A cross-cultural study of strong ties and weak ties rationalities: Toward an ontological turn in psychology.

Abstract

We developed the Strong Ties Weak Ties Rationality Scale (STWTRS) to demonstrate the heuristic value of the ontological turn which attempts to do justice to the cultural insider's picture of what is real. To test empirically the hypothesis of the existence of two distinct ontological universes that fall along the divide between strong ties and weak ties ontological framings, we used STWTRS to conduct a cross-cultural study (n = 961) using four samples (i.e., Taiwanese, Yi Chinese, Asian American, and non-Asian American). The results support our claim that the ontological universe of the cultural insider is not a list of fragmentary, ever expanding list of attributes that proliferate in cross-cultural psychology, so much as a coherent wholeness. We argue that this concept is best articulated by Maturana and Varela's (1980) theory of autopoietic living systems. Potential contributions to the literature and future research directions are discussed. Public Significance StatementStrong Ties and Weak Ties Rationality Scale (STWTRS) was developed to enhance our understanding of the cultural insider. This approach to culture is basaed on two premises: First, cultural insiders are agents who need to construct a rational/logical universe in which they can do the right thing. Second, engaging the other as kin (strong-ties) or non-kin (weak-ties) are two primary rationalities that impact on how we relate to and reason about the world. Preliminary results on four cross cultural samples (n = 961) suggest that STWTRS is sensitive enough to capture traditional strong-ties rationality, thus holds the potential to reverse the current trend in cross-cultural measures that are more predictive of modern weak-ties than traditional strong-ties cultures.

A systematic review on the cultural factors associated with stigma during pandemics

“…Here, we discuss this cultural stigma model in relation to both public stigma and self-stigma during the pandemic from the perspective of evolutionary cognition from Strong Ties Weak Ties (STWT) cultural rationality theory (Sundararajan, 2020;Yeh et al, 2022) and social group conflicts from scapegoating theory (Allport, 1954). Then, we discuss the implications of our findings for community healthcare.…”

“…Values such as collectivism are privileged among strong-ties dominant societies, while individualism is privileged among weak-ties dominant societies (Sundararajan & Yeh, 2021). Research has also identified some associations between certain religions or ethnicities that historically embody kinship and bloodline as important and their members being more dominant in strong-ties rationality (Thong et al, 2022;Ting & Zhang, 2021;Yeh et al, 2022).…”

Mapping culture and rationality across four countries: Expanding the conceptual horizons of strong-ties and weak-ties rationality.

“…Scores were calculated based on the mean of items representing operationalized variables for different types of rationality (ST vs. WT). In the past study (Yeh et al, 2022), the Cronbach's alphas for ST subscale ranged from .61 to .83, and for WT scale, it ranged from .51 to .71 across Taiwanese, Yi Chinese, Asian-American and non-Asian-American samples based on four items derived from exploratory factor analyses. In this study, Cronbach's alphas of ST and WT would be presented in Results section as a result of item analysis, alongside the results of factor analyses.…”

“…The STWTRS was constructed by Sundararajan and colleagues in 2021 to measure the rationality co-evolved with ST and WT ecology niches (see Sundararajan & Yeh, 2022; Yeh et al, 2022). Given that COVID-19 has become a global experience since 2020, the pandemic scenario was used as a context to anchor scale construction.…”

“…All items of STWTRS were rated on a 6-point Likert scale ranging from 1 ( completely disagree ) to 6 ( completely agree ). Preliminary validation of the scale by a proof-of-the-concept study was done by Yeh et al (2022).…”