Enculturation (Lesson 2)

Question 1

Differentiate humans from animals

Answer 1

Humans have thinking abilities to share intentions with one another that animals do not have. In other words, humans can get into another person’s mind, see things from that person’s point of view, understand the intentions of each other.

Question 2

Advantage of shared intentionality

Answer 2

This unique ability of humans to engage in shared intentionality allows us to engage in “cultural learning”—that is, learning not only from others but through others

Question 3

Michael Tomasello

Answer 3

Studies how humans are unique from other animals in this aspect of cultural learning at Max Planck University in Leipzig, Germany.

Question 4

How did Tomasello differentiate chimpanzees and orangutans to two-year old human children?

Answer 4

The great apes and children looked very similar in terms of how they thought about space, quantities, and causality. But there was one big difference. The children were much more sophisticated than the great apes in the ways they thought about the social world. Children understood intentionality, social learning, and social communication on a much deeper and complex level than the great apes.

Question 5

Define Socialization

Answer 5

The process by which we learn and internalize the rules and patterns of the society in which we live. This process, which occurs over a long time, involves learning and mastering societal norms, attitudes, values, and belief systems. The process of socialization starts early, from the very first day of life.

Question 6

Define Enculturation

Answer 6

Enculturation is the process whereby individuals learn their group’s culture through experience, observation, and instruction.

The gradual process of an individual or group learning and adapting to the norms and values of a culture.

Question 7

What is the difference between socialization and enculturation?

Answer 7

Socialization generally refers to the actual process and mechanisms by which people learn the rules of society—what is said to whom and in which contexts.

Enculturation generally refers to the products of the socialization process—the subjective, underlying, psychological aspects of culture that become internalized through development.

Question 8

Agents of Socialization and enculturation

Answer 8

The people (siblings, extended families, and peers ), institutions, and organizations that exist to help ensure that socialization (or enculturation) occurs.

The first and most important of these agents is parents, who help instill cultural norms and values in their children, reinforcing those norms and values when they are learned and practiced well and correcting mistakes in that learning.

Question 9

Bronfenbrenner

Answer 9

Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory of Human Development

Question 10

Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory of Human Development

Answer 10

Bronfenbrenner argues that it is only by examining the child in relation to his or her contexts, can we understand how a child develops. An important tenet of ecological systems theory is that children are not simply passive recipients of the enculturation and socialization processes.

Question 11

Super and Harkness’ notion of a developmental niche (Super & Harkness, 1986, 1994, 2002)

Answer 11

The developmental niche focuses on how the broader macrosystem structures the child’s immediate microsystems.

In their niche, children are influenced by the various socialization agents and institutions around them, ensuring their enculturation. At the same time, the child also brings his or her temperamental disposition, motivations, and cognitions to the interaction.

Question 12

To what extent do peers contribute to child development?

Answer 12

It may depend on how rapidly the culture is changing.

Question 13

Three types of cultures with differing levels of peer influence on the socialization

Answer 13

Post-figurative Cultures
Co-figurative Cultures
Pre-figurative Cultures

Question 14

Post-figurative Cultures

Answer 14

Cultural change is slow, socialization occurs primarily by elders transferring their knowledge to their children. In this case, elders hold the knowledge necessary for becoming a successful and competent adult.

Question 15

Co-figurative Cultures

Answer 15

Cultural change occurs more rapidly, adults continue to socialize their children, but peers play a greater role in socializing each other. Young people may have to turn to one another for advice and information.

Question 16

Pre-figurative Cultures

Answer 16

Culture is changing so rapidly that young people may be the ones to teach adults. The knowledge that adults hold may not be sufficient for the next generation, and adults may need to look to younger people for advice and information.

Question 17

Exposure to Peer Groups

Answer 17

Cultures vary in the exposure that children have to their peer groups.

In industrialized countries, children spend a significant amount of time with same-aged peers.

The nature and strength of peers as socializing agents in these industrialized cultures will differ from other cultures.

For instance, children growing up in solitary farm settlements will have limited options to interact with a wide range of potential playmates.

Children growing up in a hunting and gathering society may be socialized by multiple-age peers instead of the same-age groups that are characteristic of countries with formal education, where age-stratified schooling is the norm (Krappmann, 1996).

Question 18

Dan Olweus

Answer 18

A research professor of psychology in Norway, conducted the first large-scale scientific study of bullying in the 1980s. His research has led an anti-bullying movement in countries around the world to acknowledge peer bullying as a serious problem in schools and develop interventions to combat bullying.

Question 19

3 Criteria of Bullying by Olweus

Answer 19

Olweus (1993) outlined three criteria to define bullying:

(1) intentional physical or psychological harm,

(2) that is based on a power imbalance between the bully and victim. The imbalance of power can refer to differences in age, physical size, having or not having a disability, or being of majority versus minority status.

(3) which is repeated over time.

Question 20

Peter K. Smith

Answer 20

A research psychologist in London, has explored how the definition and expression of bullying may differ across cultures. He and his colleagues studied children (8 year olds) and adolescents (14 year olds) in 14 countries—Austria, China, England, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, and Thailand (Smith, Cowie, Olafsson, & Liefooghe, 2002).

To identify what was considered bullying, 25 stick-figure pictures of different situations were shown to children and adolescents in each country. They then had to decide which actions were considered bullying. Twenty-three pictures depicted various forms of aggressive or exclusionary behavior that might be considered bullying (such as excluding a child from playing a game) and two pictures illustrated prosocial behaviors (such as offering a pencil to another child who forgot to bring one).

Question 21

Three major components of Developmental Niche

Answer 21

The developmental niche includes three major components:

the physical and social setting,
the customs of child care and child rearing,
and the psychology of the caregivers.

The developing child is influenced by all three components, or more precisely by their interaction.