Defining culture Flashcards
Academic definitions of culture (Kroeber and Kluckhohn: 1952)
1) Descriptive:
•most common, describing things that culture does (social activities: language, marriage, property system, etc)
2) Historical:
•the social hereditary (not biological) unique generational stories
3) Structural:
•values give rise to norms through interdependent customs in specific social groups, forming a pattern in each society
4) Normative:
•social customs spread to form people’s way of life
•straying from norms results in punishment (morality removed)
5) Psychological:
•culture is the result of human learned efforts and adjustments
Issues with defining culture
1) People identify with their country
•ex: saying you’re Korean
2) Fuzzy boundaries: cultural borders are not as defined as county borders
•ex: makes it difficult to categorize Chinese culture
3) Constant changes in culture
•ex: gay marriage, legalizing weed
4) Within vs between culture variation: using countries as a proxy for culture assumes there’s fundamental differences between people from different countries
•In Canada, having so many asians has their values/norms as being prominent in a different country
Germany 1900s (Wilhelm Wundt) no
Forefathers of modern psychology
•created the first psychological lab (saw psych as a separate field)
•studied low level cognitive processes (memory, perception) emphasizing need for experimental control
Volkerpsychologie (folk psychology):
•discussed high level processes (religion, language, folk stories)
•questioned how it was possible to study these processes using the same experimental control as low level processes
•Conclusion: in high level processes, we must relax experimental control and study the processes for how they are
United States and John B. Watson no
US: wanted recognition as a hard science, low level processes were most commonly studied with experimental controls
Watson (behaviourism)
•human behaviours can be objectively measured as stimulus response patterns
•assumption: all behaviours, thoughts, and feelings are a response to type of stimulus
•concern: debate if internal processes (thoughts) were measurable, then it wasn’t psychology
1950s no
Cognitive revolution:
•recognition that humans have mental processes that are meaningful and should be studied
Computer revolution:
•psychologists started using computers to study the human brain
•psychologists started thinking that if the brain is a computer, and a computer in one place is the same as a computer in another, Canadian and Chinese brains are the same
•problem: european emphasis: how everyone is the same, ignoring other societies and their differences
1980s no
Richard Shweder: pushed back on the brain metaphor because we can’t interpret the brain as a computer:
•it is a passive item
•brain is active and is affected by environment, and vice versa
•impact: further development on culture and environment ideas (mind and environment mutually constitute each other)
Universality vs Variability (?) SEE TEXT
no
Culturally universal or culturally variable
•some cultures vary in their descriptions (number of words) or expressions
*ex: emotional expression
Something can be universal and cultural
•more specific: more culturally variable
•more general: more universal
•Difficult to assess because there’s so much data needed to prove universality *ex: around the whole world, each person experiences X the same way
Types of universals *
1) Non-universal (cultural invention)
•cognitive tool (traits/behaviours) not found in all cultures
2) Existential universal
•cognitive tool found in all cultures, but serve different functions
*ex: criticism (putting someone down vs a motivational tool to reach potential)
3) Functional universal
•cognitive tool serves the same function in all cultures, but present in different degrees
*ex: variation in accessibility: enforces fairness norms, but fairness is defined and dealt with differently cross-culturally
4) Accessibility universal
•cognitive tool equally accessible in all cultures and serves the same purpose
*ex: social facilitation (when were trying to accomplish a task that is easy, were better at it if were around people)
Steven Heine, Ara Norenzayan, and Joseph Henrich (UBC profs) *
Wrote an influential paper that psychology’s demographic is WEIRD (western educated industrialized rich demographic):
•68% from American populations
•32% from anywhere else
•96% came from WEIRD cultures (leaves 4% for Asia, Africa, etc.)
WEIRD cultures only make for 16% of world’s population, making research unrepresentative of all populations
Cultures in WIERD can also be under sampled (aboriginal)
About 70% of all psych participants are undergrad students
Muller-Lyer Illusion *
Same length line optical illusion
•measured susceptibility to the illusion across different cultural groups
•found certain groups were more susceptible (American undergrads most)
•Shows how under representative the WEIRD population is of a global population
Hypotheses for susceptibility differences
•Carpentered-world hypothesis: idea that in industrialized environments, we see corners everywhere (blind to them)
Figure-line task *
Left inferior parietal lobule and Right inferior parietal lobule: associated with increased focus and attentional control
Task 1: relative task (pay attention to one object in another context)
Task 2: absolute task (pay attention to the line and strip away everything else)
Findings:
•East asian: tend to focus more on background, contextual information (relative task)
•European: tend to focus more on specific attributes (absolute task)
Conclusion:
1) culturally less familiar tasks require more attentional control
2) more evidence that culture and brain are indirectly intertwined
3) takes more effort to engage in tasks that are culturally unfamiliar
Caution about culture*
What we do is a function of socialization/ our experiences
•ex: the ads we see, how we eat
Caution about culture
1. People from different places are not fundamentally different
2. Culture is learned (not born with it)
3. Culture is not a biological concept: cultural differences aren’t biological differences
Dealing with culture *
Travel resulted in high intercultural contact
1. Colour blind approach
•emphasize importance of the similarities between groups while downplaying differences
2. Multicultural approach
•appreciate and recognize differences
Get pros and cons from vanessa
Majority groups: prefer colour blindness
•leads to dislike of minorities/strong ethnic identity
•if high prejudice, multiculturalism leads to worse interactions (reverse true for low in prejudice)
Minority groups: prefer multiculturalism
•greater ethnic identification with less perception of threat
•colour blindness: more mentally taxing to downplay identity
Cultural psychology vs the world no
- Cross cultural psychology
•Similarities: both study the role of cultural processes on human psychology
•Differences: cross culture compares and looks for differences and universals - Sociology
•Similarities: both study the relationship between one’s cultural environment and their mental processes/behaviours
•Differences: focus on big social structures (social class, gov.) heavier qualitative - Multicultural
•Similarities: both study how culture affects psychology at individual and social levels
•Differences: focuses on how people of different backgrounds interact within one geopolitical context
Origins of culture *
1) Evoked culture
•humans have biologically encoded database of behaviours that activate in certain environmental conditions
•ex: environments have high levels of pathogens stay away from strangers, certain spices, etc
2) Transmitted culture
•people learn about culture through social learning and modelling
•ex: cultural change (moving from the carrabian to vanvouver - buy umbrella)
