Introduction to Cultural Psychology: Lecture 1
What is culture?
- Rules, norms and values
- Not only explicit but also implicit rules
- (Shared) Traditions, preferences, food à Shared is really important here, because it is
shared with a group of people.
- One of the definitions of culture, that is a little bit old and was proposed by an
anthropologist namely Edward Burnett Tylor (1871): Culture is that complex
whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other
capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. What is important
in this definition is the term “acquired”, because culture is not something that people
are born with but rather something that is learned. So, the process of socialization that
is at the same time the learning of culture. When a child is born, he or she immediately
starts to learn cultural habits, values, implicit ideas about what is good and bad,
morals. So, it is learned, that is really important.
- The second definition is provided by Geert Hofstede (2001). Geert Hofstede is quite
famous in the Cultural Psychology world. He did lots of studies and research on
cultural values and he said: Culture is the collective programming of the mind that
distinguishes the member of one group of people from another. So here we have the
shared part. So, it is not only a collection of habits that are learned, but also shared by
a group which makes that group different on some aspects from another group. A
shared way of living actually.
- The definition given by Steven J. Heine (2008) which is the writer of the book that
we have to read for this class. He actually splits the idea of culture into two aspects.
First: Culture is any kind of information (ideas, beliefs, technology, habit, practice)
that is acquired from other members of one’s species through social learning that is
capable of affecting an individual’s behaviours. These are all kinds of aspects that
influence people’s behaviour and make these behaviours different from people from
other groups.
Secondly: Particular group of people living within a shared context and exposed to
same cultural information, e.g., “Western” cs. “East Asian” cultures.
- Lastly there is a very short and concise definition provided by Alex Mesoudi (2015):
Culture is socially transmitted information. So, any information that goes from one
person to another person and from one group member to another group member.
- There is no consensus on what the correct definition of culture is. These are just a
few definitions of the many definitions that exist.
- The shared aspect is important and the learned aspect is important.
This image is shown during the lecture. It is also called the
iceberg of culture. What we mean with this is that there are
some overt aspects of culture, for example people’s behavior.
Some institutions, some artifacts or products, habits and
traditions. All thing that you can see, that you can observe.
But there is also a big chunk of more covered aspects of
culture and that is the underlying part. So, some social values
that people, maybe not very explicitly, communicate but is
sort of implicitly communicated in what they say and what
they do. Also, norms, attitudes, beliefs and knowledge.
,Cultural psychologists are, for a large part, interested in this chunk of covered information.
So, they also study behavior of course, but they are also very interested in what is actually
underneath this behavior, what underlying a difference in certain behavior. If you see
someone from Japan behaving in a very different way, in a certain situation, than someone
from the United States than ask yourself: What is the underlying factor? What causes this
behavior? So, this is what psychologists often look for. And then, for example,
anthropologists and historians are more often studying the more overt behaviors so the top of
the iceberg.
What is not culture?
She already mentioned Hofstede, he did very important research on cultural values and
we will talk a little bit more about that later. But it is important to realize that culture is not
only cultural values. So people sometimes equate it and all the differences they might find,
they will sort of relate to different cultural values. But of course there is more than only
values. Also behavior, cultural products, certain traditions.
What is also important, what you often see if you read research in cross-cultural
Psychology, is that these researchers use country as a proxy for culture. This can be
problematic, because it is hard to generalize the findings. Within a country there a many
different groups and cultures. Next to that, migration happens which causes there to be even
more different cultures in a country. Therefore, it is not the best idea to take a country as a
proxy for cultural values, because there are many different groups and cultures within a
country and they are different from each other, but they can also share resemblances.
Culture is not homogenous, it is heterogenous. The
picture on the right is shown during the lecture. These are all
English people, with the woman on the left whose clothes are
more like a gothic style and then next to her more “traditional
English people”. They have the same sort of overarching
culture, but then the person who dresses in a more gothic style
is living in a kind of subculture. So sometimes there are even
bigger differences within a culture/country than between.
Cultures are not stable. So it is not something that is
set in stone, cultures are constantly moving a little bit.
How unstable are cultural values?
The picture here on the right is shown during the
lecture. It is about a study that is done in many countries, all
around the world. It lasted from the 80’s until 2014. They
studied, in this case, different values. So, you have traditional
values that are more focused on family, religion, obedience to
authority, hierarchy. And then the opposites of those values are
the more secular/rational values, more individualistic and freer.
On the other axis you see the survival values that are very
much focused on economic and physical safety. And lastly,
you see the self-expression values that are less economic and
more about how people develop, about individualism and also
about minority rights for example. These are opposites and
they studied this in very different countries over many decades.
, This then turns into an interactive picture which shows the change in values over the
years. It shows that cultures are dynamic, that they are changing and moving. That is also
logical, people don’t stay the same all the time.
General vs. Cultural Psychology
What is important is that with Social Psychology and Psychology in general, the cultural
aspect has been a large source of attention. What is sort of common is that general
psychologists are mainly focused on finding aspects, finding phenomena that are the same for
everyone. So, they have a universalist perspective. In the book, by Heine, this is also
described that searching for a universalistic phenomenon is opposite to how cultural
psychologists are looking at the world. In general Psychology psychological processes,
cognitive, behavior, emotions are all seen as invariant and universal. And when there are
differences, for example cultural differences, these differences are actually seen as “noise”
and as superficial. The underlying process, of what happens in the brain for example, should
all be the same and the mind is actually independent from culture. You can compare this to
the computer like metaphor of the mind in which you have the hardware (that is actually
independent and not influenced by the context or by the software you use). That is how these
people think.
However cultural psychologists that those processes are influenced by certain
socialization and certain cultural aspects, and those aspects are meaningful. You cannot
consider them as noise, but you should consider them as part of what is happening. So, it is
not superficial and the mind is actually intertwined with culture. So, the goal of general
psychologists is actually to find universal processes in the human brain and the human mind.
They want to understand the mind independent from the context. Whereas the goal for
cultural psychologists is to understand the mind intertwined and interdependent with its
content and context.
But how “Deep” is the Effect of Culture?
So, what those general psychologists say is
that sometimes there are indeed differences, but
they are not really important and they are also not
really deep. They do not affect the brain for
example. The picture here on the right is shown
during the lecture. This reflects a task, the figure
line task which is often given to people from
different cultures. The idea is that there is this
square with a stimulus. People first have to do the
absolute test, so draw the line as long as it actually
is and then do the relative test so draw the line
relative to the one in the smaller square.
What is actually found in this task, is that Americans are actually better at the absolute
task whereas East-Asians are better at the relative task. It is a very basic cognitive task, but it
is replicated a lot and it is continuously found that this difference exists. East-Asians have a
more holistic way of thinking in which they use the whole context when they see something
or perceive something or in this case when they have to draw something. Whereas people
from Western countries think a bit more analytic, so they are more used to taking something
out of the context and then analyze it as it is. So that is why Americans are a bit better at the
absolute test, whereas the East-Asians are better at the relative task.
