Recent development of implicit measures has enabled researchers to investigate the relation between implicit attitudes and automatic behaviours. Among these measures, the implicit association test (IAT: Greenwald, McGhee Schwartz, 1998) is one of the most widely used measures of implicit attitudes. However, recently, Olson and Fazio (2004) demonstrated that the IAT is contaminated by ???extrapersonal associations??? and suggested that the personalized version of the IAT is less influenced by these associations. In this paper, we demonstrated that the extrapersonal associations reflect cultural norms and predict meaningful behaviour. In Study 1, we found that the traditional IAT is predicted by both the personalized IAT and our cultural norm IAT. In Study 2, we found the cross-cultural differences in the implicit cultural norms. Finally, in Study 3, we demonstrated that the personalized IAT and normative IAT both predict behaviours among European-Canadians and Asian-Canadians. Thus, our studies provide evidence of predictive validity for the cultural norm IAT.

The present research examined how other people’s evaluations towards social groups will develop and how these evaluations will affect discriminatory behaviour outside of conscious effort. By living in a society people are exposed to other people’s preferences or beliefs and these culturally shared preferences or beliefs can become automatic over time. I call this construct implicit normative evaluations. In the first series of studies I developed and validated implicit normative evaluations measures. Study 2 demonstrated that implicit normative evaluations would develop by exposure to cultural norms. Study 3 showed that those who were exposed to an audience who laughed at offensive racist jokes were more likely to have negative implicit normative evaluation towards a target group and were more likely to engage in discriminatory behaviour than those who were exposed to an audience who did not laugh at the racist jokes. Finally in Study 4, I examined the consequences of implicit normative evaluations towards Black people and found that implicit normative evaluations played a role in the shooter bias. The implications of implicit normative evaluations in developing potential interventions for prejudice reduction will be discussed.

The present research examined how other people’s evaluations towards social groups will develop and how these evaluations will affect discriminatory behaviour outside of conscious effort. By living in a society people are exposed to other people’s preferences or beliefs and these culturally shared preferences or beliefs can become automatic over time. I call this construct implicit normative evaluations. In the first series of studies I developed and validated implicit normative evaluations measures. Study 2 demonstrated that implicit normative evaluations would develop by exposure to cultural norms. Study 3 showed that those who were exposed to an audience who laughed at offensive racist jokes were more likely to have negative implicit normative evaluation towards a target group and were more likely to engage in discriminatory behaviour than those who were exposed to an audience who did not laugh at the racist jokes. Finally in Study 4, I examined the consequences of implicit normative evaluations towards Black people and found that implicit normative evaluations played a role in the shooter bias. The implications of implicit normative evaluations in developing potential interventions for prejudice reduction will be discussed.

Recent development of implicit measures has enabled researchers to investigate the relation between implicit attitudes and automatic behaviours. Among these measures, the implicit association test (IAT: Greenwald, McGhee Schwartz, 1998) is one of the most widely used measures of implicit attitudes. However, recently, Olson and Fazio (2004) demonstrated that the IAT is contaminated by “extrapersonal associations” and suggested that the personalized version of the IAT is less influenced by these associations. In this paper, we demonstrated that the extrapersonal associations reflect cultural norms and predict meaningful behaviour. In Study 1, we found that the traditional IAT is predicted by both the personalized IAT and our cultural norm IAT. In Study 2, we found the cross-cultural differences in the implicit cultural norms. Finally, in Study 3, we demonstrated that the personalized IAT and normative IAT both predict behaviours among European-Canadians and Asian-Canadians. Thus, our studies provide evidence of predictive validity for the cultural norm IAT.

Our interactions with objects build cultural codes, reflecting lifestyles, values, and identities beyond functional expectations. With open connectivity in the contemporary consumer environments, we have access to homogenized material cultures not only for daily activities but also for ceremonies and rituals to mark important events, such as birth, marriage, and death. What will happen to our cultural codes and diverse traditions when various cultural norms meet, exchange, clash, hybridize, and evolve? In this research, globalized material cultures were investigated to discover metaphoric comparisons, to formulate conceptual frameworks, and to develop informed design, which can address evolving cultural conditions appropriately, in comparison with commercialized goods. Considering we often ritualize sequential stages of life course or challenging events, but rarely divorce, I explored the socio-cultural norms of marriage and divorce in the current social construct to anticipate globally evolving divorce phenomena. My thesis focused on relatively unknown material cultures in ritualizing divorce by combining speculative design with semiotic, hybrid, idiosyncratic approaches to communicate desirable future scenarios for the emerging multi-cultural context. This research aims to explore how artifacts and rituals can help people cope with transitional events and how design practices can provide meaningful and reflective material cultures.

This thesis explores the imagery of funerary ritual that expresses the commemoration of both the living and the dead in the art of the marble cinerary memorials of the early Empire. This group of objects includes decorated marble artefacts associated with cremation burial between the Augustan period and the reign of Antoninus Pius: ash chests (or cineraria); ash altars and grave altars (with or without ash cavities); as well as round urns and vase-shaped urns. The iconography chosen for cinerary memorials by individuals in the early Empire reflects those individuals’ concerns to remember families and friends and in turn to be remembered. This research approaches the analysis of funerary iconography holistically as embedded in its contemporary culture, as opposed to the focus on the art of various sub-cultures of Roman society, seen in recent scholarship. Items with adequate ancient provenance are used to create a sample dataset that represents individuals that belong to a middle to high income-group of society, individuals that are united through their ability to pay and commission these memorials, rather than by class. The epigraphic material, studied alongside the tomb analysis, indicates that this socio-economic group included people of different legal statuses: slaves, freed-people, non-elites and known-elites. Thus we are able to examine how artistic motifs, and also imperial iconography and culture, were received by a cross-section of society. The use of semiotics allows symbols to be analysed in conjunction with other methods such as examining narration and abstraction. This theoretical framework results in the extraction of meaning from seemingly generic motifs and connects this interpretation with contemporaneous cultural norms. Using these methods and the sample dataset, the memorial typology is examined as indicative of a focal point for funerary cult, through the connection between the object as a replacement altar for ritual, and as a house or shrine for the commemoration of the dead. The iconography associated with the memorials therefore relates to both the ritual context (garlands and other ritualistic motifs) and to the object as a small building (the architectonic façade and doors; garden and vegetative iconography). It also relates to the commemoration of the dead (portraiture and honorific iconography) and in particular to the idea of the spirit or manes of the deceased as being immortalised through the memorial (underworld and mythological iconography). All elements, then, point to the focus of the object in funerary ritual which enables the living to honour the spirit of the deceased and acts as a memento of family and friends, bringing together both the living and the dead in art and inscription.

Girls’ withdrawal from school is posing a major challenge to female literacy in Afghanistan. The aim of this research was to examine the influence of Afghan traditions and cultural norms on girls’ school withdrawal by parents or guardians in Khinjan District of Baghlan Province. To achieve this aim the accounts of 12 mothers with daughters pulled out of school were obtained through semi-structured interviews and analyzed via the theoretical lens of Existentialist Feminism and Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Model. The findings suggest that in order to address the problem of girls’ withdrawal from school in Khinjan, the informal communication networks that reinforce the tendency of parents/guardians, especially male ones, to withdraw the girls from school should be influenced by communication channels in the district. Grounded on Paulo Freire’s concept of dialogue for liberation, it is recommended that credible members in the community should initiate and engage in a transforming dialogue about education of girls, with Khinjanis.

Girls’ withdrawal from school is posing a major challenge to female literacy in Afghanistan. The aim of this research was to examine the influence of Afghan traditions and cultural norms on girls’ school withdrawal by parents or guardians in Khinjan District of Baghlan Province. To achieve this aim the accounts of 12 mothers with daughters pulled out of school were obtained through semi-structured interviews and analyzed via the theoretical lens of Existentialist Feminism and Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Model. The findings suggest that in order to address the problem of girls’ withdrawal from school in Khinjan, the informal communication networks that reinforce the tendency of parents/guardians, especially male ones, to withdraw the girls from school should be influenced by communication channels in the district. Grounded on Paulo Freire’s concept of dialogue for liberation, it is recommended that credible members in the community should initiate and engage in a transforming dialogue about education of girls, with Khinjanis.

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Published Article / Modern philosophy left us with an unbridgeable divide between factual reality and the domain of values (normativity). This article first of all analyze modal norms, such as the principle of avoiding what is legally excessive. There are distinct but mutually cohering kinds of laws. The distinction between modal laws / norms and type laws / norms required an example from the domain of human society - John Locke and Adam Smith, whose ideas in practice gave birth to trade unionism and labour parties. The idea of an "invisible hand" (manifest in the "free market") operates with exact (natural) laws, such as supply and demand. When modal norms are distinguished from type norms it becomes clear that states and a business enterprises can act uneconomically by wasting their money although they ought to function in a way that is guided by economic considerations of frugality. As an example the well-known natural law of energy-conservation is explained as the embodiment of an analogical link between the physical aspect and the kinematic aspect which should rather be designated as the law of energy-constancy. Finally the problem of normativity is related to the coherence between the logical-analytical aspect and its coherence with the aspects of number and space - focused on the principle of the excluded middle and its implications for diverging schools of thought within twentieth century mathematics. The last subsection concludes with reference to the norms guiding technological developments and with an assessment of the meaning of technology.