Archived Daytime Events (Global Eyes)

Background and history of South Africa.

This tentative study focuses on the experiences of outbound exchange students and
underlines the international relations component among contemporary universities.
The aim is to investigate to what extent the expectations of outbound exchange
students are being met in a population of students who had temporarily studied
abroad.

Drawing from research that shows a positive relationship between multicultural experiences and creative cognition, the present study investigates creative thinking as a possible cognitive benefit gained from studying abroad. The domain generality and specificity of creative thinking is also explored. Undergraduate students completed a general measure and a culture specific measure of creative thinking.

Twenty years after South African anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela was released from a government prison — and 16 years after he became the first South African president chosen in an election open to people of all races — the country’s science system continues to experience difficulties. In addition to inadequate funding, it suffers from a lack of qualified research students that is a direct result of the government’s failure to address the legacy of apartheid education.

Group-based social hierarchies exist in nearly every society, yet little is known about whether children understand that they exist. The present studies investigated whether 3- to 10-year-old children (N = 84) in South Africa associate higher status racial groups with higher levels of wealth, one indicator of social status. Children matched higher value belongings with White people more often than with multiracial or Black people and with multiracial people more often than with Black people, thus showing sensitivity to the de facto racial hierarchy in their society.

Minority-race children in North America and Europe often show less own-race favoritism than children of the majority (White) race, but the reasons for this asymmetry are unresolved. The present research tested South African children in order to probe the influences of group size, familiarity, and social status on children's race-based social preferences.