Cultural psychology
Module 1: What is culture? And why is it
relevant?
Culture = a unique meaning and information system, shared by a group and transmitted across
generations, that allows the group to meet basic needs of survival, pursue happiness and well-being,
and derive meaning from life.
Culture is a difficult concept, you don’t need only one definition.
Culture is also a pair of glasses that we are constantly looking through, a schema to help us evaluate
and organize information.
Goals of cross-cultural psychology:
1) Transport and test hypotheses and findings to other cultural settings: are the hypotheses
universal or cultural?
2) Explore other cultures in order to discover cultural and psychological variations.
3) Integrate findings into a more universal psychology.
What we know at present, is heavily based on studies among WEIRD samples: Western, Educated,
Industrialized, Rich and Democratic. Research is mostly based on cultures like the Netherlands and
the United States.
o 73% of first authors were at American universities: 99% were at universities in Western
countries.
o 96% of psychological samples come from countries with only 12% of the world’s population.
This is NOT representative for mankind, 88% of the world’s population is not included.
What about uneducated, unindustrialized, poor people?
How can we approach culture? Theoretical approaches:
Geert Hofstede: individualism / collectivism (most used dimension)
This is used to classify cultural patterns, this is an examination of work related values in employees of
IBM (international business machines cooperation). He found four classic dimensions, later in 2010
he added two more:
1. Power distance = the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and
institutions accept and expect that power is distributed unequally. Countries with higher
power distance are more likely to be individualistic.
2. Individualism = pertains to societies in which the this between individuals are loose:
everyone is expected to look after himself or herself and his or her immediate family.
Important: low-context communication, task comes first and relationship comes second /
collectivism = 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. Exclusionists: ‘in-group’ or ‘out-group’ Important: high-
context communication, relationship comes first and tasks comes second, harmony inside of
the ‘in-group’, low pace of life.
This is measured relatively
3. Masculinity / femininity
, 4. Uncertainty avoidance
5. Long-term / short-term orientation (2010)
6. Indulgence (2010)
Criticism:
o How is it assessed? An international questionnaire is used: some items are directed to
individualism and other are directed to collectivism. But the items are not really thought
through. The items don’t match up well with the definitions of individualism and collectivism.
o Gerhart & Fang (2005): The cultural variance explained by the Hofstede approach is very
small. Other elements seem to be more able to explain the variance.
o Matsumoto (1999): He looked at studies about the differences between the USA and Japan
(polar opposites). Most studies provided no or little support for differences predicted by the
Hofstede model.
o Long term orientation: the definitions are vague
o Micheal Minkov (2017): He analyzed old evidence for the Hofstede model and compared it
with new data. The old data came from IPM employees, are these employees representative?
Do we find the four Hofstede dimensions again, are they replicated? Do these dimensions
have internal reliability, do these items go together? Can we actually use the model to predict
behavior?
A lot of the items seem to lack face validity. Power distance (do people accept equality
differences?) seems not to be a single concept but seems to be part of IND/COLL.
Uncertainty avoidance is not reliably measured, it also doesn’t predict criteria.
MAS-FEM similarly does not predict criteria.
Much of Hofstede’s model (UA, MAS-FEM) fails this test while the remaining part (IDV-COLL,
PD, LTO) needs a serious revision. They might go together.
Most important: the way that the Hofstede is designed is to be used of the national level of
analysis, not at the individual. Otherwise people are prone to the ecological fallacy.
Expansion: Cultural syndromes (Triandis):
1. Vertical collectivism includes perceiving the self as a part (or an aspect) of a collective and
accepting inequalities within the collective. You see yourself as part of the group but you
accept status differences: vertical differences.
2. Horizontal collectivism includes perceiving the self as a part of the collective, but seeing all
members of the collective as the same; thus equality is stressed. You see yourself as part of
the collective and there is horizontal equality.
, 3. Vertical individualism includes the conception of an autonomous individual and acceptance
of inequality. You see yourself as your own person and you’re accepting of the vertical
inequality.
4. Horizontal individualism includes the conception of an autonomous individual and emphasis
on equality. You see yourself as your own person but the emphasize equality nevertheless.
Short: vertical cultures are acceptive of status differences, while horizontal cultures emphasize
equality.
Markus & Kitayama: categorical difference between an dependent self (imbedded in a society of a lot
of people) and an independent self (distinct from others). The self is the mediator of cultural
differences: its construal differs across cultures. The importance assigned to so-called public,
relational and private, inner aspects of the self can vary by culture:
o Western: being different from others
o Eastern: being connected to others
Kritiek: Matsumoto (1999): Independence and Interdependence as an important tool (heuristic) to
explain (national) differences, but there is little empirical support. Past research has mostly assumed
and documented such differences, without searching for the variables that mediate them. This is not
a very dimensional way of looking at this. Most researchers use Markus and Kitayama's concepts to
characterize cultures but data on the individual level is needed for more elaborated models of
causality and mediation. As well, these concepts have been used dualistic – but could be regarded as
dimensional.
, Alana Conner: from independence to interdependence: saw a pattern of people trying to be
interdependent at school, they wanted to be close with other people. But at the school Yale they
were taught to be independent. She also saw the big cultural differences between men and women,
while the biological differences are not big at all. Men don’t invite and women don’t insist: think
about women wanting to ask for a raise. All of your life problems (with your spouse, friends, parents)
seem to be one and the same problem: the independence-interdependence clash.
In case of conflict:
1. Lead with interdependence: we’re more likely to figure out what the problem is.
2. If that doesn’t work: try independence.
We need to be able to go from interdependence to independence and back.
Gelfand: looked at tight and loose cultures: this difference seems really important to understand
different behaviors. Gelfand thinks that there has to be a good balance between tight and loose.
o Tight: strong social norms, low tolerance for deviant behavior. People want to adhere to the
rules and are not tolerant of people who don’t, there are few crimes in these societies.
o Loose: weak social norms, high tolerance for deviant behavior. In these societies there is also
more room for different people, there more open to new ideas and change.
Her theory enfolds that societies that have faced a lot of threats (ecological or historical) feed
into tight cultures. Societies that for example have a lot of threat of natural disasters seem to
be more tight. She found that people from upper class are more negative about following
rules in comparison with lower class, this is because of people from the upper class
experience less threat.
There is not a clear cut that below the mean of tightness scores are individualistic cultures
and above the mean are collectivistic cultures. While Norway is very high on the score, the
Netherlands is relatively low, while both cultures are individualistic.
