This study examined the health consequences of an indigenous concept "Anāsakti" which means non-attachment. The scale measuring anāsakti was based on the characteristics of a man of steady wisdom "the sthitaprajña", described in the Bhagvad Gītā. It was hypothesised that those higb on anāsakti would experience less distress and exhibit fewer symptoms of strain when faced with stressful life events. Results showèd tbat anāsakt subjects were less distressed and exhibited fewer symptoms of ill health. Anāsakti was also found to be the most significant predictor of strain symptoms.

No abstract

To conduct a cross-cultural test of a theory specifying the appraisals that elicit particular emotions, undergraduates from India and the United States were asked how they appraised events that caused them to feel sadness, fear, or anger. In both cultures there was evidence that an appraisal of powerlessness characterized incidents leading to sadness and fear, rather than anger; and an appraisal that other persons caused negative events characterized incidents leading to anger, rather than sadness or fear. Also, Indians appraised events as less discrepant from what they had wanted than Americans did; this accounted for lower sadness and anger among Indians. Overall, cultural differences in appraisal explained cultural differences in emotion, due to underlying cross-cultural similarities in appraisal-emotion relationships.

This study compared the self-concepts of college students in India to those in the United States by administering the Twenty Statements Test. Self-statements were analyzed in terms of five categories (social identity, ideological beliefs, interests, ambitions, and self-evaluations) and a numberof subcategories (e.g., self-identity, group identity, gender role identity). Results indicated differential use of the categories and subcategories in the two cultures. For example, Americans made more self-evaluation statements, whereas Indians responded more in terms of social identity. Women in both cultures made more frequent use of stereotypical gender characteristics in describing themselves; men had a larger proportion of responses in the self-identity category. However, cross-cultural differences were much greater than gender differences. These findings shed light on major components of the self-concept and underline its culture-specific determinants.

Hypotheses were tested regarding the effects of subjective current, retrospected, and anticipated person-environment fit on affective and somatic strain and well-being. Two-hundred seven university students preparing for annual academic examinations at an Indian university completed self-administered questionnaires measuring parameters of the hypotheses. A distinction was made between cognitive (e.g., meeting demands for intelligence, good memory) and motivational (e.g., being able to muster the effort) fit. Cognitive poor fit had a greater effect on predicting high levels of strain across all time frames but did best in the past and current frames. Motivational poor fit had its greatest effect on strain when poor fit dealt with anticipated or current fit. These findings are discussed in terms of hypotheses, which suggest that the more subjectively uncontrollable a dimension of fit, the more salient it is in the past time frame, whereas the more subjectively controllable the dimension, the more salient it is in the future time frame.

No abstract

Advice is not always wanted or correct. Nevertheless, it is sometimes difficult for the provider of advice to judge the quality of advice. Giving recipients the freedom to reject advice (and reducing their feeling of being obliged to accept it) may increase the chances that other forms of intended aid, such as social support, will continue to be accepted and to have beneficial effects on well-being. This may be particularly the case in obligatory relationships, such as between parent and child or between supervisor and subordinate compared to voluntary relationships, such as among friends. These hypotheses were tested with a cross-sectional survey design which gathered self-report questionnaire data from 207 university students facing the stress of annual examinations in India. The findings support the hypotheses. Evidence is presented which suggests that the freedom to reject advice is particularly important in obligatory relationships because the donor and recipient of advice are likely to differ in their diagnosis of the cause of problems. Attention is given to the costs and benefits which the advice-giver may incur by encouraging the recipient to feel free to reject advice.

A brief description of the Samkhya view of buman personality is presented to bighlight the power and flexibility of this transpersonal approacb to accountfor a very wide range of psychological phenomena. It is pointed out that the non-emergence of this "wideband"transpersonal approacb in modern Indian psychology is a bistorical enigma and the likely reasons for this paradox are discussed. Finally the dual epistemic status (descriptions and inferences) of the traditional Indian transpersonal statements is pointed out.Several autboritative accounts of traditional Indian personality theories now exist that provide the modern student of psychology an access to those theories which otherwise were considered lost in obscurity. Three classes of writers-psychologists, philosophers, and saints-have contributed to this literature. These include Asthana the traditional theories; rather, its focus is on two related issues. It discusses questions relating to the non-emergence of the transpersonal perspective in modern Indian psychology, and the epistemic character (whether they are perceptions or inferred concepts) of the traditional accounts of human personality. Here a brief description of the Samkbya theory of personality is only to the extent it is necessary for a discussion of the above-mentioned issues.