Sociocultural (Cultural Influences on Individual Attitudes, Identity, Behavior) Studies

Question 1

Martin and Halvorson

Answer 1

Aim:
- to determine if pre-existing gender schemas will distort memories that are inconsistent with these schemas

Procedure:
- 24 girls and 24 boys aged 5-6
- shown 16 pictures of a person doing an activity (half gender congruent and half gender incongruent)
- children divided based on their knowledge of gender stereotypes
- each picture shown for about 10 minutes and then children were asked to indicate their confidence of their memories
- a week later they were assessed again and asked which gender was completing the specific activity

Results and Conclusions:
- significantly more reversals of gender in the schema-inconsistent images
- kids had the same confidence in gender swapped images as the accurate answers
- pre-existing stereotypes distorted the children’s memories of the gender-incongruent images
- reversed gender to confirm their stereotypes

Strenghts and Limitations:
- extremely controlled
- replicable and reliable
- sample bias means no generalizability outside of American culture

Question 1

Wood

Answer 1

Aim:
- examine gender role enculturation as the result of what toys parents chose

Procedure:
- 48 children played individually for 15 minutes with three separate adults
- adults either females (their mom, another mom, woman who is not a mom) or male (their dad, another dad, man who is not a dad)
- 15 toys available (5 masculine, 5 feminine, 5 neutral)
- measured amount of time playing with each toy, adult’s sorting of toys by gender, and adrult’s ratings of toy desirability)

Results and Conclusions:
- showed adults did not agree with traditional categorizations, indicating a shift towards neutrality
- when playing with boys, most time spent with masculine toys
- girls played more with masculine and neutral toys, but still leaned towards feminine toys
- shows gender role enculturation because even though parents began to shift categorizations, it was still enforced in children through toys

Strengths and Limitations:
- quasi-experiment and naturalistic, high ecological validity but uncontrolled
- sample bias, weird
- large variability in data
- demand characteristics since parents knew they were being observed

Question 2

Lyons-Padilla

Answer 2

Aim:
- explore acculturation and determine factors that lead to marginalization and radicalization risk
(marginalization indicates feeling as though they do not fit either native or new culture, looking for sense of identity_

Procedure:
- online survey of first and second generation Muslim immigrants in the United States between ages 18-35
- gathered data on a range of measures:
acculturation, discrimination, significance loss
support of radical Islamic beliefs, and how much they think people they know would support a hypothetical fundamentalist group

Results and Conclusions:
- strong negative correlation between integration and significance loss
- strong positive correlation between marginalization and discrimination and significance loss
- significance loss predicted an attraction to fundamentalist groups
- significance loss seems to be increased by marginalization, which may then affect radical beliefs

Strengths and Limitations:
- anonymity and confidentiality
- correlational in nature
- would need a longitudinal study to see how factors developed over time
- couldn’t measure radicalization directly due to people’s comfort with such direct questioning

Question 3

Lueck and Wilson

Answer 3

Aim:
- investigate which factors predict acculturative stress in Asian American immigrants

Procedure:
- sample of 2095 immigrants of Asian descent, over half were first-gen and the rest born in US
- semi-structured interviews to determine level of acculturative stress and other environmental and personal factors

Results and Conclusions:
- those who were billingual experiences lower acculturative stress than those who did not speak English
- negative treatment and discrimination increased stress
- sharing values with one’s family lowered stress
- financial security also decreased acculturative stress
- acculturative stress is very common for those adjusting to new cultures, but can be decreased through having community and family support, language proficiency, and economic comfort

Strengths and Limitations:
- large and representative sample
- did not account for differences between Asian cultures
- reflective study, could lack accuracy in participants’ responses