ABSTRACT
Cultures responded to the COVID-19 pandemic differently. We investigated cultural differences in mental health during the pandemic. We found regional differences in people's reports of anxiety in China over two years from 2020 to 2021 (N = 1186). People in areas with a history of rice farming reported more anxiety than people in wheat-farming areas. Next, we explored more proximal mechanisms that could help link the distal, historical factor of rice farming to people's modern experience of anxiety. Rice areas scored higher on collectivism and tight social norms than wheat areas, and collectivism, rather than norm tightness, mediated the rice-anxiety relationship. These findings advance our understanding of the distal sources of cultural differences, the proximal mechanisms, and mental health problems during the pandemics.
ABSTRACT
Previous research has shown that there are vast cross-cultural differences in attitudes toward COVID-19 travel restrictions. Yet, pinpointing the specific role of any single factor in explaining cross-cultural variability is difficult when comparing cultural communities that differ along myriad dimensions. Taking a 'just minimal difference' approach that removes the effects of extraneous variables, the present research focuses on how islandness can account for variability in travel intentions during the pandemic. Combining retrospective self-report assessment with a dynamic behavioural choice regarding travel intention during COVID-19, the present research examined travel attitudes and behaviours in Chinese Xiamen islanders and mainlanders that share the same geographic environment, language, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, but vary in their implicit individualism. Results across two studies revealed that Chinese Xiamen islanders were less supportive of travel and mobility restrictions than mainlanders who all lived near the coast. Additionally, it was found that implicit individualism mediated the link between islandness and travel attitudes. Together, this paper not only presents the first empirical evidence for the role of geographic environment in the emergence of attitudes toward restrictive travel limitations, but potentially informs tourism management and revival in the era of COVID-19.
ABSTRACT
In China and around the world, the global spread of COVID-19 has made wearing a facemask more than a pragmatic or aesthetic individual-level issue: it has instilled in people deontic value. In Chinese anti-epidemic narratives, the semiotic ideology of wearing a facemask has been closely related to collectivism, patriotism and, to a certain degree, nationalism. The facemask not only serves as a protective biomedical device but also as a cultural, political and spatial sign of the line of defence against disorders of the natural system, to establish the order of the social system. This paper argues from the perspective of semiotics and life politics that such mask narratives have effectively helped China prevent the large-scale spread of the epidemic across the nation and have served as a means of collective psychotherapy, paradoxically transforming individual separation into collective spiritual cohesion. Previous semiotic studies of disaster have not paid much attention to plagues or disaster governance discourse, between which biomedicine plays an important role. Thus, this paper aims to shed light on how biomedicine works with politics in coding and decoding the relationship between the natural system of the plague and the social system of governance.
ABSTRACT
We studied the factors that influence attitudes toward the COVID-19 vaccine by testing 1872 people across 29 provinces in China. We investigated an individual trait (responsibilism) and two situational factors (a descriptive norm and an injunctive norm). Responsibilism is a version of collectivism that emphasizes tight social ties and responsibilities in close relationships. Responsibilism and perceptions of strong social norms predicted acceptance of the COVID-19 vaccine. The data also revealed an interplay between responsibilism and social norms. People high in responsibilism accepted the vaccine regardless of social norms. But people low in responsibilism were wary of the vaccine, unless they perceived strong injunctive norms. These findings contribute to the research on psychological factors behind vaccine hesitancy. The findings could help provide a roadmap for public health efforts to encourage vaccines. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
Drawing upon broaden-and-build theory, this study examined the influence of positive leadership on employee engagement through the mediating role of employees' state positive affect and the moderating effect of individualism-collectivism orientation in a Chinese cultural context. A sample of 215 valid questionnaires was obtained through a two-wave survey of 48 teams working in central China. Hypotheses were tested by a method of hierarchical linear modelling. The results indicate that positive leadership promotes employees' state positive affect and engagement. State positive affect partially mediates the association between positive leadership and employee engagement. Moreover, a multilevel moderation analysis reveals that collectivism weakens the effect of positive leadership on employees' state positive affect. Theoretical and managerial implications and future directions are discussed.
ABSTRACT
During the Covid-19 epidemic, Japanese and Chinese have overwhelmingly tended to wear face masks, while Americans have not. Why? In this paper, based on ethnographic interviews with members of these three societies as well as examination of mass media and scholarly reports, I provide a preliminary interpretation of this question.I first consider social psychologists' large-scale analyses of collectivism versus individualism;China and Japan are both considered to be collectivistic societies, whereas the United States is considered to be individualistic. I also consider ethnic belonging to one's nation in China and Japan, as opposed to civic belonging to one's nation in the United States. These explications have value in understanding Covid-19 policies but seem of limited use in explaining mask-wearing. For such understanding, I turn to ethnographic interviews - some twenty in each society - as well as participant-observation in public sites.My findings are these: While in Japan social pressure is paramount in leading to mask wearing, with the state mostly absent, in China state pressure is paramount, with social pressure largely absent. In the United States, with social pressure absent beyond one's sub-group and state pressure hotly contested, mask-wearing becomes a matter of politically-based individual choice. In these three societies, there have thus been different axes as to why mask-wearing is accepted or contested. This research is of too small a scale to fully explicate these factors;but it does show how anthropological analysis is essential in combining with the findings of other disciplines such as social psychology to arrive at a fuller understanding of contemporary social phenomena.
ABSTRACT
As a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic, several governments adopted disease containment measures limiting individual freedom, especially freedom of movement. Our contribution aims at studying the role played by party preferences in explaining attitudes towards those freedom limitations during the pandemic, taking into account the moderating role played by confidence in institutions and collectivist-individualistic orientations. Focussing on Italy, as the first western democracy to be hit by Covid-19 and to adopt harsh restrictive measures, we analyse data coming from the ResPOnsE COVID-19 project. Our study initially investigates whether attitudes towards freedom restrictions are associated with the dynamics of the pandemic and the institutional responses to it. Then, through multilevel regression models, we test several hypotheses about the relationship between party preferences, confidence in institutions, collectivistic orientations and public acceptance of Covid-19 containment measures limiting individual freedom. Findings show that party preferences are associated with different attitudes towards freedom restrictions to contain the pandemic, but this occurs only if people have individualistic orientations. Collectivistic orientations and confidence in institutions are positively associated with acceptance of freedom restrictions, regardless of party preferences. As regards the latter, neither a classical ideological explanation (conservative people more inclined to accept limitations to personal freedoms) nor a government-opposition explanation (supporters of government parties more inclined to accept freedom restrictions) seems to be adequate to fully account for the mechanisms behind acceptance of Covid-19 harsh containment measures. Thus, we offer an alternative ideological explanation by pointing out the ambiguous nature of contemporary right-wing populisms. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11135-022-01436-3.
ABSTRACT
Interdependent cultures around the world have generally controlled COVID-19 better. We tested this pattern in China based on the rice theory, which argues that historically rice-farming regions of China are more interdependent than wheat-farming areas. Unlike earlier findings, rice-farming areas suffered more COVID-19 cases in the early days of the outbreak. We suspected this happened because the outbreak fell on Chinese New Year, and people in rice areas felt more pressure to visit family and friends. We found historical evidence that people in rice areas visit more family and friends for Chinese New Year than people in wheat areas. In 2020, rice areas also saw more New Year travel. Regional differences in social visits were correlated with COVID-19 spread. These results reveal an exception to the general idea that interdependent culture helps cultures contain COVID-19. When relational duties conflict with public health, interdependence can lead to more spread of disease.
ABSTRACT
Environmental consciousness is linked to pro-environmental consumption behavior;however, the consequences of variations in the level of environmental consciousness have not been fully investigated. Therefore, we evaluated differences in individualism, collectivism, materialism, willingness to pay (WTP) for environmental protection, and pro-environmental consumption between groups with varying levels of environmental consciousness. After evaluating the factors that differentiate these groups, we identified the determinants of pro-environmental consumption for each group. For the study, an online survey was conducted, including 472 adults aged 20–69 years. Groups with low and high levels of environmental consciousness differed significantly with respect to all factors except individualism. The group with a high environmental consciousness exhibited higher collectivism, WTP for environmental protection, and pro-environmental consumption behavior, and lower materialism than the group with a low environmental consciousness. For the group with low environmental consciousness, collectivism was the main factor affecting pro-environmental consumption behavior (i.e., purchase, use, and disposal). In the group with high environmental consciousness, WTP for environmental protection and collectivism were the main determinants of pro-environmental consumption behavior. These results provide a basis for a systematic approach to improve pro-environmental consumption behavior based on environmental consciousness.
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The USA has been particularly hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and a wide spatial variation can be seen in its spread and mortality. This raises the question of why some regions are more resilient to the pandemic than others? We hypothesize that the individualism-collectivism cleavage explains the disparity in COVID-19 cases observed across sub-national units in the USA. Cultural disparity among different groups of people leads to differences in how they perceive health crises and thereby shapes the way they respond to pandemics. A heightened sense of obligation and responsibility increases in-group sociability and interdependence and raises the perceived vulnerability towards disease transmission among collectivistic individuals, and this leads to greater adherence to containment measures and social distancing rules. Our results provide evidence that more individualistic states tend to have more COVID-19 cases across the USA.
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Purpose: Responding to the radical changes in work practices and extensive virtual forms of interaction brought by COVID-19, this study aims to investigate the role played by authentic leadership and horizontal collectivism in helping the Indian startups sail through the pandemic. Design/methodology/approach: Data was gathered through standardized questionnaires from 300 leaders and 300 employees from Indian startups during the second phase of lockdown. Statistical analysis using AMOS 23.0 checks for the direct effect of authentic leadership on work engagement and the moderating effect of horizontal collectivism on the relationship between the two. This study also compares the results between self-ascribed and perceived authentic leadership. Findings: Statistical analysis using AMOS 23.0 was done to check for the direct effect of authentic leadership on work engagement and the moderating effect of horizontal collectivism on the relationship between authentic leadership and work engagement. This study also compared the results between self-ascribed and perceived authentic leadership. Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that explores the role of authentic leadership in unlocking work engagement among employees serving in Indian startups during the pandemic. The lesson learned from this is when employees perceived their leaders to be authentic, the work culture to be nonhierarchical and felt collective responsibility toward work, it unlocked their high potential and made them soulfully engaged in their work. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.
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PurposeCommunity health is placed under the limelight during the COVID-19 crisis, providing a unique context for investigating citizens' health-privacy tradeoff in accepting social surveillance technology. To elucidate this tradeoff dilemma, an extended privacy calculus framework integrated with the Health Belief Model, legislative protection, and individual collectivism was examined using the case of national contact-tracing apps.Design/methodology/approachThe hypotheses were tested through PLS-SEM analysis with data collected from a survey on Bluezone – a national app in Vietnam.FindingsThe results indicated the negative impact of privacy concerns, which was offset by the positive effect of perceived benefits in using contact-tracing apps. The effect size of perceived benefits on usage frequency was twice as large as that of privacy concerns. Individual collectivism was revealed as a mitigator of the tradeoff dilemma, as it was positively associated with perceived benefits, whereas legislative protection had no such role. Citizens may perceive legislation protection as invalid when the technologies are developed, implemented, and monitored by the authorities.Originality/valueThe theoretical contributions lie in the extension of the privacy calculus model as well as its application in the context of mobile health apps and surveillance technology. The study empirically corroborated that the privacy calculus theory holds when technologies move along the pervasiveness spectrum. This study also provided actionable insights for policymakers and developers who advocate the mass acceptance of national contact-tracing apps.
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This article rethinks the corporation and ‘the social contract with business' for the post-pandemic era. It uses a double historical orientation centred on the turbulence of the 1930s in Europe and America to insist on the company's relationship with government, and to explore transformations in the social contract now needed to socialise and ecologise global business. One part of this history looks forward, from Adolf Berle's modern corporation to the neoliberal corporation and regulatory governance. The article criticises a transformation of regulatory priorities in this era, closely analysing the shift to procedural mandates and questioning the corporate law tactic of ‘enlightening' companies. The second part looks backwards to industrial modernism and Walter Rathenau in Germany in the interwar era, and also earlier (the late 1890s), to salvage a different understanding of the company and social contract, built around more constructivist visions of law, government and social consciousness. This part of the article is insistent about the metaphysical aspects of law and about developing law's equalising powers around corporate impactfulness and injustice. It promotes ‘thought' about collectivism (John Keynes) and the legal and regulatory recalibration that is needed to confront certain amassing challenges of the present. The article makes institutional transformation about shifting onto a different historical axis, whereby we might re-learn collectivist ambitions around the company that co-evolves with law and government, live to the public interest. It proposes a new social contract with business and a new regulatory modus involving law's ‘Creabimus' and ‘regulating dangerously' for situations of widely adverse corporate impactfulness.
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Growth mindset has shown its unique potential in countering the growing prevalence of mental distress in the general population. However, the role culture plays in this process remains somewhat unanswered. In the current prospective study, we tested if early growth mindset of Chinese university students predicts less mental distress later, and how cultural values (i.e., individualism–collectivism, traditionality–modernity) affect the process. We found that growth mindset was prospectively predictive of mental conditions, and the positive effect of growth mindset was more salient among students endorsing lower collectivistic and higher modern cultural values. Our findings added evidence to the potential benefits of growth mindsets in an Asian context and highlighted the role of cultural values.
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This article examines Soviet theorist Aleksandr Bogdanov's physiological collectivism, which builds around the idea of mutual blood exchange as a method of eroding borders between individuals to increase the resilience of the social organism as a whole;and reconceptualizes community as a network of material connections between the cells of said organism. The COVID-19 pandemic increased interest in convalescent plasma (CP). This article examines the physiological collective together with theorists like Jane Bennett and Donna Haraway as a basis for how convalescent plasma can function as a first step towards establishing material community today. © 2022 Elsevier B.V.
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The article examines how Thai village health volunteers employed self-directed learning and collective power to overcome working challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Qualitative data was collected from 30 VHVs in ten communities across Thailand. Semi-structured interviews and focus groups were employed as the data collection techniques. The findings indicate that the VHVs took initiatives to learn unfamiliar technologies which became important working tools in the context of the pandemic. While such initiatives highlight their independent learning attributes involving individuality or "self” learning concepts, the way they incorporated a collaborative learning method, reflects "selves” learning practices. The VHVs also utilized collective power both in-group and inter-group power to through different networking systems. This study illustrates the possible intertwinement of collectivistic and individualistic values found in the process of self and selves-directed learning practices, and the implication of collective power as a cultural force in the field of community health promotion. © 2023 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
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The aim of this study was to examine workers' psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic as a function of their individual coping, dyadic coping, and work-family conflict. We also tested the moderating role of gender and culture in these associations. To achieve this aim, we run HLM analyses on data from 1521 workers cohabiting with a partner, coming from six countries (Italy, Spain, Malta, Cyprus, Greece, and Russia) characterized by various degrees of country-level individualism/collectivism. Across all six countries, findings highlighted that work-family conflict as well as the individual coping strategy social support seeking were associated with higher psychological distress for workers, while the individual coping strategy positive attitude and common dyadic coping were found to be protective against workers' psychological distress. This latter association, moreover, was stronger in more individualistic countries.
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The objectives of this study were: (1) to study the relationship among all observed variables with a self-disclosure model;(2) to test the structural equation model of generations Y and Z;and (3) to analyze the direct, indirect, and total effects of the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) of self-disclosure, and to test the invariance of the SEM between generations Y and Z during COVID-19 in collectivism within a country. A sample cohort of 804 participants was examined by a 6-scale questionnaire. The data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics, confirmative factor analysis, correlation coefficient, structural equation modeling, and invariance analysis. The results showed that the model was an acceptable fit with the empirical data by Chi-square = 1712.23, df = 290, p =.00, χ2/df = 5.90, GFI = 0.85, AGFI = 0.82, RMSEA = 0.07 and SRMR = 0.07. The model of social influence, emotional intelligence, digital intelligence, and self-esteem affecting self-disclosure indicated variance of parameters in the matrix of causal effects between: (1) endogenous latent variables and latent exogenous variables to endogenous latent variables;and (2) variance-covariance of the latent exogenous variable and variance-covariance of error, across generations. The result leads to the recommendation that parents, guardians, organizations, and leaders need to comprehend the generation preferences such as styles, emotional intelligence, and self-esteem, as well as endorse digital intelligence, and group cohesion among these generation cohorts, which will strengthen positive self-disclosure and not falling victim to cybercriminals. © 2023 Kasetsart University.
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The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has varied across countries. Some countries controlled the virus relatively well, while others did not. In the United States, almost a million people died. However, South Korea's death toll is only about 12,000 even though its population is about one-sixth of the United States. What caused the difference? We argue that public compliance to government direction is the primary reason. South Korea's collective culture valuing communal benefits helped the people conform to government directions, such as mask wearing in public places. By contrast, American people resisted the government policies that restrict individual freedom due to the individualistic culture. In South Korea, historical experiences of relatively frequent national crises led to the rise of defensive nationalism, resulting in national union. However, the United States had relatively fewer national crises, and thus nationalism did not rise. Instead, national division, xenophobia, and hatred toward Asians prevailed in the United States. Besides the cultural differences, differences in national leader's characteristics, past experiences of public health crisis, and political system also contributed to the different outcomes of the crisis.
ABSTRACT
The concept of happiness is consistent across cultures to a significant extent, and encompasses both internal (subjective) and external (situational) aspects. Cultural values and norms shape emotions and behavior from an early age, and hence play a key role in influencing cross-national variations in happiness. Cross-national variations in culture can thus play a key role in influencing the relationship between adverse circumstances, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and happiness. The current study examines the relationship between the six dimensions of culture, defined by Hofstede and his colleagues, and subjective ratings of happiness in 78 countries, obtained before (2017-19) and during (2020-21) the COVID-19 pandemic, based on data from the most recent World Happiness reports. The key results were: (a) countries were as likely to experience an increase as a decrease in self-reported happiness during this period; (b) distinct domains of culture were significantly correlated with happiness at each time point, though there was a certain degree of overlap; (c) pre-pandemic levels of happiness were negatively associated with changes in happiness during the pandemic; and (d) among cultural dimensions, long-term orientation was positively associated with changes in subjective happiness, while indulgence was negatively associated with this variable. Certain cultural values may play an important part in fostering a path to well-being in the face of stressful or traumatic circumstances. This path may be similar to the concept of mature happiness, derived from existential philosophy, which is characterized by achieving a balance between the positive and negative aspects of one's life.