Cultural value mismatch in urbanizing China: A large-scale analysis of collectivism and happiness based on social media and nationwide survey.

Throughout history, collectivism has contributed much to social bonding and human wellness. However, it remains unclear whether the collectivism-wellness equation still applies, when there is a mismatch between the collectivistic values and the ecological environment of urbanisation. Testing the hypothesis of cultural value mismatch (e.g., high urbanised & high collectivistic, or low urbanised & low collectivistic), two studies were designed to examine the relationship between collectivism and emotional wellbeing in China, with urbanisation as moderator. Based on the emotion analysis of tweets among 1.6 millions of Weibo users, Study 1 found that the province-level collectivism scores were significantly and positively related to negative emotions in high urbanised provinces, but this relationship was not significant in low or middle urbanised provinces. Using a nationwide survey dataset, Study 2 showed that, on the individual level, those with higher collectivism reported less negative emotions, but only in low- and middle-urbanised provinces, not in high-urbanised provinces. On positive emotions in all areas, the positive effect of collectivism was observed on individual level, but not on province level. These findings support the value mismatch hypothesis of urbanisation, suggesting that the purchasing power of collectivism on wellbeing is compromised in urbanising China.

Mind, Machine, and Creativity: An Artist's Perspective.

Harold Cohen is a renowned painter who has developed a computer program, AARON, to create art. While AARON has been hailed as one of the most creative AI programs, Cohen consistently rejects the claims of machine creativity. Questioning the possibility for AI to model human creativity, Cohen suggests in so many words that the human mind takes a different route to creativity, a route that privileges the relational, rather than the computational, dimension of cognition. This unique perspective on the tangled web of mind, machine, and creativity is explored by an application of three relational models of the mind to an analysis of Cohen's talks and writings, which are available on his website: www.aaronshome.com.

Strong Ties and Weak Ties Rationality: Theory and Scale Development.

Strong Ties and Weak Ties Rationality Scale (STWTRS) is a theory-driven questionnaire designed to capture cultural differences in reasoning about the world. It is intended to demonstrate empirically the heuristic value of the ontological turn that shifts the focus of cultural analysis from the down-stream values, beliefs, and behaviors to the upstream process of thinking and reasoning that is rooted in the local ways of being. This paper will present theory development, preliminary results, and potential contributions of this scale toward better understanding of the culturally different other.

Belief, emotion, and health: toward an integrative account. Commentary on John Cromby's 'beyond belief'.

This commentary identifies in Cromby's formulation of belief the potentials for developing three innovative approaches to belief systems: emotion as meaning, cognition as dialogue, and an aesthetic model of meaning making based on Susanne Langer's integrative approach to feeling and form. It is argued that the semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce can help to weave these threads into an integrative theory to shed some light on the connection between belief, emotion, and health.

Emotion Refinement: A Theory Inspired by Chinese Poetics.

William James made a distinction between coarse and noncoarse emotions. In the present article, we explore the nature of such noncoarse emotions, which we designate as emotions with refinement. We take our cue from the treatment of refined emotions in Chinese poetics and philosophy. The theory and description of savoring(in Chinese, p'in-wei) points to several features of emotion experiences and behavior that are usually absent in direct emotional responses to emotional events, such as self-reflexivity and higher level second-order awareness, detachment, and restraint. Emotions with those features can be found outside savoring and aesthetic contexts, for instance while dealing with actual life events. It appears both feasible and illuminating to analyze such emotion experiences and behavior in terms of current emotion theory, notably by means of the constructs of appraisal and action readiness. Emotions with refinement thus fit general emotion theory while also possessing distinctive character within the motion domain. Our analysis has implications for the structure of emotion experience and the study of consciousness.