AN INTRODUCTION TO CULTURE AND CROSS-CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY

PSYC 338

Our Goals

In this class you are learning* how culture influences our thinking, feeling and

reacting

* what happens when members of two different cultures meet

* what happens when people leave their own cultural context and have to adapt to new cultures

CULTURE IS… “the truth on this side of the Pyrenees, error on the other side.”(Blaise Pascal)

“the man-made part of the human environment.”(Herskovits, 1948, p. 17)

Definition of Culture

Culture consists in patterned ways of thinking, feeling and reacting acquired and transmitted mainly by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, Including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e. historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values.

Kroeber and Kluckhohn, 1952 (p. 181)

A Cognitive Approach

Culture denotes an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life.

Geertz, 1972 (p. 89)

Another Cognitive Approach

Culture is defined as collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one human group from another.

Hofstede, 1980 (p. 25)

Subjective culture …“is a cultural group’s characteristic way of perceiving its social environment.”

Triandis, 1972 (p. 4)

Objective culture …is material culture and consists of such elements as dress, food, houses, highways, tools, and machines.

Psychological definition

Values, Attitudes and Behaviour

Adler, 1972 (p. 89)

Attitudes

Behaviour Values

Culture

The Three Levels of Culture

Schein, 1985

Artifacts& Behaviour

Problem-solving,greetings,

rituals

Values & NormsCollectivism,

egalitarianism,competitiveness

Basic AssumptionsRelationship between humans and nature,social relationships,

time orientation

Visible, but not alwaysunderstood

Mostly unconscious,

but realizable

Unconscious

Kluckhohn and Strodtbecks (1961)Fundamental Value Orientations

* Human nature (good, bad or neither as well as mutable or unmutable)

* Relation to nature (mastery, harmony subordination)

* Time orientation (past, present or future)* Activity (being, doing or becoming)* Relations among human beings (lineal,

collateral or individualist)

Essential elements of culture* Culture distinguishes the members of one human group

from another.* Culture is a shared belief system and has to be learned.* Culture consists of patterned ways of thinking, feeling

and reacting.* Culture influences our behavior mainly unconsciously

and is taken for granted.* Culture has strong influence on our identity.* Culture underlies current change.* Cultural patterns are mainly acquired and transmitted by

means of communication.* Culture is crystallized in institutions people have built

together and therefore takes place in different areas.

Culture is not….

* A social system

* Society

* Nation

People are - members of society

- participate in social systems and - share culture.

QUESTIONS FOR PSYCHOLOGISTS

What is universal about human beings?

What are characteristic features of a certain group of people, e.g. cultural groups?

What makes the individual unique?

?

? ?

? ??

Universalism Cultural differences can be neglected as the commonalities among human beings

outweigh them. Basic psychological processes are common to all members of the species. They

constitute a set of psychological givens in all human beings.

Cultural Relativism (Boas, 1939)The development of human personality is mainly influenced by our environment.All human behavior is culturally patterned.Cultural relativism seeks to avoid “ethnocentrism” by trying to understand people in their own terms.

Ethnocentrism (Sumner, 1906)A strong tendency to use one’s own group’s standards as the standard when viewing other groups, to place one’s group at the top of a hierarchy and to rank all others as lower.

THREE MAJOR APPROACHES IN PSYCHOLOGY

* Cross-cultural Psychology

* Cultural Psychology

* Indigenous Psychology

CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY

is the study of the ways subject and object, self and other, psyche and culture, person and context, figure and ground, practitioner and practice live together, require each other, and dynamically, dialectically, and jointly make up each other

Shweder, 1990

NATURE, GOALS, ASSUMPTIONS

* Culture as way of knowing- “inside person”

* Culture and behaviour inseparable

* Views person in context

* Processes uncovered

* Methods derived from folkways

* Qualitative approaches

NATURE, GOALS, ASSUMPTIONS

* Developmental, longitudinal, historical

* Culture specific

* Cultural pluralism

INDIGENOUS PSYCHOLOGY

A system of psychological thoughtand practice that is rooted in a particular cultural tradition.

NATURE, GOALS, ASSUMPTIONS

* Indigenous constructs, theories, methods

* Culture specific

* Deals with issues, constructs important in that culture, often applied

* For and by indigenous people

CROSS-CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY is concerned with the systematic study of behaviour and experience

- as it occurs in different cultures- is influenced by culture and - results in changes in existing cultures

asks for universal principles of human behaviour by systematically comparing cultures as well ascultural specific determinants of behaviour.

Goals1. To test generality and limits of existing

psychological knowledge and theories2. To explore other cultures in order to discover

cultural and psychological variations which are not present in our own limited cultural experience

3. To generate a psychology that will be valid for a broader range of cultures

Cross-cultural psychology- Views culture (or dimensions of culture) as an IV- Offers a wider range of variability- Uses emic and etic approaches

ETICS

* Culture general

* Universal

* Control exerted by researcher

* Culture as IV

* Several cultures compared

* Over-arching framework

EMICS

* Culture specific

* Limited

* Structure uncovered rather than imposed

* Understood in culture’s own terms

TASKS* Ask yourself:

What is important to you?How is this affected by your cultural background?

* Take a walk through Wellington and observe your surroundings: What symbols or behaviour do you find that may be influenced by culture?