Book: Cultural Psychology (International Student Edition, third edition) by Steven J. Heine -
ISBN: 3709.
Summary of chapters: 1,2,3,4,7,14. This summary includes all the chapters from the booked needed for the intrimexam of the course 'Introduction to Cultural Psychology' at the University of A...
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Psychologie
Introduction to Cultural Psychology
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CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY (International Student Edition, third edition)
Steven J. Heine
INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY
Universiteit van Amsterdam, semester 2, year 19/20
FIRST INTREM EXAM
Chapter 1 – What is cultural psychology?
Chapter 2 – Culture and human nature
Chapter 3 – Cultural evolution
Chapter 4 – Methods for studying culture and psychology
Chapter 7 – Living in multicultural worlds
Chapter 14 – Mental health
,CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY?
-> Humans have culture as important adaptation to survive
* Unique contribution of cultural psychology = the thesis that people from different cultures also
differ in their psychology
Psychological processes are shaped by experiences -> different cultures provide different
experiences
Their is tension between universal and culturally variable psychologies -> to what extent are
brains the same around the world (because the brain is universal) and to what extent do their
differ (because of divergent experiences)
What is culture?
1) A particular kind of information = culture means any kind of information that is acquired from
other members of one's species through social learning that is capable of affecting an individual's
behaviours == culture is learned from others
2) A particular group of individuals = cultures are people who are existing within some kind of shared
context
* Challenges/problems:
The boundaries of cultures are not always clear-cut
o There are other kinds of groups aside from countries that can be argued to have
cultures
Cultures change over time (they are dynamic)
o Some shared cultural information disappears as new habits replace the old
There is variability among individuals who belong to the same culture
o Everyone belongs to a unique collection of various social groups with their own
cultures
General psychology = inherently assumes that the mind operates under a set of natural and
universal laws that are independent from content or context
o Sees the mind as a central processing unit (CPU) that operates independently of the
content that it is thing about or of the context within which it is thinking (computer
metaphor)
o Cultural variation in ways of thinking cannot exist, because cultures provide variations in
context and content that lie outside the CPU
! But in many important ways people are not the same wherever you go
Cultural psychology = thinking is not merely the operation of the universal CPU, but involves
interacting with the content that one is thinking about and participation in the context within which
one is doing the thinking
o To fully understand the mind it is important to consider what someone is thinking about;
whether one's behaviours increase one's status within a community etc.
o The ways that people think about behaviour are influenced by the very specific and
particular ways that cultural knowledge shapes their understanding of those behaviours
=> actions, thoughts and feelings are related to other things beyond a person
o Brains can be shaped by cultural experiences, because the brain is highly plastic
throughout live (so not like a computer metaphor)
, Explanation of cultural differences in psychological processes:
1. To the extent that people in one culture are faced with a particular cultural idea, they will
think a great deal about that idea, creating a rich network of thoughts, behaviours and feelings
that surround it.
2. These networks of information will be activated whenever people encounter something that
reminds them of this idea.
3. If people consider these networks of information often enough, the networks should become
chronically activated, such that they come to mind and become prioritized ahead of other
networks of information that are less likely to be activated.
4. Because cultures differ in the ideas their members frequently encounter, they will also differ
in the networks of thoughts etc, and thus cultures shape the ways people think.
! The effect of culture is always there, because people cannot step outside of their cultural meaning
systems (culture and mind make each other up)
Are things universal or cultural-specific?
* Depends on how concrete or more general you term the thing; the level of abstraction that one
entertains influences the success that one has in identifying evidence for universality
At more abstract levels there is more evidence for universal
At more abstract levels the phenomena under question are often too abstract to be of much
utility
* There are a number of different levels by which we can consider evidence for universality
A hierarchical framework:
* Nonuniversal = a particular cognitive tool
does not exist in all cultures -> they are cultural
inventions e.g. math
* Existential universal = a phenomenon is not
used in the same way across cultures -> not
used to solve the same problem) e.g.
failure/succes
* Functional universal = a phenomenon is not
equally accessible to people in all cultures e.g.
punishmement
* Accessibility universal = the strongest case for
universality not many examples
- Accessibility = the likelihood of a person
using the particular psychological
phenomenon
* We don't know many psychological universal processes, because we use WEIRD-participants
o Problem: typical psychological database represents very narrow and unusual slice of the
world's population -> which is a problem if processes are not universal
o For many key findings in psychology we know that:
People form industrialized societies respond differently thant those from small scale
societies
People from Western industrialized societies demonstrate more pronounced
responses than those from non-Western societies
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