Abstract
The largest in-depth cross-cultural study of the 20th Century, directed by psychologist Charles Osgood at the University of Illinois, demonstrated that the affective meanings of concepts vary along three dimensions within all 30 cultures considered in the project, and for individuals responding in more than 21 languages. I analyze data on 17 cultures from this project in order to get some insights on how cultures differ in their sentiments and how sentiments about some concepts vary across cultures. An affective map of the cultures derived with multi-dimensional scaling revealed that affective similarities and differences among cultures cannot be explained in terms of geography, nationality, or major religions. Underlying dimensions of the affective map perhaps relate to secularization and to a history of slavery/colonization. Meanwhile, sentiments about most concepts are remarkably similar across cultures, compared to the divergences of sentiments about different concepts. Thus, ubiquitous breakdowns in inter-cultural understandings must emerge from relatively small variations in feelings, or from issues where there are major differences in sentiments across cultures.
Highlights
The largest in-depth cross-cultural study of the 20th Century, directed by psychologist Charles Osgood at the University of Illinois, demonstrated that the affective meanings of concepts vary along three dimensions within all 30 cultures considered in the project, and for individuals responding in more than 21 languages
That monumental study demonstrated beyond any doubt that affective meaning varies along three dimensions, within all 30 cultures considered in the project, for individuals responding in more than 21 indigenous languages
The data that still exist cover a variety of cultural communities worldwide: American Whites and American Blacks, Germans, Dutch, Yugoslavians, Turks, Iranians, Lebanese, Israelis, Indians from both New Delhi and Calcutta, Thais, Malays, Mexicans from Mexico City and Yucatan, Costa Ricans, and Brazilians. Another weakness of the Atlas data is that ratings were obtained for only 620 concepts in each culture, whereas contemporary surveys using the EPA system for measuring affective meanings deal with 1500 to 3000 concepts (Heise, 2010)
Summary
The largest in-depth cross-cultural study of the 20th Century, directed by psychologist Charles Osgood at the University of Illinois, demonstrated that the affective meanings of concepts vary along three dimensions within all 30 cultures considered in the project, and for individuals responding in more than 21 languages. Researchers in each community used twelve of the scales from the pan-cultural study—four scales for each EPA dimension—to assess the affective meanings of 620 concepts, with 40 teenaged males providing ratings of each concept.
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