Cross Cultural Psych. Of Health and Illness Lecture Notes
Lecture 1: Intro and Research Methods
Ch 1 & 4
Definition:
• Positive concept of health and negative concepts of disease are defined differently in
different cultures
- Culture influences→what constitutes health or illness, culture-specific illnesses,
causes of illness, mechanistic or personalistic, how illness should be treated?
• Culture→ a set of implicit and explicit guidelines/information that individuals acquire as
members of a particular society or context regarding:
- How to view the world
- How to experience emotions
- How to behave in relation to other people
- To supernatural forces or gods
- To the natural environment
• Enculturation→ Culture also provides a way of transmitting these guidelines to the next
generation
• Culture is a lens through which an individual perceives and understands the world that
they inhabit and learns how to live with it
• Cultural boundaries are not distinct and often unclear- people are mixes of different
cultures
• Cultures are dynamic and change over time
• There are as many variations within cultures as between cultures
- Problem with stereotypes→ assumes person related variables and generally
continuous and distributed
- Artificial or false dichotomies should be avoided
3 levels of Culture:
• Tertiary level→ explicit manifest culture, visible to the outsider, includes social rituals,
traditional dress, national cuisine, festive occasions= façade of a culture
• Secondary level→ underlying shared beliefs and rules, known to the insiders but rarely
shared with outsiders = social norms
• Primary or Deepest Level → rules that are known to all, obeyed by all, but implicit and
generally out of awareness (hidden, stable and resistant to change)
Universality:
• Absolutist approach→ psychological phenomena are the same across cultures,
processes and behaviors vary
• Relativist approach→ psychological phenomena only exist within the context of a culture
• Somewhere in between→ psychological processes are shaped by experience, but all
humans share the same biological constraints
• General psychology focuses on universals and sometimes tries to control for cultural
variation
, • Cultural psychology focuses on cultural variation in terms of the psychological
consequences of culture
- Studies the different meaning systems originating from different environments
- Assumes that mind and culture are entangled (quite relativist idea)
- Assumes that thoughts are shaped by
context
• Whether a process is universal or
culturally variable depends on the level of
definition
- Abstract definition leads to evidence
supporting universality
- Concrete definition leads to evidence
supporting variability
• Accessibility Universal→ cognitive tool
found in all cultures that serves the same
functions and is accessible to the same
degree
• Functional universal→ cognitive tool
found in all cultures that serves the same function but is accessible to different degrees in
different cultures
• Existential universal→ cognitive tool found in all cultures that serves different functions
and is available to some degree in different cultures
• Nonuniversal (cultural invention)→ cognitive tool not found in all cultures
Cultural Dimensions Theory: Hofstede (2001)
• Cultures can be distinguished according to 5 domains
- Individualism-collectivism→ how independent is a culture?
- Uncertainty avoidance→ how do people dela with ambiguity?
- Power distance→ how hierarchal is a culture?
- Long-term/short-term orientation→ connection with tradition, also economic
orientation
- Masculinity/femininity→ how distinct are gender roles? Distribution of classical
male/female traits
• There are many other theories that can explain variation between cultures but Hoftede is
the main one we need to know
• Socio-Economic Status→ also has cultural implications: interaction with culture,
specifically relevant for health
- Differences in health behavior can be seen within a culture based on SES for example
lower SES predicts higher alcohol consumption
Dealing with Differences:
• Color-blind approach→ treat everyone the same
- Emphasize common human nature, ignores cultural differences
- Research shows that trivial distinctions between groups often leads to discrimination
• Multicultural approach→ recognizing differences
- Recognizes group identities that are different- particularly minorities
, - Understand that ignoring such group differences tends to lead to negative responses
• Ethnocentrism→ perceiving one’s own culture as standard for comparison
- Tendency to judge people from other cultures negatively by comparing them to your
own culture
• There is a current selection bias for research on the WEIRD population- makes up 96%
of all psych research but represent only 16% of world population
- W- western
- E-educated
- I- industrialized
- R-rich
- D-democratic
• WEIRD groups differ in many aspects:
- Visual perception, Fairness, Cooperation, Spatial reasoning, Categorization and
inferential induction, Moral reasoning, Self-concepts and related motivations,
Heritability of IQ
• Learning about cross-cultural variation helps us to interact in a globalizing world-
especially in multi-cultural societies
Research methods:
• Goals→ describe, explain, predict and change
• Approaches→ quantitative and Qualitative
• Methodological Equivalence→ how easily you can apply measures across cultures?
- Pilot studies are important for this
• Reliability→ reproducibility, replicability, and precision
• Validity→ Internal, external, construct, and ecological
• Themes of research include:
- Universality of a specific trait
- Influence of a specific trait on thinking and behavior
- Studying a culture as a whole rather than individuals
• Instruments→ surveys, experiments, observation, interviews, economic games, archival
work, field work, etc.
• Questionnaire Translation→ backward translation for equilibrium
- 2 independent translators, one native in each language then comparison
• Response bias must be taken into consideration too- influenced by culture
- Moderacy bias=in the middle
- Extremity bias= extreme answers
- Acquiescence bias= always agreeing
- Can combat bias with forced choice answers (yes or no), standardization, reverse
scoring items (change scale)
• Reference group effect→ the response to questions may depend on the group that one
is using for reference
- Control by using objective and concrete measures
• Deprivation effects→ the tendency for people to report to value what they would like not
what they already have
- No clear solution for this bias but take into account during interpretation of results
