Cultural Psychology
Summary
HC1:
Culture: information system shared by a group and transmitted over generations
involving basic needs like survival but also well-being, meaning from life. This
influences your view on the world (glasses).
VOUW’N; voorstellingen, opvattingen, uitdrukkingsvormen, waarden en normen.
Culture could be seen as glasses;
• Collectivism-individualism influences confirmity. Think about Asch experiment.
The confirmity will be smaller in individualistic cultures. Also the effect becomes
smaller overtime in the US.
• Industrialization influences perspective. Think about Muller-Byes experiment with arrows
point inside or outside.
• Education influences decisions; how extreme or post-decisional spread. That
involves how and how many people change their opinions and evaluation after
knowing how their choice is commonly rated. The less educated, the less spread
there is. This is called cognitive dissonance by Festinger.
Culture could be seen as both independent or dependent variable but also as confounder.
Dimensions from Hofstede:
- Collectivism - Individualism:
Collectivism: strong in-group, greater distance out-group, harmony and group are
central
Individualism: more freedom, more wealth but I is central, less group orientated
USA scores higher on individualism than other Western cultures
- Masculinity -
Feminity: complex behavior rooted in the pursuit of interpersonal goals, modesty,
consensus, friendly atmosphere, quality of life and caring for the weak.
- Uncertainty avoidance (high or low)
- Short or long termed orientation. Normative is often seen as conservative while
modern is futureing.
- Power distance (high or low)
+ Indulgence/vigilance terughoudendheid
Based on factor analysis.
<—> Criticism Hofstede: assessment is based loosely and has low face validity.
Also variance is often lower between countries than expected.
Minkov criticism on Hofstede: internal validity is low, uncertainty avoidance isn’t
measured well, power distance is a part of collectivism-individualism and feminism-
masculinity doesn’t predict.
,Triandis:
* Vertical collectivism: people in a group aren’t equal to one and another. Latin-US
China, Japan, Italy, Spain.
* Horizontal collectivism: all members are viewed the same. Rural communities in
Central US
* Vertical individualism: being fully autonomous and accepting inequality. USA,
Canada, France, UK.
* Horizontal individualism: being autonomous but believing in equality. Scandinavia,
Oceania
Markus & Kitayama:
The self is a mediator of cultural differences; seeing yourself as public, relational or
private. This determines and shows your distance to others.
Eastern cultures show more connectivity and collectivism compared to Western
world.
<—> Criticism from Matsumoyo:
- The model should be more dimensional instead of dualistic
- Little empirical evidence
- Individual data is necessary for elaboration
- Past research already assumed this so this theory is not anything new
Gelfand:
Tight cultures: strong norms where deviants will not be accepted and punished
harder.
Loose cultures: norms are weaker and there is higher tolerance of deviants.
This influences crime rates, law environment, enforcement and stigmatization.
It originates from historical and biological factors like war or racism but also wealth;
less wealth means that chaos should have been controlled more, resulting in stronger
rules.
This is something leaders play into, it should be controlled in order not to become
extreme.
WEIRD Psychology: research is 96% based on White, Educated, Industrialized,
Rich and Democratic people.
Henrich: This means that we can’t talk about universalism enough before
researching non-WEIRD people.
Carpentered world hypothesis: perspective is different across cultures. Wall A
might seem bigger than B for Western cultures but collectivistic cultures will
compare the walls beter and see that these two are the same size.
,Conner: interdependent - independent cultures.
Interdependent cultures are mostly colored or eastern and female-centered.
Traditional and rural societies. Corporation plays a bigger role here than in Western,
white cultures which are more independent.
There is psychological interdependence in educated and urban contexts.
Markus & Kitayama on in(ter)dependence: Japanese, generally Asian, African,
Latin-American and Southern European cultures are more seen as interdependent
compared to Western European and American culture, that is independent.
Interdependent selves attendance the needs of others when their in-group is
concerned.
Markus & Kim, pen paradigm: Test letting people choose a pen, 4 of them being the
same color and one having another color. In European-US culture people tend to
choose the uncommon colored pen more then in East Asia.
—> Yamagishi, Hashimoto & Schug: took that further and made 4 situations. Those
being default selection (ecologically rational), initial selection, final selection and
purchase of the pen based of probably/definitely the majority/unique color. Japanese
and American both chowed equal tendencies to buy an unique pen. But when it was
clear that the participants choice of an unique pen has negative impact on others the
Japanese and Americans had same levels again. The default setting changed because
that is where Japanese and Americans scored different on.
Poortinga, hierarchy of interpretations:
1. Cultural traits
2. Historical and political context
3. Cultural conventions
4. Groups and individuals
5. Situation
6. Behavioural
HC2:
Ecological fallacy: system in which data is collected and what you can tell about it.
You can only make conclusions about the same level or smaller but never bigger.
The level of your data is the level of your research.
Bar graphs show differences in averages from groups.
But often variance within groups are bigger than expected.
Types of research:
- Validation: equivalence of measures
- Indigenous cultural: zooms in on one subject specifically and culture specific
, - Cross-cultural:
Features..
.. Hypothesis testing
.. Presence or absence of context; acknowledging or explaining differences like
gender, age, ethnicity, personality etc.
.. Individual or ecological (averages of groups, data is on the level of a country of
culture) analyses. Using both is called multi-level.
.. Structured research (with a determined construct despite the culture, comparing
expression of constructs) or level-oriented (comparing levels of scores).
3 theoretical positions in research:
I. Absolutism: psychology is the same everywhere
II. Relativism: underlying processes differ, therefore expressions too
III. Universalism: underlying processes are the same across cultures but the
expression is different. This can be in need of conversion like kg to LBS.
Methods of research:
Qualitative research: 1 objective truth, ecologically relevant, field studies therefore
interpretations find place by strict procedures. This is challenging.
Quantitative: multiple truths, both in/dependent variables, quasi-experiments,
confounds occur often and post-hoc interpretations (coming up explanations after the
results)
Mixed method: combination of both, therefore researching discoveries (qual) and
justification (quan).
Bias in research: systematic error that endangers the comparability of results across
groups and cultures.
1. Construct bias: measurement across cultures isn’t identical because of different
expressions for the same construct.
Solution: acknowledge this incompleteness and sample all relevant behaviors
across cultures.
2. Method bias: how do we collect data; instrument use (respond bias), social
desirability and acquiescence (yes-saying) in responses, other respons styles (being
neutral or extreme) and sampling. Differences in background like age, educations,
gender etc.
And administration bias: ambiguous instructions and interaction between
administrator and respondents leading to a mismatch.
3. Item bias: an item is different in psychological meaning. Mostly translation wise
(sayings) but also cultural connotations (positive or negative associations) and
applicability (how relevant something is for that culture).
