Introduction Flashcards
What is culture?
How does culture exist?
Why does culture exist?
What: Culture is an information system shared by a group.
How: Transmitted through social learning
Why: That allows the group to meet basic needs of survival, pursue happiness and well being and derive meaning from life
What are objective elements of culture?
- Things that are tangible; we can touch, depict, see and eat
What are subjective elements of culture?
4pts
- Value, beliefs, norms, attitudes
What is the second definition of a culture ?
A group of people who are existing within some kind of shared context
Challenges to defining “culture”?
5pts
- Cultures are not monolithic –> culture isn’t one box that everyone fits into
- Ex- Sub-cultures –> French Canadian is a sub culture of Canadian culture
- Cultural contexts intersect
- Cultures are dynamic and change over time
- There is much more variation within a culture as between cultures
What distinguishes human culture from other animals is the BLANK of social learning.
What are 3 important factors
4pts
- Speed/efficiency
3 factors:
- Complexity
- Differentiation
- Institutionalization
What are key cognitive abilities that facilitate the unique quality of cultural learning in humans?
5pts
- Complex social cognition (ex- theory of mind)
- Memory
- Hypothetical reasoning
- Future planning/problem-solving
- Complex language
Ability to understand that others have minds, intentions, and perspectives different from one’s own.
Theory of Mind
What is cumulative cultural learning?
- Human culture is something that is collected over generations
What differentiates human culture from other animal cultures?
Cumulative cultural learning
What is ethnocentrism?
2pts
- Perceiving one’s own culture as the standard for comparison
- Tendency to judge people from other cultures by comparing them to your own culture
What does WEIRD stand for?
- Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich Democratic
What is general psychology vs cultural psychology?
2 pts and give 3 examples each.
General psychology: Assumes that the mind functions according to universal principles, independent of content and context
Example of universal behaviors: smiling when happy, the use of language, disgust regarding parent-child incest
Cultural psychology:
Assumes that the mind does NOT function independently of content and context
Examples of culturally variable behaviors: tongue biting when embarrassed, grammatical gender/verb tenses, disgust regarding cousin incest
What does non-universal mean? Give an example.
- Not cognitively available across cultures (cultural invention)
- Ex–> Abacus use
What does existential universal mean?
Cognitively available across cultures BUT function of behaviour varies/ what that behavior means varies across cultures
What does functional universal mean?
Cognitively available across cultures, same function across cultures but accessibility of behavior varies ( some cultures may do it and others not do it as frequently)
What does accessibility universal mean?
Give an example.
Cognitively available across cultures, same function across cultures, similar available across cultures
Ex- social facilitation
Much of current psychology is based on BLANK people
WEIRD
Cultural psychology seeks to examine the extent to which human behaviour is BLANK vs. BLANK as a function of the contexts in which we live
universal, variable
Culture is not unique to humans, but… is, thanks to our advanced BLANK abilities
Cumulative cultural learning
- Cognitive
