Global consciousness (GC), encompassing cosmopolitan orientation, global orientations (i.e. openness to multicultural experiences) and identification with all humanity, is a relatively stable individual difference that is strongly associated with pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours, less ingroup favouritism and prejudice, and greater pandemic prevention safety behaviours. Little is known about how it is socialized in everyday life. Using stratified samples from six societies, socializing institution factors correlating positively with GC were education, white collar work (and its higher income) and religiosity. However, GC also decreased with increasing age, contradicting a 'wisdom of elders' transmission of social learning, and not replicating typical findings that general prosociality increases with age. Longitudinal findings were that empathy-building, network-enhancing elements like getting married or welcoming a new infant, increased GC the most across a three-month interval. Instrumental gains like receiving a promotion (or getting a better job) also showed positive effects. Less intuitively, death of a close-other enhanced rather than reduced GC. Perhaps this was achieved through the ritualized management of meaning where a sense of the smallness of self is associated with growth of empathy for the human condition, as a more discontinuous or opportunistic form of culture-based learning. This article is part of the theme issue 'Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis'.
The warp ikat method of making decorated textiles is one of the most geographically widespread in southeast Asia, being used by Austronesian peoples in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, and Daic peoples on the Asian mainland. In this study a dataset consisting of the decorative characters of 36 of these warp ikat weaving traditions is investigated using Bayesian and Neighbornet techniques, and the results are used to construct a phylogenetic tree and taxonomy for warp ikat weaving in southeast Asia. The results and analysis show that these diverse traditions have a common ancestor amongst neolithic cultures the Asian mainland, and parallels exist between the patterns of textile weaving descent and linguistic phylogeny for the Austronesian group. Ancestral state analysis is used to reconstruct some of the features of the ancestral weaving tradition. The widely held theory that weaving motifs originated in the late Bronze Age Dong-Son culture is shown to be inconsistent with the data.
While national parochialism is commonplace, individual differences explain more variance in it than cross-national differences. Global consciousness (GC), a multi-dimensional concept that includes identification with all humanity, cosmopolitan orientation, and global orientation, transcends national parochialism. Across six societies (N = 11,163), most notably the USA and China, individuals high in GC were more generous allocating funds to the other in a dictator game, cooperated more in a one-shot prisoner's dilemma, and differentiated less between the ingroup and outgroup on these actions. They gave more to the world and kept less for the self in a multi-level public goods dilemma. GC profiles showed 80% test-retest stability over 8 months. Implications of GC for cultural evolution in the face of trans-border problems are discussed.
The diagnosis of functional dyspepsia (FD) is challenging since it depends largely on symptoms which are often heterogeneous and overlapping. This is particularly so in Asia with many different cultures and languages. Symptom-based diagnosis of FD based on Rome III criteria has not been fully validated and it may not be suitable in some Asian populations. Clinicians often assume that investigations in FD are not rewarding and physiological tests are often not available unless in the research setting. Investigation of alarm features and role of Helicobacter pylori in FD remain controversial but experts agreed that both should be tested. Physiological tests including gastric accommodation and chemical hypersensitivity tests are underutilized in Asia and available studies were few. While experts do not recommend routine clinical use of gastric accommodation tests but they agree that these tests can be advocated if clinically indicated. Empiric therapeutic trial is not currently a diagnostic option. The pathogenesis of FD is still poorly understood and there is a substantial placebo response. As a conclusion, a diagnosis of FD is challenging especially so in the context of Asia and despite the limitations of available physiological tests experts agreed that these tests can be advocated if and when clinically indicated.
Each organization has a particular culture, due to personal interactions, with certain values shared by its members. Corporate culture is defined as ‘the set of shared, taken-for-granted implicit assumptions that a group holds and that determines how it perceives, thinks about, and reacts to its various environments’. Positive corporate culture is linked to increased staff alignment, advanced level of employee commitment, increased employee productivity, enhanced organizational effectiveness and increased profitability. Researchers claimed that most studies suggesting the associations between culture and performance are methodologically weak. Cultural transformation has been a big part of NHS reforms and health system redesign in United States to deliver improvements in quality and performance. Environment, market competition, technology advancement, information age and government policies will influence the cultural change within the organization. Undesirable culture might emerge if the organization does not act appropriately to manage its corporate culture. There are six critical success factors for the implementation of corporate culture changes: committed and effective leadership, clear definition of the desired goals, rigorous implementation of a change management model, effective mitigation of change resistance, active governance structure and a design model, and effective communication. Among the issues in implementing corporate culture within healthcare organizations are middle managers dilemma, cultural diversity and subcultures within the organization, size of healthcare organization and critical mass.
The origins of linguistic diversity remain controversial. Studies disagree on whether group features such as population size or social structure accelerate or decelerate linguistic differentiation. While some analyses of between-group factors highlight the role of geographical isolation and reduced linguistic exchange in differentiation, others suggest that linguistic divergence is driven primarily by warfare among neighbouring groups and the use of language as marker of group identity. Here we provide the first integrated test of the effects of five historical sociodemographic and geographic variables on three measures of linguistic diversification among 50 Austronesian languages: rates of word gain, loss and overall lexical turnover. We control for their shared evolutionary histories through a time-calibrated phylogenetic sister-pairs approach. Results show that languages spoken in larger communities create new words at a faster pace. Within-group conflict promotes linguistic differentiation by increasing word loss, while warfare hinders linguistic differentiation by decreasing both rates of word gain and loss. Finally, we show that geographical isolation is a strong driver of lexical evolution mainly due to a considerable drift-driven acceleration in rates of word loss. We conclude that the motor of extreme linguistic diversity in Austronesia may have been the dispersal of populations across relatively isolated islands, favouring strong cultural ties amongst societies instead of warfare and cultural group marking.
Perception of the autonomy and relatedness of the self may be influenced by one's experiences and social expectations within a particular cultural setting. The present research examined the role of culture and the Autonomous-Related self-construal in predicting for different aspects of Social Networking Sites (SNS) usage in three Asian countries, especially focusing on those aspects serving interpersonal goals. Participants in this cross-cultural study included 305 university students from Malaysia (n = 105), South Korea (n = 113), and China (n = 87). The study explored specific social and interpersonal behaviors on SNS, such as browsing the contacts' profiles, checking for updates, and improving contact with SNS contacts, as well as the intensity of SNS use, hypothesizing that those with high intensity of use in the Asian context may be doing so to achieve the social goal of maintaining contact and keeping updated with friends. Two scales measuring activities on other users' profiles and contact with friends' profiles were developed and validated. As predicted, some cross-cultural differences were found. Koreans were more likely to use SNS to increase contact but tended to spend less time browsing contacts' profiles than the Malaysians and Chinese. The intensity of SNS use differed between the countries as well, where Malaysians reported higher intensity than Koreans and Chinese. Consistent with study predictions, Koreans were found with the highest Autonomous-Related self-construal scores. The Autonomous-Related self-construal predicted SNS intensity. The findings suggest that cultural contexts, along with the way the self is construed in different cultures, may encourage different types of SNS usage. The authors discuss study implications and suggest future research directions.
Objective: Family Environment Scale (FES) is one of the most widely used instruments to measure many family aspects. Cross cultural adaptation of the original FES is essential prior to local utilization as different cultures percept their family environments differently. We attempted to translate the FES into the Bahasa Malaysia language for adolescents, evaluate its reliability using internal consistency and compare its results with the original
study. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study, involving adolescents aged 12-17 from four secondary schools. The adolescents were selected using quota sampling for different age, ethnic and academic performance. The study was divided into four phases, namely: i) translation of FES, ii) pilot test iii) internal consistency reliability test and iv) comparison of the study results with the original FES. Results: A total of 295 adolescents participated in this study. All of the reliability measurements generated (ranged between Cronbach’s alpha 0.10 - 0.70) were lower than those originally reported for this instrument (ranged between Cronbach’s alpha 0.61 -0.78). Five subscales in the Bahasa Malaysia version were found to be less than Cronbach’s alpha 0.5, which were below the acceptable level for practical or research use. There was considerable variation observed between the sample population of this study and that of the original study, which could be due to the social cultural differences. Conclusion: The Bahasa Malaysia version of FES requires further culturally
appropriate revision. A new measuring scale could also be devised to provide an accurate evaluation of the family environment as perceived by Malaysian adolescents, which has acceptable levels of reliability and validity.
Turner's concepts of structure and anti-structure are applied to the culture-bound syndromes to demonstrate that they are dialectical aspects of cultural reality, The Malay cases of amok, latah and possession hysteria are discussed as instances of anti-structural behaviors that dramatize role-reversals and role-enhancement. The performers of these behaviors are not subjected to the Malay code of moral conduct. The supernatural ethos in Malay culture plays an important role in shaping tolerance towards them. Although this tolerance has been gradually eroded as a result of the introduction of Western psychiatry, the anti-structural status of these syndromes has not faded away but has assumed new meanings in terms of psychopathology.