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Desperately in need for Japanese and American participants for my Bachelor's Thesis Project!

callmezach27

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17 Jan 2021
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Hey everyone! I am really desperate!
I need at least 40 Japanese and 40 American participants for my thesis and so far I have 9 Americans and 0 Japanese, PLEASE help me out!

My name is Zoran, and I am a Psychology student at Empire State College. I am currently doing my Bachelor's Thesis Project on differences in the perception of basic emotions between American and Japanese culture. If you are American or Japanese it would mean a lot to me if you could please fill in my 7-10 minute survey.

Unlike other surveys, this one does NOT require you to read a lot but instead to look at the pictures and say what do you see.

If you decide to fill it out, I would ask you to carefully read the description of both tasks before filling it out.

Here is the link: American and Japanese Culture and Basic Emotions - Survey

Thank you all in advance!
Stay safe! 🙂
 
Hi Zoran! It's commendable that you are conducting original research for your BA Thesis.

I know that you haven't asked for any feedback but I'd like to point out two problems that I see with your survey:

1) You are establishing a simple correlation between nationality and culture. Ideally, you are looking for respondents who have been socialized in a homogenous cultural setting and have not had much intercultural experience in their life. I doubt that you expect the same responses from a Japanese national who has been brought up in the USA or elsewhere and one who was born and raised in Japan and has never left the country for an extended period. You could either add more identifying questions on the first page or at least consider these possibilities when you evaluate the results.

2) You are currently targeting people with a good understanding of English. This naturally limits your potential circle of respondents. If possible, it would be good to have at least the main question, the emotions and their descriptions properly translated into Japanese as well. If you only collect responses from Japanese nationals whose English is good enough to complete the survey it's very likely that they don't fulfill the expectation of cultural homogeneity which brings us back to the problem above.

Talk to your supervisor and if any of this is not a big deal (it's a BA and not a PhD thesis after all), then maybe you can use your university's network to reach out to students or faculty who have one of the two nationalities.

Good luck!
 
Hi Zoran! It's commendable that you are conducting original research for your BA Thesis.

I know that you haven't asked for any feedback but I'd like to point out two problems that I see with your survey:

1) You are establishing a simple correlation between nationality and culture. Ideally, you are looking for respondents who have been socialized in a homogenous cultural setting and have not had much intercultural experience in their life. I doubt that you expect the same responses from a Japanese national who has been brought up in the USA or elsewhere and one who was born and raised in Japan and has never left the country for an extended period. You could either add more identifying questions on the first page or at least consider these possibilities when you evaluate the results.

2) You are currently targeting people with a good understanding of English. This naturally limits your potential circle of respondents. If possible, it would be good to have at least the main question, the emotions and their descriptions properly translated into Japanese as well. If you only collect responses from Japanese nationals whose English is good enough to complete the survey it's very likely that they don't fulfill the expectation of cultural homogeneity which brings us back to the problem above.

Talk to your supervisor and if any of this is not a big deal (it's a BA and not a PhD thesis after all), then maybe you can use your university's network to reach out to students or faculty who have one of the two nationalities.

Good luck!
Hello,
this issue is what most of my literature review is about and my argument against it. There is no possibility of measuring universality of emotions nowadays for reasons of social media and how well-connected the entire world is. Due to that reason, I am not trying to prove wherher the basic emotions are universal or not, and in fact, I am pretty sure and convinced (after reading every single study on this topic going back to Darwin and his first theory) that the results will show that both Americans and Japanese are able to identify emotions successfully. Thus, it is not important whether they have not socialized interculturally because in today's world that is impossible to find. Even if the person never left the country or their own culture, person can still and most likely is familiarized with other cultures (consciously or unconsciously) through social media or TV and newspapers, so yes most likely they will be able to successfully recognize the facial expressions of Americans and vice versa regardless. The more important thing that my thesis is focused on is the issue that Dr. Matsumoto brought in 1992 and has never been resolved ever since is that different cultures may sucesfully identify emotiones but it is the perception of intensity of those same emotions that will differ between cultures. As Americans and Japanese have quite different and significant cultures and their main focus on identifying emotions is based on completely different parts of the body, their perception of intensity of those same emotions tend to significantly differ and that is what I am trying to investigate.

Also, for the same reason is why I avoided to use the word universality in the title of my research as such one is impossible to investigate in today's world and it is not focus of my study.

Once again, due to everything said above, it is not important whether they were culturally isolated one from another or in any other way as that is impossible in today's world.

Regarding the language, I have talked to my mentor and I raised the same issue and I was told since I did extremely thorough investigation on the topic and he knows I am very well aware of every possible limitation, in addition to difficult situation the entire world is currently in (coronavirus), I was freed from translating the survey in Japanese as it is already difficult enough to gather participants entirely digitally without any physical contact from your own home. For that reason the survey is completely in English and it was approved.

However, thank you for your response. It is much appreciated!
 
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Thanks for replying. It's great that you are aware of the limitations.

As Americans and Japanese have quite different and significant cultures (...)
Doesn't that bring us back though to the original question? Who do you define as (culturally) American or Japanese? By design, your survey only distinguishes between respondents by nationality.

I was freed from translating the survey in Japanese as it is already difficult enough to gather participants entirely digitally without any physical contact from your own home.
From a practical point of view a Japanese translation would rather broaden your circle of participants. I understand that it means additional work but as it is it's too difficult for many (words such as "contempt", "disgust", "contentment"). You could post it in places where Japanese learners of English gather (e.g. HiNative).
 
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