result in inhibition and ambivalence in emo-tions. In order to maintain and reinforce a self-concept that is engaged or disengaged

with others, individuals from independent and interdependent societies will follow dif-

ferent norms for emotional experience and expression (Markus & Kitayama, 1991).The different emotion goals for independent and interdependent individuals is whywe would expect reports of more frequent experience, self-expression, and other expressionfrom Americans, in comparison with Chinese, for whom the experience and expression of personal feelings is neither relevant to the maintenance of the social relations nor encouraged.

Dialecticism, Independence and Interdependence in Understanding Differences in

Emotional Lives

Researchers have employed dialecticism as an epistemological framework to

explain differences in the valence and intensity of emotional experiences, as well asco-occurrence of positive and negative affect. Similarly, independent versus interdepen-dent self-construals have been associated with differences in the frequency of experi-ence and expression of emotions. Kitayama and colleagues (2000), for example, nd

that the reported frequency of positive emotions was higher for interpersonally engagedemotions (e.g., friendliness) in Japan, and higher for interpersonally disengaged emo-tions (e.g., pride) in the US, suggesting a link between feeling good and feeling interde-pendent in Japan, and a link between feeling good and feeling independent in the US.

While the nding that Westerners and East Asians have different patterns of

association between positive and negative affect has been interpreted in the context

of independent and interdependent self-concepts (e.g., Kitayama et al., 2000; Bagozziet al., 1999), it has been more directly linked to dialectical thinking styles (Schimmacket al., 2002). In examining these patterns across dialectical collectivistic cultures, non-

dialectical collectivistic cultures, and individualistic cultures, the frequent co-experienceof pleasant and unpleasant feelings can be found most strongly in dialectical and col




lectivistic cultures, while the perception of positive and negative emotions to be categori-cal opposites is characteristic of non-dialectical, individualistic cultures (Schimmack etal., 2002). This pattern exists as well in the way Chinese and Americans understandsimple and mixed emotional events. Chinese participants report a higher frequency

of mixed emotional experiences than did American participants, a difference that wasmediated by dialecticism. In addition, their propensity for tolerating contradictions

lead them to be more accepting of and comfortable with the coexistence of evalua-tive opposites and simultaneous experience of affective opposites (Goetz et al., 2007).

Thus far, the research has been on experiences with multiple emotions. This study,however, looks at the mental representation of emotion valence, and is interested in testingwhether or not dialecticism can affect the understanding and experience of single emotions.

In summary, independent self-construals, together with a nondialectical style of

thinking, reect a Western worldview of autonomy, differentiation, and noncontradiction

that traces back to Greek philosophies and systems of logic. Emotions, as embedded in acognitive and social framework of dichotomies, are clearly dened and conceptualized in

oppositional terms. Emotions are more salient and intense in everyday experiences, andmore often expressed as a reection of the individual. Interdependent self-construals and

dialectical styles of thinking, on the other hand, together inform an Eastern worldview of ho-lism, mutual inuence, and coexistence of opposites, which has roots in philosophies such

as Confucianism and Daoism. Emotions in experience and expression are more likely tobe inuenced by cultural imperatives for harmony and moderation and be less polarized.

In the present study, I compare the frequent emotional experiences of Ameri-can and Chinese undergraduate students. Participants listed 8 emotions that they fre-

quently experience in daily life and were asked to rate those emotions on dimensions of affective valence, frequencies of experience and expression, and provide descriptionsof subjective experience. I hope to look at cross-cultural similarities and differences

in frequently experienced emotions as reported by American and Chinese individuals.I hypothesized that when asked to talk about experiences of fre-

quent emotions, Chinese, compared with Americans, will rate their emotionsas less positive, see these emotions as more ambivalent, and report lower-arousal emotions. In addition, I hypothesized that Chinese will report fewer

experiences and expressions by themselves and others in comparison with Americans.I propose that dialecticism can be linked to differences in the valence and in-

tensity of reported affective experiences, while independent and interdependent self-construals can be linked to differences in reported frequencies of experience andexpression of emotion. Since a tendency towards moderation and tolerance for contra-diction is embodied by dialectical thinking styles, the positivity, ambivalence, and inten-sity of emotions should be signicantly correlated with measures of dialecticism. The

frequency of experience and expression should be signicantly correlated with mea-sures of independence and interdependence, as culturally socialized self-concepts of-ten dictate the norms for experiencing and expressing emotions in the public sphere.

In addition, the cultural valuation of moderation in Chinese individuals should

not only produce a difference in the valence and intensity of reported emotions, but also

inuence the frequency of the typology of emotions reported. That is, we would expectto see that, following the cultural imperative for strong, positive affect, Americans wouldreport more positive and higher-arousal emotions (e.g., joy, excitement), while Chi-nese would report more neutral-valence and low-arousal emotions (e.g., calm, neutral).

Sun 25 ______________________________________________________________________________



METHOD

American and Chinese participants completed a survey on their 8 most frequently experienced emotions. I was interested in how va-

lence, arousal, experience, and expression might differ between the twopopulations based on cultural inuences or the type of emotion discussed.

Participants

Participants

Participants were 97 undergraduate students at the University of California,Berkeley (28 men, 68 women, 1 unreported), and 95 undergraduate students at theBeijing University (45 men, 50 women), all of whom received credit for their participa-tion. Participants from Berkeley ranged from 18 to 46 years of age, with the majority of participants between ages 18 and 22. Participants from Beijing ranged from 18 to 23years of age. Participants from Berkeley identied themselves as approximately 36%

Caucasian, 34% East Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean), 11% Hispanic/Latino (Mexi-can, Other Latino), 7% Southeast Asian (Filipino, SE Asian), 5% Other Asian (Indian,

Other Asian), 2% African American, and 4% other. Participants from Beijing were all

native Chinese.

Questionnaires

As part of a large packet of questionnaires, participants were asked to listeight emotions that they felt most frequently in their daily life and answer questionsabout them. Participants also lled out individual difference measures relevant to gen-eral emotionality, personality, and cultural values, and provided basic demographic in-formation. The ve measures were the Singelis Self-Construal Scale (Singelis, 1994),

the Dialectical Self Scale (Spencer-Rodgers et al., 2007), the Big Five PersonalityInventory, the Future Time Perspective Scale, and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale

(Rosenberg, 1965). Only the Singelis and the Dialectical Self Scale will be discussedhere, as results based on the other measures were not consistent. Emotion Listing . For each emotion listed, open-ended questions asked partici-

pants to provide descriptions on aspects of interest and relevance to this study. Partici-pants were asked to describe the emotion (“How would you describe this feeling to some-one who has not experienced it before?”), the manner of expression (“How do you express

this emotion?”), and others’ reactions to their expression (“How do others react when you

express this emotion?”). Participants were also asked to describe when they usually ex-perienced the emotion (“When do you tend to feel this emotion?”), and the antecedents

and consequents of the emotions (“What tends to happen right before/after you feel this

emotion?”). Finally, participants rated the valence and frequencies of experience, expres-sion, and others’ expression of the emotion, on 7-point Likert scales. They were giventhe questions “How pleasant is this emotion?” (1 = not at all, 7 = very positive), “How un-

pleasant is this emotion?” (1 = not at all, 7 = very negative), and “How often do you feel thisemotion in your daily life,” “How often do you express this emotion in your daily life,” “How

often do other people express this emotion in their daily life?” (1 = not at all, 7 = very often).Independent & Interdependent Self-Construals. Self-construals were mea-

sured using the Singelis Self-Construal Scale (SCS; Singelis, 1994). The SCS is a




24-item measure of how strongly an individual sees him or herself as independent(separate and unique) or interdependent (connectedness to others). This measure wasincluded to verify the expectation that participants from the American sample would re-ect stronger independent self-construals and that participants from the Chinese sample

would reect stronger interdependent self-construals. Participants rated their agreementon a 7-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree) with independent state-ments (i.e. “Being able to take care of myself is a primary concern for me”) and interde-pendent statements (i.e. “It is important for me to maintain harmony within my group”).

Dialecticism. Dialecticism in reasoning was measured using the Dialectical Self Scale (DSS). The DSS is a 32-item measure of an individual’s disposition towards dialec-tical thinking, currently in development (Spencer-Rodgers et al., 2007). The scale used inthis survey was meant to assess dialectical thinking in an individual’s perception of him- or herself. Like the SCS, the DSS was included to verify previous ndings that Chinese are

more dialectical in thinking than Americans. Participants rate their agreement on a 7-pointscale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree) with statements indicative of dialecticalthinking (i.e. “When I hear two sides of an argument I often agree with both”) and statements

indicative of non-dialectical thinking (i.e. “I often nd that things will contradict each other”).

Emotion Coding . As we are interested in participants’ perceptions of fre-quently felt emotions and how they might differ across cultures in experience andexpression, we focused on the types of emotions they listed and how they de-scribed those emotions. We wanted to look at the frequency with which certain emo-tions were listed, the positivity and negativity of the corresponding descriptions, andhow often participants described their emotions in somatic terms. Coders’ under-

standing of Chinese and English languages ranged from high to native uency. Emotion Categorization. A list of discrete items was compiled from the Americanand Chinese samples of reported emotion words (in their native language) and groupedsubjectively into basic emotion categories (i.e. Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, Surprise) fol-lowing the basic categories established by Shaver and colleagues (Shaver et al., 1987)and Ekman (1984). Additional categories were made for positive emotion categories(e.g., pride, love), self-conscious emotions (e.g., shame, awkward), and for unique emo-tions (e.g., compassion/sympathy, relief). Categories were also created for items that

were neutral or mixed in emotion valence, and for items that merited their own categoriesdue to frequency of occurrence (e.g., stress, fatigue, boredom). One last category was

created for emotion words that didn’t t into any of the previous categories. Non-emotionitems were discarded. The nal set of categories was Joy, Sadness, Anger, Love, Sympa-thy/Compassion, Fear, C onfusion, Surprise, Shame/Guilt, Awkward, Pride/Con-dence, Neutral, Conicted, Stress/Agitation, Relief, Boredom, Tired/Fatigued, Cognitive

Appraisals, and Unknown. A complete list of category items is available in Appendix A.The list of discrete items, excluding non-emotions, was then coded

into the established categories by a team of two coders. Reliability was calcu-lated on the initial coding using Cohen’s Kappa, with k = 0.84. Disagreements thatoccurred were mostly over unfamiliar words in either language (which were re-solved in a second round of coding) or over compound words from the Chinese

sample, for which disagreements occurred over what the primary emotion was. Emotion Valence & Arousal . An independent team of four coders took the samelist of emotion items and categorized them as pleasant, unpleasant, mixed, or neutral inexperience. They also rated each emotion on the level of arousal, using a 5-point Likertscale (1 = low, 5 = high). The coders were split into teams of two, each team coding half of

Sun 27 ______________________________________________________________________________



the English items and half of the Chinese items. To assess reliability, the teams overlappedon approximately 10% of the items. For emotion categorization, Cronbach’s alphas within

teams were initially 0.84 and 0.87, respectively, and 0.65 on overlapping items. Agreementrose to 100% after discussion on the disagreements. For emotion arousal ratings, Cron-

bach’s alphas within teams were 0.84 and 0.86, respectively, and 0.94 on overlapping items. Emotion Description. The same four coders coded participants’ descrip-tions of the emotions for the positivity and negativity of the descriptions. The cod-ers were in the same teams of two, each team coding different parts of both theChinese and English data sets. To assess interrater reliability, the coders over-lapped entirely within teams and on approximately 20% of the descriptions between

teams. Cronbach’s alphas within teams for description positivity were 0.96 and0.93, respectively, and 0.97 on overlapping items. Cronbach’s alphas within teamsfor description negativity were 0.92 and 0.90, respectively, and 0.96 on overlap-ping items. Reliabilities were assessed using codings for all participant descriptions.

RESULTS

Analyses of Data Set and Coded Data

Chi-squared tests were conducted on the 20 emotion term categories tocompare emotion category frequencies of the American and Chinese samples. Asummary of emotion category frequencies can be found in Table 1. The two sam-ples were found to be signicantly different on the number of reported emotions

in each category, X² (19, N = 1536) = 120.65, p = 0.05. Additional chi-squared testswere conducted after removing emotion terms with fewer than 10 reported, andagain there were signicant differences in frequency between the two groups, X² (13,N =1467) = 116.33, p = 0.05. Emotion items in the joy, anger, love, stress, andtired categories came up the most for American participants, while items in the sad-ness, neutral, and boredom categories came up the most for Chinese participants.

Comparisons were also made looking at the number of emotions that werein the unknown, discard, and originally blank categories only, and again there was asignicant difference between the frequencies of the American and Chinese samples,

X² (2, N = 145) = 24.51, p = 0.05. The Chinese sample had twice as many blanks in

the survey as the Americans and had almost forty times as many items that were con-sidered not to be emotions or were discarded for having more than one emotion term.

As further investigation into possible cultural differences in the valence of ev-eryday emotionality, I hypothesized that American participants would report more ‘pleas-ant’ emotions, while Chinese participants would report more ‘unpleasant,’ ‘mixed,’ and

‘neutral’ emotions. To test these hypotheses, chi-squared tests were performed on the

valence of participants’ eight emotions (as coded independently) to compare frequen-cies, with a second round of analyses to investigate possible covariates. The two sam-ples differed signicantly in the number of ‘pleasant’ emotions, X² (1, N = 489) = 10.31,

p = 0.00. While 37% of American (valid) emotions were pleasant, only 30% of Chinese

(valid) emotions were considered so. There were no differences for unpleasant or mixedemotions (around 57-60%, and 3-4%, respectively). However, the Chinese sample men-tioned twice as many neutral emotions (5.2%) than Americans (2.4%), X² (1, N = 216)= 24.00, p = 0.00. A summary of valence category frequencies is displayed in Table 2.




Statistical Tests of Difference on Participant Ratings

I conducted repeated measures analyses of variance (ANOVAs) to com-pare average ratings across the eight emotions, which would account for within-sub-

ject variation. All ratings were tested initially for main group effects, with Culture andGender as the between-subjects factor on all analyses. All hypotheses were tested asecond time using dialecticism, independence, and interdependence as covariates tosee whether or not any of these dimensions, in particular dialecticism, independence/

interdependence, would be accountable for any main effects. Unless otherwise noted,gender was not revealed to be a signicant factor. All results can be found in Table 3.

Valence and Ambivalence.

I hypothesized that there would be cultural differences in the positivity and

negativity of everyday emotions. Specically, I predicted that American participants, in

contrast with Chinese participants, would give 1) higher positivity ratings overall, and2) lower negativity ratings overall. In addition, I hypothesized that Chinese participants

would exhibit higher ambivalence in emotionality in general. Positivity Ratings. Repeated measures ANOVA showed that there wasa marginal difference between cultures on positivity ratings, F (1, 163) = 3.76, p= 0.06. Consistent with my hypothesis, Americans (M = 3.88) rated all emotionsslightly more positively than did Chinese (M = 3.60). With dialecticism as a covari-ate, the culture effect becomes nonsignicant. Dialecticism was a signicant covari-

ate at F (1, 160) = 14.12, p = 0.00, as was independence, which was marginally sig-nicant at F (1, 160) = 3.28, p = 0.07. An investigation into the relationship betweenthese two covariates and the positivity of each emotion showed that in general, thedialecticism was negatively correlated, while independence was positively correlated. Negativity Ratings. Contrary to my hypothesis, culture was not signicantly related

to negativity. However, dialecticism had a signicant effect again when included as covariates

in the analyses at F (1, 160) = 13.57, p= 0.00. Independence was marginally signicant as a

covariate as well,F (1, 160) = 3.51, p= 0.06. In general dialecticism was positively correlated

with the negativity ratings of each emotion, while independence was positively correlated. Ambivalence Ratings. An ambivalence rating was generated for each report-

ed emotion from positivity and negativity ratings using the Gradual Threshold Model(GTM) method (Priester & Petty, 1996). Contrary to my hypothesis, there were no sig-nicant differences across cultures on ambivalence ratings, although the Chinese par -ticipants (M = 1.80) did show means in the right direction compared with means fromthe American participants (M = 1.38). There was a signicant gender effect, F (1, 163)= 5.60, p = 0.02, with men (M = 1.96) giving more ambivalent ratings than women(M = 1.22). There was only a marginal interaction between culture and gender, F (1,163) = 2.15, p = 0.14. Interdependence was the only signicant covariate, F (1, 160)= 11.55, p = 0.00. In general it has a negative relationship with ambivalence ratings.

Experience and Expression

I also hypothesized that there would be cultural differences in the fre-quency of experience and expression of everyday emotions, and that there wouldbe cultural differences in participants’ judgments of how frequently others expressed

Sun 29 ______________________________________________________________________________



these everyday emotions, as well. Specically, I predicted that American partici-pants would report higher frequencies of experience and expression in comparisonwith Chinese participants, and that American participants would judge that others ex-pressed emotions more frequently than in comparison with Chinese participants.

Frequency of Experience Ratings. Consistent with my hypothesis, therewas a marginal difference between cultures on frequency of experience ratings,F (1, 159) = 3.51, p = 0.06. The Chinese participants (M = 4.12) reported they expe-rienced their emotions less than the American participants (M = 4.34). Gender wasalso a signicant factor, F (1, 159) = 5.11, p = 0.03. Women (M = 4.37) rated fre-quency of experience of all emotions higher than men (M = 4.10). Dialecticismhad no effects, but independence was a signicant covariate, F (1, 158) = 5.29, p = 0.02, although it did not account for the culture and gender effects. In general it

had a positive relationship with the frequency of experience ratings of all emotions. Frequency of Expression and Others’ Expression Ratings. For frequencyof expression, culture was marginally signicant as a between-subjects factor, F (1,162) = 3.66, p = 0.06, while gender was signicant at F (1, 162) = 4.21, p = 0.04.The Chinese sample (M = 3.74) on average rated frequency of expressions low-er than the American sample (M = 3.97). Women (M = 3.98) on average rated fre-quency of expression higher than men (M = 3.73). Independence was a signicant

covariate in the frequency of expression, F (1, 159) = 8.77, p = 0.00, in general cor-relating positively with the frequency of expression ratings of each emotion. Gen-der continues to be signicant, while the slight culture effect became nonsignicant.

Consistent with my hypothesis, culture had a signicant effect on frequency of

others’ expression at F (1, 162) = 5.49, p = 0.02. The Chinese sample (M = 3.65) on aver-age rated frequency of others’ expression of all emotions lower than the American sam-ple (M = 3.92). Interdependence was a signicant covariate, F (1, 161) = 4.92, p = 0.03.

Statistical Tests of Difference on Coded Data

I hypothesized that American participants would report higher-arousal emo-tions than Chinese participants in assessing frequent emotions. I also hypothesized

that there would be cultural differences in the positivity and negativity of the descrip-tions each participant provided for the emotions they listed. Specically, I predicted

that emotion descriptions from the American sample would contain more positiv-ity and less negativity overall, in comparison with the Chinese sample. Repeatedmeasures ANOVAs (with culture and gender as between-subjects factors) were per-formed on the description positivity, negativity, and emotion arousal ratings, witha second round of analyses to investigate possible covariates (such as dialecticism,independence, and interdependence) to see whether or not any, in particular dialecti-cism, would be accountable for any main effects. All results can be found in Table 3.

Arousal . There was a signicant effect of culture on average arous-al of reported emotions, F (1, 149) = 5.64, p = 0.02. As expected, the Chi-nese sample (M = 3.12) on average reported lower-arousal emotions

than did the American sample (M = 3.28). Dialecticism was a signicantcovariate, F (1, 148) = 8.51, p = 0.00, although it does not account for the culture effect. Description Positivity. Culture was a signicant between-subjects fac-tor, F (1, 159) = 15.40, p = 0.00. The American sample (M = 2.85) on average hadmore positive descriptions than the Chinese sample (M = 2.41). Dialecticism was






nitive reasoning tendencies and their self-concepts seem to directly inuence how fre-quent emotions are experienced, expressed, and thought about in daily life. Emotions,as dened by the socio-functional approach, are “multi-channeled responses that enable

the individual to respond adaptively to social problems and take advantage of social op-

portunities in the context of ongoing interactions” (Keltner & Kring, 1998, p. 321). Theseresponses help establish, maintain, or disrupt relations between an individual and hisinternal or external environment in matters of signicance (Campos, Campos, & Barrett,

1989). Emotions are meaningful social processes that serve a variety of functions in an in-dividual’s understanding and regulation of the self, as well as in relation to the social world.

Emotions help navigate our social interactions because they are sourcesof socially relevant information, such as the status of an ongoing relation, others’ in-tentions, orientations, internal states and dispositions, as well as one’s own sub-

jective orientation towards signicant objects or events in the environment (Kelt-ner & Kring, 1998). Our perception and understanding of our subjective feelingsand intentions often motivate our subsequent actions or reactions (Lazarus, 1991).

However, emotions, as social processes, are also embedded in culturalframeworks (Markus & Kitayama, 1994). Difference in self-construals and cogni-tive epistemologies may be affecting the way social functions of emotions are ap-plied in an individual’s relations to the self and the world, and thus produce the dif-ferences we nd in emotional valence, arousal, experience, and expression.

In Western, independent societies, emotions play an important role in our rela-tionships with the outside world because they provide insights into both the self and others.The social experience is dened by the emotions of the person having the experience,

and in turn the person is reected by the emotions he feels or displays. Since there is acultural imperative for Western individuals to be happy, their self-views and emotions mustnaturally reect a higher degree of positivity. The dependency upon emotions to help in-terpret and navigate social interaction also fosters emotional expressiveness in Western-ers. “The expression of feeling is the medium of communication between the self and the

social order. To root all meaningful social experience in the self is, from one point of view,an afrmation of the self and of the importance of the individual ” (Heins Potter, 1988, p.183;

italics added). Emotions in private and social life, being so closely connected with how theself is constructed and related to others, must be unambiguous and clearly communicable.

Emotions in the west are also considered as a legitimate basis for social actions.

When the emotions directly relevant to a social interaction or relationship change, it is en-tirely appropriate for the individual to effect change on the relationship. For example, feel-ings of love are emotional prerequisites to entering a marriage, but when love is no longer present, it is considered acceptable to dissolve the marriage. Since emotions play a largerole in driving action, emotional reactions and attitudes are usually intense and polarized.

The subjective feelings of individuals from interdependent cultures, in contrast,are often thought of as being of much less relevance to social interactions and of lessimportance. Emotions are a trivial part of experience and of interest only to the per-son who feels them. The cultural imperative for harmony and stability in a continuoussocial order makes it such that personal feeling is not a legitimate rationale for socially

signicant actions (Heins Potter, 1988). As a result, emotions do not have the samefunctions of providing information about the behavior of others as it does in the West.

In addition, emotions are not salient elements in dening and understanding

the self. Wang (2001) observed that in recalling the earliest childhood memory, Chineseindividuals are much less likely to mention the self as having emotional experiences,




resulting in autobiographical narratives that ascribe much less emotion (especially posi-tive ones) to the self than did narratives from American individuals. Attention to thesocial framework with which the individual is intertwined makes it such that emotionsin daily life must follow dialectical principles for moderation and balance in expression

and self-afrmation in both private and public life. “For the Chinese, emotions are pres-ent in individuals, and the emotions may bear a relationship to social experience, butthe emotions are concomitant phenomena in social life, not fundamental ones. Theyare logically secondary. The Chinese do not locate signicance in the connection be-tween the emotions, the self, and the social order. Emotion is characteristic of the in-dividual, but it is not a signicant aspect of the person” (Heins Potter, 1988, p. 186-7).

In correspondence with these different roles of emotions in daily life, this study

found that when asked to talk and think about their most frequently experienced emotions,Americans, as independent, nondialectical individuals, report a greater number of pleasantemotions, higher positivity and intensity, and consider themselves and others to be more ex-pressive. In comparison, Chinese, as interdependent, dialectical individuals, do not empha-size pleasant emotions and exhibit more temperance in emotional intensity and expression.

A cursory look at the emotion categories broken down by emotion shows a generaltendency for American participants to report more positive emotions (e.g., joy) for the 6th,7th, and 8th emotions. It would seem that when pushed to think past the basic emotions that

come to mind (e.g., happy, sad, anger), Americans tended to list positive emotions as beingfrequent in their everyday life. Chinese participants, on the other hand, listed signicantly

more neutral emotions than did American participants, giving support to the suppositionthat Chinese participants would exhibit more moderation and balance in frequent emotions.

Interpretation of Ambivalence Findings

While the tendency to attend holistically to an object that is exhibited by dia-lectical thinkers led me to think that the Chinese participants would have higher am-bivalence in their frequent emotions, they did not actually differ signicantly from Amer -icans. What may be happening is that in past studies, participants have only beengiven opposing statements or objects to judge. The ambivalent attitudes from EastAsian individuals that result in those studies may reect either dialectical thinkers’ tol-erance and acceptance when confronted with duality and contradiction, or a general

acquiescence effect. When asked to create and judge their own evaluative objects asI did in this study, however, Chinese individuals are exhibiting more moderation and

balance in not only the items they choose to report as reective of their frequent emo -tional experiences, but also in the affective ratings they provide about these emotions.

Rather than higher ambivalence, which would require higher positivity andnegativity ratings in the formula we have employed here, Chinese individuals may befollowing cultural norms for moderation by not emphasizing the positive and nega-tive aspects of their frequent emotional experiences to the same extent as Ameri-can participants are, producing instead more neutrality rather than ambivalence.

The lower positivity and arousal in Chinese participants’ frequent emo-

tions, as well as the link to dialecticism, can then be reinterpreted as the tendencyto be more holistic in attending to their emotional states, and to be less likely to fo-cus or promote positivity over negativity, high-arousal over low-arousal emotions.The balance and moderation valued and exhibited by Chinese participants, pairedwith American participants’ tendencies to promote and value positivity and inten

Sun 33 ______________________________________________________________________________



sity, together account for these different patterns in emotion valence and intensity.

Neutrality and Boredom in Emotional Life

American culture values high-arousal, positive affects and idealizes indi-viduality and self-expression, while Chinese culture values low-arousal affects andmoderation in emotional expressivity (e.g., Tsai et al. 2006; Bond, 1991). To the ex-tent that these different patterns of social emphasis on emotional experience and ex-pressivity can be reected in participants’ self-reported emotion terms (by denition a

form of self-expression familiar to Westerners), we should expect to nd that Chinese

participants are likely to report a higher number of emotion terms that are neutral or moderate in valence, arousal, and expressivity. This, indeed, is what we nd, in the

categories of “neutral/calm” and “boredom,” the members of which were kept in consid-eration as ‘emotions’ solely because Chinese participants reported so many of them.

This nding seems to reect important differences in the conceptualization and

understanding of emotion, especially when it comes to what an emotion is. “Everybody

knows what an emotion is, until asked to give a denition” (Fehr & Russell, 1984, p. 464).

Even now researchers have not come to an agreement on how to dene ‘emotion.’ As a

“fuzzy” category (Rosch & Lloyd, 1978), emotion can encompass a variety of members,

the “fuzzier” (less prototypical) of which can differ across populations depending on what

the ‘necessary and sufcient’ features of an emotion are. Research on cross-cultural emo-tions using prototype theory (Shaver, Wu, & Shwartz, 1992) has focused on the possibilityof different forms of emotion prototypes, specialized emotion concepts, and the emphasis,

enhancement, distortion, or suppression of certain emotions. The use of prototype theory isvery useful in looking at and understanding cross-cultural variations in emotion vocabulary.Basic emotions with similar patterns of appraisal (e.g., happy, sad) exist as

words and concepts across various cultures no matter how different the cultural inu-ence. How they are represented, enhanced, distorted, suppressed, however, may varysignicantly due to differing cultural values (Shaver et al., 1992). In English, for ex-ample, we would not typically consider terms such as “calm,” “neutral,” “peaceful” as

representative of ‘emotions,’ fuzzy categories that they are, but the frequency with which

they appear in Chinese participants’ reports might indicate the mental representation of these low-arousal, neutral-valence terms as ‘emotions’ in the Chinese emotion taxono-

my, not to mention a signicant amount of affective moderation in their emotional lives.Similarly, Chinese participants seem to hypercognize various

states of boredom. Whereas the English members of this particular cat-egory were merely different forms of the word: bored, boredom, boring, pas-sive/bored, Chinese participants reported no fewer than ve different terms.

Insofar as cultures are expected to be similar in the mental organization of emotion

category members (e.g., happy, sad) and vary in ‘emotions’ that are emphasized or sup-pressed (Shaver et al, 1992), it would seem that while American and Chinese are similar inmany of the basic emotion categories, they quite clearly differ in the mental categorizationof emotion in ways that reect espoused cultural values such as moderation and balance.

In this particular study, for comparative purposes I categorized all emotion terms

following an American prototypical emotion hierarchy suggested by Shaver et al. (1987),with some variation to accommodate exceptions in the Chinese sample. As Shaver andcolleagues found in a later study, the Chinese emotion hierarchy is different from theAmerican one at even the cognitively basic level. Shaver et al. (1987)’s emotion hier




archy was created based on a list of items typically considered as emotions in Westernthought. In other words, there is a selection bias in place that makes it impossible to tap

into the full range of what Chinese, or East Asians in general, might conceive as emo-tions. The signicant number of ‘neutral’ emotions found in this study might point to gaps

in our current understanding of the mental construction of emotion in Chinese thought.To better see the connection between the frequent emotions of Chinese in-

dividuals and their frequency of experience, expression, as well as the affective qual-ity of those emotions, it might be better to rst investigate the conceptual relation-ship between the emotions Chinese individuals report as often-occurring in dailylife, as well as to investigate the mental representation of emotions as a category.

Methodological Issues and Observations on the Data

In analyzing and interpreting the results of this study, I came across a number

of issues with the design of the original survey that participants completed. The mostproblematic of these issues was the Chinese translation. The word ‘emotion’ has crys-tallized as a word and as a signier in English to the point that, while no one can sat-isfactorily dene the word, everyone will recognize one when they see it. A participant

in an American psychological survey can answer questions about their ‘emotions’ and

be relied upon to refer to a core group of emotions (e.g., happy, sad). In the Chinese

language, however, different words exist for different aspects of emotion. Words that wemight use to mean ‘emotion’ often hold other connotations as well. For example, ganq-

ing , one word that we might ostensibly use to mean ‘emotion,’ can also mean feeling or

sentiment depending on the context. The word ganjue, a word we might use to inquireabout someone’s emotions or feelings, can also mean (in addition to ‘feelings’) opinions

or thoughts. The word that was used in this study, qingxu , can more often mean ‘mood.’

With such an array of meaning behind each of these possible transla-tions, it is impossible to know if Chinese participants will interpret and respondto the word qingxu in the same way that American participants interpret and re-spond to the word ‘emotion.’ Indeed, as shown in the results, we found that a sig-nicant number of ‘everyday emotions’ that Chinese participants listed would not be

considered emotions by Western scientic and folk notions. Chinese participants

had signicantly more discarded items than did American participants. In addi-

tion, the variation in items reported by Chinese participants (such as ‘calm,’ ‘peace-ful’) may be a result of the interpretation of qingxu as ‘mood’ rather than ‘emotion.’

It is also hard to say whether or not Chinese and American participants respond

to inquiries into their emotionality in the same way. The Chinese translation of the ques-tion, “How pleasant is this emotion,” when back-translated, essentially says something

like, “To what degree does this emotion make one happy/unhappy?” Instead of asking

the participants to rate the pleasantness or unpleasantness of the emotion itself, the Chi-nese survey seems to ask instead about the affective appraisal of the emotion. A similar problem that occurred with the survey was in the English version, where participants wereasked to rate how pleasant or unpleasant the emotion was, but were then given scales

that were anchored with ‘positive’ and ‘negative,’ which are more objective judgmentsabout the emotions themselves. This makes it difcult to interpret some of the results, as

it is hard to say whether participants’ ratings and our codings of their responses are reect-ing their subjective experiences or their objective understanding of the emotions they list.

American and Chinese participants also differed in response styles when asked

Sun 35 ______________________________________________________________________________



to describe an emotion to someone who has never experienced it before. Many Chi-nese participants (compared to very few American participants) would use examplesto ‘describe’ the ‘emotion’ (which sometimes was not strictly an emotion at all). For

example, one Chinese participant described feeling ‘curious’ in the following way: “There

is a box there, [it is] very pretty, there is no lock, there is no one [around], what wouldyou want to do” (i.e. participant 1032, emotion 7). Examples would often begin with “It

is when you…” and cite a situation, such as getting test scores back. These kinds of descriptions, in comparison with descriptions from American participants, often lackedemotional or social tones of any kind, which made it hard to judge those aspects of Chinese participants’ conceptions of emotions that were relevant to the inquiries of thisstudy: valence and affective experience. This pattern makes sense, however, when we

take into account the different roles emotion plays in understanding the self. Emotions,as indices of one’s orientations toward the outside world, provide important insights intoone’s internal, mental world. When American participants are asked to describe their frequently experienced emotions, they might take a much more subjective approachbecause these emotions are a reection of themselves. This would explain the tendency

for American participants to list more positive emotions (e.g. joy, content) towards the6th, 7th, and 8th emotion, as well as the higher positivity of their emotion descriptions.

Future Directions

It must be remembered that the ndings of this study, along with many others

that have been cited, cannot speak to the actual emotional lives across cultures, when

it comes to investigating the affective quality, arousal, and frequency of experience andexpression. As we can usually only access these aspects through asking participantsto recall, describe, and make judgments of their own memories, our ndings are subject

to differences in memory salience (Wang, 2001), cognitive reasoning styles (Peng &Nisbett, 1999), and various cultural valuations on emotions (e.g. Tsai et al., 2006).Emotional Complexity

One possible and very interesting next step would be to induce various emotionalexperiences, in particular ambivalent ones, in the laboratory so we can have more imme-diate measurements. More denitive work on ambivalence and dialecticism would be par -ticularly relevant and useful to an ongoing debate in emotion theory about the relationship

between positive and negative affect. Russell & Carroll (1999) conceptualize affect as ly-ing on a single dimension so that one can, at any moment, feel either positive or negativeaffect – but not both. Larson, McGraw, and Cacioppo (2001), on the other hand, argue thatpositive and negative affects are two independent systems and that it is possible to feelboth happy and sad at the same time—that is, it is possible to be emotionally ambivalent.

REFERENCES

Bagozzi, R.P., Wong, N., & Yi, Y. (1999). The role of culture and gender in the

relationship between positive and negative affect. Cognition & Emotion,13(6), 641-672.

Bond, M. H. (1991). Chinese values and health: A cultural-level examination.

Psychology & Health, 5(2), 137-152.




Campos, J. J., Campos, R. G., & Barrett, K. C. (1989). Emergent themes in the study

of emotional development and emotion regulation. Developmental

Psychology , 25, 394-402.

deBary, T., & Bloom, I. (Comp.). (1999). Sources of Chinese Tradition: From EarliestTimes to 1600. New York: Columbia University Press.

Eid, M., & Diener, E. (2001). Norms for experiencing emotions in different cultures:

Inter- and intranational differences. Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology , 81(5), 869-885.

Fehr, B., & Russell, J. A. (1984). Concept of emotion viewed from a prototype

perspective. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 113(3), 464-486.

Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford: Stanford University

Press.

Goetz, J.L. English, T., Peng, K.P., & Wang, L. (2007). Dialectical emotions: Culture

and the experience, expression, and regulation of Emotional Complexity.Poster presented at SPSP Conference in Memphis, TN.

Hansen, C. (1995). Qing (emotions) in pre-Buddhist Chinese thought. In J. Marks &

R. T. Ames (Eds.), Emotions in Asian thought: A dialogue in comparative

philosophy (181-211). Albany: State University of New York Press.

Heine, S. J., Lehman, D. R., Markus, H. R., Kitayama, S. (1999). Is there a universal

need for positive self-regard? Psychological Review 106(4), 766-794.

Heins Potter, S. (1988). The cultural construction of emotion in rural Chinese sociallife. Ethos, 16(2), 181-208.

Keltner, D., & Kring, A. M. (1998). Emotion, social function, and psychopathology. Review of General Psychology , 2(3), 320-342.

Kitayama, S., Markus, H. R., & Kurokawa, M. (2000). Culture, emotion, and well-being:

Good feelings in Japan and the United States. Cognition & Emotion, 14(1),93-124.

Larsen, J. T., McGraw, A. P., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2001). Can people feel happy and sad

at the same time? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 81(4),684-696.

Lazarus, R. S. (1991). Emotion and adaptation. New York: Oxford University Press.

Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition,

emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review , 98(2), 224-253.

Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1994). The cultural construction of self and emotion:

Sun 37 ______________________________________________________________________________



Implications for social behavior. In S. Kitayama & H. R. Markus (Eds.),

Emotion and culture: Empirical studies of mutual inuence (89-130).

Washingtong, DC: American Psychological Association.

Mesquita, B., & Karasawa, M. (2002). Different emotional lives. Cognition & Emotion,16(1), 127-141.

Peng, K., & Nisbett, R. E. (1999). Culture, dialectics, and reasoning aboutcontradiction. American Psychologist , 54(9), 741-754.

Priester, J. R., & Petty, R. E. (1996). The gradual threshold model of ambivalence:

Relating the positive and negative bases of attitudes to subjectiveambivalence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 71(3), 431-449.

Rosch, E., Lloyd, B. B. (1978). Cognition and categorization. Oxford: Lawrence

Erlbaum.

Russell, J. A., & Carroll, J. M. (1999). On the bipolarity of positive and negative affect.

Psychological Bulletin, 125, 3-30.

Schimmack, U., Oishi, S., & Diener, E. (2002). Cultural inuences on the relation

between pleasant emotions and unpleasant emotions: Asian dialectic

philosophies or individualism-collectivism? Cognition & Emotion, 16(6),

705-719.

Shaver, P. R., Schwartz, J., Kirson, D., O’Connor, C. (1987). Emotion knowledge:

Further exploration of a prototype approach. Journal of Personality and

Social Psychology , 52(6), 1061-1086.

Shaver, P. R., Wu, S., Schwartz, J. C. (1992). Cross-cultural similarities and

differences in emotion and its representation. In M. S. Clark (Eds.) Emotion

(175-212). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc.

Singelis, T. M. (1994). The measurement of independent and interdependent self-construals. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Special Issue: The

self and the collective, 20(5), 580-591.

Spencer-Rodgers, J., Peng, K., Wang, L., Hou, L. (2004). Dialectical self-esteem and

East-West differences in psychological well-being. Personality and Social

Psychology Bulletin, 30(11), 1416-1432.

Spencer-Rodgers, J., Srivastava, S., English, T., Boucher, H. C., Paletz, S., Wang, L., &

Peng, K. (2007). The dialectical self scale. Unpublished manuscript. University

of California, Berkeley.

Triandis, H. C. (1989). The self and social behavior in differing cultural contexts.Psychological Review , 96(3), 506-520.

Tsai, J. L., Knutson, B., & Fung, H. H. (2006). Cultural variation in affect valuation.






Table 1

Emotion Category Frequencies

______________________________

Emotion Category US China ______________________________

(1) Joy 22 186

(2) Sadness 94 127(3) Anger 119 91(4) Love 44 16(5) Sympathy 5 7(6) Fear 80 90(7) Confusion 25 13(8) Surprise 6 3(9) Guilt 9 13(10) Awkward 5 5(11) Pride 10 10(12) Neutral 23 42(13) Conicted 8 7

(14) Stress 36 7(15) Relief 3 0

(16) Boredom 19 40(17) Tired 23 4(18) Unknown 32 33(777) Discard 1 38(999) Blank 13 28Total 776 760

______________________________

Table 2

Coded Valence Frequency (With Valid % Total)

______________________________________

Valence US China ______________________________________

Pleasant 280 (37.6%) 209 (30.4%)

Unpleasant 423 (56.9%) 413 (60.0%)

Mixed 23 (3.1%) 30 (4.4%)

Neutral 18 (2.4%) 36 (5.2%)

Missing 19 (2.5%) 72 (9.5%)

Valid 744 (100%) 688 (100%)

Total 763 760 ______________________________________




Table 3

Estimated Marginal Mean Ratings (With Standard Deviations in Parantheses)

______________________________________________________________

Participant Ratings US China F, p ______________________________________________________________

Positivity 3.88 (0.11) 3.60 (0.09) 3.77, 0.05Negativity 3.96 (0.11) 4.15 (0.10) NSAmbivalence 1.38 (0.23) 1.80 (0.21) 1.84, 0.18Experience 4.34 (0.09) 4.12 (0.08) 3.51, 0.06Expression 3.97 (0.09) 3.74 (0.08) 3.66, 0.06Others’ Expression 3.92 (0.09) 3.65 (0.08) 5.49, 0.02

Coded DataArousal 3.28 (0.05) 3.12 (0.05) 5.64, 0.02Description Positivity 2.85 (0.08) 2.41 (0.08) 15.40, 0.00Description Negativity 3.34 (0.09) 3.58 (0.09) 3.62, 0.06

______________________________________________________________

Sun 41 ______________________________________________________________________________



Culture of Emotion

Figure 1: Signicant Mean Differences

FIGURES

42 ______________________________________________________________________________



Figure 1: Signicant Mean Differences

Sun 43 ______________________________________________________________________________

Note: Due to formatting constraints, the “Emotion Category Members” appendix has not been

included. To request a copy of this appendix, email [email protected].



The Prosocial Benets of Transference:

Promoting Benevolent Behavior

toward Out-group Members

Victoria A. Lee

The present study revealed the potential prosocial benets of transference as a

strategy to guard against intergroup bias through the promotion of prosocial be-haviors. Idiographic and nomothetic methods were used in a two-session study.

Participants learned about a target who either resembled their own signicant

other (transference condition) or a yoked counterpart’s signicant other (no-transference condition), and who either shared their same ethnicity (in-group)or did not (out-group). Inference and behavioral afliation measures were com-pared across conditions and, as predicted, participants undergoing transferenceexhibited more signicant-other-consistent inferences and behavioral afliation

toward the target, regardless of the target’s ingroup/outgroup status, than par -ticipants not undergoing transference. These ndings are the rst to suggest

that transference can occur across ethnic group membership boundaries andthat the phenomenon may promote benevolent behavior towards new others.

Decades of social psychological research indicate that people often have atendency to hold negative feelings toward those who are different from themselves,or more specically, those who are out-group members. The negative emotions as-sociated with out-group members impose social boundaries that prohibit individualsfrom having meaningful intergroup interactions and relationships. Consequently, indi-viduals rely on stereotypes to characterize members of out-groups, leading to the for-mation and perpetuation of intergroup bias, the tendency to favor one’s own group.A substantial amount of research in the eld of social psychology has attempted to

discover and remedy the root of intergroup bias. From this research a number of strat-egies to alleviate intergroup bias and thus eliminate the use of stereotyping whenmeeting new others have been identied. The aim of the present research was to

examine another strategy to alleviate intergroup bias, the activation and use of sig-nicant-other representations in the social-cognitive phenomenon of transference.

Theories of self-denition contend that at times the self is characterized as a col-lective entity that provides a shared identity with an in-group and therefore is differentiat-ed from distinct out-groups (Brewer, 1991). According to this conception of the self, har-boring negative feelings toward members of an out-group, as well as stereotyping thoseout-group members, appears to be a natural result of viewing the self in collective terms.

Research has found that the re-categorization of two distinct groups into one all inclusivesuper-ordinate group works to alleviate these group-based biases (Gaertner, Dovidio,Anastasio, Bachman, & Rust, 1993). We propose that group re-categorization can occur through activating signicant-other representations by enhancing the similarities between



one’s signicant others and perceived targets. This is very likely to occur in social situations

as signicant-other representations are highly accessible and more rich and distinct than

powerful cognitive structures such as stereotypes (Andersen & Cole, 1990). In essence,

the present research asked whether signicant-other representations can be used as an

alternative model to stereotyping when perceiving out-group members. And if so, mighttheir use ultimately lead to a more positive and inclusive view of out-group members?

We suggest that cues from the social environment activate signicant-other

representations, and through the phenomenon of transference, these representationsact as a model of general social perception, leading individuals to perceive targets withrespect to the relevant signicant-other representation rather than through the lens of

pertinent stereotypes. Thus, signicant-other representations allow individuals to see

beyond socially constructed stereotypes and view others in more positive signicant-

other-consistent terms. In order to demonstrate the logic behind the aforementioned

proposition, we will rst discuss the origins and applications of intergroup bias as well

as the resulting strategies to reduce bias and stereotyping in intergroup interactions.We will then discuss how signicant-other representations may have prosocial effects

through transference, and how the present research attempted to examine this possibility.

The Origins and Consequences of Intergroup Bias

Human beings have a tendency to favor individuals who are similar to the self

(in-group) and duly derogate individuals who are different from the self (out-group). For the purposes of this research, intergroup bias can be dened as differential treatment

based on group membership—usually in the form of favorable treatment of in-groupscompared to less favorable treatment of out-groups (Brewer, 2003). A number of theo-ries have attempted to uncover and explain the origins of intergroup bias. Based on theseminal Robbers Cave study (M. Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood, & C. W. Sherif, 1961),intergroup bias is thought to derive from competition between groups—in this case,two different groups of campers—for scarce tangible resources. Thus, a competitiverelationship between groups initiates mutually negative perceptions, evaluations, andstereotypes towards members of the relevant out-group in striving for positive individ-ual and subsequently group outcomes (M. Sherif et al., 1961). Further analysis of thestudy’s early observations of the two groups of campers reveals that the knowledge of

the mere existence of another group at the camp, even before the introduction of com-petition, was enough to delineate distinct in-groups and out-groups, and thus instigateintergroup biases (Gaertner, Dovidio, Banker, Houlette, Johnson, & McGlynn, 2000).

An alternative theory attempting to explain the origins of intergroup bias is socialidentity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Social identity theory argues that ingroup bias origi-nates from the need for positive self-identity, which is often fullled through membership in

prestigious social groups. More specically, intergroup bias represents the motivation to

achieve a positive social identity that establishes and veries positively valued differences

between one’s in-group and a relevant out-group, which often leads to biases in perception,evaluation, and behavior against out-groups (Turner, Brown, & Tajfel, 1979). Researchhas shown that individuals will even sacrice absolute levels of group and personal gain to

achieve intergroup differences in outcomes favoring one’s in-group (Turner et al., 1979).Thus far the origins of intergroup bias have been explained through com-

petition between groups, the social categorization of groups, and the striving for apositive social identity. In response to the aforementioned research several strate

Lee 45 ______________________________________________________________________________



gies to alleviate intergroup bias have been developed, including intergroup con-tact, social categorization, intergroup cooperation, and priming attachment security.

Strategies for Reducing Intergroup Bias

A recent meta-analytic study revealed that across 713 independent samplestaken from 515 studies, contact between members of different groups has the ability toproduce meaningful reductions in intergroup prejudice based on the phenomena thatfamiliarity breeds liking (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). Intergroup contact produces favorable

attitudes that not only apply to any one individual, but tend to generalize to the entiregroups from which individual group members belong. Contact effects surface acrossmany different social settings and generalize to a broad range of out-group targets.

Another strategy for reducing intergroup bias is the social categorization approach,which posits that by transforming individuals’ cognitive representations of out-group mem-bers, intergroup bias and out-group prejudice will ultimately be decreased. One method of transforming individuals’ cognitive representations of out-group members is reducing thesalience of the intergroup boundary through re-categorization. By re-categorizing individ-uals separated into two groups into either one whole group or into separate individualsthe salience of the in-group/out-group distinction decreases, lessening category-based

judgments and therefore intergroup bias (Gaertner, Mann, Murrell, & Dovidio, 1989).Intergroup cooperation has similarly been shown to reduce intergroup bias by re-

ducing the salience of the intergroup boundary. Stimulating intergroup cooperation betweentwo independent groups will make group members begin to think of themselves as part of

one super-ordinate group. This re-categorization stimulated by intergroup cooperation re-sults in individuals regarding former out-group members as generally more likable, coop-erative, honest, and similar to the self (Gaertner, Mann, Dovidio, Murrell, & Pomare, 1990).

Another strategy strongly related to the present research hypothesis isthe effect of attachment security on reducing intergroup bias. Attachment theory ar-gues that individuals develop specic attachment styles at an early age in response

to one’s relations with caregivers, which continue to be shaped throughout one’s lifeby meaningful interactions with signicant others (Bowlby, 1988). Having a secure

base (attachment security) elicits the expectation that one will be able to depend onothers to provide support in one’s time of need, allowing individuals to maintain a

framework which promotes well-being and effective emotion-regulation devices aswell as the development of positive models of the self and others (Bowlby, 1973).

In relation to the present study, recent attachment research has demon-strated that the priming of attachment security can be used as a strategy to reduceintergroup bias. In a series of studies, secure base priming was shown to abate

negative reactions to out-groups, eliminate the effects of self-esteem threat, leadto a lower threat appraisal of out-groups, and increase the willingness of individu-als to have an interaction with an out-group member (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2001).These ndings are critical to the current research hypothesis, as they are broadly

consistent with the proposition that activating signicant-other representations can

yield prosocial benets by reducing negative perceptions of out-group members.

We believe that the activation of signicant-other representations through trans-ference can also be used as a possible strategy to lessen intergroup bias. A considerableamount of research on signicant-other representations and transference indicates that the

activation of a signicant-other representation results in a wide range of everyday conse

Transference, Benevolence, and the Out-group46 ______________________________________________________________________________



quences, including how perceivers evaluate, interpret, and respond to newly encounteredothers (e.g., Andersen & Chen, 2002). Extending past work, the current study tested thehypothesis that the activation of a signicant-other representation in a transference en-counter may have prosocial benets—namely, it decreases the likelihood that out-group

members will be perceived in stereotypical ways and in doing so decreases intergroup bias.

Signicant-Other Representations and Transference in Social Situations

Research has shown that signicant-other representations are more rich

and distinct than representations of non-signicant others, traits, and even stereo-types (Andersen & Cole, 1990). Moreover, signicant-other representations have

been shown to serve more readily as models of general social perception than pow-erful social categories such as traits and stereotypes. These ndings served as a ba-sis for the present research by demonstrating that signicant-other representations

are cognitively and associatively complex enough to compete against common mod-els of social perception like stereotypes, thus guarding against intergroup biases.

Transference occurs when an individual’s cognitive representation of a signi-cant other is activated when meeting a new person, causing the individual to interpret thenew person in terms of the signicant-other representation. Knowledge about signicant

others is represented in memory in both abstract and experiential forms and is usedto predict, interpret, and respond to interpersonal situations (Andersen & Chen, 2002;

Andersen & Glassman, 1996; Hinkley & Andersen, 1996). More specically, when signif -icant-other representations become activated, people will tend to misremember a target

person as having more features consistent with the relevant signicant other (Baum &Andersen, 1994). Research has also shown that signicant-other representations are

chronically accessible, having a special readiness to come to mind and be used in socialperception. Even in the absence of priming, these representations tend to bias memory,such that individuals tend to misremember information in terms of a signicant other when

recalling information about a target person (Andersen, Glassman, Chen, & Cole, 1995).Research has shown that transference not only initiates representation-con-

sistent perceptions of newly encountered targets, but also has affective consequences(Baum & Andersen, 1994). Specically, when a signicant-other representation is acti-vated in an encounter with a new target person, people not only perceive and remember

the target in terms of the relevant signicant other, but also bring to the fore emotions thatare felt when that person is with the particular signicant other. Emotional responses con-sistent with the affect associated with the signicant-other representation surface and are

expressed (through eeting facial expressions) when learning about a new person whom

happens to resemble the relevant signicant other (Andersen, Reznik, & Manzella, 1996).

Also, when transference emerges, participants express motivations for interpersonalcloseness and acceptance or rejection that are consistent with those expressed withthe relevant signicant other (Andersen et al., 1996). And nally, a recent study revealed

that behavioral conrmation resembling self-fullling prophecies is elicited through trans-ference (Berk & Andersen, 2000). When targets resembled a perceiver’s own positivesignicant other rather than a negative signicant other, or someone else’s signicant

other, targets were found to express more positive affect in their behavior towards theperceiver. This study shows that the effects of transference are not limited to inuencing

only the individual experiencing transference in the social interaction; during social situ-ations, transference also has the power to alter the attitudes and behavior of individuals

Lee 47 ______________________________________________________________________________



being perceived and responded to using the activated signicant-other representation.

The Present Research

The present research aimed to demonstrate that the activation of signicant-other representations in the face of meeting new others yield prosocial benets through

the initiation of positive evaluations and benevolent behaviors toward out-group mem-bers. We believe that through the phenomenon of transference, positive signicant-other

representations protect social interactions from the harmful effects of intergroup bias. In

essence, we propose that transference encounters create opportunities for individuals toovercome the use of harmful and limiting stereotypes when meeting out-group members,ultimately creating an environment conducive to fostering positive intergroup relationships.

The present study was conducted in two sessions. In Session 1, participants

described a signicant other who shared their same ethnicity. In Session 2, partici-pants learned about an interaction partner with whom they anticipated having a shortgetting-acquainted interaction at the end of the study. The target was made to re-semble either the participant’s own signicant other based on descriptions taken from

Session 1 (i.e., the “Own” or transference condition) or a yoked counterpart’s signi -cant other (i.e., the “Yoked” or no-transference condition). Furthermore the target’s

ethnicity was manipulated to either match the participant’s own ethnicity (in-group)or differ from the participant’s own ethnicity (out-group). After learning about the tar-get participants completed various inference, evaluation, and behavioral afliation

measures. As in prior research, measures of schema-driven inference and evaluation

were used to assess transference (e.g., Andersen & Baum, 1994). The prosocial con-sequences of transference were measured using two behavioral measures of aflia-tion. The rst measure assessed afliation by determining how close participants sat

to the target. The second measure assessed afliation by the amount of help partici-pants offered the target in a task that would yield no direct benet to the self.

In terms of our specic hypotheses, my research associates and I predict-ed that participants learning about a new target who resembled their own signicant

other would undergo transference. Furthermore, we attempted to extend prior trans-ference research by predicting that transference would occur across group member-ship to positively inuence participants’ perceptions of the target. Also differentiating the

present study from prior transference research, we predicted that when transferenceemerges in social interactions the activated signicant-other representation will inu-ence participants’ behavior towards new targets in a representation-consistent manner.

METHOD

Overview

The materials and procedures employed in this study were largely based on thoseused in prior transference research (e.g., Andersen & Cole, 1990; Baum & Andersen, 1999).

Idiographic and nomothetic methods were used in a two-session study. In Session

1, participants were asked to generate idiographic statements that distinctly characterizeda positively toned, self-chosen signicant other, and then to rank order these statements

in terms of their descriptive importance. For the purposes of this research, a signicant

other was dened as any individual who is or has been deeply inuential in one’s life and

whom one is or once was emotionally invested (Andersen & Chen, 2002). Unbeknownst




to the participant, these descriptions would later be used in Session 2, the experimentalsession of the study, in order to activate the corresponding signicant-other representation.

During Session 2, participants learned about a pre-assigned target person andwere asked to make judgments about their thoughts and feelings toward the target. They

were also asked to complete a memory task about the characteristics of the target. The ex-periment concluded with an alleged getting-acquainted interaction which included two be-havioral measures of implicit and explicit afliation; at this time the participant was informed

that they would not be meeting the target person as they were in the control condition.

Research Design

Prior to Session 2, participants were randomly assigned to one of four ex-perimental conditions creating a 2 x 2 (Own/Yoked x In-group/Out-group) between-

subjects experimental design. Following past research, each participant was assignedto either the Own or Yoked condition; this meant that in Session 2 participants were

given stimuli that either reected their own signicant-other descriptions (Own) or a

yoked participant’s signicant-other descriptions (Yoked). Because participants were

yoked on a one-to-one basis, the stimuli presented in the Own versus Yoked condi-tions were identical, allowing us to conclude that any observed differences betweenthe two groups were due to the activation of the relevant signicant-other represen-tation and not to the signicant-other descriptions themselves (Andersen et al., 1996;

Hinkley & Andersen, 1996). Additionally participants were randomly assigned to either an in-group or out-group condition based on their self-reported ethnic identity. For ex-

ample, a participant assigned to the in-group condition was given stimuli in Session 2that reected their own ethnic identity, constituting an in-group member. Conversely,

participants assigned to the out-group condition were given stimuli in the second sessionthat did not reect their own ethnic identity, constituting an out-group member.

Participants

Sixty-seven Asian American and Caucasian ( 68.7% Asian American,

31.3% Caucasian) undergraduates (67.2% female, 32.8%male) enrolled in psy-chology courses at the University of California, Berkeley participated in a two-

session study in exchange for class credit or monetary compensation. Ses-sion 1 was run in groups of up to 6 participants. Session 2 was conducted on anindividual basis by a different experimenter and in a different room than Session 1.

Session 1

Procedure. Upon arrival, participants were informed that the study consisted of completing a series of questionnaires from different labs in the Psychology Department.Participants were then handed the rst questionnaire entitled “Describing People.” This

questionnaire asked participants to name and describe a positively evaluated signicant

other. As described below, it provided the main stimuli for the learning trial and the test phasein Session 2. Participants then lled out a brief demographic survey and a suspicion probe.

After turning in the demographic questionnaire, the experimenter so-licited participants to leave their contact information in order to help a colleaguein the psychology department whose study was in need of participants. If par

Lee 49 ______________________________________________________________________________



ticipants volunteered their contact information, they were informed that an ex-perimenter would contact them in the next few weeks to schedule a session for the study. Participants were then partially debriefed and thanked for their time.

Materials. The “Describing People” questionnaire consisted of two parts in which

participants were rst required to name a signicant other who they had known for a longtime, who had a signicant impact on their life, and who they generally liked (Baum &

Andersen, 1999). Furthermore, participants were instructed to name a signicant other

who shared their same ethnicity. These specic qualications were requested in order

to ensure that the signicant other was a positive and distinct person in the participant’s

life, as well as an in-group member. The questionnaire asked for the name of their cho-sen signicant other, their shared ethnic group, their relation to the signicant other (i.e.,

best friend, girlfriend, cousin), and the length of their acquaintance in months and years.Participants were then instructed to answer six questions using 9-point Likert

scales (1 = very negative/not at all, 9 = very positive/very much/a great deal), which fo -cused on their relationship with their chosen signicant other, and their signicant other in

relation to their shared ethnic identity. Specically, participants were asked: “How positive

or negative is your relationship with your signicant person?”, “How close are you to your

signicant person?”, “How much do you interact with your signicant person?”, “How rep-resentative of your ethnic group is your signicant person?”, “How central is your shared

ethnicity to your relationship with your signicant person?” and lastly, “How much is eth-nicity central to how you think about your signicant person?”. These questions were used

to assess the nature of each participant’s relationship with their chosen signicant other,

as well as to uncover how much their shared ethnic identity was tied to their relationship.

The second part of the questionnaire asked participants to generate 7 posi-tive and 7 negative statements that uniquely described their chosen signicant other.

These statements were to start with the signicant other’s rst name, be six words or

less, and refer to activities, beliefs, emotions, hobbies, ways of interacting with others,physical appearance, or interests of the signicant other. Participants were also direct-ed to make sure that the statements were not general descriptions that could apply tomost people, nor generic qualities that could describe members of particular cultural,ethnic, or social groups as a whole. Finally, participants were informed that the state-ments should not include references to themselves or a third person. These require-ments were used in order to ensure w/c that the sentences could be used in the sec-

ond session of the experiment without revealing a link between the two experimentalsessions (see below). After generating the 14 statements, participants were instruct-ed to rank order each set of 7 statements in terms of their descriptive importance, 1being most important to describing the signicant other and 7 being least important.

The nal task on the “Describing People” questionnaire presented participants

with 42 randomly ordered, moderately positive trait terms. Participants were asked tothink about these terms with respect to their signicant other and classify 10 as de-scriptive, 10 as counter-descriptive, and 12 as irrelevant in describing their signicant

other. From the 12 selected irrelevant trait terms, 8 were randomly selected as irrelevantller items in the learning trial and recognition-memory task of Session 2 (see below).

The demographic form asked for each participant’s gender, eth-nic background, native language, birth country, and residence in the UnitedStates. These questions were followed by a suspicion probe that asked par-ticipants for their thoughts about the procedures and the research hypothesis.




Session 2

Procedure. Two to ve weeks after Session 1, Asian American and Caucasian partici-pants were recruited by email to participate in a seemingly unrelated study. Upon arrivalparticipants were greeted by an experimenter who deliberately arrived late and appeared

ustered, trying to search through different keys, manage paperwork, and move backand forth between two different rooms. This was planned in order to make the participantbelieve that the experimenter was running two simultaneous experimental sessions.

After being greeted, participants were informed that the purpose of the studywas to help the Psychology Department establish a mentoring program as part of anorientation to the psychology major and that the study was looking at how to best matchpersonalities for the program. Thus, each participant was paired with another person whowas also participating in the experiment. The focus of the current section of the studywas purportedly to examine the effects of one person having information about the other prior to a short getting-acquainted interaction held toward the end of the session.Participants were then told that they would be given information about their upcom-ing interaction partner in a binder. This constituted the learning trial. In the bind-er were 11 descriptive statements printed separately on index cards. Participantswere informed that the descriptive statements were provided by an independenttrained interviewer, who listed both positive and negative statements about their part-ner. Participants were instructed to read through the binder only once, to read eachstatement one at a time in the order they appeared, and nally to visualize what

their partner was like as they read through the statements. After reading each de-scriptive statement, the binder was collected from the participant and they were in-

structed to take a few minutes to think about the information they were given and totry and imagine what it would be like to actually meet and interact with their partner.Next participants were given a two-part evaluation measure entitled, “Current Im-

pressions,” in which they were instructed to be, “as open and honest as possible,” when answer -ing the presented questions which centered upon their general impressions of their partner.

Participants were then given a 1 minute distracter task in which they were in-structed to compute 12 simple math problems. After the minute was up, participants wereasked to engage in a recognition-memory task in which they were to try and remember the descriptions of the partner that they were presented with in the learning trial. Partici-pants were given a list of 15 statements in which they were to rate their level of condence

in stating which descriptors were or were not presented previously in the learning trial.After completing the memory task, participants were informed that it was al-

most time to go meet their partner. In order to get to the interaction room, participants

were taken to a room on another oor in the same building by elevator. The experi-menter avoided conversation with participants by walking a few steps ahead while alsoseeming distracted by her cell phone. The interaction room was prepared by the ex-perimenter before the start of the second session in order to appear as if the partner had been in the room, but was no longer there. Upon entering the interaction room,participants saw an empty chair with a backpack sitting beside it, a water bottle, andstack of yers on a table near the chair. These items were strategically placed in or -

der to make it seem as though someone had been sitting in the room, but was mo-mentarily absent. Another chair, intended for the participant, was placed right outsideof the interaction room. The experimenter then appeared to be confused, and said,

Oh okay, I think your partner must have gone to the bath

Lee 51 ______________________________________________________________________________



room – I said that was alright. Let me just go down the hall and

check. Their stuff is right in this back room here, so can you justtake this chair inside and take a seat? When you put the chair down, make sure you’re facing your partner. I’ll be right back.

The experimenter then left the room and went down the hall apparently to check onthe partner. The participant’s chair was deliberately placed outside of the room in or-der to force the participant to place the chair at a distance with which they felt com-fortable being near the partner. One minute later, the experimenter returned and said:

Oh I just realized that you are supposed to be in the control con-dition for this experiment. In the control condition I can’t let you

and your partner meet. Don’t worry, you will still receive cred-it for the work you’ve done today even if you don’t meet them.

The participant was then instructed to ll out a suspicion probe. While the par -ticipant lled out these questions the experimenter informed the participant that

she was going to instruct the partner to wait down the hall in order to make surethat they would not accidentally run into one another at the end of the study.

After collecting the suspicion probe, the experimenter asked the participantif he or she would be willing to take some yers per the request of the partner, who

needed to pass out the pile of yers as part of a work assignment. After either taking or

declining to take yers, participants were handed a manipulation check questionnaire

inquiring about the degree of resemblance of the partner to the signicant other theydescribed in Session 1. Participants were then fully debriefed, thanked, and excused.

Materials. As noted, prior to Session 2, each partici-pant was randomly assigned to one of four conditions, Own/In-

group, Own/Out-group, Yoked/In-group, and Yoked/Out-group.

During the learning trial, participants in the Own condition were presented pre-selected descriptors of the target that were directly taken from their own self-generat-ed signicant-other descriptive statements from Session 1. Participants in the Yoked

condition were presented descriptions in the learning trial that were taken from their yoked-counterpart’s self-generated descriptive statements. In other words, participants

in the Own condition were given their own signicant-other descriptions, and that par -ticipant’s yoked counterpart was given the same set of descriptions. These descrip-tions were slightly modied to ensure that participants in the Own condition would not

link the present study back to Session 1. Specically, the rst names of the individu-als were changed to either “He” or “She.” Sentences containing uncommon adjec-tives and or exceeding six words were shortened and edited. And nally, references

to the self or a third person were corrected to read as simple statements about theperson’s character. Although these statements were edited, the central thrust of thedescriptions was retained. For example, a description reading, “Andy loves to read

me old mystery novels,” would be edited to state, “He loves to read mystery books.”

The descriptive statements presented in the learning trial were 3 positive and 3negative self-generated signicant-other descriptors (ranked 4th, 5th, & 6th in descriptive

importance), and 4 irrelevant trait terms randomly selected from the 12 that participantshad classied as irrelevant trait terms in Session 1. One additional description in the

learning trial revealed the target’s ethnic identity which was manipulated to either reect




the participant’s in-group or out-group. Thus, participants assigned to the In-group condi-tion were given a target who shared the participant’s ethnic identity, and participants as-signed to the Out-group condition were given a target who had a different ethnic identity.For example, Asian American participants assigned to the in-group condition were given

an Asian American target while Asian American participants assigned to the out-groupcondition were given a Caucasian target. In total, participants were presented with 11

statements during the learning trial that briey described the target. These statements

were placed in a xed random order, using both positive and negative descriptions in

order to ensure that the participant’s attitudes toward the target were due to a full person-ality prole, and not merely individual statements. The ethnicity descriptor was always

presented at the 6th position in the xed random order. The irrelevant trait terms served

as ller items disguising the descriptive statements generated by Own participants.

The “Current Impressions” questionnaire served as the evaluation measure of

transference. On the questionnaire participants used 7-point Likert scales (1 = not at all,7 = very much) to answer eight questions about their anticipated interaction partner in thefollowing order: “How much do you desire to interact with this person?”, “How much do you

think you would like this person?”, “In general, how positive is your impression of this per -son?”, “In general, how negative is your impression of this person?”, “How comfortable do

you think you feel interacting with this person?”, “How interested do you think you would

be in spending time with this person outside of this context?”, “How comfortable do you

think you would feel asking this person a favor of any kind?” and nally, “If something bad

happened to this person, how concerned would you be?.” An initial analysis of the data re-vealed that question 8, “If something bad happened to this person, how concerned would

you be?” did not correlate with the rest of the questions presented on the survey. The re-maining seven questions were averaged to create a measure of evaluation of the partner (; = .84). This evaluation measure was used as a measure of transference. More specif -ically, participants in the Own condition undergoing transference should show an evalua-tion of the partner that is more consistent with the positive evaluative tone of the activatedpositive signicant-other representation than Yoked participants’ evaluation of the partner.

The recognition-memory task was the second measure of transference in thestudy—specically, a measure of signicant-other-consistent inferences about the part-ner. Eight false-positive memory items placed at the 1st, 4th, 5th, 7th, 9th, 10th, 13th,and 15th positions on the questionnaire were composed of the remaining signicant-

other descriptors generated in Session 1 that were not used in the learning trial. Theremaining items on the task were 4 of 8 randomly selected irrelevant trait terms fromSession 1. The only statements that were presented in the learning trial and the recogni-tion-memory task were 3 randomly selected irrelevant trait terms placed at the 2nd, 8th,& 12th positions on the task questionnaire. A total of 15 descriptions were presented ina xed random order. For each item, participants were instructed to indicate the degree

of condence they felt when determining if the presented statement was shown earlier

in the learning trial of the study. Participants used a 6-point Likert scale (1 = condent

not presented, 6 = condent was presented) to indicate how condent they were of

viewing the descriptors during the learning trial. Greater memory errors, as indexed bygreater condence for the 8 false-positive memory items indicate that participants were

using their activated signicant-other representation to make inferences about their up-coming partner. In other words, the memory errors suggest that participants were go -ing beyond the information previously given about their partner to interpret him or her.

The behavioral measures at the end of the study were used as a measure

Lee 53 ______________________________________________________________________________



of the degree of afliation participants felt towards their partner. The distance between

the partner’s chair, which was placed in a xed location across all of the experimental

sessions, and the participant’s self-placed chair was measured in inches seat cushionto seat cushion, and the number of yers taken by the participant, if any, was recorded.

The suspicion probe asked participant if they found any of the experimentaltasks strange or difcult, and what they thought the experimental hypothesis was pro-posing. Finally, there were two manipulation check items that asked participants, rst,

to rate on a scale of 1 to 7 (1 = not at all similar, 7= extremely similar) how similar thetarget was to the signicant other they chose and described in Session 1, and sec-ond, to indicate which of 5 different ethnic groups (Asian American, Caucasian, Afri-can American, Latino/Latina, Other) their partner belonged to. The rst item was asked

to ensure that the Own/Yoked manipulation was effective, whereas the second item

was asked in order to ensure that the In-group/Out-group manipulation was effective.

RESULTS

A total of nine participants were excluded from the nal analyses. Sev -en participants were excluded because they were not assigned a yoked partner.One participant was excluded because he/she expressed suspicion that the stim-uli used in the learning trial and recognition-memory task of Session 2 were con-nected to the self-generated signicant-other descriptive statements from Ses-sion 1. To maintain perfect yoking, the yoked partner of this participant wasalso excluded. The following analyses were based on the nal sample (n = 58).

Manipulation Checks

In order to ensure that the Own/Yoked manipulation was effective, the similarity

question at the end of the study was subjected to a 2 (Own/Yoked) X 2 (In-Group/Out-

Group) analysis of variance (ANOVA). As predicted, a main effect for Own/Yoked emerged

such that participants in the Own condition reported that their anticipated partner wassignicantly more similar to their signicant other (M = 5.15) than did participants in theYoked condition (M = 4.07), F ( 1,55) = 7.25, p < .01. A signicant main effect for In-Group/

Out-Group also emerged as participants in the In-group condition deemed the partner

to be more similar to their signicant-other (M = 5.05) than participants in the Out-groupcondition (M = 4.17), F ( 1,55) = 4.82, p < .05. The pattern of increased in-group similaritywas predicted as participants were instructed to name a signicant other in Session 1 that

shared their same ethnicity. The Condition X Group interaction did not reach signicance,

F ( 1,55) = .21, ns. Overall, the analyses suggest that the signicant-other resemblance

(i.e., Own/Yoked) and ethnicity (i.e., In-group/Out-group) manipulations were successful.

Measures of Transference

In order to verify that transference occurred among participants in the

Own (transference) condition relative to participants in the Yoked (no transfer-ence) condition, comparisons of inference and evaluation were conducted acrossall conditions. We predicted that transference would occur for Own relative toYoked participants, leading Own participants to make inferences and evaluationsof the partner that are consistent with the activated signicant-other representation.






In order to further explore the relationship between transference and prosocial

behavior, we conducted an additional analysis controlling for participants’ self-reportedcloseness to their signicant other, as assessed in Session 1. The resulting 2 X 2 analysis

of covariance (ANCOVA) using closeness as a covariate revealed only a signicant Own/

Yoked main effect F (1,53) = 4.53, p < .05 (see adjusted means in Figure 1). Overall, thisanalysis suggests that, as predicted, transference led Own participants (M = 35.14) tosit closer to their partner than Yoked participants (M = 43.19) across group membership.

Helping. We predicted that participants undergoing transference would offer more help to their partner regardless of group membership, even when the task yieldedno direct benet to the self. The number of yers taken by the participants was compared

across conditions in order to measure the amount of help participants offered to the tar-get. The 2 X 2 (Own/Yoked x In-group/Out-group) ANOVA yielded a non-signicant Own/

Yoked effect F (1,53) = 1.25, ns, though the means were in line with our predictions. Spe-cically, participants in the Own condition (M = 21.45) offered more help to their partner than participants in the Yoked condition (M =13.18). Virtually no In-group/Out-group effect

was found as participants in the In-group condition (M = 17.60) offered essentially thesame amount of help as participants in the Out-group condition (M = 17.03), F (1,53)= .01,ns. The Condition X Group interaction also did not reach signicance, F (1,53 )= .68, ns.

Although the analyses only yielded a signicant Own/Yoked effect for

one of the two behavioral measures, the results for this measure suggest thattransference may promote prosocial behaviors in interactions with new others.

DISCUSSION

Research on transference has shown that during interpersonal interactionswith newly encountered others transference tends to inuence individuals to perceive,

evaluate, and respond to the new others in a manner that is consistent with the rel-evant signicant-other representation (Andersen & Chen, 2002; Andersen & Glassman,

1996; Hinkley & Andersen, 1996). Additionally, research has shown that signicant-other

representations are highly accessible (e.g., Andersen et al., 1995) and more rich anddistinct than other powerful social categories such as stereotypes (Andersen & Cole,

1990). In an attempt to extend prior transference work, we argued that the powerfuleffects of transference may occur across ethnic groups boundaries, as a result inhib-iting the use of applicable stereotypes in social situations, reducing intergroup bias,and promoting intergroup friendship through the re-categorization of individuals onceperceived as out-group members. Although not all of our results reached signicance,

the current ndings at minimum suggest that transference may indeed have the po-tential to reduce intergroup bias through the encouragement of benevolent behaviors.

In line with our predictions, participants in the Own condition showed more

false-positive memory errors on the recognition-memory task than Yoked participants,indicating the occurrence of transference. This nding is consistent with prior trans-ference research (e.g., Andersen et al., 1995; Baum & Andersen, 1994), but extends

such research by demonstrating that transference occurs across group boundar-ies. In our estimation, this is the rst time that transference has been shown to oc-cur when the resembling target person has a different ethnicity than one’s signicant

other (i.e., in a condition where the target is described as an out-group member).




The present study also demonstrated the rst evidence of transference eliciting

representation-consistent prosocial behavior towards new targets. Although prior transfer-ence research has shown that transference encounters can elicit behavioral conrmation

among targets (Berk & Andersen, 2000), they have failed to nd representation-inuenced

behavioral changes among the participants undergoing transference. As predicted, thepresent study was able to show that changes in participants’ behavior emerged as a resultof the activated signicant-other representation as participants undergoing transference

chose to sit signicantly closer to their partner than participants not undergoing transference.

This important nding suggests that benevolent behavior may be elicited by

transference, which has implications for reducing intergroup bias as non-verbal behaviorssuch as sitting closer to others have been shown to exert a powerful inuence on relational

interpretations (Burgoon, Buller, Hale, & DeTurck, 1984). Specically, research has shown

that closer proximity to targets conveys greater degrees of intimacy, attraction, trust, caring,and immediacy (Burgoon et al., 1984). Thus, closer physical proximity during a social inter-action may promote intergroup friendship and consequently decreases in intergroup bias.

Limitations and Future Directions

Although the present research discovered two important ndings with respect to

the emergence and outcomes of transference, two key dependent measures failed to reachsignicance: the evaluation measure and the behavioral afliation measure of helping.

The evaluation measure failed to reach signicance as participants tended to give

the target a moderate evaluation across all conditions. Participants may have done this in-

tentionally or with little awareness in order to appear un-biased and fair in judging the targetwith the information given. Participants also may have been apprehensive to give out-groupmembers a more negative evaluation in order to seem impartial to their differing ethnic identity.

Our analyses also failed to reach signicance for the behavioral afliation mea-sure of helping. Still, the pattern of means for this measure did fall in line with our predic-tions such that Own participants tended to take more yers than Yoked participants across

In-group/Out-group conditions. The lack of a signicant effect may have emerged for sev-eral reasons. First, several participants reported that they simply did not like yers, thus

the variability in the number of yers taken may be mostly due to individual differences in

opinions about yers on campus. A signicant effect may be more likely to emerge with a

different measure of helping less prone to such individual variability in opinions. Second,the purpose of the yers was ambiguous; thus, perhaps some participants thought that

they had to pass out the yers to others while others simply may have thought they could

just take them. These differences could have made the variability in the number of yers

taken much larger, thereby affecting our power to nd signicant effects. For example, a

participant who believed that he or she would have to pass out the yers may have had

an exam later in the week, and would thus not be willing to pass out yers. Despite these

limitations, the analyses did reveal a pattern of helping that falls in line with our predic-tions such that perhaps a larger sample size could help the nding to reach signicance.

Overall, in order to remedy the aforementioned limitations to the pres-

ent research as well as to extend the current hypothesis, more research on the po-tential prosocial effects of transference on intergroup bias is needed with a number of methodological modications. First, the evaluation measure must be modied to

encourage participants to feel safe in expressing their genuine feelings toward their partner whether these feelings are positive or negative. This can possibly be done

Lee 57 ______________________________________________________________________________



by using implicit, rather than explicit, measures of evaluation. In regards to the be -havioral measures of the study, it would be interesting to add different behavioral andhelping tasks to see if the effects of transference would generalize to different mea-sures of behavioral modication. Additionally it would be advantageous to change

the out-group manipulation to include more ethnic identities than Asian Americanand Caucasian so as to increase the generalizability of any results that are found.

To conclude, important questions arise from the ndings of the present re -search. First, can a transference encounter in an intergroup interaction also elicit be-havioral conrmation as prior studies have shown (e.g., Berk & Andersen, 2000)?

And second, can transference be used as a strategy to guard against other forms of bias as caused by sexual orientation, or one’s political beliefs? Future research onthe topics of reducing intergroup bias and the prosocial benets of transference are

highly promising as the eld of social psychology continues to strive toward nd-ing alternative models of social perception that promote intergroup harmony andfriendship. The present study adds to the possible strategies that can be used to ne-gate the harmful effects of intergroup bias. More broadly, this study supports thegrowing belief that one’s social networks, or more specically signicant-other re-lationships, may have very important and inuential effects on future social relations.

REFERENCES

Andersen, S. M., & Glassman, N. S. (1996). Responding to signicant others when

they are not there: Effects on interpersonal inference, motivation, and affect.New York, NY, US: Guilford Press.

Andersen, S. M., & Baum, A. (1994). Transference in interpersonal relations: Infeences

and affect based on signicant-other representations. Journal of Personality.

Special Issue: Psychodynamics and social cognition: Perspectives on the

representation and processing of emotionally signicant information, 62(4),

459-497.

Andersen, S. M., & Chen, S. (2002). The relational self: An interpersonal social-cogni

tive theory. Psychological review, 109(4), 619-645.

Andersen, S. M., & Cole, S. W. (1990). “Do I know you?”: The role of signicant oth

ers in general social perception. Journal of personality and social psychology,

59(3), 384-399.

Andersen, S. M., Glassman, N. S., Chen, S., & Cole, S. W. (1995). Transference insocial perception: The role of chronic accessibility in signicant-other repre

sentations. Journal of personality and social psychology, 69(1), 41-57.

Andersen, S. M., Reznik, I., & Manzella, L. M. (1996). Eliciting facial affect, motivation,

and expectancies in transference: Signicant-other representations in social

relations. Journal of personality and social psychology, 71(6), 1108-1129.

Baum, A., & Andersen, S. M. (1999). Interpersonal roles in transference: Transient




mood effects under the condition of signicant-other resemblance. Social Cog

nition.Special Issue: Social cognition and relationships, 17(2), 161-185.

Berk, M. S., & Andersen, S. M. (2000). The impact of past relationships on interper

sonal behavior: Behavioral conrmation in the social-cognitive process of transference. Journal of personality and social psychology, 79(4), 546-562.

Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Parent-child attachment and healthy human develop

ment. New York: Basic Bks.

Bowlby, J. (1973). Attachment and loss: Vol. 2. Separation: Anxiety and anger. New

York: Basic Bks.

Brewer, M. B. (1991). The social self: On being the same and different at the same

time. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 17(5), 475-482.

Brewer, M. B. (2003). Intergroup relations. Buckingham: Open Univ. Press.

Burgoon, J. K., Buller, D. B., Hale, J. L., & DeTurck, M. A. (1984). Relational

messages associated with nonverbal behaviors. Human CommunicationResearch, 10(3), 351-378.

Gaertner, S. L., Dovidio, J. F., Banker, B. S., Houlette, M., Johnson, K. M., & McGlynn,

E. A. (2000). Reducing intergroup conict: From superordinate goals to decategorization, recategorization, and mutual differentiation. Group Dynamics:

Theory, Research, and Practice.Special Issue: One hundred years of group

research, 4(1), 98-114.

Gaertner, S. L., Dovidio, J.F., Anastasio, P. A., Bachman, B. A., & Rust, M. C. (1993).

The common ingroup identity model: Recategorization and the reduction of

intergroup bias. In W. Stroebe & M. Hewstone (Eds.), European review of

social psychology (4), 1-26.

Gaertner, S. L., Mann, J. A., Dovidio, J. F., Murrell, A. J., & Pomare, M. (1990). Howdoes cooperation reduce intergroup bias? Journal of personality and social

psychology, 59(4), 629-704.

Gaertner, S. L., Mann, J., Murrell, A., & Dovidio, J. F. (1989). Reducing intergroup bias:

The benets of recategorization. Journal of personality and social psychology,

57(2), 239-249.

Hinkley, K., & Andersen, S. M. (1996). The working self-concept in transference:

Signicant-other activation and self change. Journal of personality and social

psychology, 71(6), 1279-1295.

Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2001). Attachment theory and intergroup bias:

Evidence that priming the secure base schema attenuates negative reactionsto out-groups. Journal of personality and social psychology, 81(1), 97-115.

Lee 59 ______________________________________________________________________________



Pettigrew, T. F., & Tropp, L. R. (2006). A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory.Journal of personality and social psychology, 90(5), 751-783.

Sherif, M., Harvey, O. J., White, B. J., Hood, W. R., & Sherif, C. W. (1961). Intergroup

conict and cooperation: The Robbers Cave experiment. Norman, OK:University of Oklahoma Book Exchange.

Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conict. The social

psychology of intergroup relations, 33-47.

Turner, J. C., Brown, R. J., & Tajfel, H. (1979). Social comparison and group interest in

ingroup favouritism, 187-204.




FIGURE

30

35

40

45

50

O wn Y oked

I n c h e s

Ing ro up O utg ro up

Figure 1. Behavioral afliation as measured by the proximity between participant chair

placement relative to the target’s chair as a function of transference and group membership.

Lee 61 ______________________________________________________________________________







researched and wrote books on how personality development could lead to “civilization”.

Doob claimed that he laid no moral judgment in his work. According to Herman (1995),“[Doob’s] data characterized the people of ‘uncivilized societies as rigid and lacking in

empathy, whereas the psychological prole of civilized people included tolerance, rea-

son, self reection, and a refreshing absence of dogma”.Frederick TC Yu was invited to Washington to give a presentation on Commu-

nist China’s national character. Yu suggested that China was in the process of “growing

up”, that it was “confused” like an adolescent child. Communism was to be seen as a

result of this “confusion” (Herman, 1995). Psychologists suggested that the US encour -age Third World countries to embrace US style markets and democracy the way parentsguide their children (Herman, 1995).

It had long been assumed by thinkers such as Doob and McClelland that a

“civilized” national personality was related to an autonomous and independent self-view

and a democratic and rational way of thinking. During the period just after World War II, psychologists equated modernization with American culture, and declared that one

had to go with the other. The consensus was that uncivilized people were irrational andcollectivistic; a view that also t with anti-communist sentiment. These universalistic as-sumptions set a theoretical foundation for US foreign policy: people are born alike, and

culture makes them different. The United States should therefore guide Third World na-tions and cultures into producing the kind of individuals that will support free markets anddemocracy.

The overt hierarchical manner of description has largely dropped out of culturalpsychology today. Simultaneously, the 1980’s and 90’s saw a massive expansion in

cultural psychology as a discipline (Hogan and Sussner, 2001). Most cultural psychologynow concerns the “East” or “East Asians”: specically China, Japan, and South Korea.

Studies in cultural psychology compare sets of psychological variables in these threeEastern countries to the same variables in the “West” (mainly the United States). Japan,

South Korea, China and other countries have developed capitalist economies withoutbecoming psychologically “Western” (In making this observation, Berman, 2007 refers

specically to cross cultural research in Japan). Chinese leader Deng Xioping’s reform

policies beginning in 1978 opened the door to capitalist industrialization of China. Thenew government’s plans included the development and use of psychology to aid theChinese experience of modernization (Wang, 1993a). As China institutionalized its own

psychological disciplines, it developed the ability to talk back to the West with psycho-logical discourse and to engage in the discussion about what it means to be “Eastern”

as well as “Western”. Therefore, the modernization of East Asia may have necessitated

the end of American psychological theory suggesting that “individualistic” personalities

are essential for modernization. American psychologists are now forced to recognizethe “East” as an economic force, and further, Eastern psychologists now participate in

cultural psychology by working with American psychologists and publishing in the same journals.

The hierarchical view of culture’s relation to modernization was belied by theeconomic development of the East. Cultural psychological research that describes how

uncivilized people might be modernized has dropped out of practice for the most part.There are some exceptions. For example, recent research explains that East Asian“problems” with corporate governance may be related to a “collectivistic” self-view and

“cultural values” reected in the law (Licht et. al., 2004; personal communication with

Kaiping Peng). However, it is my observation that cultural psychology has moved away

Production of Cultural Difference64 ______________________________________________________________________________



from (purportedly objective) value judgments toward a new phenomenon I describe as

difference production.Difference production enables a negotiable but “objective” dialogue between

the “East” and “West”. For example, Peter Gries and Kaiping Peng (2002) explained

how China and the US averted an escalation of conict after the April 2001 plane colli -sion between the two nations. The authors urge us to learn a lesson from this incidentand “embrace both our cultural differences and our common humanity” (Gries and Peng,

2002). However, Karen Seeley (2003) has pointed out Chinese and American psycholo-gies are not in equal positions of power. Seeley explains that “the United States exports

its psychological knowledge to the rest of the world in the form of development projects,academic conferences, textbooks and journals....This transfer of knowledge is emphati-cally unidirectional” (Seeley, 2003). American psychology by far trumps China and allother nations in disseminating psychological knowledge on the world stage. Therefore,cultural psychology may act as a mechanism of control with which American culturalpsychologists dominate negotiations over which statements about cultural difference willbe considered objective and true. Ian Hacking (2002) has argued that objectivity means

regulating what can be counted as truth. When difference becomes objective, the pos-sibility of criticizing the observer’s point of view is erased.

Analyzing paradigm enforcement in cultural psychology means analyzing whatcan be counted as truth. People and institutions inside and outside the psychological dis-cipline have interests in the production of psychological facts. I argue that a psychologi-cal object called “cultural difference” has several functions, among which is the limitation

of the kinds of conclusions that cultural psychology can put forward. The discourse of

objectivity and universalism is maintained by the reduction of “culture” to an experimentalvariable. Fundamental psychological assumptions of objectivity cannot be challengedby cultural research because experimenters can speak of the dynamics of culture andpsychology only in terms of a substantively impoverished concept of “difference.”

Furthermore, cultural psychology maintains legitimacy and objective authorityin relation to its supporting institutions by scientizing its results and eschewing non-psychological explanations. Psychology is “science”, and must remain separate from the

more “subjective” disciplines such as history, anthropology and political science. Thus,

cultural difference production is a process with which psychologists can talk about cul-ture and maintain a claim to objectivity. This point of view is necessitated by psychol-

ogy’s continued relationship with government, military and business groups that have astake in arguing for the truth about society and culture. Therefore, cultural psychologybecomes a method by which nations negotiate and represent themselves to each other (Burman, 2007).

Cultural Difference: What it is and how it is produced

What is a cultural difference in psychology? Cultural differences are producedby a process called “quasi-experimental method.” In a true experiment, subjects are

randomly selected and assigned to two or more conditions. However, it is impossible torandomly assign “culture” as a condition. Instead, people from two cultures are assigned

an experimental task. The performance of each cultural group is compared using sta-tistical methods. If the two groups show statistical differences, the experimenter infers a

difference in the psychology of the two cultures.

Cochran 65 ______________________________________________________________________________



This method reduces “culture” to an independent variable. Subjects begin the

quasi-experiment of acculturation before interaction with society. The subject is putthrough the quasi-experimental “condition” of culture by living in a certain place for most

of his or her life. Thus, the experiment attempts to see if the cultural “condition” affects

the way the subject performs a certain task. The “cultural laboratory” is understood asthe ideal situation in which to obtain psychological facts not confounded by outside vari-ables.

Cultural psychologists perform several kinds of experiments. Many cognitiveexperiments involve reaction time measures or priming manipulations. These experi-ments attempt to reveal unconscious cognitive structures in the brain (for a good over-view of culture and cognition see Nisbett, et. Al., 2001). Survey methods such as LikertScales are common. Several scales have been developed to test cross-cultural varia-tions in psychological attributes. For instance, the individualism-collectivism scale (Trian-dis, et. Al., 1988) is a bi-polar scale that measures a subject’s psychological orientationtoward other people in degrees of individualism and collectivism (I-C). It is assumed that

it is meaningful to apply this scale to subjects of any culture. In this scale, “individualism”

and “collectivism” become abstract objects that exist free of context. According to Carl

Ratner and Lumei Hui (2003), “abstraction results when a factor is misconstrued as a

discrete variable with a singular, xed character.” Thus, “collectivism” in China may be

understood as the same as “collectivism” in Japan.

The psychological objects of bi-polar scales are used to explain other culturaldifferences. For example, Markus and Kitayama (1991) explain that the independentand interdependent views of the self can be explained in part by cross-cultural differ-

ences in the individualism-collectivism scale. Markus and Kitayama’s description of “in-dependent-” and “interdependent-self” explains that Americans understand the self to

be meaningful in terms of “self actualization” and autonomy. The East Asian view of

self emphasizes the interconnectedness of people. Markus and Kitayama describe EastAsian behavior as “determined and contingent on” the thoughts and desires of others.

Markus and Kitayama subsume Triandis’s I-C scale by claiming that the cross-cultural

differences in I-C result from the variation in views of the self (Markus & Kitayama, 1991).

Two more psychological objects are abstracted, and the process goes on. Many articlescite Markus and Kitayama (1991) to explain their own results.

Ratner comments on the faulty logic in this process:

“1) Countries A & B score differently on a social value scale.

2) Psychological differences are found between country A & B.

3) Therefore, psychological differences are due to differences in the social value” (Ratner & Hui, 2003).

The relationship is actually a relationship between psychology and country. In

other words, Ratner says, “to say that Chinese come from a collectivistic culture is to

say that they come from China” (2003). This is because no experimentation has beendone to understand how “individualism-collectivism” affects the outcome of experiments

in a way that is distinct from other cultural variables. Cultural differences are explainedin terms of themselves, and objects such as “collectivism” and “individualism” remain

uninformative (Ranter & Hui, 2003).




Karen Seeley has argued that cultural stereotypes such as those mentioned“have permitted practitioners to presume cultural knowledge of subjects and patients,

and in effect, avoid deeper investigation” (2003). Cultural psychologists can continue topractice without direct knowledge of the history or society of the group of people in ques-

tion. New ideas are grounded in previous psychological constructs without reference tohistory or politics. Cross-cultural psychology maintains the assumptions of experimentalpsychology and becomes universalism-in-disguise; an apparent paradox.

Objective social sciences such as psychology use second order constructs toexplain psychological phenomena (Bourdieu, 1990). Psychologists use “pre-scientic”

constructs such as “belief”, “memory” and “anger” in experimental study, but fail to ac -count for how these objects were constructed in the rst place (Bourdieu, 1990) This is

pertinent to cultural psychology because a second order construct that arises in Ameri-can psychology may not be applicable to Chinese psychology. The fact that Chinese psy-chologists see a disparity between Western psychological theory and their own societiescan be attributed to this problem (Peng et. al., 2005).

Yet making Chinese second order constructs out of Chinese pre-scientic ideas

only partially addresses the issue. When culture is reduced to race, ethnicity, or geo-graphical location and manipulated in a quasi-experiment, the result is two objectivea-historical truths instead of just one, adding a complimentary psychology of the Eastfor that of the West. This logic can not be valid. Chinese psychologists nd objective dif -ferences amongst Chinese: between the Han majority and ethnic minorities. A Chinese

study showed differences between Japanese and Chinese managers (Wang, 1993b).

Continuing the innite quest for cultural difference, we will eventually conclude that every

individual is different from everyone else. Therefore, the question “who is different fromwhom?” is a political inquiry.

Paradigm Enforcement from the Inside of Psychology

Ratner’s critique of cultural psychology’s methodology is helpful, but it does notexplain the problem in the larger context. Asking the question of what cultural differencesexist is a political act. Whether they are aware or not, American psychologists serve par-ticular political interests by researching some cultural differences and not others. I shall

address the interests of psychological researchers themselves and argue that cultural

psychology threatens the larger domain of established psychological theory. Focusingon producing psychological differences (and thereby discouraging the development of new theories) deects awareness of the danger that the study of culture might pose on

the current paradigm of psychological universalism.A universalist perspective is often an implicit assumption of general experimen-

tal research rather than an explicit position. It is supposed that scientic psychology

describes categories that exist in the nature of the mind, outside of discourse (Danziger,1997). Seeley (2003) points out psychologists of the early 20th century felt no need tocheck the cross-cultural validity of their work. The creation of a universal set of psycho-logical laws depended on the abjection of non-white persons from research samples.

When cultural psychology established itself as a legitimate discipline in the latter half of the 20th century, there was already a signicant body of psychological research based

on the principles of universalism.As mentioned earlier, Danziger emphasizes the importance of the laboratory

setting and experimental method in psychological research. In the lab, the individual

Cochran 67 ______________________________________________________________________________







politically contentious. Elite groups in society hold an interest in scientic facts and often

guide the kinds of knowledge that social scientists are able to produce. “Objectivity” can

be identied as a controlling process that directs thinking about what can be considered

true or false. Ian Hacking (2002) has suggested that once a scientic question is posed,

its truth-value may be xed. Cross-cultural psychology produces facts that can be repli -cated and veried by experiment. However, the questions that are asked are historically

contingent and come forth in a system in which power works. Regularities that are notrelated to scientic theory but social institutions “determine systems of possibility, of what

is conceived of as true-or-false, and they determine what counts as grounds for assentand dissent, what arguments and data are relevant” (Hacking, 2002).

Kurt Danziger (1990) explains that the process of establishing legitimacy inpsychology lay in constructing rules that would lead to its recognition as an objective sci-ence. Psychologists distinguished their own knowledge as both relevant and specializedby developing the concept of psychological universals. Before the advent of experimen-tal psychology, psychology was a matter for anyone to discuss. Psychologists stakeda claim to authority by their ability to produce objective and universal truths (Danziger,1990).

An objective science of psychology produces facts that are both useful andnon-threatening to elite groups. American psychologists have a long history of offeringtheir special knowledge to outside institutions in return for jobs, funding and recognition(Herman, 1995). Herman shows that psychological research has been heavily directedby military, business and government interests. Resources are available to psychologistswho lend their help in advertising, industrial management, surveys and who advise on

popular opinion and wartime policy (cf. Ewen, 1976; Herman, 1995).The perceived objectivity of a discipline is contingent upon its ability to remain

within the bounds of hegemonic thought. Social institutions and actual institutions setregulations on what can be considered a proper research question. To be considered“scientic”, psychology must begin its research by entering non-controversial pre-scien-tic concepts into research. Yet “non-controversial” concepts should not be understood

as politically neutral. Anthropologist Laura Nader’s study of controlling processes (1997)suggests that the dissemination of hegemonic ideologies serves the interests of an eliteclass. If Bourdeiu’s formulation of objective social science is correct then it matters what

pre-scientic ideas enter into “second order constructs” because ideas are not politically

neutral.Folk psychological constructs are necessarily subject to hegemonic ideologies

to some degree. This becomes apparent in a consideration of how one culture comparesitself to another. Cultural psychology enters pre-scientic beliefs about a cultural other

and turns those beliefs into objective facts by the experimental method. Therefore ananalysis of those pre-scientic ideas is warranted.

Laura Nader (1989) has analyzed the “functional equivalence” of Orientalism

and Occidentalism. Eastern scholarship on the West mirrors Western scholarship onthe East; both have historically considered the other barbaric and uncivilized. Recall the

work of psychologists such as Leonard Doob. His work on “uncivilized” people simul-

taneously informed policy-makers and legitimized the need for American developmentprojects and Western expansion. The East’s view of the West is no different (see Nader,1989); for example, Nader (1989) mentions the book The Japan That Can Say No: The

New U.S. Japan Relations Card (English translation 1991) which positioned Japan as

technologically and spiritually superior to the West.






Bourdieu, P. (1990). The Logic of Practice. California: Stanford University Press.

Danziger, K. (1990). Constructing the Subject: Historical Origins of Psychological

Research. Cambridge University Press.

Danziger, K. (1997). Naming the Mind: How Psychology Found its Language.

California: Sage Publications.

Ewen, S. (1976). Captains of Consciousness. New York: Basic Books.

Fishbein, Martin and Icek Ajzen. (1975). Belief Attitude, Intention, and Behavior: An

Introduction to Theory and Research. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-

Wesley Publishing Company.

Gries, P. and Peng, K. (2002). Cultural clash: Apologies East and West. Journal of

Contemporary China. 11, 173-178.

Hacking, I. (2002). Historical Ontology. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University

Press.

Herman, E. (1995). The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age

of Experts. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Jahoda, G, and Krewer,B. (1997). “History of Cross Cultural and Cultural Psychology”in The Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology. J. W. Berry, Y.H. Poortinga

and J. Pandey, eds. Pp. 1-42 Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Kusch, M (1999). Psychological Knowledge: A Social History and Philosophy. London:

Routledge Press.

Licht, Amir N., Goldschmidt, Chanan and Schwartz, Shalom H. (2004). Culture, Law,and Corporate Governance. Electronic document: http://ssrn.com/

abstract=508402.

Markus, H. and Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition,

emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review. Vol 98(2). pp. 224-253.

Nisbett, R., Peng, K., Choi, I., & Norenzanan, A. (2001). Culture and system of

thoughts: Holistic versus analytic cognition. Psychological Review,

108, 291-310.

Nader, L. (1989). Orientalism, Occidentalism, and the Control of Women. CulturalDynamics, 2 (3), 323-355.

Nader, L. (1997). Controlling Processes: Tracing the Dynamic Components of Power

(and Comments and Reply). Current Anthropology, 38 (5), 711-737.




Peng, K. and Nisbett, R. (1999). Culture, dialectics, and reasoning about contradiction.American Psychologist, 54(9), 741-754.

Peng, K., Spencer-Rodgers J., Kim, Z. (2006) Naïve Dialecticism and the Tao of

Chinese Thought. Indigenous and cultural psychology: Understanding peoplein context. Uichol (Ed); Yang, Kuo-Shu (Ed); Hwang, Kwang-Kuo (Ed). New

York, NY, US: Springer Science + Business Media, 247-262.

Ratner, C. and Hui, L. (2003). Theoretical and Methodological Problems in CrossCultural Psychology. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour. 33(1), 67-94 .

Triandis, H., Bontempo, R., Villareal M. J., Asai M., and Lucca, N. (1988). Individualism

and Collectivism: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Self In-group relationships.

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 54 (2), 323-338.

Wang, Z. (1993a). New Chinese Approach in Psychological Research. Psychology andDeveloping Societies, 5(2), 151-169.

Wang, Z. (1993b). Psychology in China: A review dedicated to Li Chen. Annual Review

of Psychology. 44, 87-11.

Cochran 73 ______________________________________________________________________________



ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Chris Cochran graduated from Berkeley in May 2007 with a major in psychology. He

completed his senior thesis with Professor Kaiping Peng on the topic of Chinese andUnited States folk theories of responsibility. He plans to enter a PhD program in culturalanthropology in fall 2008. Chris would like to thank Dr. Peng, Dr. Nader and Dr. Hessefor their invaluable mentorship and direction.

Victoria Lee, born and raised in the Bay Area, is the third person in her immediatefamily to graduate from UC Berkeley. She graduated with honors in psychology and aminor in ethnic studies. Her perfect day would be spent snowboarding with friends andfamily on fresh pow on a sunny bluebird day. In regards to the presented research she

sends special thanks to Michael Kraus and Dr. Serena Chen for guiding her through thedifcult process of conducting a research project, her friends and family for supporting

her through all of the writing blocks, and the lovely people at Strada Cafe who made thelong days and nights possible with their wonderful bianca mochas; without the help of all

of these people this thesis would never have been completed. Thank you!

Scott Charles Sitrin graduated from Berkeley in December 2007 with a major inpsychology. Currently, he is still in the Bay Area, working at Crisis Support Services of Alameda County, training for the AIDS / LifeCycle bicycle ride from San Francisco to Los

Angeles, and preparing for the GRE. Next year, he hopes to begin graduate school with

the goal of earning a Doctorate in Psychology (PsyD). He would like to thank all of theteachers and graduate students from the Berkeley Psychology Department as well as hisfamily and friends for their support.

Angela Huizi Sun graduated from UC Berkeley in December 2007 with highest hon-ors and a double major in psychology and Chinese literature. Her studies in these twodisparate elds have taught her both the value of knowledge garnered from research on

lived experiences (as embodied by the social sciences), and the importance of historyand culture in providing context and interpretation. Following her interest in studying

China from an interdisciplinary vantage point, she will be pursuing her MA in the Re-gional Studies in East Asia program at Harvard in fall, 2008, with the eventual goal of obtaining her PhD in Chinese studies.



For more information about Psychology at Berkeley ,visit http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~ujpb or email [email protected].

Documents

Volume 1, Spring 2008