Cindy Gallois

Perceived Dissimilarity and Work Group Involvement THE MODERATING EFFECTS OF GROUP OPENNESS TO DIVERSITY

Perceived dissimilarity and its association with work group involvement were examined in this study. Additionally, perceived group openness to diversity was examined as a moderator of this relationship. A longitudinal study was conducted with nurses in four departments of a public hospital. Results revealed that visible dissimilarity was negatively associated with work group involvement at both times, and informational dissimilarity was negatively associated with work group involvement at Time 1. Openness to diversity interacted with visible and informational dissimilarity in the prediction of work group involvement at both times. This interaction pattern showed that there was a negative relationship between dissimilarity and work group involvement when individuals perceived low group openness to diversity, whereas there was no relationship when individuals perceived high group openness to diversity. Results highlight the importance of managing perceptions of difference and introducing norms that encourage the active involvement of group members.

Consequences of Feeling Dissimilar from Others in a Work Team

This study extended the current literature on group diversity by examining the moderating influence of perceived group openness to diversity on the relationships between perceived individual visible, informational, and value dissimilarity; individual task and relationship conflict; and work group involvement. A survey was administered to 129 public service employees who worked in intact teams. Results revealed that value dissimilarity had a positive association with task and relationship conflict and a negative association with work group involvement. Perceived group openness to diversity moderated the associations between visible and informational dissimilarity and work group involvement, and between value dissimilarity and task conflict. These results highlight the importance of managing differences by introducing norms promoting diversity and the involvement of all team members.

Difficulties of overseas students in social and academic situations

Abstract It is generally believed that overseas students have more difficulty than host nationals in dealing with a wide range of social and academic situations. In the first study, 105 Asian students, 105 urban Australian students and 112 rural Australian students completed structured questionnaires, which asked them about the level of difficulty experienced in dealing With everyday social situations in Australia and their methods of coping with these problems. Asian students had more difficulty in dealing with situations related to close interpersonal relationship. In dealing with people of different status and in establishing friendships. Australian students attending university from country areas shared many of these difficulties, although to a lesser extent. In coping with these problems, Asian students engaged in information-seeking strategies more than host nationals. In Study 2, 101 Australian and 101 ethnic Chinese students responded to four vignettes about academic situations. Chinese students r...

Pax Americana? Accent attitudinal evaluations in New Zealand, Australia and America

This study describes a series of evaluations of gender pairs of New Zealand English, Australian English, American English and RP-type English English voices by over 400 students in New Zealand, Australia and the U.S.A. Voices were chosen to represent the middle range of each accent, and balanced for paralinguistic features. Twenty-two personality and demographic traits were evaluated by Likert-scale questionnaires. Results indicated that the American female voice was rated most favourably on at least some traits by students of all three nationalities, followed by the American male. For most traits, Australian students generally ranked their own accents in third or fourth place, but New Zealanders put the female NZE voice in the mid-low range of all but solidarity-associated traits. All three groups disliked the NZE male. The RP voices did not receive the higher rankings in power/status variables we expected. The New Zealand evaluations downgrade their own accent vis-a`-vis the American and to some extent the RP voices. Overall, the American accent seems well on the way to equalling or even replacing RP as the prestige—or at least preferred—variety, not only in New Zealand but in Australia and some non-English-speaking nations as well. Preliminary analysis of data from Europe suggests this manifestation of linguistic hegemony as ‘Pax Americana’ seems to be prevalent over more than just the Anglophone nations.

Strategies of Accommodation: Development of a Coding System for Conversational Interaction

This study describes a coding system developed to operationalize the sociolinguistic strategies proposed by communication accommodation theory (CAT) in an academic context. Fifty interactions between two students (of Australian or Chinese ethnic background) or a student and faculty member were videotaped. A turn-and episode-based coding system was developed, focusing on verbal and nonverbal behavior. The development of this system is described in detail, before results are presented. Results indicated that status was the main influence on choice of strategies, particularly the extent and type of discourse management and interpersonal control. Participants’ sex and ethnicity also played a role: Male participants made more use of interpretability (largely questions), whereas female participants used discourse management to develop a shared perspective. The results make clear that there is no automatic correspondence between behaviors and the strategies they constitute, and they point to the appropriateness of conceptualizing behavior and strategies separately in CAT.

Mapping a 40-Year History With Leximancer: Themes and Concepts in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology

This article presents a study using Leximancer (a text-mining tool for visualizing the structure of concepts and themes in text) to track the history of the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology’s (JCCP’s) research articles. We included 1,416 articles mapped by decade. Results reveal a strong overall orientation toward experimental psychology, with an early emphasis on child development. In more recent years, there has been a strong emphasis on the features of culture including values, orientation, and acculturation, with the journal now situated more centrally in social psychology and personality. JCCP is the most broad-based journal in cross-cultural psychology, and its development over 40 years clearly represents changes in the field.

Conversations Between Carers and People With Schizophrenia: A Qualitative Analysis Using Leximancer

We examined conversations between people with schizophrenia (PwS) and family or professional carers with whom they interacted frequently. We allocated PwS to one of two communication profiles: Low-activity communicators talked much less than their conversational partners, whereas high-activity communicators talked much more. We used Leximancer text analytics software to analyze the conversations. We found that carers used different strategies to accommodate to the PwS’s behavior, depending on the PwS’s communication profile and their relationship. These findings indicate that optimal communication strategies depend on the PwS’s conversational tendencies and the relationship context. They also suggest new opportunities for qualitative assessment via intelligent text analytics technologies.

Evaluative Reactions to Accented English Ethnicity, Sex Role, and Context

A sample population of 48 Anglo-Australian and 49 Greek-Australian male and female high school students made personality evaluations of standard Australian English and Greek-Australian-accented English. Ratings were along two dimensions (status and solidarity), and each speaker was rated on three passages representing an achievement-oriented, public context (school), a situation of intimacy and friendliness (home), and a friendly interaction in a public context (bus stop). On the status dimension, Greek-accented speakers were evaluated more negatively than Australian-accented speakers by both Anglo-Australian and Greek-Australian students. Greek-Australian female subjects were more extreme in their ratings than were Anglo-Australians or Greek-Australian males. On the bus stop passage, however, Greek-Australian subjects did not distinguish on the basis of accent. Finally, female subjects of both ethnic groups favored female speakers in the home context, while male subjects favored Anglo-Australian female speakers in the two public settings.

Young People's Beliefs About Intergenerational Communication An Initial Cross-Cultural Comparison

This article examines young peoples perceptions of their conversations with older people (age 65-85) across nine cultures−five Eastern and four Western. Responses from more than 1,000 participants were entered into a crossnational factor analysis, which revealed four initial factors that underlie perceptions of intergenerational conversations. Elder nonaccommodation was when young participants reported that older people negatively stereotyped the young and did not attend to their communication needs. On the other hand, elder accommodation was when older people were perceived as supportive, attentive and generally encouraging to young people. A third factor was respect/obligation and a fourth factor labeled age-irrelevant positivity described a situation where young people felt conversations with much older people were emotionally positive and satisfying, age did not matter. Examining cross-cultural differences, some East versus West differences were observed, as might be expected, on the basis of simplistic accounts of Eastern collectivism versus Western individualism. However, the results challenge commonsense notions of the status of old age in Eastern versus Western cultures. On some dimensions, participants from Korea, Japan, Peoples Republic of China, Hong Kong, and the Philippines appear to have relatively less positive perceptions of their conversations with older people than the Western cultures−the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. But there was also evidence of considerable cultural variability, particularly among Eastern cultures−variability that has heretofore all too often been glossed over when global comparisons of East versus West are made. A range of explanations for these cultural differences is explored and implications for older people in these societies are also considered.

Mis)communicating Across Boundaries Interpersonal and Intergroup Considerations

The metaphor of boundary is ubiquitous and has guided much research on interpersonal and intergroup communication. This article explores the metaphor by reviewing the literature on boundaries with a focus on miscommunication and problematic talk. In particular, the tensions around privacy and self-disclosure, and rules about family communication are good examples of communication and miscommunication across interpersonal boundaries. In the intergroup arena, the negotiation of boundaries implicates the sociostructural relations between groups and the choices individuals make based on the identities that are salient to them in a given context. We argue that miscommunication can best be conceived of as indicator of tension in negotiating boundaries as they emerge and change in interaction.