Culture

Friday’s Lecture is Pre-recorded

• I will be attending the UTSC Convocation Ceremony at 9:30 because:

• One of your fellow students, Jennifer Khoury, is AMAZING!!

• Lecture will be shown in AC223 as a video at normal time and posted online

• I will be holding extra office hours in the chairs closest to Tim Hortons in the Meeting Place from 5 - 6 pm this Friday evening to answer last-minute exam questions

Lecture Overview

• Defining Culture

• Studying Culture

• Describing Cultures

• Social Psychology of Culture

• Moving Between Cultures

Defining Culture

• What is Culture?

• Why should we care?

What is Culture?

• An ever-changing11, constructive22 stimulus which shapes33 the way individuals perceive and contribute to the world

1.Dynamic

2.Influenced by members of the culture

3.Influences members of the culture

What is Culture?

• Nationality

• The country you were born in

• Ethnicity

• Your cultural heritage

• Identification

• Shared identity of group members

What is Culture?

• Meaning System

• Symbols, language, experiences

• Metaphysics

• Beliefs about the world, universe, & existence

Studying Culture

• 2 Primary Methodological Orientations

• Typical Methods

• Methodological Concerns

Methodological Orientations

• Culture-comparative

• Cross-cultural

Culture Comparative

• Universalist approach to cultural psychology that assumes basic psychological processes are fundamental to all humans

• Most common approach in cultural psych

• Think between-culture variation is comparable to within-culture variation

Cross-Cultural

• Relativist approach to cultural psychology that assumes that human behaviour is essentially cultural

• Psychological processes are defined by the cultural context in which they occur

• Focus on within-culture variation

• Usually only discuss between-culture differences qualitatively

Typical Methods

• Culture-comparative psychologists

1. Identify a construct (e.g., individualism) that might vary by culture

2.Test the construct in more than one culture

• Cross-cultural

1.Choose a culture

2.Study and identify psychological processes of people in that culture (e.g., Heuristics, Persuasion)

Describing Cultures

• Individualism/Collectivism

• Political climate

• Religious Beliefs

• Ecological Differences

Individualist Cultures

• Emphasize personal achievement, even at the expense of others

• Greater emphasis on competition

• E.g., Canada, Western Europe

Collectivist Cultures

• Emphasize social roles and collective responsibilities, even at the expense of the individual

• Greater emphasis on co-operation

• E.g., China, Korea, Latin America

Political Climate

• Political structure greatly constrains behaviour and cultural expression

• Sometimes government change can extinguish a culture

Religious Beliefs

• Dominant religious beliefs characterize a culture’s moral reasoning and motivations

• Religion also affects social roles and norms

Ecological Differences

• Environmental context shapes the development and focus of a culture

How Does Culture Affect Us?

• Cognition/Perception

• Cognitive Mechanisms

• Cognitive Framing

• Dialectical vs. Linear Reasoning

• Affect

• Emotional Complexity

• Behaviour

• Social Roles & Norms

Cognitive Mechanisms

• How do we think?

• The western assumption that talking is connected to thinking is not shared in the east

Do We All Think In Words?

• Kim (2002)

• Method:

• East Asian-American and European-American Ps

• While solving a cognitive task:

• Thinking Aloud: Verbalize your thought process, or

• Articulatory Suppression: Say alphabet aloud

Do We All Think In Words?

• Kim (2002)

• Results:

Cognitive Framing

• The perceptual framework through which you view the world

• Affects the attributions made for events

Cognitive Framing

• Cultural Primes (Hong, Chiu, Kung, 1997)

• Priming someone with a familiar icon of their culture will temporarily increase their identification with that culture

• Prime Chinese participants with Chinese icons (100 ms) versus Western icons

• Observe greater endorsement of traditional Chinese values after Chinese cultural primes

Dialectical Thinking

• A cognitive reasoning structure through which an individual interprets the environment

• 3 principles:

• Change: Everything is in flux / constantly changing

• Contradiction: Opposing propositions may both be true

• Wholism: Everything is interrelated/interdependent

Dialectical Thinking

• Peng & Nisbett (1999)

• Method:

• Compare proverbs from China and US

• Look at degree of linearity or dialecticism in proverb:

• Eg., Linear: “For example is no proof”

• Dialectical: “Beware of your friends, not your enemies”

Dialectical Thinking

• Peng & Nisbett (1999)

• Results:

• Chinese had four times as many dialectical proverbs as Americans

• Preferences:

• Americans preferred linear to dialectical American proverbs

• Chinese preferred dialectical to linear Chinese proverbs

• Chinese also preferred dialectical to linear Yiddish proverbs

Emotional Complexity

• The experience of many emotions at the same time, especially if those emotions are a mixture of positive and negative feelings

Emotional Complexity & Culture

• Correlations between positive & negative emotions (Schimmack, Oishi, & Diener, 2002)

• In US → Negative correlation

• E.g., If you feel happy, then you feel less sad

• In East Asians → No correlation

• E.g., Your level of sadness is unrelated to your level of happiness

• Chinese & Koreans have a positive correlation between positive & negative emotional intensity (Bagozzi, et. al., 1999)

Social Norms & Social Roles

• Social norms are completely relative to cultural context

• Punishment for violation of social norms varies by culture, too

• Importance of Social Roles varies by culture

• East Asians list significantly more social roles in Twenty Statements Test

Moving Between Cultures

• Acculturation

• Assimilation

• Bicultural Identity Integration

Acculturation

• Successful integration of the heritage of two cultures

• Adoption of new culture through incorporating value systems of both new and original cultures

Assimilation

• Complete adoption of a new culture

• Adoption of a new culture and simultaneous rejection of original culture

Bicultural Identity Integration (BII)

• Degree to which two cultural identities are integrated into a super-ordinate bicultural identity

• 2 Key Components:

• Perceived Harmony vs. Conflict

• Perceived Similarity vs. Distance

BII & Frame Switching

• Benet-Martínez, Leu, Lee, & Morris (2002)

• Method:

• Bring Chinese-Americans Biculturals into the lab

• Measure BII

• Prime them with either Chinese or US cultural primes

• Measure attributions on fish image task

BII & Frame Switching

• Benet-Martínez, Leu, Lee, & Morris (2002)

• Results: Internal and External Attributions by Prime

High BII

Low BII

Example Exam Question

• Compared to a Dialectical Thinker, a linear thinker:

A.Believes that life is full of paradox

B.Views many issues as being explained by a super-ordinate concept

C.Likes contradictory proverbs

D.Thinks that nothing stays the same

E.Perceives the causes of events as stable

Example Exam Question

• Compared to a Dialectical Thinker, a linear thinker:

A.Believes that life is full of paradox

B.Views many issues as being explained by a super-ordinate concept

C.Likes contradictory proverbs

D.Thinks that nothing stays the same

E.E.Perceives the causes of events as Perceives the causes of events as stablestable

“When in Rome, Do As The Romans Do”

• Next Lecture:

• Social Power and Hierarchy

• Related Websites:

• Canadian Culture on Wikipedia:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_Canada

• Words Without Borders:

• http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/

• Where is the BlogFather?

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hossein_Derakhshan