Culture-specific Experiences Research Articles

Fear of Missing Out in University Students: A Psychometric Study

Background: 
 Fear of missing out is a subcategory of social anxiety and an upsurge issue which may lead university students to experience many detrimental effects on their well-being.
 Objective:
 To develop an indigenous scale with sound psychometric properties to measure fear of missing out by highlighting the culture-specific experiences of university students.
 Method:
 A mixed cross-sectional research design was used. This study was carried out from October 2020 to May 2021. Data was collected from different government and private universities in Lahore. Initially, 82 items were generated by conducting interviews with university students. After eliminating dubious items, a list of 57 items was generated. These items were given to a committee of experts for empirical validation. After that, a list of 48 items was finalized. Then these items were piloted on 14 university students. Finally, this scale along with the demographic form was administered to a sample of 400 university students (men=194, women=206) in the age range of 18 to 28 years (M=21, SD=2.15) using purposive sampling technique. 
 Results:
 Exploratory Factor Analysis revealed four-factor structures of fear of missing out scale named, Low Self-Esteem, Lack of Contentment, Apprehensions, and Jealousy. In each subscale, no. of items ranges from 6 to 14 items. Results revealed the newly developed scale has a high internal consistency of a=.73, test-retest reliability r=.89, and good concurrent validity r= .34. Results also revealed that 14.0% of participants have mild, 37.3% have moderate, 32.0% have severe and 16.8% have a very severe level of fear of missing out.
 Conclusion:
 As a result of this study a 41-items self-reported measure of fear of missing out for university students, having sound psychometric properties was developed.

The semantic representation of food is shaped by cultural experience

AbstractWhile eating is universally salient, food habits vary greatly even across similar western cultural groups. Italians, for example, are renowned pasta consumers whereas this habit is less pervasive in other western cultures. This variability might shape the conceptualization of food of different cultural groups. Against this backdrop, it has been proposed the semantic representation of food is universally organized along two main axes, with natural food (e.g., vegetables, fruit) relying more on sensory properties and manufactured food (e.g., pasta) relying more on functional properties. In this exploratory study, we compared the semantic representation of pasta, vegetables, and fruit across Italian and English-speaking participants with a free-listing task. We find the representation of pasta is not restricted to functional properties. Moreover, Italian and English speakers differed both quantitatively and qualitatively in their representation of pasta. Italians produced more exemplars of pasta than English-speaking participants, and their conceptual organization of pasta also included fine-grained distinctions (e.g., egg-based vs. flour-and-water pasta), whereas English-speaking participants mostly focused on perceptual components (e.g., long) – even when accounting for differential consumption, cooking, and preparation experience of pasta. Our results suggest that culture-specific experiences can shape the conceptualization of food.

Modeling enculturated bias in entrainment to rhythmic patterns.

Long-term and culture-specific experience of music shapes rhythm perception, leading to enculturated expectations that make certain rhythms easier to track and more conducive to synchronized movement. However, the influence of enculturated bias on the moment-to-moment dynamics of rhythm tracking is not well understood. Recent modeling work has formulated entrainment to rhythms as a formal inference problem, where phase is continuously estimated based on precise event times and their correspondence to timing expectations: PIPPET (Phase Inference from Point Process Event Timing). Here we propose that the problem of optimally tracking a rhythm also requires an ongoing process of inferring which pattern of event timing expectations is most suitable to predict a stimulus rhythm. We formalize this insight as an extension of PIPPET called pPIPPET (PIPPET with pattern inference). The variational solution to this problem introduces terms representing the likelihood that a stimulus is based on a particular member of a set of event timing patterns, which we initialize according to culturally-learned prior expectations of a listener. We evaluate pPIPPET in three experiments. First, we demonstrate that pPIPPET can qualitatively reproduce enculturated bias observed in human tapping data for simple two-interval rhythms. Second, we simulate categorization of a continuous three-interval rhythm space by Western-trained musicians through derivation of a comprehensive set of priors for pPIPPET from metrical patterns in a sample of Western rhythms. Third, we simulate iterated reproduction of three-interval rhythms, and show that models configured with notated rhythms from different cultures exhibit both universal and enculturated biases as observed experimentally in listeners from those cultures. These results suggest the influence of enculturated timing expectations on human perceptual and motor entrainment can be understood as approximating optimal inference about the rhythmic stimulus, with respect to prototypical patterns in an empirical sample of rhythms that represent the music-cultural environment of the listener.

Systematic cross-cultural management education: a quasi-experimental analysis of guided experiential learning during intercultural simulations

PurposeThe main purpose of this paper is to test the effects of a classical intercultural simulation on participants' ability to modify their behavior in response to collectivistic and individualistic contexts. Moreover, the paper aims to examine moderating effects based on experiential learning and social identity theory.Design/methodology/approachThe learning effects are evaluated through two separate quasi-experimental studies with 152 master students in business economics at a Danish university and 190 bachelor students in international business at a German university.FindingsThe analysis shows that intercultural simulations with artificial cultures significantly improve participants' ability to modify their behavior depending on cultural context. Participants who identify with an artificial culture that differs radically from their own take greater advantage of the simulation. The overall duration of international experience moderates participants' learning with a U-shaped effect. Culture-specific experience strengthens the positive effect of the simulation. The comparison of the two conducted studies indicates that previous cognitive teaching enhances learning.Practical implicationsThe findings demonstrate the effectiveness of intercultural simulations that guide participants through all phases of the experiential learning cycle. Moreover, they underline the importance of assessing participants' cultural backgrounds before the assignment of training groups.Originality/valuePrior research on intercultural simulations is often based on qualitative methods and mostly limited to affective outcomes, such as motivation and enjoyment of intercultural interactions. By contrast, this paper quantitatively tests to what extent intercultural simulations improve participants' ability to modify behavior depending on culture.

Dignity therapists' experience of conducting dignity therapy with terminal cancer patients in mainland China: A descriptive qualitative study.

This study investigated the experience of conducting dignity therapy with terminal cancer patients from the perspective of dignity therapists in mainland China. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 15 trained dignity therapists from across mainland China who have performed at least one time dignity therapy for terminal cancer patients. Data were analysed using content analysis. Four main themes emerged. Firstly, therapists reported that they had many culture-specific experiences of conducting dignity therapy with Chinese patients. Secondly, they encountered various challenges while recruiting and delivering dignity therapy to patients. Thirdly, through conducting dignity therapy, therapists gained personal development although sometimes they empathised with patients' negative emotions. Lastly, they perceived great benefits of conducting dignity therapy to the culture of caring in clinical practice and healthcare provider-patient relationship. Chinese culture influenced dignity therapists' experience of conducting dignity therapy in mainland China. A series of challenges and benefits of conducting dignity therapy to therapists' personal growth and clinical work were perceived. It is suggested that cultural impacts on dignity therapy implementation and the therapists' ability to deal with practical and emotional challenges need to be addressed in dignity therapy training. A more resource-saving dignity therapy protocol would be significant for dignity therapy implementation.

Indian negotiation style

Characterising the style of negotiation, depending upon the nationality and cultural practices is important for developing an effective negotiating template in the increasingly interconnected world. A desire to understand cultural underpinnings of negotiating behaviour has led to the emergence of many models in US, Japanese, Chinese and Arabian settings. The present article dwells on the cultural specific tendencies in negotiation in the Indian context. The article explains the Indian uniqueness of negotiating experience in the framework of Hofstede's (2003, 2010) findings on elements of national culture. Discussion based on historical narratives and culture-specific experiences leans towards concluding that there is a clearly visible Indian style of negotiation that is very contextual and perception of factors like power asymmetry, masculinity/femininity, individualism/collectivism and uncertainty avoidance interact with situational factors to determine the Indians' behaviour during negotiation.

Indian negotiation style

Characterising the style of negotiation, depending upon the nationality and cultural practices is important for developing an effective negotiating template in the increasingly interconnected world. A desire to understand cultural underpinnings of negotiating behaviour has led to the emergence of many models in US, Japanese, Chinese and Arabian settings. The present article dwells on the cultural specific tendencies in negotiation in the Indian context. The article explains the Indian uniqueness of negotiating experience in the framework of Hofstede's (2003, 2010) findings on elements of national culture. Discussion based on historical narratives and culture-specific experiences leans towards concluding that there is a clearly visible Indian style of negotiation that is very contextual and perception of factors like power asymmetry, masculinity/femininity, individualism/collectivism and uncertainty avoidance interact with situational factors to determine the Indians' behaviour during negotiation.

Older adult research in the Journal of Counseling Psychology, The Counseling Psychologist, and Counselling Psychology Quarterly: A 15-year review and implications for research

In preparing for an aging global population, older adults’ well-being has become an urgent priority across the world. Counseling psychologists have also called upon the field for more empirical attention on older adults. Yet, a review of the literature revealed that older adults were represented in less than 2% of all the articles in the Journal of Counseling Psychology (JCP) and The Counseling Psychologist (TCP) from 1991 to 2000. The current study presents a follow-up review of older adult research in counseling psychology literature between 2001 and 2015 in the following mainstream journals: Counselling Psychology Quarterly (CPQ), JCP, and TCQ. Results suggest a decline in the past 15 years, with less than 1% of the total articles in JCP, TCP, and CPQ devoted to older adults. Most of the studies employed cross-sectional survey research design to examine predictors of mental health. A number of studies focused on culture-specific experiences of diverse older adults. Implications and suggestions for future research on older adult issues are discussed in relation to the principles and interests rooted in the field of counseling psychology.

Influence of odor function and color symbolism in odor–color associations: A French–Lebanese–Taiwanese cross-cultural study

The olfactory and visual sensory systems appear to share robust and consistent associations. It is well known that culture specific experiences with odors may influence different aspects of odor perception such as intensity, pleasantness or edibility. Differences in terms of odor–color association might therefore be culturally specific. In order to determine the role of culture in odor–color associations, the responses of 155 French, 96 Lebanese and 110 Taiwanese subjects to the same 16 odorants were compared. The results highlight the role of culture and culinary habits on edibility ratings and color associations of some odors. Both perceptual and semantic factors seem to play a role in the odor–color associations in each country. Odor–color associations could indeed be affected by the function of odors in different countries. Culture-induced experiences influence the perception of odors familiarity, which will affect the prevalence of either perceptive (intensity, irritancy and hedonics) or semantic (nameability, familiarity) processing of these associations. Further studies should be conducted in order to understand the mechanisms underlying these cross-modal correspondences and the influence of cultural background and experience on them.

International students' culture learning and cultural adaptation in China

This article examines international students' cultural adaptation at a major national university in China. A survey was designed to measure international students' adaptation to the Chinese sociocultural and educational environments in terms of five dimensions: (1) cultural empathy, (2) open-mindedness, (3) emotional stability, (4) social flexibility and (5) language proficiency. International students (n = 330) from 57 countries participated in the survey. The findings here support the existing proposition that the first year is the critical period for cultural adaptation as there are significant changes in some adaptation indicators (especially emotional stability) over the first year and thereafter changes in these indicators became less and less significant. The present study discusses the adequacy of existing theories in explaining these results and their implications for international students' adaptation as a culture-specific experience in China.

Tapping to a slow tempo in the presence of simple and complex meters reveals experience-specific biases for processing music.

Musical meters vary considerably across cultures, yet relatively little is known about how culture-specific experience influences metrical processing. In Experiment 1, we compared American and Indian listeners' synchronous tapping to slow sequences. Inter-tone intervals contained silence or to-be-ignored rhythms that were designed to induce a simple meter (familiar to Americans and Indians) or a complex meter (familiar only to Indians). A subset of trials contained an abrupt switch from one rhythm to another to assess the disruptive effects of contradicting the initially implied meter. In the unfilled condition, both groups tapped earlier than the target and showed large tap-tone asynchronies (measured in relative phase). When inter-tone intervals were filled with simple-meter rhythms, American listeners tapped later than targets, but their asynchronies were smaller and declined more rapidly. Likewise, asynchronies rose sharply following a switch away from simple-meter but not from complex-meter rhythm. By contrast, Indian listeners performed similarly across all rhythm types, with asynchronies rapidly declining over the course of complex- and simple-meter trials. For these listeners, a switch from either simple or complex meter increased asynchronies. Experiment 2 tested American listeners but doubled the duration of the synchronization phase prior to (and after) the switch. Here, compared with simple meters, complex-meter rhythms elicited larger asynchronies that declined at a slower rate, however, asynchronies increased after the switch for all conditions. Our results provide evidence that ease of meter processing depends to a great extent on the amount of experience with specific meters.

Cultural Adaptation as a Sense-Making Experience: International Students in China

China has recently become one of the world’s largest receiving countries of international students. While China has practiced its open-door policy for the past 30 years, its sociocultural structure and practices may still be mostly unfathomable to the rest of the world. The goal of the present research is to find how international students perceive and identify with the Chinese sociocultural structure. Drawing upon a group of international students’ self-reports in China, this article examines what dimensions of the Chinese sociocultural structure international students may most (or least) likely identify with. In contrast to most existing studies on culture learning and intercultural adaptation, this article demonstrates that international students’ cultural adaptation is a subjective, sense-making, and culture-specific experience in China.

Exploring Definitions of Financial Abuse in Elderly Korean Immigrants: The Contribution of Traditional Cultural Values

The purpose of this study is to explore the cultural definitions of financial abuse from the perspective of 124 elderly Korean immigrants and to examine the role of traditional cultural values in their definitions by using a mixed methods approach. The qualitative analysis generated four themes relevant to definition of financial abuse. A binary logistic regression indicated that those with stronger cultural adherence to traditional values had higher odds of providing culture-based definitions of financial abuse. Education is needed for health professionals, social service providers, and adult protective workers to increase their understanding of culture-specific experiences of financial abuse among ethnic minority elders.

Constraints on infants’ musical rhythm perception: effects of interval ratio complexity and enculturation

Effects of culture-specific experience on musical rhythm perception are evident by 12 months of age, but the role of culture-general rhythm processing constraints during early infancy has not been explored. Using a habituation procedure with 5- and 7-month-old infants, we investigated effects of temporal interval ratio complexity on discrimination of standard from novel musical patterns containing 200-ms disruptions. Infants were tested in three ratio conditions: simple (2:1), which is typical in Western music, complex (3:2), which is typical in other musical cultures, and highly complex (7:4), which is relatively rare in music throughout the world. Unlike adults and older infants, whose accuracy was predicted by familiarity, younger infants were influenced by ratio complexity, as shown by their successful discrimination in the simple and complex conditions but not in the highly complex condition. The findings suggest that ratio complexity constrains rhythm perception even prior to the acquisition of culture-specific biases.

Infants prefer the musical meter of their own culture: A cross-cultural comparison.

Infants prefer native structures such as familiar faces and languages. Music is a universal human activity containing structures that vary cross-culturally. For example, Western music has temporally regular metric structures, whereas music of the Balkans (e.g., Bulgaria, Macedonia, Turkey) can have both regular and irregular structures. We presented 4- to 8-month-old American and Turkish infants with contrasting melodies to determine whether cultural background would influence their preferences for musical meter. In Experiment 1, American infants preferred Western over Balkan meter, whereas Turkish infants, who were familiar with both Western and Balkan meters, exhibited no preference. Experiments 2 and 3 presented infants with either a Western or Balkan meter paired with an arbitrary rhythm with complex ratios not common to any musical culture. Both Turkish and American infants preferred Western and Balkan meter to an arbitrary meter. Infants' musical preferences appear to be driven by culture-specific experience and a culture-general preference for simplicity.

Faces of Depression

Faces of Depression contains 8 chapters in which brief stories (1 to 4 pages) of individuals with depression are narrated. These are true-life experiences of “regular” individuals and are not the experiences of famous personalities. Stories include those of adolescents, adults, and spouses of individuals experiencing depression. The book is easy to read and can be understood by those without formal training in mental health or medicine. Each chapter typically begins with an introduction describing a symptom or symptoms of depression per the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR) and/or other aspects of depression. Sometimes a nontechnical overview of biological aspects of depression is included too. The chapter then follows with brief stories related to that theme. For example, in Chapter 3, “Perceptions,” the first paragraph lists 3 of the 9 formal symptom categories qualifying one for a diagnosis of major depressive disorder (i.e., depression) and also mentions that these symptoms must lead to impairment in one's typical functioning to qualify the individual for the diagnosis of depression. Eight stories from different individuals relating to this depression theme are included in this chapter. Throughout the book, the stories of 16 individuals are woven into each particular depression-related theme as introduced by the beginning (or middle) of the chapter. Besides reviews of the typical experiences and symptoms of depression, there are 2 chapters on related topics: Chapter 5, “Cognition and Culture,” includes content on culture-specific experiences as they relate to depression, and Chapter 7, “Relatives,” includes content on diseases that simultaneously occur among those with depression (e.g., brief stories of individuals with fibromyalgia and some of the anxiety disorders). Faces of Depression would be of interest to medical students, medical residents, clinical psychology graduate students, social work students, and other students training to help those experiencing depression. This book would help them understand the challenges of those who experience depression. Also, primary care physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and other mental health professionals may find this book useful to recommend as reading to the caregivers and/or spouses of those whom they are treating for depression; by reading this volume, these individuals may better understand the challenging experience that their loved one is experiencing.

Do Russian and American normal adults perform similarly on neuropsychological tests?: Preliminary findings on the relationship between culture and test performance

To learn how culture may affect neuropsychological performance, eight tests were administered to non-brain damaged adult volunteers in the United States and Russia. The tests included Ruff Figural Fluency Test (RFFT), Color Trails Test (CTT), Digit Span Forward and Backward, and Category Fluency Test. Verbal and Visual Memory measures and Blind Clock Test were selected from Luria's (1980) battery. Forty-two Russian and 42 American volunteers (age 18–44) were assessed. It was hypothesized that the American group would outscore the Russian on timed measures (RFFT & CTT) due to cultural differences in familiarity with timed testing procedures. Otherwise, significant differences between the two groups were not expected to emerge. Consistent with the hypotheses, significant effect of culture was found on CTT and RFFT in favor of the American group. ANCOVA suggested that intergroup differences were not fully explained by differences in subjective relevance of the tasks to culture-specific experiences. The rest of the tests appeared similar for potential application in both cultures.

Cultural diversity and culture specific experiences effect on development of institutional experiential knowledge in SMEs

Institutional experiential knowledge results from experience of cultural diversity and culture specific experiences. It is studied empirically through a field-scenario questionnaire of ongoing business relationships. Cultural diversity has a negative effect on a firm's institutional experiential knowledge, whereas culture specific experience has a positive effect. These two experiences contribute very differently to the development of institutional experiential knowledge and the interaction effect should enable one to differentiate kinds of experience, and thus gain greater insight into scale and scope economies.

Language Contact, Variation, and Change (review)

Reviewed by: Language contact, variation, and change ed. by Jussi Niemi, Terence Odlin, and Janne Heikkinen Andrew Moody Language contact, variation, and change. Ed. by Jussi Niemi, Terence Odlin, and Janne Heikkinen. Joensuu, Finland: Joensuun yliopiston monistuskeskus, 1998. Pp. 286. ISBN 9517087454. €17. The sixteen essays in this volume originate from two meetings held at the University of Joensuu in May 1997: The 24th Finnish Conference of Linguistics and The Second Scandinavian Summer School on Language Diversity. Unfortunately, the articles are not grouped into larger categories or topics. In an article on language purism in Nordic communities, Endre Brunstad (1–14) introduces some of the measures taken by language planners to purify Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, and Faroese from relatively recent English influences. Wolfgang U. Dressler (15–32) argues that ‘productivity should be viewed as the constitutive and primitive property of patterns or rules or processes of grammar, thus at the core of morphology’ (18). Zsuzsa Duray (33–47) describes the sociolinguistic conditions related to the death of Nganasan, a Uralic language that is being replaced by Russian. Evidence of prehistoric contact between Germanic and Balto-Finnic languages is introduced and discussed by Sirkka-Liisa Hahmo and Tette Hofstra (48–69). Returning to the theme of language shift, Panu Hallamaa (70–97) writes of personal experiences encountered while studying language vitality among the native languages of Alaska and issues of measuring language proficiency, identifying sociolinguistic causes of shift, and engaging in social advocacy. Helena Halmari (98–110) discusses the elements of case marking with English adverbials (as loanwords or via codeswitching) in Finnish. In a discussion of archaeological and historical evidence as well as linguistic data, Anu-Reet Hausenberg (111–24) argues that the split of Permic tribes from Finno-Komi contacts could have occurred much earlier than previously believed. Jan Heegaard (125–35) proposes language contact as an adequate explanation of discrepancies found in the appearance of vowel length in the Kalashamon language. In an analysis of Finnish-Americans’ shift to English, Pekka Hirvonen (136–50) observes that Finnish-Americans follow the established and predictable pattern of shifting within the second generation. Using a framework for language attrition developed by Roger D. Anderson (‘Determining the linguistic attributes of language attrition’, The loss of language skills, ed. by Richard D. Lambert and Barbara F. Freed, 83–118, Rowley, MA: Newbury House, 1982), Ossi Kokko (151–72) develops an explanation for the attrition of Ingrian Finnish, and especially case marking, among a small population in Russia and Estonia. In an analysis of the similarity of l-suffixes in Samoyed and neighboring non-Uralic languages of Siberia, Ago Künnap (173–83) argues that this morphological feature entered through language contact. Minna-Liisa Mathalt (184–94) analyzes the strategies used in eight interpretation situations to demonstrate that the strategies used are situation-dependent. Examining the recent controversy over Ebonics, Terence Odlin (195–233) investigates some of the ways in which a dialect may become a language. Using the notions of ‘deep Background’ and ‘local Background’ developed by John Searle (Intentionality: [End Page 842] An essay in the philosophy of mind, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), Esa Penttilä, Marja Nenonen, and Jussi Niemi (234–45) argue that idioms that are more closely connected with universal human experience are grasped crosslinguistically more quickly than those that are connected with culture-specific experience. Helka Riionheimo (246–68) tests a model of morphological attrition by examining language shift from Ingrian Finnish to Estonian. Finally, Ikka Savijärvi (269–86) discusses some of the aspects of language contact in Ingria among four Baltic-Finnic languages which, though distinct, are closely related to one another. Andrew Moody University of Macau Copyright © 2003 Linguistic Society of America