culture & psychology

8/10/2019 Culture & Psychology

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© 2013 Cengage Learning



Outline

Culture as Cognition

Culture, Attention, Sensation, and Perception

Perception and Physical Reality

Cultural Influences on Visual Perception

Attention

Culture and Thinking

Culture and Categorization Culture and Memory

Culture and Math Abilities



Outline (cont’d.)

Culture and Thinking (cont’d.)

Culture and Problem Solving

Culture and Creativity

Culture and Dialectical Thinking Culture, Regrets, and Counterfactual Thinking

Summary

Culture and Consciousness

Culture and Dreams

Culture and Time

Culture and the Perception of Pain



Outline (cont’d.)

Culture and Intelligence

Traditional Definitions of Intelligence and its

Measurement

The Concept of Intelligence in Other Cultures Recent Developments in Theories about Intelligence

in Contemporary Psychology

Conclusion



CULTURE AS COGNITION



Culture as Cognition

Psychologists view culture as cognition

Culture is viewed as set of mental

representations about world

Norms, opinions, beliefs, values, and worldviewsare all cognitive products

Knowledge system—culture—created to solve

complex problems of living and social life Humans have certain cognitive skills other

animals do not, allowing for culture



CULTURE, ATTENTION,

SENSATION, AND PERCEPTION



Perception and Physical Reality

People’s perceptions of world do not necessarily

match physical realities of world

Once we begin to question our own senses, we

want to know their limits: Do experiences and beliefs influence perception?

Do other people perceive things as we do?

What aspects of others experiences and backgrounds

explain differences in perception?

How does culture influence this process?



Cultural Influences on

Visual Perception

Optical illusions: perceptive discrepancy

between how object looks and what it actually is

Carpentered world theory: unconscious

expectation that objects have squared corners Front-horizontal foreshortening theory:

interpretation of vertical lines as horizontal lines

Symbolizing three dimensions in two theory:Westerners experienced in interpreting pictures

People of different cultures may be differently

motivated to perceive certain types of objects



Attention

Culture influences what we attend to

Masuda studies:

Americans and Japanese differ in attention to

background objects and individuals vs. groups Cultural differences in environment affords cultural

differences in perception and attention

Holistic vs. analytic perception

Westerners use analytic perceptual processes by focusingon salient object independent of context in which it is

embedded

East Asians engage in context-dependent and holistic

perceptual processes by focusing on object within context



CULTURE AND THINKING



Culture and Categorization

People categorize on basis of similarities and

attach labels to groups of common objects

Creating mental categories helps sort out

complex stimuli Some categories are universal across cultures

Way in which people categorize things may be

culturally variable Sorting tasks: common way to study cultural

differences in categorization



Culture and Memory

Differences in memory as a function of oral

tradition may be limited to meaningful material

Serial position effect: first or last item in list are

easiest to remember Memory constants across cultures: age,

hindsight bias, collective remembering of past

Cultural differences in episodic memory are dueto differences in self-construals, emotion

knowledge, and interpersonal processes



Culture and Math Abilities

Math is universal human psychological process

National differences in math abilities and

achievements exist

Mapping of numbers onto space is universal

Gender stratification hypothesis: gender

differences related to cultural variations in

opportunity structures for girls and women Even without formal educational systems,

members of all cultures learn math skills



Culture and Problem Solving

Problem solving: process of discovering ways of

achieving goals not readily attainable

Psychologists isolate process of problem solving

by asking people from different cultures to solveunfamiliar problems in artificial settings

Luna (1976): hypothesized logical reasoning is

artificial; taught in Westernized schools

Illiterate people may not understand hypothetical

nature of verbal problems or view them with

same degree of importance



Culture and Creativity

Creativity depends on divergent rather than

convergent thinking

Constant across cultures:

Creative individuals have high capacity for hard work,willingness to take risks, high tolerance for ambiguity

and disorder

Differences amongst cultures:

High on uncertainty avoidance: work within norms

Higher on power distance: gain support

Collectivistic countries: seek cross-functional support



Culture and Dialectical Thinking

Dialectical thinking: tendency to accept what

seems to be contradictions in thought or beliefs

Positive logical determinism: contradictions are

mutually exclusive categories East Asians prefer dialectical thinking whereas

Americans prefer logical deterministic thinking

Naïve dialecticism: belief that truth is alwayssomewhere in the middle

Westerners believe something cannot be both

truth and false at same time



Culture, Regrets, and

Counterfactual Thinking

Counterfactual thinking: hypothetical beliefs

about past that could have occurred to avoid or

change a negative outcome

Regrets related to thoughts of inaction are moreprevalent than regrets related to action

Degree to which people experience regret over

inaction than over action was comparable

across all cultures



CULTURE AND

CONSCIOUSNESS



Culture and Dreams

Differences in dream content amongst cultures:

Palestinian children from Gaza incorporated more

external scenes of anxiety in dreams

Finnish children had more "inner" anxiety scenes indreams

Role of dreams differs amongst cultures:

Dream sharing and interpretation common among

Mayans American culture does not place much emphasis on

importance of dreams as symbol of individual and

social concerns



Culture and Time

People of different cultures experience time

differently

Long- versus short-term orientation is cultural

dimension that differentiates among cultures Pace of life correlated with ecological and

cultural variables

Most cultures represent time spatially from left toright or right to left, or from front to back or back

to front, with respect to body



Culture and the Perception of Pain

Culture influences experience and perception of

pain in several ways:

Cultural construction of pain sensation

Semiotics of pain expression Structure of pain's causes and cures

Cultural display rules govern expression,

perception, and feeling of pain

Tolerance of pain may be rooted in cultural

values



CULTURE AND INTELLIGENCE



Traditional Definitions of Intelligence

and its Measurement

Intelligence: conglomeration of many intellectual

abilities centering on verbal and analytic tasks

Intelligence tests rely on verbal performance and

cultural knowledge, thus immigrants are atdisadvantage

Do cross-cultural differences in intelligence

reflect biological or cultural differences?



The Concept of Intelligence

in Other Cultures

Many languages have no word that corresponds

to our idea of intelligence

Because of enormous differences in definition of

intelligence, it is difficult to make validcomparisons from one society to another

Tests of intelligence often rely on knowledge

specific to particular culture

Recent Developments in



Recent Developments in

Theories about Intelligence in

Contemporary Psychology

Gardner (1983), seven types of intelligence:

Logical mathematical, linguistic, musical, spatial,

bodily kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal

Sternberg (1986), three "subtheories“ ofintelligence:

Contextual, experiential, and componential

intelligence

Collective intelligence:

Strongly correlated with average social sensitivity,

equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking,

and proportion of females in group



Conclusion

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