Browsing by Subject "Social psychology"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Are you afraid of the dark?: Exploring death, social isolation, & cultural enlightenment
    (2006) Chao, Brian; Boltz, Marilyn
    Terror management theory claims that human behavior is driven by a subtle but profound fear of personal death, a consequence of advanced cognitions. Coalitional psychology, on the contrary, claims that human behavior is driven by a desire for social affiliation, as a fitness related adaptation. In the present study, we conducted two experiments in order to evaluate the competing claims of terror management theory and coalitional psychology, with sensitivity to the influence that culture is known to have on cognitive processes. The first experiment investigated the effects of cultural priming (individualism or collectivism) and salience priming (mortality, social isolation, or neutrality) on death-, social isolation-, and fear-related thought accessibilities, as measure by the frequency of semantically-related word completions. A mixed-factorial ANOVA found no significant effect of salience prime on the types of word completions, but did find a significant main effect of salience prime within the neutral salience condition. The second experiment investigated the effects of cultural priming and salience priming on cognitive processing, as measured by field dependency and attributio1nal tendency. A mixed-factorial ANOVA found no significant effects on the field-dependency measure, but did find a significant main effect of culture prime on the attributional tendency measure. The inconsistency of the findings with prior research is discussed in light of methodological and theoretical limitations. Directions for future research are recommended.
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    Psychology: You Can Take That to the Bank The Discipline’s Role in the Modern Retail Banking Industry
    (2018) Dekle, Anna; Wang, Shu-wen
    Throughout the history of retail banking, there have been a multitude of challenges that have arisen and shaped various aspects of this industry. A review of this historical account helps establish the current difficulties facing retail banks—(1) the people, both in terms of those inside the workplace through organization, structure, and dynamics of the employees as well as those outside of the workplace through understanding customer behavior and (2) the digital transformation as a consequence of technological advances as well as new forms of competition. An appraisal of past literature not only reveals how each of these are indeed relevant obstacles, but also how each has been discussed, and, furthermore, how psychology can effectively address these roadblocks. It is with this last consideration that a plan will be constructed with the intent of guiding retail banks to remain vital not just in the present but, far into the future. Although there may be a variety of solutions to these challenges, this specific paper will highlight the role that psychology as a field can have. This is accomplished by discussing the manner by which various subfields—such as organizational psychology, social psychology, consumer psychology, and behavioral economics—can positively contribute in both handling the people in the workplace and the customers integral to a bank’s success as well as addressing the digital transformation that has occurred.
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    “Shame on You”: Collectivistic cultural values influence the relationship between shame experiences and psychosocial well-being
    (2024) Castellón, Alexandra Miranda; Wang, Shu-wen
    This study examined whether collectivistic cultural values moderated the relationship between shame experiences and psychosocial well-being (self-esteem, satisfaction with life, perceived social support, depression, anxiety, and stress). Shame remains a significantly understudied emotion, yet recent literature indicates its potential adaptiveness within harmony collectivistic cultural settings. This study aims to enhance our understanding of shame's role in harmony cultures and collect empirical data on its function in convivial collectivistic cultural contexts. Overall, we hypothesized that collectivistic cultures (and their respective cultural values) would mitigate the association between shame experiences and negative psychosocial well-being outcomes. We used a sample (N = 446) with participants from Japan (harmony collectivists), Mexico (convivial collectivists), and the United States (individualists) to measure shame proneness & frequency and adherence to collectivistic cultural values. Surprisingly, we found no significant differences in shame proneness and frequency between the three country groups. Nevertheless, our analyses revealed that harmony collectivistic cultural values are protective against the maladaptive links between shame withdrawal and self-esteem. Moreover, harmony collectivistic cultural values are protective against the maladaptive links between shame withdrawal and satisfaction with life. Contrarily, harmony collectivistic cultural values exacerbated the maladaptive links between shame negative self-evaluation and perceived social support. Additionally, the convivial collectivistic cultural value of simpatía is protective against the maladaptive links between shame withdrawal and self-esteem. Also, simpatía is protective against the maladaptive links between shame withdrawal and depression, and against the maladaptive links between shame withdrawal and perceived social support. Overall, this study suggests that people higher on collectivism may not be as disadvantaged by shame than their low-collectivism values counterparts.
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    “Shame on You”: Collectivistic Cultural Values Influence the Relationship between Shame Experiences and Psychosocial Well-being
    (2024) Cheng, Katy Anne; Wang, Shu-wen
    Objective: Shame is an understudied emotion, especially amongst individuals in collectivistic cultures. Previous research has suggested that East Asians/ harmony collectivists in particular are more tolerant of shame than people in Western, individualistic societies. The current study aims to build upon theoretical research by comparing how three distinct cultural groups (harmony collectivistic, convivial collectivistic, and individualistic) differ on their frequency and likelihood of feeling shame, and how this emotion is related to psychosocial well-being. Method: We utilized a mixed-methods approach by collecting both quantitative and qualitative data through online surveys from participants in the United States (n = 144), Mexico (n = 162), and Japan (n = 140). Information was collected on shame proneness and frequency, personal shame experiences, and various psychosocial well-being outcomes (self-esteem, satisfaction with life, stress, anxiety, depression, and perceived social support). Results: Participants from the three countries did not differ on their likelihood of, and frequency of experiencing shame. Surprisingly, increased shame proneness and frequency predicted decreased psychosocial well-being across all three groups. However, harmony collectivistic cultural values buffered against the maladaptive associations between shame and decreased life satisfaction, along with shame and decreased self-esteem. Convivial collectivistic values protected against maladaptive relationships between shame and decreased self-esteem, decreased perceived social support, and increased depression symptoms. Conclusions: While shame was experienced as a maladaptive emotion for all participants, greater endorsement of collectivistic values led people to be less disadvantaged by shame compared to their individualistic counterparts, suggesting that shame serves a functional purpose within collectivism.
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    Verticality vs. Brightness: Relative Strength and Properties of Conceptual Metaphors for Affective Valence
    (2020) Herringshaw, Travis E.; Boltz, Marilyn
    A conceptual metaphor is an apparent cognitive principle in which abstract concepts are represented via processing of concrete source domains. Commonly attested conceptual metaphors are those for affective valence, which appears to be represented in part through activation of perceptual domains for brightness and verticality. Positive affect is contended to be rooted partly in the concepts of "up" (high vertical position) and "bright" (high reflectance or luminance), while negative affect is contended to be rooted partly in the concepts of "down" and "dark". Paradigms that evince these metaphors often involve performance of an affect-salient task related to valenced stimuli presented in metaphor-congruent (bright/up or dark/down) or metaphor-incongruent (bright/down or dark/up) contexts. Performance is generally found to be better in metaphor-congruent vs. incongruent conditions, constituting a "metaphor-(in)congruency effect". Observation of this effect is inconsistent, however, particularly regarding negative valence. Furthermore, it is unclear if this (in)congruency effect is due to a facilitation mechanism, an interference mechanism, or both. The present research employed two studies, whose goals were to: replicate the metaphor-(in)congruency effects for these verticality and brightness metaphors, discern whether these effects are facilitative or interferent in nature, determine whether one domain –verticality or brightness-is more important than the other in representing affect, and explore possible influences of individual differences in optimism and mood on these effects. The studies found strong evidence for a brightness-metaphor congruency effect for positive valence due to facilitation and weak support for a verticality-metaphor congruency effect for negative valence. The focal metaphors of verticality and brightness were not found to differ in their importance to the concept of affect. Few salient effects of optimism and mood were observed. The present study offers evidence that source domains can facilitate the representation of abstract domains and that brightness and verticality are likely comparable in their importance to affect-conceptualization. Further insight into metaphoric effects can deepen understanding of how our minds represent abstract concepts and could have practical implications, as well.