The 10th Ontario Symposium on Personality and Social Psychology was held in 2002 on the topic of culture and social behavior. This book consists of the expanded and updated versions of papers presented initially at the conference. Though much of the research discusses East-West cultural differences and similarities, contributors also focus on how the East-West research can help in cross-cultural studies more generally. processes to broad level cultural syndromes that pervade social arrangements, laws, and public representations. Pioneers in the field of cross-cultural psychology present their...

In the United States, the homicide rate in the South is consistently higher than the rate in the North. In this brilliantly argued book, Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen use this fact as a starting point for an exploration of the underlying reasons for violence.

According to Nisbett and Cohen, the increased tendency of white southerners to commit certain kinds of violence is not due to socioeconomic class, population density, the legacy of slavery, or the heat of the South; it is the result of a culture of honor in which a man's reputation is central to his economic survival. Working from...

Two cousins relate their experiences with Bielski's partisan brigade in war-torn Russia during the Second World War. Natives of Novogrodek, part of present-day Belarus, they describe Jewish life before the Holocaust and furnish a most moving account of how a thriving and prosperous Jewish center was decimated by the Nazis and local collaborators. Initial joy when their hometown was taken over by the Soviet Union disappeared when the Germans ran the Russians out of town and started implementing policies to eradicate all Jews and anything Jewish. Dov (Berl), the elder of the cousins, whose...