What is culture? Flashcards
What are people like?
- Every person is to some degree…
- like other people
- like some other people, and
- like no other person
What is culture?
- Matsumoto and Juang 2023
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
Functional definition of culture
Culture is also a pair of glasses that we are constantly looking through - a schema to help us evaluate and organize information
Goals of cross-cultural psychology
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)
WEIRD samples
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
Origin of culture
Environments come with demands for adaption:
- climate
- resources
- population desity
–> for example the difference in rice/wheat farming
Rice and Wheat farming
- influences of climate on culture
Rice farming: the people are more dependent and need to be coordenated and cooperative
Wheat farming: the people are more independent and don’t need to be cooperative with each other
Latitudinal Psychology
Harsh climates induce environmental stress, which affects ways of living
- the stressors can be counteracted by greater affluence (like money)
Absolutism
Psychology is everywhere the same
- all people greet each other in some form or another
Relativism
Underlying processes of psychology are different (the reasons are different)
- all people greet eachother (absolutism), but why they do it is different is every culture –> relativism
Universalism
Underlying processes are the same, expressions may be different
- middleground between absolutism and relativism –> the reasoning is the same, but it shows itself differently
Etics
Universal psychological processes or behaviour
- everybody greets eachother
Emics
Cultural-specific processes or behaviour
Society is not culture
Society is structures and culture is the meaning behind those structures
Race
More a social construction than a biological essential
–> culture provides the meaning for race
Cultural meaning for race
Racial differences are not useful for scientific or practical purposes without a clear understanding of the underlying causes of the similarities and differences observed
Ethnicity
Groups characterized by a common nationality, geographic origin, culture or language
- here culture also impacts the meaning for that culture
Objective elements of culture
Elemets of a culture that you can observe, such as clothing and food.
Subjective elements of culture
Elements of culture that you cannot observed and are more internal of people, such as values, beliefs, norms, attitudes and worldviews
Values
Hofstede’s cultural Values
- individualism vs. collectivism
- power distance
- long- vs. short term orientation
Beliefs
Bond and Lueng’s social axioms
- dynamic externality
- societal cynicism
- religions
Norms
Gelfand’s tighness-looseness
- rituals
- etiquette and politeness
- tightness and looseness
Worldviews
Markus and Kitayama’s independent and interdependent self
- self-concepts
- cultural worldviews
- attributions
Hofstede: individualism and collectivism
Most cited framework to classifiy cultural patterns on the contry level
- 4 classic dimentions
Hofstede’s four dimensions
- later 6
- Power distance
- Individualism/collectivism
- Masculinity/femininity
- uncertainty avoidance
After 2010 - long-term/short-term orientation
- indulgence
Individualism and collectivism
The degree to which groups will encourage rendencies for members to look after themselves and their immediate family only, or for them to belong to ingroups that look after its members in exchange for loyalty
Markus and Kitayama: independent and interdependent self
The self as the mediator of individualist/vollectivist cultural differences: its construal differs across cultures
Independent self
An independent self that is perceiving the self as somebody that is distinct from others
Interdependent self
An interdependent self as being embedded into many other people
Bond and Lueng: social axioms
General beliefs and premises about oneself, the social and physical environments, and the spiritual world; they are assertions abot the association between two or more entities or concepts
- dynamic externality
- Societal cynicism
Dynamic externality
Beliefs concerning external forces such as fate, a supreme being, and spirituality
- ofter collectivistic countries
Societal cynicism
An apprehension or pessimism of the world
- often individualistic countries
Gelfand: tightness and looseness
How strong are the norms in a countries:
loose norms or tight norms
Tight cultures
Strong norms with a low tolerance for deviant behaviour
Loose cultures
Weak norms wit a high tolerance for deviant behaviour
