Cultural Psychology
Teacher: Michael Bender (year 1, block 1)
Module 0 – Introduction
What is culture?
- Dependent on the country you’re looking at -> e.g. German culture (socks with sandals,
functional coats, rules) and Dutch culture (one cookie per coffee, circle at family parties) ->
(foreign) people can have a view/opinion about culture specific things/traditions
- Observable things, but also not observable (like enterprising, wanderlust,
ambition)
- Migration background, in this picture it means having at least one parent which
wasn’t born in the Netherlands -> ca. 20-25% -> dividable in western and non-
western background -> big chance to come into contact with people with another
background/culture
- Conflicts/disagreements/discrimination -> bijv. BLM, kick-out zwarte piet
- 3,105 international students at TiU
- a) understand the methods + limitations to better do studies
for understanding cultural similarities/differences
- c) how cultures change (because change is constantly
present) -> looking how culture is transmitted to one generation
to the next
- e) different people will come into contact with each other,
how will they (want to) interact/relate to one another + how do
they get along
- f) no recipe to solve some (very up to date), so future
researchers should look at those
- h) being able to take another perspective (important)
,Module 1 – What is culture?
Goals of Cross-Cultural research
1) Transport + 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
- Psychological research is based on studies among WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized,
Rich and Democratic samples-> not representative for mankind
Culture influences behavior -> can we say that?
Hofstede
- Most cited general framework
- Examination of work related values in employees of IBM (1970s)
- 4 classic dimensions: Individualism vs. collectivism, masculinity vs. femininity,
uncertainty avoidance and power distance
- Now 6: long-term/short-term orientation and indulgence
Individualism vs. collectivism: extent to which people attends to the needs of
themselves/of the group + to what extent is prototypical in a specific society
-> how related + interrelated you are to people or how separate -> it’s a
dimension, not a category
- Individualism: ‘’Pertains to societies in which the ties between individuals are loose:
everyone is expected to look after himself/herself and his/her immediate family’’ -> Freedom
of choice, more possibilities (to be part of multiple groups, might be on a more temporary
basis, you can come and leave a group more easily)
- Collectivism: ‘’As its opposite pertains to societies in which people from birth onwards are
integrated into strong cohesive in-groups, which throughout people’s lifetime continue to
protect them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty’’ -> Can’t choose these groups + not just
leave them cuz they’re live-long groups which are important for how you see yourself +
others -> not per se more groups in number, staying within the group(s) you’re a part of
(tradition, obligations, etc.)
Criticism
- How is it assed? Which items are used?
- Remarkable that it doesn’t question how the person feels related to other people
➔ Relatively low face validity
- What does it actually explain?
➔ Variance explained is relatively low, data is little explained by the dimension
- Matsumoto: Countries that stereotypical represent the dimension (USA and Japan) are little
supported by data + those who support questioned by validity reliability
, - Long-term vs. Short-term orientation -> oriented towards
the future + pragmatic stance or stuck in the ways you’ve done
things for a while + in the present; resistant to change + new
things
- Luck is hard to define
- Minkov: compared new data with old data -
> old multicultural IBM data, are they representative for their culture?
Do we find these dimensions (the 4 classic ones)? Do the items within
one dimension go together with other items in that same dimension?
Can we use the model to predict behavior attitudes or important other
variables connected to the model
- Problems with reliability -> many items lack face validity -> power
distance: extend to which individuals accept/not accept equality
differences , hierarchies in a society -> power distance not an
independent part, seems to be part of IND/COLL
- UA not reliably measured + doesn’t predict criteria (e.g job security)
- MAS/FEM also doesn’t predict criteria
Hofstede designed his model for national-level use, when not used at this level people are prone to
commit the ecological fallacy (one of the most important fallacies, see M2)
Triandis – expansion: Cultural Syndromes
- Vertical collectivism: perceiving the self as a part (or an aspect) of a
collective and accepting inequalities within the collective -> see yourself
as part of the group but accept vertical inequalities in the collective;
part of the group + accept status differences
- Horizontal collectivism: perceiving the self as a part of the collective,
but seeing all members of the collective as the same; thus equality is
stressed -> part of the collective but everybody more or less same status + equality very
much stressed
- Vertical individualism: conception of an autonomous individual and acceptance of inequality
-> see yourself as an own person + accept inequality in specific context you’re in
- Horizontal individualism: conception of an autonomous individual and emphasis on equality
(p. 240) -> see yourself as your own person, very autonomous + emphasize equality cuz
everyone on same level
➔ IND/COLL: extend to which you attend to your own self or extend to which you perceive
embedded into a group collective
➔ In line with Minkov’s data, individualism + power distance overlaps with equality
Markus & Kitayama
- There’s a difference between an interdependent self – which perceives the self as being
embedded into many other people or an independent self – which perceives the self as
somebody distinct from others
- The self as mediator of cultural differences: its self-construal differs across cultures
- The importance assigned to so-called public, related and private, inner aspects of the self
can vary per culture (persoonlijke identiteit, significant other identiteit, groepsidentiteit?)
, Left image – independence: bold crosses mean internal attributes are very
important, other people aren’t non-important but at certain distance from you
Right image – interdependence: The way you define yourself overlaps with how
other people are, your internal attributes indicated by the non-bold font are
actually not that relevant, the shared attributes that you have (bold) are basically
most relevant with how you see yourself, you are connected with others
- Mediator is rarely assessed +
can’t claim any causality -> self-
construal as a mediator is
interesting, but should be
assessed then
Gelfand
- Tight and Loose cultures
- Came up with an equal culture framework, a
systems model in order to explain how cultures
have become the way they are
- Cultures that have faced contexts with a lot of
threats (ecological +historical), feed into cultures
becoming tighter -> implications for nowadays
- A tight country (e.g. Norway) is seen as typically a context
that’s in Europe relatively individualist -> don’t confuse the two even
tho it cuts across the Hofstede dimensions
- Study of Jackson et al. with anthropological samples from
ethnographic record, non-WEIRD/industrialized countries, secondary
data analysis (don’t have much of those groups rn) -> their rationale:
threat > tighter, holds (data supports it)
1. WEIRD psychology
Heinrich et al.
- Focus: psychological phenomena that are taken as universal – without
evidence
- Issue: no explanation of sample differences -> need to provide a cleared empirical
investigation of whether these phenomena can be transported across the WEIRD boundaries
to non-WEIRD subjects
- “Our thesis is not that humans share few basic psychological properties or processes; rather,
we question our current ability to distinguish these reliably … given the disproportionate
reliance on WEIRD subjects” (p. 62-63)
,Comparisons in Heinrich et al.
- Modern industrialized vs. small scale societies
- Western vs. non-Western industrialized societies
- American vs. other Westerners
- University vs. non-university educated Americans
- Some perceive the Müller-Lyer illusion and others not so much,
depending on the way it is presented
- Explanation: Carpentered world hypothesis -> we’re surrounded by angels + things giving
us cues about depth
- Industrialized societies surrounded by angles -> wall A closer than B, perceiving this as a
schema that helps us orient ourselves in the world that is relevant for us
- Receiving money/coins which they 1) can keep or 2) share person B which
must accept
- Taken as a cue on how people think about fairness + altruism and what their
concerns are regarding both
- Rural Missouri (industrialized): people share about half with other person
- Not only looking at the findings but also the used methods
- Extent to which people adjust what they report instead of answering A is
effect of conformity
- There’s a difference over time, the bigger the majority the bigger the effect,
stimulus ambiguity
- Effect becomes smaller in US over time -> US became more individualist ->
effect is smaller the more individualistic a context is
- Americans very rarely attribute success to things which are not in their
control, perceive themselves as the agent of their own fate
- American prone to interpret/attribute their failure to internal reasons ->
feeling more depressed/at fault/guilt
- Festinger: cognitive dissonance -> make a
choice, which is affirmed or negated, you adjust +
like/not like the choice more
- Evolution becomes positive with the hard choice, if you get
affirmation that you chose the better option
- Heine & Lehman: music preferences and personality -> rating
CD’s in an order of preference/for the average student
- Choose 1 CD, only CD’s which were in the middle of their rankings -> difficult choice,
ambiguous items -> interested in how big the post decisional spread is
- Canadians re-evaluate the choices much higher than Japanese
- The less educated, the less they experience post decisional spread
- Higher educated you are, re-evaluating the chosen CD as more positive and
rejected CD to be less positive
➔ When varying the context or the cultural group, it matters in the results
, Critical Questions:
- Can we apply/use previous psychological findings for all groups and populations? -> not
really without evidence -> need WEIRD + non-WEIRD samples (harder to get)
- How do we find out whether we can do so, and whether findings would hold in another
cultural context? -> importance of Cross-Cultural research
2. Conceptualizing culture
- Culture influences behavior? -> different ways to think about culture (not particularly one
way accepted, but multiple)
Culture as a…
1. Independent variable
- Certain factors vary with culture and influence psychological phenomena + behaviors -> e.g.
extent to which you are individualistic, independent, or tight/loose
2. Confounding variable
- Psychological phenomena are supposed to be universal (e.g.Piaget‘s theory of cognitive
development; theory of attachment) -> culture doesn’t play a big role in psychological
processed because they’re universal
3. Genuine psychological phenomenon
- Every psychological phenomenon takes place in a cultural context, culture is inside one‘s
head (e.g. Vygotski; Indigenous psychology = looking at one specific context in a very
relativist perspective to understand culture as being incomparable to other contexts; one
specific culture is something that can only be understood from within the culture itself) ->
needs to be studied at itself, isn’t a variable/confound, but something we need to
understand; How does culture come about? How is culture shaped + how is it transmitted?
4. Placeholder
- Specific contextual differences instead of large, overarching differences (Poortinga, 2016) ->
as something we don’t necessarily know yet -> e.g. dual disaster in Japan, calm behavior not
because of their culture, we should look at the context/situation -> culture empty vessel,
look at level of preparations for disasters -> people’s behavior can be explained better
than just labeling it ‘Japanese’! -> some countries have ‘better’ disaster preparations
(e.g. Peru with earthquakes), which result in different behavior
Poortinga – Hierarchy of interpretations
1. Cultural Values/Traits
- E.g. using label like the Japanese -> but why they do that? Cuz they are collectivist or context
is tighter, etc.
2. Historical/Political Context
- E.g. going back to history of preparation for specific situation
3. Cultural Conventions
4. Other Person/Own Person (Group)
5. Situation
6. Behavior
➔ Look for most inexpensive explanation (going down the hierarchy), possible to the
closest to the behavior that you’re actually observing, otherwise you’ll make too many
assumptions that won’t hold across different situations
