Summary with the 3rd edition of Cultural Psychology by Heine

What is cultural psychology exactly? - Chapter 1 (3)

Psychology for a cultural species

People are a cultural species, this means that people from different cultures live different lives. The unique contribution of cultural psychology is that people from different cultures also differ in their psychology. An important theme within psychology is about that psychological processes are formed by experiences. And, because people in different cultures have different experiences, we can expect that there are also differences in the ways people think, act and feel.

Although experiences form psychological processes, the very base of these processes are neurological structures that are very similar for a lot of people around the globe. One of an important question in cultural psychology therefore is: to what extent do the people around the globe have an equal brain with equal processes? And where can differences be found?

What is culture?

Culture is any idea, belief, technique, habit, or practice acquired through the learning of others. Cultures are groups of people that exist within some kind of shared context. People within a certain culture are exposed to many of the same cultural ideas.

There are a number of limitations when studying the concept of culture:

• The boundaries of culture cannot be clearly defined;
• Cultures change over time;
• Within a culture there is great variation between individuals.

What are psychological universal traits and abnormalities?

Is the mind independent from, or intertwined with culture?

According to Shweder (1990), much in the field of 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.

According to the CPU perspective, important cultural variation in ways of thinking does not exist, because cultures only provide variations in context and content which lie outside the operations of the underlying CPU. So if any cultural differences are found in studies, this is seen as the result of noise such as translation errors.

Cultural psychologists, in contrast with general psychologists, start from the assumption that the mind does not operate completely independently of what it is thinking about. People are cultural beings and their actions, thoughts and feelings are immersed in cultural information. This immersion in cultural information leads to that their actions, thoughts and feelings are meaningful. If people are often confronted with a certain idea, the same network of information about that idea is always activated. If the network of information is activated often enough, then it becomes chronically active. The networks with information that are chronically active are more likely to emerge in the brain than networks of information that are not often active. Because cultures differ in the ideas with which they are often confronted, different networks of thoughts, behaviors and feelings will also be most accessible.

People are so surrounded by their cultural world that they always behave like cultural actors, and their thoughts are always supported by the meaning that is derived from their culture. So, many cultural psychologists believe that cultural meanings are entangled in our brains and we can not consider the mind to be completely seperate from its culture.

Case study: the Sambia

The Sambia, a former warrior tribe, live in the east of Papua New Guinea. Their culture is very different from Western culture. The Sambia assume that femaleness is an innate natural essence, whereas masculinity must be acquired. They call this jerungdu: physical power that you are not born with, but that you must acquire. Jerungdu is seen as the supreme essence of maleness. Sperm is seen as the physical basis of jerungdu. The Sambia think that a boy's body cannot produce sperm on its own; this ability must be acquired. To ensure that the boys start producing sperm, they are subjected to homosexual rituals. When sambian boys are 7 years old, they satisfy male adolescents and older men orally on a daily basis. When they are 15 years old, the boys produce sperm themselves and this is passed on to younger boys who now satisfy them orally. The moment the men get married and have children, they become heterosexual.

The men in the Sambia see their sexual activities (homosexual, bisexual and heterosexual) only as behavior. In the West, these sexual activities are not only seen as behavior, but more as a form of identity. Sexual orientation is seen as an important part of identity in Western culture. The difference between Sambia and Western culture also makes it clear that the meaning of a certain behavior is culturally determined.

Psychological universal properties and levels of analysis

If we look at culture and psychology there are two contrasting views. On the one hand there is the view that psychological processes are essentially the same all over the world and on the other hand there is the view that psychological processes differ between cultures. It is difficult to study through research which opinion is correct. One of the reasons for this is that it is difficult to agree on how to measure universal properties. The more abstract a concept or custom is described, the more universally it can be perceived. For example, the term "marriage": if it is described as "a sort of formal agreement in which a man and a woman stay together during a relationship," the marriage is more universal than when it is described as "a man and a woman fall in love and agree to share their lives until one of them dies or until they get divorced".

Universal properties can be looked at by a number of different levels. Norenzayan and Heine (2005) have developed a hierarchical structure for this. This structure consists of four levels:

1. Universal accessibility. 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 accross cultures and is accesible to the same degree across cultures. For example, physical laws (including the knowledge that objects can not just disappear) or social facilitation (perform better on tasks that are well learned and worse on tasks that are poorly learned if someone else is present) which occurs both in insects and humans. There is not a lot of cultural variability for the understanding of these two concepts.

2. Universal functionality. This means that psychological phenomena exist in multiple cultures, are used to solve the same problems accross cultures, but some universal functionalities are more accessible to people from some cultures than others. An example is that of the punishment of people who behave unaccording the law. This occurs in many cultures, but in some cultures this is more prevalent. Also, some cultures have stricter penalties on this kind of behaviour than other cultures. Yet, the meaning of punishment is the same.

3. Universal existentialism. This is about 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 accross cultures. An example of this is that in Western cultures success is experienced as motivating and failure as demotivating. The opposite pattern is observed in East Asia: people are motivated to work harder after failure than after success.

4. Nonuniversal. There are also psychological processes that do not occur in all cultures and that can be said to be cultural inventions. In the Middle East and in Asia people learn to count with an abacus, a calculation tool. This is called abacus reasoning They think very differently about numbers compared to people from Western cultures.

The psychological database is largely Western

Much research into culture and psychological processes has been done in Western cultures. More than 90 percent of the articles on cultural psychology have been written by Western (North American) institutes. The problem with a largely Western sample is that the results cannot necessarily be generalized to the rest of the world. Another limitation of current studies is that the sample, which often consists of bachelor's students in psychology, is not representative of Western culture.

What is the use of cultural psychology?

A good reason to learn more about cultural psychology is that if you want to understand the human mind, it is important to investigate the role of cultural experiences in our ways of thinking. It has been made clear several times that the results obtained from Western studies do not always apply to samples from other cultures. So if the role of cultural psychology is not taken into consideration, it results in an incomplete understanding of the human mind. Moreover, the increase in globalization, and with it the advent of a multicultural society, means that we are increasingly coming into contact with people from other cultures. Two approaches are possible when dealing with cultural differences in a multicultural society. The first is the "color blind" approach, which means that differences between groups are ignored and it is assumed that everyone is the same. However, research has shown that it is better to emphasize differences and to bring out the best qualities of each culture. By learning more about cultural psychology, we can increase the understanding and appreciation of cultural differences. In this way we can improve the mutual relationships between different cultural groups.

What is ethnocentrism

Your own culture is often invisible to yourself, while other cultures clearly perceive your culture. Other cultures are much clearer for us. For example, you do not hear your own accent, but you can hear that of others.

Our thoughts and behaviors seem natural to us because we don't know how to think or act differently. We can only understand our own culture if we can compare it with other cultures.

It is important not to condemn other cultures because they are different. Ethnocentrism means that we condemn people from other cultures by comparing them to the standard of our own culture.

What are the origins of cultural psychology?

Wilhelm Wundt, who is seen as the father of psychology as a discipline, was a cultural psychologist. Wundt made a major contribution to experimental psychology, but his ideas about cultural psychology were mostly ignored.

The Russian cultural-historical school was of great influence on the development of cultural psychology . This school included developmental psychologists Vygotsky, Luria and Leontiev. They argued that people interact with their environment through the 'tools' or ideas that have been devised by people and that have been passed on to them through history.

After the Second World War, there was a period of several decades in which a number of anthropologists and personality psychologists worked together in a study called "Culture and Personality Studies". This led to a lot of research by influential anthropologists and psychologists. Social psychology also has to do with cultural psychology. Cultural psychologists used more and more computer metaphors, such as viewing meaning as information and giving meaning as information processing. A number of books on cultural psychology were published in the early 1990s and this gave cultural psychology a huge boost. From this moment on, cultural psychology was taken seriously by the other areas of psychology.

What is culture and cultural life? - Chapter 2 (3)

Is culture unique to humans?

If you define culture as 'symbolic coding, such as signals, words or signs, that refer to something that other members of the same culture understand or recognize', then that means that culture is unique to people. But if culture is defined as 'learning through social transfer', then culture is not unique to people. There are a lot of examples available in which animals learn culturally (adopting certain behavior within a group). For example, the way in which chimpanzees get their delicious snack: termites. In Senegal, chimpanzees tackle this challenge differently than chimpanzees in Tanzania. You can therefore speak of different cultures among chimpanzees. Culture is not only found in primates, but also in elephants, dolphins and guppies. In animals, too, cultural information is often passed on from generation to generation. However, people are better at transmitting cultural information than other types; for example, not all animals in a group learn cultural behavior equally well.

Cultural learning

So people are not unique in cultural learning, but they do have more and better learning skills than animals. People also learn faster than animals. Animals choose behaviors occur often to imitate. People imitate the behavior of others who have skills and who are respected. For example, to become a good golfer, it is better to imitate Tiger Woods than an amateur golfer who tries to hit balls twice a year. The other side of imitating successful people is that it is not always clear which behaviors have led to success, which means that some irrelevant behaviors of these people are also copied (advertisements often make use of this).

Theory of Mind

Another feature of the unique way in which people learn culturally is the Theory of Mind. People understand that other people have their own brain and that their perspective and intentions may differ from their own perspective and intentions.

Because people can guess the intentions of others, they are better able to imitate behavior, which is called imitative learning. During imitiative learning, the goal and the behavior strategies of the model (the person who performs the behavior) are internalized. Another way of learning is through emulative learning. This form of learning focuses on what the model is doing. Attention is therefore paid to the events that take place, and not to what the model is trying to achieve, so the intentions are neglected. For example, if the model uses a certain object to achieve a goal, then in emulative learning, attention is not paid to the way the object is used, but only to the fact that the object can apparently be used for a specific purpose. People will then experiment with how the object should be used. Chimpanzees and other primates use emulative learning more often than imitative learning.

How does language facilitate cultural learning?

Being able to communicate with others is extremely important to transfer information. With the use of language, information does not need to be portrayed visually. Language also allows people to ask questions, clarify, convince, describe, refer and explain; language allows people to directly manipulate the thoughts of others. Language is integrated in the cultural learning of people.

People differ from animals due to the Theory of Mind and their ability to use language. People can learn from others in a way that animals can not. In this way people can learn cultural information very precisely from others. People's cultural learning is cumulative compared to other species.

What is meant by cumulative cultural evolution?

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.

An example of cumulative cultural evolution is the hammer. Thousands of years ago people used a stone as a hammer, then a piece of wood was attached to it and then the piece that was struck became sharper and more solid. Over the years, the hammer has therefore become increasingly handy and better in design and use. Cultural information can in some cases be lost; for example, if there are too few models to imitate cultural behavior. Cumulative cultural evolution is not limited to physical tools. A cultural idea such as democracy also represents the accumulation of ideas and innovations throughout history. People are a cultural species that is constantly learning and that is influenced by the shared ideas that determine our culture.

Why are people skilled in cultural learning?

The big human brain

People have a huge brain relative to their body and also much larger than that of animals. Primates also have a fairly large brain. There are several theories that offer a possible explanation for why primates have a larger brain than other animals:

1. Primates eat a lot of fruit and must remember where the ripe fruit is;

2. Primates also eat nuts and termites, and in order to obtain this food they need special skills (getting nuts from a hard shell and fishing for termites from hills);

3. Primates live in social groups. This idea includes the social brain hypothesis: primates who are able to make successfull relationships with other primates in the group have more safe sources and are therefore better able to protect themselves and their offspring against danger.

Research shows that primates have a larger neocortex than other animals. This is measured with the neocortex ratio. The most striking difference between the brains of primates and mammals is that their neocortex is larger. The neocortex is mainly responsible for problem solving. Animals that live in larger social groups have a larger neocortex.

Maximum 150 relationships

Dunbar (1993) argued that people can cognitively handle up to 150 relationships. This is also the average number of people that can consist of four generations. Many groups function best if they consist of a number of 150 members.

Geertz (1973) claims that cultural learning has ensured that our brain is larger than that of other primates. Our ancestors who were the best at cultural learning had the best chance of surviving offspring. Culture and the biology of our brain are therefore linked.

Is culture unique to humans?

If you define culture as 'symbolic coding, such as signals, words or signs, that refer to something that other members of the same culture understand or recognize', then that means that culture is unique to people. But if culture is defined as 'learning through social transfer', then culture is not unique to people. There are a lot of examples available in which animals learn culturally (adopting certain behavior within a group). For example, the way in which chimpanzees get their delicious snack: termites. In Senegal, chimpanzees tackle this challenge differently than chimpanzees in Tanzania. You can therefore speak of different cultures among chimpanzees. Culture is not only found in primates, but also in elephants, dolphins and guppies. In animals, too, cultural information is often passed on from generation to generation. However, people are better at transmitting cultural information than other types; for example, not all animals in a group learn cultural behavior equally well.

How does culture arise and how is it maintained? - Chapter 3 (3)

Habits differ between cultures because people adapt to different norms and values. Habits often change over time. This is partly because the ideas about health, for example, change. For example, spitting on the ground has slowly but surely changed from a good / lawful habit to an unsavory and unwanted habit. Some cultural customs are arbitrary; there is no clear motivation behind it. That habits change indicates that cultures change. Cultures are not static, they evolve.

What is the origin of cultural variation?

Ecological and geographical diversity

One way to look at cultural variation is to consider the ecology in which people live. Different environments influence the way people live their daily lives. This can have direct consequences (for example, people hunt if large mammals are walking around), but also indirect effects (for example, traditional gender roles; if the environment requires courage and physical strength to survive, it is more likely that a culture emphasizes typical male traits).

What is the difference between close and distal causes?

In 1532, the Spaniard Pizarro conquered the empire of Peru with the help of 168 soldiers. The Incas, the citizens of Peru, were with many more men, but still lost the battles of Pizarro. How could this happen? This can be viewed by studying the closest causes and the distant causes:

• Closest causes have a direct and immediate relationship with the effects. For example, the Spaniards had more experience with battles and had good equipment and horses to fight.

• Distal causes are the small differences that lead to longer-term effects, often due to indirect relationships. For example, the habit of cultivating land and keeping animals in Eurasia. As a result of this, people lived close to their plants and animals and built up resistance to the diseases that could be transmitted. The Incas had no resistance to certain diseases, but the Spaniards did. The Spaniards infected a lot of Incas and perhaps because of this they were able to defeat the Incas who were weakened by diseases. The culture of the Spaniards also enabled the invention of, among other things, advanced weapons and the use of horses. So this indirectly influenced the victory of the Spaniards.

How does geography influence cultural variation?

There are two ways in which we can understand how geography can contribute to cultural variation:

1. Evoked culture: all people have biologically coded behavioral repertoires that are potentially accessible. These repertoires are addressed if the correct situational conditions are present. An example of an evoked cultural difference is choosing a good partner based on physical attractiveness. All people have this characteristic, but it is used more often in areas where many parasites live than in areas where there is less chance of health problems. Evoked culture is therefore tied to the geographical environment; when someone moves to a new environment, new behavioral responses will be evoked.

2. Transmitted culture: people learn certain cultural habits through social learning or by taking an example from people who live close to them. For example, if you see that your neighbor is watering his plants every day and you see that he has beautiful flowers, then you could infer that if you water your plants every day, they will also be this beautiful. Unlike evoked culture, transmitted culture travels with people when they move to new environments.

Despite a shared geography,there can still be different cultures that live side by side. Culture is therefore not only dependent on the place.

People make more use of transferred culture than of evoked culture. This is evidenced by the fact that when people are placed in a completely different geographical environment, they are often difficult to survive.

How do ideas spread?

Cultural evolution requires that ideas are transferred to others and that these ideas are preserved through selection. Cultures change when ideas become widespread in the population. There are two models to understand how ideas spread. The first model assumes that ideas spread in the same way as that genes replicate. The second model suggests that ideas spread just like diseases. These two models are discussed after an explanation about biological evolution.

How does biological differ from cultural evolution?

Biological evolution occurs when certain genes become more common in populations than they were in the past. This is achieved through two related mechanisms:

1. Natural selection: 'the survival of the fittest', is an evolutionary process that occurs when the following conditions are present:

• There are individual differences between members of a species on certain traits (for example, some antelopes can run faster than other antelopes);

• These traits are associated with different chances of survival (for example, fast antelopes are better able to escape from predators than slower antelopes);

• These traits have a hereditary basis (for example, the offspring of fast antelopes is often faster than the offspring of slow antelopes).

2. Sexual selection: 'the fertility of the sexiest'; the individuals who can best lure or attract a healthy partner have the greatest chance of surviving offspring. An example is the colorful peacock tail that is found to be very attractive. Peacocks with a large colorful tail will therefore have good chances of producing offspring. The colorful tail is found so attractive because it indicates that a peacock is healthy. Sexual selection is therefore a mechanism that determines which traits are desired by sexual partners.

These two selection mechanisms have similarities in cultural evolution. Some ideas are more likely to last through time; these ideas have great chances of survival. And some ideas are more likely to be found attractive; these ideas multiply more. If ideas persist through time and become more common in a population, then there is the beginning of the cultural evolution of norms. Cultural evolution can take place extremely quickly (for example, the attitude towards flying on a plane after September 11, 2001).

What are replicators of cultural evolution?

Genes are the replicators in biological evolution and these replicators need a number of characteristics to be successful:

1. Replicators must be relatively stable and long-lasting and must not disappear or fall apart easily. Successful replicators must have a certain degree of longevity;

2. Replicators must make replication as accurate as possible. Replication must therefore be as precise as possible. Mutations are essential for evolution, but if the mutation goes too fast, the chance of survival is small;

3. Good replicators produce as many copies of themselves as possible. Replicators must therefore also be fertile.

Cultural evolution can also be seen as a process that involves a long lifespan, precision and fertility. Richard Dawkins (1976) called the cultural equivalent of genes memes. Memes are the smallest units of cultural information that can be transmitted. The basis for variation in genes and memes is essentially different, because cultural evolution grows through innovations that are not random mutation errors, but changes that are deliberately planned. Genetic variability, on the other hand, is caused by mutation errors.

Moreover, cultural transfer is not very precise. An example of this is the game 'whisper', in which a message is whispered through, but where the person who is the last to hear the message often receives something very different from the initial message. A difference between cultural evolution and biological evolution is that memes do not have to be adaptive to become a habit. Many cultural ideas are spread as well if they are poorly adapted or even if the consequences are terrible (for example, National Socialism in the 1930s and 1940s in Germany).

What is the epidemiological point of view?

The spread of ideas in a certain population has been studied. The characteristics of ideas that promote or inhibit the probability that that idea will be passed has also been studied. Supporters from the epidemiological point of view claim that there is no direct replication of ideas. Instead they assume that a number of steps must be taken before an idea is spread from one person to another:

1. An individual (the inventor) has a mental representation of an idea in the brain;

2. Another individual (the impersonator) learns about this idea from this first person and then creates a mental representation of the idea in his own brain. The idea is not immediately transferred, but the impersonator recreates the idea again. The mental representation is not exactly the same, because it is formed by the imitator's own idiosyncratic way of thinking. However, people share many characteristics of thinking and have many of the same biases, which makes imitation reasonably adequate.

Which ideas do spread?

Communicable ideas

To spread ideas it is necessary that they move from the mind of one person to the mind of another person in some way. The most direct way to do this is through language, although one idea spreads more easily than the other. One way to explore culturally shared ideas is to look at the stereotypes that people have about a particular cultural group. Stereotypes can reflect shared ideas of people in a certain cultural context about a specific cultural group. The content of the stereotypes is influenced by the type of ideas that people communicate most easily. Stereotypes about groups that are often seen are easier to communicate than stereotypes about groups that are not often seen in vicinity. When we communicate ideas, we are most likely to do this with people that we see often. People are also more influenced by the ideas they hear from people they see regularly. The dynamic social impact theory assumes that individuals influence each other, and that they do so primarily with the people they often meet with. This shows that culture (a cluster of people with the same kind of ideas) could be geographically determined. Since people mainly talk about what is personally relevant to them, the environment is affected by this and people from the environment start to share more attitudes.

Useful ideas

People want to help each other, this also involves the aspect of reciprocity. A good way to do this is by sharing useful ideas.

Emotional ideas

Stories often occur in different cultures that cause a lot of fear, but that are not true. The stories seem real, but are made up. Such stories are called contemporary legends. These contemporary legends have an informative value. For example in the time around Sint Maarten or Halloween it is told that parents should be extra careful with the candy that children get because it could be poisoned, while the chance of this is very small according to research. Contemporary legends and rumors spread sooner if they can evoke an emotional response in people. People are motivated to share emotions with others, because this reinforces the connection between people. People spread rumors or legends faster if the stories sound plausible, if the stories contain a lot of emotion and if the stories may contain useful information.

What are minimally counter-intuitive ideas?

A source of evolution of cultural ideas is evident in religions and myths around the world. Almost every culture has a myth about the origin of the world. These myths could never all be true and also not completely true, so religions and myths can be seen as cultural ideas that successfully catch on and spread throughout cultures.

In particular, stories that contain a few minimal counter-intuitive ideas hold on to memories. Minimally counterintuitive ideas are ideas that are surprising and unusual in the sense that they exceed our expectations, but are not too bizarre. The stories often take place in a normal context, but contain a "counter-intuitive" event, such as a speaking bush, or a virgin who is pregnant. It is precisely these stories with a 'counter-intuitive' event that are better remembered and passed on than stories with an intuitive event. Also the fairy tales of the Grimm brothers seem to be best known is an intuitive story with minimal counter-intuitive events.

How have cultures evolved over time?

Cultures are increasingly connected

With the arrival of mail, telephone and the internet, among other things, we increasingly know what is happening in other places in the world. Because of these technical innovations, cultures are increasingly connected to each other. What happens in one culture can also affect another culture. In this way the process of cultural evolution is accelerated. The solidarity between different cultures also leads to the formation of a world culture. Many large companies are now global companies that work beyond their own cultural boundaries. An example is that of IKEA, which has factories, offices and shops worldwide or Starbucks, which sells coffee worldwide. Other examples are the many Hollywood films that are viewed by millions of people worldwide and the videos or messages that are distributed via the internet.The trend towards globalization comes at the same time as the opposite movement of the increase in the independence of tribal cultures, such as the division of former Eastern bloc countries into smaller and more culturally independent countries. A response to globalization is the increase in the return to the traditional cultures of the past. Within the borders of countries, heterogeneity is created by the arrival of immigrants from all over the world. Within the borders of countries, heterogeneity is created by the arrival of immigrants from all over the world.

Many cultures are becoming more individualistic

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. Cultures collectivist include various habits, customs and social rules that encourage individuals to put more emphasis on collective goals.

American youths are on average more individualistic than their parents. Because the population of Americans increasingly consists of people born in recent decades, the culture is also becoming more individualistic.

An important cause of the growing individualism among Americans is the increasing pressure of money and time, leaving less room for social involvement. In addition, Americans spend more time indoors and in the car and are less likely to visit friends or neighbors. People isolate themselves through electronic entertainment such as television. Moreover, a large generation gap has arisen after the Second World War; the people who have experienced the war have a different way of life than the generations after them. The Second World War caused people to unite for a common goal. The increase in individualism is taking place not only in America, but also in other cultures where the factors mentioned above play a role.

People become more intelligent in many cultures

One of the most striking findings with regard to cultural change is that people are becoming increasingly smarter. People of current generations have on average a higher IQ than people of previous generations. This is called the 'Flynn effect', named after the researcher who first demonstrated this effect. On average, the IQ increases by 5 to 25 points per generation.

What intelligence is exactly remains a topic of discussion. If someone can build a kayak well from residual waste and use it to hunt walruses in the dark, then it could be said that this is a good measure of intelligence. An Inuït will probably score higher on this test than an urbanite. But if someone can solve algebraic puzzles well, it also measures intelligence. People who have had good education and practice in algebraic arithmetic will probably score higher on this test than someone who has not had any education in this. It is therefore difficult to understand intelligence outside of a specific cultural context. This also makes it difficult to understand what the pattern of increasing IQ scores between generations can tell us.

In recent decades, people have read less and increasingly watched more television and made use of the internet. The vocabulary of people seems to be declining; they have a smaller vocabulary than earlier generations. The intelligence test that is seen as the purest IQ test is the Raven's Matrices. No specific knowledge of culture or language is required for this test.

One reason why people have become smarter is because of eating healthier foods. After all, the brain needs fuel to function. In addition, the world has become a lot more complex and successfully dealing with this requires a lot of learning and practice, which positively influences intelligence. Nowadays, people must have followed more education to get to work than, for example, 100 years ago. Another reason for the increase in intelligence is the increase in complex entertainment. The television series get more and more complex storylines that must be followed by the viewer. Computer games have also become a lot more complex. This increasing complexity of entertainment makes people smarter, which in turn leads to even more complex entertainment. Like this, our skills to solve problems get better and better.

Why is change different from maintenance?

Despite the fact that cultures change with time, they still persist. Once cultural habits are established, many of these habits become rooted in generations, despite the major changes that generations have to deal with.

An example of cultures that persists despite that they change is shown by comparing the experiences of emigrants with those of people from their country of origin. Research shows that there is a large positive correlation between the scores on subjective well-being (the feeling of satisfaction with one's own life) of the emigrants and the 'stay-at-home'. The scores for subjective well-being therefore remained reasonably stable even after emigration. Thus, immigrants learn cultural traditions from their families that influence well-being and these traditions are passed on for generations, even after the ancestors have disappeared.

The way people think is therefore not only due to the influence of the main culture with which they interact, but is also influenced by the cultural traditions of their ancestors.

Cultural innovations built on earlier structures

Just as with biological evolution, changes in culture do not just fall out of the blue; they are changes that build on what is already present. The adjustment process is therefore gradual. Every new innovation must be woven into an existing web of beliefs and habits. Existing cultural habits influence the evolution of new cultural habits.

Earlier conditions have disproportionate influence on cultural evolution

Because culture develops from circumstances of the past, the early conditions of a culture determines much of how cultures change afterwards. Just like when taking a long trip by foot, the direction of this trip is determined when you take the first steps. Although today people face many similar experiences (due to globalization), every culture follows a path with a distinctive origin. The initial conditions influence the generations after them, but the effect may decrease over time. Nevertheless, the initial conditions have a lasting effect on cultural norms.

What does pluralistic ignorance refer to?

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, however, 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 his housemates drink too much alcohol, but does not dare to say that because he thinks drinking a lot is socially acceptable and his opinion is not. Because he does not express his real thoughts, others cannot properly interpret what he thinks. 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.

An example of pluralistic ignorance can be seen in the rise of Adolf Hitler's idea of the Third Reich. He tolerated no contradicting opinions and many people were afraid to express their resistance to his ideas. In this way, others thought that many people agreed with Hitler's ideas, while in reality they did not. This lead to the establishment of a national socialist culture the 1930s and 40s.

Habits differ between cultures because people adapt to different norms and values. Habits often change over time. This is partly because the ideas about health, for example, change. For example, spitting on the ground has slowly but surely changed from a good / lawful habit to an unsavory and unwanted habit. Some cultural customs are arbitrary; there is no clear motivation behind it. That habits change indicates that cultures change. Cultures are not static, they evolve.

How is psychological research done in the field of culture? - Chapter 4 (3)

How is psychological research conducted?

Research is often done using questionnaires with different items that try to measure a concept. It has psychometric benefits to ask different people the same questions; it reduces the random error and it provides certainty that people's answers relate to the underlying construct and not to all kinds of superficial aspects of each item.

However, the use of a standard research method can cause problems in a different culture. For example, the Zinacantecans (a culture in Mexico) do not appreciate it if their answer to a question is ignored and the researcher simply moves on to the next item on the questionnaire. The use of questionnaires therefore caused a lot of issues to occur during the research in Mexico.

Psychologists conduct research into how the brain works and how psychological processes work. The difficulty of this subject is already apparent from the fact that we often do not even understand our own psychological experiences because many of them take place outside of our consciousness. It is even harder to perceive and understand the psychological experiences of others. For cultural psychologists, this problem is increased when they try to understand the brains of people from a different culture.

The aim of cultural psychological research is to demonstrate the similarities between the ways in which people from different cultures think as well as to show differences between cultures.

How is cross-cultural research set up?

Which cultures are eligible?

A common approach to selecting cultures is to choose samples based on a theoretical variable that you will study. For example, if you are interested in how socialism influences the way people view their relationships, your research would be successful if you select cultures that clearly differ in terms of socialism. So it is good to choose samples that differ on a specific theoretical dimension.

If you are interested in whether a psychological characteristic is universal, it is a good first step to select two cultures that differ as much as possible on various theoretical relevant dimensions such as language, geography, philosophical traditions, level of education or social habits. If there are similarities in a certain psychological process between the two cultures that differ as much as possible from each other, then it is highly likely that there is a high degree of universality for the process in question.

How are meaningful results obtained from cross-cultural research?

Basic understanding of the studied culture

Cultural psychologists often study cultures that are not the same as the culture to which the researcher belongs. It is important that the cultural psychologist has knowledge of the culture that he or she is studying, otherwise there is a risk that he will exceed standards or that he or she does not understand certain habits. This could lead to misinterpretation. The first step of an investigation is therefore to collect and study information about the culture, so that embarrassing situations can be avoided.

You can learn about a culture by reading existing texts and ethnographies. Ethnographies often contain rich descriptions of a culture, but are often colored (biased) by the view of the anthropologist who wrote the ethnography.

Another approach to gathering knowledge is to find a colleague who comes from the culture you want to study and who is interested in doing research with you. The more involved your colleague is in the project, the more likely it is that you can prevent painful situations. An effective way to master the culture is to immerse yourself in the culture. This gives you an enormous amount of information and understanding, but it is a time-consuming and often costly activity.

What is the difference between comparable cultures and different cultures?

If we want to make meaningful comparisons between cultures, it is important that the participants understand our questions or situations in an equivalent way. Methodological equivalence means that the methods that are used during research are perceived identically by different cultures. The research method must be understood in all cultures that are investigated. If this is not the case, the research method must be adjusted so that ultimately all cultures understand what exactly is meant. A lot of cross-cultural research is done with students from universities all over the world. Almost all students are familiar with the way in which research is conducted and they are easily accessible to researchers at different universities. Many comparisons are made between North Americans and East Asians.

There are, of course, limitations to student research. First of all, there is a significant problem with generalizability. It is not always clear how findings among students can be generalized to a population of non-students. It is less possible to reliably generalize the results if we do not have a diverse group of test subjects.

Another problem is the power of the investigations. Power refers to the ability of the research to observe an effect that is actually present. Power reflects the quality of the design of the research. In cross-cultural research, culture is often the independent variable (the variable that can be manipulated). If the researchers compare two equal cultures, there is little variance on their independent variable. If the researchers compare two different cultures, there is more variance on the independent variable. The more variance there is on the independent variable, the more likely it is to observe an effect on the dependent variable (the variable that is being measured). If research is performed on students from different cultures, it may be that no effect is found because students from two different cultures often look more similar than non-students from the same cultures. However, this does not mean that the phenomenon under investigation is not influenced by culture; it is possible that the power of the investigation is too low. However, if an effect is found, it can often be assumed that with a more diverse sample the effect will be at least as large as the effect found. This is one of the reasons that a lot of cross-cultural research is being done among students.

What is the use of surveys?

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.

Solutions for language differences

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 test subjects may have a poorer language comprehension than the researchers. They may not 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 intelligence 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.

To conduct good research it is important to translate the material into the mother tongue of the culture that is being studied. However, translation is not easy, because many psychological terms have no equivalents in other languages. It is important to be able to compare well between cultures and therefore to use the same terms as much as possible. The translator must also understand what exactly is being asked, so that it can be translated correctly. One way to see if the questionnaire is translated correctly is to hire another translator who translates the translated questionnaire. This way you can see if there are major differences and how they can be better translated.

What are response biases?

Interpreting and comparing the responses from the surveys filled in by people from different cultures is a much more difficult task than interpreting the data from a single culture. The difficulties and possible solutions are described below:

Moderacy and extremity biases

This is the tendency to, for example on a scale that runs from 1 to 7, to choose the middle option or the option at the end of the scales. The former is called moderacy and the latter is called an extremity bias. It is known that cultures differ in their tendency to answer the questions moderately or extremely. African Americans and Latin Americans, for example, tend to respond extremely, while Asians tend to respond moderately. The moderacy and extremity biases are called response styles when they influence how an individual responds to an item, regardless of the content of the item. These response styles are problematic for comparative research into cultures. When cultures vary in how people answer questions, it influences the conclusions we can draw if we compare average scores between cultures.

A strategy to prevent average and extreme biases is to offer answer options without a middle category option, such as 'yes or no'. However, only providing these answer categories does not provide a lot of information.

Standardization can be used if you are interested in measuring a wide range of items or domains. With standardization, the average of the scores of a test subject are first measured, and then the individual items are compared with the average scores of the test subject concerned. The standardized scores (Z-scores) indicate how respondents respond compared to their own typical way of answering. Standardization drastically changes the test person's answers, but does show the individual response pattern. Standardization can only be used if we are interested in cultural differences in response patterns, but not if we want to compare the average level of responses in a single measurement.

Acquiescence bias

This is the tendency to agree with almost all claims. This tendency is a problem for cross-cultural research because cultures differ in their tendency to agree with items.

A solution to this problem is to make half of the items in a questionnaire positive and the other half negative. For example, when measuring self-confidence, one half of the items measures low self-confidence and the other half measures high self-confidence. When scoring, this must be kept in mind.

Reference group effects

People compare themselves with others, and especially with others who look like them. People from different cultures compare themselves with others from their own culture. In other words, they use different reference groups and therefore different standards. An example is the question 'do you find yourself tall'. The Dutch are tall compared to people from other cultures, but do not find themselves tall when they are 1.75 meters. The Pygmies are on average a lot shorter than the Dutch and find themselves tall when they are 1.75 meters. Reference group effects can be problematic when cultures are compared to what extent they agree with claims that have subjective answer options.

One technique for avoiding the reference group effect is to avoid subjective measures that may have different standards in the groups being compared with each other. It is better to use concrete measurements that are experienced equally in different cultures. The measurements can be made more concrete by adjusting the content of the items or by adjusting the answer format. For example, by replacing the item 'I am helpful' with the item 'if a friend needs help with his studies, I am willing to cancel my plans and help him'. The more specific the situation is described, the less likely it will be that people from different cultures will interpret the meaning differently. However, the more specific the items become, the more items are needed to get a complete picture of the concept to be measured, such as 'being helpful'. The answer options can also be made more specific by making them quantitative descriptions, such as 'at least once a day', or '10 to 20% of the time'. These answer options leave little room for different interpretations.

Deprivation effects

Research into the measurement of values ​​in people from different cultures shows that people value something more when it is less present. This is called the deprivation effect. For example, personal safety would be more appreciated if personal safety is often at risk. There are no specific solutions available to correct for the deprivation effect. It should make us aware of the difficulty of interpreting differences in value that people from different cultures attach to something.

When are experiments useful?

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.

The experimental method is done by manipulating an independent variable and measuring the influence that this manipulation has on the dependent variable. It offers researchers the opportunity to confidently investigate the relationship between the dependent and the independent variable because all external influences can be kept constant or controlled.

In cross-cultural research, the independent variable (one's cultural background) can not be manipulated. Other independent variables can be manipulated, so there is still some kind of control in this type of research.

There are two types of manipulations of the independent variable that can be done in psychological research:

1. 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. Random assignment guarantees that the participants in the different conditions are statistically equal at the start of the study. Any difference in their responses or behaviors must be due to the independent variable, because that is the only difference between the two experimental conditions.

2. 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. Differences in responses can again only be attributed to the independent variable, because other factors are kept constant and the independent variable is the only thing that is changed. This method is also useful because the previously described biases no longer play a role. For example, when completing a questionnaire, the response bias is omitted because the subject has the same response bias for each item (and in each condition).

What are specific methods for cross-cultural research?

The situation sampling method

A shortcoming of cross-cultural research is that we can not manipulate the cultural background of the test subjects. For practical and ethical reasons, we cannot randomly assign babies to a specific culture at birth and let the children grow up there and then see what the effect of culture is.

Situation sampling is a way that comes reasonably close to perfect cross-cultural research. This method assumes that culture does not affect us in an abstract way, but in a specific, concrete way. We can see our lives as a concatenation of situations. For example: you got up this morning, you took a shower, then you went for breakfast, then you got on the bike to go to university, you came to college there and during the break you went to drink coffee with study friends. Culture influences us through the situations that we regularly encounter. In other cultures, people experience completely different situations.

The underlying idea of ​​the situation sampling method is that we can see how people respond to situations that are regularly experienced by people in a different culture; in other words, we can see how culture forms our way of thinking. The situation sampling method is a two-step process:

1. Participants from at least two different cultures are asked to describe a number of situations in which something specific happened. For example, a study asked Japanese and Americans to describe a number of situations in which their self-confidence increased or decreased.

2. Other test subjects are asked how they would feel if they experienced the written situations themselves. The test subjects receive situations that have been written down by people from their own culture, but also from another culture. In this way we can get an idea of ​​how people would react if they participated in another cultural experience. In this way we learn how culture influences our psychology.

This methodology offers researchers the opportunity to analyze different issues. Specific characteristics of the situations described can be looked at. For example, are certain characteristics more common in one culture than in another? This would suggest that one culture experiences more situations in which the characteristic occurs than the other culture. In the aforementioned study, for example, the Japanese described more situations in which their self-confidence declined. This may indicate that Japanese people experience situations in which their self-confidence declined more often than Americans.

The researchers can also look at differences in the way people respond to the situations. If people from one culture consistently respond to a situation differently than people from another culture, this suggests that there are learned cultural experiences that have become so common that they affect responses to all types of situations. Finally, the researchers can see if there is a different reaction to the cultural origin of the situations. For example, the Japanese indicated that their self-confidence declined more strongly when they responded to situations made by the Japanese than if they were made by the Americans.

The use of priming in cross-cultural research

Another technique with which we can come close to manipulating culture is priming. Priming works by making certain ideas more accessible. If these ideas are associated with cultural meaning systems, then we can investigate what happens when certain cultural ideas are more accessible to people. Although cultures differ in the way of thinking that is common, these differences are more to be found in the degree than in the kind. This means that a certain way of thinking is less common in culture A than in culture B, but that this way of thinking is present to a limited extent in culture A. When cultural ideas are activated that actually fit more into another culture (priming), then people start to think in ways that fit more with the other culture.

How can culture be measured?

If we want to be sure that the psychological processes that we are investigating are actually influenced by culture, it is necessary to know what the culture in question looks like. So we need a way to measure culture. The conditions that a study must meet are: (1) the data must be objective and capable of being replicated by others and (2) the data must be measurable, so that statistical analyzes can be performed to determine whether the hypotheses are supported. If we look at the messages that people are regularly exposed to, we have a good idea of ​​how culture influences its members. Studying cultural messages is done in 3 steps:

1. Focusing on an identifiable and measurable number of cultural messages. Different domains of cultural messages are, for example, advertisements in magazines, laws, fairy tales or lyrics. For example, an American study compared the working class with the upper middle class. It was found that the working class listened more often to country music and that the upper middle class listened more often to rock music. This difference was used to investigate the different cultural messages that the different groups were told while they were driving to work, for example.

2. Drawing up a specific hypothesis. For example: the working class is more often exposed to messages that emphasize resilience and the upper middle class is more often exposed to messages that call on people to follow their own path.

3. The raw data must be transformed into measurable data that is suitable for testing the hypothesis. A number of categories are drawn up, the data is coded and then the hypothesis is tested.

How can found cultural differences be unpacked?

Many researchers find differences on a certain dimension between different cultures. By unpacking the differences found, the underlying variables that give rise to the cultural differences can be identified.

Unpacking can be done by first studying an existing theory about possible underlying variables. The next step is to prove that an underlying construct is present. Finally, the relationship between the cultural difference found and the underlying construct must be demonstrated. These steps are illustrated in the following example: a found difference between Americans and Japanese is that Japanese are ashamed faster. A guiding theory states that the Japanese have a greater sense of interdependence than Americans. The scientists who investigated the difference in shame argued that interdependence led to a greater tendency toward shame. The second step was to prove that the Japanese indeed have a greater sense of interdependence. This turned out to be the case. Finally, it was demonstrated that there was a positive correlation between the degree of shame and the degree of interdependence among both Japanese and Americans. Thus the cultural difference in tendency to shame was successfully unpacked. Unpacking cultural differences is a powerful analytical tool. It is an instrument that we can use to shed light on the nature of underlying processes in cultural differences. Discovering cultural differences not only increases our understanding of the relationship between culture and psychology, but also about the psychological processes themselves.

How is cross-cultural research set up using multiple methods?

Some studies are done by using different methods. If an effect is then found with one method, it can be checked whether the same effect is still found when another method is applied. The principle of Occam's Razor indicates that every theory must make as few assumptions as possible and that all irrelevant assumptions must be eliminated. Moreover, it states that the simplest theory is the most likely. For instance; if the results of four different measurements correspond to one particular theory, then it is more likely that this theory is true than four different theories that each explain the results for one of the measurements.

Case study: The culture of honor in the southern United States

Nisbett and Cohen (1996) conducted a large-scale study into an intriguing cultural difference. Their observation was that the South of the United States was more violent than the North. This difference had already been demonstrated in other studies. Although several possible explanations had been submitted before, Nisbett and Cohen provided a different, unique explanation. They argued that because historically more shepherds lived in the South, an "honor culture" had emerged that still holds true today. This honor culture stems from the fact that the capital of shepherds (animals) is easy to steal. A violent reputation is therefore necessary to protect your capital. A way to get this reputation in advance, is to show that you are willing to defend your honor with violence. According to the researchers, an honor culture thus emerged in the South. Their research showed that more violence was used in the rural South than in the North when it came to arguments where honor had to be defended. In addition, they showed through surveys that people from the South found it more often justified to kill someone if this person endangered their house or their family. Physiological research also showed that people from the South had higher testosterone levels if they were insulted. Moreover, after the insult, they behaved more aggressively than the people from the North. These results and the results from other similar investigators' studies demonstrated that the hypothesis of Nisbett and Cohen was probably correct.

How is psychological research conducted?

Research is often done using questionnaires with different items that try to measure a concept. It has psychometric benefits to ask different people the same questions; it reduces the random error and it provides certainty that people's answers relate to the underlying construct and not to all kinds of superficial aspects of each item.

However, the use of a standard research method can cause problems in a different culture. For example, the Zinacantecans (a culture in Mexico) do not appreciate it if their answer to a question is ignored and the researcher simply moves on to the next item on the questionnaire. The use of questionnaires therefore caused a lot of issues to occur during the research in Mexico.

Psychologists conduct research into how the brain works and how psychological processes work. The difficulty of this subject is already apparent from the fact that we often do not even understand our own psychological experiences because many of them take place outside of our consciousness. It is even harder to perceive and understand the psychological experiences of others. For cultural psychologists, this problem is increased when they try to understand the brains of people from a different culture.

The aim of cultural psychological research is to demonstrate the similarities between the ways in which people from different cultures think as well as to show differences between cultures.

How does the environment influence a person's cultural views? - Chapter 5 (3)

Differences between cultures grow larger as age progresses thanks to the process of socialization.

When does cultural socialization take place?

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.

Sensitive periods for acquiring language

No other species is as dependent on language as people. Language helps to make survival easier. For example, we can tell each other where there is danger and what are good places to go hunting.

People are able to produce, recognize and use 150 phonemes during communication. Yet no language uses all 150 phonemes; the maximum is 70 phonemes. So it may be that certain phonemes occur in one language, but not in another language. This can make learning another language difficult. The Japanese, for example, do not have separate phonemes for 'la' and 'ra'. They also have no phoneme for 'va', but for the almost the same sounding 'ba'. They hear no difference between the English words "rubber" and "lover". Children can recognize all the different sounds that people produce. However, when learning a language, it is useful to receive sounds categorically, so that we understand what we hear. During the first twelve months of their lives, children already lose part of the ability to distinguish between sounds that are very similar, but where no distinction is made in their own language.

People are biologically prepared to use human language when we come to earth. The preference for language makes us suitable to pick up languages ​​at an early age. While learning a language, our brains must organize the sounds and other characteristics of the language so that the brain can recognize them. Our brains are most able to organize language input until puberty. So it is best to learn language early in life. FMRI research shows that the activation in Broca's area during language hearing is different for people who have learned two languages ​​during the sensitive period and people who learned a second language later in their lives. For people who learned the second language later in their lives, two different areas of the brain are active when they hear their mother tongue or the second language. For people who have learned two languages ​​as a child, one and the same brain area is active when they hear one of the two languages. This indicates that the area involved in language learning in childhood can no longer be restructured after a while.

Sensitive periods for acquiring culture

Learning a language is an essential part of being socialized in a certain culture. Language and culture are both meanings systems that we acquire through social interactions and that are largely dependent on each other. Learning a language and being socialized in a culture are closely linked. Is there also a sensitive period for acquiring a culture, just as with language learning?

Measuring acquired culture is more difficult than measuring acquired language. Minoura (1992) argues that if the acquisition of culture also has a sensitive period, then people who move to another culture at a later age have a different understanding of their own culture than of the culture to which they have moved. Her research shows that when Japanese children move to America, they 'Americanize' for the most part when they are 9 years old or younger. Young people between 9 and 15 years of age also adapt well to the new culture, but less so than younger children. People of 15 years and older older never fully embrace their new culture; they indicate that the new habits and behaviors never feel completely comfortable. They continue to view the world through the glasses of their original culture.

Cultural socialization in children versus adults

When people are born they are not yet exposed to the culture in which they will grow up. Young children from different cultures are therefore more equal than older children, because the younger children are less socialized in their culture. The greatest cultural differences could be found between adults, because their brain is shaped by their cultural experiences.

What are differences between cultures with regard to childhood experiences?

Arrangements for sleeping

The first decision parents make is "where does the baby sleep?". This seemingly simple decision can tell us a lot about someone's cultural values. Moreover, it largely influences the environment in which the baby will start its life. People from different cultures make this decision in different ways. In many European and North American families, the baby has its own bed in a separate room from birth. In many other cultures, the baby sleeps in the same bed as the mother. In yet different cultures all generations and any guests sleep in the same room. The decision whether or not to let the baby sleep with the parents reflects underlying cultural values. A study into the agreements on sleeping that was held among people from the U.S. and from India shows that North Americans are more likely to opt for seperating children and parents while sleeping. Indian people prefer to sleep together with their parents and children or seperate their parents, with the father sleeping with his sons and the mother with her daughters. The Indians make the decision based on four moral principles:

1. Avoidance of incest: (young) adults may not sleep in the same room as members of the opposite sex;
2. Protection of the vulnerable: do not leave young children who are needy and vulnerable alone at night;
3. Female chastity anxiety: girls who have gone through puberty cannot sleep alone; for example, they do not get the opportunity for sexual activities, which are considered shameful;
4. Respect for hierarchy: boys who have reached puberty get a social status and now no longer have to sleep with adults or young children.

The North Americans were guided by the following principles when making the decision about sleeping:

1. Avoidance of incest: (young) adults may not sleep in the same room as members of the opposite sex;
2. Sacred couple: married couples need their own space for emotional intimacy and sexual privacy;
3. Autonomy ideal: young children who are needy and vulnerable must learn to be independent and to take care of themselves.

Different cultural values ​​determine how decisions regarding sleeping are made. The various agreements that are made around sleeping determine the socialization of children. It seems that North American children live in an environment where they are independent from a young age and have to cry out to their parents when they need help. Children from other cultures often live in a culture where the mother is always there for them. Children's social worlds vary dramatically across the world, so children learn in different ways how to view themselves and relationships with others.

Individualistic versus collectivistic orientations

According to Baumrind, three different parenting styles can be distinguished. Authoritarian parenting means that the children are subject to great demands, with strict rules and little open conversation between the child and the parent. Authorative parenting is a child-centered approach in which parents hold high expectations of the maturity of their children, try to understand their children's feelings and teach them how to regulate those feelings. They also encourage their children to be indepenent while maintaining limits and controls on their behaviors. In permissive parenting, the parents are very involved with their children and show a lot of affection. There is little control over the behavior of the children. Research in Western societies shows that authoritative parenting leads to the best results. However, the criticism of Baumrind's typology that is often mentioned is that it was drawn up too much from a Western point of view. Chinese parents, as well as parents from a number of other non-Western cultures, often have an authoritarian parenting style at first sight. There are, however, a number of elements on which the non-Western parenting style conflicts with the authoritarian parenting style. First, Chinese children are often spoiled until they reach the age of going to school. Secondly, it is possible that Chinese parents show their love for the child in a different way than Western parents. Moreover, a certain aspect of Chinese culture is not included in the typology; namely training. Chinese children receive strict training in the development of socially desirable behaviors that involve a lot of effort from the parents.

Different parenting styles work best in different cultures.

An important dimension of understanding cultural differences is the individualism-collectivism dimension. A cultural difference can already be seen on this dimension with young children. Children from China describe themselves more in collectivist terms than children from the United States. These differences arise from the way in which parents communicate with their children. For example, children in the United States notice that they are independent creatures to which their mother responds ("I understand that you want to paint the cat because that seems fun, but I don't want it to happen"). Children from China learn that they are relational beings who have to respond to their mother (the mother starts a conversation and brings topics in which the children follow her). In addition, the parents of children from the United States place more emphasis on the children's success and their positive emotional experiences, while the parents of children from China place more emphasis on the mistakes the children make.

Noun bias

Another way of looking at early childhood experiences is by studying language further. Young children have a period in which they learn a lot of words, often around 18 months. Children are the first to learn many nouns. The fact that young children know relatively more nouns compared to verbs is called the noun bias.

The noun bias is not present in every culture, so it can not be said that it is a universal characteristic in young children. For example, Chinese toddlers use more verbs than nouns.

A possible explanation for the non-universal presence of the noun bias is the linguistic explanation. There may be a difference in the nature of the language itself that makes verbs or nouns more striking. For example, in English the nouns in a sentence have an important position, and in languages ​​from East Asia more attention is paid to verbs in a sentence. Another explanation for the absence of the noun bias as a universal fact is that young children from different cultures learn to communicate differently about objects. For example, it may be that in North America attention is focused on being detached from the environment of various objects and that in China attention is focused on the relationship between different objects.

What are possible problems during development?

The Terrible Twos

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-olds" is seen as a milestone; the children begin to prove their own individuality. Yet the behavior that Western "terrible two-year-olds" display is not observed globally. For example, there are cultures where it does not occur at all, such as the Aka Pygmies from Africa or the Zinacantecans from Mexico. In Japan the toddlers do show rebellious behavior, but to a lesser extent than the North American children.

Adolescent rebellion

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.

It is not yet clear whether the rebellion in adolescence is universal or whether it differs between cultures. All cultures indicate that adolescence is a clear period in life that separates childhood from adulthood and in which restructuring and role learning take place. Yet adolescence is not universally associated with violence and rebellion. So there is cultural variation in how adolescence is experienced.

In individualistic cultures, more difficulties seem to occur during adolescence than in collectivist cultures. In the more individualistic cultures, adolescents more often argue with their parents. Adolescents in complex modern cultures also have more difficulty with imposed roles and oppose them.

How can cultural development be stimulated through education?

People from Western cultures spend a large part of their lives at school. Education shapes people in their way of thinking. Through education, people can better reflect how information is organized, they become better at abstract logical reasoning and they improve their perceptual skills for analyzing patterns. Many of the skills we gain in education depend on certain cultural tools. Testing intelligence in people from different cultures is often difficult for this reason.

Case Study: East Asians and Mathematics Education

The way in which education is given in a culture influences the way people in that culture think. Of all the subjects taught at school, mathematics is the most useful if you want to investigate how education influences the way of thinking. Three conclusions could be drawn from a study of the performance of a mathematics test between East Asians and Americans. First, there were greater differences in performance among American schools than among East Asian schools. Secondly, the East Asians scored higher on average on the test than the Americans. Finally, the differences found in scores on the test became greater the longer the children had received education. Various explanations are possible for the differences found. First, East Asian children spend more time in school than American children. Secondly, education plays a more central role in Asia than in the United States. Moreover, more is expected from Asian children in terms of school performance. The difference can also be partly explained by the fact that numbers are easier to learn in Japanese, Korean and Chinese than in English. So there are various factors that contribute to the performance differences found.

What views are there on the self-concept and consciousness? - Chapter 6 (3)

What is the essence of the self-concept?

The question "who am I?" is often used to measure the self-concept and the basis of our identity. The way we look at ourselves influences the way we experience and interact with the social world.

People around the world are able to describe themselves in terms of abstract psychological traits and concrete roles and relationships. To what extent people describe themselves precisely in terms of psychological characteristics or precisely in terms of relationships and roles differs between cultures. Some cultures encourage people to focus on inner characteristics to understand themselves, such as personality traits or their possibilities. Other cultures, on the other hand, encourage people to understand themselves in terms of being a member of a group and the roles and relationships they have.

Researchers done with people from the United States and people from Kenya shows that people from the United States describe themselves more in terms of personal characteristics such as personality traits and talents. People from traditional tribes in Kenya, such as the Masai and Samburu, describe themselves more in terms of their social identity, done by paying attention to the roles they have and their membership of a tribe. The results found can be generalized to the rest of the world. In Western cultures, more self-descriptions include personality traits and in most other cultures, more attention is paid to roles and relationships.

What are differences in the views of the self?

There are at least two different ways in which people can see themselves, as became clear from the above. One way is that the self derives its identity from inner characteristics. 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. This is called the independent conception of the self.

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.

Another way to view the self is to view the self as a relational unit that is fundamentally connected with, and confirmed 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.

The identities of interdependent individuals are to a large extent connected to others and are not experienced as clearly delineated, unique units. The identity of interdependent individuals is based on the relationships that these individuals have with others. Identity can be experienced based on the role that one has in different groups (for example: being a father, brother, son, friend, spouse). The experience of the self will vary depending on the situation and the role that someone has in that situation. The groups that include interdependent individuals are very close and it is difficult to intervene in these groups.

How does the individualistic differ from collectivistic cultures?

People from individualistic cultures more often have an independent view of the self and people from collectivist cultures more often have an interdependent view of the self. Individualistic cultures can be found in particular in the United States, other English-speaking countries and Western European countries. Collectivist cultures can be found in particular in Latin America, Asia, Africa and southern Europe.

About 80% of the world population lives in a collectivist culture and has an interdependent opinion about the self-concept. Yet much cultural research has been done in Western / individualistic cultures. The question is therefore to what extent the psychological theories that arise in a western cultural context apply to other cultures in the world.

Other dimensions

Not only the dimensions individualism-collectivism and independent-interdependent self-concepts have been the basis for cultural psychological theories. Other dimensions, such as uncertainty avoidance, vertical-horizontal social structure, relationship structure, intellectual autonomy, social cynicism and community cohesion, also served as the basis for research. However, not all dimensions offered an equally good foundation for a sustainable theory as the individualism-collectivism dimension.

A note on heterogeneity

Although in the foregoing independent self-concepts or interdependent self-concepts were mentioned, this distinction is much less clear in reality. People can not easily be classified in these categories because many people have aspects of both extremes. We must therefore see it as the two extremes on a continuum. This means that people differ in the degree to which they are closer to one extreme or the other extreme. Just like people, cultures are not that easy to place in one of the two categories and therefore the use of a continuum may offer a solution.

What is the role of gender?

Large differences can be discovered between men and women in various psychological dimensions. Kashima, et al. (1995) conducted a study among men and women from the West and the East and looked at underlying factors of the interdependence and independence measurements. The underlying factors are: collectivism, agency (for example, the item: 'I will stick to my opinion, even if others do not support me'), assertiveness and connectedness. Significant cultural differences were found for all of these factors: Western cultures scored higher on agency and assertiveness, while the Eastern cultures scored higher on socialism and solidarity. Significant differences between the sexes were only found when looking at the item 'connectedness', on which women scored higher than men did.

A study by Williams and Best (1990) among people from 25 countries showed that on average the stereotypes of men are considered more desirable than the stereotypes of women. Men are also found to be more active than women. In addition, male stereotypes were more associated with strength and power. There is cultural variability in how men and women are perceived, but there are also similarities between cultures in terms of gender stereotypes.

People look at sex roles differently worldwide. Some cultures have a "traditional" view at the roles that men and women have (for example, "a woman must maintain a sexual relationship with her husband, whether she likes it or not, because that's the best thing"). Other cultures have a 'modern' view of gender roles (for example, 'marriage should not stand in the way of a woman's career any more than it does for men'). Research shows that in Western European cultures there is a belief that men and women should be treated equally, while in cultures from Central Asia and Africa there is a belief that men and women should have different rights and roles. Yet it appears that within a culture men and women think the same about whether or not there should be equality of rights and roles for the sexes. This indicates that the attitude towards gender roles is part of cultural views. Yet in most cultures, men more often have a traditional view on sex roles than women do.

Other variables that can influence the views on gender roles are religion (in Protestant Christian cultures the concept of gender equality is more often observed and in Islamic cultures the traditional concept of gender roles is more often found), urbanization (the more an urbanized culture, the greater the chance that people have a modern view of gender roles) or the degree of individualism (the score on individualism correlated positively with the modern view of gender roles).

What are other possible cultural differences in self-concept?

Self-consistency

An important way in which our self-concept forms our psychology is reflected in how we think and act in different situations. Some people behave almost the same in all kinds of different situations. They would score high on a measurement of self-consistency. Others behave very differently in different situations, depending on who they are with. They would score low on a measurement of self-consistency. Some aspects of their identity are more striking in one situation than in the other. Cultures differ considerably in the extent to which individuals are motivated to be consistent in different situations. For example, Americans score high on consistency when they complete a questionnaire that measures self-concept;they fill in the questionnaire even positively as they do that with a professor or friend next to them or if they are alone. The Japanese judge themselves less positive on average. They are also less consistent; they judge themselves more positively if they complete the questionnaire alone and judge themselves most negatively if they complete the questionnaire with a professor next to them. The Japanese do not have a consistent self-concept and the question is which self-concept is the 'real' self-concept.

The motivation to be consistent is at the basis of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is the unpleasant feeling we have when we observe inconsistent actions in ourselves; so if we do something (for example, eat meat) that is inconsistent with the attitude we have towards that action (attitude is that you are a vegetarian). We want to get rid of the unpleasant feeling and can then behave more consistently (for example no longer eat meat), but that is often difficult. Another way to get rid of the unpleasant feeling is to change our attitudes so that it seems that we are no longer acting inconsistent. This is called dissonance reduction. An example of this is rationalization. For example, you have to choose from two options, both of which have advantages and disadvantages. Once you have chosen one of the options, you will find the other option less attractive and the chosen option more attractive, while this was the same before the decision.This happened because you want to feel good about what you bought and therefore you rationalize your decision to make your decision feel as good as possible.

Research shows that Western and Eastern people both want to be consistent, but that Western people rationalize their own decisions and that Eastern people only rationalize the decisions they make for others. Eastern people are also motivated to be consistent with the decisions of others; they rationalize decisions that they think others would take.

People with interdependent self-concepts are less motivated to have consistency within themselves. They are therefore less easily influenced by, for example, charities that ask whether you want to donate money again, "because you have done so in the past". They are motivated to be consistent with the immediate environment, so they are more likely to give money to the charity if it is said that 'your friend has also given money'. People with independent self-concepts are more likely to be influenced by their own past actions and by messages that encourage consistency.

Self-awareness

When individuals view themselves from the perspective of the subject, they are in a state of subjective self-awareness. In this state, people are involved with the world around them and are largely unaware of themselves as individuals. When individuals think about how they come across to others, they experience themselves as an object, and they are in a state of objective self-awareness. In this state, people are mainly concerned with themselves. They are aware of the fact that they are being evaluated and are likely to see how successful they are when they compare themselves to a number of standards. People do not like being aware of themselves, because they often become aware of their shortcomings. Individuals who have an interdependent self-concept more often have a state of objective self-awareness, because they are always busy with others in their environment and always look at whether they are adapted to the rest of the group. They often look at themselves and at memories from a distance. Individuals who have an independent self-concept more often have a state of subjective self-awareness. They are influenced more quickly by situations in which attention is focused on their self (for example, by allowing people to listen to their own voice or to look in a mirror) and get an unpleasent feeling faster than people with an interdependent self-concept.

What are implicit theories about the self-concept?

The basis of our self-concept are the implicit theories that we have about it. Implicit theories guide our interpretation of many things that happen around us. There are several implicit theories:

• 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.
• 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.

People who have the entity theory of the self are more likely to attribute successes and failures to their static attributes, while people who have an incremental theory of the self attribute successes and failures to the efforts they have made. People from Asian cultures more often take the view that they can grow and increase than people from North America do.

What does the concept of personality entail?

We often describe people on the basis of personality traits. However, we can ask ourselves whether every culture uses the descriptions with personality traits equally and whether each culture finds it equally important. The more unstable a personal network of people around you, the more value you attach to a description of identity based on personality traits.

The five factor model of personality

The approach most accepted by personality psychologists is the five-factor model of personality, also known as the 'Big Five'. According to this model, there are five underlying personality traits. With the use of factor analysis, we have been able to filter out the five most important personality traits out of the many personality traits. Factor analysis is a technique to identify groups of things that are equal to each other. If there is a clear positive correlation between two or more personality traits, it is concluded that it is a single trait. The five factors are:

1. Openness to experiences: reflects one's intelligence and curiosity about the world;
2. Conscientiousness: how responsible and reliable is someone as an individual;
3. Extraversion: how active or dominant an individual is;
4. Agreeableness: to what extent is a person warm and kind;
5. Neuroticism: the extent to which a person is seen as emotionally unstable and unpredictable.

The five personality factors are found in many cultures around the world, but there are also a number of non-Western cultures to which the five factors are not applicable. Cultures also differ in the scores for the five factors. Spaniards score highest on neuroticism, Chinese from Hong Kong score lowest on Extraversion, people from Austria score highest on Openness for experiences, people from Malaysia score highest on Agreeableness and the Japanese score lowest on Conscientiousness.

What is the essence of the self-concept?

The question "who am I?" is often used to measure the self-concept and the basis of our identity. The way we look at ourselves influences the way we experience and interact with the social world.

People around the world are able to describe themselves in terms of abstract psychological traits and concrete roles and relationships. To what extent people describe themselves precisely in terms of psychological characteristics or precisely in terms of relationships and roles differs between cultures. Some cultures encourage people to focus on inner characteristics to understand themselves, such as personality traits or their possibilities. Other cultures, on the other hand, encourage people to understand themselves in terms of being a member of a group and the roles and relationships they have.

How do culture and migration processes influence each other? Chapter 7 (3)

Cultures are not homogeneous units with clear boundaries. There are no societies that consist entirely of people from one cultural background. Even the most homogeneous societies contain individuals with different cultural legacies, traditions, religions and languages.

What can proof difficult when studying acculturation?

Acculturation is the process by which people migrate to a culture that is different from the culture of origin and learn the new culture. Acculturation is less empirically substantiated than other parts of cultural psychology. It is difficult to investigate acculturation because people in an acculturation process have many different experiences. For example, people move to another country for various reasons. Also the countries where people move to are different. People can move to a country with a culture that is very similar to or different from their own. Individuals differ from each other in terms of personality, goals and expectations.

What about psychological adjustment?

When moving to a new culture, psychological adjustment is involved. The adaptation relates to various domains, such as learning a new language, learning new interpersonal and social behaviors, getting used to new values, in many cases becoming members of a minority group and adapting the self-concept.

Migrants in the host culture

Migrants are people who move from an inheritance culture (their culture of origin) to a host culture (their new culture). Migrants are both people who intend to stay somewhere temporarily (sojourners) and people who intend to stay permanently (immigrants). The pattern that many migrants show when they settle in a new culture takes the form of a U (positive-negative-positive):

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

When people move back to the culture they come from, the same U-curve can arise. People are initially happy and relieved to be back, but after a while they discover that their old culture no longer fits them. After a while, they still feel at home and are adjusted to their initial culture.

What are differences in adjustment?

People adapt differently to new situations. This depends on the situation and their temperament. Moving to a new culture can have a lot of impact. Characteristics such as cultural distance, cultural fit and acculturation strategies can influence the way in which people adapt and can influence their acculturation experiences.

What is the influence of cultural distance on acculturation?

With acculturation, people must learn the way of life of a new culture. How successful they are in that learning process depends on how much they have to learn. If someone comes to live in a culture where everything is different than in their original culture, then they have to learn many new things. If someone comes to live in a culture that is very similar to the original culture, then they need to learn less new things and will therefore probably experience fewer difficulties. The cultural distance between the original culture and the host culture can influence the degree of adaptation to the new culture. Cultural distance is the difference in lifestyle between the two cultures. The more cultural distance someone has to deal with, the more difficult the person will acculturate.

How does cultural fit influence acculturation?

Cultural fit is the degree to which an individual personality is equal to the dominant cultural values ​​in the host culture. The better the cultural fit, the easier someone adjusts and acculturates into the new culture. With acculturation it is important that your personality matches the new cultural environment.

Which acculturation strategies exist?

There are four acculturation strategies:

1. Integration strategy: adapting to and fully participating in the new culture, while at the same time striving to preserve the traditions of original culture. People who use this strategy have positive opinions about both the original culture and the new culture;

2. Marginalization strategy: not adapting and participating as little as possible in the new culture and making no effort to preserve the traditions of the original culture. People who use this strategy have a negative view of the original culture and on the host culture;

3. Assimilation strategy: adapting to and fully participating in the new culture, but making no effort to preserve the traditions of the original culture. People who use this strategy have a positive view of the new culture and a negative view on the original culture;

4. Separation strategy: not adapting to and participating as little as possible in the new culture, while at the same time striving to preserve the traditions of original culture. People who use this strategy have positive opinions about the original culture and negative opinions about the new culture.

The integration strategy is applied the most often and the marginalization strategy the least frequently. Which strategy someone will use depends on a number of factors. Someone will not quickly adapt to the new culture if in the new culture many prejudices are expressed about the original culture of the person. The more people physically deviate from the standard in the new culture, the sooner they have to deal with prejudices. If this is the case, they are more likely to develop negative attitudes towards the host culture and apply marginalization as a strategy. If a host culture values ​​cultural diversity, migrants are more likely to develop positive attitudes towards the host culture and are more likely to apply the integration or assimilation strategy.

Which strategy people apply also depends on the interaction of the person with the environment. A personality variable that appears to be relevant when choosing an acculturation strategy is the need for cognitive closure (NCC). A NCC is a wish to get a clear answer to a question. Every answer that is clear is better than uncertainty. People who have a high NCC will be influenced by the first experiences they have in a new culture. They want clarity in the new, unknown culture and look for contacts and answers. Depending on the situation, they will opt for the separation strategy (when they come into contact with people from their original culture) or the assimilation strategy (when they come into contact with people from the new culture).

What are disadvantages of acculturation?

There are also potential disadvantages to moving to and acculturing to a new culture. For example, people can learn 'bad' behavior. In America, for example, people eat more on average than in other countries and people are getting fatter. If you move to America, you run the risk of developing obesity, because it has become part of American culture to eat a lot. This chance increases as you are accultured in the new culture. Not every cultural habit leads to positive results. Migrants who pick up bad behaviors will also suffer from the consequences.

How do prejudice and discrimination effect acculturation?

One of the most annoying things about migration is that people from other cultures are not always treated with equal respect. Prejudice and discrimination have been rampant for years in countries where people from different cultural backgrounds live together. Even people who are born in a certain country, but their parents or grandparents are not face discrimination.

Research also shows that minority groups are doing worse at school and quit earlier, regardless of their level. This may be due to stereotype threat. Stereotype threat is the fear that someone feels about doing something wrong, so that the negative stereotype about their group is confirmed. Because of this fear it goes wrong and the stereotype is confirmed. Minorities are often confronted with the stereotypes that concern their group and will therefore often confirm these stereotypes through fear.

How to deal with two cultures?

There are two ways in which people who are exposed to multiple cultural influences can cope with their different experiences:

1. The tendency of bicultural people to show psychological tendencies that mingle between their two cultures is called blending.
2. The tendency of bicultural people to switch between different cultural selves is called frame switching.

What does 'blending' refer to?

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.

What is meant with 'frame switching'?

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.

For example, people learn to speak the language in a new culture fluently over time, but do not lose their mother tongue. They also speak no mixture of the new language and the original language; the languages remain two separate things.

The culture at school or work can also be very different from the culture in the neighborhood where people live. For example, some people have to behave neatly and well at school and or at work, while the neighborhood they live in expects people to behave tough. This is called code change. Code change is not only limited to behavior and the way people present themselves, but also influences the way people think on a psychological basis. People in a multicultural environment have multiple networks of information in their brain. For example, an American of Asian descent has a network with Asian information and ideas and a network with American information and ideas.

Some bicultural people do not always change code; they see their two cultural identities as compatible. These people integrate aspects of both cultures into their daily lives. They have a high degree of bicultural identity integration. Other bicultural people view their two cultural identities as opposite. They can identify with both identities, but never at the same time. They have a low degree of bicultural identity integration.

People who have a high degree of bicultural identity integration will use code change more often than people who have a low degree of bicultural identity integration. This is because people with a low degree of bicultural identity integration do not see the two cultures as compatible and for example, they feel Chinese when they are in America, but feel American when they are in China. People with a high degree of bicultural identity integration provide a culturally consistent response to external cues.

Exposure to different cultures allows people to combine information from multiple perspectives, which can result in higher creativity.

Cultures are not homogeneous units with clear boundaries. There are no societies that consist entirely of people from one cultural background. Even the most homogeneous societies contain individuals with different cultural legacies, traditions, religions and languages.

What can proof difficult when studying acculturation?

Acculturation is the process by which people migrate to a culture that is different from the culture of origin and learn the new culture. Acculturation is less empirically substantiated than other parts of cultural psychology. It is difficult to investigate acculturation because people in an acculturation process have many different experiences. For example, people move to another country for various reasons. Also the countries where people move to are different. People can move to a country with a culture that is very similar to or different from their own. Individuals differ from each other in terms of personality, goals and expectations.

What different kinds of motivation do exist? - Chapter 8 (3)

What do self-enhacement and self-esteem entail?

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: comparing your own performance with someone who has done worse than yourself. In this way we can view our own (poor) performance in a positive light. Upward social comparison is better to be avoided if we want to maintain a positive self-image. In this case you compare your own performance with someone who has done better than you. This makes our performance seem even worse.

• Compensatory self-reinforcement: you acknowledge the poor performance that you have delivered, but immediately start thinking of something in which you do perform well. You divert attention from the setback and you start to think of all kinds of positive qualities of yourself.

• Discounting setbacks: reducing the perceived importance of the domain on which you have performed poorly. For example, you say "How important is mathematics? Not important, because I don't become a mathematician anyway".

• External attribution: we attribute the cause of our actions outside of ourselves. For example, we say "that I got a bad grade for the exam, depends on the teacher who gave poor education."

• Basking in the reflected glory: Nurturing yourself in the reflection of fame from a successful group that you are part of.

There seems to be a positive relationship between independent self-concepts and self-enhancementt. Self-enhancement and self-esteem are more often observed in cultures that have independent self-concepts than in cultures with interdependent self-concepts. 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.

Yet it seems that people with an interdependent self-concept like themselves as much as people with independent self-concepts, but they are more self-critical when it comes to measuring competence. They have a lesser tendency to judge themselves positively. The difference in positive self-esteem between Western and Eastern people may have a cultural cause. For example, children in Western countries often hear stories about successful events in their lives and children in Eastern countries more often hear stories about situations in which they have failed and what they can improve. In schools too, children from different cultures are given a different approach to finding positive self-esteem.

Research into the past and the origin of self-esteem shows that a difference arose at the start of the Protestant Reformation (16-th century). Many of the early Protestant religious communities believed in predestination. Predestination is about that before we were born it had already been decided whether we would go to heaven or to hell. Because no one had access to the list of names that went to heaven, it was assumed that you would know for sure if you were going to heaven. That conviction should therefore not be doubted. If you doubted whether you would go to heaven, it was already clear that you would go to hell. In this way, people were motivated to view situations in a positive way and themselves too. Another explanation for the cultural difference in self-esteem is that people in an individualistic culture are more focused on themselves, they have to take good care of themselves and therefore also view themselves positively.

What can be done to maintain face and encourage self improvement?

Another way to study the difference in positive self-perceptions between cultures is to look at the different types of positive attitudes that a person can have. One way to have a positive self-image is by having a high self-esteem. Another way is to have 'face'. The expression "losing face" has to do with this. Face is defined as the amount of social value that others attribute to you if you live by the standard that applies to your position. The higher your position, the greater the share of face that is available. In hierarchical collectivist societies (such as in East Asia), face is of great importance. What matters is not how positively you think about yourself, but whether important others think you are doing well.

An important characteristic of face is that it is easier lost than it is acquired. So face is hard to get hold of. To maintain face, people behave as they think they are expected to do.

One way to keep a face is prevention orientation: a defensive, cautious approach not to lose something. Another orientation, promotion orientation, relates to moving yourself forward and striving for growth or promotion.

It seems that Western people focus more on promotion and Eastern people more on prevention. This can explain why cultures deal differently with success and loss. The self-improvement focus, a desire to seek out and correct potential weaknesses, so that failure in the future is less likely, is common in an East Asian context.

What is the influence of religion on motivation?

In the early 20-th century, Max Weber published an influential and controversial series of essays entitled The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. He stated that human behavior is connected with meaning. Events do not simply occur to us; it is our interpretation of the meaning of these events that motivates us to respond appropriately. Weber saw capitalism as the product of giving meaning to people from a certain cultural context. The ideas at the basis of capitalism stemmed from the Protestant Reformation.

With the arrival of Protestantism, the Catholic Church was no longer necessary as a mediator between God and man. Martin Luther, the founder of the Protestant Church, believed that everyone had a "calling" or a purpose dedicated by God and to be fulfilled in life. God has given each person his own skills and talents to fulfill his own calling. The highest moral duty was to serve God by working hard on your calling. This gave work a different meaning than just ensuring that food came on the table.

Weber argues that the idea of ​​predisposition, born in the early religious communities of Protestantism, has played a key role in the development of capitalism. No one knew for sure if they were chosen to go to heaven, but a sense of certainty was a good sign. The proof for this certainty was the fulfillment of the personal calling. Through hard work and being rewarded for that, people thought they were sure of a place in heaven. The six most individualistic countries have a Protestant background and the six least individualistic countries have a Catholic background.

What is the perception of control?

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. We can 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.

How can we take control our own lives?

Primary and secondary check

There are at least two ways we can control our lives:

1. Primary control: striving to shape existing realities in accordance with own perceptions, goals or wishes. Other names for primary control are internal locus of control, influence or power.

2. Secondary control: trying to connect with existing realities, leaving reality unchanged while you exercise control over its psychological impact. The circumstances are hereby accepted. Secondary control is also called adjustment or external locus of control. Your wishes and goals are adjusted to the environment. For example: you and a group are going to get lunch and the group decides to take pizza. At that moment you think 'yes, pizza, I'm really looking forward to that'.

Cultures differ in the extent to which they experience primary or secondary control. Cultures in East Asia use secondary control more often and cultures in Europe or North America use primary control more often. Western cultures view events in the world as acts of individuals, while Eastern cultures believe that events occur as a result of the behavior and decisions of groups of people.

Making choices

One way in which people can control their environment is by making choices. By deciding where we live, what we eat, what time we get up, etc., we are able to structure our lives in such a way that it matches our wishes. Everyone makes choices, but in one environment it is more possible than in other environments. For example, a writer may choose to sleep during the day and to work in the evening. However, a professional football player has to stick to training schedules and can not decide to get drunk the day before an important match. The footballer has a team that he is part of and he wants it to perform well.

The same applies to people in individualistic and collectivist cultures. In individualistic cultures, people are less dependent on others and can make more choices independently. In collectivist cultures, people are more involved in the goals of the group and are more willing to adapt their behavior to the rest of the group; in this way they reduce the number of choices they can make.

In individualistic cultures, people take a long time to decide on important issues in their personal lives (what kind of work will I do? Who will I marry?). In collectivist cultures, decisions about personal matters are made by others, but by people who are close to the person (such as the parents) and who know a lot about their personal lives.

Differences can also be found within an individualistic culture with regard to people's satisfaction with the choices they can or cannot make. People from the working class have fewer choices to make (for example, they can not choose between a private school and a regular school, because they do not have the money to pay for a private school) than people from the upper middle class. They learn that much in life is beyond their own control and rather accept the choices they make themselves, but also the choices that are made for them. People from the upper middle class are less satisfied with choices made for them, because normally they make their own decisions.

What stimulates the urge to adjust or to be unique?

If we want to decide how we behave in a group, we can adapt to the other members of the group, so that the group becomes more harmonious, or we can extend beyond the group, so that we focus on how unique we are as human beings . We often adapt while feeling that we make a choice ourselves and show how unique we are (for example in fashion: you have the feeling that you have decided what you put on this morning, but it probably is very alike to what your friends wear).

We often adapt, because there are social consequences of rebelling against a group, such as laughing, being thrown out of the group or being no longer accepted. People from individualistic cultures often adapt to the group, but people from collectivist cultures adapt more often.

What do self-enhacement and self-esteem entail?

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.

What differences in cognition are visible between different cultures? - Chapter 9 (3)

When we look at historical artworks from different parts of the world, a number of things stand out. For example, in Eastern artworks the horizon is often depicted higher than in Western artworks, and faces are larger in Western artworks than in Eastern artworks. The researcher Masuda and his colleagues claimed that the difference found between Eastern and Western art is the result of a literally different view of the world of these cultures. Different artistic styles reflect fundamental differences in cognitive and perceptual processes.

What are differences in cognitive and perceptual processes?

People use different categorization strategies. When asked which item fits the least with the other two items, different answers are given. Take the following, for example; a dog, a carrot and a rabbit. If we do not find the carrot to fit fit in this list, we use taxonomic categorization. Items are arranged according to similarities (a dog and a rabbit are both animals; a carrot is a vegetable and therefore does not belong in the list). Taxonomic categorization is common among people from Western culture. However, if we find that the dog is not included, we use thematic categorization. Items are arranged according to the relationship they have with each other (a rabbit does not eat carrots and a dog does not, so the dog does not belong).Thematic categorization is more common among people from an Eastern culture. The difference in categorization strategies reflects an underlying difference in the way people look at the world around them. These ways of thinking are called analytical or holistic thinking.

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 Aristotles and holistic thinking finds its origins in ancient China.

What are differences in attention?

One of the most fundamental psychological processes is attention. Analytical thinkers are more inclined to focus their attention on separate parts of a scene, namely those parts that represent interesting objects. Holistic thinkers spread their attention more throughout the scene. They pay more attention to the relationships that can exist between different objects. This difference appears from an investigation; the results showed that analytical thinkers performed better on tasks where it was important to focus on individual components, while holistic thinkers performed better on tasks where attention had to be distributed throughout the scene. Analytical thinkers use field independence; they can separate objects from their background. Holistic thinkers show field dependence; they see objects connected to the background. When analytical and holistic thinkers look at the same scene, they perceive it differently.

When assessing an event, holistic thinkers look not only at the subject, but also at the environment. They allow their judgment on the situation to be influenced by the environment. Holistic thinkers make more use of saccades (movements with their eyes) over the entire scene and therefore see the scene in a different way than the analytical thinkers. The stimuli that the brain receives therefore differs per culture. An explanation for the more holistic pattern of thinking of certain cultures has to do with the bustle of everyday life; a busier environment provides a more holistic perception.

What are attributions concerning the behavior of others?

Trying to understand the behavior of others by considering their inner qualities is an extension of an analytical way of thinking. Analytical thinking refers to the understanding of objects by identifying underlying traits, such as personality traits. If we try to understand a person's behavior by thinking about how the situation affects them, it is an extension of a holistic way of thinking. It relates to the relationships that someone has with the context.

We expect people from a western culture to be more inclined to understand the behavior of another based on the underlying character. They will make character attributes. We expect that people from an Eastern culture are more inclined to describe behavior on the basis of contextual variables. They will have situational attributions to make.

The fundamental attribution error

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.

Is the fundamental attribution error a universal phenomenon or is it mainly found in Western cultures? It 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.

What are differences in reasoning?

Another indication that an analytical or holistic orientation influences the way of thinking is the way people reason. Analytical thinkers view the world as functioning according to a set of abstract universal rules and laws. They will apply these rules and laws if they try to understand a situation. Holistic thinkers try to understand a situation by considering the relationships between objects or events. Analytical and holistic thinkers probably solve problems in a different way.

Reasoning styles can also be different with regard to what information is found relevant when performing a task. A holistic thinker is aware of the countless ways in which things in the world can be related. For example, pressing your heel can make your headache disappear and a fall in the stock market can affect the number of births. Analytical thinkers place more emphasis on a direct relationship between objects or events.

Naive dialectics

Following the holistic view in which everything is fundamentally connected, people in East Asia see reality as constantly moving. Yin and Yang represent the opposite and they indicate that the world is constantly changing. The world is moving from one pole to the other and back again. Aristotles devised the law of contradictions. He claimed that no statement could be true or false. "A" can not be "not A". Chinese have the principle of contradictions. 'A' is connected to 'not A' and if 'A' changes, 'not A' also changes and in this way 'A' and 'not A' can no longer be contradictions. This acceptance of contradictions is called naive dialecticisim. People in East Asia therefore describe themselves more often in contradictory terms than people from the West do.

Differences in creativity

There seem to be major differences between cultures in terms of creativity. To investigate this, it is important to define creativity. An accepted definition is that creativity is the generation of ideas that are both new, useful and appropriate. Individualism is more associated with generating new ideas, while socialism is more associated with generating useful ideas.

What are differences regarding thoughts and speech?

An important characteristic of people is that they can talk to each other. Yet there are differences between cultures in how people think about talking. Talking is considered very important in Western cultures. The freedom to express your opinion is seen as a right in many Western cultures. Speaking is inextricably linked to thinking. In Eastern cultures the saying 'the one who has knowledge does not speak and the one who speaks has no knowledge' applies. Thoughts and speech are less closely connected than in Western cultures. When people have to express their thoughts while performing a task, people from East Asia perform the task worse than people from a Western culture. Because people in East Asia often have a holistic way of thinking and they perceive many relationships, it is more difficult for them to express their thoughts. After all, one thought follows the other and thoughts are also related to each other. This allows speech to interfere with the performance on a task. However, when talking about matters other than the task to be performed, people from East Asia are less hindered than people from the West. The cultural difference in the relationship between talking and thinking also has other consequences. If what you say is seen as consistent with what is in your brain, then speaking plays an important role in self-expression. However, if talking is less strongly connected to thinking, people are less likely to see a connection between what someone says and who someone is. However, when talking about matters other than the task to be performed, people from East Asia are less hindered than people from the West. The cultural difference in the relationship between talking and thinking also has other consequences. If what you say is seen as consistent with what is in your brain, then speaking plays an important role in self-expression. However, if talking is less strongly connected to thinking, people are less likely to see a connection between what someone says and who someone is.

What are differences in communication?

Communicating with another person involves more than just speaking words and listening to the other's words. Much of what is communicated takes place through non-verbal gestures, facial expressions and the tone of the voice. There are cultural differences in the degree of verbal or non-verbal communication.

Hall distinguishes two types of cultures:

1. High context culture: people are strongly involved with each other and this involvement leads to people sharing a lot of information which influences behavior. Because a lot of information is widespread and is known to many people, this information no longer needs to be passed on explicitly. East Asian cultures are examples of high context cultures. During a conversation, more attention is given to the non-verbal signs than to the verbal message.

2. Low context culture: there is relatively little involvement between individuals and there is less shared information that influences behavior. Because there is less shared knowledge, details must be told explicitly so that the other person can understand the story. Western cultures are low context cultures. During a conversation, more attention is given to the verbal message than to the non-verbal signs.

What is linguistic relativity?

To what extent does the language we speak affect the way we think? In many cases, the words we say influence the way we think. For example, some people prefer to say"physically challenged" instead of "disabled" when talking about people in wheelchairs. The term people use often indicates how they feel about something.

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). For example, we can not properly measure whether an Englishman experiences schadenfreude (the pleasure of seeing others having a difficult time) in exactly the same way as a German does. Research into color also shows that there are differences in how people name a certain color. Some cultures have only two names for colors (black for dark colors and white for lighter colors), while other languages ​​have 30 different names for colors. They will divide the color spectrum differently. These differences, however, are not arbitrary and surprisingly consistent patterns can be observed between cultures. Moreover, it has been found that people from cultures in which the language mentions only a few colors can distinguish the colors from other languages. Yet language can influence the perception of color; there is evidence that the way a person perceives colors is influenced by the color categories that exist in his language.

Linguistic relativity can also be found in the way in which sentences are formulated. In some languages, for example Spanish, sentences are more often formulated without agentive, while in English sentences are more often formulated with nonagentive. If people get to see a scenario in which an event has no agentive, they will find it less important to know who caused the event and they will remember this less well. When people get to see a scenario where an agentive is present, they better remember who caused the event and find this more important.

There are also differences in how people give directions to find their way. People from the West often use objects to make their description clear (at the building on the left, then you see that statue and then at the McDonald's to the right). People from an Aboriginal tribe from Australia use the north, east, south and west to describe how you can best walk. The way in which you have learned to count (a ten-point system, a twenty-ten system or even a six-count system) can also influence the way you think. So there seems to be evidence for the existence of differences in language as a basis for variation in psychological processes.

What is anthropocentrism about?

According to Carey, children come into the world with an understanding of living things that is fundamentally anthropocentric. Young children project people's qualities onto animals. For example, they think that bees look more like humans than other insects. Children also see Donald Duck on television, who speaks their own language and can read, drive and dance the samba. Yet anthropocentrism seems to only occur among children in Western cultures and is not a universal phenomenon.

What are differences in cognitive and perceptual processes?

People use different categorization strategies. When asked which item fits the least with the other two items, different answers are given. Take the following, for example; a dog, a carrot and a rabbit. If we do not find the carrot to fit fit in this list, we use taxonomic categorization. Items are arranged according to similarities (a dog and a rabbit are both animals; a carrot is a vegetable and therefore does not belong in the list). Taxonomic categorization is common among people from Western culture. However, if we find that the dog is not included, we use thematic categorization. Items are arranged according to the relationship they have with each other (a rabbit does not eat carrots and a dog does not, so the dog does not belong).Thematic categorization is more common among people from an Eastern culture. The difference in categorization strategies reflects an underlying difference in the way people look at the world around them. These ways of thinking are called analytical or holistic thinking.

In which ways can emotions be experienced and expressed? - Chapter 10 (3)

In the north of the Philippines, a tribe called Ilongot people live. They experience Liget as a key emotion in life. Liget is an emotion that cannot be translated directly. It is a combination of anger, passion and energy. Liget is experienced when someone is offended, disappointed, but especially when someone is jealous of someone else. Liget is created during interactions with someone, especially during a competition and when one becomes jealous of the skills of the other. Liget mainly occurs in men because of the belief that it is concentrated in sperm. Many chasings and killings of members of other tribes are the result of liget.

Is liget a universal emotion? Or does this emotion only occur in the Ilongot? Are emotions at all universal or are they culture-related?

Which theories about emotions exist?

The James-Lange Theory of Emotions

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.

The Two-Factor Theory of Emotions

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, 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.

The Two-factor Theory of Emotions suggests that our emotions are based on thought patterns that form our interpretations. Thinking patterns are largely influenced by culture. This leads to that people from different cultures interpret physiological signals differently.

The role of appreciation in emotions

The theories mentioned both claim that we have physiological responses that respond to an event in our environment. It are our interpretations or evaluations of what an event means that leads to a response. Evaluations are the way in which we evaluate events in terms of their relevance to our well-being. For example, a bear in the zoo is less frightening than a bear in the deserted forest.

Some events are valued the same worldwide and lead to the same emotions. For example, people feel fear when their lives are threatened, sadness when their child dies, and disgust when they smell rotten meat. These experiences are universal and have the same meaning throughout the world.

Yet there are also differences in how people from different cultures view events. How we value a situation depends on what a situation means and whether it is significant to us. Cultural differences in beliefs and values ​​ensure that the experiences that people have are valued differently. The relationship between emotions and appreciation is a bit difficult. For example, if we ask people from different cultures what makes them happy, they tell us different situations. They all experience joy when they value a situation as pleasant. In this way we cannot separate the appreciation from an emotion and cultural variation in emotional experiences is not possible. We then describe emotions as the affective response to an appreciation. If we look at the appreciation of events, we do find cultural differences. People from the Utku tribe really like throwing stones at ducks. We are probably less able to enjoy it because we are used to treating ducks nicely and it is not part of our habit to catch ducks and eat them afterwards.

What are differences in emotions and facial expressions?

Emotions and facial expressions

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.

Is there a universality of facial expressions?

Charles Darwin was the first scientist to investigate the universality of facial expressions. He found that there were similarities between at least four facial expressions in humans and chimpanzees. He expected that if there were similarities between people and chimpanzees, people around the world would express their emotions in the same way.

Ekman and Friesen investigated whether there were similarities in facial expressions in people from different cultures. That seems to be the case. They claimed that there is a set of basic emotions that are universally recognized. This basic set consists of at least six emotions: anger, fear, joy, sadness, surprise and disgust. There is a debate about whether the emotions are contempt, shame, pride and interest as universal emotions. There is convincing evidence that pride is a universal emotion, but this emotion is expressed throughout the body posture and not just in the facial expression.

How can one recognize facial expressions?

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.

How do experienced differ from expressing emotions?

According to Ekman and his colleagues, cultures have different cultural rules for showing emotions. These rules determine which emotional expressions are appropriate in a certain situation and how intensively one must try to suppress the expression. People may differ in how they express an emotion, but they are able to experience the same underlying feelings. People from Japan tend to suppress their feelings of disgust when others are there, while showing the expression when they are alone. People from America show their disgust regardless of whether others are there or not. Some expressions are produced voluntarily (such as tongue biting in shame in Indian culture) and are called ritualized expressions .

Facial feedback hypothesis

Emotional experiences are not always accompanied by a facial expression, but they are not unrelated. This is called the facial feedback hypothesis . The facial feedback hypothesis states that our facial expressions are a source of information for determining our emotions. For example, if we try to find out if we are happy, we can pay attention to whether we smile or not.

An investigation shows that if our face has a certain expression, our feeling corresponds to this expression. Research shows that, for example, if we take a pen between our teeth and contract the muscles as if we were laughing, we rate cartoons as more fun than if we just hold a pen between our lips (frowning). The facial feedback hypothesis suggests that different cultural rules for showing emotions affect not only the expression of emotions, but also the feeling itself.

Differences in th experiences of emotions

If it is common in a certain culture not to express your emotions, then individuals from that culture also experience fewer emotions. In an interdependent culture, for example, it is not convenient to express your anger, because you still have a lot to do with the other person. Anger is therefore often not expressed and because it is not expressed, the anger is also experienced less often. People from an interdependent culture will also be less likely to find a situation anger-inciting than people from an independent culture. They use strategies to minimize any anger, for example by switching the topic.

How are emotions expressed in language?

All basic emotions have an English label. In other cultures these emotions cannot always be translated directly because in some cases there is no word for it. For example, when the basic emotions were determined in Poland, "disgust" was not among the basic emotions because there is no word for this in Polish. Differences in basic emotions are also evident when comparing India to the the West. There is some overlap, but there are also emotions that are not Western basic emotions. So there is no agreement between cultures which emotions are the basic emotions. Some cultures have no word for an emotion, other cultures have a word for an emotion that Western people would divide over two emotions (gurakadj is used by Aboriginals to express shame and fear), and the English language has more than 2000 different words to describe emotions. However, some cultures have words for emotions that cannot be translated directly into English. German schadenfreude is described in English as feelings of pleasure because of knowning or seeing that someone is having a difficult time. There is a debate about the extent to which having a word or term for a certain emotion influences having an emotional experience. This is called the linguistic relativity.

Emotions in dependent versus interdependent cultures

For people in an interdependent culture, it is important to maintain a sense of interpersonal harmony, so they are more aware of how events around them can impact themselves and others close to them. People from an independent culture focus more on how an event can affect themselves, or how events can make a difference between themselves and others. People from an independent culture value situations and events differently than people from an interdependent culture. People from an interdependent culture experience emotions more as interpersonal states than people from an independent culture.

What are differences in well-being and joy?

Joy is a universal emotion and people around the world strive for activities that make them happy. Joy feels very pleasant and it is a signal for the person that everything is good. People in Western cultures attach great importance to joy and experience more positive emotional experiences than negative emotional experiences. People from Eastern cultures experience as many positive and negative emotional experiences. The number of negative emotional experiences was the same for people from Western and Eastern cultures. The question is whether people from Eastern cultures are less happy than people from Western cultures.

A lot of research has been done onto subjective well-being; in other words, the feeling of how satisfied people are with their lives. Cultural differences have been found in how satisfied people are with their lives. It appears that people in Scandinavian countries, many countries in Latin America, various countries where English is spoken and Western Europe scored high on this measure. People in the former Soviet Union and some developing countries in Africa and South Asia scored low on the concept of well-being.

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. This is especially true for people in very poor cultures; in such a situation, a few dollars can already mean the difference between survival and death. In developed countries, the relationship between money and subjective well-being is much smaller. If the average income of a country is very high, there is hardly any relationship between wealth and subjective well-being.

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.

People in an interdependent culture feel good about their lives if they live by the standards of others to be a good person. Living according to cultural standards is seen as the basis of a good life in collectivist cultures.

People from different cultures therefore have a different vision of how they should experience their lives. People in Western cultures often judge periods in the past more positively than they judged them at the time; while people in Eastern cultures rate periods in the past about as positively or negatively as they do at the moment. Research shows that people from collectivist cultures, who generally find it less important to have many positive experiences, judge their overall subjective well-being less positively than people from individualistic cultures, who generally consider it more important to have many positive experiences. However, if you are asked per day how satisfied they were on that particular day,people from individualistic and collective cultures score equally high on subjective well-being. How you judge subjective well-being is therefore influenced by the theory that you have about how important it is to be happy.

Research also shows that people from Western cultures are more likely to look for situations in which a positive mood is associated with a high level of arousal, while people from Eastern cultures are more likely to look for situations in which a positive mood is associated with a low level from arousal.

In the north of the Philippines, a tribe called Ilongot people live. They experience Liget as a key emotion in life. Liget is an emotion that cannot be translated directly. It is a combination of anger, passion and energy. Liget is experienced when someone is offended, disappointed, but especially when someone is jealous of someone else. Liget is created during interactions with someone, especially during a competition and when one becomes jealous of the skills of the other. Liget mainly occurs in men because of the belief that it is concentrated in sperm. Many chasings and killings of members of other tribes are the result of liget.

Is liget a universal emotion? Or does this emotion only occur in the Ilongot? Are emotions at all universal or are they culture-related?

How are groups, friends and attraction treated in different cultures? - Chapter 11 (3)

What are cultural differences regarding attraction?

Is there a universal standard for attractiveness? There seems to be cultural differences in how people try to make themselves attractive. For example, women from the Paduang in Thailand make their necks longer by putting more rings around them. Women from the Ainu in northern Japan tattoo a dark line around their lips. Women in the West use mascara and eye pencil to make their eyes appear darker and mark their lips. Yet there are also features that are seen worldwide as attractive:

1. A skin that is free of spots, pimples, wounds and rash is considered more attractive than a skin that is not. We see clean skin as attractive because it can be an indication of good health. If people have all sorts of wounds or pimples, this can be an indication of poorer health. With a healthy partner you will have healthier children sooner.

2. 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. Bilateral symmetry is seen as attractive because it is an indicator of developmental stability.

3. A third characteristic of attractive faces is having average characteristics. Faces with an average size and average shape are seen as attractive. Reasons why average features are found attractive are:

   • People with average traits probably have no genetic abnormalities and are therefore healthy;

   • People can process average properties (prototype) quickly, and rapid processing is associated with positive feelings and feelings of attraction.

People not only find members of their own culture with average characteristics the most attractive, but also members of other cultures with average characteristics are found more attractive.

However, people find average bodies not the most attractive. The bodies that are seen as attractive deviate from the average. What an attractive body looks like differs per culture. In the West, very thin bodies are found attractive in women. In Africa, women are often found more attractive when they are fat. In the past, women were also seen as attractive when they were fat.

What are other factors concerning attraction?

We form friendships with people we have met, this is also called the propinquity effect. People will become friends with others sooner when they meet them often. We do not even choose our friendships entirely ourselves; they are shaped by the situation in which we find ourselves.

The mere exposure effect shows that we find something more attractive if we are often exposed to it. For example, we find some people, music or fashion more and more fun if we see or hear it often enough.

What is the similarity attraction effect?

Another powerful predictor for attraction is the similarity attraction effect. People are most attracted to people who look like themselves. People see someone as attractive or as a potential friend or partner if they have the same attitudes, economic background, personality, religion, social background and activities. This predictor seems to be mainly true for Western cultures and not or to a limited extent in Eastern cultures.

Who is defined as social being?

People are social beings. People live with others, eat with others, work with others, study with others and do fun things with others. People are happiest when they are with others. People are most sad when people from their environment die or when their relationships ends.

Differences in relationships

Few things are more special in our lives than friendship. Friends ensure that we enjoy fun times even more and make bad times less painful. Friends help us when we need them, they make us laugh and they make us feel loved and important. Friendship is seen as the key to success. Having close friendships makes us happy and makes us live longer.

Enemies are people who hope for your downfall or try to sabotage your progress. Western people seem to have fewer enemies than people in, for example, Africa. If Western people already have enemies, they do not come from their own in-group (friends, neighbors, family), but from an out-group. The enemies of people in Africa come from the in-group more often than from the out-group. This is a striking outcome, because people in Africa have an interdependent culture and often there are close relationships between people. The people who can get close can also be enemies at the same time.

A possible explanation for this is that people who live in an independent culture only enter into friendships if both people can benefit from it. Enemies are not a problem for people in an independent culture, because they do not enter into a relationship with those people. As a result, people in independent cultures have almost no enemies; after all, they can easily avoid potential enemies. We can therefore say that people in an independent culture have a high relational mobility.

People who live in an interdependent culture do not have the choice of being part of a network or not. They are by definition part of a network, because they are born into a family that already has ties with other families. The activities of daily life (going to school, working, having a partner) always take place in the same context and this is how relationships are formed. Not every relationship is positive, but the relationship does exist. So we can say that people in an interdependent culture have low relational mobility. Having a relationship is not an option. In this way enemy relations arise within the own group. Close relationships are seen by people in the West as very important. People in Africa see close relationships as natural and not coincidental, they are just present. People in Africa see friendship mainly to help others when needed and not so much to have a good time together.

Attractiveness is a greater factor in a context with high relational mobility than in a context with low relational mobility. In the latter, people have less choice in the relationships they enter into, and their social circle is largely stable. In a high mobility context, people are freer to put together their social circle, and any trait that potentially attracts new partners is very welcome. Attractiveness is therefore more important in this context. The same effect can explain the difference in the similarity-attraction effect found between independent and interdependent cultures.

How are feelings of love expressed?

Parents feel love for their children, so they take good care of them. People need care for a long time and therefore need love from their parents to survive. Taking care of people until they are independent is so long and demanding that it is often necessary for them to be cared for by both parents. Some other species where the youngs are independent more quickly, grow up without parents or with only the mother. To ensure that children are raised and cared for by both parents, love is also needed between the parents to keep them together. Love therefore has an evolutionary basis.

Romantic love is a universal phenomenon. However, there are cultural differences in romantic love. That people think differently about romantic love can be seen by the existence of arranged marriages and marriages based on love. Many marriages are arranged by the parents rather than by the people who marry each other themselves. In some cultures love is seen as an essential part of getting married, while in other cultures that is not the case. Romantic love is more important in cultures where the ties with family are becoming less and less strong. Feelings of romantic love can be irrelevant or even problematic in an environment with strong family ties. In such an environment the pressure to stay together because of the families is high. In cultures where family ties are less strong, another means is needed to keep partners together, namely romantic love.

Individualism is related to the likelihood of someone emphasizing romantic love in a marriage. The more someone idealizes his or her partner, the more they love their partner and the greater the chance that the relationship will last. This is because an idealizing partner does not experience cognitive dissonance in the other person's bad behaviors such as getting angry, kicking the dog, becoming overweight or leaving dirty laundry on the floor. With such behaviors, the idealizing partner does not think 'what undesirable qualities my partner has', but 'my partner is emotional, my partner enjoys life, my partner is carefree'. These cognitions are easy to reconcile with 'I love my partner'. The truth can threaten a relationship, but by idealizing, romantic love can flourish. Idealization is less common in collectivist cultures, with the important reason that people from such cultures are less inclined to devote behavior to internal dispositions (and it is therefore not necessary to 'rationalize' behavior).

People in the West often wonder how arranged marriage can last without love. People have different assumptions about love:

1. An arranged marriage often starts without feelings of love towards the partner, but a strong love develops between the couple during the marriage. People expect to love each other and that is what happens. People from an individualistic culture only get married if they know for sure that they love each other.

2. If a marriage is arranged, this is done by the family. It is thought that the family can make a better choice for a partner than the person himself. The person who is married off relies on the choice of the family. In an individualistic culture it is assumed that you can make the best choice for a partner yourself, because you know best what kind of partner suits you best.

3. In individualistic cultures, people think that marriage is doomed to fail if there is no love as the basis. In individualistic cultures, many marriages go through bad periods and sometimes even end in divorce. In cultures where arranged marriages are common, it is assumed that a marriage has a greater chance of success if it is arranged. A positive correlation has also been found between the extent to which a culture encourages marriages based on love and the number of divorces in that culture. Partners in an arranged marriage seem to be as satisfied with their marriage as people who are married to each other on the basis of love, although this often does not apply to women.

How do people interact in groups?

The in-group versus the out-group

People in all cultures belong to groups, but there are differences. For people in a collectivist culture, relationships with members of the group are an important part of the definition of themselves. In this context, people have relationships with people whom they have obligations to. To become a member of a group is not easy. The boundaries between calling in and calling out are clearly defined in an interdependent culture.

An individual in an individualistic culture often sees himself as detached from the social environment. The people in his or her environment are less seen as a part of identity than with an individual in a collectivist culture. New relationships can be entered into and other relationships can be ended without this having much impact on the experience of the individual's self.

The four basic structures of relationships

All relationships are based on one or more of the four basic structures below. All four forms work in relationships around the world, but there is also cultural variation.

1. 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. Sharing is common in families. In families, it is not exactly recorded what someone has received or what they have contributed. Everyone gets what they need and contributes what they can.
2. 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. The people with a lower rank do, however, receive protection and care from the higher ranked people. This form of relationships occurs in, for example, the army.
3. 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.
4. Market prices: 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.

Collaboration

Much of the work that we do, we do in a group. For example, a clinical psychologist works with other psychologists, psychiatrists, nurses, social workers, and support services such as administration.

Effects of the presence of others on performance

If we are surrounded by others while working, it affects our performance. The presence of others causes physiological arousal, and this arousal influences how well we can work on a task. Arousal ensures that we perform tasks that are competent in better and that tasks that we are not (yet) competent to perform worse. This process is called social facilitation and is a universal phenomenon.

How is social loafing different from social striving?

In some situations our performance is assessed individually and in other situations the performance of the group is assessed. If the performance of the entire group is assessed, it is often unclear how much each individual contributed to the performance. People work less hard in such a situation. This effect is called social loafing.

People loaf more when a task is easy than when the task is difficult. People loaf less if the group to which they belong is a group with acquaintances and a women's groups loaves less than a men's groups. People loaf less if they belong to a group in which they care about relationships with people in that group. In an interdependent culture, there is less lazing than in an independent culture. There sometimes even the opposite of social lazing occurs: social striving, where people will do better if they are evaluated as a group than as an individual.

What is the difference between competition and collaboration?

Another way in which people can be influenced by the presence of others is in a task with an opponent. There are two such tasks. One is a task where the profit of one person means a loss for the other person. This is the case when playing chess, for example. The other task is where both parties can win. In this situation, opponents can work together to get the best out of both.

It seems that people from a collectivist culture try to work together more quickly in order to achieve the best results and that people from an individualistic culture are not likely to do so.

There are two ways to negotiate:

1. Ignoring the position of the other and only emphasizing one's own goals.
2. Searching for compromises. The conflict is reduced; both parties do not win exactly what they wanted but do not lose it to the opponent either.

People from individualistic cultures are more likely to opt for the first negotiating strategy and people from collectivist cultures are more likely to opt for the second negotiating strategy.

What are cultural differences regarding attraction?

Is there a universal standard for attractiveness? There seems to be cultural differences in how people try to make themselves attractive. For example, women from the Paduang in Thailand make their necks longer by putting more rings around them. Women from the Ainu in northern Japan tattoo a dark line around their lips.

How do ethics, justice and culture interact? - Chapter 12 (3)

In recent years there have been various riots between Muslims and other religious people or non-believers. This was, among other things, the result of the cartoon in a Danish newspaper in which Mohammed was depicted. People of different religions have different views on creating a cartoon with a saint in it.

Samuel Huntington assumes that many wars and quarrels in the world do not have an economic or ideological background, but a cultural or religious background. He also states that as the world continues to evolve and progress and science continues to make more discoveries, religious explanations of phenomena are being replaced by rational and scientific explanations. This theory, the secularization theory, assumes that the influence of religion is decreasing and that people are discovering more and more secular and rational ways to give meaning to their lives. Yet, in the world that is becoming increasingly scientific, there are still many people who believe in God. Christianity and Islam are therefore still growing religions. People are also increasingly coming into contact with people from other cultures and religions.

What do the concepts of universalism, evolutionism and relativism entail?

Anthropologists have three models of interpretation to make sense of cultural diversity:

1. Universalism: the perspective that people from different cultures are largely the same and that every cultural difference found only exists on a superficial level. This can be illustrated by language. Different languages ​​seem very different at first sight, but actually have many similarities. According to Noam Chomsky there is even one universal grammar on which all languages ​​are based.

2. Relativism: the perspective that cultural differences in the way of thinking are not superficial, but really reflect different psychological processes.

3. Evolutionism: cultural variability reflects differences in psychological processes. However, there can only be one way in which the mind has evolved into thinking. Cultural differences in the way of thinking reflect different levels of development. If everyone is at the same level of development, everyone thinks in the same way.

What is ethnocentrism about?

Ethnocentrism means that people judge their own culture and way of life as better or more natural than that of others. An ethnocentric perspective is hard to prevent because we are socialized in a way that is consistent with our cultural values ​​and we evaluate habits in terms of how well they fit into our beliefs of good or bad.

What does Kohlberg say about moral reasoning?

Kohlberg (1971) designed a development model to understand the possibilities of people to reason morally. He claimed that moral reasoning implies cognitive skills and that these skills improve as someone develops, grows up and receives education. The Kohlberg model has three levels:

Level 1: The Preconventional level

At this 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. Morality at this level is determined by whether an action satisfies one's own need's and sometimes the needs of others.

Level 2: The Conventional level

At this level, people are able to identify themselves with a certain group and social rank and show loyalty to this group. Morality here means following rules and laws drawn up by the social order.

Level 3: The Postconventional level

At this level, moral values ​​and principles are viewed separately from the authority of the social groups where these values ​​and principles apply. Morality is defined here by universal and abstract ethical laws, and is independent of other people or prevailing rules. According to Kohlberg, the three levels are universal. This means that they are passed through in a fixed order around the world, although the speed and the end point of moral development may vary.

Cross-cultural evidence for Kohlberg's model

A cross-cultural study showed that in all cultural groups adults can be found that use conventional reasoning level and that there is no cultural group of adults that reason on a pre-conventional level. However, evidence was not found in every cultural group for moral reasoning at a postconventional level. This was often the case in non-Western cultures. This can be explained at an evolutionary level (certain educational experiences are needed to reason at post-conventional level) or at a relativistic level (different environments require different levels of reasoning). It can also be claimed that Kohlberg's model is a good model for Western cultures, but less for other cultures.

What are the three codes of ethics?

Shweder and colleagues claim that Kohlberg's model represents only one of three different codes of ethics, namely the ethic of autonomy. This ethics sees morality in terms of individual freedom and violations of rights. 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.

Another code for ethics is ethics of the population, where 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.

The third coding for ethics is ethic of divinity, which is about holiness and the perceived "natural order" of things. This code contains the ethical principle that someone is obliged to maintain the standards that have been mandated by a superior authority. It relates to the belief that God has created a holy world and that everyone is obliged to respect and preserve this holiness. Here, acts are seen as immoral if they cause impurity or degradation in the person or others, or when someone is disrespectful towards God or His creations.

These three codes of ethics are not equally distributed throughout the world. One culture uses more ethic of divinity and the other culture uses more ethics of population. Because not every culture has the same ethics as a starting point, this can lead to major misunderstandings and problems between cultures.

What is the ethic of community?

Gemeinschaft and gesellschaft relations

The debate about whether interpersonal commitments and legal obligations vary by culture dates back to the 19th-century, to the work of the the German sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies. He claimed that there are two ways in which individuals can relate to others in a group. Some groups are characterized by Gemeinschaft, which can be translated as "community". Community groups are generally small people's organizations in which interpersonal relationships play an important role. Relationships are seen as real and non-instrumental. People feel connected in these groups through a unity of mind. The interpersonal relationships are essential for identity.

Other groups Tonnies talked about are called Gesellschaft groups, which can be translated as "association" or "society". Gesellschaft groups are common in Western cultures and treat relationships as imaginary, instrumental and ending. Groups have their own rules, norms and laws that individuals must adhere to. These rules are the result of public consensus. Because individuals have little social obligations to others, formalized laws are necessary to maintain order.

Ethic of community in India

People all over the world have obligations to each other, but whether they interpret these as moral obligations remains a question. Moral obligations are viewed as objective obligations. This means that people feel obliged to behave in a certain way, even if there is no prescribed law. Moral obligations are also experienced as being legitimately regulated; so people think that someone should be punished if they break a moral rule. A study among people from India and the United States shows that people in India think that in all situations where one needs help, another has a moral obligation to help. This is irrespective of whether the person in need of help is in danger to life or wants to know the directions. People in the United States believe that a person has a moral obligation only when the other person is in danger of death. In other situations there is no such moral obligation. This does not mean that the Americans would not help others if they ask for help, but they do not feel morally obliged. Social responsibility therefore differs between these two cultures. When there is a conflict between interpersonal and legal obligations, people from India often choose to fulfill interpersonal obligations and Americans more often choose to fulfill the legal obligations.

What is the role of emotions in morality?

How can we identify a moral violation? Some say this can be done by paying attention to our feelings. If we are aware of what our feelings are trying to make us clear and that something seems to be wrong, we can justify with arguments and reasons that our negative emotional reactions indicate a moral violation.

Emotions guide our morality. Emotions such as guilt and shame guide our own behavior in decisions about what we think is right or wrong. We are also sensitive to moral violation by others. This includes emotional responses that depend on the type of moral violation that we experience. Anger indicates violation of autonomy, contempt indicates violation of community and disgust indicates a violation of divinity.

How do orthodox differ from progressive cultures?

Cultural wars can be found in many places in the world. According to Hunter (1991) the two sides of a cultural war can be described as the orthodox and the progressive side, regardless of the religion that is adhered to. Religious followers who are orthodox are committed to the idea of a ​​holy authority. This authority existed before there were people and therefore functions independently of people. This authority has more knowledge and power than all human experiences. On the other hand, supporters of progressive religions emphasize human mediation in the understanding and formulation of a moral code. Progressive supporters believe that social circumstances change and that a moral code must therefore also be able to change.

Adherents of an orthodox religion seem to have more affinity with ethic of divinity, while the morality of adherents of a progressive religion shows more inheritances with ethic of autonomy.

According to Hunter, the two opponents (progressives and orthodox) in a cultural war can therefore be characterized by the code of ethics that they use. Research among different cultural groups from around the world indeed shows that orthodox cultural groups more often use the ethic of divinity, and progressive cultural groups more often use the ethic of autonomy.

Haidt and Graham expanded the three ethics codes of Shweder with five moral instincts that guide people in moral reasoning. The ethics of autonomy include the instincts to avoid harm and to protect fairness; the ethic of community require the instincts to be loyal to their ingroups and to respect hierarchy, and the ethic of divinity requires the instinct to achieve purity.

What are differences in the distribution of resources?

There are different ways to distribute things:

1. Principle of need: resources must be directed towards those who need it the most;
2. Principle of equality: resources must be evenly distributed among all members of a group;
3. Principle of equity: resources must be distributed based on the contributions that people have made.

A social system that rewards individuals based on the principle of equality is called a meritocracy (performance society). Meritocracies are more common in individualistic cultures. Meritocracies can cause people to do their best because their rewards depend on the effort they make. This leads to greater productivity. Meritocracies can also lead to disruptions in harmonious relationships; if a person does extremely well, it means that the rest is doing worse and therefore they get a lesser reward.

In other cultures (collectivist cultures) the principle of equality is applied more often. The wage increase is then, for example, the same for everyone every year, which means that employees are paid more the older they are or the longer they work for the company. This is called the seniority system. There is no competition between individuals about the reward. People are therefore less motivated to work hard, but there is more harmony.

One of the ways in which culture forms our interpretation of the fair distribution of goods is apparent from an experiment called "The Dictator Game." In this experiment, the test subject receives 100 dollars, and can decide for himself how he distributes this between himself and another, anonymous test subject. The results showed that most people gave themselves and the other half of the amount. First it was thought that this represented an equity principle. However, the results were largely from test subjects from the West with a high social status. When this experiment was done with other cultural groups, it appeared that in most other societies people had a much weaker motivation for justice. This can be explained by two factors;market integration (the better the understanding of market forces, the fairer the money was distributed) and religion (religious people are more likely to divide the money fairly, probably because according to them the behavior is seen by God). The extent to which people attach importance to individual rights over the collective advantage also differs between cultures.

What is the role of thoughts in morality?

Are we morally responsible for the thoughts we have? Even if our brain works in part unconsciously? If a man looks at a woman who is not his wife and he experiences feelings of lust, is he morally responsible for this thought? According to the New Testament in the Bible of the Christians he is, because he committed adultery in his heart and adultery is not allowed. Jews, on the other hand, look at the Ten Commandments as a guideline for how to behave well. In the Ten Commandments, the emphasis is primarily on behavior (not thoughts). So you behave in a morally good way by adapting your behavior to the Ten Commandments. If the man only has thoughts about this woman and doesn't do anything about it, Jews don't think he is morally responsible for these thoughts.

The found differences in moral responsibility of thoughts may be due to differences between the two religions. In Christianity, more emphasis is placed on faith itself. You become a member of Judaism because your mother is Jewish while you can become a Christian by accepting and believing in the words of Jesus.

In recent years there have been various riots between Muslims and other religious people or non-believers. This was, among other things, the result of the cartoon in a Danish newspaper in which Mohammed was depicted. People of different religions have different views on creating a cartoon with a saint in it.

Samuel Huntington assumes that many wars and quarrels in the world do not have an economic or ideological background, but a cultural or religious background. He also states that as the world continues to evolve and progress and science continues to make more discoveries, religious explanations of phenomena are being replaced by rational and scientific explanations. This theory, the secularization theory, assumes that the influence of religion is decreasing and that people are discovering more and more secular and rational ways to give meaning to their lives. Yet, in the world that is becoming increasingly scientific, there are still many people who believe in God. Christianity and Islam are therefore still growing religions. People are also increasingly coming into contact with people from other cultures and religions.

What are the differences in health and disease among different cultures? - Chapter 13 (3)

Is physical health also influenced by cultural experiences, just like mental health? There are various psychological variables that are associated with physical health and that influence culture.

Why is there biological variability between people?

There are two ways to explain biological variability between cultures:

• Innate biological differences: people in different parts of the world are subject to different selections over several generations.
• Acquired biological differences: people from different cultures have different experiences in their lives that can influence their biology.

Genetic variation between populations

The most striking example of genetic variability between people from different cultural populations is skin color. People have different skin colors because the skin must be able to absorb the correct amount of vitamin D from the sunlight. Environmental factors can also play a major role in forming the genotype; such as in the relationship between sunlight and skin color, but also, for example, locally present pathogens that provide a greater chance of survival for individuals who are immune to these pathogens.

Another example of how culture can influence the genotype is the development of lactose tolerance in certain (mainly Western) populations. Before the ancestral population of people left Africa, they were in a state of lactose intolerance (this means that people can no longer process lactose after childhood). Over time, a certain mutation (especially in Northern Europe) resulted in a mutation that made an individual lactose tolerant. In places where keeping cows was common, the lactose tolerant individuals had an evolutionary advantage. They therefore had a greater chance of surviving offspring, so that entire populations became lactose tolerant. This is an example of how culture can influence natural selection, and therefore the genotype; lactose tolerance mainly occurs in cultures where it was customary to keep cattle. There is much debate about whether genetic variation can underlie differences in psychological processes. To date, there is little evidence that this is the case.

Acquired physical variation between cultures

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.

Why are there differences in weight?

A clear way in which people from different cultures differ from each other is their weight. Someone suffers from obesity when the Body Mass Index (BMI) is 30 or higher. The extent to which people suffer from obesity varies enormously per culture. 1.5% of Chinese women are obese, and 55% of Samoa women are obese. Obesity ratios have risen sharply in recent years, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom. This increase can be explained by a cultural change. It seems that obese people eat more fast food, drink more sodas and exercise less because they spend more time in the car or behind the computer.

Yet there are major differences in the West. An example of this is the 'French paradox'. The French kitchen contains a lot of fats and sugar, but the French are thin and have fewer heart diseases. A possible explanation for this may be that the French drink more wine and that the wine reduces the risk of heart disease. Another explanation may be that the French eat fewer calories during the day, partly because the portions are smaller and because of their attitude to food. In the United States, the average portion of, for example, jars of yoghurt, fries from McDonald's, chocolate bars and soft drinks is 70% larger than the average portion in Europe. Because the portions are larger, people are more likely to eat more. They tend to eat the whole portion, regardless of how much is in it. The French also take longer to eat and find food more enjoyable than people in the United States. Many American women have a conflicting attitude to food. They see food primarily as thickening and try to eat as healthily as possible by to consume low-fat and low- sugar products. French women look at food much more positively.

Why are there differences in length?

A certain diet can also influence the height of people. Often a diet also depends on the income of a family. People who have enough money to buy healthy foods are often taller than people who don't have enough money to do this. This is especially important if someone is experiencing a growth spurt, such as during childhood and puberty.

What are cultural differences in health?

Socio-economic status and health

Socio-economic status (SES) is the best predictor of human health. The higher the SES, the better the health. This principle seems to be global. Having sufficient access to medical services seems to be an obvious reason for the relationship between SES and health found, but is not entirely satisfactory. Poor health habits (such as smoking, unhealthy eating, less exercise) among people with a low SES do not appear to be the main reason that people with a higher SES have better health. Namely, if these poorer habits are checked, the correlation between SES and health is still present.

A theory that can partly explain the relationship between SES and health assumes that psychological variables underlie this relationship. In neighborhoods where the SES is low, traits such as hostility and pessimism are more often observed. These traits can lead to more violence and reduced confidence in the future and can partly explain the increased health risks in lower SES individuals.

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:

1. 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.
2. In addition, stress directly reduces the ability of the immune system to defend itself against infections and other threats.

Certain environments can cause feelings of stress, such as New York; one of the busiest cities in the world. Stress is often present when an individual experiences a lack of control. Experiencing a lack of control is also related to a number of health risks. People with a high SES experience less stress in different areas of life than people with a low SES. The subjective experience of a low SES, so feeling that you are poor, is a predictive factor for poorer health. Relative deprivation, or the feeling that you are worse off than others in your immediate environment (even though you're better than most in the community as a whole), is also a predictive factor for poorer health.

Ethnicity and health

Affected minorities around the world generally have lower SES, and they often have poorer health than members of majority groups. The African Americans in the US have far more problems with their health than Americans of European descent, even if controlled for the lower SES of African Americans. A number of theories have been devised to explain this difference. Genes appear to offer no explanation. What can lead to the difference found is the amount of stress experienced. African Americans feel discriminated against more often and experience racism more often, which can lead to stress. Stress can, among other things, lead to hypertension (high blood pressure).

Americans of Latin American descent, also a group with low SES, also experience problems with their health. However, this level is the same as that of Americans of European descent. They even have lower mortality rates than Americans of European descent. This is called the 'epidemiological paradox'. Possible explanations for this are that only the healthiest Latinos were able to move to the U.S. because of the dangerous journey or that when they are old, Latinos move back to their original country and their death is therefore not registered in the U.S. These statements are not yet supported with sufficient evidence.

However, Latinos do have a healthier lifestyle than non-Latinos. In addition, they live in close-knit communities, which has a positive effect on health.

How are illness and health treated in different cultures?

Culture is about the way people think and also how they think about disease and health. Doctors are also shaped by the culture in which they live. Although there is much agreement in the medical world about the causes of diseases, their symptoms and the recommended treatments, there is also a lot of cultural variation. For example, there are various non-Western cultures that ascribe the cause of diseases to supernatural powers.

Research among doctors and lay people from different cultures has also shown that doctors and lay people from the same culture are more likely to agree with each other than doctors from different cultures themselves. Modern medicine has a scientific basis, where the various procedures and medication stem from controlled experiments. Supernatural powers play no significant role in scientific research.

Hygiene is generally more important in the United States than in other countries, such as France. American doctors also operate earlier and more often and prescribe more and higher doses of medication than in other countries. Treatment in the United States is therefore more aggressive than in other countries.

Is physical health also influenced by cultural experiences, just like mental health? There are various psychological variables that are associated with physical health and that influence culture.

Why is there biological variability between people?

There are two ways to explain biological variability between cultures:

• Innate biological differences: people in different parts of the world are subject to different selections over several generations.
• Acquired biological differences: people from different cultures have different experiences in their lives that can influence their

What perspectives are there on psychological disorders? - Chapter 14 (3)

Why is mental health important?

Psychological disorders

Disorders are often defined as behaviors that are unusual and cause harm to the individual. When something is a disorder is often not entirely clear. Defining a disorder becomes even more difficult if behaviors are problematic in one culture, but not in another.

The study of psychiatry has largely been done in the West. As a result, disorders observed in the West (such as depression, social anxiety and schizophrenia) are often seen as the basic categories in diagnostics.

What are culture-related syndromes?

Culture-related syndromes are syndromes that are largely influenced by cultural factors and that occur much less frequently in other cultures or manifest themselves in a completely different way.

Eating disorders

Eating disorders are the most common psychological disorders among North American students. The two most common eating disorders are anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. In order to be diagnosed with anorexia nervosa, a person must refuse to maintain normal body weight, be extremely anxious to gain weight, deny the severity of low body weight, and avoid consecutive menstrual periods in the person. To be diagnosed with bulimia nervosa, a person must experience recurring periods of binge eating (an unusual amount of food intake within a two-hour period with a feeling of no control over the eating), along with recurring inappropriate behaviors to prevent weight gain (for example, self-induced vomiting, abuse of laxatives, excessive exercise). This happens at least twice a week for three months and the self-evaluation of the person is excessively influenced by body weight. The diagnosis of anorexia nervosa cannot be diagnosed at the same time.

A common view is that anorexia and especially bulimia are culture-related syndromes. Proof of this is that the incidence of these disorders has increased dramatically over the past 50 years. The change in cultural norms can be one of the reasons for this increase. Participants in Miss elections and women in the Playboy have become increasingly thinner. In addition, women receive more and more cultural messages saying that attractive bodies are thin bodies. Moreover, there is evidence that bulimia and anorexia are more common in certain communities, in particular those with Western cultural influences. Bulimia in particular appears to be a culture-related syndrome; there are no known cases in Africa and the Indian subcontinent and there are only a few cases in the Middle East and Southeast and East Asia. Anorexia also appears to be a culture-related syndrome, but cases of anorexia have also been seen in the past. Moreover, anorexia occurs slightly more often than bulimia in non-Western cultures.

Koro

A clinical syndrome identified in the south and east of Asia (especially in the southern part of China) is called Koro, which literally means "head of a turtle." This syndrome occurs among men and manifests itself as an enormous fear that the penis will shrink and withdraw into the body. Koro occurs in epidemics. Koro is considered a culture-related syndrome because the symptoms are absent in other cultures.

Amok

Amok is a phenomenon identified in a number of cultures in southeast Asia and can be defined as "an acute outburst of uncontrolled violence, associated with murderous attacks, preceded by a period of worry and ending with exhaustion and amnesia". Amok is mainly found among men and is often caused by stress, a lack of sleep and alcohol consumption. Amok appears to occur specifically in cultures in Southeast Asia, although occasionally there are also similar behaviors in Western cultures (such as the mass murders in schools, offices or in neighborhoods). It is unclear whether these behaviors are indicative of the same underlying disorder.

Hysteria

Hysteria was a phenomenon that was common among women in the mid-nineteenth century. The symptoms included fainting, insomnia, temporary blindness, loss of appetite and libido, and a general tendency "to cause trouble". The number of diagnoses of hysteria fell sharply in the early twentieth century. A possible explanation for the temporary nature of this syndrome is that patients who show hysteria-like symptoms are now diagnosed differently (depression or schizophrenia). It is also possible that the suppressive social norms of that time gave rise to the syndrome.

Various other culture-related syndromes have been discovered, such as frigophobia (a morbid fear of catching a cold in China), susto (a frightening experience in which the soul releases from the body; in Latin America), voodoo death (where people are convinced that they carry a curse that has been imposed on them or that is caused by breaking a taboo, leading to enormous fear and sometimes to death, in Africa), latah (people fall into a transient disocciated state after some kind of startling event, such as being tickled or thinking that they have seen a snake), malgri (a syndrome of territorial anxiety that has been identified among various Australian aboriginal groups), agonias (an anxiety disorder identified among Portugese and Azoreans in which people report a wide array of different symptoms, such as a burning sensation, a loss of breath, hysterical blindness, sleeping and eating disorders, kufungisisa (a condition associated with anxiety and somatic problems that are thought to stem from mental exhaustion; Africa, Caribbean, Native Americans and East Asians), ataques de nervios (a condition in which emotionally charged settings such as funerals lead to symptoms such as palpitations, numbness, and a sense of heat rising to the head; Puerto Rico), Arctic hysteria (a hysterical attack occurring in the Inuit population), in which people experience a sudden loss or disruption of consciousness, which leads to taking off clothes, rolling around in the snow and speaking foreign languages).

What are universal syndromes?

In culture-related syndromes, culturally acquired meanings play a fundamental role in the development of psychopathology. Biological factors play a fundamental role in universal syndromes.

Depression

Depression is one of the most identified psychological disorders in the West. It is also the most well-known disorder, perhaps because everyone has experienced symptoms of depression (such as sadness, a loss of energy or a feeling of uselessness).

To diagnose a depressive disorder according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), someone must have at least five of the nine symptoms below, including symptom one or symptom two, for at least two weeks: (1) depressed mood (gloomy, dull, continuous); (2) reduction of interest or pleasure (continuous); (3) weight reduction or increase of appetite; (4) sleep complaints (too little or too much, every night); (5) psychomotor excitement or inhibition; (6) fatigue, loss of energy, almost every day; (7) feelings of worthlessness and guilt; (8) reduced concentration or indecision; (9) feelings of despair, thoughts of death or desires. In addition, a few additional criteria apply. The lifetime prevalence of a depressive disorder in the United States is between 4.9% and 17.1%.

In other cultures, such as China, a depressive disorder is diagnosed less frequently. The prevalence is one fifth of the prevalence in the United States. In yet other cultures, depressive disorder is diagnosed more often than in the US; for example in Nigeria, where the prevalence is four times higher than in America. However, research shows that the DSM-IV definition of a depressive disorder is appropriate for every culture, despite the changing prevalence.

Yet the question of whether the depressive disorder is universal is complicated by the symptomatology. The symptoms of the depressive disorder are of a psychological nature, but also of a physiological nature. There seem to be differences between cultures in the way in which symptoms of the depressive disorder are expressed. When people mainly feel the symptoms in their body, this is called somatization. When people mainy experience the symptoms in their mind, this is called psychologization.

Research shows that people in China mainly somatize. In comparison with people from the West who suffer from clinical depression, people from China express the symptoms more often on a physical level and people from the West mainly on a psychological level. In the West, for example, depression is seen more as a mood disorder and in China as a headache and sleep disorder.

There are several explanations for the cultural difference in the expression of symptoms of depression:

1. There are differences in the social stigma associated with having mental problems. In non-Western countries, having psychological problems is stigmatized. It is therefore possible that having a depression is experienced in the same way, but is not expressed in the same way;
2. The symptoms of depression may be experienced the same in different cultures, but more attention is paid to certain symptoms in one culture than in other cultures. For example, Western people seem to pay more attention to their emotional experiences than Eastern people;
3. The symptoms of depression can also be experienced differently. In the East there is a less clear separation between body and mind than in the West, which can cause symptoms to be experienced differently in both cultures.

Social anxiety disorder

One of the most common anxiety disorders is social anxiety disorder. This is the fear that you are in danger of behaving in an absurd and unacceptable way and that this will result in disastrous social consequences.

Since people in the East live in a culture where people are closely involved with each other, it is to be expected that more social anxiety disorders will be diagnosed in these cultures. Interdependence is associated with higher social anxiety and independence is associated with lower social anxiety. Social anxiety has a lot of overlap with the concept of interdependence. As a result, social anxiety is less easily experienced as problematic in interdependent cultures than in independent cultures. Fewer social anxiety disorders are diagnosed in the East than in the West.

With problematic social anxiety, the expression of symptoms differs between cultures. A disorder has been identified in Japan called taijin kyoufushou (TKS). This can be roughly translated as a phobia to confront others. This disorder is expressed by (often psychosomatic) physical symptoms (such as sweating, becoming red, having a smelly body odor) and the discomfort that these symptoms could put on others. These people are afraid of bothering others with their physical expressions. This form of social anxiety appears to be a culture-related syndrome, since it does not occur or is less common in other cultures.

Suicide

Suicide is one of the most tragic consequences of mental disorders. 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.

Almost no suicide is committed in Egypt and other Islamic countries. Among the group of people who originally lived in Canada, the First Nations, suicide ratios are higher among adolescents than among other adolescents in Canada. Suicide was more frequent, especially in families where there was increasingly less connection with the original First Nation culture. In the West, a reason to commit suicide is often the hopeless state caused by a mental disorder (such as depression or alcohol dependence). In Japan, suicide is more often committed to show that you take responsibility and to retain honor.

Schizophrenia

One of the most debilitating and most common mental disorders is schizophrenia. To be diagnosed with schizophrenia, a person must have two or more of the following symptoms, each present for a significant period of at least one month: delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, disorganized behavior, catatonic behavior, or negative symptoms (the loss of 'normal' behavior). Approximately one percent of the population develops schizophrenia. Schizophrenia has a biological component; the chance of being diagnosed with schizophrenia is therefore greater if it occurs in the family. Schizophrenia is diagnosed worldwide, but there are also cultural differences. For example, paranoid-type schizophrenia was detected much more frequently in the U.K. than in India. In addition, schizophrenia of the catatonic type is almost non-existent in the West, while in India 20 percent of cases were of this type. Schizophrenia is a disorder that can present itself in very different ways and the prevalence of the subtypes therefore differs per culture.

How can mental problems be treated?

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.

Americans and East Asians also differ in the way they seek social support from people around them. Americans experience stress relief when they talk about their problems with people who are close to them, while East Asians experience stress relief when they think about their close relationships. It is not so common in East Asian culture to talk a lot about your problems.

In other cultures, there are other ways of dealing with mental disorders than in Western healthcare, such as intensive family care, religious healing, or reinterpreting the past (Naikan therapy). The cultural diversity in both symptoms and treatment of mental disorders suggests that psychological counseling could become more effective by linking a patient to a counselor with the same cultural background. However, this is hampered by the increasingly multicultural society. Cultural competence means that therapists recognize their own cultural influences, develop knowledge about the cultural background of the patient and develop the skills to achieve a culturally sensitive way of providing assistance.

Why is mental health important?

Psychological disorders

Disorders are often defined as behaviors that are unusual and cause harm to the individual. When something is a disorder is often not entirely clear. Defining a disorder becomes even more difficult if behaviors are problematic in one culture, but not in another.

The study of psychiatry has largely been done in the West. As a result, disorders observed in the West (such as depression, social anxiety and schizophrenia) are often seen as the basic categories in diagnostics.