0000000000124428
AUTHOR
Boele De Raad
Are virtues national, supranational, or universal?
Many studies investigated cultural differences in values, most notably by Hofstede and Schwarz. Relatively few have focused on virtues, a related and important concept in contemporary social science. The present paper examines the similarities and differences between nations, or blocks of - culturally related - nations on the perceived importance of virtues. Adults (N = 2.809 students) from 14 countries were asked to freely mention which virtues they found important to practice in daily life, and next to rate a list of 15 virtues, which reflect the most frequently mentioned categories in The Netherlands, as found in a previous study. The 14 nations included the United States, Mexico, nine E…
Are Virtues Shaped by National Cultures or Religions?
The present paper examines the relative influence of religion and nation on conceptions of virtues. In a first study, conducted in the Netherlands, 926 respondents of different profession, age, sex, and religious background rank ordered a list of 15 virtues. A comparison of Dutch Muslims and non-Muslims showed a remarkably high resemblance in their ratings of virtues. Only faith was rated as being much more important by Muslims than by non-Muslims. In the second study, the influence of national cultures was examined. Adults (N = 795) from two culturally relatively similar countries, Germany and the Netherlands, and from Spain rated the same list of virtues. Crossnational differences between…
Traits and emotions
This paper reviews literature on traits and emotions focusing on both structure and management, or 'having' and 'doing'. The cognitive perspective of this paper implies that traits and emotions are viewed as provisions to frame people and their behaviours in situations in meaningful ways. The focus on the structure of traits thus implies considering the now broadly acknowledged Big Five model as a dimensional framework by which traits of people can be meaningfully organized. A similar position is taken with respect to emotions, given the recurrent finding of a two-dimensional model of emotions with Positive Affect and Negative Affect (PA and NA). Maintaining relevant distinctions between tr…
Terms of abuse as expression and reinforcement of cultures
In this study terms of abuse are investigated in 11 different cultures, Spontaneous verbal aggression is to a certain extent reminiscent of the values of a certain culture. Almost 3000 subjects from Spain, Germany, France, Italy, Croatia, Poland, Great Britain, USA, Norway, Greece, and The Netherlands were asked to write down terms of abuse that they would use given a certain stimulus situation, and in addition, to give their rating of the offensive character of those terms. A total set of 12,000 expressions was collected. The frequencies of the expressions were established, and the total list of expressions was reduced to 16 categories. Results point to some etic taboos, like sexuality and…