An experiment was conducted with American college students to determine whether differences in cultural perspectives might act as an impediment to empathic responding. Participants read about targets who experienced distress in a social context and who assumed a perspective that was consistent or inconsistent with norms typical of U.S. culture. When evaluating targets with a dissimilar as opposed to similar cultural perspective, participants exhibited a lack of perspective taking, perceiving those responses as inappropriate, atypical, and dissimilar to their own likely response in that situation. They also tended to attribute dissimilar targets' distress to dispositional as opposed to situational forces, essentially assigning them more blame. Further, emotional empathy, including feelings of compassion and sympathy were lessened with respect to targets whose responses reflected unfamiliar cultural norms. Path analyses indicated that inadequate appreciation of the different cultural perspective could account for much of the reduction in empathic concern. Results suggest that lack of perspective taking with regard to divergent cultural norms may compromise cross‐cultural exchanges of tolerance and compassion.

How is preferring same‐ vs. cross‐sex friendships related to one's perceptions of these friendships? In Phase 1, college students (N = 122) listed qualities they valued in their same‐ and cross‐sex friends. In Phase 2, survey items constructed from the responses were administered to 231 students who indicated a preference for same‐ vs. cross‐sex friendship. Those who reported a preference for opposite‐sex friends rated these friendships as higher in closeness, trust, caring, having common interests, and providing narcissistic benefits, compared to those who reported a preference for same‐sex friends. Results demonstrate that gender differences often associated with close friendships are greatly attenuated and sometimes reversed when preference for same‐ vs. cross‐sex friendship is included as a moderating variable.

This study assesses the post-reform business environment in Viet Nam as seen from a Vietnamese perspective. A survey was conducted in the two largest cities, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City to study how Vietnamese entrepreneurs and owners evaluate the post-reform business environment. The findings were mixed. For instance, while the evidence supports the common thesis concerning the specific weaknesses in some sectors such as the legal and financial, it contradicts the conventional wisdom that lack of access to bank credit constitutes a crippling impediment for entrepreneurial initiatives. There is some evidence showing entrepreneurs' reliance on market prices for making important decisions, indicating that the price mechanism has begun to take root. Further, contrary to expectation, most entrepreneurs found the commercial/market conditions acceptable; they also expressed a feeling of trust and confidence in the future of the business environment in Viet Nam. Comparative Economic Studies (2000) 42, 1–30; doi:10.1057/ces.2000.13

No abstract

A reaction time (RT) experiment was conducted to examine the influence, on retrieval time, of temporal organization of subspan sets of digits. The 5s were shown five, six, or seven to-be-remembered digits followed by a probe stimulus to which they were to give the name of the item that had followed the probe in the series. Brief temporal pauses interpolated near the middle of the six-and seven-digit strings produced marked changes in the serial position curves. The results were discussed in terms of a directed memory search which was influenced by the organization of information in memory.