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Comparisons of Chinese and European American College Students on Individual Differences Variables Hypothesized to Predict Self-reported Interpersonal Competency
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The authors developed and tested a model of spouse adjustment to international assignments in a sequence of qualitative and quantitative investigations. From in-depth interviews with expatriate spouses, half of whom had either positive or negative experiences living abroad, the authors identified several potentially important sources of adjustment. These constructs were integrated with others from identity theory and earlier research on expatriates to develop a conceptual model of spouse adjustment. The model was tested by collecting multisource questionnaire data from 221 international assignee couples working in 37 countries. Correlation and regression analyses revealed several important relationships between individual, interpersonal relationship, and environmental sources of identity, and the adjustment of expatriate spouses.
The construct of prosocial organizational behavior is defined and 13 specific forms are described. They vary according to whether they are functional or dysfunctional for organizational effectiveness, prescribed or not prescribed as part of one's organizational role, and directed toward an individual or organizational target. Potential predictors and determinants drawn from the social psychological literature suggest an agenda for research in organizational settings.
This study investigated whether self-concepts that arise from participation in interdependent cultural contexts, in this case the self-concepts of Japanese students, will be relatively more sensitive to situational variation than will self-concepts that arise in independent cultural contexts, in this case the self-concepts of U.S. college students. The self-concepts of 128 Japanese and 133 U.S. women were assessed in one of four distinct social situations: in a group, with a faculty member, with a peer, and alone in a research booth. Furthermore, the authors examined the hypothesis that Japanese self-concepts would differ from American self-concepts in valence, reflecting normative and desirable tendencies toward self-criticism. American and Japanese participants differed in the content, number, and range of self-descriptions. As predicted, the situation had a greater influence on the self-descriptions of the Japanese participants than on the Americans’ self-descriptions, and the self-descriptions of the Japanese were more negative.
An examination is undertaken of literature bearing on the matter of misunderstandings between persons engaged in cross-cultural relationships. The dimensions of the problem are outlined using the following sub-headings: subjective culture and social construction of reality; intercultural communication; stereotyping, ethnocentrism, and prejudice; time factor; cultural distance; personality; and contact and attitudes. Further, a description is made of various approaches which have been adopted in investigating the problems of cross-cultural contact in international organizations. A critical analysis reveals that the most significant gaps in current knowledge of the problems are at the interpersonal level. Suggestions are made as to what research questions demand urgent attention.
In developing a new scale, this article makes theoretical and measurement distinctions between vertical and horizontal individualism and collectivism. Vertical collectivism includes perceiving the selfas a part (or an aspect) of a collective and accepting inequalities within the collective. Horizontal collectivism includes perceiving the self as a part of the collective, but seeing all members of the collective as the same; thus equality is stressed. Vertical individualism includes the conception of an autonomous individual and acceptance of inequality. Horizontal individualism includes the conception of an autonomous individual and emphasis on equality. Measurement of these constructs is preferable theoretically and empirically (better internal consistency) to either of the more general constructs of individualism and collectivism or the constituent elements of these constructs, such as self-reliance, hedonism, family integrity, and so on. The usefulness of these theoretical distinctions is demonstrated and their implications are discussed.
The five-factor model (FFM) is a representation of the patterns of covariation of personality traits in terms of five broad factors. The Revised NEO Personality Inventory, a questionnaire measure of the FFM, has recently been translated into a number of different languages, permitting tests of its cross-cultural replicability. Data from Filipino and French translations are presented, showing clear and detailed replication of the American normative factor structure when targeted rotation is used. Results from these and other cross-cultural and behavior genetic studies suggest that the FFM is a biologically based human universal. Applications of trait psychology in clinical, educational, and organizational settings may prove generalizable across cultures, and cross-cultural psychologists can profitably explore the expression of the same personality traits in different cultural contexts.
A combined "emic-etic" approach was adopted to develop an indigenous omnibus personality inventory for the Chinese people. The Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI) consists of constructs selected specifically in consideration of the Chinese culture as well as scales covering personality constructs commonly found in English-language psychological tests. Preliminary results confirmed the robust structure of the scales related to Chinese tradition among random samples of subjects in the People's Republic of China and in Hong Kong. This article reports the psychometric properties of the CPAI. It also outlines the steps in the construction of the CPAI, which adapted personality assessment methods used in Western countries for developing a culturally relevant instrument in a non-Western culture. The methodology provides an example for the development of indigenous personality inventories in other non-Western cultures.
Individualism and collectivism are terms used by both social scientists and the public, but there are few systematic studies of this dimension. A sample of psychologists and anthropologists from all parts of the world was asked to respond to a questionnaire the way they believe an individualist and a collectivist would respond. The questionnaire described 10 target persons in seven situations. The responses converged, suggesting that there is consensus about the meaning of the dimension. Accordingly, collectivism can be defined as (1) concern by a person about the effects of actions or decisions on others, (2) sharing of material benefits, (3) sharing of nonmaterial resources, (4) willingness of the person to accept the opinions and views of others, (5) concern about self-presentation and loss of face, (6) belief in the correspondence of own outcomes with the outcomes of others, and (7) feeling of involvement in and contribution to the lives of others. Individualists show less concern, sharing, and so on than collectivists. The approach can be used with other relatively unstudied constructs to establish whether there is consensus among researchers about the meaning of a construct.
Une épreuve adaptée du Sigel Cognitive Style Test a été appliquée à 316 élèves américains et 221 élèves chinois (Taiwan) du quatrième et cinquième degré de l'école élémentaire. Il était supposé que, par rapport à leurs condisciples chinois, les écoliers américains obtiendraient des résultats 1) supérieurs pour le style descriptif-analytique; 2) inférieurs pour le style descriptif-global; 5) inférieurs pour le mode relation-contexte; 4) supérieurs pour le style inférence-catégorie. Les résultats ont confirmé les hypotheses (1), (3) et (4) pour les deux niveaux scolaires et pour les garçons aussi bien que les jeunes filles. On a pu conclure que les élèves chinois ont préféré catégoriser les stimuli selon leur interdépendance ou leurs rapports, tandis que les sujets américains ont classifié les stimuli D'après les caractéristiques inférées de ces stimuli, en analysant les composantes observables de l'assemblage-stimulus.
Policy capturing was used to examine relative importance placed by managers on the Big Five personality factors (Emotional Stability, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness) in the context of expatriate selection. Ninety‐six managers with expatriate staffing and management experience made judgments about 32 expatriates based on characteristics associated with the Big Five. Judgments were made about (a) completion of overseas assignment, (b) adjustment, (c) interpersonal relations with host‐country nationals, and (d) overseas job performance. Across all four decisions, the raters tended to use the cues (i.e., the Big Five personality factors) in a similar manner. Conscientiousness was perceived to be the most important personality factor for all four judgments examined. Openness to Experience was perceived to be important for completion of overseas assignment. These results from policy capturing are compared and contrasted with those from criterion‐related validity studies of the Big Five for expatriate selection. Implications for expatriate selection systems are discussed.
A review of the extant literature and new empirical research suggests that social desirability is not much of a concern in personality and integrity testing for personnel selection. In particular, based on meta-analytically derived evidence, it appears that social desirability influences do not destroy the convergent and discriminant validity of the Big Five dimensions of personality (Emotional Stability, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness). We also present new empirical evidence regarding gender and age differences in socially desirable responding. Although social desirability predicts a number of important work variables such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and supervisor ratings of training success, social desirability does not seem to be a predictor of overall job performance and is only very weakly related to specific dimensions of job performance such as technical proficiency (r = -.07) and personal discipline (r = .05). Large sample investigations of the moderating influences of social desirability in actual work settings indicate that social desirability does not moderate the criterion-related validities of personality variables or integrity tests. The criterion-related validity of integrity tests for overall job performance with applicant samples in predictive studies is .41. Controlling for social desirability in integrity or personality test scores leaves the operational validities intact, thereby suggesting that social desirability functions neither as a mediator nor as a suppressor variable in personality-performance and integrity-performance relations. Theoretical explanations of why social desirability does not influence criterion-related validity are reviewed.
This article presents a perspective on the relation between personality, job performance, and performance appraisal. The article is largely descriptive and discursive, but the key assumptions are primarily data-based. We begin by defining personality in terms of motivation, identity, and reputation - as opposed to traits. We then describe the role of social skills in allowing people successfully to pursue their major occupational goals. Finally, we suggest that performance appraisals reflect supervisors' judgments of rewardingness - the degree to which an incumbent meets or fulfills his or her boss's expectations regarding his or her performance - and these expectations may not necessarily concern the degree to which important organizational goals are met.
Notes that a major difference between historical and nonhistorical judgment is that the historical judge typically knows how things turned out. 3 experiments are described with a total of 479 college students. In Exp I, receipt of such outcome knowledge was found to increase the postdicted likelihood of reported events and change the perceived relevance of event-descriptive data, regardless of the likelihood of the outcome and the truth of the report. Ss were, however, largely unaware of the effect that outcome knowledge had on their perceptions. As a result, they overestimated what they would have known without outcome knowledge (Exp II), as well as what others (Exp III) actually did know without outcome knowledge. It is argued that this lack of awareness can seriously restrict one's ability to judge or learn from the past. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 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 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.
In the intensely competitive world of business, there's no such thing as too much preparation.
I examined the influence of cultural meaning systems on the perception of self among Japanese and American (United States) college students. Given the importance of social context to the Japanese self as compared with the U.S. self, I used two types of free-response format: the noncontextualized Twenty Statements Test (TST), and a contextualized questionnaire asking subjects to describe themselves in various situations. Consistent with prior research, on the TST Japanese subjects listed fewer abstract, psychological attributes than did American subjects, referring more to social role and behavioral context. On the contextualized format, however, this trend was reversed. Japanese scored higher on abstract, psychological attributes than did Americans, who tended to qualify their self-descriptions. In addition, on the TST Japanese surpassed Americans in the number of highly abstract, global self-references. Results point to the impact of divergent cultural conceptions of the person rather than differences in cognitive ability on the perception of self in these two cultures.
Cross-cultural psychology has demonstrated important links between cultural context and individual behavioural development. Given this relationship, cross-cultural research has increasingly investigated what happens to individuals who have developed in one cultural context when they attempt to re-establish their lives in another one. The long-term psychological consequences of this process of acculturation are highly variable, depending on social and personal variables that reside in the society of origin, the society of settlement, and phenomena that both exist prior to, and arise during, the course of acculturation. This article outlines a conceptual framework within which acculturation and adaptation can be investigated, and then presents some general findings and conclusions based on a sample of empirical studies.
This study examined the role of 3 sources of support in facilitating expatriate adjustment and performance. A model was developed that examined the effects of perceived organizational support (POS), leader-member exchange (LMX), and spousal support on expatriates' adjustment to work, the country, and interacting with foreign nationals. In turn, it was expected that expatriate adjustment would influence expatriate task performance and contextual performance. The model was tested using a sample of 213 expatriate-supervisor dyads via structural equation modeling. The results indicated that POS had direct effects on expatriate adjustment, which in turn had direct effects on both dimensions of performance. Although LMX did not influence adjustment, it did have direct effects on expatriate task and contextual performance. Spousal support did not relate to adjustment or performance. Practical implications for facilitating expatriate adjustment and performance are discussed.
The present paper examines the effect of a central cultural value, individualism-collectivism, on social loafing in an organizational setting. A study was conducted to test the hypothesis that collectivistic beliefs influence the incidence of social loafing. Forty-eight managerial trainees each from the United States and the People's Republic of China worked on an in-basket task under conditions of low or high accountability and low or high shared responsibility. The results of regression analyses demonstrate the moderating role of collectivistic beliefs on social loafing, and they are discussed in terms of social responsibility and its relation to performance in work groups.
Based on a study of 409 expatriates on assignment to 51 countries around the world, this study examines: (1) Expatriates' perceptions of the importance of international assignments to their overall career development; (2) the modes of acculturation in interacting with host country nationals; (3) the mechanisms used to cope with stress abroad; (4) attributes that facilitate interaction abroad; and (5) the relationship between performance and country difficulty. The study yielded some new trends in expatriate assignments.
Research on perception and cognition suggests that whereas East Asians view the world holistically, attending to the entire field and relations among objects, Westerners view the world analytically, focusing on the attributes of salient objects. These propositions were examined in the change-blindness paradigm. Research in that paradigm finds American participants to be more sensitive to changes in focal objects than to changes in the periphery or context. We anticipated that this would be less true for East Asians and that they would be more sensitive to context changes than would Americans. We presented participants with still photos and with animated vignettes having changes in focal object information and contextual information. Compared to Americans, East Asians were more sensitive to contextual changes than to focal object changes. These results suggest that there can be cultural variation in what may seem to be basic perceptual processes.
Chinese and American respondents were equally likely to rely on response scales as a frame of reference in estimating the frequencies of unobservable behaviors, for which people have little episodic knowledge. Moreover, both drew on information extracted from the scales in making comparative judgments involving the self. Chinese respondents, however, were less influenced by the response alternatives than were Americans for observable behaviors, both in their behavioral reports and comparative judgments. The authors suggest that this occurred because members of collectivist societies attend closely to their own and others’ behaviors to ensure smooth social functioning, resulting in memories for behaviors that Americans can only estimate.
Four propositions from the Theory of Work Adjustment (Dawis & Lofquist, 1984) were examined in a sample of 115 young adults followed up 8 years after their original aptitude and interest testing as high school seniors. Congruent with the theory, results indicated that aptitude-job correspondence predicted performance satisfactoriness and that satisfaction accounted for significant additional variance in the prediction. Also as expected from the theory, interest-job correspondence and satisfactoriness both predicted satisfaction, but they predicted different measures of satisfaction, and only when current interests rather than the original interests were used.
The dominant picture of cross-cultural adaptation still, with some exceptions, features a reified process of recovering from culture shock or culturerelated stress. The purpose of this article is to put cross-cultural adaptation back into perspective, reconnecting it with its roots in sociopsychological adjustment theory. Cross-cultural adaptation represents in essence a common process of environmental adaptation. Far from being culture specific, “culture” shock is simply a frustration reaction syndrome. A model of cross-cultural adaptation based on sociopsychological adjustment theory and applied to the findings of decades of cross-cultural investigations is presented. It holds that all adjustment is a cyclical and recursive process of overcoming obstacles and solving problems in present-environment transactions. It is the individual who chooses how to respond, and in so doing creates his or her own adjustment. Cultural adaptation is a continuum. Sojourners exhibit a broad range of degrees, modes, and levels of adaptation. Adaptation is also more than the sum of the subadjustments that compose it. Working one's way into a culture can produce fundamental changes in the sojourner commensurate with a process of resocialization. When, in the adaptation process, socialization is extensive or adjustments are particularly difficult, sojourners can be “reborn” by the experience.
In contrast to the reliable effects observed with North Americans, research with Japanese has failed to detect self-enhancing biases. The authors considered the possibility that, owing to the need to adapt themselves to others' expectations, Japanese are more criti- cal of themselves than are North Americans. A comparison of actual-ideal self-discrepancies indeed revealed larger discrepan- cies for Japanese than for either European or Asian Canadians. Moreover, the magnitude of the cultural differences were larger for characteristics that participants viewed as more important, and the relation between depression scores and actual-ideal dis- crepancies was weaker for Japanese than for European Canadi- ans. The data support the notions that (a) Japanese are more likely than North Americans to be dissatisfied with themselves and (b) these self-critical attitudes are less distressful for Japanese.
Although a robust finding in cross-cultural research is that Japanese exhibit less self-enhancement than North Americans, all of these studies have employed questionnaire measures susceptible to self-presentational biases. The present study assessed self-enhancement in a laboratory that covertly measured participants’ behaviors. Whereas Canadians were reluctant to conclude that they had performed worse than their average classmate, Japanese were hesitant to conclude that they had performed better. This research provides evidence that cultural differences in self-enhancement and self-criticism go beyond mere self-presentation.
This paper describes the development of a theory-based cross-cultural training intervention we call relational ideology training, and reports a field experiment testing its effectiveness in facilitating intercultural collaborations. The intervention was based on Protestant relational ideology (PRI) theory (Sanchez-Burks, 2002) and cross-cultural empirical research derived from this theory. An experiment compared the effectiveness of this novel intervention with the well established cultural assimilator training. Results show that compared to cultural assimilator training, relational ideology training is more effective in improving managers' task performance and affective adjustment in cross-cultural ventures. Important practical and theoretical benefits can be gained from integrating theoretical advances in cultural psychology into cross-cultural training.
This study investigated the relation of the "Big Five" personality di- mensions (Extraversion, Emotional Stability, Agreeableness, Consci- entiousness, and Openness to Experience) to three job performance criteria (job proficiency, training proficiency, and personnel data) for five occupational groups (professionals, police, managers, sales, and skilled/semi-skilled). Results indicated that one dimension of person- ality. Conscientiousness, showed consistent relations with all job per- formance criteria for all occupational groups. For the remaining per- sonality dimensions, the estimated true score correlations varied by occupational group and criterion type. Extraversion was a valid pre- dictor for two occupations involving social interaction, managers and sales (across criterion types). Also, both Openness to Experience and Extraversion were valid predictors of the training proficiency criterion (across occupations). Other personality dimensions were also found to be valid predictors for some occupations and some criterion types, but the magnitude of the estimated true score correlations was small (p < .10). Overall, the results illustrate the benefits of using the 5- factor model of personality to accumulate and communicate empirical findings. The findings have numerous implications for research and practice in personnel psychology, especially in the subfields of person- nel selection, training and development, and performance appraisal.
Many psychologists in India today have accepted the characterisation of India as a "develop ing" country that must emulate the "advanced" countries. This position implies that tech nological advance is the epitome of "progress". As noted by Bury, the "idea of progress" is a product of the intellectual history of Europe. It is not only Eurocentric, but is deeply coloured by Hegel's notions of the irreversible nature of history, and of the inevitable superiority of the European civilisation in the march of history. Hegel's understanding of India was the dialectical opposite of Schopenhauer's rather naive idealisation of ancient Indian culture, and both need a corrective. Influenced by Comtean positivism, presentism, and scientism, most psychologists in India today have developed an amnesia for the long history of the exchange of ideas between India and Europe. In contemporary Western thought, positivism has been declared dead; the idea of perpetual progress through technology is questioned due to the fear of a nuclear holocaust and impending ecological disaster; and the philosophy of science has taken a hermeneutic turn. The rise of interpretive social science and hermeneutic psychology signals the prospect of a holistic understanding of alien cultures. With its own rich tradition of textual interpretation and its practical use in personal edification, India has much to offer to enrich hermeneutic and existential psychologies. With the gradual fading of the colonial mentality in both the so-called "developing" and "developed" countries, the time is ripe for psychological insights of the hermeneutic traditions of India and Europe to converge.
Past research has shown that East Asians are more tolerant of apparent contradiction and tend to accept contradictory beliefs more readily than Americans. The present research examined through three studies whether such a dialectical tendency among East Asians also would be found in beliefs about the self. The results showed that in all three studies, Koreans displayed inconsistent beliefs about the self across contexts more than Americans. Unlike Americans, Koreans considered themselves more extroverted when asked how extroverted they were than when asked how introverted they were (Study 1). Koreans also exhibited less consistent beliefs about their relative standings on various personality dimensions than did Americans (Study 2). For example, Koreans evaluated their relative honesty differently when asked how honest they were than when asked how dishonest they were compared to their peers. Koreans also exhibited greater fluctuations in value preferences than did Americans (Study 3). Some implications of the present findings are discussed.
The role of interpersonal competence in memory for conversation was investigated by comparing evidence for two mechanisms of competence effects: (a) organization of social knowledge in memory and (b) use of interaction management skills. In Study 1, undergraduates acted as participants or observers in conversations with scripted confederates and afterward took a cued recall test. Interpersonal competence was positively correlated with recall of the confederate’s ideas among participants with same-sex confederates. In Study 2, undergraduates acted as participants in similar conversations with friends or strangers, and the effect of competence was replicated. Results are interpreted as evidence for an interaction management skills explanation of competence effects.
This article draws attention to the distinction between individual ism and collectivism, indicates its importance for organizational scientists, and develops a questionnaire measure of individualism- collectivism. This measure allows the empirical assessment of an important implicit dimension in many contemporary organiza tional models, and can be of use in directing the development of theories and practices relevant to both collectivists and individualists.
Two studies test the multidimensional structure underlying the Self-Construal Scale. Study 1 cross-validated a multidimensional structure in new samples of Latino or Latina (n= 350), African American (n= 110), and European American (n= 350) college students, supporting the generalizability of the multidimensional structure. Study 2 explored the utility of the six dimensions of self-construal in samples of Asian (n= 59), Asian American (n= 89), and European American (n= 192) college students. Specific dimensions of self-construal accounted for more variance in social anxiety than the broader constructs of independence and interdependence did for the Asian Americans and European Americans, supporting the utility of measuring multidimensional self-construal in at least some groups. Implications for the measurement of multidimensional self-construal are discussed.
The universality and sufficiency of the five-factor model in the Chinese context were investigated. In Study 1, analysis of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI) taken by Chinese students showed four joint factors similar to the domains of the NEO-PI-R. Two unique factors were obtained. The Interpersonal Relatedness factor was defined only by CPAI scales. The Openness domain, however, was not represented in the CPAI scales. In Study 2, involving Chinese managers, the robustness of the Interpersonal Relatedness factor was demonstrated. In Study 3, the six-factor model was confirmed with Hawaiian students. Further analyses showed that the six-factor models were superior to the five-factor models and that the Interpersonal Relatedness scales could not be consistently explained by a combination of the Big Five factors. Implications for the universality of the five-factor model and the cross-cultural relevance of the CPAI Interpersonal Relatedness factor are discussed.
The cross-cultural generalizability of Chinese personality dimensions—in particular, the Interpersonal Relatedness dimension of the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI)—was investigated in samples of Chinese Americans (n= 201) and European Americans (n= 236). Four CPAI factors, including Interpersonal Relatedness, replicated very well in a Chinese American sample and fairly well in a European American sample, indicating that these dimensions are not unique to Chinese populations. Lowacculturation Chinese Americans, but not high-acculturation Chinese Americans, averaged higher than European Americans on the Interpersonal Relatedness dimension. This suggested that the Interpersonal Relatedness dimension, although not culture-unique, is more salient in or characteristic of individuals who retain or identify with traditional Chinese culture. Contrary to previous interpretations of the Interpersonal Relatedness dimension in terms of interdependent self-construals, the dimension was only modestly correlated with relational and collective aspects of self, two aspects of interdependent self-construals.
The present study examines the relationships between the endorsement of filial piety and both universal and indigenous personality trait factors among Chinese subjects. Two groups of college students from Hong Kong and Beijing participated in the study and completed a questionnaire composed of the Filial Piety Scale, the Five Factor Inventory (FFI), and five facets selected from the Chinese Tradition factor of the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI). The results showed that (a) the indigenous CPAI facets can significantly contribute to predicting filial piety scores over and above the universal FFI factors, and (b) among the five factors of the FFI, Neuroticism and Openness significantly predicted filial piety, whereas among the five facets of Chinese Tradition, Harmony and Renqing (relation orientation) were the two significant predictors. Thus, whether filial piety is universal or culture-specific, improved prediction requires using indigenous measures in addition to the FFI.
The study further explores the distinction of psychological and socio-cultural adjustment during cross-cultural transitions. One hundred and seventy-eight New Zealand American Field Service (AFS) students residing in 23 different countries completed questionnaires which contained assessments of the following: Personality (extraversion and locus of control); life changes (Social Readjustment Rating Questionnaire); homesickness, cultural distance, acculturation (cultural identity and cultural integration-separation); attitudes toward host country; language ability; amount of contact with host and conationals; relationship satisfaction with co-nationals, host nationals and host family; and outcome measures of socio-cultural (social difficulty) and psychological adjustment (Profile of Mood States). Stepwise repressions revealed that homesickness, external locus of control, life changes, and social difficulty accounted for 55% of the variance in psychological adjustment. In contrast, cultural distance, language ability, satisfaction with host national contact, cultural separation and mood disturbance explained 52% of the variance in socio-cultural adaptation. In the second part of the research, psychological and socio-cultural adjustment of AFS students was compared with a sample of 142 home-based New Zealand secondary school students. Although there were no significant differences in psychological adjustment between the two groups, the students who were resident abroad experienced greater socio-cultural difficulties than the students resident in New Zealand (P < 0.0005), and, as hypothesized, the correlation between psychological and socio-cultural adjustment was significantly greater in the home-based students compared to the AFS group (P < 0.0001).
This article describes a study based on two samples of sojourners and hosts in Australia and Singapore. The objectives of this research are (a) to explore the relationship between the Big Five personality dimensions and cross-cultural adjustment and (b) to test the “cultural fit” hypothesis. The first sample included 165 Singaporean and 139 Australian students in Australia; the second included 244 Australian expatriates and 671 Chinese Singaporeans in Singapore. Correlation analyses were undertaken that examined the relationship between neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, as well as their discrepancies from host-culture norms, and cross-cultural adjustment. Findings demonstrated that neuroticism and extraversion were related to psychological and sociocultural adaptation in both sojourning samples. Agreeableness and conscientiousness were also linked to psychological well-being in both samples and to sociocultural adaptation in the Singaporean sojourning group. There was no empirical support in either Singapore or Australia for the cultural fit proposition.
Many personality researchers have considered personality to be an integrated constellation of attitudes, values, feelings, beliefs about the self and behaviors, and most of the comprehensive personality measures reflect such a multifaceted conceptualization by including a mixture of items assessing these components. The present study examined the relationship between personality and beliefs about the world by using culturally derived yet universally applicable measures of personality and social beliefs—the Cross-Cultural Personality Assessment Inventory-2 (CPAI-2) and the Social Axioms Survey (SAS). It was found that the overlap between the CPAI-2 and the SAS was slight, suggesting that personality and beliefs about the world are two distinct multi-dimensional concepts, and that their overlap lies in self-assessments of personal control.
Seen through the eyes of a modern Chinese executive, a typical Western businessman is an antique. The Westerner's manner of linear analysis and individualism may be perceived with polite curiosity, but what does the Chi-nese executive really think? In The Art of War, Sun Tzu advises: ''One cannot enter into alliances without knowing the designs of one's neighbors.'' Yet most Westerners do not know how to prepare for working with Chinese; the usual solution is a cross-cultural workshop that compares and teaches specific behaviors. Studying expatriate executives who are highly effec-tive in the Chinese environment shows that they have been receptive to learning from Chinese patterns and now think and behave differently than they did before. China today is a laboratory for studying global leaders because it is the center of rapid change and a nexus for the integration of global systems. Its culture throws conflicting views into stark relief. During the next ten years, almost any mid-sized and large busi-ness in the world will be dealing with Chi-nese as suppliers, partners, employees and customers. To remain competitive in that world, today's international firms will have to diversify their leadership and develop a global mindset. Chinese executives have been facing their own cultural dilemmas and learning to work with the West. Wester-ners are now under pressure to learn from the East as well. This article describes the results of layer-ing Eastern and Western thought processes by describing a select group of expatriate execu-tives in the China laboratory. It shows how working in China has changed the way these executives think. They have learned new ways of perceiving their environment and new ways of reacting and acting within it. They have become more complex, more con-nected, and more personal as the basis for their consistently impressive business results.
This article describes a theory of job performance that assumes that job performance is behavioral, episodic, evaluative, and multidimensional. It defines job performance as the aggregated value to the organization of the discrete behavioral episodes that an individual performs over a standard interval of time. It uses the distinction between task and contextual performance to begin to identify and define underlying dimen- sions of the behavioral episodes that make up the performance domain. The theory predicts that individual differences in personality and cognitive ability variables, in combination with learning experiences, lead to variability in knowledge, skills, and work habits that mediate effects of personality and cognitive ability on job perform- ance. An especially important aspect of this theory is that it predicts that the kinds of knowledge, skills, work habits, and traits that are associated with task performance are different from the kinds that are associated with contextual performance.