Social Values and Determinants of Cultural Fit in Quebec: The Roles of Ancestry, Linguistic Group, and Mental Health Status

Abstract

Many quantitative cross-cultural research studies assume that cultural groups consist of anyone born and raised in the same country. Applying these criteria to the formation of study samples may produce cohorts that share a country but are heterogeneous in relevant domains of culture. For example, in Canada, Franco- and Anglo-Canadians are generally assumed to represent different linguistic groups but the same cultural group. However, speaking a different first language also can mean exposure to different media, information, and conventions, which are known to shape certain cultural domains, such as social values. Other factors may also produce cultural heterogeneity. For example, ancestral origins and recency of familial migration may influence endorsed social values after exposure to diverse cultures or norms. Mental health status or psychiatric conditions may also influence subscription of social values due to different lifestyle demands. Understanding the nuanced contributions of diverse backgrounds to cultural membership and fit (i.e., the degree to which an individual behaves like other cultural members) is useful when performing quantitative cross-cultural studies to minimize alternative explanations for statistical outcomes. This study used Cultural Consensus Analysis (CCA) to assess the cultural fit of social values for 222 Canadians, who had participated in cross-cultural neuropsychological experiments. CCA is an anthropological statistical method for evaluating cultural agreement of a sample. Participants were systematically evaluated by linguistic groups (French and English), migratory generation (1st–3rd+), and mental health status (healthy and patient). Group and individual variances were statistically interrogated. Results demonstrated that Franco- and Anglo-Canadians represent different cultural groups cohabitating in Quebec. Social values dividing Franco- and Anglo-Canadians were also identified. Second and third generation Canadians held more heterogeneous social values than Canadians, whose families had migrated earlier. Second generation Canadians with psychiatric disorders showed notably reduced cultural fit with other Canadians, which supports other literature reporting difficulties experienced by second generation migrants. However, third and later generations of Canadians with psychiatric disorders held a greater range of social values compared to healthy Canadians but still were good fits for Canadian culture. This study concluded that linguistic group and migratory generation partially determines cultural group for the social values domain while mental health status does not, contrary to theories proposed by previous literature.

The impressionable social self of schizophrenia: Neural correlates of self-other confusion after social interaction

“…Anglophone Canadians (patients and controls) included in the present study had high agreement in baseline social values (Crafa et al, 2019c).…”

Traces of culture: The feedback loop between behavior, brain, and disorder

“…Practically, mixed-methods approaches are needed to establish converging evidence of cultural differences (for relevant anthropological discussions, see Lieber & Weisner, 2010; Weisner, 2012). Operationally, a statistical definition of culture may be the most useful for conducting neuroscientific research in cultural psychiatry, which approaches like Cultural Consensus Analysis provide (for a complete discussion, see Weller, 2007; for an example of applications to neuropsychiatry, see Crafa et al., 2019). From this perspective, culture can be treated as a set of statistically common beliefs and behaviors within a certain population, region, and time period.…”

“…Some studies in CN include recent immigrants (e.g., labelled in terms of their geographic origin, e.g., an ''East Asian'' sample), without acknowledging either the heterogeneity of the population or the fact that immigrants may be experiencing acculturation (e.g., Gutchess, Hedden, Ketay, Aron, & Gabrieli, 2010), which can occur rapidly and result in great variability in culturally-related behaviors (Yorulmaz & Is¸ık, 2011). Considering that people experience and subscribe to different cultural domains to different degrees and may display different degrees of cultural fit in different domains (Crafa, Liu, & Brodeur, 2019;Weller, 2007), experiments designed in terms of specific cultural domains rather than ''culture'' as a general category will produce more meaningful results (Greenfield, Keller, Fuligni, & Maynard, 2003;Keller, 2006).…”

“…There may also be cultural variations in their etiology and underlying biological mechanisms. However, culture is not simply a discrete set of factors that lead to the emergence of psychopathology; instead psychopathology results from dynamic feedback loops between culture, mind, and brain mediated by processes at multiple levels (Crafa & Nagel, 2014, 2019; Kirmayer & Crafa, 2014; Ryder, Ban, & Chentsova-Dutton, 2011).…”

Towards a conceptualization of a social efficiency notion in management sciences

“…Measures of economic efficiency based on several economic values are universal, while various societies and communities are often characterized by significantly differentiated social values. Very different social values, expectations and customs can occur in societies and communities located in different countries or even among people from one country using different languages and professing different religions (Crafa et al, 2019). This is a significant challenge related to the development and application of methods for assessing the social effectiveness of projects that take into account social values subjectively understood by widely differentiated societies and communities.…”