Combat stress in a small-scale society suggests divergent evolutionary roots for posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms.

Military personnel in industrialized societies often develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) during combat. It is unclear whether combat-related PTSD is a universal evolutionary response to danger or a culture-specific syndrome of industrialized societies. We interviewed 218 Turkana pastoralist warriors in Kenya, who engage in lethal cattle raids, about their combat experiences and PTSD symptoms. Turkana in our sample had a high prevalence of PTSD symptoms, but Turkana with high symptom severity had lower prevalence of depression-like symptoms than American service members with high symptom severity. Symptoms that facilitate responding to danger were better predicted by combat exposure, whereas depressive symptoms were better predicted by exposure to combat-related moral violations. The findings suggest that some PTSD symptoms stem from an evolved response to danger, while depressive PTSD symptoms may be caused by culturally specific moral norm violations.

Examining relations between performance on non-verbal executive function and verbal self-regulation tasks in demographically-diverse populations.

Self-regulation is a widely studied construct, generally assumed to be cognitively supported by executive functions (EFs). There is a lack of clarity and consensus over the roles of specific components of EFs in self-regulation. The current study examines the relations between performance on (a) a self-regulation task (Heads, Toes, Knees Shoulders Task) and (b) two EF tasks (Knox Cube and Beads Tasks) that measure different components of updating: working memory and short-term memory, respectively. We compared 107 8- to 13-year-old children (64 females) across demographically-diverse populations in four low and middle-income countries, including: Tanna, Vanuatu; Keningau, Malaysia; Saltpond, Ghana; and Natal, Brazil. The communities we studied vary in market integration/urbanicity as well as level of access, structure, and quality of schooling. We found that performance on the visuospatial working memory task (Knox Cube) and the visuospatial short-term memory task (Beads) are each independently associated with performance on the self-regulation task, even when controlling for schooling and location effects. These effects were robust across demographically-diverse populations of children in low-and middle-income countries. We conclude that this study found evidence supporting visuospatial working memory and visuospatial short-term memory as distinct cognitive processes which each support the development of self-regulation.

International psychological research addressing the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic: A rapid scoping review and implications for global psychology.

In March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Given that keeping abreast of international perspectives and research results is of particular importance for such massive global emergencies, we employed a scoping review methodology to rapidly map the field of international psychological research addressing this important early phase of the pandemic. We included a total of 79 studies, with data mostly collected between March and June 2020. This review aimed to systematically identify and map the nature and scope of international studies examining psychological aspects of the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic. We mapped key research themes, subfields of psychology, the nature and extent of international research collaboration, data methods employed, and challenges and enablers faced by psychological researchers in the early stages of the pandemic. Among the wide range of themes covered, mental health and social behaviours were the key themes. Most studies were in clinical/health psychology and social psychology. Network analyses revealed how authors collaborated and to what extent the studies were international. Europe and the United States were often at the centre of international collaboration. The predominant study design was cross-sectional and online with quantitative analyses. We also summarised author reported critical challenges and enablers for international psychological research during the COVID pandemic, and conclude with implications for the field of psychology.

Little Between-Region and Between-Country Variance When People Form Impressions of Others.

To what extent are perceivers' first impressions of other individuals dictated by cultural background rather than personal idiosyncrasies? To address this question, we analyzed a globally diverse data set containing 11,481 adult participants' ratings of 120 targets across 45 countries (2,597,624 total ratings). Across ratings of 13 traits, we found that perceivers' idiosyncratic differences accounted for approximately 29% of variance and impressions on their own and approximately 16% in conjunction with target characteristics. However, country- and region-level differences, here a proxy for culture, accounted for 3.2% on average (i.e., both alone and in conjunction with target characteristics). We replicated this pattern of effects in a preregistered analysis on an entirely novel data set containing 7,007 participants' ratings of 100 targets across 41 countries (24,886 total ratings). Together, these results suggest that perceivers' impressions of other people are largely dictated by their individual characteristics and local environment rather than their cultural background.

The changing profile of eating disorders and related sociocultural factors in Japan between 1700 and 2020: A systematic scoping review.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to investigate the changing profile of the phenotypic expression of eating disorders (EDs) and related sociocultural factors in Japan between 1700 and 2020. METHOD: The authors conducted a systematic scoping review in accordance with the PRISMA statement guidelines for scoping reviews. RESULTS: Findings indicate that Kampo doctors reported more than 50 patients with restrictive EDs in the 1700s, when Japan adopted a national isolation policy. On the other hand, only a few reports of EDs were found between 1868 and 1944, when rapid Westernization occurred. After World War II, providers began diagnosing patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) around 1960. Patients reported experiencing fat phobia, but did not engage in restriction for achieving slimness. However, after the 1970s, Japan experienced a rise in patients with AN who engaged in restriction to achieve thinness. Cases of patients who engaged in binge/purge symptomatology increased after the 1980s, followed by a steady increase in total ED cases after the 1990s. At various time points, providers attributed family conflicts, internalization of a thin ideal of beauty, changing food environments, and pressures associated with traditional gender roles to the onset and maintenance of EDs in Japan. DISCUSSION: Findings reveal that restrictive EDs were present as early as the 18th century; Japanese patients may present with both "typical" and "atypical" forms of AN; ED symptoms can persist in the absence of Western influence; and sociocultural factors, such as gender-specific stressors and family dynamics, may contribute to EDs for Japanese populations.

Explaining consumers' intentions towards purchasing green food in Qingdao, China: The amendment and extension of the theory of planned behavior.

This study aims to investigate consumers' green food purchase intentions using a survey conducted in Qingdao, Shandong Province, China. Based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), it models the influences of Chinese culture and consumer characteristics towards purchasing green food products. According to TPB, the behavioral intention is determined by attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control, whereas subjective norms vary according to differences in cultural systems. This study incorporates traditional Chinese cultural constructs of face consciousness and group conformity instead of subjective norms to develop an amended TPB model under China's cultural environment. Furthermore, the TPB model has been extended by adding the constructs of confidence and personal characteristics to represent the current consumption environment and consumers' characteristics. Research data were derived from Chinese consumers via a paper questionnaire and obtained valid responses from 300 participants. To test the overall model fit, structural equation modeling was applied. The explanatory capabilities of the models were also evaluated. The findings reported the usefulness of TPB in predicting consumers' green food purchase intentions in the research area. The results also supported the applicability of incorporating cultural constructs, confidence, and personal characteristics into the Chinese case, as the explanatory capability was increased after being measured by the amended TPB models under China's cultural conditions as well as the extended models (from 71% to 83%). These findings have research implications that may be important for policy and food marketing, and can be used to better understand the factors that influence purchase intentions of Chinese consumers towards green food products.

Cultural awareness workshops: limitations and practical consequences.

Cultural awareness training for health professionals is now commonplace across a variety of sectors. Its popularity has spawned several alternatives (i.e., cultural competence, cultural safety, cultural humility, cultural intelligence) and overlapping derivatives (diversity training, anti-racism training, micro-aggression training). The ever-increasing reach of cultural awareness initiatives in health settings has generally been well intentioned - to improve cross-cultural clinical encounters and patient outcomes with the broader expectation of reducing health disparities. Yet the capacity of cultural awareness training to accomplish or even impact such outcomes is seldom comprehensively scrutinized. In response, this paper applies a much needed critical lens to cultural awareness training and its derivatives by examining their underpinning philosophies, assumptions and most importantly, verification of their effectiveness. The paper finds cultural awareness approaches to be over-generalizing, simplistic and impractical. They may even induce unintended negative consequences. Decades of research point to their failure to realize meaningful outcomes in health care settings and beyond. Broader expectations of their capacity to reduce health disparities are almost certainly unachievable. Alternative suggestions for improving cross-cultural health care interactions and research are discussed within.

[Mentalization-based Encounter to Challenges in Early Childhood Education with Refugee Families]. / Herausforderungen in der frühpädagogischen Arbeit mit geflüchteten Familien mentalisierungsbasiert begegnen.

Mentalization-based Encounter to Challenges in Early Childhood Education with Refugee Families This article introduces the mentalization concept into the field of early childhood education suggesting that it can also provide a helpful framework for working with refugee families in these settings. Mentalization is identified as a crucial element in establishing and maintaining relationships that are developmentally conducive. It is argued that a mentalizing attitude is relevant for dealing with children with traumatic experiences as well as families with a different cultural background due to its emphasis on openness, curiosity, and (self)reflexivity. In stressful contexts, however, mentalizing can fail or become biased. After providing information on psychotraumatology and cultural influences on child development, the paper will therefore focus on specific ways in which the confrontation with traumatized children and families from diverse cultural backgrounds can interfere with professionals' mentalizing capacities.

Europe's Culture(s): Negotiating Cultural Meanings, Values, and Identities in the European Context.

The intent of this Special Issue is to be a starting point for a broadly-defined European cultural psychology. Across seven research articles, the authors of this Special Issue explore what European culture(s) and European identity entail, how acculturation within the European cultural contexts takes place and under what conditions a multicultural Europe might be possible. The Special Issue also discusses what is currently missing from the research agenda. Therein, the findings of this Special Issue constitute an important starting point for future psychological research that accompanies Europe along its journey into the 21st century.

Gustav Jahoda: The art and science of constructive skepticism.

In this essay, we consider Gustav Jahoda's contributions to empirical research and conceptual reflection in the fields of cross-cultural and social psychology. The first section draws attention to what we see as salient characteristics of his empirical research. The second section describes Jahoda's critiques of some iconic theoretical concepts and distinctions. The third section describes his historical interest in the development of the two fields, with cultural context as a focus. In the conclusion section, we mention why Jahoda's contributions need to be taken into account by current researchers and those to come.

Cross-cultural comparison of political leaders' operational codes.

This study aims at comparing operational codes (namely, philosophical and instrumental beliefs about the political universe) of political leaders from different cultures. According to Schwartz (2004), cultures can be categorised into 3 dimensions: autonomy-embeddedness, egalitarianism-hierarchy and mastery-harmony. This study draws upon the 1st dimension (akin to the most popular cultural dimension of Hofstede: individualism-collectivism) and focuses on comparing the leaders of autonomous and embedded cultures based on how cooperative/conflictual they are. The main research hypothesis is as follows: the leaders of embedded cultures would be more cooperative than the leaders of autonomous cultures. For this purpose, 3 autonomous cultures (the UK, Canada and Australia) and embedded cultures (Singapore, South Africa and Malaysia) cultures were chosen randomly and the cooperativeness of the correspondent countries' leaders were compared after being profiled by Profiler Plus. The results indicated that the leaders of embedded cultures were significantly more cooperative than autonomous cultures after holding the control variables constant. The findings were discussed in the light of relevant literature.

Personality and gender differences in global perspective.

Men's and women's personalities appear to differ in several respects. Social role theories of development assume gender differences result primarily from perceived gender roles, gender socialization and sociostructural power differentials. As a consequence, social role theorists expect gender differences in personality to be smaller in cultures with more gender egalitarianism. Several large cross-cultural studies have generated sufficient data for evaluating these global personality predictions. Empirically, evidence suggests gender differences in most aspects of personality-Big Five traits, Dark Triad traits, self-esteem, subjective well-being, depression and values-are conspicuously larger in cultures with more egalitarian gender roles, gender socialization and sociopolitical gender equity. Similar patterns are evident when examining objectively measured attributes such as tested cognitive abilities and physical traits such as height and blood pressure. Social role theory appears inadequate for explaining some of the observed cultural variations in men's and women's personalities. Evolutionary theories regarding ecologically-evoked gender differences are described that may prove more useful in explaining global variation in human personality.

Cultural differences in survey responding: Issues and insights in the study of response biases.

This paper introduces the special section "Cultural differences in questionnaire responding" and discusses central topics in the research on response biases in cross-cultural survey research. Based on current conceptions of acquiescent, extreme, and socially desirable responding, the author considers current data on the correlated nature of response biases and the conditions under which different response styles they emerge. Based on evidence relating different response styles to the cultural dimension of individualism-collectivism, the paper explores how research presented as part of this special section might help resolves some tensions in this literature. The paper concludes by arguing that response styles should not be treated merely as measurement error, but as cultural behaviors in themselves.

Are implicit self-esteem measures valid for assessing individual and cultural differences?

OBJECTIVE: Our research utilized two popular theoretical conceptualizations of implicit self-esteem: 1) implicit self-esteem as a global automatic reaction to the self; and 2) implicit self-esteem as a context/domain specific construct. Under this framework, we present an extensive search for implicit self-esteem measure validity among different cultural groups (Study 1) and under several experimental manipulations (Study 2). METHOD: In Study 1, Euro-Canadians (N = 107), Asian-Canadians (N = 187), and Japanese (N = 112) completed a battery of implicit self-esteem, explicit self-esteem, and criterion measures. Included implicit self-esteem measures were either popular or provided methodological improvements upon older methods. Criterion measures were sampled from previous research on implicit self-esteem and included self-report and independent ratings. In Study 2, Americans (N = 582) completed a shorter battery of these same types of measures under either a control condition, an explicit prime meant to activate the self-concept in a particular context, or prime meant to activate self-competence related implicit attitudes. RESULTS: Across both studies, explicit self-esteem measures far outperformed implicit self-esteem measures in all cultural groups and under all experimental manipulations. CONCLUSION: Implicit self-esteem measures are not valid for individual or cross-cultural comparisons. We speculate that individuals may not form implicit associations with the self as an attitudinal object.

Cultural adaptation in measuring common client characteristics with an urban Mainland Chinese sample.

OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to develop a culturally adapted version of the Systematic Treatment Selection-Innerlife (STS) in China. METHODS: A total of 300 nonclinical participants collected from Mainland China and 240 nonclinical US participants were drawn from archival data. A Chinese version of the STS was developed, using translation and back-translation procedures. After confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of the original STS sub scales failed on both samples, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was then used to access whether a simple structure would emerge on these STS treatment items. Parallel analysis and minimum average partial were used to determine the number of factor to retain. RESULTS: Three cross-cultural factors were found in this study, Internalized Distress, Externalized Distress and interpersonal relations. CONCLUSIONS: This supported that regardless of whether one is in presumably different cultural contexts of the USA or China, psychological distress is expressed in a few basic channels of internalized distress, externalized distress, and interpersonal relations, from which different manifestations in different culture were also discussed.

Values and helping behavior: A study in four cultures.

Values are important factors in determining individuals' behaviours. Previous studies have examined the relations between values and helping behaviour, but usually in the context of a single culture. The current study examines the relations between personal value types and helping behaviour among university students (N = 722) in four cultures (Germany, Scotland-UK, Israel and Turkey). Across cultures, the value types of self-transcendence versus self-enhancement and conservation versus openness to change were positively related to helping. Specifically, self-transcendence values were positively related, and self-enhancement and openness to change values negatively related, to helping behaviour. The correlations pattern did not differ significantly between cultures.

A cross-cultural study of different facets of dissociation: Validity and relationship with childhood trauma.

BACKGROUND: Dissociative symptoms are often conceptualized as a response to childhood trauma. However, most previous studies did not consider dissociation as a multidimensional phenomenon and only focused on English-speaking samples. OBJECTIVES: To establish the cross-cultural validity of dissociation and examine the relationship of childhood trauma with different specific dissociative symptoms across two different samples. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: Data from two surveys were analyzed (N = 781 Chinese-speaking adults and N = 468 English-speaking adults). METHODS: Participants completed the Childhood Trauma Subsection of the Brief Betrayal Trauma Survey and the Multiscale Dissociation Inventory (MDI) in their respective languages. We first established the measurement invariance of the MDI across the samples. Then, we examined the correlations between childhood trauma and different dimensions of dissociation. RESULTS: The six-factor structure of MDI achieved configural, metric and scalar invariance across the samples. In both samples, childhood trauma was significantly correlated with all facets of dissociation (rs = 0.227 to 0.450, p < .001), after controlling for age and gender. While depersonalization (r = 0.450) had the strongest correlation with childhood trauma in the Chinese-speaking sample, memory disturbance (r = 0.333) had the strongest correlation with childhood trauma in the English-speaking sample. CONCLUSIONS: Dissociation is a valid, multidimensional construct associated with childhood trauma across cultures. Yet, social and cultural factors might influence this relationship. Further studies on the complex relationship between childhood trauma and different specific dissociative symptoms, as well as possible moderators, are needed.

Lay Misperceptions of Culture as "Biological" and Suggestions for Reducing Them.

Culture is typically studied as socialized and learned. Yet lay intuitions may hold that culture is associated with biology via perceptions of race, presenting a problem for those who study culture: There may be a mismatch between how psychologists study culture and how their research is interpreted by lay audiences. This article is a call to researchers to recognize this mismatch as a problem and to critically evaluate the way we study culture. We first describe evidence that laypeople tend to associate culture with notions of folk biology. Next, we propose three suggestions for researchers: explicitly address whether biological processes are, or are not, relevant for studying culture in their work; consider using multiple methods because different methods for studying culture may come with assumptions about culture as more tied to socialization or biology; and represent all people as cultural by studying multiple forms of culture and by contextualizing all psychological research. Last, we provide an example for how researchers can implement these suggestions to encourage more accurate interpretations of findings.

Principles to guide research and policy on psychological well-being in remote island developing states in the South Pacific.

Adverse climatic changes around the globe and predictions of catastrophic and irreversible alteration in global weather patterns, temperature rise, and coast-line habitability require a careful examination of consequences on the resilience and mental health of people who will endure these changes. This paper is concerned with the South Pacific region. This geography has benefited from a relatively stable climate that is seen in the lush and vibrant natural world with many unique species of plants and animals exclusively found here. This paper examines the psychological profile of the people in the South Pacific using an evolutionary framework, and considers their local climate risks and lifestyle patterns with the aim of exploring possible mental health trajectories.

Piagetian Theory and the Psychogenetic Development of Humankind Throughout History. Towards a General Theory of the Human Being.

J. Piaget wanted to study children to find a key to understanding history of mind, culture, science, and philosophy. The new theory program, called the structural-genetic theory program, developed by the author of this article, is an off-spring of Piagetian theory and follows Piaget's main idea concerning the study of parallels between ontogenetic and historical developments. It maintains the full identity of the child's psyche and that of the adult archaic human being concerning traits and features of the preoperational stage and partially the concrete operational stage, thereby evidencing the total sally of the formal operational stage in the minds of archaic people. The identity of the stage structures is not partially given but rather entirely and implies even the smallest details. The article exemplifies this identity concerning several central issues, such as logic, physical understanding, categories such as causality and chance, animism, personification of plants and animals, belief in magic, metamorphosis, ghosts, and understanding of dreams and myths. Accordingly, there is no difference between ontogenetic stages and the psychogenetic development of humankind throughout history. Historically, humankind has gone through the same stages as children do. The new theory program presents the fundamental theory of the human being as he or she existed in history and peopled archaic, ancient, and medieval societies. Consequently, the world history of culture, mind, worldview, politics, law, science, philosophy, morals, religion, and arts must be reconstructed in terms of stages, a task already accomplished by the new program, at least to a certain extent.