Cross cultural psychology of health and illness, elective course, IBP.
Content Overview:
Week 1: Course overview, research methods. Book chapter 1, 4.
Week 2: Emotion, motivation, acculturation. Book chapter 8, 10.
Week 3: Cross-cultural cognition. Book chapter 3, 9.
Week 4: Culture and health communication. Articles: De Graaff, 2012; Mori et al, 2019.
Week 5: Culture in neuropsychological assessment. Articles: Goudsmit, 2016; Nielsen, 2011.
Week 6: Culture and body image, lifestyle and health. Book chapter 11, 13.
Week 7: Multicultural society and development. Book chapter 5, 7. Article Williams, 2019;
Bourabain, 2020.
Week 8: Culture and mental health. Book chapter 6, 14
With the following notes I received an 8.5.
Notes about the exam: The exam was surprisingly based on study, and research factors rather
than focused on asking questions on the main theories and the big picture. Therefore do not
forget to study the methodological part sufficiently.
Week 1: Course overview, research methods. Book chapter 1, 4.
Culture: Culture is information people get from one another through social learning. OR a dynamic group
of people sharing a similar context or environment. Can be seen as a set of implicit and explicit
guidelines acquired as members of a society.
- cultures change over time (not static, they are dynamic)
- there is high variability in individuals in the same culture
- there is no clear cut off point (due to immigration etc)
- culture also involves a method of enculturation (a way that the guidelines are transmitted to the
next generation).
- Mind and culture are inseparable. Brain shaped by experiences shaped by culture.
- Cultural ideas don't necessarily evolve to address universal problems. Rather they result from
social learning. Cultural practices often outlive their usefulness.
Human universality (all same) vs. Cultural variability (all different)
Whether a process is universal or culturally variable depends on its definition. More abstract definitions
lead to evidence supporting universality. Concrete definitions lead to evidence supporting variability.
4 levels of universality of psychological processes are:
1. Nonuniversal (does not exist in all cultures, only some) Ex: abacus reasoning (counting tool)
, 2. Existential universal (exists in all cultures but different functions/solves different problems, and
it's not equally accessible across cultures). Ex: success is motivating and failure is demotivating in
the west, opposite in east.
3. Functional universal (exists in all cultures and are used to solve the same problems but are more
accessible to people from some cultures than others.) Ex: costly punishment of others. Ex: some
spent 28% percent of their earnings to punish those who were unfair and others spent 90%. Ex:
attraction to similarity, role of negative affect in depression
4. Accessibility universal (no variation in cultures) Ex: social facilitation
Extent of universality that exists for psych processes is unclear because research is limited to
northern American undergraduates. Ex> basic understanding of physics / things cannot
disappear.
Note: 2022 exam gave an example of a situation and you had to identify which level of
universality it is.
General psychology/absolutist - assumes that the mind operates according to natural and universal laws
that are independent from context and content - people are the same wherever you go. Ex: universal
emotions. Context and content are seen as noise that limits us in conceptualizing the central processing
unit (CPU, the brain).
Cultural psychologists/relativists - the mind is shaped by context and content. our brain grows in
response to what we do and what we experience. argue that to fully understand the mind you have to
consider the content of what one is thinking about. Cultural information leads to meaningful actions,
thoughts and feelings. Psychological phenomena only exist within the context of a culture.
Psych studies are WIERD: western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic - makes up 96% of
psychology research - only represents about 12% of world population
Enculturation: transmitting guidelines to the next generation.
The three levels of cultures.
1. Primary or deepest level: rules that are known to all, obeyed by all. But implicit and generally
out of awareness. These are hidden, stable and resistant to change - roots.
2. Secondary: underlying shared beliefs and rules, knowns to the insiders but rarely shared with
outsiders - social norms
3. Tertiary level: explicit manifest culture, visible to the outsider, social rituals, traditional dress,
festive occasions. These would be the easiest to change.
Socio-economic status has cultural implications: Interaction with culture, specifically important for
health (ex: smoking, alcohol, healthy food).
Color-blind approach: emphasizes common nature, and ignores cultural differences. Research has
demonstrated that even trivial distinctions between groups often lead to discriminations.
,Multicultural approach: recognises that group identities are different (particularly minorities). Ignoring
such group differences tends to lead to negative responses.
Error of ethnocentrism: We perceive our own culture as the standard of comparison. Tendency to judge
negatively by comparing them to your own culture. Narrowed perception/distortion of other countries.
Judgment made from your own cultural group. Ex: Argentinian may think that the Netherlands and
Finland are very similar.
Study effects & Biases
● Reference group effects: response to questions may depend on the group that one is using for
reference (example of the “I am tall” statement —> avoid subjective measures)
○ Can be controlled by using objective and concrete measures - specific scenarios as
questions, quantitative questions (ex: frequencies of behavior)
● Deprivation effects: tendency for people to value what they would like or do not have - Belief
● perseverance effect: holding on to your views in the face of conflicting evidence
● Self-fulfilling prophecy: expectations lead to thinking too see confirmatory evidence
● Representativeness bias: incorrect categorizing based on inaccurate features
● Fundamental attribution error: overestimating internal causes and underestimating situational
● Belief perseverance effect: holding on to your views in the face of conflicting evidence.
● Within culture: tend to share same response bias and reference group (subjective measures
work) within-group: each participant is assigned to all of the conditions
● Between culture: tend to share different response styles and reference groups (subjective
measures do not work as well) - different groups of participants to different conditions (random
assignment)
● Methodological equivalence: how easily can you apply measures across cultures? The method.
Bad methodological equivalence Ex: testing different animals for how well they can climb a tree.
Methodological equivalence ensures that participants from different cultures understand the
research questions and situations in the same way.
● IMPORTANT: CULTURE IS NOT A TRAIT THAT CAN BE MANIPULATED.
Central themes in cultural research:
1. Universality of a specific trait - looking across groups- link to levels of universality.
2. Influence of a specific trait on thinking and behaviour, often looking within multiple groups
3. Studying a culture as a whole rather than individuals - looking at cultural messages (news, media
etc. For specific traits.
In cross cultural surveys there are often problems with
different response biases. Including social desirability
responding, moderacy biases, extremity biases,
acquiescence biases.
● Reference group effects: people from different
contexts evaluate themselves based on their own
reference group. A person may see themself as
less shy compared to their reference group (such as
, their friends/family), however would be seen as very shy compared to another culture.
● Experiments are good cus they can control for response biases and reference group effects
● Limitation of cross cultural research is that the cultural background of participants cannot be
altered.
● unpacking cultural findings: means identifying the underlying variables that give rise to the
cultural difference
● oceans razor: any theory should make as few assumptions as possible
Response biases can be solved through:
1. Forcing yes/no answers (however then nuances are lost)
2. Standardization
3. Reverse scoring
Culture specific methods: situation sampling and cultural priming
● Situation sampling is a method that can approximate experimental manipulations of culture.
○ Participants from at least two cultures are asked to describe a number of situations they
have experienced in which something specific has happened 2. Another group of
participants is provided with a list of the situations that have been generated by the first
set of participants, and they are asked to imagine how they would have felt if they had
been in those situations themselves
○ Essentially: you look at a situation and how different cultures would react.
● Cultural priming used in cross-cultural comparisons makes ideas associated with specific cultural
meanings more accessible to participants.
○ Entails inducing cultural ways of thinking that were not enculturated by the participants
cultural group - Assumes that while some ways of thinking may be different culture A
and B, culture A’s way of thinking may still be present to some degree in culture B
○ Essentially: you prime ideas (Ex: individualism) and look for common ideas.
● 5 Dimensions include: 2022 exam asked to list these and come up with an example for each.
1. tightness-looseness
2. individualism- collectivism
3. long-term - short term time orientation
4. power distance
5. uncertainty avoidance
○ US/western europe - individualistic, Collectivistic - china
