CROSS-CULTURAL STUDIES OF PERSONALITY, ATTITUDES AND COGNITION

CROSS-CULTURAL STUDIES OF PERSONALITY, ATTITUDES AND COGNITION

Other books by Gajendra K. Verma and Christopher Bagley RACE AND EDUCATION ACROSS CULTURES G. K. Verma and C. Bagley (editors) RACE, EDUCATION AND IDENTITY G. K. Verma and C. Bagley (editors) PERSONALITY, SELF-ESTEEM AND PREJUDICE C. Bagley, G. K. Verma, K. Mallick and L. Young RACIAL PREJUDICE, THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY C. Bagley and G. K. Verma ILLUSION AND REALITY IN INDIAN SECONDARY EDUCATION G. K. Verma, C. Bagley and K. Mallick WHAT IS EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH? Perspectives on Techniques of Research G. K. Verma and R. M. Beard THE IMPACT OF INNOVATION G. K. Verma *SELF-CONCEPT, ACHIEVEMENT AND MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION G. K. Verma and C. Bagley (editors) PROBLEMS AND EFFECTS OF TEACHING ABOUT RACE RELATIONS L. Stenhouse, G. K. Verma and R. Wild MULTICULTURAL CHILDHOOD: Education, Ethnicity and Cognitive Styles C. Bagley and G. K. Verma (editors) RACE RELATIONS AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES G. K. Verma and C. Bagley (editors) *ETHNICITY AND EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT IN BRITISH SCHOOLS G. K. Verma with B. Ashworth *PERSONALITY COGNITION AND VALUES G. K. Verma (editors) C. Bagley and EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENTS: Issues and Outcomes in Multicultural Education G. K. Verma and P. Pumfrey (editors) RACE, TRAINING AND EMPLOYMENT G. K. Verma and D. Darby EDUCATION FOR ALL: A Landmark in Pluralism G. K. Verma (editor) * Also published by Palgrave Macmillan

CROSS-CUL TURAL STUDIES OF PERSONALITY, ATTITUDES AND COGNITION Edited by Gajendra K. Verma Reader in Education and Director of Centre for Ethnic Studies in Education University of Manchester and Christopher Bagley Professor of Child Welfare University of Calgary M MACMILLAN PRESS

Gajendra K. Verma and Christopher Bagley 1988 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1988 978-0-333-39539-4 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended), or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 33-4 Alfred Place, London WC1E 7DP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1988 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Cross-cultural studies of personality, attitudes and cognition. I. Cognition I. Verma, Gajendra K. II. Bagley, Christopher 153.4 BF311 ISBN 978-1-349-08122-6 ISBN 978-1-349-08120-2 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-08120-2

Contents List of Illustrations List of Tables Notes on the Contributors Introduction vi vii IX xi PART I THEORY AND MEASUREMENT 1 The Cross-cultural Measurement of Personality 3 Paul Kline 2 Putting Cognitive Theory to the Test: Group Testing Reassessed Using the Cross-cultural Method 41 Sid H. Irvine, Aubrey Schoeman and Willie Prinsloo 3 Collectivism v. Individualism: A Reconceptualisation of a Basic Concept in Cross-cultural Social Psychology 60 Harry Triandis 4 Problems in Cross-cultural Research 96 Gajendra K. Verma and Kanka Mallick PART II EMPIRICAL STUDIES 5 Cognitive and Social Factors in Psychological Adaptation to Acculturation among the James Bay Cree John W. Berry 6 Cognitive Style and Cultural Adaptation in Blackfoot, Japanese, Jamaican, Italian and Anglo-Celtic Children in Canada 143 Christopher Bagley 7 Prenatal Cognitive Measures and Maternal Physical Contact in Japan and America 160 Nancy Shand, Yorio Kosawa and Paul Decelles 8 A Model for Preschool Education of Environmentally Disadvanced Children in a Divided Society 185 Simon Biesheuvel Author Index 207 Subject Index 212 III v

List of Illustrations 2.1 Examples of digit-symbol substitution and letter-checking tasks 45 5.1 Four possible modes of acculturation defined by responses to two questions lis 5.2 Framework for studying Cree adaptation to acculturation 116 7.1 Mean behaviour frequencies for the ten groups obtained from Ward's hierarchical cluster analysis 174 7.2 Plot of the five largest clusters obtained by Ward's hierarchical cluster ten-group solution 175

List of Tables 2.1 Independent variables used, research references and descriptive statistics for SST and LCT experiments 46 2.2 Symbol-symbol substitution task in three countries 48 2.3 Digit-symbol substitution task; approximate F ratios for 3- trial MANOV A for test of overall main effect in six different cultural groups 50 2.4 Letter-checking task; approximate F ratios for 3-trial MANOV A for test of overall main effects in five cultural groups 51 5.1 Samples drawn at Time 1 and Time 2 in three Cree communitiees 123 5.2 Original and follow-up sample: demographic characteristics in the three communities 127 5.3 Cultural and psychological characteristics of the follow-up sample at first and second testing 129 5.4 Correlation matrix for all subjects 132 5.5 Factor analysis of acculturation and psychological variables 137 6.1 CEFT 10 British, Japanese, Jamaican and Canadian samples 148 6.2 Mean levels of Verbal Reasoning and their correlation with the CEFT in Canadian subjects 151 6.3 Mean scores on the CEFT of migrant and non-migrant children from rural Jamaica and in Toronto-born control subjects 154 6.4 Mean levels of Verbal Reasoning and their correlation with the CEFT in Jamaican and Italian subjects in Jamaica and Toronto 156 7.1 Summary statistics and between-culture comparisons for the Japanese and American mothers 167 7.2 Cognitive test scores for the complete Japanese and American samples 168 7.3 Correlation matrix for cognitive test scores and maternal physical contact behaviours: American-Caucasian and Japanese 170 7.4 Unrotated factor loadings for principal components 177 vii

Notes on the Contributors Christopher Bagley is Professor in the Faculty of Social Welfare at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. John W. Berry is Professor in the Department of Psychology at the Queen's University, Kingston, Canada. Simon Biesheuvel is Professor Emeritus of the University of Wit watersrand, South Africa. Paul DeceUes is a Research Associate with the Meninger Foundation of Topeka, Kansas, USA Sid Irvine is Professor of Psychology at Plymouth Polytechnic, UK. Paul Kline is Professor in the Department of Psychology, University of Exeter, UK. Yorio Kosawa is Professor of Psychology in the Department of Child Study at Japan Women's University, Tokyo, Japan. Kanka Mallick is Senior Lecturer in Psychology of Education at West London Institute of Higher Education, UK. Willie Prinsloo is Senior Member of Staff at the Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa. Aubrey Schoeman is Senior Member of Staff at the Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa. Nancy Shand is Senior Anthropologist with the Meninger Foundation of Topeka, Kansas, USA. Harry Triandis is Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. Gajendra K. Verma is Reader in Education and Director of the Centre for Ethnic Studies in Education in the Department of Education, University of Manchester, UK. ix

This book is dedicated to the late Philip E. Vernon guru, friend and scholar

Introduction This book is a sequel to Personality, Cognition and Values, published in 1986. These two volumes have been inspired by the work of Philip E. Vernon, Professor Emeritus of the University of Calgary, Canada. Philip Vernon's scholarship spans five decades and has informed the work of researchers in several continents. The studies included in this volume all owe an intellectual debt in one way or another to Vernon's work. Vernon has published extensively on personality, cognition and ability, including important cross-cultural work, in which field he has been a pioneer (Vernon, 1960-1983). Besides work on British and Canadian children he has undertaken research on cognition in children in Africa, the Caribbean, and in aboriginal peoples in North America. His work offers exemplars of careful balances and above all human scholarship, diffused with warmth, kindness and concern for his SUbjects. The studies in this volume were selected first of all because of their theoretical breadth and their pioneering of new concepts in crosscultural psychology. It is clear that the cross-cultural method is crucial to progress in this discipline of psychology; many phenomena which we had previously assumed to be fundamental responses based on the relatively fixed capacities and personality orientations of human subjects now appear to be artefacts of Western culture. The true search for the fundamental psychological nature of human beings has to be undertaken through cross-cultural enquiry. The empirical studies in this volume were selected by the editors to reflect both areas in which Philip Vernon has undertaken pioneering research and areas which impinge on salient issues in the development of the modern world. Berry on psychological effects of massive social change on aboriginal people; Bagley on changing cognitive styles in migrant children from the Caribbean and in aboriginal children in Canada; Shand and colleagues on cognitive development in Japanese children; Biesheuvel on educational development of Black prescholars in South Africa; and Verma on educational achievement of ethnic minorities in Britain are all examples of such work drawing directly or indirectly on the principles of scholarship established by Philip Vernon. Xl

xii Introduction REFERENCES Vernon, P. E. (1960) Intelligence and Attainment Tests, London: University of London Press. Vernon, P. E. (1961) The Structure of Human Abilities (2nd edn), London: Methuen. Vernon, P. E. (1964) Personality Assessment: A Critical Survey, London: Methuen. Vernon, P. E. (1969) Intelligence and Cultural Environment, London: Methuen. Vernon, P. E. (1979) Intelligence: Heredity and Environment, San Francisco: Freeman. Vernon, P. E. (1982) The Abilities and Achievements of Orientals in North America, New York: Academic Press. Vernon, P. E. (1983) The Achievement of Orientals in North America, New York: Academic Press. GAJENDRA K. VERMA CHRISTOPHER BAGLEY