PSY 437 Lecture Notes PDF

**Lecture 1: What is Culture?** Defining Culture - Two definitions: - Information acquired from others through social learning that can influence behavior - "Cultural information" - A group of people within a shared context (e.g., geographical, historical...

**Lecture 1: What is Culture?** Defining Culture - Two definitions: - Information acquired from others through social learning that can influence behavior - "Cultural information" - A group of people within a shared context (e.g., geographical, historical, linguistic, etc.) - "Cultural groups" Challenges to Defining Culture (1) - Is something a "group" or a "culture"? - More communication & shared norms, more evidence it may be a "culture" - Cultural boundaries are not always clear - Key is some shared context; exposure to similar cultural messages, but... - Culture exists at many levels - Broad vs. narrow, national vs. regional, etc. - People may be a member of multiple cultural groups - Religious & national, ethnic & sexuality, etc. Challenges to Defining Culture (2) - Cultures are dynamic and change over time - Within-culture variability [\>] between-culture variability - Personality, social groups, life history, regional variability, etc. - Not everyone in a culture experience it in the same way - E.g., gender norms Defining Culture in Research - Often use country/region of origin or ethnicity as a proxy - E.g., Asian international vs. domestic students studying at US college - May lump together different groups or ignore exposure to different cultures (e.g., studying in US) An expanded definition of cultural groups - A dynamic group of people who share a similar context are exposed to many similar cultural messages, and contain a broad range of different individuals who are affected by those\ cultural messages in various ways ***General Psych vs. Cultural Psych*** General Psychology - Focus on universal laws that govern mind - Assumes mind is independent from context or content - i.e., same mental processes, just happening in different situations with different inputs - Cultural variation as "noise" Cultural Psychology - Focuses on cultural variation - Assumes that the mind is not independent of context or content - Studies impact of living in different cultural environments on the meaning systems we create - Culture as the "signal" rather than the noise A Core Idea - Regular exposure to our cultural environment "programs" the mind with sets of beliefs, expectations norms, scripts, etc. - We typically don't notice our own programming -- it is our reality Culture and the Mind "Make Each Other Up" - Minds and cultures are entangled with each other - Cultures [emerge from] minds interacting together, and cultures [shape how] those minds operate - Cultural differences in minds and behavior can be studied and explained - Difficult ***Universality vs. Variability*** Culturally Universal vs. Culturally Variable - Universals -- color "black", number 2, smiling when happy - Variable -- numbers [\>] 3, color "blue", biting tongue when embarrassed Recent Research - Music (singing and instrumental) tend to be slower, higher pitched, and more stable in pitch than speech across 75 different cultural -- linguistic groups Framed-Line Task Findings - Rask used to show how culture shapes the mind - **Relative Task**: relationship - **Absolute Task**: length - Kitayama et al., 2003 - Japanese & European American participants - Absolute and relative versions of task - Errors = worse performance The Cultural Brain - Follow-up work suggests patterns of brain activation map onto the performance results - Both cultures show activation of areas associated with attentional control in the more difficult version of the task - Our minds (and the brains that implement them!) are shaped by our experiences Determining Universality vs. Cultural Variability - Often depends on whether definitions are abstract or concrete - Concrete definitions lead to more evidence of variability - Example: "marriage" involves a man and a women falling in love and agreeing to spend their lives with each other - Abstract definitions lead to more evidence of universality - Example: "marriage" is a formal arrangement between people that is accompanied by sexual exclusivity. Levels of Universality (1) - A **nonuniversal** is a cultural invention, or psychological process, that does not exist in all cultures - Example: abacus reasoning Levels of Universality (2) - An **existential universal** is a psychological process that - Exists in all cultures - Does *not* serve the same function (s) in all cultures - Example: persistence in the face of success/failure Levels of Universality (3) - A **functional universal** is a psychological process that: - Exists & serves the same function(s) in all cultures - **Not** equally accessible across cultures - Example: costly punishment Levels of Universality (4) - An **accessibility universal** is a psychological process that - Exists & serves the same function(s) in all cultures - Is equally accessible in all cultures - "Fully universal" - Example: social facilitation What Do We Know About Human Psychology\> - It's difficult to determine extent to which many psychological processes are universal - Definitions of concepts from one culture may be too narrow to capture instances of the concept in other cultures - Concepts can be fully, partially, or not at all universal - Lack adequate data to test the extent of universality ***Psychological Database*** Psychology is WEIRD - Most research comes from WEIRD societies: - Western - Educated - Industrialized - Rich - Democratic - Americans make up 68% of psychology participants - 96% of samples are from Western/Industrialized countries (only 16% of world live only 16% of world live in these countries) US undergrad 4000x more likely to be in a psychology study than any other non-Western person! In other words... - The psychology "database" largely examines the psychology of the West - But "robust" findings are constrained by culture - WEIRD cultures are atypical on many dimensions - White American are often even more extreme than other WEIRD cultures Why Study Cultural Psychology? - To better understand the full distribution of human thoughts, feelings, and behavior - To understand ourselves and each other What is the Best Way to Deal with Cultural Differences **Color-Blind Approach** **Multicultural Approach** --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Emphasis common human nature and ignores group differences Recognizes that group identities are different (particularly true of minorities) Relevant to research showing that even trivial distinctions between groups often lead to discrimination Relevant to research showing that ignoring such group differences tends to lead to negative responses The Importance of Cultural Psychology - Cultural psychology is not the study of "them" -- [we are all influenced by culture]! - Tendency to offer cultural explanations for other people's behaviors, but not our own -- be aware of this! - Recognize our own **ethnocentrism**: - Judging other cultures by comparing them to our culture, using our own culture as the standard of comparison - Can lead to prejudice, discrimination, etc. As we learn about culture - Recognize our own ethnocentrism -- remember we are a product of our own cultures - Know that people are the product of multiple cultural influences/identities, as well as their own personalities and life experiences - Acknowledge differences, but recognize members of other cultures as individuals who have inherit value - Learning about (ones own and other) cultures is a lifelong journey Summary: - Cultures are difficult to define; boundaries are unclear, cultures are dynamic - Psychological process vary in their universality - Much of current psychology is WEIRD - Cultural psychology offers unique perspective on how the mind work **Lecture 2: Cultural Evolution** ***Cultural Evolution*** Overarching Themes in this Chapter - Cultural ideas and norms are the product of different environments and cultural learning - Cultures are fluid and dynamic and often change over time ***Cultural Variation*** Where Does Cultural Variation Come From? - Ecological and geographical variation - Environment affords different behaviors; same behavior may lead to more/less success in different environments - E.g., hunting traditionally common among the Kung of the Kalahari Desert (many large mammals there), but not among Native Hawaiians (no large mammals there) - Can lead to downstream psychological changes - In harsh environments that require physical strength to obtain food, cultures tend to place emphasis on strength/toughness of men - With plentiful food, more egalitarian gender norms - Impact is exerted in different ways: - Proximate causes versus distal causes - Evoked culture versus transmitted culture - **Proximate Causes**: differences that produce direct and immediate effects - E.g., differences in Spanish and Incan weaponry, resistance to disease - **Distal Causes**: initial (or "early") differences that lead to effects over long periods of time, often indirectly - E.g., differences in the native life and geography of Eurasia and Americas Subsistence Practices -\> Culture Example: Rice vs. Wheat Farming in China - Rice farming requires more water, irrigation - Irrigation requires cooperation and coordination with neighboring farms - Irrigation systems are a public good, tend to be maintained at the community, not the individual level - Rice farming requires more labor (\~2x that of wheat) - Married couple cannot farm enough rice to sustain family - Communities would coordinate transplanting/harvesting dates to help each other, "labor exchanges" A map of the country Description automatically generated Psychological Differences - Talhelm et al., 2014, found that **modern** people from rice-growing regions were compared to those from wheat-growing regions - Lower in individualism - Higher in loyalty - Less likely to divorce - Higher in holistic thinking Real World: Sitting in Starbucks - Percentage sitting alone on weekdays vs. percentage sitting alone on weekends  Where Does Cultural Variation Come From? - Do cultural norms emerge directly from the environment? - **Evoked Culture**: behaviors evoked by specific environments; these environment-specific responses -\> culture - Example: conformity and pathogen prevalence - **Transmitted Culture**: cultural ideas that are learned via social learning, by modeling the behavior of others living nearby - Example: parents teaching their children to conform - Edgerton (1971) conducted a study comparing evoked and transmitted culture - Surveyed communities from four different East African tribes living in different environments - Tribal affiliation had more impact than environmental pressures in predicting a community's attitudes - Transmitted culture can play a more powerful role in cultural variation than evoked culture - Rice/wheat data from China are consistent with this -- modern people's psychology is shaped by cultural transmission, more than their subsistence practices ***Cultural Evolution*** Cultural Evolution - Process by which cultures and cultural; ideas change - Note: this is relevant to how individual cultures change over time and how different cultural groups may diverge (or converge) over time Parallels Between Biological & Cultural Evolution - Biological evolution is an evolutionary process that requires three conditions: - Individual variability within a species on a trait - Trait associated with different reproductive rates - Trait has hereditary basis - Initial genetic variation can come from random mutation, copying errors, byproduct of meiosis, etc. - **Natural selection** (or sexual selection) can lead to an increased proportion of that trait in the population over time - **Similarities:** some cultural ideas are more likely to being passed along to others (reproduced more) -\> become more common over time - **Differences:** "copying errors" rare in genes; more common in cultural ideas \[and can be intentional\] - Genes only be passed down vertically (parent to offspring); cultural ideas can be transmitted horizontally, among peers - Cultural ideas do not have to be evolutionarily adaptive Biological vs. Cultural Evolution - Cultural transmission is more complex than genetic transmission and may occur on short timescales, even within a single generation A diagram of a diagram of a person\'s body Description automatically generated with medium confidence ***What Ideas Spread?*** Factors that Cause Ideas to Spread - For ideas to spread, they must be: - Communicable - Useful - Emotional - Minimally counterintuitive ***Change vs. Stability*** Cultural Change vs. Stability - Some aspects of culture seem to change quickly, others persist over millennia - E.g., gay marriage and gender bias in lyrics Cultures Are Becoming Increasingly Interconnected - Increased ease of long-distance transportation, travel, & communication - Cultural influences transcend national borders - Many large companies (e.g., Starbucks, IKEA, TikTok) - Pop culture (e.g., Hollywood movies, KPop, anime) - Globalization countered by increased tribalism -- an urge to return to traditional cultures Individualism and Collectivism - Overall, cultures vary in individualism and collectivism - **Individualistic Cultures**: emphasize personal goals over collective goals and being distinct from others - **Collectivistic Cultures**: emphasize the collective goals of one's ingroup (often one's family or important social groups) Many Cultures are Becoming More Individualistic - Across time, cultures have become more individualistic - Americans have become less socially engaged and less civically active since the 1960s - Why? - Time and money pressures; materialism/capitalism - Electronic entertainment - Higher socioeconomic status - More secular - Move to suburbs - Decrease in rates of infectious diseases - Import of individualistic ideas due to colonialism, media, economics Cultural Persistence in the Face of Change - Despite some cultural changes, other cultural habits persist across generations - E.g., Beijing & Shanghai themselves don't have grain production, yet the historical effects live on - Regions of Africa where more people were enslaved pre-1900, today there is less evidence of trust in others One Reason for Stability: Pluralistic Ignorance - Heavy drinking at Princeton - **Pluralistic Ignorance**: tendency to collectively misinterpret the thoughts underlying others' behaviors - We're influenced by what we *believe* other people *feel*, not what the *actually* feel - E.g., approval of heavy drinking on campus Cultural Persistence Tracks Environmental Stability - Cultural persistence more likely in stable climates - Evidence across regions of the world and within countries - E.g., Navajo and Cree Summary: - Cultural ideas can be spread in a variety of ways - Only certain cultural ideas will likely be passed successfully within a population - Cultures have changed over time, sometimes in systematic ways - While cultures change, some cultural ideas persist **Mini Lecture: Reading a Journal** Basic Organization of Empirical Article - Abstract - Introduction - Method - Result - Discussion Reading a Journal Article - Start with abstract - If you get confused, go back to abstract - Keep authors' goal in mind -- relate each section back to goals - Ignore statistical details - Can be overwhelming -- trust that they are correct; try to get the gist of the findings - Know where to find key information - Take notes - What is the hypothesis? - What are the key findings & what do they mean? - What are your own reactions? - Did the finding surprise you? Consistency with ideas? - Do the methods adequately test hypotheses? Alternative explanations? Forest then the Trees - Read paper twice - Focus on "big picture" first - What point are the authors trying to make? - How does this advance our understanding of X? - Critically evaluate the paper - In terms of construct, external (generalizability), statistical conclusion, and internal validity (based on research claim being made) Understanding Results - Identify relevant variables - IV/Predictor variable (usually culture in this class) - Dependent variable/criterion variable/outcome variable - Look for key words and statements of relationships - Significant; non-significant - As hypothesized/predicted; consistent with predictions; unexpectedly - Greater/less than; strong/weak relationship - What do these differences mean? - Cultural difference? - Differences in question interpretation? Differences in how scales are used Basic Approaches - Qualitative -- non-numerical data collection (e.g., through observation, interviews) - Not used much in psychology, can guide research on culture - Ethnography -- in depth description of a culture and its practices; common in anthropology - Quantitative -- numerical data collection and statistical/numerical analysis - Much more common in psychology, most other sciences - Can still involved direct observation, but observations are translated to numbers for analysis Types of Quantitative Studies - Descriptive -- attempts to describe a population on some parameter(s) - E.g., public opinion survey (X% of Americans support Y) - Correlational -- measures two or more variable to examine relationship between them - Experimental -- manipulates one or more variable to examine *causal* effect Variable Types - Independent variable (IV): manipulated variable in an experiment - Dependent variable (DV): the measured variable Applied to Cross-Cultural Research - When **culture** is the predictor, the study is in-between correlational and experimental - Book uses term "quasi-experimental", talk about culture as an independent variable - Interested in "causal" relationship, but cannot manipulate culture - Don't know what variable is the true cause - E.g., culture A and B differ on more than one dimension (collectivism, hierarchy, education, communication styles, language, income, etc.) Other General Issues to Consider - **Statistical Power**: ability to detect a difference if one is present - If independent variable -\> dependent variable, can the study support it? - Maximized by large difference on IV (large effect size), large sample size, and reliable measures - **Generalizability**: to what populations and instantiations of key concepts does the effect apply to? - Example -- Research on self-construal: - Assumes "interdependent" selves follow from collectivistic cultural values - But mostly East Asian samples studied - Latin America doesn't fit, seems to have - Independent selves - Collectivistic cultural values - East Asia ≠ Latin America **Lecture 3: Meaningful Comparisons** Selecting Cultures to Study - Depends on specific research question - "Does variable X shape variable Y?" - Example: does individualism shape the preference for uniqueness? - Study two cultures that vary on X - "Is variable X universal?" - Example: is theory of mind a universal psychological process? - Study cultures that are different on many dimensions Making Meaningful Comparisons - Need to understand cultural norms/practices/attitudes related to the phenomenon of interest - Ethnographies, foreign collaborators, and cultural immersion help - **Methodological Equivalence**: are questions or situations understood in the same way across cultures? - May require different methods for different cultures - E.g., changing the wording of surveys - Most cross-cultural research uses university students in industrialized societies to address this concern - Sometimes by examining domestic/international students at same school - Problems with targeting specific samples (esp. university students): - Limits **generalizability** -- university students may not represent their culture - Less time living in the culture, may come from non-traditional backgrounds for the culture - Limits **power** -- university students in industrialized societies may share similar experiences - May dilute the cross-cultural comparison - May be a conservative test of cultural differences **Asking Questions Across Cultures** Surveys and Questionnaires - Want materials to be as similar as possible while conveying the exact same meaning Surveys and Questionnaires: **Translation of Items** - One solution: find bilingual and ask them to complete measures in English - Problem: people who speak English may not represent their culture well, for example, they might be: - More exposed to Western culture - More highly educated than their country - They may also respond differently in English than in their native language - Other solutions: - Bilingual collaborator - Ideally with knowledge of both cultures as well as relevant concepts - Back-translation - Translator 1 translates materials from original language to target language - Translator 2 materials back to original language - Original and back-translated materials are compared and discrepancies are resolved - Becomes a bigger issue with culture-specific terms - Schadenfreude - Amae - Self-esteem - Or idioms where direct translation changes meaning - Under the weather , dime a dozen, getting cold feet, hit the books, eat like a bird, once in a blue moon Surveys and Questionnaires: **Response Biases** - Response biases: consistent "mental sets" applied to all questions in a survey - Socially desirable responding, moderacy bias, extremity bias, acquiescence - Problematic when these vary across culture - Differences due to cultural variable of interest or to how people are using the scales? - Book discusses potential solutions Surveys and Questionnaires: **Reference Group Effects** - Reference group effect: one's response to questions depend on the group that one is using for reference - I am tall -- strongly disagree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 strongly agree Surveys and Questionnaires: **Reference Group Effects** - Can be even more of an issue for socially embedded traits (e.g., confrontational) - Solution: objective, concrete measures - Specific scenarios - Quantitative responses (e.g., frequencies of specific behaviors) - Behavioral and physiological measures - May still miss different manifestations of the same tendency **Ethics in Cross-Cultural Research** Ethical Issues in Cross-Cultural Research - Common for a researcher in a Western context to collect data in their country and in another country - Potential power differential; possibility of exploitation - Several issues I want to mention - Protection for participants - Must understand culture/norms to ensure questions/procedures don't inflict harm - Respect for collaborators - Full collaboration & authorship - Respect for the culture - Conclusions that respect culture, nuanced discussion of cultural context **Specific Methods for Studying Cultures** Specific Methods for Studying Cultures (1) - **Cultural Priming**: making specific cultural ideas more accessible to participants - Assumes the idea is available to all cultures - E.g., pronoun circling task: - "I go to the city..." "We go to the city..." Culture-Level Measures - Most methods study **people** in different cultures, can also study elements of the culture itself - People receive ideas through cultural messages - Examples: - Magazine ads - Laws - Newspaper articles - Children's stories - Webpages - Music lyrics - Steps for studying cultural messages: - Focus on identifiable and quantifiable subset - Develop specific hypothesis - Code the data: transform messages into meaningful \#s - Coding: creating themes or categories that are consistent with the cultural messages observed - Multiple coders - Coders blind to the hypothesis - Ensuring consistency of coding across languages is critical Using Multiple Methods - Problem: - No single study design is perfect due to alternative explanations and methodological flaws - Solution: - Use multiple methods - **Occam's Razor**: simplest solution to a problem tends to be correct (parsimony) **Case Study: Culture of Honor** Case Study: Culture of Honor in the US South - Observation: - The U.S. south seems more violent than the North - Initial possible explanations: - Temperature, poverty, history of slavery, etc. - Nisbett and Cohen's explanation: - Settlers in the South were herders, while settlers in the North were farmers - Greater threat of theft for herders than for farmers - To protect assets, herders had to build/protect reputation by showing aggression to maintain honor - Methods included by Nisbett and Cohen: - Archival data - Physiological data - Survey data - Behavioral data - Field experiment Summary - Studying cultural differences requires knowledge of each culture, awareness of potential issues in study design - Findings are strengthened by multiple methods - It's important to unpackage the nature of a cultural difference or phenomenon **Lecture 4: Development and Socialization** Universal Brains -\> Culturally Diverse Minds - Cultural norms/differences acquired through socialization - Humans are not born with cultural knowledge or skills - Humans are born **prepared to learn** from any cultural environment ***Sensitive Periods*** Naeun (Eden) Park - Daughter of Korean and Swiss parents - Growing up speaking: - German (w/ Mom) - English (w/ both parents) - Korean (w/ dad; dad's family) - Spanish (w/ Mom's family) Sensitive Periods for Cultural Socialization - **Sensitive Period**: period of time in development when it is easy to acquire a skill - Trade-off between ability to learn new behavior and ability to specialize in behaviors Language Acquisition - Language -- most heavily studied topic on sensitive periods - Discrimination of different sounds is broad at birth but narrows during development - Newborns can discriminate all (\~150) phonemes (units of sound) - Each language only uses subset (\~70) - Within the first year, infants start losing ability to distinguish similar sounds that are not used in their language Example: Phoneme Discrimination (1) A graph of different colored bars Description automatically generated Example: Phoneme Discrimination (2) - Example of the loss of phoneme perception: - Two Hindi phonemes, aspirated and unaspirated versions of "b" - Sound different to native speakers but the same to English speakers Language Acquisition Among Bilinguals - Age of additional language learning matters (e.g., in where/how the brain processes language) - First and second languages processed in the same regions if learned early (Kim, Relkin, Lee, and Hirsch, 1997) - Second language processed in a different region if learned later - Brain is flexible at restructuring, but particularly during sensitive periods Acquiring Culture - Hong Kong immigrants identification with Canadian culture depends on their age when they moved to Canada The Emergence of Cross-Cultural Psychological Differences with Age - Humans acquire culture as they are socialized -- cultural differences increase with age - Evidence: - Chinese and Canadian 7-year-olds are more similar in thoughts about the future than 9- and 11-year-olds - Cultural divergence with age in explanations of others' behaviors, optimism, and tendency to focus on positive aspects of the self **Early Experiences** First: A Universal (1) - Style of speech/song directed at infants seems to be universally different than to adults - Hilton et al., 2022 - Recordings of adult & infant directed speech & song - Machine learning to identify features that differentiated - Later played recordings to people unfamiliar with the languages to see if they could identify with the languages to see if they could identify who recording was directed at First: A Universal (2) - Hilton et al., 2022 - Across 21 societies, systematic features for both speech (e.g., higher pitch) and song (e.g., wide range of vowel sounds used) when directed at infants - English speaking participants could identify whether speech or song was directed at an infant or adult with \~70% accuracy Infants' Personal Space (1) - Infants' interactions with their parents are a key source of cultural practices guiding development - Keller et al., (2004) investigated mother-infant (3mo) interactions in diverse cultural contexts - Urban middle-class Greeks (independent) - Urban lower-class Costa Ricans (autonomous-related) - Cameroonian Nso Farmers (interdependent) Infants' Personal Space (2)  Who are caregivers? - Helfrecht et al., 2020: Traditional Societies have very diverse care networks - Frequency of care by mothers and allomothers across subsistence groups and age categories. Colored bars represent the mean frequency of observed Sleeping Arrangements (1) - Co-sleeping: children sleep in parents' bed - Cultural variability in sleeping arrangements: - Most societies (two-thirds) practice co-sleeping - Co-sleeping found in every subsistence society examined - Also common: infant in same room but different bed - In US, co-sleeping rare among European Americans, but more common among Asian Americans, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and others Sleeping Arrangements (2) - Sleeping arrangement preferences may emerge from different moral values across cultures - Shweder et al., (1995) study: - Indians and Americans were asked to plan sleeping arrangements for a hypothetical family - Participants in the two groups focused on different values when deciding who sleeps together Sleeping Arrangements (3) - Example: arrange family of 7 into 3 rooms - Father, Mother - Sons (15,11,8) - Daughters (14, 3) Sleeping Arrangements (4) - Americans Seemed to Consider - **Incest Avoidance**: teens of opposite sex should not be - **Sacred Couple Principle:** married couples should have their own space for intimacy - **Autonomy Ideal:** young children should sleep along to learn self-reliance - Indians Seemed to Consider - **Incest Avoidance**: teens of opposite sex should not be - **Protection of Vulnerable**: youngest children not left along - **Female Chastity Anxiety:** unmarried women should be chaperoned - **Respect for Hierarchy:** older boys given independence Attachment Styles Parenting Styles (1) - Baumrind's (1997) Parenting Styles: - **Authoritarian**: high demands, strict rules, restricted parent-child dialogue, parent-centered (constraints) - **Authoritative**: high expectations of child's maturity, understanding of feelings, independence (within limits), parental warmth and responsiveness, child-oriented (less constraints) - **Permissive**: lots of dialogue, parental warmth and responsiveness, few limits or controls (less constraints) - **Neglectful**: cold, unresponsive, indifferent (constraints) Parenting Styles (2) - In Western samples authoritative parenting has best outcomes - School achievement, perceived parental warmth, etc. - **But**, Baumrind's categorization based on Western notions of development; may not capture parenting styles across cultures Parenting Styles (3) - Strict parenting common in **many** cultures, but not the same as authoritarian parenting - Different parenting approaches used at different stages of the child's development - Parents communicate warmth and responsiveness differently across cultures - The authoritarian category may exclude the parental role of training - Some parenting styles predict different outcomes across cultures - E.g., strong parental control, more cohesion, more perceived warmth/acceptance, & higher achievement in East Asia, but not in US The Noun Bias (1) - **Noun Bias**: children's tendency to learn nouns more quickly than verbs & other relation words - Once thought to be universal; but evidence primarily found among North Americans - Possible explanation: - English syntax makes nouns more salient, other languages (e.g., East Asian languages) make verbs more salient Yet Another Early Socialization Experience - Dropping nouns/pronouns - Makes verbs more salient - Requires use of context to disambiguate - Alternative Explanation: - Young children (and their parents) communicate about objects differently across cultures - Example: - North American parents talk about objects as separate from their environment - East Asian parents highlight how objects are related to other things **Difficult Transitions** *Socialization Through Education* Socialization Through Education (1) - Question: Which object does not belong? - Ax - Hammer - Logs (of wood) - Saw - Luria (1976) posed the same question to people without formal education - Grouping could be done by: - Relationships - Attributes - Participants created groups based on relationships rather than shared attributes Socialization Through Education (2) - Evidence across many cultures shows that formal education: - Encourages people to think abstractly and go beyond knowledge derived from direct experience - Affects people's ability to create taxonomic categories (categories based on some shared attribute or rule) - Predicts higher IQ **scores** - Studies underscore how the [concept] of intelligence (and intelligence [testing]) is intertwined with skills acquired through cultural learning Case Study: East Asians and Math Education (1) - Stevenson and Stigler's (1992) large-scale study on math performance found some interesting trends - Possible Explanations: - Teaching methods differ between cultures (\# school days, time devoted to math, amount of homework, etc.) - Value of education differs across cultures - Parents' expectations of children differ between cultures - Numbering systems in languages differ between cultures: - East Asian systems may be easier to understood and work with than the English numbering system ***Exam Review*** Material - Lectures & textbook for Ch. 1, 3, 4, 5 - Mostly overlapping content, some textbook only - Discussion reading (Rozin article), but not in detail - Reasonably even split between chapters Level of Detail - Reinforce the main idea from a study - Specific culture examples - If discussed at length in book or lecture, it will be on the exam Study Tips - Memorize key terms - Why is this topic important? *Chapter 1 Questions* Defining Culture - Two definitions in this class: - Information acquired from others (of the same species) through social learning that can influence behaviors - "Cultural information" - A group of people within a shared context (e.g., geographical, historical, linguistic, etc.) who are exposed to many similar cultural messages - "Cultural groups" - Note individual differences matter, not all people experience the same culture the same way General Psychology - An **approach** to psychology - Focuses on universal laws that govern mind - Assumes mind is independent from context or content - Context -- where the "mind" is situated - Content -- what the mind is considering - Cultural variation as "noise" Cultural Psychology - Focuses on cultural variation - Assumes that the mind is not independent of context or content - Studies impact of living in different environments on the meaning systems we create - Culture as the "signal" rather than the noise Universality - Four levels, but really breaks down to: - **Nonuniversal** -- some psychological phenomenon does not occur (at all) in at least one culture - **Partially universal** (existential, functional universals) -- some psychological process/concepts exist in every culture, but may vary in its use or accessibility across cultures - **Fully universal** (accessibility universal) -- some psychological process/concept occurs in all cultures, in the same way, and to the same extent Muller-Lyer Illusion  - Visual systems have adapted to our environment and our depictions reflect such. Modified Framed-Line Task - Original stimulus - Absolute task - Relative task Framed-Line Task Findings - Kitayama et al., 2003 - Japanese & European American participants - Absolute and relative versions of task - **Errors = worse performance** - Results from study 1: Japanese & American participants' mean error in the two line-drawing tasks of framed-line test, the error bars represent standard errors What is the Best Way to Deal with Cultural Differences? **Color-Blind Approach** **Multicultural Approach** --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Emphasizes common human nature and ignores group differences Recognizes that group identities are different, groups have different experiences in society Relevant to research showing that even trivial distinctions between groups often lead to discrimination Relevant to research showing that ignoring such group differences tends to lead to negative responses *Chapter 3 Questions* Where Does Cultural Variation Come From? - **Proximate Causes**: differences that produce direct and immediate effects - E.g., differences in Spanish and Incan weaponry; resistance to diseases - **Distal Causes**: initial (or "early") differences that lead to effects over long periods of time, often indirectly - E.g., differences in the geography of Eurasia and Americas, domestication of animals - **Evoked Culture**: behaviors evoked by specific environments; these environment-specific responses -\> culture - Conformity and pathogen prevalence - Spicy foods in hotter climates (which are more conducive to bacterial growth) - Garlic, onion, allspice, oregano, thyme, cinnamon, tarragon, cumin, hot peppers kill at least some bacteria Wheat vs. Rice Example - Climate & geography in China favored different cereal crops (i.e., wheat vs. rice) - Rice cultivation requires more cooperation & coordination to grow - Over time, this may lead to more collectivistic values/interdependent selves in rice-growing regions - Studies in modern China support this Biological vs. Cultural Evolution - **Biological Evolution** -- takes place over many generations, involves change in genetic basis of people - **Cultural Evolution** -- can take place in any time scale, involves changes in ideas and practices within a culture - Key Differences - "Copying errors" are rare in genes but more common in cultural ideas \[can be (un)intentional\] - Genes can only be passed down vertically, but cultural ideas can be transmitted horizontally, among peers - Cultural ideas do not have to evolutionary adaptive Cultural Stability - Why is culture more persistent in environmentally stable locations? - Nothing "forcing" change; instability may require innovation/adaptation/change - Why does pluralistic ignorance happen? - Even when we **internally** reject social norms, we often **still engage in them** - When we see **others** engaging in the norm, we assume their behavior and inner states align - So, we believe most people accept the norm -- nor persists *Chapter 4 Questions* Specific Methods for Studying Culture (1) - Situation sampling (a two-step method): - Participants from each culture generate a list of situations during which they experience some psychological phenomenon - Another group of participants assess a list of situations generated by both cultures in Step 1 - Can examine: - How people from different cultures respond to same situations - Cultural differences in the types of experiences/situations that people have Specific Methods for Studying Culture (2) - **Cultural Priming**: making specific cultural ideas more accessible to participants - Assumes the idea is available to all cultures - E.g., pronoun circling task: - "I go to the city..." "We go to the city..." Contrasting Cultures by Categories - The study of culture in psychology often categorizes cultures on certain variables and then compares psychological measures within those categories - Example categories: - **Tightness-looseness**: degree to which a culture has strong social norms and low tolerance for deviance from those norms - Individual-collectivism, power distance, uncertainty, avoidance, masculinity, long-term/short-term orientation The Challenge of Unpackaging (1) - Cultural differences are embedded within vast networks of practices and symbols - E.g., are US-East Asian differences in math outcomes due to difference in number systems, education systems, parent expectations, etc. - **Unpackaging**: identifying underlying variable that create cultural differences - **Two steps** to unpackaging: - Demonstrate cultural difference in the proposed underlying variable - E.g., does the use of concrete examples in math instruction differs across countries? - Show that underlying variable is related to cultural difference in question - Does the use of concrete examples in math instruction [predict differences] in math learning/performance? Example: Spencer-Rodgers et al., 2004 - Argued dialectical thinking (especially embracing contradiction) underlies East-West difference in self-esteem ambivalence - Self-esteem ambivalence = seeing both positives and negatives in the self - **Study 1:** - Compared mean levels of self-esteem ambivalence across cultures - Higher in East Asian than other cultural groups examined - Demonstrate cultural difference in the proposed underlying variable - **Study 3**: Chinese/Asian Americans had higher scores on a dialecticism measure than European Americans - Show that underlying variable is related to cultural difference in question - **Study 3**: scores on dialecticism measure predicted self-esteem ambivalence Chapter 5 Questions Born Largely the Same - Humans are born prepared to learn from any cultural environment - With age/exposure to culture, babies/children/adults from different cultures diverge in culture-specific ways Sensitive Periods - **Sensitive Period:** period of time in development when it is easy to acquire a skill - Note: skill acquisition not impossible later -- just tougher - Discussed language -- best studied "sensitive period" - E.g., babies lose ability to distinguish phonemes not needed in their language in first year; languages learned early in life learned more easily than those learned later - Less studied, but some evidence: math/numbers, social skills, emotion regulation, abstract thinking Parenting Styles (1) - Baumrind's (1997) Parenting Styles: - **Authoritarian**: high demands, strict rules, restricted parent-child dialogue, parent-centered - **Authoritative**: high expectations of child's maturity, understanding of feelings, independence (within limits), parental warmth and responsiveness, child-oriented - **Permissive**: lots of dialogue, parental warmth and responsiveness, few limits or controls - **Neglectful**: cold, unresponsive, indifferent The Noun Bias - **Noun Bias**: children's tendency to learn nouns more quickly than verbs & other relation words - Once thought to be universal; but evidence primarily found among North Americans Reading Questions - Know the main idea of the readings - E.g., Rozin et al., 2003, main idea is that portion sizes tend to be larger in the US than in France - (article provides more nuance, but this is the take home message)