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The cultural background of the non-academic concept of psychology in Japan: Its implications for introductory education in psychology
Abstract
No research has empirically explored the non-academic concept of psychology itself (implicit theories) in non-Western cultures despite a widely held belief that this understanding differs cross-culturally. This study examined whether the non-academic concept of psychology among inexperienced Japanese students differed from the concept held by students of other countries. In Japanese, psychology is referred to as , which includes the ideographic character , literally meaning heart. This fact led us to hypothesize that psychology will be disproportionately associated with emotion among Japanese students. Indeed, our findings among Japanese students produced a J-curve, indicating that our prediction was true. We posit that this issue has never been discussed in Japan because a majority of people share this concept of psychology. In our second study, we examined not only preference in students' association of intelligence or emotion but also heart or mind with psychology. Finally, we identified whether students' believe that psychology encompasses both the heart and the mind. We conclude with a discussion of the importance of explicitly defining the non-academic concept of psychology in early psychology education in Japan.
... Between 1.2 and 1.6 million students annually enroll in Intro Psych, as it is commonly called . Intro Psych is well researched both in North America (e.g., Weiten & Houska, 2015) and abroad (e.g., Ashitaka & Shimada, 2014). However, many questions and issues remain. ...
The introductory psychology (Intro Psych) course is the bedrock of the psychology major and the front face of our discipline. The class not only provides a foundation for students in the major but also provides a comprehensive portrait of the discipline for nonmajors. Despite a sizable body of research focused on pedagogy related to the introductory class, there are many questions that remain unanswered. We provide a comprehensive review of scholarship related to the Intro Psych course and discuss current practices and concerns related to textbook options, as well as teaching methods, course design, assignments to help students learn, and students’ learning outcomes. Finally, we provide five major suggestions for future work. We charge researchers to identify major bottlenecks to learning, design multisite studies, measure moderators of learning, assess long-term retention, and design/assess different models of teaching Intro Psych.
Social comparison theory maintains that people think about themselves compared with similar others. Those in one culture, then, compare themselves with different others and standards than do those in another culture, thus potentially confounding cross-cultural comparisons. A pilot study and Study I demonstrated the problematic nature of this reference-group effect: Whereas cultural experts agreed that East Asians are more collectivistic than North Americans, cross-cultural comparisons of trait and attitude measures failed to reveal such a pattern. Study 2 found that manipulating reference groups enhanced the expected cultural differences, and Study 3 revealed that people from different cultural backgrounds within the same country exhibited larger differences than did people from different countries. Cross-cultural comparisons using subjective Likert scales are compromised because of different reference groups. Possible solutions are discussed.
Do cultural and ethnic groups differ in their extreme response style? To answer this question, Hispanic and non-Hispanic subjects were asked to respond to a questionnaire on 5-point or 10-point scales. As predicted, Hispanics were found to exhibit a stronger tendency for extreme checking (about half the time, on the average) than non-Hispanic, but only when the 5-point scales were used. Use of 10-point scales reduced the extreme responses of the Hispanics to the level of non-Hispanics. Extreme responses of non-Hispanics were not affected by the scales. Implications of the findings for social research are discussed.
1. Introduction Part I. Similarities and Differences in Behavior across Cultures: 2. Individual development: infancy and early childhood 3. Individual development: childhood, adolescence and adulthood 4. Social behavior 5. Personality 6. Cognition 7. Emotion 8. Language 9. Perception Part II. Relationships between Behavior, Culture and Biology: 10. Contributions of cultural anthropology 11. Contributions of evolutionary biology 12. Methodology and theory Part III. Applying Research Findings across Cultures: 13. Acculturation 14. Intercultural relations 15. Intercultural communication and training 16. Work and organizations 17. Health 18. Culturally informed and appropriate psychology Epilogue Glossary of key terms.
Three experiments investigated experts' and laypersons' conceptions of intelligence. In Exp I, 61 persons studying in a college library, 63 entering a supermarket, and 62 waiting for trains in a railroad station were asked to list behaviors characteristic of either "intelligence," "academic intelligence," "everyday intelligence," or "unintelligence," and to rate themselves on each. In Exp II, 140 experts and 122 laypersons (excluding students) were asked to rate various properties of the behaviors listed in Exp I; the laypersons also rated themselves on the 3 kinds of intelligence and took the Henmon-Nelson Tests of Mental Abilities. In Exp III, 65 laypersons received written descriptions of behaviors characterizing fictitious people and were asked to rate these people's intelligence. Results show that well-formed prototypes corresponding to the various kinds of intelligence, that these prototypes were quite similar for experts and laypersons, were closely related to certain psychological theories of intelligence, and were used in the evaluation of one's own and other's intelligence. Moreover, proximity of one's behavioral self-characterizations to an ideal prototype was strongly related to intelligence. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The goals of both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis are described and procedural guidelines for each approach are summarized, emphasizing the use of factor analysis in developing and refining clinical measures. For exploratory factor analysis, a rationale is presented for selecting between principal components analysis and common factor analysis depending on whether the research goal involves either identification of latent constructs or data reduction. Confirmatory factor analysis using structural equation modeling is described for use in validating the dimensional structure of a measure. Additionally, the uses of confirmatory factor analysis for assessing the invariance of measures across samples and for evaluating multitrait-multimethod data are also briefly described. Suggestions are offered for handling common problems with item-level data, and examples illustrating potential difficulties with confirming dimensional structures from initial exploratory analyses are reviewed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
People in different cultures have strikingly different construals of the self, of others, and of the interdependence of the 2. These construals can influence, and in many cases determine, the very nature of individual experience, including cognition, emotion, and motivation. Many Asian cultures have distinct conceptions of individuality that insist on the fundamental relatedness of individuals to each other. The emphasis is on attending to others, fitting in, and harmonious interdependence with them. American culture neither assumes nor values such an overt connectedness among individuals. In contrast, individuals seek to maintain their independence from others by attending to the self and by discovering and expressing their unique inner attributes. As proposed herein, these construals are even more powerful than previously imagined. Theories of the self from both psychology and anthropology are integrated to define in detail the difference between a construal of the self as independent and a construal of the self as interdependent. Each of these divergent construals should have a set of specific consequences for cognition, emotion, and motivation; these consequences are proposed and relevant empirical literature is reviewed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Many clinical evaluations are subjective, resulting in ordinal level measurements. A widely used example in medical rehabilitation is the Functional Independence Measure (FIM), which provides a measure of disability. The FIM is an 18-item, 7-point Likert scale ranging from complete dependence to complete independence. Parametric statistics are commonly used for the analysis of ordinal data. However, Likert scales often lead to violation of many underlying assumptions. This study examined the comparative power of the
t test with the Wilcoxon rank-sum test using real pretest/posttest data sets measured on an ordinal scale. FIM scores were obtained on 714 geriatric patients at admit and discharge from a rehabilitation hospital. A Fortran 77 program was written to sample with replacement from each admit and discharge data distribution. Results indicated the Wilcoxon rank-sum test outperformed the
t test for almost every sample size and alpha level examined. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Studies using the lexical decision task with English stimuli have demonstrated that homophones are responded to more slowly than nonhomophonic controls. In contrast, several studies using Chinese stimuli have shown that homophones are responded to more rapidly than nonhomophonic controls. In an attempt to better understand the impact of homophony, we investigated homophone effects for Japanese kanji words in a lexical decision task. The results indicated that, whereas a processing disadvantage emerged for homophones when they have only a single homophonic mate (as in the English experiments), a processing advantage occurred for homophones when they have multiple homophonic mates (as in the Chinese experiments). On the basis of these results, we discuss the nature of the processes that may be responsible for producing the processing advantages and disadvantages for homophones. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).
Over the past fifty years or so the process-oriented approach has been used to explore the general properties of language systems within the framework of human cognition (Alegria, Holender, Morais & Radeau 1992). While much of this work in information processing deals with the English language, there is increasing realization that we need to understand better the similarities and differences in processing lexical items in different alphabetic language systems and also non-alphabetic systems such as Chinese and Japanese (Frost & Katz 1992).
Theories of language production generally describe the segment as the basic unit in phonological encoding (e.g., Dell, 1988; Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999). However, there is also evidence that such a unit might be language specific. Chen, Chen, and Dell (2002), for instance, found no effect of single segments when using a preparation paradigm. To shed more light on the functional unit of phonological encoding in Japanese, a language often described as being mora based, we report the results of 4 experiments using word reading tasks and masked priming. Experiment 1 demonstrated using Japanese kana script that primes, which overlapped in the whole mora with target words, sped up word reading latencies but not when just the onset overlapped. Experiments 2 and 3 investigated a possible role of script by using combinations of romaji (Romanized Japanese) and hiragana; again, facilitation effects were found only when the whole mora and not the onset segment overlapped. Experiment 4 distinguished mora priming from syllable priming and revealed that the mora priming effects obtained in the first 3 experiments are also obtained when a mora is part of a syllable. Again, no priming effect was found for single segments. Our findings suggest that the mora and not the segment (phoneme) is the basic functional phonological unit in Japanese language production planning.
Lay dispositionism refers to lay people's tendency to use traits as the basic unit of analysis in social perception (L. Ross & R. E. Nisbett, 1991). Five studies explored the relation between the practices indicative of lay dispositionism and people's implicit theories about the nature of personal attributes. As predicted, compared with those who believed that personal attributes are malleable (incremental theorists), those who believed in fixed traits (entity theorists) used traits or trait-relevant information to make stronger future behavioral predictions (Studies 1 and 2) and made stronger trait inferences from behavior (Study 3). Moreover, the relation between implicit theories and lay dispositionism was found in both the United States (a more individualistic culture) and Hong Kong (a more collectivistic culture), suggesting this relation to be generalizable across cultures (Study 4). Finally, an experiment in which implicit theories were manipulated provided preliminary evidence for the possible causal role of implicit theories in lay dispositionism (Study 5).
The 1st of a series of 2 papers discussing a theoretical approach to conceptualization of theory and principles in social psychology. The present formulation, an extension of a theoretical approach begun in 1942 (Allport, 1942) and elaborated elsewhere (Allport, 1954, 1955) involves understanding social phenomena as a function of "collective structuring." Such a concept is offered as a substitute for other terms implying the group as a referent point, e.g., social norm, life space, group mind, etc. This formulation is necessitated by a need to explain the empirically-derived influence on individual behavior in and out of groups without resorting to epiphenomena. Collective structuring implies the interrelating of individual frames of reference with those of others, born out of a personal involvement and "heightened probability of satisfactions through integrated behaviors."
On the basis of the lexical corpus created by Amano and Kondo (2000), using the Asahi newspaper, the present study provides frequencies of occurrence for units of Japanese phonemes, morae, and syllables. Among the five vowels, /a/ (23.42%), /i/ (21.54%), /u/ (23.47%), and /o/ (20.63%) showed similar frequency rates, whereas /e/ (10.94%) was less frequent. Among the 12 consonants, /k/ (17.24%), /t/ (15.53%), and /r/ (13.11%) were used often, whereas /p/ (0.60%) and /b/ (2.43%) appeared far less frequently. Among the contracted sounds, /sj/ (36.44%) showed the highest frequency, whereas /mj/ (0.27%) rarely appeared. Among the five long vowels, /aR/ (34.4%) was used most frequently, whereas /uR/ (12.11%) was not used so often. The special sound /N/ appeared very frequently in Japanese. The syllable combination /k/+V+/N/ (19.91%) appeared most frequently among syllabic combinations with the nasal /N/. The geminate (or voiceless obstruent) /Q/, when placed before the four consonants /p/, /t/, /k/, and /s/, appeared 98.87% of the time, but the remaining 1.13% did not follow the definition. The special sounds /R/, /N/, and /Q/ seem to appear very frequently in Japanese, suggesting that they are not special in terms of frequency counts. The present study further calculated frequencies for the 33 newly and officially listed morae/syllables, which are used particularly for describing alphabetic loanwords. In addition, the top 20 bi-mora frequency combinations are reported. Files of frequency indexes may be downloaded from the Psychonomic Society Web archive at http://www.psychonomic.org/archive/.
To clarify the arguments for and against indigenization, the author constructs a metatheory of cross-cultural comparisons between theories, theorists, and cultures. This metatheory makes clear that cross-cultural psychology encompasses both indigenous and exotic theories; accordingly, indigenous psychologies may be regarded as a subdomain of cross-cultural psychology. The case for indigenization rests on acknowledging a critical point: The conceptualization of psychological phenomena is a psychological phenomenon in itself and is, therefore, subject to investigation. Illustrations are provided on how indigenous theorizing derived from Filipino and Confucian heritage cultures makes a conceptual and methodological contribution. To go beyond indigenization, methodological relationalism is explicated as a conceptual framework originating from Asia toward the realization of a universal psychology.
Research in cultural psychology suggests that person is a social and collective construction made possible through an individual's participation in the practices and meanings of a given cultural context. This perspective can make a contribution to some contemporary controversies in personality. In the current article, it is argued that although most conceptions of personality in academic psychology are rooted in a model of the person as independent, in many Asian cultures, personality is constructed on the basis of an alternative model of the person as interdependent. In these cultures, then, personality is experienced and understood as behavior that is characteristic of the person in relationship with others in particular social contexts. Some initial evidence is reviewed and questions for future research are suggested.
The paper explores the Chinese conceptualisation of intelligence and points out how Western techniques of measurement of intellectual functions arefarfrom satisfactory. Two studies are presented. Both studies used the relevance rating technique to investigate the notion of intelligence held by two groups which differed in terms of culture and race (Australian and Taiwanese students, Study 1) and also in terms of educational experience (traditional Chinese and English schooling systems) but of the same culture (Study 2). In both studies items selected from two well-known intelligence tests were rated for their relevance to measuring intelligence as well as in terms of their difficulty level. Study 1 showed that three factors—non-reasoning ability, verbal reasoning ability and rote memory—constituted the concept of intelligence. In Study 2 as well, subjects of both groups shared a common structure of intelligence. The implications of using Western intelligence tests for non-Western groups are discussed.
To clarify the arguments for and against indigenization, the author constructs a metatheory of cross-cultural comparisons between theories, theorists, and cultures. This metatheory makes clear that cross-cultural psychology encompasses both indigenous and exotic theories; accordingly, indigenous psychologies may be regarded as a subdomain of cross-cultural psychology. The case for indigenization rests on acknowledging a critical point: The conceptualization of psychological phenomena is a psychological phenomenon in itself and is, therefore, subject to investigation. Illustrations are provided on how indigenous theorizing derived from Filipino and Confucian heritage cultures makes a conceptual and methodological contribution. To go beyond indigenization, methodological relationalism is explicated as a conceptual framework originating from Asia toward the realization of a universal psychology.
The neglect of the consequences of the Extreme Response Style (ERS) phenomenon in cross-cultural research is documented through a selective literature review. Consideration of ERS differences permitted derivation of three logical consequences that pertain to (a) differences in group means, (b) the internal consistency of measures and the correlation among measures, and (c) results of dimensional analyses. Comparison of U.S. and Korean student samples on a 1 30-item questionnaire revealed stronger ERS in the U.S. sample. Furthermore, the predictions derived from ERS differences were confirmed, thus demonstrating the credibility of the ERS argument. General implications of ERS for cross-cultural research are discussed.
Suivant une technique élaborée par Norman (1963) pour étudier les théories implicites de la personnalité, 20 échelles utilisant des adjectifs bipolaires ont été administrées en anglais à 100 étudiants philippins, qui devaient se juger les uns les autres, en groupes de 8–11. Pour les facteurs Extraversion et Amabilité, les resultats sont très proches des résultats américains; les facteurs correspondant à consciencisux et cultivé n'en font plus qu'un et le facteur de Stabilité Emotionnelle correspond à deux facteurs: Stabilité de l'bumeur et Stabilité Psychosomatique. Ces résultats montrent que les měmes concepts doivent ětre utilisés avec prudence d'une culture à l'autre; on peut peut-ětre trouver là une méthode pour étudier les sources d'erreurs dans l'interprétation du comportement des étrangers.
In the first section of this paper the prevailing methods of studying conformity, by such conceptual tools as customs, folkways, and mores, were criticized. It was contended that inaccuracies could be corrected, confusions clarified, and important questions answered, if "rule" and "custom" were considered to be essentially multi-individual situations and a study made of them by observing and measuring the behavior of the individuals involved. There is some uniformity, by no means complete, in the limiting of conversations in church and library to a fairly short range of time. Conversations in the clubroom have a longer range of time and show some uniformity, but considerably less than church or library. Using a conformity continuum based on a rule and purpose, it was found that more than 50% of the cases fall on the first step of this continuum for the two former situations, but less than 50% in the latter; and that the two former situations yield a J-curve of distribution, whereas the latter does not. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Social comparison theory maintains that people think about themselves compared with similar others. Those in one culture, then, compare themselves with different others and standards than do those in another culture, thus potentially confounding cross-cultural comparisons. A pilot study and Study 1 demonstrated the problematic nature of this reference-group effect: Whereas cultural experts agreed that East Asians are more collectivistic than North Americans, cross-cultural comparisons of trait and attitude measures failed to reveal such a pattern. Study 2 found that manipulating reference groups enhanced the expected cultural differences, and Study 3 revealed that people from different cultural backgrounds within the same country exhibited larger differences than did people from different countries. Cross-cultural comparisons using subjective Likert scales are compromised because of different reference groups. Possible solutions are discussed.
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