Neither human nature nor personality can be independent of culture. Human beings share certain social norms or rules within their cultural groups. Over 2000 years ago, Aristotle held that man is by nature a social animal. Similarly, Xun Kuang (298-238 B.C.), a Chinese philosopher, pointed out that humans in social groups can not function without shared guidance or rules. This book is designed to provide readers with a perspective on how people are different from, and similar to, each other --both within and across cultures. One of its goals is to offer a practical guide for people preparing to interact with those whose cultural background is different from their own.

Provides background content and teaching ideas to support the integration of culture in a wide range of psychology courses.

Cross-Cultural Risk Perception demonstrates the richness and wealth of theoretical insights and practical information that risk perception studies can offer to policy makers, risk experts, and interested parties. The book begins with an extended introduction summarizing the state of the art in risk perception research and core issues of cross-cultural comparisons. The main body of the book consists of four cross-cultural studies on public attitudes towards risk in different countries, including the United States, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Sweden, Bulgaria, Romania, Japan, and China. The last chapter critically discusses the main findings from these studies and proposes a framework for understanding and investigating cross-cultural risk perception. Finally, implications for communication, regulation and management are outlined. The two editors, sociologist Ortwin Renn (Center of Technology Assessment, Germany) and psychologist Bernd Rohrmann (University of Melbourne, Australia), have been engaged in risk research for the last three decades. They both have written extensively on this subject and provided new empirical and theoretical insights into the growing body of international risk perception research.

Neither human nature nor personality can be independent of culture. Human beings share certain social norms or rules within their cultural groups. Over 2000 years ago, Aristotle held that man is by nature a social animal. Similarly, Xun Kuang (298-238 B.C.), a Chinese philosopher, pointed out that humans in social groups can not function without shared guidance or rules. This book is designed to provide readers with a perspective on how people are different from, and similar to, each other --both within and across cultures. One of its goals is to offer a practical guide for people preparing to interact with those whose cultural background is different from their own.

Since its inception, Islam and its civilization have been in continuous relationships with other religions. The essays collected here examine the many texts that have come down to us about these cultures and their religions, from Muslim theologians and jurists.

The objective of this study is to evaluate gender and cultural differences in the perception of male and female leaders in a feedback situation. The research is based upon considerations from a literature review in the fields of gender bias and stereotypes previously conducted. Subjects from Spain and Germany were asked to evaluate a director (male or female) in a fictive feedback situation that was described prior to a short questionnaire. The questions of the questionnaire were based on previous research and findings of the literature review. We tested if previous experience with a woman leader was related to a higher evaluation of the female leader and if there was a relationship between the previous experience with a female leader and the preference to work for a certain leader’s gender. Results from the study show that gender, culture and previous experience with a female leader had no influence on the leader’s evaluation. A discussion with possible interpretations of the findings and implication for further research follows.