PSY101 EXAM Noties PDF

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Summary

Chapter 1Cultural Psychology – Psychology with a CulturalPerspectiveThe goals of psychologyFirst Goal: build body of knowledge about people Second Goal : take body of knowledge and apply it to intervene in people’s lives Applied psychologists engage in lifelong learning process to help intervene in ...

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Chapter 1

Cultural Psychology – Psychology with a Cultural Perspective The goals of psychology First Goal: build body of knowledge about people Second Goal: take body of knowledge and apply it to intervene in people’s lives • • •

Applied psychologists engage in lifelong learning process to help intervene in people’s lives Theories tested for validity both in science and in real life settings Psychology Is well – equipped to meet the challenge of cultural diversity

Cultural Psychology and Cross – cultural Research

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Is what we know about human behaviour true for all people?

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Lots of research uses WEIRDOS (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic cultures) as participants

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WEIRDOS are not representative of all humans

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Cross-cultural research: tests cultural parameters of psychological knowledge

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o Involves inclusion of people of different cultural backgrounds Cultural psychology: phenomenon of understanding cultural influences on behaviour

The contribution of the study of culture on psychological truths  Important to incorporate a cultural perspective in mainstream psychology  Knowledge created in psychology should be accurate and descriptive of all people  Cross-cultural research tests whether what is true for some is also true for others  Cultural diversity in findings and cultural differences in research are widespread  Multicultural psychology incorporates psychologies of cultures around world

The contribution of the study of culture in our own lives Practicing cultural psychology is an exercise in critical thinking: o Is what we know true for all people regardless of their cultural backgrounds? o Under what conditions do differences occur, and why? o What is it about culture that produces such differences? o What factors other than culture contribute to these differences?

The growth of cultural psychology and cross-cultural research

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Cultural psychology has made substantial impact in psychology worldwide

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Popularity of cultural psychology due to importance of culture on behaviour

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Intercultural conflicts led to much interest in cross-cultural research

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Theoretical models are increasingly incorporating culture

What is culture Culture, race, nationality, and ethnicity often used synonymously

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Culture: • Describes activities or behaviours • Refers to heritage or tradition • Describes rules and norms • Describes learning or problem solving • Defines organization of group • Refers to origins of a group

Where does culture come from

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Universal psychological toolkit: aptitude and cognitive abilities help people adapt to environment

A definition of culture

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Function of culture • Provi • Ways

d what to feel eds

Human culture: a unique meaning and information system, shared by a group and transmitted across generations, that allows the group to meet the basic needs of survival, pursue happiness and well-being and derive meaning from life.

Is culture a uniquely Human Product?

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Many animals are social

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Animal societies can have social networks and hierarchies

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Many animals communicate with each other

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Characteristics of human life/culture differentiates it from those of animals on:

Many animals invent and use tools

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complexity differentiation institutionalization

the difference between “society” and “culture” Society: system of interrelationships among people Culture: meanings and information that are associated with social networks e.g., different human cultures assign different meanings to family

Groups that have cultures

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Nationality

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Ethnicity

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Gender

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Disability

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Sexual orientation

Language

Contrasting culture, race, personality and popular culture Race: more of social construction than biological essential •

“racial" differences are of little scientific or practical use

Personality: unique constellation of traits, attributes, qualities, and characteristics •

culture is relatively stable across individuals, whereas personality can be vastly different

Popular culture: does not involve sharing a wide range of psychological attributes

The contents of culture Objective elements

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The explicit, physical elements of a culture •

Architecture, furnishings, clothes, foods, art, eating utensils, tools, musical instruments • Mass media, music, social media Subjective elements

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Values: guiding principles that motivate and justify behaviour and serve as standards of judgement

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Beliefs: propositions regarded as true relating to oneself, the social and physical environment, and the spiritual world

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Norms: generally accepted standards of behaviour for cultural group Attitudes: evaluations of things occurring in ongoing thoughts

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Worldviews: belief systems about world

How does culture influence Human Behaviours and mental processes? Enculturation: process of learning about one’s culture beginning at birth

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Culture influences psychological processes

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Culture, situational context, and individual factors influence mental processes

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Relationship between culture and individual behaviours is a reciprocal, dynamic one

System by which culture influences mental processes is dynamic

Understanding culture in perspective: Universals and culture – specifics There are many psychological processes in which all humans engage Attributions: ability to recognize others as intentional agents while drawing inferences •

Making attributions is universal, but people may differ in the way they make them • Because human cultures exist in unique environments, differences exist among cultures • Same psychological process may be done differently when comparing human cultures

Etic: universal psychological processes Emics: culture-specific processes

Summary

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People are very similar in their basic needs

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Each culture has had different combinations of geography, climate, resources, previous culture, and contact with other cultures

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Culture has objective and subjective elements

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Culture allows group to meet the basic needs of survival, pursue happiness and wellbeing and derive meaning from life

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Cultures have long histories of having worked for many generations

Foregrounding culture △ We all are shaped by our culture △ When the textbook says… “…we know that people have needs that must be met in order to survive. They come into the world equipped with a universal psychological toolkit….But, they also live in groups…” etc. This is about all of us.

Chapter 2

Cross – cultural research methods Validity and Reliability in research Validity: how accurate does tool measure what it is supposed to measure

Eyesight or memory?

Reliability: how consistent is measurement

Drug use or social desirability bias

e.g. measures of personality traits (which are considered stable and enduring) should produce similar results in different circumstances

Method validation studies Cannot take scale or measure developed and validated in one’s culture and use it in another Cross – cultural validation studies • • •

First step before cross-cultural comparisons Do not involve testing hypotheses about cultural difference Determine if a measure developed in one culture can measure the same thing in another culture?

Indigenous cultural studies

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Psychological processes and behaviour can be understood within cultural milieu

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Use of rich descriptions of theoretical models of culture ( e.g. how we account for cultural differences)

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Roots in anthropology

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Explicitly advocates for incorporating both the content and context of research

To understand behaviour requires in-depth analysis of cultural systems

Cross – cultural comparisons

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Compare cultures on some psychological variable of interest

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Most prevalent type of cross-cultural study

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Different methods have particular strengths and weaknesses

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About getting people from one culture to complete a measure of some sorts- say intelligence, self-esteem, committed processing, whatever it might be, and then have people from another culture complete the same measure and then see if there’s a difference in the overall scores.

Different methods of cross-cultural studies are prominent at different times

Types of cross-cultural comparisons Exploratory vs Hypothesis testing

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Exploratory studies: examine existence of cross-cultural similarities and differences •

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To increase our understanding by approaching a topic and a culture in an open and unprejudiced manner o Not assuming anything and not making any predictions- just collecting data without any exception about what the results will be o Strength: broad scope for identifying similarities and differences o Weakness: limited capability to address causes of differences

Hypothesis-testing: examine why cultural differences may exist •

Hypothesis-testing leads to more substantial contributions to theory development • Making predictions based on things we’ve discovered in the exploratory studies and previous theories in other research then testing too see if we’re right

Contextual factors

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Characteristics of participants or their cultures

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Enhances validity and helps rule out influence of biases and in-equivalence

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Involves any variable that can explain observed cross-cultural differences

Evaluation of contextual factor influence can help to (dis)confirm their role in accounting for cultural differences observed Hypothesis testing studies generally need to include contextual variables

Structure vs Level Oriented

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Structure: comparisons of constructs, structures, or relationships with other constructs • • •

Structure-oriented studies focus on relationships among variables Look at the construct itself eg. Intelligence Attempt to identify similarities and differences in these relations across cultures e.g. how do different cultures conceptualize intelligence?

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Level oriented: comparisons of scores

- Level-oriented studies ask whether people of different cultures have different mean levels of different variables e.g. what are the mean individualism scores of different cultures?

Individual vs Ecological (Cultural) level Individual-level studies: individual participants provide data and are unit of analysis. Ecological- or cultural-level studies: countries or cultures are units of analysis Hofstede's work-related values Data from > 117000 participants, from 72 countries Analysis of the country means on work related values led to five dimensions for describing cultures: - Individualism vs Collectivism - Power distance - Uncertainty Avoidance - Masculinity vs Femininity - Long vs Short term Orientation

Multi-level studies: Involve data collection at multiple levels of analysis

Table 2.2 - Example of data from an individual – level study

Table 2.3 – Example of data from an Ecological – Level Study

Getting the right research question

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Research design starts with a comprehensive knowledge of literature •

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Understanding the need for a study to be conducted leads to questions about how to conduct it

Challenges faced by researchers

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Isolating the source of cultural differences and identifying active cultural (vs. noncultural) ingredients that produce those differences • Validity of theoretical models o Researchers must adopt design strategies that match their beliefs and models

Linkage studies

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Studies that measure an aspect of culture theoretically hypothesized to produce cultural differences •

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Empirically link that measured aspect of culture with the dependent variable of interest

Types • •

Unpackaging studies Experiments

Unpacking studies △ Measurement of a variable that assesses a culture factor thought to produce differences on the target variable △ Utilizes context variables • Context variables: Operationalize aspects of culture that produces differences in psychological variables △ Individual – level measures of culture • Assess variable on the individual level that is thought to be a product of culture • Individualism versus collectivism 

Idiocentrism: Individualism on the individual level

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Allocentrism: Collectivism on the individual level

Self-construal scales, personality and cultural practices

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Self-construal scales - Measures independence and interdependence on individual level

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Personality •

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Cultural differences can be explained based on different levels of personality traits in each culture

Cultural practices •

Variables that assess child-rearing practices, nature of interpersonal relationships, or cultural worldviews

Experiments and priming studies

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Experiments: Researchers create conditions to establish cause–effect relationships

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Priming studies - Experimentally manipulating mindsets of participants and measuring the resulting changes in behaviour •

behavioural studies - Manipulations of environments and observation of changes in behaviour as a function of those environments.

Bias and equivalence Bias: differences that do not have exactly the same meaning within and across cultures - If bias exists in cross-cultural comparative study, comparison loses its meaning - Important to understand many aspects of studies that may be culturally biased - Bias refers to a state of non-equivalence, and equivalence refers to a state of no bias Equivalence: similarity in conceptual meaning and empirical method between cultures Conceptual bias ◆ Is there equivalence of • Theoretical framework • Hypothesis being tested E.g. Do the cultures being compared have the same understanding of intelligence? Method bias Sampling bias •

Are samples appropriate representatives of culture?

Linguistic bias •

Are research protocols semantically equivalent across languages?

Procedural bias •

Are procedures, environments, and settings equivalent across cultures?

Measurement Bias

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Degree to which measures used to collect data in different cultures are equally valid and reliable

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Linguistic equivalence alone does not guarantee measurement equivalence

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Different cultures may conceptually define a construct differently and/or measure it differently

Response Bias è Systematic tendency to respond in certain way to items or scales è If response biases exist, it is very difficult to compare data between cultures • Socially desirable responding: tendency to give answers that make oneself look good • Acquiescence bias: tendency to agree rather than disagree with items on questionnaires • Extreme response bias: tendency to use ends of scale regardless of item content • Reference group effect: people make implicit social comparisons with others when making ratings on scales Interpretational Bias

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Culture can bias ways researchers interpret their findings

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Data from hypothesis-testing are correlational

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Cultural attribution fallacies: claim that between-group differences are cultural without empirical justification Linkage studies address this problem

Chapter 3

Enculturation Humans and Cultural Learning Engaging in shared intentionality allows cultural learning • •

Learning not only from others but through others Humans can understand another humans point of view and understand the intentions of other humans

Tomasello’s study •

Children understand intentionality, social learning, and communication on a complex level - Provides the foundation for cooperation with other humans along with social learning and communication

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Humans can create and transmit a culture in a sophisticated manner

Enculturation and socialization •

Constant across cultures: people wish to become competent, productive adults

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Different across cultures: meaning of "competent" and "productive”

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Culture must be learned with practice through prolonged process •

We are not born with culture; we are born with language and memory which allows us to learn culture

Socialization: process by which we learn and internalize rules and patterns of society •

Through socialization we learn its appropriate to queue at the café to order coffee

Enculturation: process of learning and adopting ways and manners of their culture •

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Through enculturation we learn queuing is about fairness, polite interaction with others

Socialization and enculturation agents •

People, institutions, and organizations that ensure socialization and enculturation occurs • Parents who instil values in children • Learn from lots of different sources

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Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory of development •

Studying children in relation to their particular contexts is key to understanding development • Children contribute to their own development by interacting with and influencing people around them

 Macrosystem – what we expense the most, ideologies of the culture  Exosystem – neighbours, legal system  Micro/ exo – parents having to deal with social welfare systems

Culture, parenting and families Family: most important microsystem to child’s development

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By observing parents, we are observing • •

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essence of a culture How cultural rules and values are reinforced and passed on from generation to generation

Study of parenting within cultural context tells us what is important to that culture

"I taught my kids not to fart at the table. My 4-year-old apparently thinks it's then appropriate to run over to the next table in the restaurant and let one rip...” "He has this habit of pulling down his pants when he's upset. It's funny in a family context...but not so much at the airport.”

Whiting and Whiting’s’ Six Cultures Study

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Collected field data in Mexico, India, Kenya, USA, Okinawa, ...