The World at 7:00: Comparing the Experience of Situations Across 20 Countries
Piotr Szarota
Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences
Search for more papers by this authorCorresponding Author
David C. Funder
University of California, Riverside
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to David Funder, Department of Psychology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521 USA. Email: [email protected].Search for more papers by this authorPiotr Szarota
Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences
Search for more papers by this authorCorresponding Author
David C. Funder
University of California, Riverside
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to David Funder, Department of Psychology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521 USA. Email: [email protected].Search for more papers by this authorAuthor affiliations are listed in the Appendix.
Data gathering was assisted by Joanne Fullerton, Danique van den Hanenberg, Sakiko Kumagai, and Elizabet Orekhova. Portions of the U.S. and Japanese data were utilized in an earlier paper (Funder, Guillaume, Kumagi, Kawamoto, & Sato, 2012), but all of the analyses reported here are new.
Abstract
The purpose of this research is to quantitatively compare everyday situational experience around the world.
Local collaborators recruited 5,447 members of college communities in 20 countries, who provided data via a Web site in 14 languages. Using the 89 items of the Riverside Situational Q-sort (RSQ), participants described the situation they experienced the previous evening at 7:00 p.m.
Correlations among the average situational profiles of each country ranged from r = .73 to r = .95; the typical situation was described as largely pleasant. Most similar were the United States/Canada; least similar were South Korea/Denmark. Japan had the most homogenous situational experience; South Korea, the least. The 15 RSQ items varying the most across countries described relatively negative aspects of situational experience; the 15 least varying items were more positive. Further analyses correlated RSQ items with national scores on six value dimensions, the Big Five traits, economic output, and population. Individualism, Neuroticism, Openness, and Gross Domestic Product yielded more significant correlations than expected by chance.
Psychological research traditionally has paid more attention to the assessment of persons than of situations, a discrepancy that extends to cross-cultural psychology. The present study demonstrates how cultures vary in situational experience in psychologically meaningful ways.
Supporting Information
Additional Supporting Information may be found in the online version of this article at the publisher's web-site, or at www.rap.ucr.edu/pub17.pdf.
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jopy12176-sup-0001-suppinfo.pdf160.7 KB |
Significant RSQ Correlates of Power Distance, across countries Significant RSQ Correlates of Masculinity, across countries Significant RSQ Correlates of Long-term Orientation, across countries Significant RSQ Correlates of Extraversion, across countries Significant RSQ Correlates of Agreeableness, across countries Significant RSQ Correlates of Openness, across countries Significant RSQ Correlates of per-capita GNP, across countries Mean RSQ Placement of 15 most varying items, for each of 20 countries Mean RSQ Placement of 15 least varying items, for each of 20 countries |
Please note: The publisher is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing content) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.
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