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© 2013 Cengage Learning
8/10/2019 Culture & Psychology
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Outline
Culture as Cognition
Culture, Attention, Sensation, and Perception
Perception and Physical Reality
Cultural Influences on Visual Perception
Attention
Culture and Thinking
Culture and Categorization Culture and Memory
Culture and Math Abilities
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Outline (cont’d.)
Culture and Thinking (cont’d.)
Culture and Problem Solving
Culture and Creativity
Culture and Dialectical Thinking Culture, Regrets, and Counterfactual Thinking
Summary
Culture and Consciousness
Culture and Dreams
Culture and Time
Culture and the Perception of Pain
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Outline (cont’d.)
Culture and Intelligence
Traditional Definitions of Intelligence and its
Measurement
The Concept of Intelligence in Other Cultures Recent Developments in Theories about Intelligence
in Contemporary Psychology
Conclusion
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CULTURE AS COGNITION
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Culture as Cognition
Psychologists view culture as cognition
Culture is viewed as set of mental
representations about world
Norms, opinions, beliefs, values, and worldviewsare all cognitive products
Knowledge system—culture—created to solve
complex problems of living and social life Humans have certain cognitive skills other
animals do not, allowing for culture
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CULTURE, ATTENTION,
SENSATION, AND PERCEPTION
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Perception and Physical Reality
People’s perceptions of world do not necessarily
match physical realities of world
Once we begin to question our own senses, we
want to know their limits: Do experiences and beliefs influence perception?
Do other people perceive things as we do?
What aspects of others experiences and backgrounds
explain differences in perception?
How does culture influence this process?
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Cultural Influences on
Visual Perception
Optical illusions: perceptive discrepancy
between how object looks and what it actually is
Carpentered world theory: unconscious
expectation that objects have squared corners Front-horizontal foreshortening theory:
interpretation of vertical lines as horizontal lines
Symbolizing three dimensions in two theory:Westerners experienced in interpreting pictures
People of different cultures may be differently
motivated to perceive certain types of objects
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Attention
Culture influences what we attend to
Masuda studies:
Americans and Japanese differ in attention to
background objects and individuals vs. groups Cultural differences in environment affords cultural
differences in perception and attention
Holistic vs. analytic perception
Westerners use analytic perceptual processes by focusingon salient object independent of context in which it is
embedded
East Asians engage in context-dependent and holistic
perceptual processes by focusing on object within context
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CULTURE AND THINKING
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Culture and Categorization
People categorize on basis of similarities and
attach labels to groups of common objects
Creating mental categories helps sort out
complex stimuli Some categories are universal across cultures
Way in which people categorize things may be
culturally variable Sorting tasks: common way to study cultural
differences in categorization
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Culture and Memory
Differences in memory as a function of oral
tradition may be limited to meaningful material
Serial position effect: first or last item in list are
easiest to remember Memory constants across cultures: age,
hindsight bias, collective remembering of past
Cultural differences in episodic memory are dueto differences in self-construals, emotion
knowledge, and interpersonal processes
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Culture and Math Abilities
Math is universal human psychological process
National differences in math abilities and
achievements exist
Mapping of numbers onto space is universal
Gender stratification hypothesis: gender
differences related to cultural variations in
opportunity structures for girls and women Even without formal educational systems,
members of all cultures learn math skills
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Culture and Problem Solving
Problem solving: process of discovering ways of
achieving goals not readily attainable
Psychologists isolate process of problem solving
by asking people from different cultures to solveunfamiliar problems in artificial settings
Luna (1976): hypothesized logical reasoning is
artificial; taught in Westernized schools
Illiterate people may not understand hypothetical
nature of verbal problems or view them with
same degree of importance
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Culture and Creativity
Creativity depends on divergent rather than
convergent thinking
Constant across cultures:
Creative individuals have high capacity for hard work,willingness to take risks, high tolerance for ambiguity
and disorder
Differences amongst cultures:
High on uncertainty avoidance: work within norms
Higher on power distance: gain support
Collectivistic countries: seek cross-functional support
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Culture and Dialectical Thinking
Dialectical thinking: tendency to accept what
seems to be contradictions in thought or beliefs
Positive logical determinism: contradictions are
mutually exclusive categories East Asians prefer dialectical thinking whereas
Americans prefer logical deterministic thinking
Naïve dialecticism: belief that truth is alwayssomewhere in the middle
Westerners believe something cannot be both
truth and false at same time
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Culture, Regrets, and
Counterfactual Thinking
Counterfactual thinking: hypothetical beliefs
about past that could have occurred to avoid or
change a negative outcome
Regrets related to thoughts of inaction are moreprevalent than regrets related to action
Degree to which people experience regret over
inaction than over action was comparable
across all cultures
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CULTURE AND
CONSCIOUSNESS
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Culture and Dreams
Differences in dream content amongst cultures:
Palestinian children from Gaza incorporated more
external scenes of anxiety in dreams
Finnish children had more "inner" anxiety scenes indreams
Role of dreams differs amongst cultures:
Dream sharing and interpretation common among
Mayans American culture does not place much emphasis on
importance of dreams as symbol of individual and
social concerns
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Culture and Time
People of different cultures experience time
differently
Long- versus short-term orientation is cultural
dimension that differentiates among cultures Pace of life correlated with ecological and
cultural variables
Most cultures represent time spatially from left toright or right to left, or from front to back or back
to front, with respect to body
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Culture and the Perception of Pain
Culture influences experience and perception of
pain in several ways:
Cultural construction of pain sensation
Semiotics of pain expression Structure of pain's causes and cures
Cultural display rules govern expression,
perception, and feeling of pain
Tolerance of pain may be rooted in cultural
values
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CULTURE AND INTELLIGENCE
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Traditional Definitions of Intelligence
and its Measurement
Intelligence: conglomeration of many intellectual
abilities centering on verbal and analytic tasks
Intelligence tests rely on verbal performance and
cultural knowledge, thus immigrants are atdisadvantage
Do cross-cultural differences in intelligence
reflect biological or cultural differences?
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The Concept of Intelligence
in Other Cultures
Many languages have no word that corresponds
to our idea of intelligence
Because of enormous differences in definition of
intelligence, it is difficult to make validcomparisons from one society to another
Tests of intelligence often rely on knowledge
specific to particular culture
Recent Developments in
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Recent Developments in
Theories about Intelligence in
Contemporary Psychology
Gardner (1983), seven types of intelligence:
Logical mathematical, linguistic, musical, spatial,
bodily kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal
Sternberg (1986), three "subtheories“ ofintelligence:
Contextual, experiential, and componential
intelligence
Collective intelligence:
Strongly correlated with average social sensitivity,
equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking,
and proportion of females in group