Response to Chapter 1 & 2 by Kira

  Chapter 1 begins with a scene of the film "Twelve angry man" which I have seen before. In this film, twelve jurors from different backgrounds sit together and decide whether a boy is guilty or not. Among their discussion, we can see the different behaviors between people from different backgrounds. The example used in Ch 1 is the scene where the 10th juror, a garage owner, is being very rude while the 11th juror, a European-born, keep his politeness. Besides, there is also one scene which is about one of the jurors insists that the boy is guilty based on his personal experience. (He has some bad experiences with boys, for example, his wallet has been stolen by a boy.)  So we can see how people behave according to their culture, education, values or personal experiences, and how arguments occur when all those differences meet.

And the we-and-they theory mentioned on page 16 impressed me the most. Humans are we-versus-they creatures. We classify others due to different criteria such as blood relationship, school and nationality. We try to support and take care of our in-group members while being cautious to the outsiders. This made me think of my situation: a Chinese in US. It takes time for us to understand and even accept each others' differences.

  Chapter 2 is about the research process based on paradigms and how to apply it in studying cultural differences. It involves different measures and dimensions, which is quite hard for me to understand.  But since I am taking a psychology course and I just learnt a little bit about correlations, I am interested to know more about how it can be applied in studying cultural differences.(which is a bit pity that there are no further information about the application in this chapter)

Also I am interested in the Chinese value survey because I am Chinese and also by this Chinese value survey, a new dimension which combined values opposing an orientation on the future to an orientation on the past and present was created and adopted as the fifth universal dimension. (p38) More detailed information will be told in Ch 7 and I am quite looking forward to reading it.