BulletPointsummary of Cultural Psychology by Heine - 4th edition

What is cultural psychology exactly? - BulletPoints 1

• Culture is any idea, belief, technique, habit, or practice acquired through social learning of others. Cultures are groups of people that exist within some kind of shared context. People in a certain culture are exposed to the same kind of cultural ideas. There are a number of limitations when studying the concept of culture: The boundaries of culture cannot be clearly defined (e.g. globalization can influence culture); cultures change over time; within a culture there is great variation between individuals.
• According to Shweder (1990), much in the field of general psychology assumes that people are the same all over the world and that the brain functions according to a number of natural and universal rules that are independent of context and content. Yet there are also many differences between people worldwide. Shweder says that the brain can be seen as a central processing unit (CPU) which operates independently of the content that it is thinking about or of the context within which it is thinking. This is the basic principle of general psychology.
• Universal properties can be looked at by a number of different levels. Norenzayan and Heine (2005) have developed a decision tree for this. This structure consists of four levels: Nonuniversal (there are also psychological processes that do not occur in all cultures, thus being nonuniversal, and that can be said to be cultural inventions.), existential universal (this is about the fact that a psychological phenomenon exists in multiple cultures, but the phenomenon is not necessarily used to solve the same problem, nor is it equally accessible across cultures. It also does not have to be the same process.), functional universal (this means that psychological phenomena exist in multiple cultures, are used to solve the same problems across cultures, but some universal functionalities are more accessible to people from some cultures than others.), accessibility universal (this is the strongest case for universality. This means that a given psychological phenomenon exists in all cultures, is used to solve the same problem across cultures and is accessible to the same degree across cultures.)

What is culture and what does cultural life mean? - BulletPoints 2

• There are three key cognitive capacities helping in learning cultural skills: Mentalizing and perspective taking (containing imitative learning - the learner internalizes the goals and behavioral strategies of the role model; and emulative learning - the learner focuses on the environmental elements involved. This kind of learning does not require the role model's behavioral strategies), language to make communication between two people easier, and sharing experiences and goals which is used for collaborative learning. 
• Cultures of people are cumulative. This means that once an idea has been learned from a person, it can be adapted and improved by other individuals. Over time, cultural information grows in complexity and often also in utility. This process is called the ratchet effect. Just like a ratchet (which can move forward, but not reverse), human cultural information can increase without losing previous information. However, information must be transferred reliably so that a solid basis is created. This requires accurate imitation learning and refined communication. Other species than humans do not show the capacity for significant cumulative cultural evolution.
• Humans have less muscle mass than chimpanzees. This came with the cost of having less strength, but it came with the gain that more energy could be consumed by our brain. But the decrease in muscle mass is just a small contributor to our bigger brains. Also, our gut became smaller by approximately 60% and this saves about 10% of our daily energy use. This smaller gut is compensated by humans doing a part of their digestion outside their bodies, to extract enough energy from food. That is why food is being dried, marinated, chopped, scraped, and cooked. The development of cooking is an interaction of culture and genes. This is called gene-culture coevolution. The social brain hypothesis by Dunbar (1998) states that cognitive demands inherent in social living led to the evolution of larger brains in primates. This hypothesis does not explain why group living is beneficial to primates. It might be that living in a group comes with more opportunities for social learning. It is been found that the larger the brain size, the more engaged the primate is in social learning.

How does culture arise and how is it maintained? - BulletPoints 3

• There are two ways in which we can understand how geography contributes to cultural variation: Evoked culture (all people have biologically coded behavioral repertoires that are potentially accessible. These repertoires are addressed if the correct situational conditions are present.) and transmitted culture (people learn certain cultural habits through any form of social learning.)
• Cultures that are individualistic include a variety of habits and practices that encourage individuals to set their personal goals above collective goals and to distinguish themselves from others in the ingroup. Cultures collectivist include various habits, customs and social rules that encourage individuals to put more emphasis on collective goals of the ingroup. American youths are on average more individualistic than their parents. Because the population increasingly consists of people born in recent decades, the culture is also becoming more individualistic.
• Pluralistic ignorance is the tendency for people to collectively misinterpret the thoughts that explain the behavior of others. We often try to find out what others think, but we only have the behavior to base our observations on. If people make statements that reflect their actual thoughts, we can easily distract their thoughts. In some situations, people do not say what they really think, but instead answer in a way that they expect others to find desirable. For example, a student who actually thinks their housemates drink too much alcohol, but does not dare to say it to them because they think drinking a lot is socially acceptable and the student's opinion is not. Because the student does not express their real thoughts, others cannot properly interpret what they think. As a result, the norm with regard to drinking alcohol persists and even gets worse. Pluralistic ignorance is relevant to the preservation of culture, because people are more influenced by what they believe other people think, than by what others actually think.

How is psychological research done in the field of culture? - BulletPoints 4

• Researchers in the same area often use the same research methods. But cultural psychology cuts across subfields of psychology, so it is not always the same which methods are used in cultural psychology. Every method has strengths and weaknesses. A combination of different methods can improve the ability to assess psychological states of people in different cultures. The most common approach for selecting cultures for research is to choose samples based on a theoretical variable you are investigating. If this variable is, for example, collectivism, you would choose cultures that differ in terms of their collectivism. In addition to surveys, cross-cultural research also makes extensive use of experiments. An experiment is a powerful methodological tool that can reveal much more than a regular questionnaire can reveal.
• One of the most used ways of doing cross-cultural research is the use of surveys. This means that the test subjects are asked to fill in a questionnaire, often anonymously. Often the researchers and the test subjects do not speak the same language. It is then difficult to communicate with each other about what is being investigated, for example personality traits or emotions. A possible solution to this problem is to compare cultures that speak the language of the researchers (often English) in addition to their mother tongue. In this way no questionnaires need to be translated, so that costs and effort can be saved. However, this also has a number of limitations: First of all, the participant may have a poorer language comprehension than the researchers. They may not completely understand what is asked of them if the questions are not asked in their native language. In addition, the subjects who do speak English well as a second language, could be unrepresentative of the population. For instance, it could be that they have a higher educated and are more westernized than their fellow cultural partners who do not speak English. There also appears to be a difference between the answers people give when the same questions are asked in their native language or in English. This is also to be seen in bilingual participants who are tested in their native language and their second language.
• There are two types of manipulations of the independent variable that can be done in psychological research: Between-groups manipulation (different groups of test subjects receive different levels of the independent variable. Between-groups manipulation requires random assignment to the different conditions, so that every participant has the same chance to end up in every condition.) and within-groups manipulation (each subject receives more than one level of the independent variable. Within-groups manipulation has no random assignment, because all participants receive all levels of the independent variable. Each test subject is therefore assigned to all conditions.)

How does the environment influence a person's cultural views? - BulletPoints 5

• People are cultural beings and have brains that are pre-programmed to learn cultural meaning systems. We have a sensitive period of cultural learning. During this sensitive period, we acquire a set of skills relatively easy. Cultural knowledge and skills are not in our brains from birth. This makes us unlike other species. Humans have to learn the cultural skills, and the universal brain provides us with certain inherited capabilities that enable us to learn them well.
• Humans are born cultureless and acquire culture as they socialize. Cultural differences in psychological processes are thus more pronounced with age. The younger the children are, the more similar they are.
• There are three styles of attachment: Secure attachment (Infants occasionally seek their caregiver's presence and intensify their desire to be close to them after being left alone in an unfamiliar situation), avoidant attachment (Infants show little distress at their caregiver's absence, and avoid them on return), anxious-ambivalent attachment (Infants show frequent distress when their caregiver is either present or absent. Sometimes they seek the caregiver's company, other times they resist the caregiver).
• The difficult transitions while growing up are around two years old (the Terrible Twos) and in adolescence. When children are around two years old, there is an obvious increase in refusals and rebellious behavior. Many two-year-old children will say 'no' to everything they are asked to do. In Western cultures this behavior of the "terrible two-year-old" is seen as a milestone; the children begin to prove their own individuality. Yet the behavior that Western "terrible two-year-old" display is not observed globally. In the West, adolescence is described as a chaotic period of storm and stress, when teenagers rebel against authority figures, commit crimes and display criminal behavior, suffer a great deal of stress and have a high risk of substance abuse or suicide. Violence is often associated with adolescence. Boys are more violent when fewer girls are around.

What views are there on the self-concept and consciousness? - BulletPoints 6

• The independent view of self is that the self, derives its identity from inner attributes. These characteristics presume to reflect the essence of an individual, because they are the basis of identity. The characteristics remain stable in various situations as well as over time. The characteristics are perceived as unique; no one has exactly the same composition of characteristics as another. Independent individuals experience their own identity characteristics as independent of interaction with others. Important aspects that define the self are clearly distinguished from (close) relationships, and take place within the individual himself. Independent individuals have clear boundaries, so that experiences can be reasonably stable and do not change much in different situations. Individuals are closer to people who are close to them, but those who are close to them can change quickly. Independent 'selves' can be seen as clear, autonomous units whose identity is formed by a number of internal properties, and which interact with other independent units. The other way of seeing yourself, is the interdependent view of self. This is that the individual sees themselves as a relational entity who is fundamentally connected to, and sustained by, a number of significant relationships. Behavior in this way depends on the thoughts, feelings and actions of others. Own behavior will influence others and own psychological experiences are influenced by what others do and think. Individuals are therefore not seen as separate and clear units, but as participants in a larger social unit. This is seen as the interdependent view of the self.
• Close relationships are essential in all cultures, but they are especially important for individual self-definition in interdependent cultures. Ingroup relationships guide behavior and obligations toward these relationships. Independent people perceive themselves as functioning largely separately from the social environment, so the people in that environment are more tangential to the person's self-concept. New relationships can be formed and old relationships can dissolve without much impact on the individual identity. Independent people should therefore be more willing to form new connections, maintain larger networks, and be less distressed when relationships fade over time. The ingroup-outgroup boundary is less important to the self-construction there, and is more fluid and permeable. Interdependent people view ingroup members as an extension of themselves, while maintaining distance from outgroup members. Independent people view themselves as distinct people.
• Implicit theories guide our interpretation of many things that happen around us. The most known implicit theories are: the incremental theory of the self (the belief that we can easily change; we can change and adjust our self-concepts by making an effort. There is always room for improvement.) and the entity theory of the self (aspects of the self are largely resistant to change, traits are innate and remain the same as you get older).

How do culture and migration processes influence each other? - BulletPoints 7

• The pattern that many migrants show when they settle in a new culture takes the form of a U (positive-negative-positive): The first months after arrival they have a positive feeling about the new culture. They enjoy the new experiences, meeting new people, trying different food and communicating in a different language. This phase is called the honeymoon. Tourism is also part of the honeymoon. Many people do not stay in a new culture long enough to get beyond the honeymoon phase. At a certain moment the pleasure and excitement of the honeymoon phase decreases. Many people get negative feelings about the host culture after this phase. This often happens in the period from 6 months after arrival to 18 months after arrival in the new culture. This is called the crisis or culture shock phase. The experiences become more difficult and less fun. The migrants realize that their language skills are not good enough to have good conversations. The people in the host country now know the stories about their home country and are less interested in it. The area is going to talk about local festivities and activities and the migrants still have too little knowledge to talk about it. The migrants are starting to miss their family and friends and are homesick. After a few months in the crisis phase, migrants start to adjust and the experiences become more enjoyable again. Their language skills are improving so that they can participate better in daily life. They begin to better understand and appreciate the customs and habits of the new culture. This adjustment phase often takes several years and over the years people become more skilled at functioning in the new culture.
• Cultural distance and cultural fit are important when adjusting to a new culture. Cultural distance is the difference between two cultures overall. Cultural distance predicts how difficult acculturation experiences will and can be. Cultural fit is the degree to which an individual's personality is compatible with the dominant values of the host culture. Acculturation is smoother if one's sense of self fits well with one's host cultural environment.
• People that are multicultural often engage in frame switching and blending. If bicultural people respond to their experiences in different cultures by blending and averaging them, then their responses to psychological measurements are in between the responses of monocultural people from the two cultures. Americans of Asian descent will not think like typical Americans or Asians, but in a way that is in between. The confidence of Japanese people moving to Canada is increased and the confidence of Canadians moving to Japan is decreased. In Japan, more emphasis is placed on weaknesses and in Canada, more attention is paid to someone's strengths. The longer someone is exposed to a culture, the more influence the culture can have on psychological domains. The results mentioned before can also be the result of the changing way of thinking of multicultural people. Over time, for example, the Japanese may have adopted the Western way of thinking. People can therefore develop multiple selves, each developed to deal with a specific cultural environment.

What different kinds of motivation do exist? - BulletPoints 8

• Self-enhancement is the motivation to view oneself positively. People seem to have a strong need to view themselves positively. Self-enhancement is clear when measuring the self-serving bias, the tendency for people to show how good they think they are. People often judge themselves higher than the average on personal characteristics such as loyalty, creativity, social skills or driving skills. The unrealistic positive valuations of our own skills and characteristics maintain because we are rarely confronted with concrete, contradicting information about these domains. Without that information there is no evidence that we are no better than average. There are different strategies to get or maintain a positive self-image: Downward social comparison, compensatory self-reinforcement, discounting setbacks, external attribution, basking in the reflected glory.
• Motivations for a positive self-view are powerful and pervasive, but these studies have been done with WEIRD participants most of the times. Cultural variation in self-enhancement is more striking when North Americans of European descent are compared to people living in East Asia. 93% of European Canadians have high self-esteem, while 55% of Japanese do. The tendency for self-serving bias is less common for East Asians than Westerners. It has been found that people in East Asia have a lack of enhancement motivation. The differences in positive self-perceptions are reinforced by the way people pay attention to and interpret events in the world around them. For example, people with independent self-concepts remember more positive events and people with interdependent self-concepts remember more negative events. The list of strategies for maintaining a positive self-image is mainly used by people with an independent self-concept. People with an interdependent self-concept are more inclined to do the opposite, for example, in case of failure the task is becoming increasingly important, or if success is attributed externally.
• The most fundamental way in which culture can form our motivations is through our perception of control. If we want to achieve a goal then we have to deal with the environment that can help us, but can also work against us. We can try to influence the environment in order to achieve our goal and thus exercise control. One theory is relevant to the fact if we see the environment as a fixed unit in which we cannot make changes. We can also see the environment as flexible and easy to change. If we hold the incremental theory of the world, we see the environment as flexible and responsive. If we hold the entity theory of the world, we see the environment as fixed.

What differences in cognition are visible between different cultures? - BulletPoints 9

• Analytic thinking is characterized by a focus on objects and their properties. Objects exist independently of the environment. A predefined set of abstract rules is used to predict and understand the behavior of the objects. Analytic thinking is more common among people from Western cultures than among people from Eastern cultures. Holistic thinking is characterized by looking at the context as a whole. It represents an associative way of thinking, paying attention to the relationships between objects and between objects and the context. Objects are understood in terms of how they are related to the rest of the environment and their behavior is predicted and understood on the basis of these relationships. Holistic thinking is more common in Eastern cultures than in Western cultures. Analytical thinking finds its origin in ancient Greece with Plato and Aristoteles and holistic thinking finds its origins in ancient China.
• The tendency to ignore situational information while focusing on dispositional (characteristic) information is called the fundamental attribution error. When we see people who exhibit a certain behavior, we attribute this to underlying dispositions and we ignore the situational factors that may play a role in the development of the behavior. The fundamental attribution error seems to occur mainly in people from Western cultures. People from other cultures often show an opposite fundamental attribution error. They tend to ignore the personality traits when trying to understand the behavior of others and only consider the situational factors.
• There is debate over the Whorfian linguistic relativity hypothesis in context of the color perception. Color is a continuous variable that extends gradually, yet linguistically it is a discrete variable. All known languages have a minimum of two different color terms. This has to do with the categorical perception of colors, and maybe even the difference in perception of the colors. The Whorfian hypothesis states that language largely determines how we think. However, it is difficult to test this hypothesis (which is also called the linguistic relativity hypothesis). The perception of agency is also different in different situations and cultures. When describing an accident, it's more common to attribute behavior directly to someone taking an action (an agent). The area of odors is impoverished in the English language. People try to compare smells to things, but there are just a few basic odor terms. Other groups have a much larger vocabulary of olfaction words. Spatial perception can vary between languages. English speakers identify locations based on their position, relative to the speaker. Some languages lack relative directional terms. They have to attend to the cardinal directions more than the English speakers. Numerical cognition also has cultural variation in people's comprehension of concepts and details in mathematics. Not every language has terms for everything in mathematics.

In which ways can emotions be experienced and expressed? - BulletPoints 10

• There is controversy of what an emotion is. The James-Lange theory argues that emotions are physiological responses, but the two-factor theory of emotions states that emotions are interpretations of physical responses. William James claimed that emotions are physiological responses to stimuli in our environment and Carl Lange claimed that these physiological responses are products of the autonomic nervous system. The theory that combines these two statements is known as the James-Lange theory of emotions. The James-Lange theory of emotions states that our bodies respond to stimuli in the environment to make us respond in a way that makes us survive. Emotions are the changes in our body that direct our behavior. Different emotions are associated with each emotion.
• Not everyone had the same perspective as James. Schacter and Singer argued that the autonomic nervous system was too slow and clumsy to trigger all our different emotions. They claimed that emotions are our interpretations of physical responses. This theory is called the two-factor theory of emotions. This theory did not emphasize the physiological body, but emphasized the brain. According to the two-factor theory of emotions, people assess a situation to interpret their feelings. An experiment showed that when people felt arousal (which was unknowingly caused by a drug they had taken) and found themselves in a situation where they were made happy, they interpreted the feelings as euphoria. However, if they found themselves in a situation where they were disadvantaged, they interpret the arousal as anger. Although in both cases the arousal was caused by the medicine, people interpreted it as euphoria or anger depending on the situation. The James-Lange theory assumes that emotions have an evolutionary basis. In the past, for example, fear increased the chance of survival, because people with more fear had a greater tendency to protect themselves against danger. This theory assumes that people all over the world have the same emotional experiences, because we all share the same genetic code.
• Facial expressions are a way to communicate with others. Communication is very dependent on what we learn in a culture. Are facial expressions also dependent on the culture? Facial expressions are often reflex-based and appear to be part of our biological make-up. People recognize facial expressions better from people from their own culture than from people from another culture. They are on average 9% better at recognizing facial expressions of people from their own culture. Yet people are accurate in 58% of all cases. The more often people are exposed to people from a different culture, the better they become at recognizing facial expressions of the culture in question. Facial expressions for the basic emotions are therefore universally functional (they have the same function worldwide). There is, however, cultural variability in the recognition of facial expressions in people from other cultures; people are better adapted to recognizing emotions among their fellow culture people than among people from another culture.
• Happiness is seen differently across cultures. In some cultures, it is the happiness as an individual and in other cultures it is the happiness as a nation. There are also cultural differences in how satisfied people are with their lives. This variation is not only to be seen in a culture, but also between regions within the culture. It is mostly because people from different cultures have different views on what well-being is. Well-being varies not only between cultures, but also between regions within cultures. Many factors influence the general sense of satisfaction of people with their lives. One of the factors is wealth. In general, the more money a country has, the easier it is to meet people's basic needs and the happier people are. Another factor is human rights. On average, countries where human rights are of paramount importance are happier than countries where this is not the case. There are also factors that influence subjective well-being in one culture and not in other cultures. People in an independent culture will feel happy if they behave in a way that is consistent with their inner desires. People in an independent culture base their well-being on how many positive feelings they experience. Experiencing positive feelings is seen as a good life in individualistic cultures.

How are groups, friends, and attraction treated in different cultures? - BulletPoints 11

• There are some universal signs of beauty, but there are even more aspects that are viewed as attractive in one culture, but not in the other. Examples of these are: A skin that is free of spots, pimples, wounds and rash is considered more attractive than a skin that is not; bilateral symmetry is another characteristic that is universally seen as attractive. People are considered attractive if the right side of their face and body is identical to the left half; having average characteristics. Faces with an average size and average shape are seen as attractive.
• All relationships are based on one or more of the four basic structures developed by Fiske (1991): Communal sharing (the members of a group emphasizing their common identity. Everyone is treated the same and everyone has the same rights and privileges as all other members of that group.), authority ranking (members of a group are linearly ordered according to a hierarchical social dimension. People with a higher rank have prestige and privileges that people with a lower rank do not have.), equality matching (people keep track of what has been exchanged and are motivated to give back what they have received. This is based on the idea of balance and reciprocity.), and market pricing (all forms of aid that are exchanged can be reduced to an underlying dimension, often that is money. It is concerned with proportionality and ratios. For example, I buy coffee and give the seller money for it.)
• Friendship is universal, however, the nature and meaning of friendships can vary. Americans, for example, have more friendships than what is common in other cultures. Also, most of these friends are online, and not in real life. Also, different aspects are important in different cultures. For example, in collectivists cultures, giving advice is important. The aspect of having a lot of friends is also viewed differently in different cultures. Ghanians would say that having a lot of friends, is foolish. This has to do with the definition of friendship in the different cultures.
• There are three basic elements for love and friendships: intimacy (the amount of intimacy individuals share and express to each other, differs across cultures), passion (the feeling of passion is universal in romantic relationships, but passion does not play a strong role in every relationship), and commitment (Feelings of commitment are stronger in Asia than in the West). It depends on the kind of relationship, and culture, what elements are present. 

How do ethics, justice, and culture interact? - BulletPoints 12

• Ethnocentrism is an obstacle to understanding people in unfamiliar cultures. It leads people to assume that their own culture's way of life is in some way better, or more natural, than that of others. In different cultures, different variables reflect quality of life for example. So, it makes it hard to choose specific variables that measure quality of life across different cultures. This shows the overlap, but not exact similarity, of the values and morality in cultures.
• The Kohlberg model has three levels: The Preconventional level (individuals understand the cultural rules and labels of what is right and what is wrong, but they interpret these labels in terms of either the physical or hedonistic consequences of their behavior), the Conventional level (people are able to identify themselves with a certain group and social rank and show loyalty to this group), the Postconventional level (moral values ​​and principles are viewed separately from the authority of the social groups where these values ​​and principles apply).
• There are three codes of ethics according to Shweder and colleagues: Ethic of autonomy (the emphasis is on personal choices, the right to make free contacts and individual liberty. An act is considered immoral if it immediately hurts or damages someone.), ethic of community (the emphasis is on the fact that individuals have duties in accordance with their roles in a society or social hierarchy. Acts are seen as wrong when individuals fail to perform their obligations.), and ethic of divinity (this code contains the ethical principle that someone is obliged to maintain the standards that have been mandated by a superior authority.)
• Religion is a key source of cultural information. Religion is also interwoven into people's psychological worlds. Protestantism is related to being achievement focused. The Protestant ethic is associated with negative attitudes toward laziness and being overweight. Children become self-reliant at an earlier age. The Protestant drive to be creative and productive may be based on an effort to rid oneself of any thoughts that might not be spiritually pure.

What are the differences in health and disease among different cultures? - BulletPoints 13

• Genetic adaptations to the local climate, altitude, and pathogens are cases when geographical factors shaped the genome. Culture can influence directly and indirectly the genome. These indirectly effects are mostly side effects of the adaptation to the environment or habit. Most genes do not cluster in racial categories, as people may think. 4% of the genetic variability is linked to continental races. Immigrants are genetically similar to people from their heritage culture, yet they participate in cultural practices from their host culture. In this way, it can be detected if cultural experiences play a role in variations in psychological processes.
• Physical differences can also arise through different behaviors in different cultures. Children from the Moken tribe, who live in Southeast Asia, are much better able to see under water than children from Europe. The children from Moken live most of the year in boats on the water and eat by diving and grabbing and catching edible things. Children from Europe could be trained in this, but they need it less. That this skill (seeing under water) can be learned indicates that it is an achievement and not an innate difference.
• Socio-economic status (SES) is the best predictor of human health. The higher the SES, the better the health. Minorities around the world generally have lower SES, and they often have poorer health than members of majority groups. Another important variable that influences the relationship between SES and health is stress. When people experience chronic stress in their lives, their risk for medical diseases increases enormously. There seem to be two mechanisms that are responsible for this: People who are chronically stressed are more likely to take part in health-compromising behaviors such as smoking and drinking to cope with the difficulties in their lives; in addition, stress directly reduces the ability of the immune system to defend itself against infections and other threats.

What perspectives are there on psychological disorders? - BulletPoints 14

• Cultural concepts of distress can be common. An example of this is hikikomori described before. It means that other cultures do not have the same symptoms or do not cluster these specific symptoms together. Examples are eating disorders (common in North American students), Koro (common in the south and east of Asia), attaques de nervios (common in Puerto Rica), amok (common in southeast Asia, and hysteria (common among women in the mid-nineteenth century. Now common to be identified as depression or schizophrenia).
• There are also universal mental disorders, for example depression, social anxiety disorder, and schizophrenia. Biological factors play a fundamental role in universal syndromes. Also, suicide occurs worldwide, but the numbers in different cultures vary enormously. In addition, the point in life at which suicide is most often committed is different for different cultures.
• The way mental disorders are treated, is also different across cultures. Culture can strongly influence the chance of success in the treatment of mental disorders. The Western way of treating, namely sharing personal experiences with a psychologist or psychiatrist, is seen as unnatural in many non-Western cultures. In non-Western cultures, too, there is often a social stigma based on acknowledging the existence of mental disorders Some cultures have more social support than others in these kind of situations, multicultural therapeutic settings, but also other developments in treatments and psychotherapy from other cultures like religious healing and Naikan therapy.

How do organizations, leadership, and justice differ across cultures? - BulletPoints 15

• The degree of diversity in groups can differ. Groups can be homogeneous, but also be diverse in terms of cultural backgrounds of members. Diversity is good and bad at the same time. It can cause friction between group members, which can interfere with performance. It can lead to stereotyping, decreased trust, communication problems, segregation into ethnic fractions, less group cohesion, and negative work outcomes. But these problems decrease over time and diversity can provide a valuable information resource.
• Good leadership is essential for the functioning of a team. Good leadership involves motivation, being direct, able to manage, and to inspire team members. The value of leadership is viewed differently across cultures. Americans romanticize leaders, but Europeans feel more ambivalent towards them. In Latin America, people prefer leaders who act strong and can be somewhat autocratic, whereas in Asia, people prefer a leader who can serve as a moral role model and offers guidance to employees. Two universally desirable leaderships are charismatic/value-based leaders and team-oriented leaders. Leadership styles that are culturally bounded are: Humane-oriented leaders, participatory leaders, self-protective leaders, paternalistic leaders. 
• There are three principles of resource distribution based on distributive justice: Principle of need (resources must be directed towards those who need it the most); principle of equality (resources must be evenly distributed among all members of a group); principle of equity (resources must be distributed based on the contributions that people have made).
• Corruption can have real costs like undermining trust, cooperation, and effective economies. Societies have different norms and institutions that make corrupt behavior more or less detectable and punishable. One kind of corruption is deception, acting dishonestly for one's own benefit. It is quite rare for people to lie, so there are constraints on how dishonest people will be. People lie and cheat just enough so they can convince themselves they are not really dishonest. Bending the rules is seen as more honest than breaking them. Corruption is more common under certain circumstances. Predictors of corruption are: Poverty level, economic inequality, power distance, and collectivism.