Ying-yi Hong

Epistemic motives and cultural conformity : need for closure, culture, and context as determinants of conflict judgments.

Three studies support the proposal that need for closure (NFC) involves a desire for consensual validation that leads to cultural conformity. Individual differences in NFC interact with cultural group variables to determine East Asian versus Western differences in conflict style and procedural preferences (Study 1), information gathering in disputes (Study 2), and fairness judgment in reward allocations (Study 3). Results from experimental tests indicate that the relevance of NFC to cultural conformity reflects consensus motives rather than effort minimization (Study 2) or political conservatism (Study 3). Implications for research on conflict resolution and motivated cultural cognition are discussed.

Dynamic Influences of Culture on Cooperation in the Prisoner's Dilemma

This study tested whether priming of cultural symbols activates cultural behavioral scripts and thus the corresponding behaviors, and also whether the behaviors activated are context-specific. Specifically, to activate the cultural knowledge of Chinese-American bicultural participants, we primed them with Chinese cultural icons or American cultural icons. In the control condition, we showed them geometric figures. Then, the participants played the Prisoners Dilemma game with friends or strangers (the context manipulation). As expected, participants showed more cooperation toward friends when Chinese cultural knowledge was activated than when American cultural knowledge was activated. By contrast, participants showed a similarly low level of cooperation toward strangers after both Chinese and American culture priming. These findings not only support previous evidence on culture priming of social judgment and self-construals, but also (a) provide the first evidence for the effects of culture priming on behaviors and (b) demonstrate the boundary condition of culture priming.

Lay theory of race affects and moderates Asian Americans' responses toward American culture.

People may hold different understandings of race that might affect how they respond to the culture of groups deemed to be racially distinct. The present research tests how this process is moderated by the minority individuals lay theory of race. An essentialist lay theory of race (i.e., that race reflects deep-seated, inalterable essence and is indicative of traits and ability) would orient racial minorities to rigidly adhere to their ethnic culture, whereas a social constructionist lay theory of race (i.e., that race is socially constructed, malleable, and arbitrary) would orient racial minorities to identify and cognitively assimilate toward the majority culture. To test these predictions, the authors conducted 4 studies with Asian American participants. The first 2 studies examine the effect of ones lay theory of race on perceived racial differences and identification with American culture. The last 2 studies tested the moderating effect of lay theory of race on identification and assimilation toward the majority American culture after this culture had been primed. The results generally supported the prediction that the social constructionist theory was associated with more perceived similarity between Asians and Americans and more consistent identification and assimilation toward American culture, compared with the essentialist theory.

Essentializing Race: Implications for Bicultural Individuals' Cognition and Physiological Reactivity

It is a widely held belief that racial groups have underlying essences. We hypothesized that bicultural individuals who hold this essentialist belief about race are oriented to perceive rigid interracial boundaries and experience difficulty passing between their ethnic culture and the host culture. As predicted, we found that the more strongly Chinese American participants endorsed an essentialist belief about race, the less effective they were in switching rapidly between Chinese and American cultural frames in a reaction time task (Study 1), and the greater emotional reactivity they exhibited (reflected in heightened skin conductance) while they talked about their Chinese and American cultural experiences (Study 2). Taken together, these findings suggest that essentialist beliefs about race set up a mind-set that influences how bicultural individuals navigate between their ethnic and host cultures.

Social comparison during political transition: Interaction of entity versus incremental beliefs and social identities

Abstract The relation between intergroup perceptions and peoples implicit theories of the malleability of human attributes or character was examined. We predicted that people who believe that human attributes are fixed (entity theorists) may also view a group as an entity and thus would rely on trait-based dimensions in social comparison to achieve group distinctiveness. By contrast, people who believe that human attributes are malleable (incremental theorists) may focus on the dynamic aspects of social groups (e.g., group goals) and thus would be less likely to rely on trait-based dimensions in social comparison. Moreover, such differential tendency was expected to become more salient as the day of the handover approached. These predictions were tested in a longitudinal study conducted in Hong Kong during the 1997 political transition. Implicit theories, social identities and group categorization strategies of 242 university students were assessed first in March, 1996, and then in September, 1996 and March, 1997. The findings supported our predictions and were discussed in terms of their implications for intergroup relations.

Language use as a carrier of social identity

In the present study, we examined the relationship of social identity (Hongkonger or Chinese) and the attitudes toward bilingual code switching in a conversation between a Hong Kong person and a Chinese Mainlander. Students from a local university in Hong Kong (N = 159) listened to a four-turn conversation between a Hong Kong person and a Mainlander in a wedding party. As expected, when the speaker converged to the Putonghua (the Mainland official language), those who claimed a Hongkonger identity judged the Hong Kong speaker less favourably than did those who claimed a Chinese identity. In addition, participants who claimed a Chinese identity judged the Hong Kong speaker more favourably when he converged to Putonghua than when he maintained Cantonese (a Chinese dialect most commonly used in Hong Kong). Finally, social identity was unrelated to language attitudes when the Mainland speaker converged to Cantonese first.

Differential emphases on modernity and confucian values in social categorization: the case of hong kong adolescents in political transition

Abstract This study investigated if modernity and Confucian values were ingroups positively valued distinctiveness for Hong Kong adolescents with different social identities. Participants (236 Hong Kong adolescents) filled out a questionnaire which tapped social identity and intergroup perception. They also participated in a card-sorting activity in which they decided if any of 20 attributes (e.g., advanced, respecting collective will) could be used to characterize a specific ethnic–social group (e.g., mainland Chinese, Hongkongers, Americans). Multidimensional scaling performed on the card-sorting data resulted in a two-dimensional solution. Emphasis on Dimension 1 (modernity) correlated with positive perception of Hong Kong and Hong Kong people while emphasis on Dimension 2 (Confucian values) correlated with positive perception of China and Chinese. In addition, compared to adolescents who identified themselves as Chinese or Chinese-Hongkongers, those who identified themselves as Hongkongers or Hongkonger-Chinese placed more emphasis on modernity and less on Confucian values. The results were discussed with reference to Taj fels theory of social identity.

How Are Social Identities Linked to Self-Conception and Intergroup Orientation? The Moderating Effect of Implicit Theories

Social identity approaches assume that social identification affects both self-conception and intergroup orientation. The authors contend that such social identification effects are accentuated when people hold a fixed view of human character and attribute immutable dispositions to social groups. To these individuals, social identities are immutable, concrete entities capable of guiding self-conception and intergroup orientation. Social identification effects are attenuated when people hold a malleable view of human character and thus do not view social identities as fixed, concrete entities. The authors tested and found support for this contention in three studies that were conducted in the context of the Hong Kong 1997 political transition, and discussed the findings in terms of their implications for self-conceptions and the meaning of social identification.

Social identification in a political transition: the role of implicit beliefs

Abstract The optimal distinctiveness model posits that social identificaion is a social psychological expression of the universal needs for connectedness and differentiation. We propose that compared to individuals who believe that the social world is malleable (malleable theorists), individuals who believe that the social world is a fixed reality (fixed theorists) may feel more strongly that people should harmonize the self with, rather than differentiate it from, the fixed social world. Fixed theorists may thus have a relatively stronger connectedness motivation and a relatively weaker differentiation motivation. This proposal was tested in an experimental study (Study 1) and a longitudinal study (Study 2), both set in the context of the 1997 political transition in Hong Kong, in which Hong Kong people faced the social identification issue of whether to identify themselves with the more inclusive Chinese group or to affirm their distinctive Hong Konger identity. The results supported our proposal and were discussed in terms of their implications for several theoretical models of social identification and for the social identification processes in transitional Hong Kong.

Advances in culture and psychology

Chapter 1 The Role of Language and Culture in Universality and Diversity of Human Concepts Mutsumi Imai and Takahiko Masuda Chapter 2 Development: The Cultural Solution of Universal Developmental Tasks Heidi Keller and Joscha Kartner Chapter 3 From Chinese to Cross-Cultural Personality Inventory: A Combined Emic-Etic Approach to Study Personality in Culture Fanny M. Cheung, Shu Fai Cheung, and Weiqiao Fan Chapter 4 Cultural Unity and Diversity in Compensatory Control Processes Aaron C. Kay and Daniel Sullivan Chapter 5 Creating Cultures Between Arctics and Deserts Evert Van de Vliert Chapter 6 Macro Cultural Psychology: Its Development, Concerns, Politics, and Future Direction Carl Ratner