Cross-culture Flashcards
Issues of culture
- Early psychology (Europe and US) emerged from philosophy in the 20th century
- Colonisation and globalisation has increased diversity - is our psychology relevant
Culture
- The human made part of the environment: objective (tools and houses) and subjective (norms and values) elements
- Shared system that influences attitudes, values, opinions, beliefs, norms and behaviour which is stable over time across generations
- Unlike nationality, ethnic group and geological boundaries, cultures are dynamic open systems that spread across geographical boundaries and evolve over time
Pop culture
- Popular music and art is similar to culture as it involves expressions and values held by the those involved (trends change within few years)
- Psychological attributes not shared
Historical overview
- Early attempts: one group observes another ‘less developed’ group
- End of 19th century: Wundt and Jung believed in a collective unconscious
- After WWII: studying human behaviour in cultural contexts grew quickly
- Lately there has been an increase in studies from Asia and Africa
- Today: more than 90% of publications in organisational and consumer psychology involve only 15% of the world’s population (Eurocentric)
Ethnocentrism
- Belief/attitude that one ethnic group is superior to another/all others
- Manifests outright negativity to other ethnic groups and subtle assumption that own ethnic group should be the norm for others to be measured against
- Results in stereotyping and discrimination
EThnocentrism in psychology
- Studies examining ethnocentrism, the processes behind it and methods to combat
- Subjective beliefs can affect studies as they are mistaken for scientific truths
- Tests may be biased towards/against a certain culture
- Performance reinforces psychologists’ beliefs and propagates to others
Culture bias in intelligence test
-Sternberg’s intelligence test involved linguistic context, culturally specific knowledge and western problem-solving skills (cultural bias)
Redicing/removing bias in intelligence tests
- Mental functions and processes may by universal e.g. recognising problems and allocating mental resources, but the mental contents may differ (type of knowledge)
- To remove cultural bias, use non-verbal, non-culture specific tests (ravens’ matrices)
- Develop tests to measure skills and knowledge that are contextually important (adaptive and valued to that culture) e.g. Swazi Reed dance
Issues in cross cultural psychology
- Universalist approach: you are subjected to your culture (cross-cultural)
- Contextualist approach: lens through which we view the world (culture)
- Integrationist approach: subjective meaning (indigenous)
Cross cultural research
- Empiricism (Universal (scientific) truth) and reductionism
- Pros: simple broad application
- Cons: insensitive
Cultural research
- Relativism (integrative) and holism
- Pros: flexible, sensitive and context specific
- Cons: complicated limited application
Definitions of cross-cultural psychology
- Scientific study of human behaviour and the influence of social and cultural forces
- Previous definitions: systematic comparison of psychological variables under different cultural conditions to determine the limits of general psychological theories and the modifications needed to make them universal
Goals of cross cultural psychology
-Transport current hypotheses and conclusions about human behaviour to other cultural contexts to test their validity and explore culturally specific phenomena
Etic
- Culture = Universal approach: global factors e.g. age/gender
- Apply Euro-American concepts & measures globally, with some modification
Traits
-Attempts to distinguish differences in individual behaviour being due to cultural position on small number of traits drawn from personality theory e.g. individualism vs collectivism and independence vs interdependence
