Culture Flashcards
What is cross-cultural psychology?
Field of psychology that attempts to account for the psychological differences between and within different cultural groups.
What is cultural psychology?
A field in psychology that seeks to understand individual cultures, it avoids making comparisons.
What is culture?
Culture refers to psychological attributes of groups. It includes essential elements such as symbols, beliefs, values, norms and practices.
What is enculturation? What about acculturation?
Enculturation is the process of socialization through which an individual acquires their native culture. Acculturation is the process of socialization by which a person partially or fully acquires a new cultural outlook.
How does culture play into personality psychology?
Personality psychology studies individual differences and culture comes into play because 1. people from different cultures differ and 2. members of the same group may differ from one another in distinctive ways.
What are the reasons psychologists have become interested in cross-cultural differences?
1- Cross-cultural understanding increases international understanding
2- Generalizability of theory, it helps us understand how applicable theories are to all.
3- Varieties of human experience
What are some outcomes from getting in touch with other cultures?
Increased openness, emotional stability and agreeableness, a clearer sense of self and a looser moral compass.
What is etics and what is emics?
Etics are universal components of an idea while emics are the particular components of that idea.
T from todo mundo, M from meu
What are some characteristics of cultures?
Tough and easy, some cultures can be tough or easy depending on how easy it is to be considered socially accomplished.
Achievement and affiliation, degree to which it emphasizes the need to achieve.
Tightness and Looseness, the amount of deviation from proper behavior tolerated by the culture.
Head and Heart, if the culture emphasizes strength of heart/head
Dignity, face and honour
Individualism x collectivism
What are some factors that affect how tight a culture is?
Density of the population because norms are more necessary then.
Diversity as people might disagree on those norms.
Why do cities vary on headxheart dimensions?
Selective migration, certain people are attracted to certain cities.
Social influence affects one’s values
Ecological factors may influence cultural differences, lack of winter and depression
What is the dimension of individualism-collectivism?
The way the culture views the relationship between the individual and society. Me and we.
What are some key differences between individualistic and collectivistic cultures? (7)
The way they view the self relating to others, the way people try to stand out, the need for positive self-regard, sociability and mate choice, emotion (nature of the words used to describe the feeling, the ground of the experience), motivations (lose face, self-enhance) and behavioral consistency.
Explain culture of honor.
It was evoked by weak external constraints on behaviour where it left people to defend their own resources, thus any show of weakness would mean the loss of resources or even life. Common in herding cultures. Therefore insults are threatening and met with violence or retaliation.
Explain culture of face.
Evoked by agriculture based on cooperation, creating a culture where stable hierarchies and alliances were essential. People are motivated to protect one another’s social image by being careful to not insult or even disagree in public.
Explain culture of dignity.
Evoked by market economies based on equal exchanges where the focus was on internal strength and equality. It lead to people that care more about their ideals than what other think of them.
What are the three questions used to assess differences among cultures?
The first way is by assessing the degree to which average levels of a specific trait vary between cultures. The second way is to assess the degree to which the traits of one culture can meaningfully characterize people in another.
Are there subcultures within the dominant culture that greatly differ?
What is Triandis model of culture?
Ecology-> Culture-> Socialization-> Personality-> Behavior
In what way can disease affect culture?
Countries that historically suffered from high levels of infectious disease are lower in extraversion, openness and sociosexuality. Countries that historically suffered from high levels of pathogens promoted conformity as it promotes behaviors such as cleanliness and orderliness, which stops the spread.
How does temperature impacts culture?
Hot temperatures make people grouchy and violent, a pleasant 22 degree Celsius make people more pleasant
What are some obstacles for Cross-Culture research?
Propensity to ethnocentrism
Exaggeration of cultural differences
Moral relativism
Multiculturalism and subcultures
What are the reasons for exaggerated cultural differences?
Cross-cultural psychology is in the business of finding differences
Statistical reasons, due to large sample groups, effects sizes look bigger as they use significance tests
Outgroup homogeneity bias
What is the outgroup homogeneity bias?
Ingroup contains individuals that obviously differ but outgroup members look “all the same”
What is moral relativism?
The idea that all views of reality are equally valid.
what is BII?
Bicultural identity integration, people who score high on this scale see themselves as members of combined cultures.
What does the horizontal/vertical dimensions add to the scale of individualism/collectivism?
Horizontal means self same as others and high equality while vertical means low equality, authority ranking and self different from others.
IH: “I want to do my own thing”
IC: “We can do this together”
VH: “I want to be the best”
VC: “We are better than others”
What are some critiques of the individualism and collectivism constructs?
Most research only compares NA and East Asia
One is not mutually exclusive of the other
They are rarely measured
There are more differences within culture than between.
What is one factor that might contribute to collectivism within farming?
The type of crop, growing rice needs more cooperation than wheat, per example.
Why does research within culture provide stronger tests of mechanisms driving the differences between cultures?
Due to better control over potential confounds and a more homogenous sample.
Is the Big 5 valid across cultures?
The Big 5 structure holds up well, but most cultures have their variation, with only extraversion, conscientiousness and agreeableness holding up across all.
