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Prototypical Behaviour Patterns of Social Intelligence: An Intercultural Comparison between Chinese and German Subjects
Author(s) -
Willmann Elke,
Feldt Kimberly,
Amelang Manfred
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
international journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.75
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1464-066X
pISSN - 0020-7594
DOI - 10.1080/002075997400692
Subject(s) - german , psychology , construct (python library) , social psychology , social intelligence , developmental psychology , linguistics , philosophy , computer science , programming language
By using the Act Frequency Approach (Buss & Craik, 1980), Chinese subjects ( N = 31) generated a list of acts (specific behaviours) considered to represent social intelligence. These acts were rated by Chinese subjects ( N = 39) and German subjects ( N = 29) for prototypicality. A comparison of results showed that the construct of social intelligence is culture dependent. For the Chinese, social intelligent behaviours seem to reflect the classical traditions and ideals of Confucianism. Acts that received the highest scores were those that described conforming to and fulfilling expected roles, and acts in which the wellbeing of the entire society was described as being more important that the desires of an individual. This was especially true for older subjects and for women. Items controlling for socially desirable behaviour and social engagement showed clear differences between the two cultures; as expected, the German subjects rated these items lower, whereas the Chinese subjects found both items to be high prototypical of social intelligence.