Shamsul Haque

Culture, gender, and the self: Variations and impact of social comparison processes

Psychological differences between women and men, far from being invariant as a biological explanation would suggest, fluctuate in magnitude across cultures. Moreover, contrary to the implications of some theoretical perspectives, gender differences in personality, values, and emotions are not smaller, but larger, in American and European cultures, in which greater progress has been made toward gender equality. This research on gender differences in self-construals involving 950 participants from 5 nations/cultures (France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United States, and Malaysia) illustrates how variations in social comparison processes across cultures can explain why gender differences are stronger in Western cultures. Gender differences in the self are a product of self-stereotyping, which occurs when between-gender social comparisons are made. These social comparisons are more likely, and exert a greater impact, in Western nations. Both correlational and experimental evidence supports this explanation.

A Cross-Cultural Investigation of Autobiographical Memory On the Universality and Cultural Variation of the Reminiscence Bump

Groups from Japan, China, Bangladesh, England, and the United States recalled, described, and dated specific autobiographical memories. When memories were plotted in terms of age-at-encoding highly similar life-span memory retrieval curves were observed: the periods of childhood amnesia and the reminiscence bump were the same across cultures. However, content analysis of memory descriptions of the U.S. and Chinese groups found that memories from the Chinese group had interdependent self-focus (i.e., were of events with a group or social orientation), whereas the memory content of the U.S. group showed an independent self-focus (i.e., were of events oriented to the individual). These findings suggest that there are culturally invariant features of autobiographical memory that yield structurally similar memories across cultures, yet the content of memories is sensitive to cultural influences related to the nature of the self. Findings are discussed in light of similarities and diversity between selves with different self/other orientations.

Life scripts for emotionally charged autobiographical memories: A cultural explanation of the reminiscence bump.

Two studies examined the ability of the life script account to explain the reminiscence bump for emotionally charged autobiographical memories among Malaysian participants. In Study 1 volunteers, aged 50–90 years, participated in a two-phased task. In the first phase, participants estimated the timing of 11 life events (both positive and negative) that may occur in a prototypical life course within their own culture. Two weeks later the participants retrieved the same set of events from their lives and reported how old they were when those events occurred. In the second study 92 undergraduate students produced life scripts for the same 11 events. The findings revealed reminiscence bumps in both life script and retrieval curves for the memories judged happiest, most important, most in love, and most jealous. A reminiscence bump was also noted for success, although this was later in the lifespan than other reminiscence bumps. It was suggested that the life scripts can be used as an alternative account for the reminiscence bump, for highly positive and occasionally for negative autobiographical memories.

Representations of swine flu: perspectives from a Malaysian pig farm

Novel influenza viruses are seen, internationally, as posing considerable health challenges, but public responses to such viruses are often rooted in cultural representations of disease and risk. However, little research has been conducted in locations associated with the origin of a pandemic. We examined representations and risk perceptions associated with swine flu amongst 120 Malaysian pig farmers. Thirty-seven per cent of respondents felt at particular risk of infection, two-thirds were somewhat or very concerned about being infected. Those respondents who were the most anxious believed particular societal “out-groups” (homosexuals, the homeless and prostitutes) to be at higher infection risk. Although few (4%) reported direct discrimination, 46% claimed friends had avoided them since the swine flu outbreak. Findings are discussed in the context of evolutionary, social representations and terror management theories of response to pandemic threat.

Autobiographical memory and hierarchical search strategies in depressed and non-depressed participants

BackgroundThere is a growing body of literature showing individuals with depression and other trauma-related disorders (e.g., posttraumatic stress disorder) recall more overgeneral and less specific autobiographical memories compared to normal participants. Although the mechanisms underlying overgeneral memory are quite clear, the search strategy operated within the autobiographical knowledge base, at time of recollection, requires further exploration. The current study aimed to examine the hierarchical search sequence used to recall autobiographical memories in depressed and non-depressed participants, with a view to determining whether depressed participants exhibited truncated search strategies.MethodsThirteen depressed and an equal number of non-depressed participants retrieved 15 memories each, in response to 15 commonly used cue words. Participants reported the first memory that entered in their mind. All memory descriptions were recorded and later transcribed verbatim for content analysis.ResultsDepressed participants retrieved autobiographical memories faster, produced shorter memory descriptions and were less likely to recall positive memories than non-depressed participants. Non-depressed participants were more likely to commence retrieval by accessing lifetime period knowledge followed by general event and event specific knowledge, whereas depressed participants showed a tendency to terminate retrieval at the general event level.ConclusionsIt is concluded that depressed participants do adhere to the same hierarchical search strategy as non-depressed participants when retrieving specific autobiographical memories, but that they terminate their search early, resulting in overgeneral memories.

Initial behavioural and attitudinal responses to influenza A, H1N1 (‘swine flu’)

As the media interest in H1N1 Influenza A (‘swine flu’) ebbs and wanes, it is important to prepare ourselves for the societal—not just the medical—implications of this outbreak. While practitioners may, rightly, anticipate a desire for physical intervention (eg, face masks),1 psychologists also point to the societal ‘out-grouping’ that can follow an epidemic. …

The transmission and stability of cultural life scripts: a cross-cultural study

ABSTRACT Cultural life scripts are shared knowledge about the timing of important life events. In the present study, we examined whether cultural life scripts are transmitted through traditions and whether there are additional ways through which they can be attained by asking Australian and Malaysian participants which information sources they had used to generate the life script of their culture. Participants hardly reported that they had used cultural and religious traditions. They more often reported that they had used their own experiences and experiences of relatives and friends. They also reported the use of comments of relatives and friends and the use of newspapers, books, movies and television programmes. Furthermore, we examined the stability of life scripts and similarities and differences across cultures. We found that life scripts are stable cognitive structures and that there are, besides cross-cultural differences in the content, small cross-cultural differences in the valence and distribution of life script events, with the Australian life script containing more positive events and more events expected to occur before the age of 16.

Culture and Cognition

One of the core issues in psychology and neuroscience research is that the nervous systems and behavior of human beings are complex, yet laboratory experiments must be kept relatively simple in order to be well-controlled and thus provide definitive answers to research questions. In this chapter, I first discuss how “model organisms” are used to reduce the complexity of scientific investigations in low-level (cellular) neuroscience research; that is, even if researchers are ultimately interested in the human mind and brain, it is often easier to begin by asking reduced forms of their questions about animals with simpler nervous systems, and attempt to build towards an understanding of increasingly complex systems. A similar approach can be taken in psychological studies of human beings. It is impossible to simultaneously examine all the multitude of factors that drive human behavior, so instead we must study individual facets of human behavior in the laboratory, and hope to build towards a more unified understanding. Here, I argue for a “component process” approach to studying human thought, wherein we use extremely simple laboratory tasks in an effort to identify fundamental “building blocks” of cognition that may form the basis of more complex thoughts and behaviors.