Osgood, Charles E. Probing subjective culture. Journal of Communication, 1974, 24 (1): 21-35 and 82-100. Reprinted in Charles E. Osgood and Oliver C.S. Tzeng. 1990. "Language, Meaning, and Culture, The Selected Papers of C.E. Osgood." Charles E. Osgood and Oliver C.S. Tzeng (Eds.). New York: Centennial Psychology Series.

Subjective culture

Why cross cultural comparison?

Overhead

I.                Tool Construction

1. Producing qualifiers that describe 100 nouns

100 common nouns that existed the 27 language/culture communities were selected.

Each of the 100 subjects (in each community) was asked to give a qualifier for each of the 100 nouns on a list.

100 (nouns) * 1 (adjective) * 100 subjects

 10,000 Qualifiers were then ordered in term of

A) common ó uncommon

B) representativeness of qualifier

The best 50 qualifiers and their polar opposites were used for field testing

2.  Cross Cultural Field Test

Subjects of the 27 different cultures rated the same 100 common culture concepts on these 50 bipolar scales.

A.)      Psycholinguistic definition of similarity of meaning.

For each concept, all 50 bipolar scales were correlated inter-culturally.  Scales with highest correlation were treated as translation equivalent.

=> Statistically this is a factor analysis.

B.)      Factorization (of qualifiers):

For all cultures E, P, and A are the three main factors

Four strongest qualifiers for each factor are used to represent this factor => Pancultural SDs,

Example:  E- scale

nice        --------    ugly

good       --------    bad

sweet     ---------    sour

helpful   ---------    not helpful

Factor Analysis

·     Addresses the problem of too many IVs

·     Tries to minimize the number of IVs that establish factors (groups) that maximize explanation power.

Cluster Analysis

·     Addresses the Problem: which IVs explain a group

·     Grouping of IVs that maximize homogeneity within groups while maximizing heterogeneity between groups.

Overhead

Process in Summary:

·      Original 10,000 qualifiers in 26 language cultures

·      Ranked according to frequency of use (commonness) and representativeness => 50 (pairs of?) qualifiers

·      Factor analysis => three factors: EPA dimensions

(Two times) four qualifiers that best describe each dimension

overhead  

"But why E, P and A? The most important question today, as in the day of the Neanderthal, about the sign of a thing are:  

first, is it good or bad for me? (is it a cute Neanderthal female or a sabertooth tiger?);

second, is it strong or is it weak with respect to me? (is it a sabertooth tiger or a mouse?);

third, is it an active or a passive thing? (is it a sabertooth tiger or merely a pool of quicksand that I can carefully skirt?).

Survival of the species has depend on answers to such questions (p.247)."

overhead

good ----------------------------- Mother ---------------- bad

Activity: fast, young, noisy - slow, old, quiet

Overhead

Osgood's Color Analogy

Alternative:  Heise's (2007) Room Analogy:

Imagine yourself in a Room.

Wall in front POWERFUL

Ceiling GOOD

Left QUITE things                             Right LIVELY things

Floor BAD

Wall in back WEAK

II. Tool using

Examples U.S. Japanese in Table 8.5

Intercultural differences are larger than intracultural differences:

Accepting things is culturally unstable (high variance) for Japanese, but not so much for Americans.

Comparing the standardized composite scores of EPA, the concept is very similar in both cultures.

Adolescence is culturally unstable (high variance) for Americans, but not for Japanese

Schneider, Andreas. 2002. "Probing Unknown Cultures". Electronic Journal of Sociology: 6, 3.