ISSN : 1229-067X
To examine the utilities of the theory of individualism-collectivism, proposed by Triandis (1990), recent cross-cultural research on the theory was reviewed. The empirical researches were examined in four areas: cultural differences in the conception of 'self, discrimination between ingroup and outgroup members, conforming behaviors, and interaction disclosure. Although the methods of many researches are not appropriate for testing the theory, many works provide support to the conceptual framework of the theory. Discussions were centered on the aspects of the theory-testing and the possible refinements. The theory's contribution to the understanding of social acts is largely twofold: it has the potential of integrating many mid-range theories in various fields of psychology and it has clearly shown the importance of cultural mileu on psychological theorizing.
Group polarization is the tendency for group interaction to produce group decision or mean of post-interaction individual decisions that is more extreme in the direction already favored than individual initial decisions. It was Known as 'risky shift by the findings that group was more willing to take risk than individual. But as its generality has proved accross various tasks and situations, it has been reconceptualized and now becomes one of the more popular topics in group dynamics. In line with these trends, a number of explanations have faded in and out. Persuasive arguments theory emphasizing informational influence and social comparison theory focussing on normative influence enjoy substantial empirical supports, and more recent self-categorization theory attempts to integrate these two theories in terms of social identity processes. In reviewing studies on group polarization, historical trends and current status followed by generality of phenomenon and major theories are presented Finally, future directions are discussed.
This theoretical review deals with the issue of the "Goodness-of-fit" between individuals' temperament and their contextual environment, which has great influences on psychological well-being. First of all, it investigated the definition of temperament and the history of temperament studies, the New York Longitudinal Study (NYLS) by Thomas and Chess and their stylistic approach toward temperament. In the main body, the definition of the "Goodness-of-fit" model, and the Revised Dimension of Temperament Survey were discussed. And some specific applications of the model in the areas of cross-cultural comparison, interpersonal relationship, academic performance, and mental health, were also thoroughly reviewed. Finally, the implication and limitations of the model on human development and psychological adjustment were discussed.
According to the adaptation theory, changes in the sensitivity of the cones caused by illumination playa very critical role in color constancy. However, since the sensitivity of the cones may rapidly dissipate as the levels of adaptation grows up, adaptation theory assumes that eye-movement is an essential part controlling the sensitivity of the cones not to be saturated. A neural network model for color vision was developed to simulate the function of adaptation and eye-movement as specified in adaptation theory. Color constancy was the focal interest in the designing of the neural network A six-layered neural network was designed in such a way to accomodate a number of human principles of color proce:3sing from retina to cortex. Units in each of the six layers were made to mimic the three kinds of cones, adaptation of cones, color-opponent units, double-opponent units, interconnecting units between area 17 and V4, and the units in area V4, respectively. The fifth layer were treated as hidden and its connections with the fourth and sixth layers were made to be adaptively determined by back-propagation algorithm, Outputs of the network were mapped onto the CIE color space by the units in the sixth layer. The effect of eye-movement was simulated by shifting the input color image back and forth across the input field. Hence, the neural network thus developed was dynamic in nature. In order to evaluate the effect of installing adaptation and eye-movement mechanisms in the neural network on approximating color constancy, the performance of the dynamic neural network was compared with that of a static one of which structure is identical to the dynamic one except the absence of adaptation and eye-movement mechanisms. The performance of the dynamic neural networks approached to color constancy in a satisfactory level and was significantly superior to that of the static neural network.