Cultural Psychology Textbook Notes PDF

Preview

Summary

Download Cultural Psychology Textbook Notes PDF

Description

Cultural Psychology Notes Chapter 1: What is Cultural Psychology People from different cultures…  Speak different languages  Different customs  Eat different foods  Different religious beliefs  Different child rearing practices  Etc.     

We can often predict much about a persons lifestyle just by knowing their culture People from different cultures also differ in their psychology Psychological proccesses are shaped by experiences (but don’t determine them) Because people in different cultures have many different experiences Tension between universal and culturally variable psychologies-to what extent do people around the world share ways of thinking due to sharing a universal brain

What is Culture?  Some focus on….symbolic, physical artifacts, habits contained Means 2 different things: 1. Indicates a particular kind of information-specifically, any kind of information that is acquired from other members of ones species through social learning that is capable of affecting an individuals behaviors. Therefore, any kind of idea, belief, technology, habit or practice, that is acquired through learning from others. 2. Indicate a particular group of individuals. People who are existing within some kind of shared context. People within a given culture are exposed to many of the same cultural ideas. They might attend the same cultural institutions, follow the same norms, and have convos with eachother on a day to day basis. Globally- broad swaths of the earths population which may include people from many different countries. Ex) Western Culture Challenge 1: Hard to contrict people to groubs b/c:  Not always clear cut  Ex) individuals might be exposed to cultural ideas that emerge from distant locations while travelling, immigrant parents, advertisements, films, etc. What about “vegetarian culture” or “millennial culture” etc. How are these cultures?  Members exist within a shared context  Communicate with eachother  Have common practices and ideas  Have norms that distinguish them from others Challenge 2: Cultures are not static. They are dynamic and ever changing.  Some shared cultural info changes, is added or is lost over time Challenge 3: Variability among individuals who belong to the same group  People inheret distinct temperments (personality traits, abilities and attitudes)  Belong to a unique collection of various social groups with their own distinctive cultures  Have had a unique history of individual experiences that have shaped their world view In this latter sense then, Culture-dynamic groups of individuals that share a similar context, are exposed to many similar cultural messages, and contain a broad range of different individuals who are effected by those cultural messages in divergent ways. Psychological Processes can vary across cultures:  One way peoples psychology varies ex) Humor

    

Differences in preferences and taste Way people perceive the world What people think is right and wrong Things that motivate them Very controversial by researchers.

Is the mind independent from or intertwined with culture?  Father of modern incarnation of cultural psychology- Richard Shweder  He argues that much of the field of psychology inherently assumes that the mind operates under a set of natural and universal laws that are independent from content or context  Human unversals Ex) In all cultures people speak a language that uses between 10 and 70 phonemes, all smile when they are happy, they all have a word for the color black, all disgusted by the idea of incest b/w parents and children, and all understand number 2.  Shweder believes the mind operates as a highly abstract central processing unit that operates independently of the content that it is thinking about or of the context within which it is thinking.  Context and content are viewed as unwanted noise that cloud our ability to perceive the functioning of CPU (central processing unit) in experiments which is why researchers will use controlled environemnts.  Mind as a computer metaphor IN CONTRAST,  Some cultural psychologists believe that in many ways the mind does not work independently of what it is thinking about  Therefore thinking is not only the operation of universal CPU but also interacting with the content that one is thinking about and participation in the context within which one is thinking.  The ways that people think about these kinds of behaviours are influenced by the very specific and particular ways that cultural knowledge shapes their understanding of those behaviors  

Humans seek meaning in their actions ex) a woman going to a coffee shop may mean many different things such as seeking a romantic partner, waking up, breaking a diet…where as in some other cultures this may be frowned upon its inappropriate to go alone, stimulants are sinful, people do not strive for body weights that are less than what they currently have.

Figure line task:  Western cultures tend to perform better on the absolute task  Non-western cultures tend to perform better on the relative task  European americans comple

Chapter 6: Self and Personality Ex) American and Japanese Olympic athletes interview with the media  Japanese focused more on how their experience was guided by the expectations of others  Americans focused on how performance reflected their own characteristics  Indictive of- theories for athletic success, highlight cultural differences in the way people understand themselves (self-concept) Who am I?  Self concepts-foundation of our identity, nature  Self statements- “I like hockey” associating yourself with the...