Jackie Schlein
Researchers Nairán Ramírez-Esparza, Matthias R. Mehl, Javier Álvarez-Bermúdez, and James W. Pennebaker set out to understand if Mexicans are actually more extraverted than Americans. There are prevalent stereotypes about Mexicans in that they are extraverted and outgoing, however, in self-reports, Mexicans rate themselves as less extraverted than Americans.
The authors of the study set out to test three research questions overall. The first research question is, to what extent do Mexicans and Americans differ in how sociable they consider themselves to be? This is an important question for the authors of the study to ask because it would be helpful to attain self-reports to see if they match up with the stereotype. The second …show more content…
The authors made an educated decision by having this as a research question because there previously has not been any research that has assessed sociability via objective behavioral observation in Mexicans and Americans. The final research question is, to what extent do Mexicans and Americans differ in the ways they behave sociably? This is a valuable question because sociability is a personality trait that is generally considered to be largely universal, but has also been found to differ across cultures.
The authors sought to answer these research questions by conducting a naturalistic observation study. Also, the authors used two main methods by measuring self-reported sociability using a personality questionnaire, and behavioral sociability using the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) in Mexican and American students (Ramírez-Esparza, Mehl, Álvarez-Bermúdez, and Pennebaker, 2008). American participants wore the EAR continuously for two weekdays during their waking hours whereas Mexican participants wore the EAR continuously for two weekdays and …show more content…
For example, it is well-known that Americans show a self-enhancement bias when responding to self-reports (Heine & Lehman, 1997; Heine & Renshaw, 2002), especially when responding to highly social desirable traits such as Extraversion (Paulhus, Bruce, & Trapnell, 1995). Therefore, there is a very high chance that Americans tend to score higher than or similar to Mexicans because their scores increased due to a tendency to self-enhance. On the other hand, Mexicans might be exhibiting a modesty bias (Ramírez-Esparza et al., 2008) which could lead to artificially low scores. This idea suggests that self-views interact with aspects of cultural norms, such as self-enhancement and modesty. Due to this, it is plausible that these biases greatly affected the scores and that it is not merely culture that influences how Americans and Mexicans score, although culture most likely still retains a large
Researchers Nairán Ramírez-Esparza, Matthias R. Mehl, Javier Álvarez-Bermúdez, and James W. Pennebaker set out to understand if Mexicans are actually more extraverted than Americans. There are prevalent stereotypes about Mexicans in that they are extraverted and outgoing, however, in self-reports, Mexicans rate themselves as less extraverted than Americans.
The authors of the study set out to test three research questions overall. The first research question is, to what extent do Mexicans and Americans differ in how sociable they consider themselves to be? This is an important question for the authors of the study to ask because it would be helpful to attain self-reports to see if they match up with the stereotype. The second …show more content…
The authors made an educated decision by having this as a research question because there previously has not been any research that has assessed sociability via objective behavioral observation in Mexicans and Americans. The final research question is, to what extent do Mexicans and Americans differ in the ways they behave sociably? This is a valuable question because sociability is a personality trait that is generally considered to be largely universal, but has also been found to differ across cultures.
The authors sought to answer these research questions by conducting a naturalistic observation study. Also, the authors used two main methods by measuring self-reported sociability using a personality questionnaire, and behavioral sociability using the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) in Mexican and American students (Ramírez-Esparza, Mehl, Álvarez-Bermúdez, and Pennebaker, 2008). American participants wore the EAR continuously for two weekdays during their waking hours whereas Mexican participants wore the EAR continuously for two weekdays and …show more content…
For example, it is well-known that Americans show a self-enhancement bias when responding to self-reports (Heine & Lehman, 1997; Heine & Renshaw, 2002), especially when responding to highly social desirable traits such as Extraversion (Paulhus, Bruce, & Trapnell, 1995). Therefore, there is a very high chance that Americans tend to score higher than or similar to Mexicans because their scores increased due to a tendency to self-enhance. On the other hand, Mexicans might be exhibiting a modesty bias (Ramírez-Esparza et al., 2008) which could lead to artificially low scores. This idea suggests that self-views interact with aspects of cultural norms, such as self-enhancement and modesty. Due to this, it is plausible that these biases greatly affected the scores and that it is not merely culture that influences how Americans and Mexicans score, although culture most likely still retains a large