IACCP newsletter day 2

Incoming IACCP president seeks bigger role for young researchersAustralia-based psychologist Yoshi Kashima

yesterday took over as the president of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP), starting a two-year presidential journey that will end in 2014.

Kashima (55) had been elected in an online ballot in 2010 by the organisation’s worldwide members, per IACCP’s tradition. The Japanese-born professor at Melbourne University took over from Professor Kwok Leung, who had been at the association’s helm since 2010.

“Thank you very much for electing me,” Kashima told delegates attending IACCP’s general meeting here in Stellenbosch. “I know the tradition of the association very well, and I will ensure that we continue to develop and grow it.”

Kashima, a professor in social psychology and cross-cultural psychology later explained that he had already started working on measures to encourage the participation of young researchers and improve the organisation’s relationship with other academic associations.

“We want to cultivate the involvement of the younger generation,” which includes PhD students and early-career researchers who have obtained their PhD

less than ten years ago. “We are trying to start a youth group and also establish an early-career award, which are mechanisms we have not had so far,” Kashima said. “We will set up a subcommittee to work on this plan in the next six months to a year.”

Kashima said involvement of younger people was important as they would carry some of the association’s administrative burden and be in a good position to move the institution forward. The organisation also depends on individual researchers’ participation, which is why a growing membership remains a priority.

Kashima said the IACCP also enjoyed connections with large international associations. Renewing those, and building more synergies, is one of his top priorities, he said. Among IACCP’s friends are the Asian Association of Social Psychology and the Students for Industrial-Organizational Psychology.

The general meeting also heard that the association was in a sound financial position and its publications are doing well. It was also reported that membership is growing, with 763 members from 71 countries as of 31 May 2012.

BY JENNIFER DUBE

The newely elected president of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, Yoshi Kashima.

FOR MORE STORIES, VIDEO AND AUDIO GO TO: IACCP2012.blogspot.com

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Lines of segregration still visible in South Africa

South Africa has progressed well in terms of racially integrating schools and universities post-apartheid,

with some former white education institutions having more black students, but the country remains deeply racially segregated, a University of Cape Town study has found.

The 10 year research found that while SA universities were more representative of the country’s demographics, South Africans were still not comfortable sharing space with those outside their race and there was still racial prejudice between blacks and whites.

The series of observational studies, which were carried out at UCT, some of the Long Street pubs and night clubs, and education institutions in Gauteng, also found that while there was no longer institutional segregation in South Africa and public and leisure spaces were more integrated, there was still very little inter-racial contact. Not enough inter-racial friendships were made in such spaces.

While some of the redress policies, including Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and land restitution were introduced after the first democratic elections in 1994, there was still not enough support. Some white South Africans were found to be likely to oppose the implementation of such policies as they felt they were unjust towards them.

Speaking at the conference, Professor Colin Tredoux, professor of psychology at UCT said data has shown that whites who had more inter-racial contact and had formed relationships and friendships outside their race, were supportive in principle of such policies. When it came to implementation, they were likely to oppose them. Ironically, the black middle-class who had more inter-racial contacts were also found to be resistant to the implementation of some redress policies.

Tredoux said this “informal segregation” had been mostly observed in seating arrangements and choices of students in dining halls, public spaces, classrooms and cafeteria.

Most students had cited “comfort” as a spontaneous reason for not forming inter-racial contacts. In a survey that was carried out in 2010, researchers observed that the initial seating arrangement of first-year students was in “segregated patterns”. When students sat on the steps outside UCT’s Jamieson Hall, researchers observed that black students were more likely to sit on top of the steps, whites in the middle and coloured students on the sides.

Of the 285 new friendships that were formed by students in the first few months, only 51 were cross-race. About 65 percent of participants reported a “great deal” of inter-racial contact while 58 percent said the quality of contact was “mostly positive”.

A study that was done in Long Street in 2009 also revealed that while the trendy clubs “proudly reflected diversity and racial mix” of the country’s population, interaction and conversations at these clubs remained mono-racial.

Treduoux warned that inter-racial integration could not be forced on people. South Africa shouldn’t ignore the micro-ecological levels of inter-racial contact, he said, as it could lead to reproduction of inequality for younger generations.

“Segregation is a linchpin of inequality. If this is continued and ignored, it’s likely to reproduce a society that is highly unequal,” he said.

BY SIPOKAZI FOKAZI

University of Cape Town

Does the word “happy” mean the same to all of us?

When was the last time someone got on your nerves, sending

you screaming all over the place? You were angry—and that happens to people all over the globe. But still, people may mean very different things when they use words such as “anger” to describe their emotion.

Now, researchers have developed an instrument, called GRID, to determine what so-called emotion words, such as anger, joy, hate, and sadness mean, and whether they are comparable across cultures.

GRID is the product of a seven-year collaborative research project between institutions in Belgium and Switzerland. The work was presented during a keynote speech today by the lead researcher, Dr Johnny Fontaine of Ghent University in Belgium. We use emotion terms very often,

Fontaine said, but the question is, “what do these terms really mean?”

An emotion, Fontaine said, “is not a deep feeling, it is a process” — a package of different effects. “We unpackage the package. We identify the features of that process.” The instrument is called a grid because it has two axes. On one axis are emotion words, such as joy, happiness, hate, guilt, and shame. The other axis contains so-called emotion features, such as “cried,” “sweated,” “increased breathing,” or “felt good.”

“People have to link these two together,” Fontaine said. The grid has been tested in 27 different countries, from China to Belgium. The results showed

that the basic emotions, which include joy, happiness, sadness, and fear, have mostly the same features associated with them across countries and languages. “The meaning of emotion appears to be quite stable when we use the grid,” Fontaine said.

BY ROSALIA OMUNGO

Regional differences in learning patterns in early childhood

Psychologists have confirmed what many parents have

often observed: the imitation of their older siblings is an important part of the learning process of young children.

Parents may not be aware, however, that the imitation

patterns showed by children in different parts of the world is markedly different.

Sonja Borchert, a PhD student from the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, studied 18-month-old toddlers in a Cameroon farming community and those from middle class families in Germany.

She used toys to elicit a response from the children and found that the toddlers in Cameroon reacted faster than babies from Germany, perhaps because they are not used to playing with toys.

Bettina Lamm, a PhD student at the University of Osnabrueck in Germany, studied children aged three, six and nine months old and discovered that “infants from Germany learned language faster while those from Cameroon were

likely to learn to sit and stand sooner”.

Joyce S. Pang, assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, spoke on “Caring dad/controlling mum: Gender differences in effects of parental warmth and psychological control on aggression of impulsive Singapore children”. She found that the quality of the parental relationship with a child will have an impact on the child’s development.

She said controlling mothers had more influence on the behaviour of their sons than their daughters. Girls who are impulsive tend to identify themselves with their father’s warmth rather than to pay attention to their controlling mother.

A follow-up study will be carried out to assess behaviour changes during late adolescence.

BY LOMINDA AFEDRARU

Dr Johnny Fontaine

A vicious cycle of violence in Nigeria

Children who are forced to leave their homes as a result of conflicts and violence are more likely

to display aggressive behaviour, according to a study among Nigerian children presented on Wednesday at the IACCP congress. The research was carried out by Agatha Ogwo of Nasarawa State University, Chinwe Ifeacho of the University of Nigeria, and Solomon Mumah of Kenyatta University in Kenya.

Nigeria is a country with over 140 million people from about 250 ethnic groups and multiple religions. This often results in conflicts and people leaving their homes to seek a safer place elsewhere in the country, a process called ‘internal displacement.’ Ogwo said internal displacement often results in neglect by international aid workers, who are more concerned by the acute problems of refugees.

As a result of such neglect, most of the internally displaced

children end up in churches or the homes of relatives, who can only offer short-term assistance.

The researchers interviewed 222 boys between 13 and 18 years of age of the Bassa/Igbirra ethnic group who were internally displaced and compared them with

223 who weren’t displaced. They discovered that the displaced boys were more prone to aggression.

The researchers mention many possible reasons for this. After a conflict, many children suffer flashbacks of scenes of murder, rape, and other types of violence.

Many are frustrated and want to retaliate for the injustices they experienced. Ogwo says that this can lead to a

vicious cycle, which may be one reason why Nigeria continues

to experience conflicts. Psychological help for internally displaced children would be one solution to the aggression, Ogwo said.

BY CHINYERE OPIA

Armas Chikongo

My name is Armas Chikongo. I’m a

lecturer at the University of Namibia. I teach courses and do research in psychology.

Why did you choose to come to the conference?

I am here for my own personal interest in cross-cultural psychology, but also to represent the head of my Department, who could not make the trip.

What is the most interesting thing you have heard today?

I attended a couple of presentations focusing on culture and psychology, on

how people move from one society to the other. This has stimulated me to go back home and do some research

in the field. I will work to present my PhD thesis, which I did in

Malaysia, during the next IACCP Congress.

The congress is very important for networking

and collaborative research; I got a lot of information here.

BY LEOCADIA BONGBENMeet the delegates

Agatha Ogwo

Child upbringing in culturally individualistic Britain brings forth individuals with more

self-esteem and self-confidence than the more traditional way in collectivistic Turkey does. That is the conclusion of a comparative cross-cultural psychology study presented on Thursday at the IACCP congress.

The research, dubbed The Role of Culture in Shaping the Ecology of Parenting, was headed by Turkish researcher Berna Aytac, a PhD student at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom.

“England is a typical individualistic culture where personal fulfillment and self-maximisation outweigh family relationship concerns,” Aytac explained. “Turkey has a more collectivistic culture in which patriotism and intimate family ties including obedience to parents as authoritative figures are keystone norms.”

However, a study from mothers and kids in both cultural settings has revealed that those cozy and healthy family ties in Turkey don’t guarantee of convivial parent-child relationship and productive childrearing.

“Turkish mothers reported more negative relationships with their kids,” Aytac said. “They use more severe methods of discipline and have more conflicts with their children. When they’re cross, they smack the kids and shout at them.” That is in sharp contrast to Britain, where the study found that mothers are calmer in child discipline and express more affection for their offspring.

“It’s an interesting and worthwhile comparison,” said Ng Sik Hung, a Professor of Psychology at the Hong Kong City University’s College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. “I think the practical relevance of this work may not be immediately apparent, but it provides sufficient information on how parents can improve their relations with their kids worldwide.”

BY NTARYIKE DIVINE JR.

Ayse Uskul

My name is Ayse Uskul. I am a social

psychologist, and a senior lecturer at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom. I am originally from Turkey.

Why did you choose to come to this conference?

I am attending the conference in my capacity as a member of the IACCP. I always try to come to the conference.

What is the most interesting thing you have heard today?

The most important thing today was my trip to an interesting township on the outskirts of Stellenbosch. called Khayamandi. I came face to face with a very

different part of Africa. I learned about its history.

My daughter also had a chance to mingle

with little children. This was fun because since I

arrived for the conference, I have not had a chance to look around and enjoy the beauty of South Africa.

BY ROSALIA OMUNGOMeet the delegates

English mothers outfox Turkish counterparts in positive parenting

Improve existing research with home-grown ideas

Indigenous research in non-Western cultures can complement and extend Western theories,

contributing to their universality, the outgoing president of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP), Kwok Leung said yesterday during his keynote address.

Presenting a paper on Indigenous Research and Universal Theories at IACCP’s 21st congress, Professor Leung said researchers should use cultural diversity to improve existing research. “We should take greater advantage of cultural diversity as a valuable resource to improve current and develop new theories,” Leung said.

Leung told delegates about his research on harmony, saying it was a typical example of areas that have not been explored by Western researchers. “Harmony is how people get along. It is a very salient concept in the Chinese culture, but Western research does not talk much about it,” he said. “It is not a very popular idea in the West.”

He said his ongoing research, which focused on two motives, harmony enhancement and disintegration avoidance, could be used by many cultures in conflict resolution.

Leung found that there were two reasons why people got along: Some wanted to build relationships, while others used harmony to avoid conflict. The group in the harmony enhancement category took steps to improve relationships and promoted positive reciprocity, Leung said, while those in the disintegration avoidance group took steps not to irritate or hurt others.

He said those in the first category also felt safer communicating with others and saw opportunities for better relations through exchange, while those in the second category felt

unsafe about communication and focused more on problems that might arise from this.

The harmony enhancement group was also more likely to share resources like money and to explore opportunities of making more for themselves and others, while the other group was afraid of loss and tended to protect their possessions.

Leung added that the two motives were relevant for different cultures and could be used in promoting relationships and avoiding conflict. “Maintaining harmony is very important,” he said. “Everything prospers when there is harmony.”

BY SIPOKAZI FOKAZI & JENNIFER DUBE

Professor Kwok Leung

Delegates read the first edition of the IACCP newsletter on Wednesday. Hot off the press, the issue was distributed at the start of the presidential address in the Konservatorium.

All the news that’s fit to print

Why Africa can’t catch up in psychology

Doctor Vivian A. Dzokot, a clinical psychologist from Ghana, is Assistant Professor at the

Department of African-American Studies of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond in the United States. The IACCP newsletter asked her about psychology’s prospects in Africa.

How relevant is cross-cultural psychology to Africa at this point in time?

Well, we’re becoming a global village. The Chinese are streaming into Africa and many people are beginning to think that perhaps doing business in Africa is not such a bad idea. If you want to do business with somebody, it’s probably a good idea to understand what their cultural norms are, how to communicate effectively in that culture, so you don’t offend the people and are actually able to make as much money as you came there to make. That’s what the missionaries did in the pre-colonial era. Psychology is relevant to Africa in many other ways. For example, if you’re trying to change things like health behaviours, you have to understand how people are thinking about illness to be able to see if it makes sense to change it and how. There are psychological theories on how to change behaviour.

Now, will all of them work in Africa? Probably not; but we have to test them

and maybe find African ways of doing it. So despite the relevance, why is

there so little psychological research in Africa?

There are lots of universities with psychology departments, but their major business is to teach. For example, the University of Ghana has a huge student body with lots of them taking psychology at least at the undergraduate level. But in

order to do research, you need time, skill and above all, funding. There is very little funding for psychological research in Africa.

I actually did a study looking at available funding for mental health compared to HIV, and found that in a period of five years there were over a hundred research opportunities for HIV and less than five for mental health for the whole of Africa. The money comes from external donors and if you have money you get to decide what it’s used for. Funding institutions drive research. And because Africa lacks a lot of internal funding sources, we’re not going to get a lot of research on psychology. People are going to fund other things which are perceived to be more pressing.

Are there possibilities of catching up in the near future?

I honestly do not think that it will be possible for Africa to catch up. And the reason is that psychology has developed and thrived outside of Africa, and unless

African countries themselves decide to fund research internally, I don’t think there’ll be a chance of

catching up. Another issue is that there could be

more psychologists, but if a current university student has a choice to work in a bank or become a psychologist, they’re going to choose the bank because that way, at least in Ghana, you get access to low-interest loans. If you become a psychologist, you end up as a lecturer and what’s a lecturer’s salary compared to that

of a bank manager, where the job will probably come

with a car?

BY NTARYIKE DIVINE JR.

Dr Vivian A. Dzokot

The benefits of uplifting music

For the first time this year, the IACCP Congress has a dedicated

newsletter, written by a group of science and health journalists from across Africa who are attending the meeting. The newsletter will be printed and distributed to all delegates on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday morning.

The journalists are mentees in

SjCOOP, a mentoring program run by the World Federation of Science Journalists to support science journalism in Africa and the Arab world.

Their stories are edited by two mentors in SjCOOP who are also at the meeting: Lynne Smit, a science writer and owner of HIPPO Communications in Cape Town, and

Martin Enserink, an Amsterdam-based reporter and editor for Science, the weekly U.S. journal.

The design and layout is by Simon Wilson from DefineDesign.

FOR MORE STORIES, VIDEO

AND AUDIO GO TO: IACCP2012.blogspot.com

The Black Eyed Peas

About this newsletter

Can listening to a song with an uplifting, social message

about human cooperation and love make you behave better? Research presented on Thursday at the IACCP congress suggests it can. A study showed that so-called prosocial behaviour—aimed at benefitting other people—can be stimulated by songs that stress prosocial values.

Psychologists say that music can be a powerful prosocial resource, but that it can also have the opposite effect of stimulating antisocial behaviour and aggression. They have speculated that it may depend on the kind of music you listen to.

A study led by Ron Fischer of the University of Wellington in New Zealand appears to confirm that. The study was conducted in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Germany,

and Brazil. The researchers made subjects listen to two songs that have a positive message: Where is the Love by Black Eyed Peas, whose lyrics advocate against war and discrimination, and Keep Ya Head Up by Tupac.

They compared the effects of the music to those of two ‘ antisocial’ songs: Imma Be by the Black Eyed Peas, and Tupac’s Hit ‘Em Up, whose lyrics start with: “I ain’t got no motherfucking friends / That’s why I fucked your bitch.”

The positive songs made people more likely to bond and unite and caused them to share money more readily. That means music can have a positive effect on society, says Fischer, who suggests musicians could be encouraged to

produce prosocial songs.Of course, freedom of

expression is also an important value, and most governments will not dictate what kind of lyrics are acceptable. So despite their bad effects, those aggressive, mean songs won’t be gone from the radio waves anytime soon.

BY CHINYERE OPIA

Ron Fischer