The Cultural Context of Social Support Exchange

本项目旨在加深对家庭和朋友关系中社会支持交换体验的文化差异的理解。这项研究将在纽约市的非裔美国人和欧裔美国成年人中进行；日本东京的成年人口；以及印度巴罗达的印度教印度成年人口。该研究旨在确定互惠规则和日常社会支持交换的道德意义中的文化差异。预计非裔美国人、日本人和印度人的受访者比欧美人的受访者更重视广义互惠。在接受帮助时，一般互惠比平衡互惠更容易让人感到舒适。进一步预测，在每个社区中，对社会支持的不同道德观将很明显，欧洲裔美国人最重视个人自由裁量权，非洲裔美国人强调基于相互依赖的持续情感纽带的重要性，日本人强调促进顺畅的人际关系的必要性，印度人则优先考虑基于角色的责任。这些假设将在一系列自然主义和实验性访谈研究中得到检验，这些研究将评估互惠规则、道德意义、社会保证，以及与社会支持的文化差异有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)加强对社会团结经验中导致文化差异的过程的理解；B)强调在理解文化观时需要超越个人主义/集体主义的二分法；c)揭示基于不同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集体主义和个人主义文化的陈规定型观点，促进文化间的理解，并扩大对未被充分研究的人群的认识。此外，各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.