Sociocultural Approach - Cultural Influences on Individual Attitudes, Identity and Behaviours - Enculturation

Question 1

Enculturation

Answer 1

• The process of how we adopt the behaviours that are the norm for our culture = learn our culture
• Enculturation happens through
  
  • Observational learning
  • Direct teaching
  • Participatory learning
  • Child training practices
  • Cultural transmission, happens through
    
    • Vertical transmission
    • Oblique transmission
    • Horizontal transmission
• Theories of enculturation are developed through
  
  • looking for cultural universals (similarities) in behaviour
    using
    
    • etic approach
    • emic approach

Question 2

Observational Learning

Answer 2

Observing the common behaviour of others and learning about what counts as socially acceptable behaviour

Question 3

Participatory Learning

Answer 3

Children engage in an activity and then transfer that learning to later situations.

Question 4

Vertical Transmission

Answer 4

Parents transmit cultural values, skills, beliefs, and motives to their offspring

Question 5

Oblique Transmission

Answer 5

Transmission between unrelated individuals of different generations

Question 6

Horizontal Transmission

Answer 6

Learn from peers in day-today interactions during the development from birth to adulthood

Question 7

Etic Approach

Answer 7

Assumes that the meaning of behavior can only be defined from within the culture studied (cultural specific)

Question 8

Emic Approach

Answer 8

Assumes that the underlying psychological mechanisms are subjectively experienced and are very similar cross cultural (universal)

Question 9

Odden & Rochat (2004)

Answer 9

Aim:
- Investigate how Samoan children were ‘enculturated’ by observing their parents, other adults, older siblings and peers

Pps:
- 28 children in a single Samoan village

Procedure
- Researchers carried out a longitudinal study of 25
months
- They observed children in different contexts
- Conducted semi-structured interviews with adults and
children surrounding these children
- They looked at the behaviour of line fishing &
conceptual understanding of rank and hierarchy
- They carried out a multiple choice test

Results:
- Young children perform many household chores
- cooking
- washing
- Interviews confirmed that many of the children’s skills
had been acquired through observational learning
- Same was found when they studied fishing
- young males spend a lot of time watching the adult
males fish, with no direct instruction
- children of 10 years old will borrow the adult’s fishing
equipment and experiment on their own
- by 12, most were able to fish on their own
- when a father went fishing a child often accompanies
him
- Samoan children could learn abstract concepts by
observing and listening to adults
- researchers asked children about the system -> they
had a reasonably good understansing of it although
nobody had taught them
- They learn the social rules regarding how to behave
with people of highert class by
- obersving parents
- overhearing their conversations about the sysyem
- no direct tuition until high school
- Multiple-choice test of basic knowledge about the chief
system to 46 12-year-olds
- the majority had a broad understanding of the
concepts and rituals of their society