Surveying Cultures

Back to the Future: 25 Years of Research in Affect Control Theory

“…In addition to four major books since 1988 (Heise, 2007(Heise, , 2010MacKinnon, 1994;MacKinnon & Heise, 2010), there have been over 120 refereed articles and chapters, with more on the horizon, as well as a sizable number of theses, dissertations, presentations, and research reports not included in this review. The numerous and diverse substantive areas to which affect control theory has been applied attest to the scope of the theory.…”

“…The first book-length exposition of the theory since MacKinnon (1994), Heise's book Expressive Order consists of three parts, the first of which provides a verbal, reader-friendly, and nontechnical introduction to ACT. Besides covering the usual bases, Expressive Order introduces new discussions of self and social institutions, drawing from the later book by MacKinnon and Heise (2010), then in progress. The second part of Expressive Order provides a detailed presentation of the underlying mathematics of ACT, and the third part provides a description and history of the research program, the application of affect control theory to general topics in social psychology and substantive areas of research, and instructions on conducting simulations with affect control theory software.…”

“…This facilitated new data collections in the United States and Canada, as well as new cultures À including Japan, China, and Germany. Magellan is the name assigned to an ongoing research project of collecting data sets on sentiments in different cultures around the world, while Surveyor is the name of the program for accomplishing this objective (Heise, 2001(Heise, , 2010. Surveyor collects data on sentiments and returns the ratings of respondents via the Internet.…”

“…Two publications (Heise, 2010;Smith, Ike, & Li, 2002) offer wisdom acquired in the trenches about how best to acquire data about cultures. While traditional survey research focuses on individual differences among respondents, surveys of cultural norms focus on consensus among respondents.…”

“…While traditional survey research focuses on individual differences among respondents, surveys of cultural norms focus on consensus among respondents. A new book, Surveying Cultures (Heise, 2010), not only assembles and codifies the methods employed in affect control theory for measuring cultural sentiments from a culture-as-consensus model, but also presents the methodology in a way that can be adopted by anyone engaged in the study of cultural norms. Among other things, this work details the use of bipolar scales and methods of data collection using the Internet, describes archival repositories of EPA cultural sentiments data, and explains differences between traditional survey research and the culture-as-consensus model in conceiving measurement error and reliability.…”