Culture

Question 1

components of culture

Answer 1

• Cultural Differences (evoked vs. transmitted culture)

- Cultural Similarities (cultural universals)

Question 2

evoked culture (and its 2 key ingredients)

Answer 2

• Differences in physical environments lead to different adaptations among different groups of people; such differences are characterized as “cultural differences” (ie. People who live closer to equator sweat more than Canadians)
• 2 key ingredients:
• • Universal underlying mechanisms (ie. Fight or flight response; sweat glands)
• • Environmental differences in the degree to which the underlying mechanism is activated (ie. Differences in threats/demands in early environments; temperature differences

Question 3

evoked culture & personality: pathogen prevalence example

Answer 3

• In populations with higher exposure to pathogens:
• • Lower levels of openness
• • Lower levels of extraversion
• • Deviating from cultural norms (in regards to food preparation) may also increase likelihood of pathogen exposure (ie. Risk of food-born disease) -> more conformity
• • Historical prevalence of pathogens also associated with more authoritarian personalities, more authoritarian governance, and more conservative political ideologies (support for “parasite stress” hypothesis)

Question 4

transmitted culture

Answer 4

• Ideas, values, attitudes, and beliefs, that are communicated from one person to another (originally from one person)
• • Different cultures focus on spreading certain ideas, morals, values, attitudes, and beliefs, and have different self-concepts
• These differences in turn result in differences in personality (by impacting behavioural tendencies) from one culture to the next
• Includes cultural orientation and self-enhancement

Question 5

3 types of transmitted culture

Answer 5

• Vertical transmission: parents -> child
• Horizontal transmission: between peers/people of the same generation
• Oblique transmission: from older generations to younger generations
• • Includes grandparents, media, and unrelated people
• • Ex. The Taliban is an example of oblique transmission for Malala

Question 6

cultural orientation

Answer 6

• Individualistic: focus on uniqueness, independence, agency, independent self-construal
• Collectivistic: focus on relationships with others and communion; interdependent self-construal
• Also linked to how people process information, either analytically (ie. American) or holistically (ie. Asian cultures)

Question 7

2 key aspects to consider: transmitted culture & personality

Answer 7

• Individualism vs. collectivism

- Equality vs. Inequality/status

Question 8

Transmitted culture: individ/collec vs. eq/ineq result in these 4 outcomes

Answer 8

• Vertical individualism: focus on individualism & inequality/status
• Vertical collectivism: focus on inequality/status & collectivism
• Horizontal individualism: focus on individualism and equality
• Horizontal collectivism: focus on equality and collectivism

Question 9

self-enhancement

Answer 9

• Tendency to describe and present oneself using positive or socially valued attributes (ie. Kind, smart)
• North Americans tend to maintain a more positive evaluation of themselves and of their own group compared to outsiders (likely because other cultures ie. Asians genuinely feel less positive due to their cultural values)

Question 10

Santos et al study: is individualism on the rise?

Answer 10

• examined 51 years of data about individualistic practices (ie. Living alone) and values (ie. Having children develop independence)
• Saw an increasing level of individualistic practices in most countries (incl. Canada and the US)
• Saw an increasing level of individualistic values in most countries (Canada was higher than US, China was exception -> decreased individualistic values)
• As countries grow economically and reduce pathogen prevalence, they typically experience increase in individualism

Question 11

Malala case study: is evoked or transmitted culture more important to her personality?

Answer 11

Transmitted -> vertical culture (influence of parents on her)

Question 12

Malala case study: in what was were different aspects of transmitted culture at odds with each other in her life?

Answer 12

Taliban saying girls should not go to school (oblique transmission) vs. Her parents saying girls should go to school (vertical transmission)

Question 13

acculturation

Answer 13

• The process of cultural adaptation upon arriving in a new culture
• Research examining acculturation in individualistic (Western) cultures suggests an impact on self-construal via transmitted culture
• 2 main factors of self-contrual: independent (how you set yourself apart) & interdependent (how you’re affiliated with the group)
• • independent is common in individualistic cultures and vice versa

Question 14

Combos of 2 main factors of acculturation result in these 4 different types

Answer 14

• Bicultural: strong independent, strong interdependent (Malala)
• Western: strong independent, weak interdependent
• Traditional: weak independent, strong interdependent
• Culturally Alienated: weak independent, weak interdependent

Question 15

Acculturation of big 5 study (Japanese Americans)

Answer 15

• collected Big 5 ratings of Japanese Americans and compared them to European Americans and Japanese women
• Higher participation in American culture led to personality profiles that were more “American” and less “Japanese”
• Became more similar in neuroticism (lower), openness (higher), and conscientiousness (lower)

Question 16

Do cultures differ in the Big 5?

Answer 16

• Overall, not much
• Across 51 different cultures, the largest difference was seen in extraversion
• • North Americans, Australians, and Europeans scored slightly higher than Asians and Africans
• There is a lot more variation within cultures than between cultures

Question 17

cultural universals (and 3 important aspects)

Answer 17

• Features of personality that are common to people in all cultures (“human nature”)
• 3 important aspects that appear to be culturally universal:
• • Emotional expression
• • 5-factor model/Big 5
• • Beliefs about men and women

Question 18

Emotional expression

Answer 18

• all humans feel the same emotions, but express them differently or label them differently based on culture (ex. everyone feels schadenfreude, but only Germans have a word for it)
• However, some are universal -> 6 original universal emotions: Anger, fear, disgust, surprise, happiness, sadness
• • Research done at UBC shows that pride may also be universal

Question 19

Universal Traits (Big 5)

Answer 19

• 5-factor model (Big 5) helps to explain variance in many cultures; trait terms (in general) appear to be universal
• Transport and test theory shows that dimensions used for personality evaluation show high degree of cultural universality; replicable across cultures
• • exceptions: indigenous people of Bolivia, Chinese people, and some European countries
• all factors except openness are highly consistent; openness is replaced by something else in some cultures

Question 20

Big 5 exceptions: indigenous people of Bolivia

Answer 20

• Big 5 didn’t replicate
• Found support for 2 principal factors that may reflect socioecological characteristics common to small-scale societies:
• • Prosociality
• • Industriousness

Question 21

Big 5 exceptions: Chinese people

Answer 21

• factor analysis revealed 4 dimensions:
• • Dependability -> neuroticism/stability
• • Social potency -> extraversion
• • Individualism/accommodation -> agreeableness
• • Interpersonal relatedness (ie. Harmony, reciprocity in relationships) -> none of the big 5
• – Replicated in Asian American, Korean, and Japanese samples; also in European Americans, but seems to be less salient to them

Question 22

Big 5 exceptions: European countries

Answer 22

• Across 7 countries/languages (Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Polish), Ashton et al. found evidence for 6 dimensions rather than 5:
• • Extraversion
• • Agreeableness
• • Conscientiousness
• • Emotionality
• • Intellect/Imagination/Unconventionality
• • Honesty-Humility

Question 23

Williams & Best study: Beliefs about men & women

Answer 23

• Examined 30 countries for 15 years, including countries in Western Europe (e.g., Germany, Netherlands, Italy), Asia (e.g., Japan, India), South America (e.g., Venezuela), and Africa (e.g., Nigeria).
• University students examined 300 trait adjectives (e.g., aggressive, emotional, dominant) and indicated whether each trait is more often associated with men, women, or both sexes.
• RESULTS: Many trait adjectives were associated with one or the other sex (likely due to combo of innate and social factors); there was tremendous consensus across cultures.

Question 24

cultural variation

Answer 24

• within-group similarities and between-group differences

- ex. Eating beef (deemed okay in Canada, not in India)

Question 25

3 key goals of cultural personality psych

Answer 25

• discover principles underlying cultural diversity
• discover how human personality shapes culture
• discover how cultural understandings shape our psychology

Question 26

examples of evoked culture: evoked cooperation, evoked mating strategies & evoked aggression

Answer 26

• evoked cooperation: in high-variance environments, it’s helpful to be egalitarian (ex. cooperative food-sharing)
• evoked mating strategies: if children experience rejecting/inconsistent parents in early life, they’ll have sex earlier and have more sexual partners (unpredictable early environment taught them they can’t rely on just 1) and vice versa -> different strategies are more common in certain cultures (ie. many partners more common in Sweden than China)
• evoked aggression: in cultures of honour, insults are viewed as public challenges -> more aggression (ex. Southern US people more aggressive than Northern)

Question 27

self-definition and culture

Answer 27

• People in individualistic cultures more likely to describe themselves using internal characteristics (ie. smart, fun, open-minded); more likely to see themselves as unique and special
• People in collectivist cultures more likely to describe themselves using social roles (ie. daughter, Jane’s friend), preferences (ie. I like chocolate), and context-dependent activities (ie. I like watching TV on the weekend); responses are less consistent in different contexts
• people who have immigrated to Canada from collectivist countries more likely to place more emphasis on their ethnicity; more likely to only have high self-esteem if their ethnic group is positively evaluated by others (collective self-esteem)

Question 28

culture and information-processing

Answer 28

• collectivistic cultures explain events holistically (attention to relationships and context between the focal object and field as a whole)
• individualistic cultures explain events analytically (object detached from context and people)

Question 29

3rd factor of self-construal

Answer 29

• metapersonal self: the self within a broader context, (ie. humankind, the cosmos, etc.), related to all living things (biospheric values), a spiritual self
• characteristic of Eastern philosophies (ie. Buddhism)
• high metapersonal self-contrual = more resource sharing and environmentalism

Question 30

cautions in generalizing cultural differences

Answer 30

• studies usually occur only in certain cultures; can’t generalize to all others
• characterizations may be too general
• Though European American typically more individualistic, not always -> less so than African Americans and Latinos
• Though European Americans typically less collectivistic, not always -> no less so than Koreans or Japanese

Question 31

within-culture variations

Answer 31

• social class: low-class = more obedient; high-class = self-directed, non-conforming
• historical era: growing up in great depression = more anxious, thrifty; growing up during sexual revolution of 60s-70s = more openness
• • one study showed increases in agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion & decrease in neuroticism in the Netherlands over 25 years

Question 32

WEIRD research

Answer 32

• research done on Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies (and on WEIRD undergrads specifically) -> often generalized to entire population, but only based on small subset of it
• 70% of psych research done in US; many research assume their findings are generalizable both explicitly (saying x is a thing everyone has) and implicitly (not listing generalizability as a limitation)
• problematic because studies have shown differences in social and cognitive processes between small-scale and industrialized societies, Western and non-Western cultures, and Canadians and Americans (ie. Americans most individualistic of any western country), and undergrads and non-undergrads

Question 33

Whorfian hypothesis of linguistic relativity

Answer 33

• states that language creates emotions and experiences; what we think/feel is limited by our language
• extreme view, contrasts research on universal emotional expression -> we all feel the same emotions, but express them differently depending on culture and context