Lecture 1 Flashcards
What is culture? -> Edward Burnett Tylor (anthropologist, 1871)
that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society
-> multitude of things
-> sth acquired and shared
What is culture? -> Geert Hofstede (Dutch psychologist, 2001)
the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group of people from another
-> programming = sth acquired
What is culture? -> Steven J.Heine (2008)
> any kind of information (ideas, beliefs, technology, habit, practice) that is acquired from other members of one’s species through social learning that is capable of affecting an individual’s behaviors
> Particular group of people living within shared context and exposed to same cultural information example: “Western” vs “East Asian” cultures
What is culture? -> Alex Mesoudi (2015)
socially transmitted information
cultural psychology approach
not only interested in observable habits, artifacts, behavior or institutions
interested in driving underneath forces (= latent processes)
What is NOT culture?
-> only cultural values
-> only nation (often used as cultural proxy)
-> homogenous/inwariant within group (people can reject dominant cultural values)
-> stable (it constantly evolves)
How unstable are cultural values?
-> matrix:
1) survival values - self-expression values
2) traditional values - secular rational values
there is prominent change over time!
however, there is also some stability -> cultures are moving but they don’t change into complete opposites (as cultures are build on what happened before)
goals of general psychology
psychological processes = invariant, universal
differences are superficial = noise
mind independent from culture (mind as computer)
goal: to understand the mind independent of content and context
goals of cultural psychology
psychological processes shaped by culture
differences = real and affect deep structure
mind interwined with culture
goal: to understand how the mind is inter-dependent with its content and context
How deep is effect of culture? absolute task vs relative task
Figure-line task
There are 2 tasks:
1. absolute task: in another smaller square → reproduce the line they saw in a big square (big square is gone - memory based)
- relative task: shrink the square and replicate the proportions (relative size)
challenging tasks = involves more attentional control
(left inferior parietal lobule + right inferior precentral gyrus activated)
findings:
- absolute task: more challenging (=required more attentional control) for East Asians
- relative task: more challenging for Americans
Why absolute task is harder for East Asians, but relative task is harder for Americans?
One possible explanation:
East Asians - holistic way of thinking - word as a whole - how elements are related to each other?
Americans - more analytical way of thinking - focus on taking information out of context -
What illustrates Muller-Lyer illusion? Why American undergraduates are most susceptible to it?
if you move away from Western cultrues, industrialized, educated etc. → illusion is not as strong (almost not present)
one possible explanation -> carpenter corner
reflex angle (kąt wklęsły) seems to have loner lines than oblique angle (kąt wypukły)
when you are growing in environment withut these angles (lines) - neural networks weren’t trained to perceive those lines in 3D space context
also Americans respond more extremely than other Westerners!
How sth can be both universal and culture-dependent?
universal - language use - consonents and vowels -> culture dependent - specific ways of speaking
universal - incest disgust -> culture dependent - variation in what is considered incest (for example dependent on clan membership)
What are levels of universality?
1) existential universal
2) functional universal
3) accessibility universal
Is specific cognitive tool available across cultures?
NO
then it points into cultural invention such as (abacus)
then it is nonuniversal
existential universal
-> specific cognitive tool available ACROSS cultures
however, it doesn’t do the same thing!
for example: instrinsic vs extrinsic motivation
after failure, Americans get demotivated, but East Asians experience increase in instrinsic motivations
functional univeral
-> specific cognitive tool available ACROSS cultures AND is used to solve the
same problems across cultures
HOWEVER, it is more accessible in some cultures than in others
example would be costly punishment after breaking social rules
people differ across cultures in how much cost they are willing to pay to punish sb
What are conditions for accessibly universal?
-> specific cognitive tool available ACROSS cultures AND is used to solve the
same problems across cultures AND is accessible to the same degree across cultures
mostly psychological processes that emerge in early infancy
example: social faciliation
What is most prominent characteristic of psychological research sample?
Western
Educated
Industrialized
Rich
Democratic
color-blind (culture-blind) approach
idea that people can interact without giving much attention to one’s cultural background
multicultural approach
focus on respecting group differences
How to study cultural variation?
1) pick different cultures
2) look at differences in variable you are interested in
which aspect of culture can explain that difference?
what are characteristics of cultural values?
preferences for one state of affairs over another
distinguishes countries NOT individuals
more of continuum, than exclusive categories!
Geert Hoftstede - cultural values
1) individualism/collectivism
2) power distance
3) uncertainty/avoidance
4) masculinity/feminity
5) long-term/short-term
6) indulgence/restraint
Michele Gelfand - cultural values
tightness/looseness
tolerance of deviant behavior and severity of punishment to norm violators
are individualism/collectivism and tightness/looseness the same?
NO!
they are moderately correlated -> example: Norway individualistic + tight, Sweden rather loose but equally individualistic
what are methodological issues in cross-cultural research?
COSI concerns
C -> causation
O -> operationalization
S -> sampling
I -> interpretation
Causation concern
how do I design my study + what conclusions can I draw?
Operationalization concern
how do I measure my variables + how do I construct my material?
sampling concern
which cultures should I study?
Interpretation concern
what do my data tell me?
Sampling approaches
1) testing for universality
2) testing for cultural variance
testing for universality (not that common in cultural psychology)
Is sth an universal phenomenon that exists across cultures?
option 1: randomly select as many countries as possible (great approach but often not an option)
option 2: select maximally different cultures - if there is no difference = good evidence for universality
however what if you find a difference? you don’t know what caused it…
testing for cultural variation
option 1: randomly select as many countries as possible (ideal but often not realistic)
option 2: just minimal difference approach: match two cultural groups in all non-cultural variables (age, SES, gender, education) so that the only difference is cultural value of interest (such as collectivism)
downside: culture is not manipulated - so you don’t get definite answers; in many cases you just compare students in EIRD contexts -> can you really generalize then?
Operationalization concerns
main objective: ensure all study materials are equivalent across cultural groups
1) construct equivalence
2) methodological equivalence (equity in familiarity with stimulus and response procedure)
3) linguistic equivalence (translation accuracy, retention of connotations)
construct equivalence
how do you measure happiness?
if you ask participants: “How proud are you about your achievements in life?” you implicitly assume that all people feel happy when they achieve sth personally (but for many people group achievements are more prominent)
is the meaning of happiness the same acrorss cultures?
methodological equivalence
participants must understand questions/situations in the same way
example: burglar breaking in (but there is a difference in how windows open in America vs India - so participants approach situation differently)
linguistic equivalence
how to deal with language differences?
-> translation
problem: untranslatable words/cultural-specifics
solutions
1) back translation
you translate the questionnaire from your language to the other; then other person translates their questionnaire from their language to your language = you can notice if items are the same or different
2) bilingual investigators/collaborators (ideal)
3) avoid very short/vague items (with non transatable words)
How to ensure bias-free result interpretation?
Consider following cultural differences in response styles:
1) moderacy + extremity bias
2) acquiescence bias (=agreement bias)
3) reference-group effect
moderacy and extremity bias
East Asians show moderacy bias (choosing answers in the middle)
Hispanic and African-American show extremity bias (chosing extreme answers)
what are solutions for moderacy/extremity bias?
1) avoid scales with middle response option (however, it doesnt account for extremity)
2) yes/no format (reduced variance of responses)
3) standardize the scores! -> it alters the data, so it is only useful for comparison patterns
What are cons vs pros of standardization of respones?
Standardization involves taking participant mean and looking at test results by comparing them to this mean (difference relative to the mean)
However, major drawback is that there is underlying assumption that average level of response is identical across cultures - problematic if you look at patterns of responses across broad array of measures!
It is fine to assume everyone has the same amount of personality
However, when you have 10-item measure of talkativeness → standardization forces each person to have the same level of talkativeness
Acquiescence bias
agreement bias - participants tend to agree more (prominent in East Asians)
how to overcome acquiescence bias?
1) use 50% reverse-scored items
2) standardize scores
3) avoid general items, specify contexts
reference group effect
comparison to most other people around us
example: -
- “I am helpful” compared to all the people I know? → in collectivistic cultures, people are more helpful in general, so participant may score themselves lower
How to account for reference group effect?
1) use concrete scenarios; 2) use concrete response choices to concrete scenario; 3) avoid quantifiers (very); 4) use behavioral or physiological measures (not self-reports)
How to account for causation?
culture cannot be manipulated -> you can always implement quasi-experiments tho!
methods used in cultural psychology
1) survey
2) field experiement
3) neuroscience methods
4) situation sampling
5) cultural products
6) cultural priming
survey
Pros
- economic
- easy to sample a lot of participants
- some equivalence issues can be overcomed by looking at patterns of means across groups
Cons
- bias prone due to self-report
- without experimental manipulation, no causal claim possible
field experiment
Pros
- high ecological validity (real world vs lab)
Cons
- extraneous variables that cannot be controlled (weather, strikes)
such as study where they send job applications of ex convicts (some convicts were sentenced due to crime of honor) to check if they will be treated differentially in Southern vs Nouthern USA regions
neuroscience methods
PROS
-understand neurological/genetical underpinnings of cultural differences
- scan brain activity/EEG - understand how different tasks come with different brain activations
- allows to draw conclusions about biological bases of cultural variation
CONS
- expensive + time intensive, usually, small samples (power issues)
-emerging field - not always clear what differences in one gene polymorphism mean
what 3 methods are particularly close to manipulating culture?
1) situation sampling
2) cultural products
3) cultural priming
situation sampling
- in different cultures, people encounter different types of situations
- these culturally shaped situations lead us to adopt habitual ways of thinking about ourselves and our world
1) Participants from different culturs describe situations of a certain type (example: high self esteem)
2) Participants from both cultures indicate how they respond to selection of situations from both cultures
2 types of effects investigated:
1) situation effect -> Do situation from one culture lead to different responses than those from other cultures?
2) participant effect -> Do participants from one culture respond differentially than those from the other culture?
evaluation of situation sampling
PROS
sheds light on the process of how culture (in the world) affects people (in the head) → causal inferences
CONS
time intensive multi-step research
difficult to know what to leave in situation descriptions (what is necessary to understand them) and what to remove (cultural specifics)
cultural products
looking at cultural artifacts
1) specify hypothesis for example about children books
2) focus on most relevant products -> most popular books
3) code data -> for presence of psychological constructs of interest (for example how is affect expressed in children books?)
cultural products - evaluation
PROS
- cultural products reflect the most prevalent cultural ideals/messages that members of culture produce and are exposed to
- data are already available - only need to be coded
CONS
-mostly requires trained coders (time and resource intensive, subjectivity)
- limited scope - ideally supplemented with evidence for the effect of exposure to cultural products
cultural priming
closest to causal manipulations
1) activation of cultural ideas -> for example circle certain words, show flags of different countries etc.
2) thinking or acting in culturally distinctive ways
cultural priming - evaluation
PROS
- within-group design of priming studies is not affected by equivalence issues
- allows causal inference about effect of cultural mindsets (proxy for culture)
CONS
- culture is chronic and sustained by environment, cultural mindset is temporary
- not all cultural ideas are accessible across cultures
