Equivalence of measurement scales is a crucial prerequisite for making valid cross-cultural comparisons, as cultural differences in the interpretation of indicators could result in misleading conclusions. In this paper, we empirically assess the cross-national measurement equivalence of four scales that are included in the European Social Survey, round 1 (2002– 03). These four scales, referring...

Early dialogues between parent and child constitute an important factor for the acquisition of culture and hence verbal interaction is considered to be a universal parenting system. Parenting strategies and socialization practices are strongly influenced by the cultural conception of the self, prototypically defined as the model of independence and interdependence. Our study focuses on the temp...

Social comparison theory maintains that people think about themselves compared with similar others. Those in one culture, then, compare themselves with different others and standards than do those in another culture, thus potentially confounding cross-cultural comparisons. A pilot study and Study 1 demonstrated the problematic nature of this reference-group effect: Whereas cultural experts agre...

In this cross-cultural study, we primarily aim to present research-based evidence to examine the main gender characteristics associated with socialization. Using the symbolic interaction theory and the socialization theory, this cross-cultuural analysis particularly explores the construction and representation of gender identity through educational systems. The fields of this stu...

Three studies investigated whether apologies and/or thanks in a favor asking email message increase normality of the message, positive attitude about the message, sender credibility and willingness to give the favor in the U.S. and Korea. Participants as the Sender in study 1 (N = 521) and as the Receiver in study 2 (N = 386) completed one of four versions of a questionnaire regarding a prototy...

leadership is in fact a process of influencing followers. characteristics of leadership are functions of time and situation and differ in different cultures and countries. managers of international organizations should obtain enough knowledge of these cultural characteristics and differences and should have the utmost versatility while executing their leadership tasks. in this paper we have con...

Social smiling is universally regarded as being an infant's first facial expression of pleasure. Underlying co-constructivist emotion theories are the assumptions that the emergence of social smiling is bound to experiences of face-to-face interactions with caregivers and the impact of two developmental mechanisms--maternal and infant imitation. We analyzed mother-infant interactions from two d...