Frameworks of cultural variability

(Psyc 338) July 25, 2006

Ype H. Poortinga

Tilburg University, Netherlands and

University of Leuven, Belgium

 

Organization of this presentation Culture always matters, an example What is culture? (A psychological approach)

Two dimensions of interpretation of cc differences A bit of history An alternative theory: Culture as a set of conventions Conclusions

Culture ALWAYS matters in human behavior:Culture ALWAYS matters in human behavior:

An example, the Horizontal-Vertical IllusionAn example, the Horizontal-Vertical Illusion

Example: horizontal-vertical illusion (results)Example: horizontal-vertical illusion (results) (Segall, Campbell, & Herskovits, 1967)(Segall, Campbell, & Herskovits, 1967)

What do psychologists mean with “culture”? Culture arises from a faculty (or set of faculties) of the human speciesWe learn from experience, we reflect on experience and we transmit knowledge (including beliefs) to the next generation more than other species Culture is the context in which a person lives, including ecocultural (economic, political) and socio-cultural (values, norms beliefs, practices) aspects  Behavior-culture relationships are studied as external influences on the person (antecedent conditions) and as part of the person (internalized, meaning)

How culture matters: Two theoretical dimensions

1. Relativism vs. universalism (also: cultural vs culture-comparative approaches)- Cultural relativism (primacy of culture; context is mediating; “qualitative”):

“Culture and psyche make each other up”

“There is one mind but many mentalities” (cf. machoism, detachment) - Ψal universalism (primacy of organism; antecedents; “quantitative”)

“Ψal processes are universal, but manifestations in overt behavior differ”

2. (In)coherence of culture-and-behavior relationship:- Culture as coherent (system, syndrome)

Geertz’s octopus

- Culture as a set of conventions (i.e., rules about what to do, what to believe)

Explanations of cc differences ordered in two Explanations of cc differences ordered in two dimensions dimensions

A bit of history: Perception Rivers (1901) concluded from a review of the literature and data from the Torres Strait Islands that “savage and half-civilized” people had a somewhat better visual acuity than the “normal European” (p. 42)  He also observed among the native population a great attention to detail and saw this as an impediment to cognitive development: “the predominant attention of the savage to concrete things around him may act as an obstacle to higher mental development” (p. 45)  Such a trade-off is known as the "compensation hypothesis" (e.g., Deregowski, 1980)

A bit of history: Perception Biesheuvel (1943) and Ombrédane (1954) suggested that Africans were more oriented towards the auditory modality and Europeans towards vision based on, e.g., sense of rhythm and the variety of languages spoken by unschooled urban Africans, and the tradition of reading and writing among Europeans  Compensation hypotheses are no longer in fashion, perhaps because empirical studies found little support (Deregowski, 1980; Poortinga, 1971), but more likely because there has been change in the common view about cross-cultural differences

A bit of history: Perception Differences that have stood up to empirical scrutiny are specific (limited to precise antecedents and categories) and can be explained against a background of cultural invariance in psychological functioningExamples include susceptibility to visual illusions (Segall et al., 1967), effects of direction of reading (Chokron & De Agostini, 2000) and word segmentation

A bit of history: Cognition Where we infer "culture", 18th century authors tended to infer climate (e.g., Montesquieu); with a moderate climate as favorable for the development of "civilization"A century later evolutionary differences between "us" and the "primitives" were in fashion (cf. racial differences in IQ; Porteus, 1936) In the 20th century "culture" became the main focus of analysis In the 1930s Luria (1971) studied syllogisms with unschooled and schooled farmers in Central Asia. He concluded that the faculty for abstract thinking is absent among illiterates; it is a culturally mediated faculty (Vygotsky)Later on Scribner (1979) showed that not the Aristotelian principles of logical reasoning, but the selection of information (own experience, vs information given in the premises) is the key factor

A bit of history: Cognition Scribner and Cole (1981) demonstrated with the Vai in Liberia that not literacy per se, but knowledge learned in western style education makes the differenceDasen (1975) showed a gap between performance and competence for Piagetian tasks of operational thinking among Australian Aboriginal childrenCole (1996) has followed a domain-oriented approach, studying how children learnt to use computers  There has been a trend away from "Great Divide" theories, towards explanation of cc differences in more specific influencesNote: An exception is work by Nisbett and colleagues (e.g., 2001) who see an East-West distinction between analytic and holistic thinking, traceable to the ancient Greeks vs Confucius

A bit of history: Personality research Perhaps the most sweeping generalizations about cc differences are found in the area of personality researchBenedict (1934) characterized entire cultural populations in terms of unique configurations, to which most members learn to adapt and conform; thus the Pueblo Indians were qualified as “Apollonian” and the Plains Indians as “Dionysian”.Mead (1928) is best known for her controversial description of the sex life of adolescent girls on Samoa (Freeman, 1983) Mead (1935) also described the Tchambuli where the ideal woman was alleged to be energetic and asserting, while the ideal man stayed at home and occupied himself with gossip and domestic tasks

A bit of history: Personality research Other notions derived from anthropological traditions include "the authoritarian personality syndrome" and "national character" Most (or perhaps all??) of these differences are overgeneralizations reflecting stereotypes and prejudices Comparative research with personality inventories has shown invariance of personality dimensions (like the Big Five, or Eysenck's Giant Three)A dimension found with the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI), namely Interpersonal Relatedness, which includes aspects such as harmony and concern for maintaining face was also found with European American samples when this inventory was used (Cheung et al., 2001, 2003; Lin & Church, 2004)

A bit of history: Social psychological dimensions The weight of cc research has shifted to socio-cultural dimensions, like individualism-collectivism or independence of the self versus interdependence of the self The evidence for such dimensions derives mainly from correlational studies or quasi-experimental studies in which there is no control on the independent variable Question: Has ccp finally identified the major ways in which cultural populations differ from each other, or will currently popular dimensions in the future be recognized as over-generalizations?

An alternative: Culture as a set of conventions Within several areas of cc research, there has been a trend from more general to more precise (less inclusive) interpretations of cc differences There are few cc theories fitting the lower half of the Figure in slide 7The most important of exception is Michael Cole (1996), who belongs in the lower left quadrantThere are no theories for the lower right quadrant What would such a theory look like?It would conceive of culture as an enormous array of only loosely interconnected cultural practices, or conventions Conventions are partially arbitrary culturally agreed upon ways of doing things and believing things, as well as norms about what to think and believe (Berry et al. 2002, Ch 12)

Conclusions This lecture has given examples of previous interpretations of cc differences in behavior repertoire that did not stand the test of time The examples were taken from various domains of psychological research The gist of the argument is not that there are no "general" cultural factorsHowever, such factors are not to be inferred too lightly

 

Additional materials The following slides provide a similar argument as given above for domains of cross-cultural research not covered in the lecture

A bit of history: Language Whorf (1956) argued that: "the background linguistic system (in other words, the grammar) of each language is not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but rather is itself a shaper of ideas" (p. 212) , and"[w]e dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language" (p. 213). Decisive research requires a natural (physical) referentMuch research has been conducted with color words: Is the spectrum split up the same way across languages?

A bit of history: Language Another domain is spatial orientation

Levinson and colleagues distinguish ego-referenced orientation ("on my right side"), geocentric orientation ("on the East side"), and intrinsic orientation (location with reference to another object: "the duck is behind the boat")

Dasen and colleagues (e.g., 1999) found on Bali and in India that encoding to some extent was task dependent

A bit of history: Language Bowerman (1996) describes how prepositions such as “in” or “on” in English often are not translation equivalent. Thus, in Finnish the handle is in (rather than on) the pan In Korean there is a distinction between the verbs “kkita” referring to objects that fit tightly into each other (putting the cap on a pen) and “nehta” for loosely fitting relations (putting books in a bag) that has no direct match in English (Bowerman & Choi, 2003) In habituation experiments McDonough et al (2001) found that both Korean and English children as young nine months showed evidence of making this distinction

A bit of history: Language Hespos and Spelke (2004) obtained similar results with five months old infants in both Korean and English speaking environments, i.e., long before the onset of speech. Apparently, sensitivity to a conceptual distinction available for infants but not marked by their native language becomes reduced. Does ego-referenced orientation imply "profound linguistic effects on cognition" (Majid, et al., 2004, p. 113)?

A bit of history: Emotional experiences "One can assume that there exist words ('emotion words') that dictate the way things are seen; or one can assume that there exist things ('emotions') that are given names and thus have words assigned to them" (Frijda et al., 1995) Culture-specific emotions have been inferred from emotion terms for which there is no translation equivalent, e.g., "Schadenfreude" "song" (justifiable anger among the Ifaluk, Lutz, 1988), or "liget" (anger associated with head hunting among the Ilongots, Rosaldo, 1980) Others claim that (basic) emotions are invariant across cultures; e.g., Ekman (1973) distinguished 7 basic emotions on the basis of facial muscular patterns Cc differences result mainly from variations in "display rules"

A bit of history: Emotional experiences Rarámuri Indians in Mexico who use one word for guilt and shame were shown to differentiate between shame and guilt components Breugelmans and Poortinga (2005) first elicited local emotion scenarios among Rarámuri and among rural Javanese. Ratings by Dutch and Indonesian students were used to select shame-eliciting and guilt-eliciting scenarios from both regions In the crucial study other Rarámuri respondents rated these scenarios on emotion components that previously had been found to differentiate between shame and guilt in a student sample composed of Dutch/Belgian, Mexican and Indonesian studentsFor most components, the pattern of differentiation found for the Rarámuri matched that of the students With a rural Javanese sample similar results were obtained as for both the Rarámuri and the international student sample

Guilt - Shame.40.30.20.10.00-.10-.20-.30-.40

Inte

rnal

- E

xter

nal

.30

.20

.10

.00

-.10

-.20

-.30

trying to forget

ruminating

smiling

punishing self

explaining

hiding

evading looks

apologizing

sweating

feeling hot

blushing

angry with others

guilt

angry with self

shamebad person

moral norm

harms reputation

others disapprove

being responsible

center of attention

done damage

.40.30.20.10 .00-.10-.20-.30-.40

.30

.20

.10

.00

-.10

-.20

-.30

smiling

punishing self

explaining

hiding

apologizing

sweating

feeling hot

weak limbs

“student guilt”shame

bad person

confuseddeserving punishment

moral norm

harms reputation

others disapprovebeing responsible

center of attentiondone damage

Guilt - Shame

Inte

rnal

- E

xter

nal