scholarly journals Four Fundamental Distinctions in Conceptions of Wellbeing Across Cultures

2021 ◽  
pp. 675-703
Author(s):  
Mohsen Joshanloo ◽  
Evert Van de Vliert ◽  
Paul E. Jose
Keyword(s):  
Contextual Factors ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Mental Wellbeing ◽  
Cultural Variations ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Optimal Functioning ◽  
Hedonic Experience ◽  
Empirical Implications

AbstractOne of the key roles of culture is to shape how human groups pursue personal and collective wellbeing, and thus each culture contains prescriptions and customs about how to achieve optimal functioning and wellbeing. This chapter identifies four fundamental differences in the conceptualizations of mental wellbeing across cultures. The identified differences are in the centrality of hedonic experience, self-enhancement, autonomy, and the relevance of contextual factors in determining wellbeing. These overlapping dynamics provide a framework for categorizing and making sense of existing cross-cultural findings on mental wellbeing. The chapter discusses the theoretical and empirical implications of the reviewed cross-cultural findings for international measurements of wellbeing. We argue that various measures of wellbeing may function differently in different global regions, with crucial implications for how countries are ranked based on wellbeing. Our review also highlights the relevance of cross-cultural variations in the concepts of wellbeing for designing interventions and policies and evaluating their effectiveness across cultures.

scholarly journals Does Understanding Behavior Make It Seem Normal?

2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 286-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Ban ◽  
Yoshi Kashima ◽  
Nick Haslam
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Differences ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Abnormal Behavior ◽  
Questionnaire Study ◽  
Culturally Specific ◽  
Cultural Variations ◽  
Making Sense

According to recent research, abnormal behavior appears normal to the extent it is understood. Cultural differences in frameworks for making sense of abnormality suggest there may be variations in this “reasoning fallacy.” In light of evidence that people from Western cultures psychologize abnormality to a greater extent than people from East Asian cultures, the effect of understanding on perceptions of abnormality was predicted to differ across cultures. Results of a cross-cultural questionnaire study indicated that understanding made behavior seem normal to European Australians ( n = 51), consistent with the reasoning fallacy. For Singaporeans ( n = 51), however, understanding did not influence the extent to which behavior was normalized and made abnormal behavior more stigmatizing. Cultural variations in the effect of understanding were attributed to the differential salience of deviance frameworks, which are grounded in culturally specific conceptions of the person.

Oppositional deliberation: Toward explaining overconfidence and its cross- cultural variations

1998 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Frank Yates ◽  
Ju-Whei Lee ◽  
Hiromi Shinotsuka ◽  
Winston R. Siech
Keyword(s):  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Variations

Show your teeth or not: The role of the mouth and eyes in smiles and its cross-cultural variations

2010 ◽  
Vol 33 (6) ◽  
pp. 450-452 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chao Liu ◽  
Yue Ge ◽  
Wen-Bo Luo ◽  
Yue-Jia Luo
Keyword(s):  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Variations

AbstractPrevious studies with Westerners have found that both the mouth and eyes are crucial in identifying and interpreting smiles. We proposed that Easterners (e.g., Chinese and Japanese) evaluate the role of the mouth and eyes in smiles differently from Westerners. Individuals in collectivistic Eastern society heavily rely on information from the eyes to identify and interpret the meaning of smiles.

Respondents in Asian Cultures (e.g., Chinese) are More Risk-Seeking and More Overconfident than Respondents in Other Cultures (e.g., in United States) but the Reciprocal Predictions are in Total Opposition: How and Why?

2004 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shu Li ◽  
Yongqing Fang
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Network ◽  
Risk Taking ◽  
Risk Preferences ◽  
Risk Preference ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Variations ◽  
Risk Seeking ◽  
The Social ◽  
Predicted Risk

AbstractTriggered by rather surprising findings that respondents in Asian cultures (e.g., Chinese) are more risk-seeking and more overconfident than respondents in other cultures (e.g., in United States) and that the reciprocal predictions are in total opposition, four experiments were designed to extend previous collective-culture oriented researches. Results revealed that (1) Singapore 21, which is a vision of Singapore in the 21st century and has highlighted the promotion of a collective culture, did not advocate greater risk-seeking but led to weaker overconfidence; (2) the knowledge of "financial help from social network" did not permit prediction of risk preference but the knowledge of "the value difference between possible outcomes" did; (3) the social network could be viewed not only as a positive "cushion" but also as a negative "burden" in both gain and loss domains of risky choices; (4) the predictions of the risk-as-value, risk-as-feelings and stereotype hypotheses were not consistent with the predicted risk preferences of others but the predictions of the economic-performance hypothesis were consistent with the predicted risk preferences as well as the predicted overconfidence of others. The implications for cross-cultural variations in overconfidence and for cross-cultural variations in risk-taking were discussed.

scholarly journals Making sense of (exceptional) causal relations. A cross-cultural and cross-linguistic study

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivier Le Guen ◽  
Jana Samland ◽  
Thomas Friedrich ◽  
Daniel Hanus ◽  
Penelope Brown
Keyword(s):  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Causal Relations ◽  
Linguistic Study ◽  
Making Sense

scholarly journals Social context and culture influence judgments of non-Duchenne smiles

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-321
Author(s):  
Shushi Namba ◽  
Magdalena Rychlowska ◽  
Anna Orlowska ◽  
Hillel Aviezer ◽  
Eva G. Krumhuber
Keyword(s):  
Contextual Information ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Contextual Influences ◽  
Basic Emotions ◽  
Cultural Variations ◽  
Emotion Displays ◽  
Positive Feelings ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Duchenne Smiles

Abstract Extant evidence points toward the role of contextual information and related cross-cultural variations in emotion perception, but most of the work to date has focused on judgments of basic emotions. The current research examines how culture and situational context affect the interpretation of emotion displays, i.e. judgments of the extent to which ambiguous smiles communicate happiness versus polite intentions. We hypothesized that smiles associated with contexts implying happiness would be judged as conveying more positive feelings compared to smiles paired with contexts implying politeness or smiles presented without context. In line with existing research on cross-cultural variation in contextual influences, we also expected these effects to be larger in Japan than in the UK. In Study 1, British participants viewed non-Duchenne smiles presented on their own or paired with background scenes implying happiness or the need to be polite. Compared to face-only stimuli, happy contexts made smiles appear more genuine, whereas polite contexts led smiles to be seen as less genuine. Study 2 replicated this result using verbal vignettes, showing a similar pattern of contextual effects among British and Japanese participants. However, while the effects of vignettes describing happy situations was comparable in both cultures, the influence of vignettes describing polite situations was stronger in Japan than the UK. Together, the findings document the importance of context information in judging smile expressions and highlight the need to investigate how culture moderates such influences.

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