• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.10 no.spc
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• pp.47-53
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• 2004

The present study reviewed the study on the impact of divorce upon children's well-being presented in both abroad and Korea. The criteria for the selection of the study for the review are as follow; The study must have a comparative child group of non-divorced family and include at least one psychological variable that are measured quantitatively. Two studies are found in Korea and 92 in abroad. Both the domestic studies and foreign studies indicate the lower self-esteems of children of divorced families than those of children of non divorced families. In domestic study, the sociable was found as the variable that give a negative impact to the children of divorced families among elementary population but not to the children of middle school. In contrast, the studies of foreign showed the negative impact of the seven psychological variables included in the studies upon children of divorced families. The study suggests that the impacts of divorce on the children will be more pronounced in Korea than in abroad and the necessities of the studies in the future in Korea.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.103-117
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• 2008

The polygraph test administered by the Korean Prosecutors Office for crime investigations customarily uses the score of -12 as the cutoff point separating the subjects who lie from those who tell the truth. The criterion used by the KPO is different from the one (-13) suggested by Backster (1963) who invented the particular method for lie detection. Based on the signal detection theory applied to the real polygraph test data obtained from real crime suspects by the KPO, the present study identified the score of -8 as an optimal criterion resulting in the highest overall accuracy of the polygraph test. The classification of the subjects with the score of -8 as the criterion resulted in the highest accuracy (83.17%) compared with the accuracies of classifications with the Backster's criterion (76.24%) and the KPO's criterion (80.20%). However, the new criterion was also found to result in more false-positive cases. Based on the results from the present study, it was recommended to use the score of -8 as the criterion when the overall accuracy is important but the score of -12 or -13 when avoiding false-positive is more important than securing the overall accuracy.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.17-40
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• 2002

The purpose of this study is to investigate the differences in the traffic environments and driving behaviors in 5 regions of Korea. Data were collected through the survey research from 1387 passenger car drivers in 14 locations in Korea. The main findings of this research are as followings: First of all, There were significant differences in traffic environment factors(road topography, construction, road & safety facilities, pedestrian behaviors, surrounding drivers) among 5 regional areas. When we examined drivers factors, there were significant differences among 5 metropolitan areas on wearing seat belt, most of constructions related to drink driving, speed-limit violation. There were many differences in driving habits, intentions, behaviors including wearing seat belt, driving after drinking according to metropolitan area, and also in case of speed-limit violation and careless driving behavior. These results suggested that there are many differences in traffic environments and driver's behaviors among regional areas. These result suggests that traffic safety policy and practice should be prepared based upon the peculiarities of regional area. We discussed these resulte in terms of the regional traffic policy and the suggestions for future studies were added.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.67-79
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• 2003

Why, in general, don't Korean people follow the law? Possible one of the answers to this question is based on lay people's emotional evaluation to the law in which common people's evaluation to the guilty according to their private logics comparing to public logics of facts and sentence of illegal behavior. Futhermore, in psychological field, there have been some researches concerning on differences in morality such as moral judgement and evaluation including moral inference among cultures. Therefore, the reason why Korean people tend to be not law observance and law break is that Korean people are not immoral such as telling a lie and not keeping promises, but rather they have a tendency of appling their private and personal logics based on Cheong(interpersonal affection) relationships and logics to public and legal affairs.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.101-130
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• 2018

Social class has become a major focus of research in the field of Western psychology due to its critical impact on human life. The Korean scholarship in psychology, however, has paid very little attention to the issue of social class despite the deepening of social stratification in the country; and the concepts and measurement they used were typically borrowed from sociology. In this study, I discussed what social class means and how it should be measured in order to emphasize the importance of the concept and its related issues. To this end, I examined a variety of theoretical backgrounds on the measurement of social class and the concept of socioeconomic status (SES)-a term commonly used as a synonym for social class. This study divided the method of measuring social class into objective social class and subjective social class, and outlined the characteristics of each approach and their main indicators. Finally, I assessed the recent trend in the Korean psychology on social class measurement. Among the 23 studies I have found, 65.2% used the objective social class index; and education was the objective indicator they most frequently employed, followed by income and occupation. Social stratification identity was used in all seven studies that applied subjective social class. And seven different words to describe social class was found. Based on these results, I concluded that there should be a call for more direct research on social class variables. In addition, I suggest that 'social class', instead of socioeconomic status, should be used as a preferred term in the future studies and propose a few notes on how to use the objective indicators and subjective social class measurement.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.215-237
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• 2017

Most research on medical accidents is related to medical disputes and malpractice of relief system. Therefore, there is a lack of research which explores the psychological experiences of patients injured by medical accidents. The purpose of this study was to investigate Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) of patients harmed by medical accidents and to examine the moderating role of social support on the relationship between clinicians' explanation and attitude and PTSD symptoms. A total of 180 patients were drawn from a medical accident organization and online communities related to medical accidents. Results showed that 171 (95%) of the subjects experienced full PTSD symptoms and their severity of the PTSD Symptoms was as high as those who experienced other severe traumatic events. Though the main effect of clinician's explanation and attitude on PTSD symptoms was not significant, the moderating effect of social support was significant in the relationship between clinicians' explanation and attitude and PTSD symptoms. In other words, when the level of social support was low, the poorer the explanation and attitude of clinicians, the more severe the symptoms of PTSD. Drawing from these results, psychological, social, and institutional strategies were suggested to alleviate and prevent PTSD symptoms of patients injured by medical accidents. Finally, limitations of this study and suggestions for future research were discussed.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.671-696
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of individual difference variables on emotional change after indirect trauma among elderly. After Sewolho Accident in South Korea, we invested emotion of the elderly and collected the same variables from the same sample two months after the accident. In study, we examined how social support, depression, future time perspective, and active aging affect emotion of elderly and which emotions are affected by these four variables. As a result, when compared to the counterpart, those with lower perceived social support, future time perspective, and active aging and higher depression level experienced lower levels of positive emotion and higher level of negative emotion after indirect disaster experience. Overall, we could certify that social support, future time perspective, and active aging functioned as protective factors, whereas depression functioned as a risk factor. Implications and limitations for our findings were discussed.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.331-354
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• 2010

Previous psychological studies in gambling have mainly focused on the characteristics of gamblers. the purpose of the present study was to categorize gambles in Korea into subtypes based on winning probability and money and to examine variations of gambling behaviors and problems across the gamble subtypes. A survey on 1,304 gamble participants were conducted, of their gambling behaviors, personal and social problems, and CPGI. First, factor analyses on perceived winning probability and money revealed 6 subtypes of gambles: amusement type, lottery type, internet type, slot-machine type, racing type and casino type. Secondly, comparisons among gamble subtypes revealed the differences in gambling behaviors, gambling-related cognitions, emotional experiences during gambling, and personal/social problems related to gambling. The gambling behaviors in slot-machine type, racing type, and casino type were more negative than those in amusement type, and lottery type. Gamblers in internet type were found to have potential for latent problems of gambling. In discussion, the academic and practical values and implications of typology of gambles were further discussed.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.177-203
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• 2015

The aims of this study were 1) to compare irrational gambling beliefs of gamblers and non-gamblers, 2) to investigate the role of cognitive error on winning probability thinking error, and 3) to examine the relationship between attributional bias and gambling behavior. A total of 248 subjects were recruited for this study. All subjects were classified into non-gamblers, social gamblers and pathological gamblers, and administered self-report questionnaires to measure irrational gambling beliefs, the probability inference error, the attriburional style, and the attributional bias. A pathological gambler group scored highest on irrational gambling beliefs, especially the overestimation of self-ability factor, and a social gambler group and a non-gambler group follow. All three groups scored higher on the magnification of gambling skills than the mean (4.0) of the scale. Pathological gamblers and social gamblers scored higher on the probability thinking error than non-gamblers. Pathological gamblers displayed higher external attribution, lower internal attribution in their daily life events and higher internal attribution in failure situation than social gamblers and non-gamblers. The results indicate that cognitive errors would be a factor that differentiates pathological gamblers from social gamblers and non-gamblers. In predicting gambling behaviors, overestimation of self-ability of irrational gambling beliefs, internal attribution in failure situation, external attribution in daily live event, and probability thinking error were identified as significant factors. It is concluded that a public education about common cognitive bias featured in gamblers might be important in prevention of pathological gambling behaviors.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.103-128
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• 2006

The present study investigated individuals' perception of important social issues in Korea. Based on previous research(Hahn, 1994; Hahn & Kang, 2000), a checklist containing 370 social issues was created. This checklist was administered to 1600 Koreans(812 college students, 788 adults) residing in 5 regional areas in Korea during the period of December 2004 and February 2005. Data were analyzed by the respondents' age, sex, and residing areas, and findings were compared to those of the two previous studies conducted in 1994 and 1999. Major findings of the study are as follows. First, across the three surveys, over 50% of the respondents consistently indicated the following four items as important social issues in the Korean society: political corruption, environmental pollution, the education system that is driven too much for college entrance, employment difficulty for local college graduates. Second, more than 50% of the respondents in the current survey indicated the following 12 items as important social issues that must be resolved: high unemployment rate, political corruption, environmental pollution, education system, overall difficulty of getting jobs, the nation's distrust in politics, hardships of life among the working classes, political incompetence, people with defective personal credit standings, employment difficulty for local college graduates, political instability, corruption of public servants. Third, analyses on the top 30 social issues across the three surveys revealed a positive and significant rank-order correlation for a five-year period(i.e., 1994-1999, 1999-2004), but not for a ten-year period(i.e., 1994-2004). Implications of the study and directions for future research are discussed.