Sedlmeier Peter, Rangaiah Babu, Weber Doreen, Winkler Isabell
Department of Psychology, Chemnitz University of Technology, 09107, Chemnitz, Germany.
Pondicherry University, Pondicherry, India.
Integr Psychol Behav Sci. 2020 Jun;54(2):494-513. doi: 10.1007/s12124-020-09520-9.
People in different cultures differ in their time-related behaviors and judgments. But do they also differ in how time is represented in their minds, that is, in their semantic structures of time, and if so, how and why? Two studies addressed these questions using participants' time-related associative responses to compare the semantic structures of time across Indian and German university students. Study 1 compared time-related associations and found only low intercultural agreement, which increased somewhat if associations were grouped into categories. In Study 2, a comparison of the results of multidimensional scaling analyses on a cross-culturally representative selection of stimuli was consistent with the conclusion that differences across cultures are much more pronounced than commonalities. Two cultural aspects in particular might be responsible for the diversity in the semantic structures of time: the monochronic-polychronic distinction and the distinction between linear and cyclical time. Moreover, intercultural differences may be strongly intensified by language effects, especially if the languages in question greatly differ. It is concluded that behavioral and judgmental differences in dealing with time may be grounded in how people intuitively think about it and the language used to do so.
不同文化背景的人在与时间相关的行为和判断上存在差异。但他们在时间在脑海中的呈现方式上，即时间的语义结构上，是否也存在差异呢？如果存在差异，又是怎样的差异以及原因是什么呢？两项研究针对这些问题，通过参与者与时间相关的联想反应，比较了印度和德国大学生的时间语义结构。研究1比较了与时间相关的联想，发现跨文化一致性较低，但如果将联想分类，一致性会有所提高。在研究2中，对具有跨文化代表性的刺激样本进行多维尺度分析的结果比较，得出的结论是，文化差异比共性更为显著。时间语义结构的多样性可能尤其由两个文化方面造成：单时制-多时制的区别以及线性时间和循环时间的区别。此外，跨文化差异可能会因语言效应而大大加剧，尤其是当所涉及的语言差异很大时。研究得出结论，在处理时间方面的行为和判断差异可能基于人们对时间的直观思考方式以及用于思考时间的语言。
