Out-of-school time constitutes a major context of social and emotional development for children across cultures. Because it is not constrained by school attendance, weekend time allows cultural and ...gender differences in time usage to emerge. In this study, children's weekend activities, choice, and some of the related emotional outcomes were examined for fourth-grade students in four countries. A total of 1,265 children of families from middle socioeconomic status in Bulgaria, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United States completed an activity survey asking them to state their typical activity for each of 12 hours on Saturday, their enjoyment of the activity, and whether it was self- or adult-chosen. They also completed the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale. Findings indicated that children across the four countries spent most of their weekend time in self-chosen unstructured activities. There was a great deal of variation across countries in the amount and choice of time spent in different activity types. Children's enjoyment was negatively related to the amount of adult-chosen activities, and this relationship varied little across countries. The general anxiety level of children was slightly related to amount of adult-chosen activities without any country or gender differences. Results suggest that cultures differ in the available and socially acceptable types of weekend activities as demonstrated by the time spent by children in different activities and extent of parental involvement in children's activity decisions. Culturally different socialization processes associated with activity choice and participation help shape children's emotional experiences. Weekend time provides important developmental niches within which children in different countries experience activities that contribute to their personal and social developmental outcomes. The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.
According to cognitive-dissonance theory, performing counterattitudinal behavior produces a state of dissonance that people are motivated to resolve, usually by changing their attitude to be in line ...with their behavior. One of the most popular experimental paradigms used to produce such attitude change is the induced-compliance paradigm. Despite its popularity, the replication crisis in social psychology and other fields, as well as methodological limitations associated with the paradigm, raise concerns about the robustness of classic studies in this literature. We therefore conducted a multilab constructive replication of the induced-compliance paradigm based on Croyle and Cooper (Experiment 1). In a total of 39 labs from 19 countries and 14 languages, participants (N = 4,898) were assigned to one of three conditions: writing a counterattitudinal essay under high choice, writing a counterattitudinal essay under low choice, or writing a neutral essay under high choice. The primary analyses failed to support the core hypothesis: No significant difference in attitude was observed after writing a counterattitudinal essay under high choice compared with low choice. However, we did observe a significant difference in attitude after writing a counterattitudinal essay compared with writing a neutral essay. Secondary analyses revealed the pattern of results to be robust to data exclusions, lab variability, and attitude assessment. Additional exploratory analyses were conducted to test predictions from cognitive-dissonance theory. Overall, the results call into question whether the induced-compliance paradigm provides robust evidence for cognitive dissonance.
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