Argumentative and Aggressive Communication in Bulgaria: Testing for Conceptual and Methodological Equivalence

This study sought to investigate argumentative and aggressive communication and to test for conceptual/methodological equivalence in the Bulgarian culture. One hundred and twenty six Bulgarian residents completed short forms concerning argumentativeness and verbal aggressiveness. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed support for conceptual and methodological equivalence of both constructs. However, gender differences that have historically been observed in other cultures were not observed in Bulgaria. The findings support the growing body of research indicating that argumentativeness and verbal aggressiveness are etic in nature.     

Family-support goals drive engagement and achievement in a collectivist context: Integrating etic and emic approaches in goal research

Much of the goal research in educational psychology has focused on top-down etic approaches with little emphasis on the use of bottom-up emic methods to uncover culturally-relevant phenomena. The aim of this study was to combine etic and emic approaches and to explore how goals derived from both approaches drive engagement and achievement. Study 1 was a qualitative study which aimed to examine the different types of goals that students spontaneously generated in school contexts. Wanting to help the family (which we labeled as family-support goal) was one of the most commonly-endorsed goals indicating its psychological salience for Filipino students. Study 2, a cross-sectional study, demonstrated that family-support goals were distinct from achievement goals. Study 3, a prospective longitudinal study, found that family-support goals positively predicted subsequent engagement and achievement. Study 4 replicated the results of Study 3 on a different sample of students after taking into account several relevant covariates (e.g., parental relatedness, relational self-construal, social desirability) thus ruling out the possibility of third variable confounds. Taken together, family-support goals were more salient predictors of optimal learning-related outcomes followed by mastery-approach goals. Results of the current study highlight the importance of taking culture into account in examining student motivation.