Quasi-experimental research in culture sensitive psychology

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 327-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre R. Dasen ◽  
Ramesh C. Mishra ◽  
Jürg Wassmann
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Cultural Psychology ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Spatial Skills ◽  
Cultural Variables ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
The Many

The research presented in this article follows up on several aspects of Gustav Jahoda’s long and fruitful career: (1) his early fieldwork on cognitive development in Africa, particularly in the area of spatial skills; (2) his interest in cross-cultural psychology as a research method; and (3) his insistence on bringing anthropology and psychology together. The topic of our research is the development of a so-called “geocentric” frame of spatial reference. This is a cognitive style, in which individuals describe and represent small-scale table-top space in terms of large-scale geographic dimensions. We explore the development with age of geocentric language and cognition, and the relationships between the two. We also explore the many environmental and socio-cultural variables that favor the use of this frame. We demonstrate how we untangled several of these variables by using a succession of within-society group comparisons, in several societies where a geocentric frame is in common usage (Bali, Indonesia, India, and Nepal). Our research program unfolds like a detective story, where one finding that is difficult to interpret because of several confounded variables leads to another quasi-experimental group comparison that suggests another hypothesis, which is then tested in a further session of field-work. In each case, we emphasize how important it was to have extensive linguistic and ethnographic knowledge before implementing psychological tests. The research design is not cross-cultural as such (we hardly ever perform comparisons between societies), but culturally sensitive within a series of societies; in other words, as Dasen and Jahoda (1986 , p. 413) defined it, “cross-cultural developmental psychology is not just comparative: essentially it is an outlook that takes culture seriously.”

scholarly journals Small-scale societies exhibit fundamental variation in the role of intentions in moral judgment

2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (17) ◽  
pp. 4688-4693 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Clark Barrett ◽  
Alexander Bolyanatz ◽  
Alyssa N. Crittenden ◽  
Daniel M. T. Fessler ◽  
Simon Fitzpatrick ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Narrow Range ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Moral Assessment ◽  
Mitigating Circumstances

Intent and mitigating circumstances play a central role in moral and legal assessments in large-scale industrialized societies. Although these features of moral assessment are widely assumed to be universal, to date, they have only been studied in a narrow range of societies. We show that there is substantial cross-cultural variation among eight traditional small-scale societies (ranging from hunter-gatherer to pastoralist to horticulturalist) and two Western societies (one urban, one rural) in the extent to which intent and mitigating circumstances influence moral judgments. Although participants in all societies took such factors into account to some degree, they did so to very different extents, varying in both the types of considerations taken into account and the types of violations to which such considerations were applied. The particular patterns of assessment characteristic of large-scale industrialized societies may thus reflect relatively recently culturally evolved norms rather than inherent features of human moral judgment.

Cattle

1984 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 83-89
Author(s):  
Ian B. Howie
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Production Systems ◽  
Farming System ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Market Forces ◽  
Poultry Production ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Fully Integrated ◽  
Beef Producers ◽  
The Many

Matching production to the markets for meat makes the assumption that individual producers can have an influence on market forces. This may well apply nowadays to some of the very large scale poultry production units but, individually, beef producers can have little if any influence on the marketing scene. Although there are farmers who produce several hundred fat cattle a year, the bulk of the beef produced comes from fairly small scale producers. Much of beef production is on a fairly haphazard basis with little or no recording or budgeting.Nevertheless, small scale producers and feeders who move in and out of the market can exploit local or short-term, favourable, market fluctuations and, with skilful buying and selling, make good profits on a quick turnover. Larger scale producers who have pre-planned fully integrated production systems cannot react as quickly to any great extent to short-term marketing opportunities. I regard marketing as only one of the many variable factors to be taken into account when planning a beef enterprise within a whole farming system, in which it is likely to be one of a number of enterprises which have to be kept in balance.

R.A. Daly’s early model of seafloor generation 40 years before the Vine–Matthews hypothesis: an outstanding theoretical achievement inspired by field work on St. Helena in 1921–1922

2015 ◽  
Vol 52 (10) ◽  
pp. 893-902 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominik Letsch
Keyword(s):  
Earth Sciences ◽  
Oceanic Crust ◽  
Plate Tectonics ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Scientific Models ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Early Model ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
St Helena

Large-scale lateral mobility of the Earth’s lithosphere (mobilism) was a hotly debated issue in Earth Sciences during some two decades following publication of Wegener’s (1912) theory of continental displacement. The final acceptance of lithospheric mobility was brought about with the plate tectonics revolution during the late 1960s. Support for mobilism was rather popular in certain European countries during the 1920s, whereas the reactions in North America were mostly hostile. One of the very few influential mobilists in the New World was Reginald Aldworth Daly of Harvard University. The present paper discusses his model of continental displacement which is very remarkable in many aspects. We focus on the hitherto neglected fact that Daly proposed in the mid-1920s a mechanism to create oceanic crust which would have been totally consistent with the Vine–Matthews hypothesis of seafloor generation published in 1963. It is furthermore suggested that Daly’s geotectonic proposals were inspired by small-scale analogues of lava flows and multiple dike swarms he observed on Atlantic islands such as St. Helena and Ascension. His model to account for the construction of new oceanic crust is reminiscent of the models of Vine and Moores (1972) and Cann (1970) which eventually led to the “Penrose-definition” of ophiolites in 1972. As these scientists arrived at their conclusions absolutely independently of Daly, this episode is an instructive example of a multiple or repeated discovery in the Earth Sciences which renders it difficult to believe certain theories of science which assume scientific models to depend mostly on social factors.

scholarly journals From Chernozem to Luvisol or from Luvisol to Chernozem? A discussion about the relationships and limits of the two types of soils. A case study of the soil catena of Hrušov, Czechia

Geografie ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 125 (4) ◽  
pp. 473-500
Author(s):  
Barbora Strouhalová ◽  
Anne Gebhardt ◽  
Damien Ertlen ◽  
Luděk Šefrna ◽  
Kristýna Flašarová ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Intensive Agriculture ◽  
Soil Types ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Soil Micromorphology ◽  
Simultaneous Presence ◽  
Soil Evolution ◽  
Soil Catena

The patchy character of the distribution of Chernozems and Luvisols formed on loess is often observable on the pedological maps, on a large scale, in Czechia. The focus of the paper is to examine the features of the soil catena of Hrušov (Czechia), which is characterized by the simultaneous presence of Chernozem, Luvisol and Luvic Chernozem – without obvious environmental reasons. A catena of only 330 meters is considered a system of transformation between these soils. Along with field work and the pedological analysis, we used the soil micromorphology method to understand the processes of pedogenesis. We concluded that the presence of considerably different soil types on a small scale is due to intensive agriculture. We found that the present Chernozem is formed on the Luvisol by retrograde soil evolution, which included a shift in the vegetation, erosion, and recarbonation. The evolution of Luvisol in the lower part of the catena has been considerably modified.

Plankton

1962 ◽  
Vol 265 (1322) ◽  
pp. 335-341
Keyword(s):  
Surface Waters ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Fish Meal ◽  
Water Masses ◽  
The Other ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Local Areas ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Many ◽  
European Markets

Today I must concentrate on just one of the many possible aspects of plankton research, one that 1 believe has a real future given the opportunity and the backing. This is: how the movement and mixing of water masses affect the plankton and, in turn, the effect this has on the other dependent communities and so on the fish themselves. We know that the mixing of different water masses produces conditions that are usually more productive than in either, and this can happen on a large scale, as in the convergences, or on a small scale in quite local areas. Sometimes the cause of the greater productivity is obvious—for example, off the coast of Peru where off-shore winds tend to drive away the depleted surface waters. These are replaced by the upwelling of nutrient-rich waters from below; some mixing takes place seeding the rich water with phytoplankton and resulting in one of the richest areas of production in the oceans and incidentally leading to an export of cheap fish meal that is having repercussions in the European markets.

scholarly journals Generation of photoclinometric DTMs for application to transient changes on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

2019 ◽  
Vol 630 ◽  
pp. A10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Tang ◽  
S. P. D. Birch ◽  
A. G. Hayes ◽  
R. Kirk ◽  
N. Kutsop ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Shape From Shading ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Digital Terrain ◽  
Terrain Models ◽  
Rosetta Mission ◽  
The Many ◽  
Pixel Scale ◽  
Comet 67P ◽  
Temporal Coverage

Context. The wide spatial and temporal coverage of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P) by the Rosetta mission has revealed a surface created by scattered large-scale changes and numerous small-scale changes. The many small-scale changes are of particular interest because they are unexpected and ubiquitous. As their topographic relief is often smaller than one meter, which is below the resolution of any shape models, we need higher resolution topography to analyze them properly. Aims. We describe a photoclinometry method that is able to retrieve surface elevations for a single OSIRIS image of the surface of 67P. With this method, we can provide accurate measures, along with error estimates, of the centimeter-scale topography of observed transient changes. Methods. Photoclinometry, or shape-from-shading, estimates heights by examining the light reflection of the surface as dictated by a photometric model under a specified set of viewing geometries. Assuming a standard photometric model for 67P, we can recreate the shading of a surface under specified viewing geometries. The output is a high-resolution height map that matches the original image pixel by pixel. We then provide estimates of the error in the retrieved heights and ensure that our method is valid with a series of checks. Results. We generate digital terrain models (DTMs) with a vertical resolution comparable to or smaller than the pixel scale. This allows us to accurately measure changes in the surface topography on centimeter scales. We find that most changes within the smooth terrains involve the transport or removal of material thinner than one meter.

When age meets culture: an investigation of children’s package design preferences

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Cultural Psychology ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Design Guidelines ◽  
Chinese Children ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Package Design ◽  
The Usa ◽  
American Children

Purpose This research aims to investigate whether and how differences may exist in children’s preferences of package design across cultures, with a focus on three aspects of package design: curvilinearity, figurativeness and complexity. Design/methodology/approach A large-scale questionnaire survey has been conducted in a face-to-face setting in the USA and China, generating valid responses from 763 American children and 837 Chinese children of age 3-12 years. Findings Unlike previous findings among adults, children from both cultures were found to unanimously prefer curved package design. Nevertheless, Chinese children showed greater preferences for figurative and complex package design than American children; these tendencies increased with age, suggesting significant age–culture interactions. Research limitations/implications The surprising finding of the lack of cultural difference in children’s preferences of curved package design suggests that such cultural preferences established in studies of adults may not emerge through time via cultural/social learning until after age 12. The limited cultures, stimuli and factors included in the study call for replications of the study in more realistic and broader settings. Practical implications The findings provide package design guidelines for consumer product marketers and designers/innovators targeting the Chinese and American children’s markets. Curved package designs are preferred by children from both cultures. Nevertheless, marketers should choose figurative and complex package design in accordance with the target children’s age and cultural background. Originality/value This study contributes to the limited empirical consumer behavior research on package design, especially that of children’s products. It also extends the literature on cultural psychology, experimental aesthetics and developmental psychology.

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