Cultural Psychology And Social Practices Flashcards
What are power dynamics?
Games people play using personal energy and
self-investment to further personal & own group interest vs moral
ethical standards
Culture, Beliefs, and Emotions
- Emotions and self-image are tied to cultural messages, standards, and expectations (rules/laws).
- In every culture, there are particular standards for what the consensus believes is and is not beautiful. (intelligent, appropriate, good e.t.c)
- In this case, people have established a cultural standard, but that cultural standard is also influencing and affecting how people think and feel about themselves.
What is Cultural psychology?
Cultural psychology is considered an interdisciplinary study, which is a field that draws from more than one area to form its methodologies and theories.
- In this case, cultural psychology draws from psychology,
- anthropology, and
- sociology,
among others, to better understand how people are both shapers of and shaped by their individual cultures.
What is culture?
A human developed –a manmade - program of:
i) shared rules and laws, handed down from generation to generation, over long periods of time, that governs the behavior of members of a community or society, and includes
ii) a set of values, beliefs, and attitudes shared by most members of that community.
Understanding Culture
- Culture is a human phenomenon.
- It is acquired through the process of socialization or enculturation.
- Culture generally refers to knowledge that is passed on from one generation to another within a given society, through which people make sense of themselves and the world.
¢Culture incorporates language, values,
assumptions, norms of behavior, ideas about illness and health, etc.
¢In Anthropology this body of knowledge
is organized systematically and is referred to as cultural meaning systems.
¢Culture is however not static but
constantly shifts and changes to produce
new hybrid identities.
Culture exists on 3 levels:
- Visible level of artifacts or the material
things of life, the meanings, and uses of
which may be readily discernible to an
outsider. - Behavioral level - observable behaviors though the meaning may differ in different cultures.
- Cognitive or invisible level – values, norms, and precepts that underlie or guide our actions.
¢ Culture is both diverse and universal
Cultural World View or Perception.
• A worldview is a set of basic assumptions that a group of people develop in order to explain reality and their place and purpose in the world.
- Frame of reference to address problems in life.
- Worldviews shape our attitudes, values, and opinions as well as the way we think and behave.
• It also determines how members of a
particular culture view illness, health and
care.
Cultural psychological definition
Cultural psychology is the study of how psychological tendencies (cognitions=beliefs, thoughts & feelings)
and behavioral tendencies are rooted in and embodied in culture.
Cultural Psychology is dynamic (changing) not static
Cultural psychology is a branch of psychology that is focused on how our thoughts, beliefs, emotions and
behaviors are influenced by and rooted in our individual cultures.
The fundamental belief in cultural psychology is that not only do human beings shape their cultures, but
that cultures also shape human beings.
Culture is viewed as dynamic (changing) not static (unchanging).
CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY according to(Jansen, 2011)
The field of Cultural psychology focuses on studying how cultural traditions and social practices regulate, express, and shape the human psyche and how, in turn, these minds maintain and recreate the sociocultural world they inhabit.
Cultural psychologists have produced evidence on what?
have produced a large body of evidence
documenting the intricate and profound ways in which human cognition, development, and behavior are shaped by culture.
Following the guiding principle of “one mind, many mentalities”, cultural psychologists argue that observed
differences in human cognition & perception across cultures are not reducible to variations in the content of thought (e.g. beliefs or ideas) but grounded in differences in the structure
and process of thought (e.g. rationality, cognitive stages, decision-making processes, etc.) (Jensen, 2011).
CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY THEORY
The main idea (point; tenet; teaching, theory, etc) of cultural psychology is that
mind and culture are inseparable and
mutually constitutive, [meaning that people are shaped by their culture and their culture is also shaped by them].
Mutual Constitution of Culture & Individual
Mutual constitution is the notion that the society and the individual have an influencing effect on one another.
Because a society is composed of individuals, the behavior and actions of the individuals directly impact the society.
In the same manner, society directly impacts the individual living within it.
The values, morals, and ways of life a society exemplifies will have an immediate impact on the way an individual is shaped as a person.
The rules, laws, and atmosphere that a society provides for the individual is a determining factor for how an individual will develop.
MUTUAL CONSTRUCTION & SUPPORT
FOR CULTURE & SOCIAL PRACTICES
EMERGING FROM THE CULTURE
In summary mutual constitution is a cyclical model in which the society and the individual both influence
one another and contribute to the construction and maintenance of cultural laws and social practices.
Societies & individuals often fail to recognize or outrightly deny this reality of joint contribution and tend to minimize the effect that people have on their communities.
Culture Potentially Promotes Psychic Disunity & Ethnic Divergence
Richard Shweder, one of the major proponents of the field, writes, “Cultural psychology is the study of the way cultural traditions and social practices regulate, express, and transform the human psyche,
resulting in less in psychic unity
for humankind (& more in)
ethnic divergences in mind,
self, and emotion.
