What is culture?

Question 1

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

Answer 1

• like other people
• like some other people, and
• like no other person

Question 2

What is culture?
- Matsumoto and Juang 2023

Answer 2

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

Question 3

Functional definition of culture

Answer 3

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

Question 4

Goals of cross-cultural psychology

Answer 4

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)

Question 5

WEIRD samples

Answer 5

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

Question 6

Origin of culture

Answer 6

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

Question 7

Rice and Wheat farming
- influences of climate on culture

Answer 7

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

Question 8

Latitudinal Psychology

Answer 8

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

Question 9

Absolutism

Answer 9

Psychology is everywhere the same
- all people greet each other in some form or another

Question 10

Relativism

Answer 10

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

Question 11

Universalism

Answer 11

Underlying processes are the same, expressions may be different
- middleground between absolutism and relativism –> the reasoning is the same, but it shows itself differently

Question 12

Etics

Answer 12

Universal psychological processes or behaviour
- everybody greets eachother

Question 13

Emics

Answer 13

Cultural-specific processes or behaviour

Question 14

Society is not culture

Answer 14

Society is structures and culture is the meaning behind those structures

Question 15

Race

Answer 15

More a social construction than a biological essential
–> culture provides the meaning for race

Question 16

Cultural meaning for race

Answer 16

Racial differences are not useful for scientific or practical purposes without a clear understanding of the underlying causes of the similarities and differences observed

Question 17

Ethnicity

Answer 17

Groups characterized by a common nationality, geographic origin, culture or language
- here culture also impacts the meaning for that culture

Question 18

Objective elements of culture

Answer 18

Elemets of a culture that you can observe, such as clothing and food.

Question 19

Subjective elements of culture

Answer 19

Elements of culture that you cannot observed and are more internal of people, such as values, beliefs, norms, attitudes and worldviews

Question 20

Values

Answer 20

Hofstede’s cultural Values
- individualism vs. collectivism
- power distance
- long- vs. short term orientation

Question 21

Beliefs

Answer 21

Bond and Lueng’s social axioms
- dynamic externality
- societal cynicism
- religions

Question 22

Norms

Answer 22

Gelfand’s tighness-looseness
- rituals
- etiquette and politeness
- tightness and looseness

Question 23

Worldviews

Answer 23

Markus and Kitayama’s independent and interdependent self
- self-concepts
- cultural worldviews
- attributions

Question 24

Hofstede: individualism and collectivism

Answer 24

Most cited framework to classifiy cultural patterns on the contry level
- 4 classic dimentions

Question 25

Hofstede’s four dimensions
- later 6

Answer 25

1. Power distance
2. Individualism/collectivism
3. Masculinity/femininity
4. uncertainty avoidance
   After 2010
5. long-term/short-term orientation
6. indulgence

Question 26

Individualism and collectivism

Answer 26

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

Question 27

Markus and Kitayama: independent and interdependent self

Answer 27

The self as the mediator of individualist/vollectivist cultural differences: its construal differs across cultures

Question 28

Independent self

Answer 28

An independent self that is perceiving the self as somebody that is distinct from others

Question 29

Interdependent self

Answer 29

An interdependent self as being embedded into many other people

Question 30

Bond and Lueng: social axioms

Answer 30

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

Question 31

Dynamic externality

Answer 31

Beliefs concerning external forces such as fate, a supreme being, and spirituality
- ofter collectivistic countries

Question 32

Societal cynicism

Answer 32

An apprehension or pessimism of the world
- often individualistic countries

Question 33

Gelfand: tightness and looseness

Answer 33

How strong are the norms in a countries:
loose norms or tight norms

Question 34

Tight cultures

Answer 34

Strong norms with a low tolerance for deviant behaviour

Question 35

Loose cultures

Answer 35

Weak norms wit a high tolerance for deviant behaviour