Cultural Differences Flashcards
What is culture?:
· Concept originating in anthropology
· Increasing impact on social sciences over course of 20th century
· Kroeber & Kluckhohn (1963) famously listed 161 different definitions!
· A few examples follow …
Anthropological definitions:
· “That complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, laws, customs and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man [sic] as a member of society” (Tylor, 1871)
· “The man-made [sic] part of the human environment” (Herskovits, 1948)
- Includes both physical artefacts and social systems
Psychological definitions:
· “The totality of equivalent and complementary learned meanings maintained by a human population, or by identifiable segments of a population, and transmitted from one generation to the next (Rohner, 1984)
· “The collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group […] of people from another (Hofstede, 2001)
Social systems (cultural groups):
· “The behaviour of multiple individuals within a culturally-organized population, including their patterns of interaction and networks of social relationships” (Rohner, 1984)
- Might include nations, organisations, families, etc.
· Social systems ‘have’ cultures
· Cultures do not ‘have’ social systems
· Cultures make behaviour comprehensible
Some potential pitfalls:
· Theorising based on stereotypes
- NB power differentials
- Importance of exploring
· Methodological issues
- Working in multiple languages
- Comparability of constructs
- Response styles (e.g., acquiescence)
- Cultures are not individuals
Emic and etic perspectives:
· See Berry (1989)
· Emic approaches
- grounded in specific cultural context
- no claim to generality or attempt to compare
· Etic approaches
- aspire to universality or at least comparability
- imposed etic vs. derived etic
Cross-cultural psychology:
· Question: How and why do psychological processes differ across cultures?
- Influence of cultural context on individuals
- Often focuses on cross-national comparison
- Relativism higher-order universality
· Origins in social/organisational psychology
- Mainly surveys, some experiments
Cultural psychology:
· Question: How do cultures ‘work’?
- Psychological study of cultural processes
- Relationship between individual and society
- Often ‘within-culture’ focus
· Social anthropology -> social cognition
- Qualitative studies in single cultures -> experiments in two or more cultures
Indigenous psychologies:
· Question: How can psychology become more globally representative?
- Overcoming power dynamics by empowering diverse local perspectives (~decolonisation)
- Indigenous methods
- Initially avoid cultural comparisons
- “Psychology” = Western indigenous psychology
- Can lead to cross-indigenous approach
Comparative culturology:
· Question: How do societies differ in their cultural characteristics?
- Often confused with cross-cultural psychology
- Focus on describing cultural norms of societies, not individuals’ psychological functioning
- Societies provide the cultural contexts for individuals’ psychological functioning
· Business studies political science
- Large multinational surveys
Early cross-cultural studies:
· Failures to replicate US findings:
- Conformity (rest of world > US & Europe)
- Social loafing (US effects reversed in Pacific Asia)
· Problem is how to explain these differences
- Showing differences between nations is just description, but social science demands explanation!
· Need a theory of how cultures differ
· Attempts to construct cultural ‘map of the world’
Hofstede’s project:
· IBM (HERMES) employee surveys
- Originally conducted 1967 and 1973
- > 116,000 respondents in 72 countries
- Questions about job satisfaction, perceptions of work situations, personal goals and beliefs
- Wide variety of response formats
· Hofstede conducted secondary analysis to look for dimensions of cultural variation
Cultures and individuals:
· “Cultures are not king-size individuals [. . .] and their internal logic cannot be understood in the terms used for the personality dynamics of individuals” (Hofstede, 2001, p. 17).
The ecological fallacy:
· Ecological level of analysis
· Robinson’s (1950) paradox:
- US states: %immigrants and %literacy (r =.526)
- Individuals: immigrant status and literacy (r = -.118)
· Different explanations at each level of analysis
- Ecological fallacy is falsely extrapolating group-level findings to individual level of explanation
- Reverse ecological fallacy is wrongly attributing properties of individuals to cultures
Survey response styles:
· Methodological problem
- People in different cultures use response scales in different ways
- Variation in acquiescence – in some cultures people tend to agree more with everything
· Hofstede’s solution
- Country mean agreement with all items
- Subtract and/or control in analyses
Hofstede’s analysis:
· Analysis at ecological level
- Sufficient data for CC analysis of 40 countries
· Each item -> weighted country mean
- Combination of averages within different occupational groups within IBM (marketing and service depts.)
- Corrected for acquiescence where possible
· Theoretically guided data exploration led to ‘discovery’ of 4 dimensions of CC variation
Power distance (PD):
· Extent to which members of a society accept that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally
· Survey items:
- Employees afraid to disagree with managers
- Subordinates perceive Bosses as autocratic or paternalistic (as opposed to democratic or consultative)
- Subordinates would like Bosses to be autocratic, paternalistic or democratic (as opposed to consultative)
· Highest: Malaysia, Guatemala, Panama
· Lowest: Austria, Israel, Denmark
Uncertainty avoidance (UA):
· Degree to which the members of a society feel uncomfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity, which leads them to support beliefs promising certainty and to maintain institutions protecting conformity
- Company rules should not be broken—even when employee thinks in company’s best interest
- % employees expecting to stay at least 5 years
- How often feel nervous or tense at work (stress)
· Highest: Greece, Portugal, Guatemala
· Lowest: Singapore, Jamaica, Denmark
Individualism (IDV):
· Individualism - A preference for a loosely knit social framework in society in which individuals are supposed to take care of themselves and their immediate families
· Collectivism - A preference for a tightly knit social framework in which individuals can expect their relatives, clan or other in-group to look after them, in exchange for unquestioning loyalty
Individualism 2:
· Assessed by items about work goals:
- IDV: personal time, freedom, challenge
- COL: training, physical conditions, use of skills
· Highest: USA, Australia, Great Britain (richer)
· Lowest: Guatemala, Ecuador, Panama (poorer)
· Strong negative correlation with PD (r = -.68)
· Enormous amount of subsequent research
- For review, see Triandis (1995)
- For critique, see Oyserman et al. (2002)
- For riposte, see Schimmack et al. (2005)
Masculinity (MAS):
· Masculinity - A preference for achievement, heroism, assertiveness, and material success
· Femininity - A preference for relationships, modesty, caring for the weak, and quality of life
· Assessed by items about work goals:
- MAS: earnings, recognition, advancement, challenge
- FEM: relationship with manager, cooperation, live in desirable area, employment security
· Highest: Japan, Austria, Venezuela
· Lowest: Sweden, Norway, Netherlands
Masculinity 2:
· Unfortunate choice of name by Hofstede
- Masculinities and femininities differ across cultures!
- a.k.a. toughness vs. tenderness
- Reverse ecological fallacy?
· Has some predictive value
- e.g., %GNP spent on international development
· NB: Uncorrelated with IDV (r = .00)
- FEM: focus on relationships, others in general
- COL: focus on in-groups, social position
Are these the big 4?:
· Hofstede’s dimensions of cultural variation
- Power distance (PD)
- Uncertainty avoidance (UA)
- Individualism (vs. Collectivism) (IDV)
- Masculinity (vs. Femininity) (MAS)
· Provide 4D cultural ‘map of the world’
· Guided much future research (mostly IDV)
Chinese culture connection (1987):
· International project
- Student participants in 22 nations
- 40 values proposed by Chinese social scientists and/or taken from Chinese philosophy
- No attempt to be culturally inclusive!
· Statistical analyses
- Items adjusted for response style
- Ecological-level factor analysis
