LB: Cultural Psychology, W9 Flashcards
Invariance and Psychology
- Psychological trait/phenomena is ‘real’ and doesn’t change across times, places and contexts (invariant throughout time)
- Notion in natural science is: chemical reaction will be the same every time in all equal contexts
- In psychology, suggests it’s possible to find universal truths of mind and behaviour irrespective of culture (often justification for ignoring culture!) proposes a philosophical challenge > invariant = not variant and consistent
- This supported Psychology as being a more scientific discipline because things like invariance is a characteristic in natural sciences
Philosophical challenge for Psychology
• Mind and behaviour are both Individual and Social (so how can culture not impact behaviour and be invariant)
• Social and Individual and Individual and Social interact (as do the biological aspects of being human too > humans are BIOPSYCHOSOCIAL beings)
- Human beings are shaped by culture and shape culture (society is the way it is because of human influences) > Internal external loop > E.g: Human capacity for language acquisition
What is culture?
• Culture is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behaviour and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities and habits of the individuals in these groups.
• Can take two key approaches to explore culture
○ emic perspectives- within a culture and cultural similarities > normally considerate + understanding of the culture
etic perspectives- from outside of a culture and cultural differences > usually conducted by a researcher + considered culture neutral
Cultures in Psychology are thought of as: Individual or Social
Individual:
• Emphasise the needs of the individual over the needs of the group.
• People are seen as independent and autonomous.
• Social behaviour tends to be dictated by the attitudes and preferences of individuals.
• Cultures in North America and Western Europe tend to be individualistic.
Social:
• Emphasize the needs of the group over the individual.
• Relationships and interconnectedness central to identity.
- Cultures in Asia, Central America, South America, and Africa tend to be more collectivistic.
Psychology and Culture vs Culture and Psychology
Psychology and Culture (cross-cultural psychology)
• Humans have psychological capacities as a result of biology and inheritance
• Culture ‘fits into’ these capacities and variation can be seen between human societies
• E.g. language- all share hardware for acquiring language, what language you acquire irrelevant
• Culture- social and influential; but not formative (Cross-cultural psychology)
Culture and Psychology
• Humans social creatures shaped strongly by culture and society they are in
• Psychological capacities are shaped by culture- not just different content, different form
• E.g. language- the language raised with shapes your psychological experiences of the world: e.g. Effect of on space and colour perception
• Culture- formative but constrained by biology (Cultural psychology)
Psychology and Culture: Historical Context
- ‘Founding fathers’ of psychology initially uninterested in culture due experimental and philosophical interest in the ‘inside of mind’
- Natural sciences and neurology influence on discipline
- Culture is STILL an often overlooked aspect of Psychology despite importance
- Wundt - Saw culture as important but not scientifically measurable > E.g. Behaviourism: Culture just a set of learned behaviours
Influence of Anthropology
- Anthropology was a contemporary discipline to Psychology & informed some of it’s thinkers & theorists
- Anthropology: the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behaviour, human biology, and societies, in both the present and past, including past human species
- Social anthropology studies patterns of behaviour, while cultural anthropology studies cultural meaning, including norms and values.
- Early anthologists interested in mind and culture and how culture shapes what people think > Ethnographic studies of non-Western peoples
- BUT- 19th and 20th century height of COLONIALISM- policy of a country seeking to extend or retain its authority over other people or territories, generally with the aim of economic dominance. In the process of colonisation, colonisers may impose their religion, language, economics, and other cultural practices on indigenous peoples
- Important- much research consciously or non-consciously informed by erroneous idea of racial and cultural ‘superiority’ of Europeans
Bartlett (1932) & War of Ghosts
• Critical of the way that North American and European culture was considered to be ‘superior’ and ‘advanced’ compared to indigenous peoples (colonialism)
• English participants read Native American Folklore story, “War of the Ghosts“: did not fit with English story-telling traditions
• Participants told to remember the story at different time periods
• Increased intervals between reading and recalling participants were less accurate and had less detail
• Stories were altered, participants omitted or added detail to ‘fit’ with English (more culturally familiar) forms of story-telling, e.g. remembering “canoes” from the story as “boats”.
• Meaning that the constructive nature of memory was influenced by subject’s own cultural schema (pockets of understanding)
• Note: in 1932 there was not as much global exposure + awareness so ppts would not have been aware
- Shows culture is important in many aspects such as memory
Psychology and Cultural Assumptions
Problem with ontological invariance in psychology
• Can forget theories and findings based on Western culture
• Assume culturally relative foundation on which psychology built is ‘correct’ way for mind and behaviour to be
• Assume general rules of mind and behaviour from observation of specific culture
• People from other cultures may perform poorly because they have been socialised/educated for this
Ethnocentrism
• seeing the world only from one’s own cultural perspective, and believing that this one perspective is both normal and correct. > has consequence for how people from other cultures are treated
• Often inadvertent lack of awareness that other ways of seeing things can be as valid as one’s own.
Culture and Intelligence testing
• Ignorance of culture and assumption Western psychology as ontological invariance has contributed to oppression.
• Dudgeon et al 2014: Historical review psychology treatment of Aboriginal Australians > Perform poorly on Western intelligence tests (QT) and Piagetian tests of child development > Results used to justify prejudice and need for ‘civilising’ (help) - partial justification of forced separation mid 20thC > treated as un-intelligent
• BUT Aboriginal Australians educated in ‘Westernised’ schools and culture perform at normal rates to Caucasian Australians > NOT the fault of the participants- fault of the measures which are culturally bound
- Cultural biases and cultural construction > Modify tests for cultural context- no difference in performance > similar scores across cultures
Galton & Intelligence
- We also need to understand the roots of theory-these beliefs can seep into ‘objective’ research
- Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911) Founder of psychometrics, primarily interested in the heritability of intelligence. BUT…was interested in the heritability of traits because of cultural adherence to racist and classist biological theories of time > An advocate for Eugenics, and biological interventions > suggested natural selection should be controlled by state (by killing or made sterile)
- Problematic because he made psychometrics while have prejudiced views > how will this impact measurement of intelligence from cultures different from Galtons?
Intelligence and Socio-Economic Inequality
- Those from higher socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds tend to attain higher marks
- Sacks (2000, p. 8): “Volvo effect” > argues you can make a good guess about a child’s standardised test scores from knowing how many degrees the parents have or car they drive
- Brooks-Gunn and Duncan (1997): Family income related to child-outcome
- Higher the family income, the higher the child’s outcome in education > could be due to the context of intelligence tests
- Croziet and Dutrevis (2004) IQ test situation that discriminates against those from lower SES backgrounds, people from high SES are more comfortable in the set exam environment than low SES and when the context is more fair low SES students perform better> Questions the validity of standardised intelligence tests
- Especially pertinent, when the relationship between intelligence and wellbeing is mediated by socioeconomic status (Dimitrijević et al., 2018)
- Consistently see, those from disadvantaged backgrounds are underperform > is this because of the person or because of the test?
WEIRD = Westernised, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic
- Since 2010 increased attention to continuing historical issue of using WEIRD participants in majority of psychology experiments.
- Surprising number of historical and current experiments conducted on University students. Findings from these studies then generalised to all human beings
- ‘WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species - frequent outliers [in]… visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. ’(Henrich et al., 2010)
- WEIRD participants make up: 80% psychology research subjects, 12% worlds population (67% all US studies use university students aged 18-21)
- Evidence WEIRD are Example: Visual Perception > 1966- U.S. college students perceive some visual illusions to a much greater degree than people from many other cultures, including the San foragers of the Kalahari. Some cultures were completely unaffected by certain illusions.
- Why? Environment raised in- built vs natural
- Inaccurate applications of WEIRD participants to whole populations even though they are not representative
WEIRD Populations and Personality
- Focus on the Big Five (Costa & McCrae)
- Personality as measure on a continuum in a given factor, e.g. extraversion-introversion (personality & Wellbeing)
- The big 5 (OCEAN) has relative cross-cultural stability (McCrae, 2002) > some slight variations at the facet-factor level (Rolland, 2002) > cross-cultural generalisability in neuroticism, openness and conscientiousness but agreeableness + openness seem to vary by culture
Honesty-humility factor exists in some cultures
- suggested than an additional factor ‘honesty-humility’ exists in some cultures > HEXACO model (e. g. Lee & Ashton, 2008) > big 5 may not explain personality in a culturally sensitive way
• Not evident in all cultures, OCEAN and HEXACO work as effectively as each other (Ion et al., 2017)
• Big five has shown to not be cross-culturally stable when tested on small-scale illiterate indigenous people in Bolivia (Gurven et al., 2013) >
Results not explained by educational level, Spanish fluency, sex, or age indicating cultural impact
• Some factors mixed together (e.g. extraversion and agreeableness) > Personality can be better-conceptualised as two factors, pro-sociality and industriousness (in the context of subsistence labour) > comes from impact of culture > their livelihood was dependent on subsistence labour which involves pro-sociality + industriousness making these factors more important in this particular community
• Authors argue that this may be because of deeply embedded traditional cultural practices so big five may not be a universal structure of personality > even the young and educated were deeply embedded in their cultural practices
• Consequently the big 5 doesn’t summarise personality in a culturally sensitive way > not identified across all cultures though showing there is cultural variation in the expression of personality
