Quiz 2 Flashcards
How does cultural psychology agree or conflict with indigenous psychology?
o Similarities: Emic perspective (less so than Indigenous) Preference for localized methods (but will use others if local methods are insufficient). Look at culture specifics and reject culture universals. Culture is viewed as being inseparable from the individual. Culture is internal to the person.
o Differences: Researcher that does not have to be a local (i.e., an outsider with an emic perspective). Indigenous uses “formal” psychological theories. In contrast, cultural psychology uses folk theories (ethnotheories I.e. cultural models). Cultural has roots in anthropology.
How does cultural psychology agree or conflict with cross-cultural psychology?
o Similarities:
Researcher is an outsider.
Can compare multiple
groups.
o Differences: Focuses on universals and ignores specifics. Does not use localized methods. Emic/etic perspective. Culture is treated as a variable and not a process (antecedent i.e., external to the person).
How might cultural psychologists working from the cultural anthropology tradition treat universals (using the four levels), indigenous or cross-cultural?
o Cross-cultural: Would focus on accessibility universals. o Indigenous: Would look at non- universals. o Cultural: Would look at non-universals i.e. culture specifics. o Evolution: Would look at functional universals, existential universals and accessibility universals.
Difference between KMP between indigenous and cultural psychology?
When KMP is used by Maori people it is considered indigenous. When someone outside of the Maori culture uses KMP it is cultural psychology.
Universalism vs relativism stances of indigenous, cultural and cross-cultural psychology.
Indigenous takes a relativist stance (culture is internal and subjective and have a preference for culture-specific).
Cultural psychology takes a relativist stance i.e. culture specifics and against universals.
Cross-Cultural psychology takes a moderate universalism stance and focuses on accessibility universals.
what are the two main methods of cultural psychology?
- Ethnography: science or broader term referring to methods that involve an outsider taking an aic perspective. Participant observation is an example of an ethnographic method.
• A systematic method of leaving your own cultural frame to engage in other perspectives. • It requires long-term interactions with a particular group that is unfamiliar to the researcher (i.e., not your cultural group). • The goal is to translate, it’s probably the oddest thing in the universe.
- Participant Observation:
• A technique of field research, used in anthropology and sociology, by which an investigator (participant observer ) studies the life of a group by sharing in its activities.
What are the four forms of observation in cultural psychology?
- Naturalistic
- Laboratory-Based
- Participant
- Non-Participant
what are the (4) benefits of ethnography?
1. Minimal equipment
required:
o Only requires two things,
the ability to observe and a
writing device to record our
observations on.
2. Is participant-driven:
o You learn the context from
people who know it best.
o For example, when
European explorers who die
in environments that
indigenous people thrive in.
It highlights that indigenous
people have unique
knowledge Europeans
could benefit from.
o For example, Burke and
Wills did an expedition
where they were taken in by
native aboriginals. They
feed him on fish, berries and
Nardoo (unless it is washed
correctly it has an enzyme
that inhibits the uptake of
vitamin D. One of them died
from lack of vitamin D and
not starvation (regardless of
what they eat). Lost their
sight, weakness or pain in
joints and the abnormal
walk they develop with
rhythmic falling because
their bodies were not
receiving nutrients to
function. An example, of
how outsiders can lack vital
information about customs
and practices which can
have a very disastrous
effect on us.
o For example, hippos and
tomatoes in Zambia. All of
the projects he set up in
Africa failed. Everything he
touched he killed. Italians
tried to teach Zambians how
to grow Italian fruit and
vegetables. The locals had
no interest in learning it and
only showed up to be paid
for participation.
Researchers were shocked
that the locals did not have
agriculture in such a fertile
land. Instead of asking
them “why do you not grow
her” they thought oh thank
god we are here to teach
you and save you from
starvation. Hippos came
out of the river and ate their
tomatoes, and this was why
they do not grow food
there. He said why did you
not tell us about the
hippos?
Their response, you never
asked!
3. Avoid mistakes of not
knowing the cultural group
by taking lead from those
who know it best.
4. Leads to better questions,
better data, better
participation and better
research overall.What are the (6) challenges of ethnography?
- Being there changes things
(i.e., people act differently
because you are there
watching them).
o Important to remember your
positionality (assigned and
ascribed roles and
perspectives) and reflexivity
(reflecting on how your
positionality introduces bias
to the research). - Takes a long-time:
o Depending on how well you
know the context, it takes a
long time to learn how
things work and obtain an
emic perspective.
o Data collection is built on
relationships, and
relationships take time to
build.
o Major method: “deep
hanging out” is a common
aspect of ethnography
where you simply spend
time with the people in their
cultural context with where
the only goal is to learn. - EVERYTHING is data:
o It can be hard to tell what to
attend to because as a
researcher we are trying not
to pre-judge and leave our
biases at the door.
o Difficult in feeling like you
must always be “on” (i.e.,
always looking for data and
performing certain actions
around respondents).
o Removed from normal
environment and support
networks.
o IMPORTANT to have self-
care practices in place to
mitigate feeling
overwhelmed. - Balance research goals
with personal relationships
(in and out of field research)
o Data gathering based on
relationships: but we need
to manage our expectations
from participants, friends
and family back home, and
demands of research.
o Long-term and stressful:
humans will do as humans
do… think carefully about
starting romance. - Reliability and validity:
o Can be hard to avoid “naval
gazing” getting too caught
up in your own perspective.
o Does it matter whether what
you observe will ever
happen again?
o How do you know your
conclusions are based on
more than your own
opinion? - Personal challenges:
o Getting to know a new
culture can be
overwhelming.
o Feeling foreign, homesick
and sometime physically
sick can take its toll.
o For example, Alice and
wonderland. Enough of this
nonsense I just want to go
home. Nothing looks
familiar. I’ll be glad to be
home. It would be nice if
something made sense for a
change.
If ethnography is so hard, why bother?
o Recreating cultural phenomenon (i.e., festivals or rituals) is unethical, impractical and impossible to recreate in a lab (i.e., the gold standard experimentation we are used to is not applicable and field study methods need to be adopted). o Participants communities cannot access to the lab. o External validity: we want to make sure that the phenomenon is as authentic as possible to who it naturally occurs in the real world.
What is a core method in ethnography?
observation.
positives and negatives of naturalistic observation?
o Positive: o External Validity: the behavior we are collecting data on is the “real” behavior in the “real world”. o Negative: o Lack of precision: there is issues of confounds that cannot be controlled for, researchers access to locations may be limited (physically and positionality impacting our ability to understand another perspective), potential challenges for researcher’s safety (i.e., field research risk if going to unfamiliar terrain or violent area).
positives and negatives of participant observation?
o Positive: o Allows for an outside researcher to begin to adopt an emic perspective, learn the meaning and experience of actions in the event. o Negative: o Issues of access, limitations of participants perspective (i.e., can never truly be emic), their safety (i.e., rituals that involve bodily harm or substance consumption).
positives and negatives of laboratory-based observation?
o Positive:
o Researcher control: the
researcher can set the
parameters of the event
and control for confounds.
o Negative:
o External Validity: behaviors
in a lab are not natural (i.e.,
some events cannot be
recreated in the lab).positives and negatives of non-participant observation?
o Positive: o Access to events that researcher cannot be “in” (i.e., animal groups, children, larger events like festivals or public rituals). o Negative: o Issue of etic perspective, some events are not accessible as a non- participant or etic perspective.
How do we untangle the link between the mind and culture?
with a culture model.
How do we unpack the contents of a culture model?
With the method of Cultural Domain Analysis.
What are the domains and concepts within a culture model?
(A) Domains:
is a category of things that exist in the world (i.e., animals, fruit, musical instruments, books, university courses, movies) that can indicate a groups ontology.
The amount of agreement about what concepts fall within the domain can vary (i.e., the level of cultural consensus).
Items in the domain are seen as important (i.e., are salient) and are often the first thing that comes to mind and the most common.
Domain item salience is also variant across the group (i.e., more salient for some members of the cultural group than others).
(B) Concepts:
Concepts within a domain (category) have a structure.
Items within a category can be compared to one another to determine the level of similarity and differences between each item.
E.g., coconut trees are more like banana trees than they’re to apple trees (in tree domain).
E.g., apples are more similar to plums than they are to bananas (in fruit domain).
