Universality and Cultural Diversity in Moral Reasoning and Judgment

Many theories have shaped the concept of morality and its development by anchoring it in the realm of the social systems and values of each culture. This review discusses the current formulation of moral theories that attempt to explain cultural factors affecting moral judgment and reasoning. It aims to survey key criticisms that emerged in the past decades. In both cases, we highlight examples of cultural differences in morality, to show that there are cultural patterns of moral cognition in Westerners’ individualistic culture and Easterners’ collectivist culture. It suggests a paradigmatic change in this field by proposing pluralist “moralities” thought to be universal and rooted in the human evolutionary past. Notwithstanding, cultures vary substantially in their promotion and transmission of a multitude of moral reasonings and judgments. Depending on history, religious beliefs, social ecology, and institutional regulations (e.g., kinship structure and economic markets), each society develops a moral system emphasizing several moral orientations. This variability raises questions for normative theories of morality from a cross-cultural perspective. Consequently, we shed light on future descriptive work on morality to identify the cultural characteristics likely to impact the expression or development of reasoning, justification, argumentation, and moral judgment in Westerners’ individualistic culture and Easterners’ collectivist culture.

National culture and the distribution of foreign aid

This paper investigates the relationship between a country’s national culture and the level of aid it grants to other countries. We rely on Hofstede’s culture framework to quantify national culture and find that national culture and aid are significantly related. Specifically, we show that countries having high power distance, high masculinity and high uncertainty avoidance cultures appear to refrain from engaging in foreign assistance programmes. On the other hand, high individualistic-culture countries tend to provide greater levels of foreign aid. Overall, the results imply that national culture matters in shaping the donation behaviour of aid providers.

Commons, Commoning and Co-Becoming: Nurturing Life-in-Common and Post-Capitalist Futures (An Introduction to the Theme Issue)

Over the last decade, there has been an expansion of scholarly and activist engagement with the commons. This interest corresponds to a growing quest for alternatives to capitalism in view of ongoing socio- ecological crises. As neoliberal capitalism intensifies enclosure of the commons, local actions to reclaim old commons and invent new ones to counter these processes are also on the rise. However, there are diverse conceptions of the commons, and pitfalls in their reproduction and in mobilizing this vocabulary in the dominant neoliberal individualistic culture. Our understanding remains limited about how spaces for commons and commoning practices can be expanded, as well as about specific practices, relations and imaginaries that support commons and subjectivities of being-in-common. This Special Issue on the “Commons, Commoning and Co-becomings” seeks to deepen our understanding of ‘actually-existing’ and ‘more-than- human’ commons in the world, and how ways of relating to them open up possibilities of responding to current socioenvironmental challenges and generating beyond-capitalist ways of life. Exploring commoning experiences in diverse settings, the papers assembled in this Special Issue illustrate the role that commons and commoning practices play in reconfiguring human-nature relations. Thinking with these papers, we draw attention to three interrelated areas: relational aspects of the work of commoning (practices, labor, care) in transforming our world and being transformed by it; the role of commons and commoning practices in generating subjectivities of being-in-common; and difference and divergences (or, un-commoning) that persist and emerge in commoning processes. We offer these themes as directions to better understand and enact the potential of commons and commoning for worlding—crafting, (re)producing—of a pluriverse of post-capitalist worlds and life in- common.

“AmeriKenyan”: Lived Acculturation and Ethnic Identification of Kenyan Natives During Their Youth

This qualitative study investigated the immigration, acculturation process, and ethnic identity experiences of six Kenyan emerging adults who immigrated to the United States during their adolescent years. Themes emerged from the data to describe their (a) immigration experience, (b) acculturation process into an individualistic culture with more of a Western worldview, (c) ethnic and racial identity, and (d) emotional response and coping. Subthemes and additional factors illustrated their experience as it relates to social life, academics, cultural context, family values, and more. Implications for multicultural psychology research and practice are addressed.

The Antecedents of Thriving at Work: A Meta-Analytic Review

In this study, a systematic and comprehensive meta-analysis of the relationship between thriving at work and its antecedents is conducted. The antecedents in terms of the characteristics of unit contextual features, the resources produced at work, agentic work behaviors, and personality traits are illustrated according to the socially embedded model of thriving described by Spreitzer and research. Additionally, we examine possible cultural influence on the relationship between thriving and its antecedents at different levels of individualistic culture. According to 67 independent samples (N = 28,097), our findings reveal the correlations between thriving at work and the antecedents such as those in the form of unit contextual features, the resources produced at work, agentic work behaviors, and personality traits. Furthermore, we find that individualism moderate the relationships between certain antecedents and thriving at work. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this study as well as the directions for future research.

Stereotype Threat, Intergenerational Contact, and Performance among the Elderly across Cultures: A Comparative Study of France and Indonesia

In the present research, we examined cross-cultural generalizability of the roles of anxiety and intergenerational contact in age-based stereotype threat (ABST). To this end, we conducted studies in France (individualistic culture) and Indonesia (collectivistic culture). In the main study, elderly participants in France and in Indonesia completed the Digit Span task that was presented as memory (high-threat) or cognitive strategy task (low-threat). Using the bootstrapping method, we found that, in both countries, stereotype threat led to lowered performance among the elderly who had little or no contact with the young. Those with positive contacts, on the other hand, showed no performance decrement under high (vs. low) threat. Highlighting the importance of culture, performance anxiety mediates the effects of threat on the performance of the French elderly, versus intergroup anxiety for the Indonesians. Self-construal (independent vs. interdependent) associated with cultural orientation (individualistic vs. collectivistic) was proposed to explain the cultural difference in the type of anxiety as a mediator. This not only leads to suggestions for future research but also for possible real-life intervention strategies.

Caregiver Relationships and Distress Moderated by Collectivism

The number of older populations raising their grandchildren has increased. Past research has indicated the distress custodial grandparents’ experience is related to their family relationships (Hayslip, Shore, & Emick, 2006). Family relationships are also influenced by a variety of factors such as social history, culture, family structure, and individual differences (Uhlenberg & Kirby, 1998). The current study evaluated the influence of culture on the relationship between caregiver relationship quality and mental health by examining 885 children (18-25 years; M=18.93). This study also compared the difference in cultural impact between custodial grandparents-grandchildren and biological parents-children. Measures included the Network of Relationships Inventory, Hofstede Cultural Questionnaire, and Adult Behavior Checklist. Path analysis was conducted using AMOS 26.0 which resulted in an interaction between relationship closeness and collectivism to predict custodial grandparent depressive symptoms. Custodial grandparents who reported a lower level of closeness with their grandchildren in a higher collectivistic culture reported a significantly higher level of depression symptoms than those in a more individualistic culture, particularly for custodial grandmothers. However, custodial grandparents who reported a higher level of closeness with their grandchildren in a higher collectivistic culture reported significantly lower levels of depressive symptoms than those in a more individualistic culture. Furthermore, compared to biological parents, custodial grandparents reported significantly lower levels of depressive symptoms when reporting higher collectivistic culture. These findings will inform the need for more research to assess factors of cultural features that reduce psychological problems and support family relationships to adapt psychological therapies in older adults.

Rising Ethnic Diversity in the United States Accompanies Shifts Toward an Individualistic Culture

We investigate the relationship between ethnic diversity and the rise of individualism in the United States during the 20th and 21st centuries. Tests of the historical rates of ethnic diversity alongside individualistic relational structures (e.g., adults living alone, single-/multi-child families) from the years 1950 to 2018 reveal that societal and regional rates of ethnic diversity accompanied individualistic relational structures. These effects hold above and beyond time-series trends in each variable. Further evidence from experimental studies ( N = 707) suggests that the presence of, and contact with, ethnically diverse others contributes to greater individualistic values (e.g., the importance of uniqueness and personal achievement). Converging evidence across societal-, regional-, and individual-level analyses suggests a systematic link between ethnic diversity and individualism. We discuss the implications of these findings for sociocultural livelihood in light of the rising rates of ethnic diversity across the globe.