Psych 109 Reading Notes PDF

MODULE 1: INTRODUCTION TO events, situations, and environments with CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY which we interact. - And these situations or events may Chapter I of Salzman, M.B. (2018) be i...

MODULE 1: INTRODUCTION TO events, situations, and environments with CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY which we interact. - And these situations or events may Chapter I of Salzman, M.B. (2018) be interpreted differently by other groups and individuals constituting Culture as the Software of the Mind those groups. (Hofstede) - Our behaviors respond to the meanings we attribute to situations According to Hofstede (2001), culture is and behaviors. the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one Culture can be considered as a system of group or category of people from another. shared learned meanings by a population The programming of may be considered that can be transmitted or transferred socialization. through generations. - A collective phenomenon because it - Culture adapts to specific is at least shared with people who experiences and ecologies. live of lived within the same social - Aspects of culture that have worked environment where it is learned. in terms of addressing and satisfying - Culture is learned, not inherited. human needs can be transmitted - Culture is described as the highest across generations through the form of human adaptation. process of socialization. - All humans think (“hardware” of the - The transmission of cultural mind). But we do not think alike knowledge and skills across (software). generations address the basic - The “software” of the mind is the physiological needs that was varying interpretation of behaviors proposed by Maslow. and meanings among groups of people. Culture as “What Has Worked in the Past” (Triandis) Culture as Shared Meanings and Interpretations Herskovits defined culture as the human-made part of the environment. According to Rohner, the shared meanings - This human-made-part of the and interpretations of the world around us environment consists of physical by a group of people is the essence of (e.g., tools, bridges, educational culture. systems, religious institutions) and - These shared meanings and subjective elements (e.g., beliefs, attributions mediate and moderate attitudes, norms, values) our experience with the behaviors of others and the situations in which Kluckhohn proposed that culture is to they occur. society is what memory is to an individual. - It is a memory of what “has worked Shweder proposed that humans are in the past” that has made survival motivated to derive meanings from the more probable.  - Consists of what “has worked” in the - If we accept this definition, then, NO, experience of a group of people humans are by no means the only facing the demands of life in a species to have culture. particular time and place so it was - There are many clear examples of seen as worth transmitting to peers cultural learning in the animal and descendants across generations kingdom. (Triandis & Gelfand, 2012). “Humans are not unique in cultural Triandis emphasized that cultures arise and learning.” adapt to an ecological context consisting of - But they do seem to stand out in the a physical environment, climate, resources extent of their cultural learning skills. (or lack of them), land, fauna and flora. - Many species can learn cultural information, but the nonhuman Ecology → Culture → Socialization → species are not very good at it. Personality → Behavior - Humans frequently learn new information from each other, and MODULE 2: THE BIOLOGICAL, often with only a single exposure. SOCIAL, AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ORIGINS OF CULTURE Cultural Learning: Biases in Imitation Heine, S. (2020). “Culture and Human Humans are quite particular about the Nature” (pp. 35 - 69) individuals they decide to learn from. Is Culture Unique to Humans? Different Kinds of Learning Biases that Guide People in Choosing Which Models “Culture refers to some kind of symbolic to Imitate: coding —- having a set of signals, icons, and words that indicate something else 1. Prestige Bias most members of that culture recognize.” - Humans want to know who - If we accept this definition, then has prestige—that is, those YES, humans are the only species who have skills and are having culture, because no other respected by others—and species appears to have symbolic they try to imitate what those coding. individuals are doing. - This is defining culture in terms of - Individuals are more likely to what is uniquely human and learn successfully if they concluding that culture is therefore target those people who are unique to humans. especially talented. “Culture is an information acquired through A general imitating mechanism attracts us social learning from members of one’s own to prestigious individuals, whom we observe species.” and try to imitate, regardless of what they are doing. Side Effects of Prestige Bias: - The most useful behaviors should 1. Humans tend to be fascinated with ultimately be copied by the most famous people and want to know people; in other words, if an idea is everything about them. any good, it will likely be picked up 2. People sometimes imitate a by more people. celebrity’s destructive habits. Cultural Learning: Cognitive 2. Similarity Bias Foundations - Humans are choosing whom to imitate, and learn from, Three Key Cognitive Capacities of based on the target’s Cultural Learning: similarity to themselves. - Individuals will focus on 1. Mentalizing and people who are most similar Perspective-Taking to them because those - When people learn from people are more likely to others, they can take on the occupy roles that the perspectives of others by individuals will also occupy considering their intentions, someday. goals, preferences, and - People thus seem to be strategies. especially attentive to those Mentalizing who share their - Interest in the mental states of backgrounds, and they others. appear to learn better from - Evident in infants and appears to them, too. develop at a fairly similar rate across very diverse cultures. This learning bias reveals another key - It is a necessary human capacity. aspect of the motivation imitation: - Copying another’s actions serves to Imitative Learning demonstrate your group identity and - The learner internalizes some of the affiliation. model’s goals and behavioral - Copying similar others indicates that strategies. you are part of a shared group. - The learner is copying precisely what he or she thinks the model is 3. Conformist Transmission trying to do - This is the tendency for - Can be the sincerest form of flattery. people to learn from people who are engaging in Emulative Learning behaviors that are more - The learner focuses on the common compared with environmental events involved, such others. as how the use of one object could potentially cause changes in the The logic behind this learning bias: state of the environment.  - Emulative learning does not require - Sharing experiences and imitating a model’s behavioral goals is essential in cultural strategies. learning. - Focusing only on the events that - Human motivation to share happen around the model, rather experiences by the tendency than what the model intends to of people to take turns in accomplish. conversations, to gaze into - Can be a very clever and creative each other’s eyes, to form of learning. The individual has exchange emotions, and to to use creative insight and jointly pay attention to the problem-solving skills to imagine same things (such as solving how an object could be used in a a jigsaw puzzle together). new way. - Sharing experiences and A drawback of Emulative Learning: goals allows humans to - Although it is productive and more engage in collaborative successful for solving problems than learning. imitative learning, it does not allow Shared experiences allow these to happen: for cultural information to 1. Collaboration is when people work accumulate. together, exchange ideas, and coordinate their behavior by 2. Language following shared norms—all of this - It allows ideas to be can lead to the creation of new communicated without ideas. having to be visually 2. Instructed learning, in which the demonstrated. model can direct the actions of - It is integral to human cultural learners to guide them toward a learning as it allows people desired behavior. to convey their beliefs, intentions, and complex Cumulative Cultural Evolution thoughts, facilitating the coordination of behavior Ratchet Effect among individuals living in - Cultural information grows in groups. complexity, and often in usefulness - Cultural ideas are most over time. successfully transmitted - Cultural information can continue to through language. build without losing the earlier - Humans have far more information. sophisticated ways of communicating their ideas Cumulative Cultural Information than any other primate - Requires creative invention species. - Requires reliable and faithful social transmission. 3. Sharing Experiences and Goals - Requires precise imitative learning and sophisticated communication. Accumulated cultural weight predicted for a comparable information/innovations: animal of the same body size. - Allows us humans to become a - It is the largest encephalization species that does not need to evolve quotient of any mammal. a new genetic solution for each problem we encounter. “A large brain requires an enormous amount - Allows us to invent, adapt, and of energy to function. It consumes about modify a certain kind of cultural 16% of your total metabolic energy.” idea/information. Humans vs. Chimpanzees Reasons for Cultural Accumulation: “Cooking allowed humans to have a larger 1. Population Size and and smarter brain.” Interconnection - It is a cultural invention that is partly - People continue to grow in responsible for our biological nature. number and become more interconnected which makes Gene-culture Coevolution it easy for cultural - The interaction of culture and genes accumulation to increase. - Cooking—- which is a part of our - The bigger the group of culture contributed to the evolution people, the better the cultural of our genes information can be - This is a key factor that distinguishes maintained and improved human evolution from the evolution upon. of other species. - Bigger groups can also lead to faster cultural evolution. “Other species face challenges from their environment with only genetically evolved 2. Humans Live in Cultural Worlds traits and abilities to help them. Humans, on - Cultural worlds are worlds the other hand, face their challenges that contain ideas that have equipped with both genetically evolved accumulated over time. capabilities and culturally acquired ones.” - Culture is everywhere, and it greatly influences the way we The Evolutionary Advantage of a Large all live our lives. Brain How Humans Became Good Cultural Social Brain Hypothesis (Dunbar, 1998) Learners - To function well in a highly social community, one must be able to You and Your Big Brain out-maneuver others, which requires attending to a highly complex series “Our brain size is approximately 4.6.” of relationships. - Determined by the encephalization - The great cognitive demands quotient—-the ratio of the brain inherent in social living led to the weight of an animal to the brain evolution of large primate brains. “In support of the Social Brain Hypothesis, the comparison of the neocortex ratio of the primates was done (the volume of the neocortex ratio to the volume of the rest of the brain).” Neocortex Ratio - The outermost layer of the brain that governs higher functions, such as sensory perception, motor control, and conscious thought. - It also has been used as a proxy measure of intelligence, because the most notable way primate brains differ from those of other mammals is that the primate neocortex is larger. “The research showed that the species of primates that are living in a larger social group tended to have larger neocortex ratios.” “Why is group living would be so beneficial to primates?” The Social Brain Hypothesis does not explain this. - One reason for this is that living with many others may have allowed more opportunities for social learning. - Social living provides more social learning opportunities for the primates. Learning from others was key to driving the evolution of the large primate brain. Human Brains Learn from Each Other “What adaptive benefits did humans derive from evolving such costly large brains?” - Though having larger brains than other primates, humans don’t seem to have an overwhelming intellectual advantage over other primates.