Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Semester of Degree Completion

1973

Thesis Director

Randall H. Best

Abstract

The major purpose of this study was to explore personality differences between American and Chinese college students.

Sixteen American college students and two groups of the same number of their Chinese counterparts, one of the Chinese student groups being in the United States for less than one year and the other group being in the United States for longer than two years, were randomly selected and matched by ages to be the subjects of this study.

The Holtzman Inkblot Technique (HIT) was administered to all forty-eight subjects by the author and the HIT protocols were scored by two different scorers who have previously been trained in projective techniques, and did not have any knowledge of the subjects. Twenty-two HIT scoring variables were obtained among these three groups of subjects.

Two Analyses of Variance (ANOVA) were undertaken. A 3x2x45 factorial ANOVA design was used to evaluate latency time among the three groups, as it is related to the effects of different nationality, sex, and inkblots. A 3x2x2x21 factorial ANOVA design was used to evaluate the remaining 21 HIT variables considering the effects of different nationality, sex, judges, and the variables. The inter-scorer reliability coefficients were also estimated.

The results of this study found (1) American and Chinese college students do differ in latency when responding to the HIT inkblots. American college students tended to have longer latency than their Chinese counterparts. Cultural and environmental changes do seem to affect people's perception as revealed in responses to the HIT. The Chinese group II, which had been in the United States longer than two years, had a mean latency time very close to its American counterpart, while the Chinese group I, which had been in the United States less than a year, had the shortest latency time. Male and female differences on latency were found to be non-significant. (2) The inkblots themselves have significant differences in inducing latency differences. Certain inkblots seemed to require a greater amount of time for a subject to respond than others. (3) The main effects of nationality, and of judge alone were found to be non-significant for the remaining 21 HIT variables. Neither nationality nor judge was a main factor in determining cross-cultural differences between American and Chinese college students. (4) Differences between the HIT variables in terms of occurrence frequency in a protocol seem to be significant. (5) Certain HIT variables seem to cause more inter-scoring disagreement than others. (6) Judges did show discrepancies when scoring certain variables of different nationality group's HIT protocols. (7) The HIT may not be a sensitive instrument to measure the assimilation of a foreign culture over a long period of time. As was the case in this study, nationality factor alone was not found to be significant.

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