Culture, Self & Identity Flashcards
Self
psychological construct people create in order to help understand themselves and their world better
Self-concept
cognitive representations of one’s own self, idea or images one has baout oneself and how and why one behaves.
Why do people have Self-Concepts?
Cultural worldviews
- Belief systems about oneself and culture
- Products of several uniquely human abilities.
Self-concepts are functional
- Aid in addressing needs for affiliation and uniqueness and explain the importance of understanding values as guiding principles within a specific culture.
Cultural Differences in Self-Concept
Cultural psychology received major boost with theory of independent and interdependent self-construal.
Independent and interdependent self-construal theory has been major impetus for many studies in cultural psychology since its inception.
Independent construal of self:
individuals focus on personal, internal attributes.
Collectivistic cultures have a composite construal of self; individual is interdependent and inseparable from social context.
Interdependent construal of self:
self is unbounded, flexible, and contingent on context.
Data regarding assumptions concerning culture and self:
Idea that American culture is individualistic/independent and Asian cultures are collectivist/interdependent challenged by several studies.
Australia’s Individualism Rating before and after 2023, why?
Bfre: 90
After: 73
Australia is not one culture:
Indigenous culture is more collectivist.
Ethnic groups such as Greek-Australian, Latvian-Australian, Italian-Australian and Chinese-Australian have high “family collectivism”.
Natural selection has fostered 2 basic developmental approaches:
Self-definition
Development of interpersonal relatedness
Niedenthal and Beike theory
existence of both interrelated and isolated self-concepts.
Triandis theory:
existence of 3 types of selves – private, public & collective – that coexist in everyone.
Self-esteem
cognitive and affective evaluations we make about ourselves.
Self-enhancement:
collection of psychological processes by which we bolster our self-esteem.
Terror management theory:
humans are aware of and terrified of inevitable death – this is why we have self-esteem.
- Psychological phenomena buffer terror of dying.
- Cultural meaningfulness and self-worth arise because humans balance propensity for life w/awareness of inevitable death.
Influence of 4 bases of self-esteem:
controlling one’s life, doing one’s duty, benefitting others, achieving social status.
Derived positive self-regard from all 4 bases but mostly from those that were consistent w/the value priorities of other people in the same cultural context.
Is Self-Enhancement Universal or Culture-Specific?
Early studies showed that members of individualistic cultures have higher self-esteem than members of collectivistic cultures.
Suggested that collectivistic individuals had the tendency to self-effeace & criticise themselves.
Self-effacement: tendency to downplay one’s virtues.
May be cause by the better than average effect.
Better than average effect: tendency of individuals to underestimate the commonality of desirable traits and to overestimate their consequences.
Mutual self-enhancement:
self-enhancement is achieved through giving and receiving of compliments between partners in close relationships.
Tactical self-enhancement:
enhancement occurs on different traits, explicitly/implicitly, or in different contexts.
Types of Identities
Identity – ways individuals understand themselves and are recognised by others.
Personal identity – qualities and attributes that distinguish themselves from others.
Collective identities – recognition we belong to social categories. E.g. Australian, dentist.
Relational identities – qualities of ourselves in relation to others. E.g. good listener, kind.
Culture, ethnic, and racial identities – recognising belongingness to specific cultures.
Identity denial
one isn’t recognised as a member of the group to which he/she identifies.
Culture frame switching
People who speak multiple languages will switch between one cultural system and another when switching languages.
Cultural reaffirmation effect:
excessive endorsement of home cultural values by bicultural individuals.
Caused by the stress of multicultural life in a different world.
Cultural reaffirmation effect can lead to cultural crystallisation.
Cultural crystallisation:
entrenchment of a cultural system of an immigrant group at one point in time despite the fact that the cultural system of the home culture continues to evolve.
