Valeschka Martins Guerra

The Community, Autonomy, and Divinity Scale (CADS): A New Tool for the Cross-Cultural Study of Morality

Moral rules are an important aspect of culture.Yet to date, no published scale exists to measure the endorsement of different moral codes. We report the development of the Community, Autonomy, and Divinity Scale (CADS), based on Shweder’s moral codes, as a means to measure cross-cultural, subcultural, and individual differences in the contents of morality. Scale development, confirmatory factor analysis, and convergent and discriminant validity are reported in Studies 1 and 2, as well as analysis for structural invariance and meaningful differences across British and Brazilian cultural contexts. The authors find the CADS to be a reliable and valid scale, thereby enabling the cross-cultural quantitative study of similarities and differences in endorsement of moral codes.

Cultural Values Predict Coping Using Culture as an Individual Difference Variable in Multicultural Samples

Three studies establish the relations between cultural values and coping using multicultural samples of international students. Study 1 established the cross-cultural measurement invariance of subscales of the Cope inventory Carver, Scheier, & Weintraub, 1989) used in the article. The cultural value dimensions of embeddedness versus autonomy and hierarchy versus egalitarianism predicted how international students from 28 (Study 2) and 38 (Study 3) countries coped with adapting to living in a new country. Cultural values predicted coping by religion, and this relation was only partly mediated by personally valuing tradition, cultural norms, and perceived difficulty of adapting. Cultural values predicted emotion-focused/avoidant coping beyond neuroticism and seeking social support beyond extraversion. Mediators to the relations between cultural values and these coping strategies were also found. The results demonstrate the power of cultural values to predict coping and bring to the forefront the use of multicultural samples as an important method in cross-cultural research.

The importance of honor concerns across eight countries

Honor concerns are considered an important part of one’s self-image, and strongly associated to cultural values. However, there is a lack of research studies that explore these concerns in more than two cultural communities. Across eight countries (Brazil, Israel, Japan, Macedonia, New Zealand, Spain, United Kingdom, and United States), participants (total N = 1098) answered the Honor Scale and the Community, Autonomy, and Divinity Scale. Individualistic cultures, such as the USA, were predominantly concerned with integrity honor, while Israel, Macedonia, and Japan (i.e., honor cultures) rated family honor closer to integrity in importance. Subscales measuring masculine and feminine honor showed gender differences, but not in all cultures; “masculine” honor items were often endorsed by both men and women alike. Regarding honor associations to moral codes, family concerns were closely related to community, integrity concerns were related to autonomy, and feminine concerns were related to divinity.

Adaptação da escala de homofobia implítica e explícita ao contexto brasileiro

O grande numero de atitudes agressivas e comportamentos discriminatorios reportados com relacao aos homossexuais tem sido amplamente discutido. Estudos recentes tem mostrado que o preconceito se modificou, tornando-se mais sutil. No entanto, sao escassos os estudos que procuram enfatizar essa modificacao no que diz respeito ao preconceito frente a estes grupos minoritarios. Assim, o objetivo deste estudo foi adaptar a Escala de Homofobia Implicita e Explicita para o contexto brasileiro. Participaram desta pesquisa 231 estudantes universitarios, com idade variando de 17 a 55 anos (M = 24,0; DP = 5,38), sendo a maioria (51,5%) do sexo masculino. Estes responderam a escala mencionada e questoes socio-demograficas. Os resultados da analise fatorial confirmatoria corroboraram a estrutura bi-fatorial da medida. Conjuntamente, o instrumento apresentou consistencia interna (alfa de Cronbach = 0,87), mostrando-se uma medida fidedigna para utilizacao neste contexto.

What Kinds of Value Motives Guide People in Their Moral Attitudes? The Role of Personal and Prescriptive Values at the Culture Level and Individual Level:

Opinions about moralized issues are arguably one of the most difficult issues in interpersonal dialogues given that they can result in intolerance and prejudicial behavior toward those with divergent moral beliefs. Recent research has shown that moral attitudes vary not only depending on the individual’s characteristics but also as a function of culture. Individuals from individualistic-oriented cultures exhibit more lenient judgments toward moralized issues than those from collectivistic-oriented cultures. What is unclear to date is what kinds of cultural value motives underlie these attitudes—Are they driven only by intrinsic value motives (personal values) or also by extrinsic value motives (prescriptive values in the form of societal expectations about what should be valued)? The cultural press to conform is arguably stronger if moral attitudes are predicted by the latter. Participants from eight countries (N = 1,456) responded to a questionnaire containing a modified version of the Schwartz Value Survey assessing personal and prescriptive values. The results showed that personal value ratings of openness-to-change versus conservation at the culture and individual levels were predictive of individuals’ moral attitudes consistent with previous findings. Prescriptive value ratings of openness-to-change versus conservation also predicted individuals’ moral attitudes, but only at the aggregated culture level. This suggests that the prescriptive values concept is a truly group-level phenomenon and that attitudes toward moralized issues are guided by cultural values with normative qualities. We discuss the implications for intercultural contact situations.

Liberalismo / conservadorismo sexual: proposta de uma medida multi-fatorial

This study aims at presenting a multi-factorial measurement of sexual liberalism/conservatism. New items were added to the Sexual Attitudes Questionnaire and two studies were developed. During the first study, the participants answered the Sexual Attitudes Questionnaire, divided in two sub-scales (Self and Other), and demographic questions. The results of the exploratory factor analysis showed a general factor of sexual liberalism/conservatism. In the second study, the participants answered the Sexual Liberalism/Conservatism Questionnaire (SLCQ), the Moral Conservatism Scale, the Moral Traditionalism Scale and demographic questions. By means of a confirmatory factorial analysis, the multi-factorial structure of the SLCQ was confirmed, revealing acceptable indexes of goodness-of-fit. The Cronbachs Alpha found to the second order factors were .88 (Self) and .90 (Other). All factors of liberalism correlated themselves with each other and with the conservatism and traditionalism scales, corroborating the convergent validity of the psychometric instrument, wich proved its adequacy for use in the Brazilian context.

Correlatos valorativos das motivações para responder sem preconceito

The current study aimed at establishing to what extent both internal and external motivations to respond without prejudice towards Blacks would correlate with human values. As many as 308 subjects from Joao Pessoa - comprising high school and university students as well as individuals from the community as a whole - were considered. The Basic Values Questionnaire, the Impression Management Scale and the Scale of Internal and External Motivation to Respond without Prejudice, and also demographic questions were applied. Results showed that the internal motivation was positively correlated with the suprapersonal values, specifically maturity, beauty and knowledge. Moreover, the external motivation did correlate, predominantly, with the achievement values, specifically those of prestige and privacy. Such results are in line with those found in the literature, which indicate the opposition between egalitarianism (suprapersonal) vs. protestant ethic (achievement) values so as to explicate the prejudice and the motivations that would prevent such attitude.

Research in Social Psychology: methodological strategies of the Brazilian production

The aim of this study was identifying the methodological strategies used in Social Psychology research in Brazil. By resorting to the term Social Psychology as an index search factor, a literature review was conducted in papers published in Psychology periodicals indexed at Scielo and Pepsic between 2007 and 2011; and in dissertations and theses abstracts indexed at the CAPES Database from 1987 to 1991, and from 2007 to 2011. Altogether, 877 works were analyzed through SPSS. Results indicated that the main data collection and data analysis techniques were: interviews, associated with content and discourse analysis; questionnaires, analyzed mainly through content analysis and descriptive statistics; and inventories and scales, analyzed through descriptive and multivariate statistics. The most frequently investigated objects were generational groups and health/disease processes. The study points to the need for methodological triangulation in the production of knowledge, aiming to overcome qualitative and quantitative false dichotomies in research methodology.

O sentimento de constrangimento: evidências acerca do contágio emocional e do gênero

This study aimed to comprehend the extension of emotional contagion and gender influences on the embarrassment experienced in several social circumstances. It was a correlational study, with 325 participants, 65% of which were female, all aged from 14 to 75 years old (media= 26.7; standard deviation= 10.4). The sample group included students, 87.7% of them were from the local university, 12.3% were high school students, and the rest of the group were from the general population. They answered individually the Embarrassment Questionnaire, the Emotional Contagion Scale, and also a set of demographic questions. Results showed that the total score of embarrassment and its specific factors are negatively correlated to the emotional contagion. Women have presented higher scores on embarrassment dimensions. These findings were analyzed based on the present theories of emotions, as well as on a gender perspective.

Atitudes de estudantes universitários frente ao consumo de materiais pornográficos

University students’ attitudes towards pornographic material consumption. The expansion of the pornographic material market raises the question of the influence of the values transmitted by the media in people’s behavior. Despite the apparent interest in sexuality by the society in general, Brazil lacks studies on this topic, which has not yet been deeply discussed. This study describes the elaboration and validation of a psychometric instrument for the measuring of attitudes towards the consumption of pornographic material, answered by 336 university students and submitted to a factor analysis. 33 items were built in order to cover two dimensions, presenting adequate reliability scores: (1) “Positive effects of pornography”, expressing the idea that pornographic material is favorable to sexual life ( = 0.94) and (2) “Harmful effects of pornography”, which expresses the idea that this same material is noxious to intimate relationships and it is associated to vice and isolation ( = 0.85).