Cultural variation: differences between cultural groups. Cultures are fluid and dynamic, in most cases changing over time. But cultural ideas and norms don't necessarily emerge to address universal problems. Rathe result from cultural learning. Example: fashion, tertiary level.
Sources of cultural variation: ecological geographical differences are important and can lead to far-reaching consequences. Eg availability of food sources, ease of living in specific habitats, interdependence among groups, etc. Local ecologies influence cultural values and norms and can lead to cultural in different ways: proximal causes vs distal causes and evoked culture vs transmitted culture.
Proximal causes: influenced that have direct and immediate effects. - eg when Spanish conquistadors invading had good armour, allowing a quick victory over the Incans, who lacked such technology.
Distal causes: initial differences that lead to effects over long periods of time. - eg because of sufficient food, people could devote their time to nonfood activities such as creating tools.
Evoked culture: specific environmental conditions evoke specific responses from (all) people within that environment, becoming part of a culture. - eg acting in an intimidating manner when your children are being threatened.
Transmitted culture: cultural information passed on or learned via social transmission or modeling. - eg copying behaviour, clothing, aspects of etiquette, etc, from food-finding to social interaction.
Evoked and transmitted culture are not always clearly separated! Eg more emphasis on physical attractiveness due to greater parasite prevalence, vs parents teaching their children to pay attention to physical attractiveness. Transmitted culture is arguably always involved in maintaining cultural norms, even when evoked cultural responses are also present. Evoked culture based on ecological pressures alone cannot explain cultural variation. Transmitted culture represents situation-specific AND group-specific knowledge.
Transmission of cultural information, how is information transferred
Parallel with biological evolution, the main mechanisms are natural selection: increasing proportions of traits that confer a survival advantage; sexual selection: increasing proportion of traits that confer reproductive advantages. Sometimes conflicting!
Cultural evolution
Similarities with biological evolution: Ideas can be persistent (high survival rate) and ideas can be more prone to being passed around (reproduced more).
Differences: cultural ideas can be transmitted horizontally among peers, not only vertically across generations.
What makes ideas interesting and sticky?
Information going viral: memes: agents of cultural transmission --> shared jokes/context
Communicable ideas
In order to be easily shared, information might be especially useful or informative, elicit an emotional response, be socially desirable, and are simple to communicate. Eg instructional videos (life hacks), messages of common interest (risk of rumours), messages confirming your shared values or messages that are not too complex. The stronger the emotion, the more likely people are to pass a story on.
Ideas generally spread within social networks, leading to clustering of attitudes: Dynamic social impact theory. An account for the origin of culture: norms develop among those who communicate regularly.
Persisting ideas: ideas that have a small number of counterintuitive elements persist longer. Minimal, but noticeable violations of expectation. Characteristics of many religious narratives as well as myth/storytelling. Supported by the research into 'catchiness' of fairy tales: the unknown/unpopular fairy tales have to many of not enough violations of expectation.
In recent decades, cultures have been changing and evolving in several ways:
Changes are usually slow, and some cultural qualities persist for far longer than their initial usefulness! Persistence is an effect of pre-existing structure: evolution of culture departs from and is based on, some initial cultural state, such initial cultural states will limit the manner in which future cultural variation takes shape.
Facilitated by pluralistic ignorance(= tendency to collectively misinterpret the thoughts that underlie other people's behaviour. When everyone (incorrectly) assumes everyone else in favour of some cultural norm, they will comply with the norm, thus perpetuating the culture.
Part 1 key points
Thoughts of as mostly universally functions! However, there are cross-cultural differences in the basic phenomena of:
Sensing vs perceiving
Sensation: input through the senses: visions/seeing, auditions/hearing, haptic sense/touching, olfactory sense/smelling, gustatory sense/taste and more.
Perception: the conscious percept or experience
Enculturation in perception
Previous exposure leads to changes processing of new information: eg increased sensitivity. Predictability: if you know what to expect, infrequently perceived things become more interesting, but processed less successfully. This applies to faces, weather, colours, tastes, music, etc.
Statistical learning
Bottom-up & top-down: cognitive processes interact with basic sensory mechanisms to produce a conscious percept. Top-down modulation: internally driven attention. Bottom-up processing: externally driven attention.
New categories in sound
Different cultures lead to different 'auditory environments'. Music: scale notes make up common melodies, but tone is continuous! Music scales are different in different cultures. Your auditory environment teaches you what is normal and what is deviant.
Developing structure in perception: Infants are developing rhythmic categories. Study with violations of structures, with babies they used looking time: they can hear the violations in structure. Rhythmic biases are enculturated!
Auditory environment
Language: The rhythm of composed music caries for languages, even without lyrics!
Normal pairwise variability index: nPVI: calculates the duration variability of successive vocalic duration: how variable is rhythm in speech? The higher the nPVI value, the larger the contrast of successive duration. In Dutch, German and English there are more variations in the language between long and short syllables.
Analytic and holistic thinking appear to be culturally variant, potentially based on philosophical traditions (Cf. Greek vs Chinese).
Analytic thinkinginvolves focus on objects and attributes, objects perceives as independent from contexts, taxonomic categorization, more prevalent in individualistic societies.
Holistic thinkinginvolves attending to the relations among objects, prediction an object's behaviour on the basis of those relationships, thematic categorization, more prevalent in collectivistic societies.
Change blindness: after exposure to the images (US city-scape and Japanese city-scape), both Japanese and US viewers increase their ability to detect changes in visual scenes. Perceptual environments can induce specific patterns of attention!
Analytic & holistic approaches: relationship between figure and ground (field), focal and contextual information. Field dependence: linking/integrating an object into its context, difficultly to see separate elements. Holistic thinkers perceive a scene as an integrated whole (more field dependence). Analytic thinkers are able to separate objects from each other (field independence).
Field dependence in the lab
The rod-and-frame task: is the line vertical? If given control to operate the machine, Americans became more confident as compared to Chinese.
Fish and background task: Americans were unaffected by background manipulation. Japanese noticed more errors with new background, they were not affected by absent background.
Focal attention: attention operationalized as gaze direction
Reasoning and thinking (effected by analytic and holistic thinker)
Rule-based reasoning vs resemblance-based reasoning
Understanding the behaviour of others
Analytic thinkers are more likely to make dispositional attributions even when contextual/environmental constraints are made explicit. Holistic thinkers are more likely to pay attention to contextual information and make situational attribution. Tendencies develop with age: differences between Indian & American adults *much* larger for children. Indian adults show reversed attribution error.
Tolerance for contradictions
Other influences on thinking: talking (communication styles)
Vocalizing thoughts helps Westerns, but not Easterners. Interpretation: speech forces focus which facilitates analytic thinking but interferes with holistic thinking.
Language and thought
All spoking communication contains both implicit (ie nonverbal) and explicit information.
East-Asian cultures tend to be high-context cultures, Western cultures tend to be low-context cultures. People in high context cultures have a harder time ignoring implicit information than people in low context cultures.
Linguistic relativity
Whorfian hypothesis: Strong version = language determinesthought: without access to the right words, people cannot have certain kinds of thoughts --> Largely rejected.
Weak version = language influencesthought: having access to certain words influences the kinds of thoughts that one has (Much controversy surrounding this claim)
Effects of language on perception and cognition
Part 2 key points
Ecological variability (geological/social) is related to cultural differences. Although cultures can change, it appears that superficial (tertiary) aspects might change more readily, while underlying shared values persist for a long time. Cultural differences also impact psychological functions thought to be basic/universal measurable in the lab! Difference may be related to language, to the environment, to cultural importance, etc
Lecture 1: Introduction, Methods and DevelopmentHealth and Illness: positive concept of health and negative concepts of disease/ illness/ sickness are defined differently in different cultures!
Culture influences:
Culture can be thought of as a set of implicit and explicit guidelines/information that individuals acquire as members of a particular society or context, regarding, eg 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. It also provides a way of transmitting these guidelines to the next generation (enculturation).
Enculturation: a 'lens' through which the individual perceives and understands the world that he inhabits and learns how to live with it. The group or context itself.
Challenges to definitions/ challenges to define cultures:
Multiple levels of culture
(Cross-)cultural psychology
Lecture 2: Cultural transmission, Cross-cultural cognitionCultural variation: differences between cultural groups. Cultures are fluid and dynamic, in most cases changing over time. But cultural ideas and norms don't necessarily emerge to address universal problems. Rathe result from cultural learning. Example: fashion, tertiary level.
Sources of cultural variation: ecological geographical differences are important and can lead to far-reaching consequences. Eg availability of food sources, ease of living in specific habitats, interdependence among groups, etc. Local ecologies influence cultural values and norms and can lead to cultural in different ways: proximal causes vs distal causes and evoked culture vs transmitted culture.
Proximal causes: influenced that have direct and immediate effects. - eg when Spanish conquistadors invading had good armour, allowing a quick victory over the Incans, who lacked such technology.
Distal causes: initial differences that lead to effects over long periods of time. - eg because of sufficient food, people could devote their time to nonfood activities such as creating tools.
Evoked culture: specific environmental conditions evoke specific responses from (all) people within that environment, becoming part of a culture. - eg acting in an intimidating manner when your children are being threatened.
Transmitted culture: cultural information passed on or learned via social transmission or modeling. - eg copying behaviour, clothing, aspects of etiquette, etc, from food-finding to social interaction.
Evoked and transmitted culture are not always clearly separated! Eg more emphasis on physical attractiveness due to greater parasite prevalence, vs parents teaching their children to pay attention to physical attractiveness. Transmitted culture is arguably always involved in maintaining cultural norms, even when evoked cultural responses are also present. Evoked culture based on ecological pressures alone cannot explain cultural variation. Transmitted culture represents situation-specific AND group-specific knowledge.
Transmission of cultural information, how is information transferred
Parallel with biological evolution, the main mechanisms are natural selection: increasing proportions of traits that confer a survival advantage; sexual selection: increasing proportion of traits that confer reproductive advantages. Sometimes conflicting!
Cultural evolution
Similarities with biological evolution: Ideas can be persistent (high survival rate) and ideas can be more prone to being passed around (reproduced more).
Differences: cultural ideas can be transmitted horizontally among peers, not only vertically across generations.
What makes ideas interesting and sticky?
.....read more Lecture 3: Emotions, Motivation and Acculturation StressStarted with Darwin: Emotions and emotional expressions are universal; everyone has the same. Later there was discovered by Ekman & Friesen that there were six basic emotions: happiness, surprise, sadness, disgust, fear and anger.
How did they do the research: They asked different people, who have never met, how they would express certain sentences. These were checked with different societies.
Assessing universality: in particular, pride has been proposed to be universally recognized expression. Pride is different in that it involves much of the body, not just the face: erect posture, head tilted back, slight smile, arms extending away. Even people who are born blind, show this emotion.
What is an emotion: face, posture, subjective feeling, caused by the environment, combination of physiological reaction and cognitive,
Perspectives on emotions
Universality vs cultural variability
The JL theory predicts that emotions should be universal due to physiological similarities of all humans. If JL was right, then emotions would be universal, the same in every human being.
The Two-Factor theory predicts that emotions should vary across cultures because different cultural experiences may lead us to have different interpretations of physiological responses. If the Two-factor theory was right and it would depend on how you would interpret it, then not universal.
Do differences in emotional expressions affect emotional experiences, too?
Do people experience emotions the same? Is there a link with how emotions are expressed and how they are felt? If that is true, then you could either feel the emotion and express it and express the emotion and feel it. If the second thing is the case, then you could influence how you feel.
Facial feedback hypothesis provides one reason to expect cultural variability. The hypothesis proposes that we use our facial expression to infer our emotional state. This suggests that by making a particular emotional expression, we can think that we are experiencing the corresponding emotion. Pencil test:
.....read more Lecture 4: Culture and Body-Image, Life-Style and HealthOverall key points
Commonalities and culture differences in:
Body and lifestyle are influenced by our culture
Note that: Influence of culture on health is very broad and complex. In these notes only some of the relevant topics will be discussed. The main aim is to raise awareness of differences, open mind to variety and views other than those that are so standard to you that you wouldn't even think about them. Differences between individuals from one culture can sometimes be larger than those between cultures.
What is universally attractive? Evolutionary psychologists suggest preferences for visual appearances have evolutionary roots. Communalities across culture in what is perceived as attractive: clear complexion, bilateral symmetry and average features. Signs that you are healthy. People are attracted to healthy mates.
Skin signals health more directly than any other visible aspect. The cosmetics industry provides people with ways to make their complexion look clearer. People have strong aversive reactions to skin conditions. Skin conditions often associated with stigmatization. Example: 2 Nigerian girls with skin disorder were hidden to protect the other children in the family, as marriage with member of family in which the skin disorder occurs is discouraged.
Bilateral symmetry is a marker of health. When an organism develops under ideal conditions its right and left sides will be symmetrical. Genetic mutations, pathogens or stressors in the womb can lead to asymmetrical development. On average, asymmetrical faces are views as less attractive.
Faces with average features are more attractive than faces that deviate from average. Average features are less likely to contain genetic abnormalities and are more symmetrical. We can more easily process any kind of stimulus that is closer to a prototype than one that is further from a prototype. And easy processing is associated with a pleasant feeling that gets interpreted as attractive.
"Average is attractive" does not apply to aspects beyond facial features. This is seen with people's weight, height, muscles, breasts and hips. For such aspects, it's often bodies that depart from average that are seen as more attractive. The kinds of body weights that are perceived to be most attractive vary considerably across cultures.
Body-weight
In 1951, anthropologist and psychologist concluded
.....read more Lecture 5: Intercultural communication in serious illnessThere is no direct explanation but, a serious illness can be explained as a condition that carries a high risk of mortality, negatively impact the quality of life and daily function, and/or is burdensome in symptoms, treatments or caregivers stress.
Examples of serious illnesses: cancer, dementia, heart failure, diabetes, lung diseases.
Importance of communication: The moment patients are diagnosed, they need good communication: what is going on, what are their options, feel they are seen, someone is caring for them (patient and family).
Patient: Priority: complaints; Outcomes: satisfaction, bereavement outcomes, how they're loved ones feel after they died.
Healthcare professionals: Intrinsic motivation: we all have intrinsic motivation for good communication. But it is difficult, especially breaking the bad news. Poor communication is related to burnout.
Communication errors are related with culture.
In the Netherlands there is a lot of focus on what the patient wants, the family comes second. Autonomy: discuss everything with the patient first, and then maybe the relatives. Don't speak about the patient without his/her permission. Tell everything clearly and honestly. The patient decides, not the family. A lot of cultures are more family-centred.
The stress-coping model of communication
It really about the 'need to know' (cognitive information) and the 'need to feel known' (affective empathy).
Illness attributions: When facing serious illness, patients attribute these illnesses to several causes. Where you attribute the illness to, is dependent of the culture.
Study among White British vs Black Caribbean MS patients in London. Two illness attributes: genetic/medical/environment vs supernatural. How people attribute their illness, could also change the information you have to give.
The role of religion: religion can play a large role in illness perceptions. Islam: disease can be a divine test
.....read more Lecture 6: Cultural Aspects of Clinical NeuropsychologyNeuropsychology: study of the relationship between behaviour, emotion and cognition on one hand, and brain function on the other.
Clinical neuropsychology(NP): assessing and cognitive, emotional and behavioural function after suspecting brain damage for diagnosis and potential treatment.
Brain damage after trauma, vascular accidents, tumours, toxicity, infections, also (neurodegenerative) diseases, or just ageing.
NP assessment: 'imperfect index of brain function'
Physical differences: brain - Brain plasticity can be affected by: specialized skill acquisition, enrichment, deprivation, education, health, stress, correlates of differing cognitive mechanisms, experience more generally.
Cultural neuroscience: field with focus on factors that affect biologicals and psychological processes that reciprocally shape beliefs and norms shared by groups of individuals.
Physical differences: genetics - Core of nature/nurture interactions!
Heredity: passing on characteristics from parents to children based on genetic material. Although about 99% of genes are fixed, 1% differs across individuals. Genes can have effects that depend on external variables.
Epigenetics: environmental factors cause genes to switch on or off without modification of the DNA sequence. Chemical tags can control genes in specific cells. Epigenetic tags can result from lifestyle choices or specific experience. Some epigenetic tags are hereditary! Part of our genetics that only become available in certain circumstances.
Physiological approach is relatively new! Questions:
The relation between biology and behaviours may depend on the cultural meaningsof behaviours, rather than on the actual behaviours.
Measuring brain function: NP assessment: intelligence; memory; verbal abilities; executive functions; visuo-spatial functions; attention; syndrome-related combinations; general batteries. The scores will be compared to normative data, sometimes with correlations for age or education level.
Culture and NP assessment: Normative data based on very limited subsample WEIRD patients: which is partial and biased.
There are
.....read more Lecture 7: Case study: Understanding HIV risk in the aids Pandemic's EpicentreThe epicentre: eastern/southern Afrika. 10% of the world population lives there. 75% of all people infected with HIV and 75% of newly infected people live there.
Anthropology: how individuals’ behaviour is shaped more by group norms and values, but they have been too focused on group norms. They studied only the cultures and took themselves as the norm and the other as needed of explanation. We still see this today. But, our own point of view needs explanation too. The individual perspective of a culture lacked, not everyone in a culture is the same. The lay people still see their own culture as the norm and that everyone within a culture thinks the same.
Cultural relativism: becoming aware that we are also trained to see the world a certain way. The opposite of ethnocentrism. Differences between groups of people are not biological but cultural (‘man-made’/ taught). Franz Boas: "civilization is not something absolute, but is relative, and our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes”. cultural relativism has consequences for data collection.
Data collection: it suggests that the data is out there, has a form/shape, regardless of who finds it. That's not true, data is not easy to find. A lot of the time people just ask what they want to know, but when asked sensitive questions (about HIV for example), people don't always answer honestly. Also, our concepts of things/situations aren't always the same. For example, marriage is very different in the West, then in Afrika.
Ethnographic research: a qualitative research method centred upon direct and sustained, naturalistic interaction with people in the context of their daily lives in an attempt to grasp the world from their perspective.
How to gain the trust of a culture: participate in the daily lives, activities. Trying to bond with the people. Bodily experiencing helps to understand the people.
Differences in world views: Gender
Malawi: you squat down when talking to someone older. Social hierarchy is much more related to age/seniority than gender. Gender not a universal social stratifier in that society. In Malawi, you have words for a younger and older sibling, instead of brother or sister.
Cultural differences in health
Everywhere people try to make sense
.....read more Lecture 8: Problems and treatment of traumatized refugees in Western countries ARQ: organization helping people after traumas.
Who are refugees? Because conflict or persecution they have to flee their country. No longer in their own country, having to cross borders and it is not possible to go back home safely. Countries have a legal obligation to help refugees and are not allowed to send them back if it is not safe. When do you stop being a refugee: when they can go back? When they integrate in their new country?
2017: 14.716 new asylum application. Mostly from Syria (2.202) and Eritrea (1.095). 14.490 people reunited with their families in the Netherlands.
Syrians are the largest group of refugees in the Netherlands. 40% of male and 45% of female recognised refugees have psychological complaints (anxiety, depression, PTSD).
The refugee (mental) burden:
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