For the last several decades research in cross-cultural psychology has focused on the cultural patterning and positioning of values. Unfortunately, values have low predictive power for actual behavior. Researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong decided to develop a questionnaire to measure beliefs, i.e., what is believed to be true about the world, to add to the power of values, i.e., what the person believes is valuable, in predicting behavior. They administered the original Social Axioms Survey (SAS) in five countries and used exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to evaluate the individual-level data. Five factors were found: Social cynicism, Social complexity, Reward for application, Religiosity and Fate control. However, analyzing the data on a country-wide level yielded only two factors: Societal cynicism and a combination of the other four factors labeled Dynamic externality. The SAS has proven useful in many research contexts, and eight years later the original researchers developed an updated version, the SAS II, using a more complex methodology to increase the reliability of the various factors. The SAS II is currently being used in research as the more comprehensive and reliable measure of beliefs about the world.
Definition of social axioms and their usefulness The study of values has a long history in psychological research, for instance, Rokeach's value scale, which has been used widely. That focus has also been transferred to the study of culture in psychology. The anthropologists Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck conducted a large-scale study of values in five Southwestern US cultures in the 1950s. However, it was Geert Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory that really initiated the wave of cross-cultural research on values. His four (later increased to six) dimensions of cultural values have become a major tool in many kinds of cross-cultural research. Values, however, have important limitations for predicting behavior. A value states that, "X is good/desirable/important," but it does not indicate if a person thinks that X is obtainable. A belief, on the other hand, is a statement about how things work in reality. A social axiom, according to Leung and Bond's (2002) definition, describes how the world and society are believed to work. In other words, "...a typical social axiom has the structure – A is related to B. A and B can be any entities, and the relationship can be causal or correlational." The strength of a belief can vary from person to person. Furthermore, a social axiom is different from a normative belief. Normative beliefs tell us what we ought to do, e.g., be polite to everyone. Social axioms are a guide as to what it is "possible" to do.
Leung and Bond (2008) provide a formal definition of social axioms: "Social axioms are generalized beliefs about people, social groups, social institutions, the physical environment, or the spiritual world as well as about categories of events and phenomena in the social world. These generalized beliefs are encoded in the form of an assertion about the relationship between two entities or concepts." Social axioms act as a practical guide to human conduct in everyday life. They function in at least four ways. "They facilitate the attainment of important goals (instrumental), help people protect their self-worth (ego-defensive), serve as a manifestation of people's values (value-expressive), and help people understand the world (knowledge)." Leung and Bond (2002) also argue that because people in all cultures face similar challenges in everyday life, these axioms should be universal, even if people in each culture do not believe in them with the same strength.
Development The Social Axioms Survey (SAS) was developed with the cooperation of researchers in Hong Kong and Venezuela, using materials from local residents along with sources in the psychology literature to develop and screen items for the Survey. The survey was then refined using data from Japan, the US and Germany.
Generating survey items Three methods were used to generate a list of possible items for the Survey:
Examining the extensive literature already existing on beliefs in the English-language psychology literature Content analysis of popular literature in Hong Kong and Venezuela, including newspapers, textbooks, language surveys, proverbs, popular songs, etc. Interviews with adults in Hong Kong and Venezuela, both "on the street" and in-depth. Three sets of interview questions were used: "...(a) the beliefs and principles that guide their interactions with others, and their beliefs about everyday matters, (b) beliefs with regard to the self, other people, social relations, social groups, the environment, and the supernatural, and (c) beliefs with regard to issues on health, love, marriage, society, politics, religion, entertainment/recreation, work, family, sports and life in general".
Screening the items and assembling the Survey Of the more than four thousand items collected, only about a third came from professional literature, and the other two-thirds from non-academic sources. These items were classified, similar items were eliminated, and the remaining items were rewritten to be clear. The rewritten items were then classified into 33 subcategories, and the subcategories supplemented with newly generated items to give equal coverage. The first working version contained 182 items. Scoring used a 5-point Likert-type scale, which ranged from "strongly believe" to a neutral midpoint "no opinion", to "strongly disbelieve", a standard English version was used to generate Chinese and Spanish versions.
First administration The Survey was administered in both Venezuela and Hong Kong, using both university students (100 and 128 respectively), and citizens approached on the street (122 and 230). The adults completing the survey covered a range of ages, both genders and, in Venezuela, both urban and working participants.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
