{"id":4300,"date":"2018-09-18T21:51:41","date_gmt":"2018-09-19T01:51:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.amyork.ca\/academic\/zz\/?p=4300"},"modified":"2019-05-25T23:50:20","modified_gmt":"2019-05-26T03:50:20","slug":"cultural-psychology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.amyork.ca\/academic\/zz\/cultural-psychology\/cultural-psychology\/","title":{"rendered":"Cultural Psychology"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>We rely on culture which helps us succeed in diverse environments<\/li>\n<li>Culture effects our thoughts and behavior and culture psychology is the studies of those implications<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h1>A Psychology for a cultural Species<\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li>People from different cultures live their life differently: they speak different languages, eat differently, different customs, etc.<\/li>\n<li>A persons lifestyle can be predicted just by knowing their culture<\/li>\n<li>Thesis: People from different cultures also differ in their psychology<\/li>\n<li>Theme: Psychological processes are shaped by experiences<\/li>\n<li>Psychological processes are constrained and afforded by the neurological structures that underlie them.<\/li>\n<li>The brain is identical around the world.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><u>What is Culture?<\/u><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Culture and the way people think is the relation we need to know<\/li>\n<li>Aspects of cultures: symbolic, physical, habits<\/li>\n<li>Culture: &#8211; particular kind of information we get through social learning\n<ul>\n<li>a group of individuals who are within some kind of shared context, and same cultural ideas<\/li>\n<li><u>Global level<\/u>: culture can refer to broad swaths of the earth\u2019s population, from many different countries. Ex: Western Culture.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><u>Challenge 1<\/u>: Boundaries of culture are not always clear-cut, sometimes it\u2019s important to look at Nationality for a indicator of culture<\/li>\n<li><u>Challenge 2<\/u>: Cultures change over time<\/li>\n<li><u>Challenge 3<\/u>: There is much variability among individuals who are in same culture.\n<ul>\n<li>People have distinct temperaments \u2013 predisposition of having certain kinds of personality traits<\/li>\n<li>People belong in unique collection of various social groups o People have a unique history of individual experiences<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Individuals are nothing if not variable and the findings do not apply equally to all members \u2013 studies reflect average tendencies within cultural groups<\/li>\n<li>Culture refers to dynamic groups of individuals that share a similar context, are exposed to many similar cultural messages, and contain broad range of different individuals whoa re affected by those cultural messages in different ways.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h1>Psychological Processes can vary across cultures<\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li>People\u2019s psychology differs between cultures is their sense of humor.<\/li>\n<li>What is funny in one culture may not be funny in others. Everyone in USA loved Seinfeld but not Germans.<\/li>\n<li>Humor is a readily observable cultural difference<\/li>\n<li>Many basic psychological processes such as the way we perceive the world, value sense of right and wrong, and the things that motivate us can emerge differently across cultures.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><u>Is the Mind Independent From, or Intertwined With, Culture?<\/u><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Richard Shweder = father of modern cultural psychology\n<ul>\n<li>He says that the mind operates under a set of natural and universal laws that are independent from content or context<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>General psychologists are more into human universality than about cultural variability. \u2013 They think our mind is a CPU \u2013 abstract processing unit<\/li>\n<li>Unwanted Noise: Context and Content<\/li>\n<li>We don\u2019t want unwanted noise when doing experiment so we use a lab to see the purest view of the CPU.<\/li>\n<li>All human psychology is universally experienced in similar ways.<\/li>\n<li>Cultural psychologists think that the mind does not operate independently of what it is thinking about<\/li>\n<li>To fully understand the mind it is important o consider whether one is thinking about food, weapons, sex, etc.<\/li>\n<li>The ways that people think about these kinds of behaviors are influenced by the very specific and particular ways that cultural knowledge shapes their understanding of those behaviors.<\/li>\n<li>An action can have many meanings, and the potential meanings that are available are influenced by the cultural context within which they occur<\/li>\n<li>Shared ideas that make up cultures proved the kinds of meanings that people can derive from their experiences<\/li>\n<li>When European-Americans completed the relative length task, they showed more activation in the left inferior parietal lobule and there right precentral gyrus than they did when they completed the absolute length task.\n<ul>\n<li>These two regions of the brain are both associated with attention control, and indicate relative length judgment was more difficult for the EuropeanAmericans.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>When East Asians made the same judgments, they showed more evidence of attention control when they completed the absolute length task compared to relative one.<\/li>\n<li>Structure of brains can be altered by experiences Ex: Cab drivers in London develop larger volumes of the posterior region of their hippocampi relative to other humans o Hippocampus facilitates spatial memory in navigation\n<ul>\n<li>Regularly encountered experiences can ultimately change the structure of the brain<\/li>\n<li>Therefore since culture provides people with particular sets of experiences on daily basis, we can conclude that cultural influences can change our brains.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Humans are always behaving as cultural actors and their thoughts are always sustained by the meanings that are derived from their cultures.<\/li>\n<li>Many cultural psychologists would argue that culture couldn\u2019t be separated from the mind because culture and mind make each other up.<\/li>\n<li>Cultures emerge from the interaction of the various minds of the people that live within them, and cultures then, shape the ways that those minds operate.<\/li>\n<li>Compare people to weeds and culture is bound by weeds \u2013 we chose what we want or don\u2019t want.<\/li>\n<li>Culture are dependent on the minds of the people within them, and peoples minds are dependent on the cultures in which they exist<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h1>Case Study: The Sambia<\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li>Remember cultural psych: mind is shaped by content and context<\/li>\n<li>They are extremely peaceful now but they use to be ferocious<\/li>\n<li>They still have one persistent cultural practice: the initiation to transform young boys to men.<\/li>\n<li>Boys are viewed as being in a female world, doing female task like babysitting or weeding \u2013 so they need to remove the pollution that their mothers caused.<\/li>\n<li>So they perform fellatio to ingest seamen because semen is very manly.<\/li>\n<li>Big contrast compared to Western Society.<\/li>\n<li>But in Sambia it\u2019s a behavior and not an identity.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h1>Psychological Universals and Levels of Analysis<\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li>Psych processes are the same everywhere and the processes emerge differently across cultural contexts.<\/li>\n<li>At more abstract levels the phenomena under question are often have more evident for universals \u2013 but often they are too abstract to be much of utility.<\/li>\n<li>Tension between universal and culturally specific psychologies<\/li>\n<li>There are a number of different levels by which we can consider evidence for universality.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h1><em>Universals<\/em><\/h1>\n<p><strong><em>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><u>Accessibility Universal<\/u><\/strong>: Strongest case for universality is when it could be said that a given cognitive tool exists in all cultures, is used to solve the same problem across all cultures and is accessible to the same degree across cultures. Ex: understanding the law of physics \u2013 learned at a very early age.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><u>Functional Universal<\/u><\/strong>: A cognitive tool exists in multiple cultures, it is used to solve the same problem across cultures, yet it is more accessible to people from cultures than others.<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><u>Existential Universal: <\/u><\/strong>If a psychological process fails the test of an accessibility universal and of a functional universal. A cognitive tool is said to exist in multiple cultures, although the tool is not necessarily used to solve the same problems, nor is it equally across cultures.<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><u>Nonuniversal: <\/u><\/strong>it\u2019s an absence of universality. Cognitive tools that are nonuniversal do not exist and be cultural inventions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Ex: Abacus reasoning \u2013 people from cultures who use this think about numbers differently than those who do not use abacus. The cognitive tools associated with abacus reasoning can be said to be nonexistent in people who have not been trained in them<\/li>\n<li>Much of numerical reasoning appears to be nonuniversal<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2>Psychological Database is Largely WEIRD<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Most studies are based from people who are living in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Findings that come from WEIRD samples are different from those obtained in other samples. Ex: Mueller-Lyer illusions \u2013 it\u2019s only an illusion in some cultures South African miners didn\u2019t think it was illusion but it points to a psychological mechanisms that underlies the illusion. Only people who are use to seeing corners like construction work etc know it\u2019s the same. So it is not an innate feature, but something that is learned.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><u>Why should we study Cultural Psychology?<\/u><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Experiences are central to the development of psychological tendencies, and cultures provide people with certain kinds of experiences.<\/li>\n<li>Cultural psychology helps with understanding how human mind works and the role cultural experiences play in terms of how we come to think and feel.<\/li>\n<li><strong><u>Color-Blind approach: <\/u><\/strong>it\u2019s a mindset that is when you are thinking that people are the same wherever you go.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>o <strong><u>The hope of this Underlying this approach is <\/u><\/strong><u>\u00e0<\/u> people will interact with each other without giving much attention to anyone\u2019s ethnic background.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Perhaps the best way for people of different backgrounds to get along is to stop attending to cultural differences and focus instead on people\u2019s common human nature.<\/li>\n<li><strong><u>Multicultural Approach:<\/u><\/strong> Attending to and celebrating group differences (this is the opposite of color-blind strategy) o This suggests that people will fare better when the distinctive characteristics of their groups are attended to and appreciated<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Groups that emphasize multicultural messages fare better in numerous respects than groups that emphasize color-blind messages o Ex: the more white employees\u2019 attitudes were multicultural and less colorblind \u00e0 resulted in the minority employees to be more engaged with their work.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2>You are a Product of Your Own Culture<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Our cultures are invisible to us, although everyone else can see them<\/li>\n<li>Our own thoughts and behaviors appear natural to us because we really don\u2019t know how we could think and behave otherwise.<\/li>\n<li>In many ways we don\u2019t really come to understand our own culture until we see it in contrast to other cultures.<\/li>\n<li>The way that you think and behave is guided by the particular cultural experiences.<\/li>\n<li>Our values are shaped by cultural experiences \u2013 we are socialized to think in many ways of doing things good or moral.<\/li>\n<li>Culturally normative behavior are seen to be natural \u2013 and deviation from that natural path often tend to be viewed as less desirable or even immoral.<\/li>\n<li><strong><u>Ethnocentrism:<\/u><\/strong> judging people from other cultures by the standards of our own culture o Our cultures socialize us to be ethnocentric because we are socialized to value normative cultural behaviors.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><strong><u>Where does cultural Psychology come from?<\/u><\/strong><strong>\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Father of psychology as a discipline = William Wundt \uf0b7 William Wundt was a cultural psychologist as well.<\/li>\n<li>He became famous for introducing experimental methods into psychology and launching it into the field of science<\/li>\n<li><strong><u>Russian Cultural-Historical School<\/u><\/strong> \u00e0 This school of thought argued that people interact with their environments through the tools or human-made ideas that have been passed to them throughout history. Ex: cultural inventions o All of human thought is sustained and expressed through accumulated human-made ideas as it is practiced in day-to-day activities \uf0b7 In the mid 20\u2019s, psychology was dominated by behaviorism.<\/li>\n<li>James Bruner = one of leading persons for cognitive revolution\n<ul>\n<li>He argued that human psychology could only be properly understood by considering the meaning that people derived from the encounters with their worlds.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Self-concept is shaped differently across cultures<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We rely on culture which helps us succeed in diverse environments Culture effects our thoughts and behavior and culture psychology is the studies of those implications &nbsp; A Psychology&hellip; <a class=\"continue\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amyork.ca\/academic\/zz\/cultural-psychology\/cultural-psychology\/\">Continue Reading<span> Cultural Psychology<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyork.ca\/academic\/zz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4300"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyork.ca\/academic\/zz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyork.ca\/academic\/zz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyork.ca\/academic\/zz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyork.ca\/academic\/zz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4300"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyork.ca\/academic\/zz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4866,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyork.ca\/academic\/zz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4300\/revisions\/4866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyork.ca\/academic\/zz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyork.ca\/academic\/zz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyork.ca\/academic\/zz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}