Defining dimensions of culture Flashcards
What is culture?
Originating in anthropology
Increasing impact on social sciences over course of 20th century
Kroeber & Kluckhohn (1963) famously listed 161 different definitions!
What are some examples of anthropology definitions of culture?
“That complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, laws, customs and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man [sic] as a member of society” (Tylor, 1871)
“The man-made [sic] part of the human environment” (Herskovits, 1948)
Culture includes both physical artefacts and social system
What are psychological definitions of culture?
The totality of equivalent + complementary learned meanings maintained by a human pop., or by identifiable segments of a pop., and transmitted from one generation to the next (Rohner, 1984)
“The collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group […] of people from another (Hofstede, 2001)
What are social systems (cultural groups)
The behaviour of multiple individuals within a culturally-organised population, including their patterns of interaction and networks of social relationships” (Rohner, 1984)
Might include nations, organisations, families, etc.
Social systems ‘have’ cultures
Cultures do not ‘have’ social systems
Cultures make behaviour comprehensible
What are problems of psychologists face whilst studying culture?
Theorising based on stereotypes = why exploring is important + being aware of power differences (be open minded)
Methodology issues = working in diff. languages, comparability of constructs in language, response style (rude to disagree in culture), cultures are not indvdls.
What is the emic approach?
Berry (1989)
Grounded in spec. cultural context
No claim to generality or attempt to compare
What is the epic approach?
Berry (1989)
Aspire to universality or at least comparability
Impose etic vs derived etic
What does cultural psychology aim to do?
Question: How do cultures ‘work’?
Psychological study of cultural processes
Focus on reflexive relationship between indvl + social system
Usually ‘within-culture’ focus
Social anthropology = social cognition from 1990s
Qualitative studies in single cultures = experiments in two or more cultures
What does cross-cultural psychology aim to do?
Question: How and why do psychological processes differ across cultures?
Influence of culture on psychology
Focus on cross-national comparison
Culture as a level of analysis
Get away from relativism = higher-order universality
Origins in social/organisational psychology
Mainly surveys, some experiments
What does indigenous psychology aim to do?
Question: How can psychology become more globally representative?
Overcoming power dynamics by empowering diverse local perspectives (~decolonisation)
Indigenous methods
Initially avoid cultural comparisons
“Psychology” = Western indigenous psychology
Can lead to cross-indigenous approach
Aims to build research from diff. cultural groups.
Describe the early cross-cultural studies.
Failures to replicate US findings:
Conformity (rest of world > US & Europe)
Social loafing (US effects reversed in Pacific Asia)
Problem is how to explain these differences
Showing differences between nations is just desc., but social science needs explanation
Need a theory of how cultures differ
Attempts to construct cultural ‘map of the world’
Who is Hofstede and what did he do?
IBM (HERMES) employee surveys
Originally conducted 1967 + 1973
> 116,000 respondents = 72 countries
Qs abt job satisfaction, perceptions of work situations, personal goals + beliefs
Wide variety of response formats
Hofstede conducted secondary analysis to look for dimensions of cultural variation
What did Hofstede find in his research?
Aggregated the data = ecological level of analysis + units of his analysis were the different countries.
Robinson’s (1950) paradox = same variables might relate to each other diff. @ diff. levels of analysis
State %immigrants and %literacy (r =.526)
Individual immigrant status and literacy w/in state (r = -.118)
Different explanations at each level of analysis
Ecological fallacy = falsely extrapolating group-level findings to individual level of explanation
Reverse ecological fallacy = wrongly attributing prop. of indvdls to cultures
What is acquiescence bias and how did this affect Hofstede’s research?
Methodological problem
People in different cultures use response scales in different ways
Variation in acquiescence – in some cultures people tend to agree more with everything
Hofstede’s solution
Country mean agreement with all items
Subtract and/or control in analyses
What was Hofstede’s analysis?
Analysis at ecological level = Sufficient data for CC analysis of 40 countries
For each item = weighted country mean
- Combination of averages w/in diff. occupational groups w/in IBM (marketing + service depts.)
- Corrected for acquiescence where possible
Theoretically guided data exploration led to
‘discovery’ of 4 dimensions of CC variation