The present study examined the practice of forgiveness in Nepal. A model relating collectivism and forgiveness was examined. Participants (N = 221) completed measures of collectivism, individualism, forgiveness, conciliatory behavior, and motivations for avoidance and revenge toward the offender. Collectivism was positively related to forgiveness. Forgiveness was strongly related to conciliatory behavior and motivations for avoidance and revenge toward the offender. Decisional forgiveness was a stronger predictor of motivations for revenge than was emotional forgiveness.

This investigation with 342 Nepalese tertiary students indicates that current conceptions of approaches to learning are relevant to these students. Factor analysis of the Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ) also suggests that the structure of learning processes is similar for Nepalese, Australian, and Filipino students. Internal locus of control also seems to be a factor in the adoption of deep and achieving approaches to learning in each of these cultures. Evidence of differences in secondary and tertiary student approaches to learning within Nepal and comparisons between Nepalese and Australian tertiary students' approaches to learning are also presented.

The responses of 268 Hong Kong and 399 Nigerian first- or second-year social science undergraduate university students to the Personal and Academic Self-Concept Inventory (PASCI; Fleming & Whalen, 1990) were compared to previously reported findings with similar groups of American and Nepalese students. Country × Gender analyses indicated clear, statistically significant mnain and interaction effects which varied according to the area of self-esteem under investigation. Support was found for the tendency found in research with secondary school students for subjects from non-Western cultures to report higher academic but lower nonacademic self-esteem than their Western peers. However, the gender differences did not generalize across cultures.

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The authors used the Twenty Statements Test in 2 studies to investigate gender and country differences in the spontaneous self-descriptions of 811 college students from Hong Kong, India, Nepal, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe and 136 secondary school students from Taiwan and Hong Kong. The authors performed statistical analysis and found no significant gender differences in the percentage of responses classified as belonging to the idiocentric self in either study. However, the authors found significant Country effects in both studies for responses classified as representing the idiocentric self and some aspects of the collective self, and the authors found significant Country x Gender effects involving all 4 categories of the idiocentric self and the collective self for the college students. These findings raise questions about the generalizability of Western findings that males are more likely to espouse an independent conception of self than females. However, as the authors predicted, females were more likely to use small group self-descriptions than their male peers.

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The current studies investigate whether different forms of fatalistic thinking follow from the Christian and Hindu cosmologies. The authors found that fatalistic interpretations of one's own life events center on deity influence for Christians, especially for those high in religiosity; however, Hindu interpretations of one's own life emphasized destiny as much as deity (Study 1). Also, the focus on fate over chance when explaining others' misfortunes depends on the presence of known misdeeds for Christians, but not for Hindus (Study 2). Finally, Christians prefer petitionary prayer over divination as a strategy for managing uncontrollable future risks (Studies 3a and 3c), and preference for these strategies can be primed in bicultural Hindu Americans by a Hindi-accented telephone interviewer (Study 3b).