The Cultural Context of Social Support Exchange

该项目旨在增加对家庭和朋友关系中社会支持交流经验的文化差异的理解。 这项研究将在纽约市的非洲裔美国人和欧洲裔美国人成年人群、日本东京的日本成年人群和印度巴罗达的印度教成年人群中进行。这项研究预计将确定互惠规则和日常社会支持交换的道德意义的文化差异。 预计非洲裔美国人、日本人和印度人的受访者比欧洲裔美国人的受访者更重视广义互惠。 一般互惠预计将与更大的舒适接受帮助比平衡互惠。据进一步预测，一个独特的道德观的社会支持将是显而易见的，在每个社区，与欧洲裔美国人给予最大的重量，以个人的自由裁量权，非洲裔美国人强调的重要性，正在进行的情感纽带的基础上相互依赖，日本人强调需要促进顺利的人际关系，和印度人根据优先权，以角色为基础的责任。 这些假设将在一系列自然主义和实验访谈研究中进行测试，这些研究评估互惠规则，道德意义，社会保证，以及与社会支持中的文化差异相关的自我的积极和消极影响。 该项目的一些长期目标包括：a）加深对社会团结体验中促成文化差异的过程的理解; B）强调在理解文化观点时需要超越个人主义/集体主义二分法;和c）揭示不同的基于文化的社会支持方法对心理健康的影响。这项研究将通过挑战对集体主义和个人主义文化的陈规定型观念，以及扩大未得到充分研究的人口的知识，促进文化间的理解。此外，每种文化的研究生将在每个项目年参加培训活动。

This project aims to increase understanding of cultural differences in the experience of social support exchange within family and friend relationships. The research will be conducted among African-American and European-American adult populations in New York City; Japanese adult populations in Tokyo, Japan; and Hindu Indian adult populations in Baroda, India. The research is expected to identify cultural variation in rules of reciprocity and in the moral meanings of everyday social support exchange. African-American, Japanese, and Indian respondents are predicted to give greater weight to generalized reciprocity than European-American respondents. Generalized reciprocity is expected to be associated with greater comfort in accepting help than is balanced reciprocity. It is further predicted that a distinct moral outlook on social support will be evident in each community, with European-Americans giving greatest weight to personal discretion, African-Americans stressing the importance of ongoing affective bonds based on mutual reliance, Japanese emphasizing the need to promote smooth interpersonal relationships, and Indians according priority to role-based duty. The hypotheses are to be tested in a series of naturalistic and experimental interview studies that assess rules of reciprocity, moral meanings, social assurance, as well as positive and negative implications for the self linked to cultural differences in social support. Some of the long-term objectives of the project include: a) enhanced understanding of the processes contributing to cultural variation in the experience of social solidarity; b) an emphasis on the need to go beyond the individualism/collectivism dichotomy in understanding cultural outlooks; and c) uncovering mental health implications of the different culturally-based approaches to social support. The research will promote inter-cultural understanding by challenging stereotypic views held of collectivist and individualist cultures, as well as broaden knowledge of understudied populations. In addition, graduate students from each culture will participate in training activities during each project year.