Cross-Cultural Psychology

Question 1

Why do groups differ?

Answer 1

Ecological environment and Social environment

Question 2

What do cross-culture studies help us to understand?

Answer 2

Differences in development and commonalities in development

Question 3

What is culture?

Answer 3

Information acquired from other members of a group . A group of people who have a shared context.

Question 4

What percentage of all psychological participants are from western industrialised countries ? What percentage of the world population does this host?

Answer 4

96% of all participants are from western industrialised countries. 12% of the world’s population

Question 5

What percentage of participants are psychology undergraduates?

Answer 5

70%

Question 6

What does cultural psychology study?

Answer 6

The variability of human behaviour
The universal of human behaviour (capturing diversity)
The interaction between inherited predispositions and cultural context

Question 7

What methods are used in cultural psychology?

Answer 7

Anthropological record
Observation
Survey
Experimentation

Question 8

What makes up the triadic perspectives?

Answer 8

Cross cultural, developmental and comparative

Question 9

What is vertical learning?

Answer 9

Learning that occurs across generations (from more experienced individuals)

Question 10

What is horizontal learning ?

Answer 10

Learning from peers

Question 11

What is individual learning in cultures?

Answer 11

A change throughout a culture that spreads throughout a community

Question 12

Explain the ratchet effect

Answer 12

Modifications and improvements stay in the community with relatively little loss until further changes ratchet things up again.

Question 13

What does WEIRD stand for?

Answer 13

Western Educated Industrialised Rich Democratic

Question 14

Explain the ‘far, far away’ approach to researching visual perception.

Answer 14

This is the maximum difference approach so this could be researching North America and Japan. People in North American culture are thought to student to a focal object and looking at it analytically. Meanwhile Japanese cultures are thought to be more attuned to things around the object . They take more of a holistic approach, looking at the contextual information - the ‘bigger picture’. Different tasks require different types of judgement.

Question 15

Explain the ‘everywhere’ approach to researching visual perception.

Answer 15

This is a broad sweep approach. An example of this is the Muller Lyer Illusion. <—->. >—-< . Ppts were asked if one of the lines were longer than the other. People who lived in nomadic environments were less likely to see that they were the same. compared to western cultures that spend time in ‘box shaped’ rooms.

Question 16

Explain cross-cultural research into sound perception.

Answer 16

Irrelevant sound perception was found to decline throughout development. Infants (6-7 months old) are therefore universal listeners as they can discriminate against retroflex vs dental stop sounds.

Question 17

Explain cross-cultural research into spatial cognition findings.

Answer 17

Preverbal children from different cultures shared an inherited preference to process small space geocentrically. Learning a geocentric language builds on this inherited preference. Learning an egocentric language emphasises egocentric spatial.

Question 18

Explain the two cultural intelligence hypotheses

Answer 18

1) species with improved social learning abilities will also show better asocial learning abilities and will therefore have generally advanced cognitive skills.

2) Humans have not evolved higher general intelligence but rather a specific set of social cognitive skills, this leads to humans being ‘ultra social’.

Question 19

What are the core components of cultures?

Answer 19

The spreading of newly learned techniques

Question 20

How does learning spread in captive primates?

Answer 20

A human teaches one member of the group who acts as a model on how to open the box . The new techniques often spreads throughout the group within a few weeks.

Question 21

What makes humans ‘copy cats’?

Answer 21

Humans (children 2-4 years) imitate even when it does not make sense. Meanwhile chimpanzees imitate and emulate.

Question 22

Summarise cross-cultural psychology

Answer 22

• Possible cultural differences need to be taken into account In research
• Most of our evidence is biased
• Different methods are possible when comparing different cultures
• Important components of culture can be found in animals

Question 23

What percentage of all psychology citations come from the United States?

Answer 23

70%

Question 24

What do findings from the line study show?

Answer 24

Shows that people from industrialised societies consistently occupy the extreme end of the human distribution.

Question 25

What did Rawlings, Boysen & Davila-Ross find?

Answer 25

They studied 3 different chimpanzee colonies and found that each colony used a different technique to open hard-shelled fruit. This showed cross-colony differences in foraging techniques.

Question 26

What does cross cultural psychology aim to identify?

Answer 26

Differences and commonalities between cultures during development

Question 27

What is a core component of culture?

Answer 27

The spreading of newly learned techniques

Question 28

What was found concerning hand clasping grooming in apes?

Answer 28

There were different hand clasping grooming techniques across colonies