What is culture? Flashcards

1
Q

What is culture?
- Matsumoto and Juang 2023

A

A unique meaning and information system, shared by a group and transmitted across generations, that allows the group to meet basic needs of suvival, pursue happiness and well-being, and derive meaning from life

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2
Q

Functional definition of culture

A

Culture is also a pair of glasses that we are constantly looking through - a schema to help us evaluate and organize information

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3
Q

What are people like?
- Every person is to some degree…

A
  • like other people
  • like some other people, and
  • like no other person
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4
Q

Goals of cross-cultural psychology

A

Build a body of knowledge about people:
1. transport and test hypotheses and findings to other cultural settings
2. explore other cultures in order to discover cultural and psychological variations
3. Integrate findings into a more universal psychology
–> Improve people’s lives
(psychological research is based on studies among WEIRD samples)

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5
Q

WEIRD samples

A

Western Educated Industrialized Rich and Democratic sample
- not representative
- most authors and samples are WEIRD
- we need to know whether what we study holds for educated as well as uneducated people, industrialized or non-industrialized contexts

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6
Q

Origin of culture

A

Environments come with demands for adaption:
- climate
- resources
- population desity
–> for example the difference in rice/wheat farming

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7
Q

Latitudinal Psychology

A

Harsh climates induce environmental stress, which affects ways of living
- the stressors can be counteracted by greater affluence (like money)

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8
Q

3 theoretical approaches for cultural differences

A
  1. Hofstede and Triandis
  2. Markus and Kitayama
  3. Gelfand
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9
Q

Hofstede

A
  • most cited general framework to classify cultural patterns on the country level
  • examination of work-related values in employees of IBM during 1970s
  • 4 classic dimensions –> later 6 (bottom up)
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10
Q

Hofstede’s four classic dimensions

A
  • power distance
  • individualism/collectivism
  • mascuinity/femininity
  • uncertainty/avoidance
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11
Q

Individualism

A

Pertains to societies in which the ties between individuals are loose: everyone is expected to look after himself and his immediate family

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12
Q

Collectivism

A

As its opposite pertains to societies in which people from birth onwards are integrated into strong cohesive in-groups, which throughout people’s lifetime continue to protect them in unquestioning loyalty

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13
Q

2 added dimensions to Hofstede’s 4
- happened in 2010

A
  • Long-term/short-term orientation (short-term orientation is stuck in the way it has always been
  • Indulgence
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14
Q

Criticism on Hofstede

A

Low face validity for individualism testing for example: long term orientation en Minkov
- no support for the differences that were predicted by the model
- power distance seems to be a part of indivudualism/collectivism
- uncertainty avoidance is not reliably measured
- masculinity/femininity does not predict criteria that were prespecified

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15
Q

Criticism long term orientation Hofstede

A
  • normative societies score low on long term orientation and therefor stick to old traditions and what they know
  • cultures with a high score are pragmatic and prepare for the future in culture
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16
Q

Minkov’s criticism on Hofstede

A
  • analysed the model with new studies
  • 4 questions
  • power distance seems to be a part of IND and COLL
    –> hofstede fails the test and needs serious revisioning
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17
Q

Triandis

A
  • Vertical collectivism
  • Horizontal collectivism
  • Vertical individualism
  • Horizontal collectivism
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18
Q

Vertical collectivism

A

Includes perceiving the self as a part of a collective and accepting inequalities within the collective

19
Q

Horizontal collectivism

A

Includes perceiving the self as a part of the collective, but seeing all members of the collective as the same; thus equality is stressed

20
Q

Vertical individualism

A

Includes the conception of an autonomous individual and acceptance of inequality

21
Q

Horizontal individualism

A

Includes the conception of an autonomous individual and emphasis on equality

22
Q

Difference between horizontal and vertical

A

Horizontal is everybody on the same line, so there is a lot of equality
Vertical is everybody on different levels (vertical), so there is acceptance of inequality

23
Q

Markus and Kitayama

A

Independence and interdependence
- the self as the mediator of cultural differences: it’s construal differs across cultures
- the importance assigned to so-called public, relational and private, inner aspects of the self can vary by culture

24
Q

Independence

A

Western: being different from others
- an independent self that is perceiving the self as somebody that is distinct from others

25
Q

Interdependence

A

Eastern: being connected to others
- an interdependent self as being embedded into many other people

26
Q

Criticism Markus and Kitayama

A
  • little empirical support
  • past research had mostly assumed and documented such differences, without searching for the variables that mediate them
  • most researchers use Markus and Kitayama’s concepts to characterize cultures –> but data in the individual level is needed for more elaborated models of causality and mediation
  • as well, these concepts have been used dualistic - but could be regarded as dimensional
27
Q

Gelfand

A

Tight and loose cultures
- non-WEIRD
- Anthropological samples from ethnographic record
- rationale: threat > tighter

28
Q

Tight cultures

A

Strong norms, low tolerance for deviant behaviour

29
Q

Loose cultures

A

Weak norms, high tolerance for deviant behaviour

30
Q

Focus of WEIRD

A

Psychological phenomena that are taken as universal - without evidence

31
Q

Issue with WEIRD

A

No explanation of sample differences

32
Q

Comparisons WEIRD

A
  • modern industrialized vs. small scale societies
  • western vs. non-western industrialized societies
  • Americans vs. other westerners
  • university vs. non-university educated Americans
33
Q

Carpentered world hypothesis

A

Some cultures are more industrialized and therefor surrounded by angles, Wall A is closer than Wall B, we would assume the same in the illusion. Cultures who aren’t as industrialized don’t process the illusion in the same way and therefore don’t fall for the illusion
–> explanation to the Muller-Lyer illusion

34
Q

Other examples of test-differences in cultures

A

Dictator Game
Asch Conformity test
–> Americans vs. other westerners: Americans hold on average the highest scores in individualism/ are most ego-centric
–> educated vs. non-educated Americans: Highly educated Americans occupy even more extreme position than less-educated Americans

35
Q

Dictator game

A
  • people mostly share about half with the other person
  • in other contexts, you see differences and oftentimes, much less is given
  • it is not clear what the difference means, just that they found a difference
36
Q

Ash conformity test

A

Wich line is the same length, other people all choose the wrong one, will you too?
Over 12 trials, 75% conformed at least once and 25% never confirmed. With no pressure less than 1% gave the wrong answer
- the more people disagree with you, the bigger the chance you’ll be conforming
- effect becomes smaller in the US over time
- effect is smaller the more individualistic a context is
- Americans hold on average the highest scores in individualsim/are most egocentric

37
Q

Educated vs. Non-educated Americans

A
  • highly educated Americans occupy an even more extreme position than less-educated Americans
  • cognitive dissonance
38
Q

Culture as a…

A
  • independent variable
  • confounding variable
  • genuine psychological phenomenon
  • placeholder
39
Q

Independent variabel
- conceptualizing culture

A

Certain factors vary with culture and influence psycholocial phenomena

40
Q

Confounding variabel
- conceptualizing culture

A

Psychological phenomena are supposed to be universal

41
Q

Genuine psychological phenomenon
- conceptualizing culture

A

Every psychological phenomenon takes place in a cultural context, culture is inside one’s head

42
Q

Place holder
- conceptualizing culture

A
  • specific contextual differences instead of large, overarching differences
  • is problem solving in cases of earthquakes for example part of ones culture or are they simply just prepared for the situation
43
Q

Hierarchy of interpretations

A
  1. Cultural values/traits
  2. Historical/political context
  3. Cultural conventions
  4. Other person/ own person
  5. Situation
  6. Behavior
44
Q

Pen paradigm

A

5 pens, 1 a different color
- independent people choose the different pen to show uniqueness
- interdependent people choose any pen
–> without contextual cues we fall into default choices, if there are contextual clues we tend to use them