Lecture 5 - Cross-Cultural Social Psychology

Question 1

(lecture synopsis):

Cultures concern groups of people, but these can be defined at multiple levels from transnational cultures such as Western culture to individual villages that may have distinctive languages and traditions.
Acquiring culture - enculturation - takes a long time and is not complete until adulthood. This is illustrated in a study by Miller (1984) where differences in causal attribution between Indian and American participants emerged gradually during childhood and into adulthood.
Effects of culture on topics of interest to psychologists are common in social psychology but also occur in processes that might seem more fundamental, such as perception and drawing of lines. Research suggests a fundamental difference between cultures in thinking styles: analytical thinking, focussing on objects and their features, and holistic thinking, focussing on the object in its context.
That relates to an important dimension on which cultures vary: individualism, focussing on people as independent and responsible for themselves (characteristic of Western nations) and collectivism or interdependence, in which people are identified more in terms of relations with others (characteristic of East Asian nations).
Culture influences the very questions we seek to investigate as researchers, so its influence in all of social psychology runs deep.

Answer 1

(lecture synopsis):

Question 2

(essential lecture reading):

Miller, J. G. (1984). Culture and the development of everyday social explanation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 961-978.

Kitayama, S., Duffy, S., Kawamura, T., & Larsen, J. T. (2003). Perceiving an object and its context in different cultures: a cultural look at New Look. Psychological Science, 14,201-206.

Answer 2

(essential lecture reading):

Question 3

(lecture):

What is culture?

Answer 3

(lecture):

This question is almost impossible to answer.

In short:
Culture involves social learning. We become a member of a culture by growing up in that culture and learning how to behave and think by how others around us learn and think.

Cultures are not static or unchanging. No culture is absolutely fixed.

If we find it hard to define what culture is, then we find it even harder to analyse how it influences psychology.

Question 4

(lecture):

Describe this study:
Miller, J. G. (1984). Culture and the development of everyday social explanation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 961-978.

Answer 4

(lecture):

PROCEDURE:

• 1 group Pps: Born + brought up in America
• 2 group Pps: Born and brought up in India (specifically hindu Indian)
• 8 year old, 11 year olds, 15 year olds, + adults.
• They had to think of behaviours recently done by people they knew. (2 examples of good behaviours + 2 examples of bad behaviours)
• Had to then explain why they person did what they did (this is the causal attribution question that they had chosen for themselves.
• Researchers coded these explanations into various categories.
• 2 important categories: the person + the situation (explanations that refer to the person that did the behaviour, or explanations that refer to the situation that persons was in)

RESULTS:

• American Pps strongly tend to favour person attributions (40% of their attributions were to the person + only 18% were to the situation).
• Indian Pps were the other way around (40% of their attributions were to the situation + 18% were to the person).

CONCLUSION:

• The process of growing into a culture (inculturation) takes a long time. It takes the whole of childhood and is not complete until adulthood.
• It’s tempting to think of the effects of culture as being relatively superficial, but they’re not.

Getting into your culture is a process that goes on for a very long time.

Question 5

(lecture):

Describe this study:
Kitayama, S., Duffy, S., Kawamura, T., & Larsen, J. T. (2003). Perceiving an object and its context in different cultures: a cultural look at New Look. Psychological Science, 14,201-206.

Answer 5

(lecture):

PROCEDURE:

• Comparing American Pps with Japanese Pps.
• The Pps were shown a box with a vertical line drawn on it. (example on Ppt. slide)
• Given 1 of 2 tasks to do (between subjects):
  TASK 1 (called the absolute task):
• Shown a smaller box and asked to draw in the box a line that was the same length as the line that was in the first box.
  TASK 2 (called the relative task):
• Pps asked to draw a line such that the proportion of the length of the line and the height of the box was the same as in the large box.
• While Pps were doing this they were in a scanner and the authors were looking at brain activation in the Pps. Looking at areas of the brain that were associated with attentive control and concentration. (Essentially looking at how easy or difficult the task was for Pps).

RESULTS:

• American Pps found the absolute task easier than the absolute task.
• The Japanese Pps found the relative task easier than the absolute task.

CONCLUSIONS:
- Results show cultural differences in thinking styles;
ANALYTIC thinking (used in the absolute task)
HOLISTIC thinking (used in the relative task)

Therefore Americans find analytic thinking easier than holistic thinking, and vice versa for Japanese Pps.

Question 6

(lecture):

Describe analytic thinking.

Describe holistic thinking.

Answer 6

(lecture):

Analytic thinking:
Objects are perceived as existing independently from their context.

Holistic thinking:
Objects are understood in terms of how they relate to their context.

(lecture recording around 23 mins)

Question 7

(lecture):

Describe individualism.

Describe interdependence.

Answer 7

(lecture):

Individualism:
people are independent and responsible for themselves.
Prevalent in U.S.A., U.K., Australia, Western Europe.

Interdependence:
People are identified in terms of relations with others.
Prevalent in East Asia, South America.

(lecture recording around 25 mins)