Cultural Psychology – Summary full (UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM)
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People of Western culture tend to engage in context-independent cognitive processes and people of East Asian cultures tend to engage in context-dependent cognitive processes. The cultural differences in attentional pattern might be afforded by cultural differences in the physical environment.
Japanese scenes (i.e. cities) are judged to be more ambiguous and complex than American scenes. Cultural differences in the perceptual environment are larger in the smaller, more rural areas than in the megalopolises.
Cultural differences in the perceptual environment can lead to different patterns of attention. People primed with Japanese scenes attended more to contextual information than people primed with American scenes.
Culture is:
It includes a particular group of people living within a shared context and individuals exposed to the same cultural information. There is no consensus on the definition of culture although there are shared aspects of culture:
Culture, however, is not:
Culture consists of implicit and explicit parts and can change through reflection upon their own values and ideas (1) and through globalization (2).
People in different cultures differ in their psychology because psychological processes are shaped by experience and culture shapes experience, although psychological processes are constrained and afforded by the neurological structures that underlie them. Culture can affect psychological processes.
One example of this is the Müller-Lyer illusion. This asks people which line is longer although both lines are equally long. Non-Westerners are better at this than Westerners and this might be because Westerners tend to employ more analytic thinking (1) and because Westerners tend to use carved corners to estimate depth (2).
Cultural values are preferences for one state of affairs over another that distinguishes countries, rather than individuals, from each other. They are not exclusive categories and are part of a continuum. There is a lot of heterogeneity within cultures and there are no superior cultural values, although some cultural values are more functional in a given culture or are historically more prevalent in a culture.
People create a network of thoughts, behaviours and feelings surrounding a cultural idea, depending on the extent to which people in a culture are faced with this idea. A network that is activated more often will become stronger. A strong network will be prioritized over weaker networks and this (i.e. the most accessible network) differs between cultures. The meaning of an action is derived from particular cultural experiences.
Multicultural communities in a globalized world need to deal with group differences. However, psychological research makes use of the universality assumption and, therefore, most research is based on WEIRD samples; Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic samples. These samples cannot be generalized because:
Imitative learning (humans) | Emulative learning (primates) |
Not very effective. | Very effective. |
Very precise. | Not very precise. |
Focussed on the model. | Focussed on environmental events. |
Allows for the accumulation of cultural information. | Does not allow for the accumulation of cultural information. |
Imitation saves the cost of individual learning (1), requires the ability to identify models who stand-out (2) and leads to individuals attempting to increase frequency and intimacy with the model (3).
The social brain hypothesis states that humans have developed a large brain in order to facilitate growth and more complex social relationships. A large brain requires more energy and it is possible that this was possible by a shorter but more efficient gut (1) and having fewer muscles (2). It is also possible that humans developed a large brain due to eating vitamin-rich fruits or food sources requiring ingenuity to obtain.
Cultural learning requires a theory of mind (1) and language (2). Both aspects lead to the accumulation of cultural information. Together with innovation, this leads to the ratchet effect; cultural information growing in complexity and utility over time. A large brain facilitates cultural learning.
A large population will lead to quicker cultural learning and more innovation because a large population ensures the presence of a large number of models to copy. A loss of cultural knowledge tends to occur when a small group of people is cut off from a larger population due to there being a shortage of models to copy from.
Cultural variation can be explained in two ways:
The effects of transmitted culture are greater than the effects of evoked culture. Cultural norms are adaptive responses to features of the ecology (e.g. geography has an influence on the cultural norms that develop).
An example of ecological factors changing the culture can be found in China. Rice growing communities became more interdependent and wheat growing communities became more independent, demonstrating that ecological differences can lead to differences in psychology.
Proximal causes refer to causes that have direct and immediate relations with their effects. Distal causes refer to the initial differences that lead to effects over longer periods, often through indirect relations.
There are several characteristics of cultural ideas that are more likely to spread:
Cultures have been changing because of globalization; which leads to cultures becoming more homogeneous at an international level. However, at a local level, there is glocalization; cultures becoming more diverse. A result of globalization is the existence of hybrid cultural products.
Cultures persist because cultural innovations are constrained by pre-existing structures. There appears to be a disproportionate influence on cultural evolution by early ecological factors (e.g. gun-slave cycle). Pluralistic ignorance, a situation in which a majority of group members privately rejects a norm but incorrectly assumes that most others accept it and, therefore, goes along with it, also allows cultures to persist.
There is a rise of individualism because of leisure activities that are socially isolating (e.g. television) (1), more work and financial pressures (2), a lack of nationally unifying events (e.g. war) (3) and an increase in sub-urbanisation (4).
The Flynn effect states that there is a rise of IQ over generations which might be due to improved nutrition (1), better and more education (2) or because pop culture is more complex (3). The dynamic social impact theory states that individuals come to influence each other and primarily do so based on how often the individuals interact.
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The unpackaging of cultures refers to identifying the underlying variables that give rise to the cultural differences as identifying a cultural difference does not tell us which cultural experiences sustain this difference. It consists of identifying an underlying variable (1), demonstrating that this variable actually differs between cultures (2) and demonstrate that the observed cultural differences relate to the observed differences in the variable of interest. However, unpackaging does not mean that all variables behind a cultural difference have been identified.
One difficulty in studying different cultures is choosing which culture to study. Selecting random cultures might yield unexpected results although this is difficult to interpret without a theoretical framework. One method of choosing a culture is by choosing a culture based on a theoretical variable.
The COSI concerns in doing research in cultural psychology are Causation, Operationalization, Sampling and Interpretation. There are two possibilities with sampling, testing for universality of a cultural idea, value or invention or testing for cultural variance:
Testing for universality | ||
METHOD | PROS | CONS |
Randomly select as many countries as possible. | This is the ideal option. | This is not pragmatic. |
Select two maximally different cultures. | Finding no difference is strong evidence for universality. | Finding a difference will be difficult to interpret. |
Testing for cultural variation | ||
Randomly select as many countries as possible that span the entire range of a cultural value of interest. | This is the ideal option. | This is not pragmatic. |
Match two cultural groups in all non-cultural variables |
The development niche theory is a theoretical framework for understanding and analysing how culture shapes child development:
A sensitive period refers to a period of time in an organism’s development that allows for the relatively easy acquisition of a set of skills. There exists a sensitive period for language learning which is demonstrated by:
There appears to be a sensitive period for culture learning. After the age of 15, people have greater difficulty with learning language. Exposure with the host culture increased identification with this culture, especially if this happens before the age of 15. The sensitive period for cultural learning could be influenced by the degree of integration in the new host culture. However, the existence of a sensitive period for culture learning is controversial.
There are four major differences in cultural variation in early developmental experiences:
A lot of face-to-face contact, rather than bodily contact in infants can lead to more individualism. Parenting style can be seen as a continuum rather than distinct categories and the parenting style might change with the age of the child. The measurement of parenting styles fails to consider developmental stage (1), the fact that expression and perception of warmth depend on culture (2) and the role of training (3). The noun bias might reflect differences in language (e.g. nouns being in more salient positions) or differences in analytic or holistic reasoning.
There are different parenting styles:
There are several key characteristics of an independent self:
There are several key characteristics of an interdependent self:
Identity is thought to come from inner attributes for people with an independent self. It is thought to come from social relationships for people with an interdependent self. People with independent selves represent themselves and others in different brain regions, whereas people with interdependent selves represent themselves and others in the same brain region.
Independent self-qualities exist by themselves (1), are stable across situations (2) and are abstract (3). Interdependent self-qualities are conceived in the framework of relations (1), are context-dependent (2) and imply responsibilities and appropriate behaviours (3).
The type of self-concept relates to the cultural values of the larger cultural context (1), physical constraints of the environment (2) and the social environment (3). The self-concept influences emotion (1), motivation (2), thinking style (3) and implicit theories of self (4). The self-concept also organizes information about the self (1), directs attention to information that is viewed to be relevant (2), shapes concerns people have (3), guides people in the choice of relationship partner (4) and influences how people interpret situations (5).
A collectivistic culture stresses the importance of being connected with others through certain cultural practices (e.g. co-sleeping), which nurtures an interdependent self. An individualistic culture stresses the importance of being self-sufficient through certain cultural practices (e.g. children having own bedroom), which nurtures an independent self.
There are differences within subcultures regarding the content of the self because of urbanization (1), lifestyle (2), education (3) and Westernization (4).
The entity theory of self (i.e. fixed mindset) states that aspects of the self are resistant to change across one’s life because they are innate. This is more prevalent in people with an independent mindset. The incremental theory of self (i.e. growth mindset) states that aspects of the self are malleable and can be improved through effort. This is more prevalent in people with an interdependent self.
People with independent selves demonstrate dissonance reduction through rationalizing one’s decision in ways that are consistent with one’s preferences, whereas people with interdependent selves demonstrate dissonance reduction through rationalizing one’s decision in ways that are consistent with other’s expectations.
Subjective self-awareness refers to attention directed outwards and not being consciously aware of the self. In subjective self-awareness, there is more first-person memory (1), high self-esteem (2) and inaccuracy in predicting one’s behaviour (3). It is related
.....read moreEnculturation refers to the process of first-culture learning. Acculturation refers to the process of cultural change when you interact with people from another culture (i.e. second-culture learning). It is relevant to study acculturation as there is a lot of contact (1), diversity (2) and contact with other cultures (3).
Migration refers to the movement of a person or a group of persons either across an international border or within a nation. There are economic migrants (1), sojourners (2), refugees (3), asylum seekers (4) and displaced people (5).
The process of acculturation includes contact (1), influence (2) and change (3). The change occurs for individuals of both cultures. There are three stages of acculturation:
A culture shock refers to the feeling of being anxious, helpless, irritable and homesick when one moves to a new culture. The acculturating individual’s adjustment is influenced by the ease which migrants can be accommodated by the host culture.
The outcome of acculturation consists of sociocultural adaption (1) and psychological adjustment (2). Acculturation can be accompanied by acculturative stress, a reduction in mental health and well-being of ethnic minorities during the process of the adaptation to a new culture. This stress can occur because of language issues (1), perceived cultural incompatibilities (2) and cultural self-consciousness (3). It might be a proxy or a mediator for mental health.
Push factors (e.g. poverty) are factors that push a person away from a country and a culture. Pull factors (e.g. safety) are factors that pull a person towards a country and a culture.
There are several acculturation strategies:
There are
.....read moreIn Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, there are different needs and motivations.
One problem with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is that it is phrased in Western terms.
People with an independent self-concept attempt to achieve the connectedness motivation through securing uniqueness. People with an interdependent self-concept attempt to achieve the connectedness motivation through acting consistently with others.
The preference for uniqueness or fitting in also differs between social classes in the same culture (e.g. American working-class and American middle-class).
The promotion orientation refers to concerns over advancing oneself. People with an independent self-concept focus on self-esteem and this is related to the promotion orientation and the idea of an inalienable dignity that individuals have.
The prevention orientation refers to concerns over losing face and attending to one’s weaknesses and correcting them. Face refers to the amount of social value others give a person if that person lives up to the standards associated with the position. Face is determined by position and is difficult to increase and easy to lose. People with an interdependent self-concept focus on face and this is related to the prevention orientation.
It is unclear whether the self-esteem need is universal or linked to the self-concept. The cultural norm for an independent self when describing oneself is achieving high self-esteem, whereas the cultural norm for an interdependent self when describing oneself is modesty.
The self-enhancement motivation is achieved by engaging in different strategies:
Independent self | Interdependent self |
Making use of the self-serving bias. | Making use of self-criticism. |
Making use of downward social comparison. | Making use of upward social comparison. |
Making use of compensatory self-enhancement. | Not making use of compensatory self-enhancement. |
Discounting negative information when encountering failure in one domain. | Increase significance of domain when encountering failure in one domain. |
Making use of external attribution of failure. |
Analytic thinking can be characterized by different things:
Holistic thinking can be characterized by different things:
Taxonomic organization refers to grouping stimuli according to the perceived similarity of their attributes. Thematic organization refers to grouping stimuli based on causal, temporal or spatial relationships among them.
The differences in thinking style are caused by socialization and ongoing social experiences (i.e. proximal cause) and the differences in philosophical traditions (i.e. distal cause).
Holistic thinking allows for the ability to attend to a lot of information at once, which is reflected in how information-laden collectivistic cultural settings are (e.g. urban areas). This makes Japanese cities more complex than American cities, as it affords different thinking styles. Holistic thinking allows for better skills for finding details in a busy scene.
Analytic and holistic thinking influence several parts of cognition:
ATTENTION | |
Analytic thinking | Holistic thinking |
Attention is focused on different parts of a scene. | Attention is broad and across the entire scene. |
Objects are perceived as independent from their background (i.e. field independence). | Objects are perceived as bound to their background (i.e. field dependence). |
ATTRIBUTION | |
Analytic thinking |
There are cultural differences of emotion in appraisal (1), emotion stimulus (2), action-readiness (3), physiological response (4), emotion word (5) and emotional behaviour (6).
The James-Lange theory (i.e. evolutionary approach) of emotion states that emotions are physiological responses to stimuli in the world and emotions are invariant, innate biological responses. This theory assumes universality of emotional experience.
The two-factor theory (i.e. social constructionist approach) of emotion states that emotions are interpretations of physiological responses and emotions are highly variable and contextualized responses. This theory does not assume universality of emotional experience.
People do not have a fine-tuned awareness of their bodily sensations and people tend to look for environmental cues to help them label physical sensations, making the two-factor theory more likely.
The universality thesis states that certain configurations of facial movements are universally perceived as expressing particular emotions (e.g. smile always means happiness). The idea of universality of facial expressions stems from the idea of the evolutionary adaptive value of emotions.
Evidence for the universality thesis comes from blind infants showing the same facial expressions as healthy adults and people from different cultures recognizing the same facial expression as the same emotion.
However, people may be active perceivers who categorize facial movements using culturally learned emotion concepts. The universality thesis might have found support because of methodological constraints put on the participants (e.g. matching facial expressions to a fixed list of answers).
People from small-scale societies do not always infer specific mental features as the cause of facial movements although they do show action identification, seeing facial expressions as giving meaning to actions. People from cultures that do infer specific mental features as the cause of facial movements attend to different parts of the face to recognize emotions. The recognition of the valence of faces might be universal.
Display rules refer to culturally specific rules that govern which facial expressions are appropriate in a given situation and how intensely they should be exhibited. The idea of display rules assumes that emotional experience is not affected by emotional expression.
The facial feedback hypothesis states that facial expressions are one source of information we use when we infer our emotional experience and there is some evidence that the facial expression influences the intensity of the emotional experience.
The ingroup advantage refers to a more accurate recognition of emotion within the same culture and language group. This effect might exist because of more exposure and familiarity with expression of one’s own culture (1), decoder differences in effort due to ingroup identification (2) and encoder differences in display (3).
There are differences in subjective well-being and ideal affect between independent and interdependent selves:
Independent self |
There are several universal physical features of attractiveness:
It is possible that mixed-ethnicities faces are more attractive because genetic diversity is a marker of healthy genes (1) and it is more average than a one-ethnicity face (2).
There is cultural variation in the ideal body weight of women with smaller-scale societies finding women with a higher body weight more attractive whereas societies which have been exposed to Western culture more finding women with a lower body weight more attractive. People in lower social-economic settings find heavier bodies more attractive whereas higher social-economic settings finding thinner bodies more attractive.
Body dissatisfaction and a desire for thinness are more common in societies with more exposure to Western ideals and high social-economic settings. There also is cultural variation in the preference for and kind of body decorations.
There are two effects that can influence attractiveness:
It is possible that the similarity effect does not hold for collectivistic cultures because of a different stance towards strangers and lower relational mobility.
Attractive people are seen as having more positive qualities as demonstrated by the halo effect. This effect does not hold in cultures with low relational mobility. The residential context in which a person lives or the fact whether a person moves a lot influences the kind of relationships a person has.
Every relationship consists of one or more parts of the relational model typology:
Every culture provides a symptom pool of recognized and discussed symptoms that lead people to express their inner conflicts in a familiar language. There are cultural differences in the extent to which certain mental illnesses are prevalent and in the extent to which certain symptoms are part of mental disorders. There is also a difference in the way mental illnesses are perceived and dealt with (i.e. stigma).
There is a difference in psychologization and somatization of depression across cultures. This might be due to the social stigma associated with the disorder (1) and a different focus on internal emotional states across cultures (2).
It is not a good idea to use a therapist from a different culture than the patient. Cross-cultural psychotherapy leads to higher drop-out rates (1) and less effective treatment (2). It is more effective to make use of culturally adapted psychotherapy.
However, this requires cultural competence. This can be achieved by recognizing one’s own cultural influence (1), developing knowledge about the cultural background of a patient (2) and develop appropriate skills to be able to intervene in the therapy session in a way that is culturally sensitive and relevant (3). A therapist needs to be flexible about when it is appropriate to generalize from a client’s culture to mainstream culture and when it is more appropriate to individualize the client.
There are universal syndromes (table 1), mental disorders that exist in all cultures, although cultural differences can exist in prevalence and symptom expression. Culture bound syndromes (table 2) are syndromes that appear to be greatly influenced by cultural factors.
DISORDER | PRESUMED CAUSES | CULTURAL DIFFERENCES |
Depression | Neurotransmitter imbalance, stress associated with tragic life events. | Difference in prevalence across cultures. Psychologization in Western cultures. Somatization in Eastern cultures. |
Schizophrenia | Genetic factors, prenatal conditions | Paranoid sub-type is more prevalent in the United Kingdom. Catatonic sub-type is more prevalent in India. Better prognosis in non-industrialized societies. |
Social anxiety |
The universality thesis states that certain configurations of facial movements are universally perceived as expressing particular emotions. It is possible that people are active perceivers who categorize facial movement using culturally learned emotion concepts.
The universality thesis might have found more support because of the methodological constraints put on the participants (e.g. matching facial expressions to a fixed list of answers). Less constraining methods weaken the evidence found for the universality thesis.
It is possible that the universality thesis has to be weakened as it might be possible that people do not recognize emotion concepts in other people but recognize pleasure and displeasure in all people. People from small-scale societies do not always infer a specific mental feature as the cause of facial movements. They also show action identification, where they make sense of facial movements as behaviours.
Emotion perception requires the perceiver to give meaning to the facial expression which might be culturally determined.
Research in psychology tends to assume that everyone shares the most fundamental cognitive and affective processes and that findings from one population apply to other populations. Most psychological research is conducted on Western (W), educated (E), industrialized (I), rich (R) and democratic (D) (WEIRD) participants.
Evidence suggests that there are cultural differences in cognitive and affective processes. Populations vary in the extent to which they display certain biases, patterns and preferences.
There are four methods to overcome this problem:
People of Western culture tend to engage in context-independent cognitive processes and people of East Asian cultures tend to engage in context-dependent cognitive processes. The cultural differences in attentional pattern might be afforded by cultural differences in the physical environment.
Japanese scenes (i.e. cities) are judged to be more ambiguous and complex than American scenes. Cultural differences in the perceptual environment are larger in the smaller, more rural areas than in the megalopolises.
Cultural differences in the perceptual environment can lead to different patterns of attention. People primed with Japanese scenes attended more to contextual information than people primed with American scenes.
It is possible that location (i.e. city) is relevant for the self and well-being because local contexts have different ecologies and histories and vary in their often subtle and implicit cultural understanding of how to be and how to be well.
In individualistic settings, well-being is correlated with self-esteem, positive affect and happiness.
People from Boston are more likely to perceive clear norms in their area than people from San Francisco. Boston displays more contingency than San Francisco. The self is less bound by a concern with status and established social norms in San Francisco.
The Boston culture cycle reflected and promoted greater attention to the old and established and revealed a high degree of social contingency. The San Francisco culture cycle reflected and promoted greater attention to the new and free and less social contingency.
Boston suggests a history of emphasizing tradition, status and community. People in Boston have a sense of self-satisfaction contingent on education, finances, work, family and community, a more contingent self-worth, more attention to fitting in with others and support of regulation by establishment.
In Boston, there is more contingent self-evaluation, more contingent self-worth and feeling good tied to relief from contingency. In San Francisco, there is less contingent self-evaluation, less contingent self-worth and feeling good tied to own positive experience.
There are major cultural differences within China. Farming rice makes a culture more interdependent, whereas farming wheat makes a culture more independent.
Western culture is more individualistic and analytic thinking and East Asian culture is more interdependent and holistic thinking. Analytical thinking uses abstract reasoning and formal categories and holistic thinking is more intuitive. There are four main theories which attempt to explain the reasons for differences between the East and the West:
The biggest differences between farming rice and wheat are irrigation (1) and labour (2). Rice requires more labour and more elaborate irrigation systems, which required the cooperation of multiple people.
Rice cultures have more holistic thought, more interdependent self-construals and lower divorce rates. Wheat cultures had more analytic thought, individualism and divorce. It is believed that subsistence style can shape culture long after people have stopped relying on that subsistence style.
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