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Summary- Cultural Psychology
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The summary includes notes, slides and a summary of the book of the course Cultural psychology at Tilburg University.
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Cultural psychologyModule 1
VIDEO 1
What is culture?
Culture is a unique meaning and information system, shared by a group and
transmitted across generations, that allows the group to meet basic needs of
survival, pursue happiness and well-being, and derive meaning from life.
Culture is like a pair of glasses that we are constantly looking through, a
schema to help us evaluate and organize information. That can lead to
ethnocentrism, the tendency to view the world through one’s cultural filters. It
can be a problem when we are not updating our knowledge by ranking every
other culture as lowest on the hierarchy.
Cross-cultural psychology=It includes theoretical and methodological
frameworks that posit an important role for culture and its influence on mental
processes behavior, and vice versa.
Cross-cultural research=A research methodology that tests the cultural
parameters of psychological knowledge. Traditionally, it involves research on
human behavior that compares psychological processes between two or more
cultures. It also incorporates knowledge contrasting human cultures versus
nonhuman animal cultures. This approach is primarily concerned with testing
the possible limitations of knowledge gleaned from one culture by studying
people of different cultures.
The goals of cross-cultural psychology are:
- build a body of knowledge about people
- transport and test hypothesis and findings to other cultural
settings
- explore cultures n order to discover cultural and psychological
similarities and differences
- integrate findings into a more universal psychology
- improve people’s lives
Psychological research is usually based on WEIRD people, but this is not
representative for mankind. Editorials in journals acknowledge the need for
better sampling.
,How does culture develop?
There are many ecological demands that shape how cultural groups structure
their lives, for example climate, resources and population density… (example
of farmers in China).
Latitudinal psychology= a perspective that understands group differences in
mental processes and behaviors according to a combination of distance from
the equator and affluence.
Latitudinal psychology is similar in its ecological groundedness. Harsh and
demanding climates produce environmental stress, which in turn affects ways
of living, this stress can be counteracted by affluence like for example money.
Latitudinal psychology specifies that it matters for the cultural psychological
characteristics, where the cultural groups live and what their options are to
resolve stresses.
THE HUMAN MIND
People come to the world with a universal psychological toolkit, a set of basic
psychological skills and abilities that people can use to meet their needs.
These include complex cognitive skills, language, emotions and personality
traits. The needs are universal to all people of all cultures, and if these needs
are not met, people don’t survive. The basic needs
(eating,drinking,sleeping…) are associated with social motives (motive to
achieve,motive to affiliate with others…).
What sets humans apart from animals is knowing that others know that one
has intentions. Intentionality is what allows us to have beliefs, morality…
Language is another complex ability that humans have. Language is an ability
that sets humans apart from all others. The major function of human language
abilities is to communicate a shared intentionality, knowledge about
motivations concerning behaviors that are common among people in a group.
The ratchet effect is also crucial to understand humans. This is the concept
that humans continually improve on improvements, that they do not go
backward or revert to a previous state. Progress occurs because improvements
move themselves upward.
Human cultures differ from animal cultures on three major dimensions:
- Complexity (people are complex creatures)
- Differentiation (people differ from each others)
, - Institutionalization (people are organized into institutions where
everyone has a role)
What are theoretical approaches to understanding cultural differences
and similarities?
Absolutism—> psychology is everywhere the same
Relativism—> underlying processes are different
Universalism—> underlying processes are the same, expression may be
different
Ethics: universal psychological processes or behavior
Emics: culture-specific processes or behavior
CONTRASTING TERMS
Society is not the same as culture. In fact, society generally refers to a system
or a structure of interrelationships among individuals and groups. Culture
refers to the meaning and the value that we are associating with some of these
structures, in particular in relationship to other people.
Country is also not the same as culture, but sometimes it can be
interchangeable. Country is a geopolitical definition, it’s a legal entity and it’s
critical to understand how people act and how they coordinate their whole life
(language can also have a big impact).
Race is a social construction rather than a biological essential. Racial
essentialism, reducing people to which race they categorically belong to,can
be wrong when you do not look at prototypes.
Ethnicity is usually used for groups characterized by a common nationality,
geographic origin, culture or language—> can be difficult to categorize
ethnicity and race.
Culture is not personality. Culture is a macro-social construct that
characterizes groups, while personality refers to the unique constellation of
traits, attributes, qualities etc. that a person has.
Popular culture is formed by all the tendencies that become popular among a
group of people from time to time.
, VIDEO 2
Objective elements—> things that you can observe directly:
- art
- mass media
- architecture
- clothes
- social media
- food
- music
- advertising
- eating utensils
- texts
Subjective elements—> things that you cannot directly observe, things that are
more internal to people:
- values—> Trans-situational goals that serve as a guiding principle in
the life of a person or group (e.g., kindness, creativity).Values
motivate and justify behavior and serve as standards for judging
people, actions, and events
- beliefs—> A proposition that is regarded as true. People of different
cultures have different beliefs.
- norms—> A generally accepted standard or behavior within a cultural
or subcultural group.
- attitude—> Evaluations of objects occurring in ongoing thoughts
about the objects, or stored in memory.
- worldviews—> Culturally specific belief systems about the
world.They contain attitudes, beliefs, opinions, and values about the
world. People have worldviews because of evolved, complex
cognition; thus, having a worldview is a universal psychological
process. The specific content of worldviews, however, is specific to
and different for each culture.
VALUES —> HOFSTEDE: individualism/collectivism
His theory is the most cited general framework to classify cultural patterns on
the country level. He individuate four classic dimensions:
- Individualism versus Collectivism. The degree to which groups will
encourage tendencies for members to look after themselves and their
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