Intro to Cultural Psych

Question 1

Kroeber & Kluckholm’s academic definitions of culture

Answer 1

• Descriptive definition
• Historical definition
• Normative Definition
• Structural Definition
• Psychological definition

Question 2

Kroeber & Kluckholm: descriptive definition of culture

Answer 2

• culture refers to “all social activities in the broadest sense, such as language, marriage, property system, etiquette, industries, art, etc.”
• Ex. Definition of German culture: people speaking a Germanic language who have a diet consisting of lots of meat

Question 3

Kroeber & Kluckholm: historical definition of culture

Answer 3

• culture is the total heredity (vs. Biological heredity) of mankind, while as a specific term a culture means a particular strain of social hierarchy
• Ex. Definition of Chinese culture: people with 5000 years of history characterized by philosophical and scholarly progress

Question 4

Kroeber & Kluckholm: normative definition of culture

Answer 4

• culture is all standardized social procedures and customs, passed on socially, that form a people’s way of life
• Ex. Definition of Korean culture: people who are younger are socially required to be respectful to people who are older than them

Question 5

Kroeber & Kluckholm: structural definition of culture

Answer 5

• Structural definition: culture is a system or organization of interdependent values common to specific social groups, forming a pattern unique to each society
• Ex. Korean culture: respect elders -> demonstrating respect for authority

Question 6

Kroeber & Kluckholm: psychological definition of culture

Answer 6

Psychological definition: culture consists of all results of human-learned effort at adjustment to pressures (emphasis on learning)

Question 7

Our textbook’s definitions of culture

Answer 7

• INFORMATION acquired from other members of one’s species through social learning can that affect one’s behaviours (more psychological)
• GROUP OF INDIVIDUALS existing in some shared context (more descriptive)

Question 8

Issues with defining culture

Answer 8

• Cultural boundaries are fuzzy boundaries: difficult to know where one ‘culture’ ends and another begins (ex. Because China borders so many different countries, you’ll see different types of culture in different locations)
• Constant changes: culture changes over time (ex. Support for gay marriage and marijuana has increased with time)
• Often more differences within cultural groups than between cultural groups (ex. China: Northeast has more Mongolian and Korean culture, southwest culture influenced by rice farming, etc.)

Question 9

Evolution of general psychology & cultural psychology: Wilhelm Wundt

Answer 9

founding father of psych in the early 1900s, established one of the first psych labs in Germany studying low-level processes like memory; established importance of strict experimental controls; later focused on higher-level processes like language, religion, etc. (what we would consider culture) -> argued that when we study these things, we need to relax experimental controls

Question 10

Evolution of general psychology & cultural psychology: John B. Watson

Answer 10

founder of behaviourism in the early 1900s (behaviourism = human behaviours are simply what can be objectively measured as stimulus-response patterns) -> if we can’t measure something using stimulus-response patterns, it’s not psychology

Question 11

Evolution of general psychology & cultural psychology: Cognitive revolution

Answer 11

psychologists recognized that humans have thoughts, feelings, and mental processes with that have meaning -> rise of computers led to use of computer as metaphor for brain -> assumed that brains were the same; that non-western brains were the same as western brains -> culture became statistical noise to be controlled for

Question 12

Evolution of general psychology & cultural psychology: Richard Shweder

Answer 12

in the 1980s, Richard Shweder recommended that we think in more nuanced ways about that metaphor -> brains are active and influence environment (we create art and architecture, etc.) -> mind and environment mutually constitute each other (culture cannot be eliminated as statistical noise)

Question 13

Universality tree

Answer 13

Is it cognitively available?

• If not -> non-universal (cultural invention -> cognitive tool not found in all cultures; ex. abacus)
• If so, is it used the same way?
• • If not -> existential universal (cognitive tool found in all cultures, but serves different functions in different cultures; ex. criticism)
• • If so, does it have the same accessibility?
• – If not -> functional universal (cognitive tool serves the same function in all cultures, but present in different degrees; ex. punishment)
• – If so -> accessibility universal (no variation -> cognitive tool equally accessible in, and serves the same purpose across all cultures; ex. Social facilitation)

Question 14

Examples of culturally universal things vs. culturally variable thing

Answer 14

• Culturally universal things:
• • Ability count to 2
• • Label for black
• • Smiling when happy
• Culturally variable things:
• • Ability to count to 3+
• • Label for blue
• • Sticking tongue out when feeling embarrassed

Question 15

How might something be universal and culturally specific at the same time?

Answer 15

• More culturally variable = more specific
• • Ex. mathematical computation beyond 2
• More universal = more general
• • Ex. mathematical computation

Question 16

Why is it hard to assess whether things are universal or culturally variable?

Answer 16

Lack sufficient data to properly assess universality

Question 17

The WEIRD Phenomenon

Answer 17

• WEIRD = Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic
• Vast majority of top psychological data comes from these countries (ie. USA)
• Majority of top psychological data also comes from undergrads
• WEIRD countries only make up 16% of population, yet 96% of psych data

Question 18

Influence of culture on the Muller-Lyer Illusion

Answer 18

• Muller-Lyer Illusion was assumed to be a basic part of human psychology, but many cultural groups are not susceptible to this illusion
• • American samples tend to be outliers (on the extreme end of susceptibility), yet are mistakenly assumed to be representative of human psychology as a whole
• • Why are we susceptible to this illusion? -> Carpentered-world hypothesis: our visual environment is filled with corners, and our visual systems are so accustomed to seeing them that our visual system created geometric shapes such as the ones in the Muller-Lyer illusion, and adjusts accordingly

Question 19

Figure-line task (squares): what brain areas are being used, and how does it relate to culture?

Answer 19

• left inferior parietal lobule and right inferior precentral gyrus –> both areas associated with increased attentional control
• East Asians use more energy for absolute task compared to relative task; Americans are the opposite (culturally less familiar tasks require more attentional control; takes more effort to engage in tasks that are culturally unfamiliar → culture and brain are intricately intertwined)

Question 20

3 cautions about culture

Answer 20

• People from different places are not “fundamentally different”
• Culture is not something one is born with, but something one learns to have
• Culture is not a biological construct, and cultural differences are not necessarily biological differences

Question 21

2 different approaches to culture

Answer 21

• colour-blind approach

- multi-cultural approach

Question 22

colour-blind approach (and its pros/cons)

Answer 22

• emphasizing similarities between people of different groups and downplaying or ignoring differences
• • Pros: even subtle distinctions between groups can cause discrimination; may assist in fostering more harmony and cohesiveness in a globalizing world by promoting things everyone agrees on; may help promote empathy
• • Cons: ignoring differences = not learning about those differences

Question 23

multicultural approach (and its pros/cons)

Answer 23

• appreciate and recognize differences; trying to understand where those differences come from
• • Pros: real differences exist, and we can’t ignore them; can adopt superordinate goals to encourage feelings of unity; appreciating/understanding differences and learning more about the world
• • Cons: overly anticipate differences and lead to stereotyping

Question 24

how does majority vs. minority status influence your approach to culture?

Answer 24

• Majority groups:
• • Tends to endorse colour-blindness (bc it usually promotes their culture)
• • Colour-blindness leads to dislike of minorities with strong ethnic identities
• • If high in prejudice, multiculturalism leads to worse interactions (reverse is true of low in prejudice)
• Minority groups:
• • Tend to prefer multiculturalism (less pressure to downplay your cultural identity)
• • Under colour blindness, can be taxing to hide cultural identity
• • Under multiculturalism, greater ethnic identification, less perception of threat (ie. discrimination or physical threat)

Question 25

what things do we do that aren’t influenced by cultural environment?

Answer 25

• Basic biological functions
• Exchanging commodities
• Reproduction

Question 26

cultural psychology vs. cross-cultural psychology

Answer 26

• Similarities: both deal with the role of cultural processes on various aspects of human psychology
• Differences: CCP compares across numerous cultures, looks for differences and universals

Question 27

cultural psychology vs. sociology

Answer 27

• Similarities: both deal with the relationship between one’s cultural environment and one’s mental processes and behaviours
• Differences: focus is on large and abstract societal structures (eg. social classes, government institutions), heavier use of qualitative measures

Question 28

Cultural psychology vs. Multicultural psychology

Answer 28

• Similarities: both involve studying how culture affects psychology at both individual and social levels
• Differences: focus is on how people of different cultural backgrounds interact with each other within the context of one geopolitical context (usually a country)