Cultural Psychology Flashcards
What does WEIRD stand for?
Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies.
What did Henrich, Heine & Norenzayan, 2010 find about WEIRD samples?
There are considerable differences between populations in different domains and that particularly American undergraduates are some of the most psychological unusual people.
What is culture?
The complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits as acquired by man as a member of society.
OR
A set of attitudes, behaviours and symbols shared by a large group of people and usually communicated from one generation to the next.
What comes under attitudes that contribute to culture?
- Beliefs (political, ideological, religious, moral, etc)
- Values
- General knowledge
- Opinions
- Superstitions
- Stereotypes
What comes under behaviours that contribute to culture?
- Norms
- Roles
- Customs
- Traditions
- Habits
- Practices
- Fashions
What do symbols have to do with culture?
They represent things or ideas, the meaning of which is bestowed on them by people. Can be objects, colour, sound, slogan, building, or anything else.
What are the enlightenment vs romanticism movements?
Enlightenment - A European movement between the 17th and 18th centuries that valued reason and individualism rather than tradition.
Romanticism - This was characterised by emotion and individualism as well as glorification of the past and nature (more focus on traditions).
What is empiricism vs interpretivism?
Empiricism - All knowledge is derived from sensory experience.
Interpretivism - Theoretical belief that reality is socially constructed and fluid. What we know is often negotiated within cultures, social settings, and relationship with other people.
What is Wundt’s volkerpsychologie?
Use of historical and comparative methods instead of experiments alone. Dealt with cultural and communal products of human nature including religions, languages, and mythologies.
What is cultural psychology?
The study of all things members of different communities think (know, want, feel, and value) and by virtue of being the kinds of beings who are beneficiaries, guardians and active perpetrators of a particular culture.
What is cross-cultural psychology?
Systematic study of behaviour and experience as it occurs in different cultures.
What is accommodation?
Modification of knowledge given data
What is assimilation
Incorporation of data to the existing knowledge
What is a representativeness heuristic?
When people are asked to judge the probability that whether something belongs to a category or process.
What is an availability heuristic?
This is employe when people are asked to assess the frequency of a class or the plausibility of a particular development.
What are examples of culture specific phenomena?
- Visual illusions
- Spatial orientation (Tzetal speakers avoid egocentric locative descriptions)
- Self-views (East Asians do not self enhance compared to westerners)
- Value of personal choice (personal choice enhances motivation for Americans compared to asians)
- Motivation to conform (collectivist countries show higher levels of conformity)
What are some examples of cultural universals (something common to humans worldwide)?
- Perceiving colour
- Analog numeracy
- Emotional expression
- Psychological essentialism
- Mate preferences (eg. females value social status and men value physical attractiveness)
- Personality structure
What is individualism?
- Rights of the individual come before their duties
- Care for oneself and their family
- Emphasis is placed on autonomy and self actualisation
What is collectivism?
- Duties of the individual come before their rights
- Care for group harmony
- Emphasis is placed on group belongingness and group related duties
What are the two forms of organising social life?
Community - members possess and use common goods, they feel similar pleasures and annoyances, they have mutual enemies and friends.
Association - People love side by side but they are not so strongly connected.
What are qualities of the independent self?
- Unique qualities of the individual
- Independence
- Self-sufficiency
- Personal success
- Personal freedom
- Personal agency
What are qualities of the interdependent self?
- Individual as a member of a group
- Interdependence
- Group co-ordination
- Group cohesiveness
- Emotional self control
- Responsibility
What are agents qualities?
- Attention is paid to traits which affect the trait holder - similar to what is important to the independent self.
- Ambition and intelligence
- Lack of thereof
What are communal qualities?
- Attention is paid to traits which affect the environment of the trait holder - similar to what is important to the interdependent self
- Loyalty and morality
- Lack of thereof
How do analytic and holistic reasoning compare?
Holistic reasoning pays attention to context and relationships between objects whereas analytic reasoning is context independent and focuses on attributes.
Also, holistic reasoning is associative and focuses on similarities and continuity whereas analytic reasoning is abstract and rule based.
What are the differences between individualism and collectivism?
Central value:
- (i) individual
- (c) group
Social values:
- (i) freedom, autonomy and competition
- (c) equality, social harmony, solidarity
Attitude towards conflict:
- (i) positive, conflict is a challenge and opportunity
- (c) negative, avoid as much as possible
Attitude towards social norm:
- (i) - personal standards of behaviour
- (c) - traditionalism
Sense of identity:
- (i) based on individuals traits and competencies
- (c) based on group belonging
What are the 6 dimensions of culture?
- Power distance
- Individualism vs collectivism
- Masculinity vs femininity
- Uncertainty avoidance
- Long vs short term orientation
- Indulgence vs restraint
