Ethical Challenges of Cross-Cultural Research - The Example of a Psychological Research Project in the Andean Context.

Using the example of a psychological research project in the Andean context, this explorative interview study adds to the current debate about ethical challenges of psychological cross-cultural research projects by being one of the first to address those challenges empirically. Using a multilevel approach, we conducted interviews with three groups of experts (study participants, i.e.

Interactional preludes to infants' affective climax - Mother-infant interaction around infant smiling in two cultures.

Due to limited research on cross-cultural similarities and differences in the development of infant smiling, the main goals of this study were to analyze, first, the development of infants' bouts of intense smiling during their third month and, second, the interactional preludes to infants' affective climax in two cultural contexts, namely Kichwa families from the Ecuadorian Andes region and educated urban middle-class families from Münster, Germany, which differ concerning their cultural models on infant smiling. Based on a longitudinal, naturalistic study design, mother-infant interaction in Kichwa (n = 10) and Münster (n = 10) families was analyzed when infants were 9 and 13 weeks old. Following a mixed methods approach, a quantitative analysis of infant smiling based on a 1-second interval-coding approach showed that there was a significant increase in infants' high-intensity positive affect from 9 to 13 weeks in the Münster, but not the Kichwa sample, leading to significant cross-cultural differences at 13 weeks.

Universality without uniformity - infants' reactions to unresponsive partners in urban Germany and rural Ecuador.

Previous studies based on non-WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) samples provide initial evidence that the still-face effect is universal. Based on the assumption that - independent of their cultural niches - infants share some fundamental expectations of social interactions, we put forth the assumption that a universal response exists for when a social interaction is interrupted. At the same time, we hypothesized that the size of the effect depends on the typicality of the interaction that precedes the adult partners' interruption.