Cross-cultural Patterns Research Articles

Children who claim previous life memories: A case report and literature review

ObjectiveAcademic investigation of thousands of children who claim past-life memories has been developed worldwide for five decades. However, despite the scientific and clinical significance of this substantial body of research, most clinicians and scientists are not aware of it. This study aims to report a case of a child who claimed memories that match his deceased granduncle's life and to perform a literature review of the main characteristics and implications of children's past-life claims. MethodWe investigated the case through interviews with the child and first-hand witnesses, and conducted a documental analysis to verify possible associations between the child's statements and facts from the deceased's life. We also performed a CT scan of the child's skull to verify possible associations between anatomical features and a fatal wound from the alleged previous life. ResultsThe child presented most key features typical of such cases of claimed past-life memories. He made 13 statements about the previous life; nine were correct (e.g., the mode of death and a toy the granduncle had) and four were undetermined. The child demonstrated eight unusual behaviors that matched the previous personality´s habits, interests, and manners. The child has a birth defect (a rare occipital concavity) that is compatible with the firearm injury that caused the death of his uncle. ConclusionsThe characteristics of the reported case fit the cross-cultural patterns of children who claim past-life memories, and it has scientific and clinical implications that need to be better known and investigated.

Examining cross-cultural patterns in customer citizenship behavior: A cross-cultural exploration between Turkish and British airline passengers

Customer citizenship behavior (CCB) refers to actions that provide value to companies, such as offering feedback, being patient with disruptions, and assisting other customers. This is especially important in the airline industry, where services are provided collectively in a shared environment. Recognizing that the factors influencing CCB might differ based on national culture is crucial, particularly for the international operations of the airline industry. However, the impact of national culture on shaping CCB in this industry remains unclear. Using three theoretical lenses, namely expectation confirmation theory (ECT), social exchange theory (SET), and cultural dimensions theory (CDT), this study aims to investigate how national culture affects the formation of CCB through the proposed conceptual model. To achieve this, the study gathered responses from 743 passengers—both Turkish (n = 323) and British (n = 420)—using a structured web-based questionnaire. The analysis employed partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and multigroup analysis (MGA). The results indicated that factors like service quality and value for money have a positive influence on customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction has a positive impact on behaviors such as giving feedback, advocating for the company, assisting others, and being patient with disruptions. The proposed relationships are also mediated by value for money and customer satisfaction. This study stands as the first effort to investigate how national culture moderates the formation of CCB in the context of the airline industry.

Cross-Cultural Patterns of Gender Differences in STEM: Gender Stratification, Gender Equality and Gender-Equality Paradoxes

Cross-Cultural Patterns of Gender Differences in STEM: Gender Stratification, Gender Equality and Gender-Equality Paradoxes

Cross-Cultural Differences in Empathy, Listening-Styles, Mindfulness and Intersubjectivity in American and Polish Counseling Discourses

Empathy and mindfulness, that require an attentive attitude towards the speakers, plus de-automated listening skills and collaborative discourses of American and Polish counselors-in-training, are analyzed for developmental patterns and cross-cultural comparisons. The results of the mixed methods analysis reveal that American counselors-in-raining outrank their Polish counterparts in both affective and cognitive empathy, suggesting their greater metacognitive and empathic awareness. By contrast, Polish counselors-in-training show greater focus on people and content during listening (rather than time, for example), which suggests their aural mindfulness. Developmental (pre-/post comparisons) and cross-cultural patterns identified in the (meta)discursive analysis of 124 audio-recorded counseling sessions suggest differential conceptualizations of mindfulness and empathy as expressed in professional discourse by the American and Polish counseling-students. While the American counseling discourse features mostly implicit stance, attenuated and sentiment-rich counseling moves, the Polish discourse showcases epistemic/ evidence-rich reasoning and intersubjective, camaraderie-building ‘social-lubrication.’ Cross-cultural differences reflect different conceptualizations of client needs. Implications are offered for active-listening modification (for the US counseling-students) and multi-dimensionality of empathic-awareness and expression (for the Polish students) in order to enhance mindfulness in counseling-techniques, pedagogy, and/ or therapy-sessions.

Judging a book by its cover: Cultural differences in inference of the inner state based on the outward appearance.

The world can be represented by two layers of information: How it appears on the outside (outward appearance) and what it is on the inside (inner state). To what extent an outward appearance is assumed to reflect the inner state is fundamental to social inference and judgments. Conceptualizing inference in terms of the relationship between the outward appearance and the inner state generates an integrative interpretation for a wide range of phenomena. We showed that Chinese were more likely than Euro-Canadians to make inference of inner state that deviated from outward appearance, whereas Euro-Canadians were more likely than Chinese to infer a convergence between outward appearance and inner state (Studies 1-5). We observed these cross-cultural patterns in various contexts involving people or physical structures. Individual differences in correspondence bias or response bias did not explain these patterns. The lay belief that outward appearance can be misleading mediated the cultural effects (Study 4). To probe the underlying process, two additional experiments showed that highlighting the misleading nature of appearance, but not highlighting the power of the situation, reduced Americans' beliefs (Study 6) and inference (Study 7) that the outward appearance reflects the inner state. By focusing on the assumed relationship between the outward appearance and inner state, these findings provide a unique angle for understanding cross-cultural phenomena and have practical implications in daily life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Chinese Wu, Ritualists and Shamans: An Ethnological Analysis

The relationship of wu (巫) to shamanism is problematic, with virtually all mentions of historical and contemporary Chinese wu ritualists translated into English as shaman. Ethnological research is presented to illustrate cross-cultural patterns of shamans and other ritualists, providing an etic framework for empirical assessments of resemblances of Chinese ritualists to shamans. This etic framework is further validated with assessments of the relationship of the features with biogenetic bases of ritual, altered states of consciousness, innate intelligences and endogenous healing processes. Key characteristics of the various types of wu and other Chinese ritualists are reviewed and compared with ethnological models of the patterns of ritualists found cross-culturally to illustrate their similarities and contrasts. These comparisons illustrate the resemblances of pre-historic and commoner wu to shamans but additionally illustrate the resemblances of most types of wu to other ritualist types, not shamans. Across Chinese history, wu underwent transformative changes into different types of ritualists, including priests, healers, mediums and sorcerers/witches. A review of contemporary reports on alleged shamans in China also illustrates that only some correspond to the characteristics of shamans found in cross-cultural research and foraging societies. The similarities of most types of wu ritualists to other types of ritualists found cross-culturally illustrate the greater accuracy of translating wu as “ritualist” or “religious ritualist.”

Cooperation and partner choice among Agta hunter-gatherer children: An evolutionary developmental perspective.

Examining development is essential for a full understanding of behaviour, including how individuals acquire traits and how adaptive evolutionary forces shape these processes. The present study explores the development of cooperative behaviour among the Agta, a Filipino hunter-gatherer population. A simple resource allocation game assessing both levels of cooperation (how much children shared) and patterns of partner choice (who they shared with) was played with 179 children between the ages of 3 and 18. Children were given five resources (candies) and for each was asked whether to keep it for themselves or share with someone else, and if so, who this was. Between-camp variation in children's cooperative behaviour was substantial, and the only strong predictor of children's cooperation was the average level of cooperation among adults in camp; that is, children were more cooperative in camps where adults were more cooperative. Neither age, sex, relatedness or parental levels of cooperation were strongly associated with the amount children shared. Children preferentially shared with close kin (especially siblings), although older children increasingly shared with less-related individuals. Findings are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding cross-cultural patterns of children's cooperation, and broader links with human cooperative childcare and life history evolution.

Cross-cultural patterns in mobile playtime: an analysis of 118 billion hours of human data

Despite the prevalence of gaming as a human activity, the literature on playtime is uninformed by large-scale, high-quality data. This has led to an evidence-base in which the existence of specific cultural gaming cultures (e.g. exceptional levels of gaming in East Asian nations) are not well-supported by evidence. Here we address this evidence gap by conducting the world’s first large-scale investigation of cross-cultural differences in mobile gaming via telemetry analysis. Our data cover 118 billion hours of playtime occurring in 214 countries and regions between October 2020 and October 2021. A cluster analysis establishes a data-driven set of cross-cultural groupings that describe differences in how the world plays mobile games. Despite contemporary arguments regarding Asian exceptionalism in terms of playtime, analysis shows that many East Asian countries (e.g., China) were not highly differentiated from most high-GDP Northern European nations across several measures of play. Instead, a range of previously unstudied and highly differentiated cross-cultural clusters emerged from the data and are presented here, showcasing the diversity of global gaming.

Neuropsychological Outcomes of COVID-19: A Multicenter, Cross-Cultural Study of Patients Referred for Outpatient Assessment

Objective: Cognitive dysfunction is one of the most frequently reported symptoms in post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC) and has become a common reason for neuropsychological referral. While data are emerging, we aimed to address possible cross-cultural patterns of neuropsychological outcomes that remain underexplored. Methods: In this cross-sectional, retrospective study, we characterize the cognitive performance, demographic makeup, and clinical characteristics of 84 PASC patients (Mage = 57 years) referred for neuropsychological evaluation to three USA sites and one in Germany. Neuropsychological data (mean demographically adjusted z-scores and frequencies of impairment) were examined across six cognitive domains. Independent t-tests compared performances of previously hospitalized and non-hospitalized patients. Results: Patients were assessed on average seven months post-COVID-19 infection. The majority were women and non-hospitalized. Mean cognitive performance was within the normative range, but high variability existed within and between sites. Deficits were generally mild and most frequent in processing speed (range across sites: 9–57% of patients), executive functioning (range across sites: 4–43% of patients) and attention/working memory (range across sites: 0–43% of patients). Hospitalized patients showed greater cognitive impairment than those not requiring hospitalization. Mood symptoms and fatigue/sleep disturbance were more frequent than objective cognitive impairments. At the time of assessment, most patients were unable to return to work. Conclusions: Cognitive performance in clinically referred PASC patients was, overall, within the normative range. Mild deficits were most frequent in time-based attentional/executive tasks. Other factors, such as affective symptoms and fatigue, were frequent and may significantly impact functioning, perhaps more than cognition. Further work with larger samples and longitudinal measures is needed to clarify the impact of COVID-19 on cognitive function and psychiatric distress.

The resource availability hypothesis (RAH) and cross-cultural patterns: which one explains West African Cochlospermum species’ uses in Benin?

BackgroundCochlospermum tinctorium and C. planchonii are two wide edible plants of sub-Saharan countries, e.g., Benin, widely used as food, medicine, dye, handicraft, etc. Unfortunately, the uncontrolled harvest of their rootstocks exposes them to local extension risk. To enhance knowledge on the determinants of their uses in Benin, this study aimed to (i) assess the use forms, use values, abundance and perceived spatiotemporal dynamics, (ii) determine how does local abundance or cultural patterns affect the use of Cochlospermum species, and (iii) assess local harvesting modes and conservation management practices.MethodsIn total, 756 Dialog Partners through 27 ethnic groups were questioned countrywide using semi-structured interviews. Questions refer to local taxonomy, specific uses, organs sought, harvesting modes and local conservation strategies; afterward, local abundance of each species was assessed. Ethnobotanical indicators were analyzed through citation frequencies to obtain quantitative data. Comparison tests and statistical analyses were performed using R program.ResultsC. tinctorium and C. planchonii are locally well known and involved into 83 specific uses, grouped into ten categories of which medicinal use was the main. The use values of C. planchonii (0.10 ± 0.19) and C. tinctorium (0.23 ± 0.20) varied significantly between the ethnic groups, and only C. tinctorium showed index of commercially value above 75% for some ethnic groups. The current abundance, about 84 and 97 tufts.ha−1, respectively, for C. planchonii and C. tinctorium was perceived with a decline of 81.09% (C. tinctorium) and 73.7% (C. planchonii) of informants. Moreover, the Spearman’s correlation and Kruskal–Wallis tests performed revealed that the use values of C. tinctorium and C. planchonii were significantly correlated on the one hand with their local abundance and on the other hand with the investigated ethnic groups. About 42.3% of women produced the powder as principal activity, while more than 57% produced it mainly at the end of farm work. However, the conservation management was practiced by very few informants and consisted of partial harvesting of rootstocks (41.8%, only in southern Benin), and fallowing of harvesting areas (3.97%, only in northern Benin).ConclusionFacing the declining abundance and increasing market demand for rootstock powder of Cochlospermum species, existing local conservation strategies should be promoted and the domestication process should be initiated for sustainable management of these important wild edible plants before these important resources disappear completely in the wild.

Running through the Who, Where, and When: A Cross-cultural Analysis of Situational Changes in Comics

ABSTRACT Understanding visual narratives requires readers to track dimensions of time, spatial location, and characters across a sequence. Previous work has found situational changes across adjacent panels differ cross-culturally, but few works have examined such situational dimensions across extended sequences. We therefore investigated situational “runs” – uninterrupted sequences of the situational dimensions (time, space, characters) – in a corpus of 300+ annotated comics from the United States, Europe, and Asia. We compared runs’ proportion and average lengths and found that across books, semantic information changed frequently and run length correlated with proportion. Yet, cross-cultural patterns arose, with American and European comics using more continuous runs than Asian comics. American and European comics also used more and longer temporal and character continuity, while Asian comics used more spatial continuity. These findings raise questions about comprehenders’ processing strategies of visual narratives across cultures and how general frameworks of visual narrative comprehension account for variations in situational (dis)continuity.

Attachment perspectives on race, prejudice, and anti-racism

ABSTRACT Central to attachment theory is the idea that behavior in close relationships can best be understood in context. Although decades of research have illuminated cross-cultural patterns of caregiving and attachment, there remains a critical need to increase research with African American families, examine the specific sociocultural context of systemic anti-Black racism, and integrate the rich theory and research of Black scholars. The goal of this special issue is to bring together attachment researchers and scholars studying Black youth and families to leverage and extend attachment-related work to advance anti-racist perspectives in developmental science. The papers in this special issue, highlighted in the introduction, illuminate pathways of risk and resilience in Black children, adolescents, and families and point to the protective power of relationships (and the limits of such protection) for mental and physical health. We highlight critical questions to guide ongoing dialogue and collaboration on this important topic.

An Ethnological Analogy and Biogenetic Model for Interpretation of Religion and Ritual in the Past

This paper provides a method- and theory-focused assessment of religious behavior based on cross-cultural research that provides an empirically derived model as a basis for making inferences about ritual practices in the past through an ethnological analogy. A review of previous research provides an etic typology of religious practitioners and identifies their characteristics, selection-function features, the societal configurations of practitioners, and the social complexity features of the societies where they are found. New analyses reported here identify social predictors of the individual practitioner types in their relationships to subsistence and sociopolitical conditions (foraging, intensive agriculture, political integration, warfare, and community integration). These relations reveal the factors contributing to social evolution through roles of religious organization in the operation of cultural institutions. The discussion expands on the previous findings identifying fundamental forms of religious life in the relations of the selection processes for religious practitioner positions to their principal professional functions. These relationships reveal three biogenetic structures of religious life involving (1) alterations of consciousness used in healing rituals, manifested in a cultural universal of shamanistic healers; (2) kin inheritance of leadership roles providing a hierarchical political organization of agricultural societies, manifested in priests who carry out collective rituals for agricultural abundance and propitiation of common deities; and (3) attribution of evil activities, manifested in witches who are persecuted and killed in subordinated groups of societies with political hierarchies and warfare. These systematic cross-cultural patterns of types of ritualists and their activities provide a basis for inferring biogenetic bases of religion and models for interpreting the activities, organization, and beliefs regarding religious activities of past societies. Cases are analyzed to illustrate the utility of the models presented.

Magic, Explanations, and Evil

In nearly every documented society, people believe that some misfortunes are caused by malicious group mates using magic or supernatural powers. Here I report cross-cultural patterns in these beliefs and propose a theory to explain them. Using the newly created Mystical Harm Survey, I show that several conceptions of malicious mystical practitioners, including sorcerers (who use learned spells), possessors of the evil eye (who transmit injury through their stares and words), and witches (who possess superpowers, pose existential threats, and engage in morally abhorrent acts), recur around the world. I argue that these beliefs develop from three cultural selective processes: a selection for intuitive magic, a selection for plausible explanations of impactful misfortune, and a selection for demonizing myths that justify mistreatment. Separately, these selective schemes produce traditions as diverse as shamanism, conspiracy theories, and campaigns against heretics—but around the world, they jointly give rise to the odious and feared witch. I use the tripartite theory to explain the forms of beliefs in mystical harm and outline 10 predictions for how shifting conditions should affect those conceptions. Societally corrosive beliefs can persist when they are intuitively appealing or they serve some believers’ agendas.

Producing Good Stories in English As A Foreign Language: Analysis of The Kurdish Efl Learners’ Oral “frog Story” Narratives

By focusing on the structural elements particularly the evaluative devices by (Labov & Waletzky, 1967) and (Peterson & McCabe, 1991), this study examined how the Kurdish participants’ narrative discourse deviate from the target language discourse, and how this deviation is explained in line with the cultural discourse strategies in both types of discourse (Kurdish and English). This study analyzed the frog narratives told by the EFL Kurdish participants (in Kurdish and English) and the American speakers with special attention on the narrative length, narrative structure and evaluative devices. The findings from the T-test and MANOVA statistics revealed cross-cultural patterns of differences between the narratives told by the Kurdish and the American speakers. Generally, the narratives told by the American participants were longer than those told by the Kurdish participants in both Kurdish and English. The American speakers elicited narratives with frequent evaluation. Conversely, the Kurdish participants constructed narratives with higher number of durative (descriptive) clauses, orientation and repetition.

Burying the Dead during the Maya Postclassic period: Saxe, Binford and Goldstein’s continued relevance to mortuary analysis

We explore Maya social organization after the Classic-period “collapse” using mortuary and osteological patterns. Our data consist of 78 burials from the Freshwater Creek drainage of northern Belize: 24 dating to the Terminal Classic period (AD 800–1000) and 54 to the Postclassic period (AD 1000–1500). These mortuary data allow us to infer continuity in the populations occupying a single river drainage between these periods. During the Postclassic, a greater diversity of grave inclusions interred with individuals at Caye Coco are consistent with the higher status of some of its residents who had greater access to wealth items and more elaborate domestic architecture compared to inhabitants of the smaller settlement of Laguna de On island. These grave inclusion results are consistent with cross-cultural patterns defined by the Saxe/Binford hypothesis that social organization can be inferred from mortuary patterns. A new development in Postclassic burial customs in our study region was the establishment of formal cemeteries. Consistent with the Saxe/Goldstein hypothesis, we interpret this change as the increased importance of local, lineage-based authority after large, Classic-period kingdoms had dissolved. Considering mortuary and osteological patterns together allows for a fuller understanding of Postclassic Maya social organization than either type of data would alone.

Similarities in Color Preferences Between Women and Men: The Case of Hadza, the Hunter-Gatherers From Tanzania.

Evidence for cross-cultural patterns of sexual differences in color preferences raised the question of whether these preferences are determined by universal principles. To address this question, we investigated most- and least-favorite color choices in a nonindustrialized community, the Hadza that has an egalitarian hunter-gatherer culture, fundamentally different from those previously investigated. We also compared color preference patterns in the Hadza with published data from Poland and Papua. Our results show that Hadza have very different color preferences than Polish and Papuan Yali respondents. Unlike many industrialized and nonindustrialized cultures, Hadza color preferences are practically the same for women and men. These observations question the idea of universal differences of color preferences between sexes and raise important questions about the determinants of color preferences.

Amitav GhoshGun Island

peasant girl who becomes an inspiring soldier), Aster (a woman of noble birth who knows the worth of women), and Fifi (the woman who consorts with Italian officers to learn their strategies). The women want to do more than bear children and be comforts to soldiers; they desire to fight side- by-side with the men. In other words, they want to be more than what the world expects of them. By turns, the brutality and savagery of the war is exposed. The aggression of men is interrogated, and the hope rendered by a shadow king (while the Emperor Haile Selassie is in exile in England) permeates the action of an army that is deemed no match for the Italians. Of equal note is the portrait of the male characters fully drawn and complicated by their motivations: Ettore (the Jewish photographer/solider), Kidane (the leader of the Ethiopian resistance), and Carlos Fucelli (the merciless leader of the Italian forces). This is an amazing novel. It employs elegantly simple prose, the power of metaphor , and marvelous insights into human behavior. Its historic undertones provide insights on Ethiopia today, and like many other contemporary African women writers , Mengiste performs art. Adele Newson-Horst Morgan State University Amitav Ghosh Gun Island New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2019. 320 pages. Amitav Ghosh’s latest novel, Gun Island, traces familiar crosscultural patterns evident in his earlier novels. There are journeys by land and water, diaspora and migration, experiences aboard ships, the world of animals and sea-creatures. Ghosh foregrounds environmental issues like climate change and the danger to fish from chemical waste dumped into rivers by factories, concerns that carry over from earlier books like The Hungry Tide and The Great Derangement. Gun Island describes the quest of Deen, a scholar and collector of rare books, who returns from New York, his city of domicile , to the Sunderbans in West Bengal to unravel the mystery and legend of a seventeenth -century merchant, Bonduki Sadagar , translated “The Gun Merchant,” and his persecution by Manasa Devi, mythical goddess of snakes. In a talk held in New Delhi after the release of the novel, Ghosh stated that the merchant “was a trope for trade.” The merchant and the goddess dramatize “the conflict between profit and the world.” In the novel, the goddess pursues the merchant to make him aware of other realities like the animal world: “Humans— driven, as was the Merchant, by the quest of profit—would recognize no restraint in relation to other living things.” We learn that the old Arabic name for Venice was al-Bunduqevya, which is also the name for guns. Deen concludes that the name Bonduki Sadagar did not perhaps mean the Gun Merchant but the Merchant who went to Venice. When Deen travels to Venice to research further on the Gun Merchant, he discovers that many Bangladeshis are being employed as illegal migrant labor. Their hazardous journey across the Middle East and Africa and the strong, even militant opposition to their presence in the city by Italian authorities form a major segment of the second part of the novel, contrasting with the Gun Merchant ’s past, prosperous journey to Venice. Women are a stronger presence and force in the novel than in Ghosh’s earlier fiction. Cinta is a scholar from Venice working on the role of Venice in the medieval spice trade from India. Piya Roy, the cetologist from The Hungry Tide, reappears in this novel and offers the aging, lonely Deen hope of a romantic partner. Nilima Bose runs the Badabon Trust, an effective charitable organization, and Lubna is a Bangladeshi immigrant working for the cause of illegal immigrants. In depicting a wide range of diverse characters from various countries and subtly invoking myth and history, fact and fiction, Ghosh has created a work that contrasts nostalgia for a lost past with concerns for the contemporaneous. Rita Joshi Lady Shri Ram College for Women, Delhi University Books in Review 98 WLT AUTUMN 2019 ...

Causes of cultural disparity: Switches, tuners, and the cognitive science of religion

ABSTRACTCultural disparity – the variation across cultural traits such as knowledge, skill, and belief – is a complex phenomenon, studied by a number of researchers with an expanding empirical toolkit. While there is a growing consensus as to the processes that generate cultural variation and change, general explanatory frameworks require additional tools for identifying, organizing, and relating the complex causes that underpin the production of cultural disparity. Here I develop a case study in the cognitive science of religion and demonstrate how concepts and distinctions drawn from work on contrastive explanation and manipulationist accounts of causation provide such tools for distinguishing explanatory levels, organizing causal narratives, and accounting for cross-cultural patterns.

Pettiness: Conceptualization, measurement and cross-cultural differences.

Although pettiness, defined as the tendency to get agitated over trivial matters, is a facet of neuroticism which has negative health implications, no measure exists. The goal of the current study was to develop, and validate a short pettiness scale. In Study 1 (N = 2136), Exploratory Factor Analysis distilled a one-factor model with five items. Convergent validity was established using the Big Five Inventory, DASS, Satisfaction with Life Scale, and Conner-Davidson Resilience Scale. As predicted, pettiness was positively associated with neuroticism, depression, anxiety and stress but negatively related to extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness, life satisfaction and resilience. Also, as predicted, pettiness was not significantly related to physical functioning, or blind and constructive patriotism, indicating discriminant validity. Confirmatory Factor Analysis in Study 2 (N = 734) revealed a stable one-factor model of pettiness. In Study 3 (N = 532), the scale, which showed a similar factor structure in the USA and Singapore, also reflected predicted cross-cultural patterns: Pettiness was found to be significantly lower in the United States, a culture categorized as “looser” than in Singapore, a culture classified as “tighter” in terms of Gelfand and colleagues’ framework of national tendencies to oppose social deviance. Results suggest that this brief 5-item tool is a reliable and valid measure of pettiness, and its use in health research is encouraged.