Cultural Psych
Terms
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- The Psychic Unity Assumption
- All human minds function in fundamentally the same way. Invariability v. Context-independence. Fundamental v. Superficial. REJECTED by cultural psychology.
- Claims of Cultural Psychology
- Cultural traditions mold and shape human psyche. Many fundamental psych processes are products of culture and upbringing. Wants to document ways in which culture molds perception and emotion., and to discover universals.
- Necessary Universals
- Processes that people share as a part of human nature, inevitable non-changeable (malleable), cultural psych SHUNS these.
- Contingent Universals
- Processes everyone shares because every single culture has it in common, malleable or learned, cultural psych EMBRACES these.
- Evolutionary and Anthropological Relations
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Cultural variation is noise, biological relations.
Psychic unity, cultural variation is evidence for unity.
- Material Culture
- Agriculture, foraging, pastoralism.
- Subjective Culture
- Ideas, concepts, folk tales, stories passed down. Feels like common sense to those who live it. Collective D and social M representations. Shared knowledge, external to people's minds. Mind and culture mutually influence one another.
- Primitivism v. Advancement (19th Century)
- Darwin's progression towards perfection. Ranking of developmental stage. Europeans were closest to perfection, justified subjugation.
- Ecological View
- Culture is a unique, adaptive response to the environment, internal structure.
- Memes
- Cultural equivalent of genes, useful ones thrive, useless ones dwindle.
- Evolutionary v. Cultural
- Memes are naturally selected, and evolve to solve evolutionary problems v. memes are socially selected, natural selection gave us the capacity to form social culture
- Coordination Problems
- Rational people making choices in isolation cannot optimize. Coming together is key.
- Epistemic Security
- People have the basic need to think that the world is predictable, and every question has an answer. Culture is a quick answer.
- Culture gives us...
- Life meaning. We all have a need to belong somewhere, gives us a place to belong.
- Capacity to Form Cultures (3)
- Imitative ability, theory of mind, and language.
- Social Brain Hypothesis
- Social living demands us to have larger brains for our social world.
- Psychological Definition of Values
- To specify which outcomes are desirable or appropriate in a culture. General, not specific, widely shared in a culture, helps establish norms in that culture.
- Individualism
- Person sees self as separate, own needs over other's needs, self-reliant.
- Collectivism
- Person sees self as a member of a group, group needs over own needs, cooperation and equality.
- Power distance, high and low
- High hierarchies in organization, ideal boss is benevolent, children expect parents to be authoritative. Low power should be even, ideal boss is resourceful and democratic, parents and teachers treat children as equals.
- Individualist Behavior
- Out group perceived as homogenous, in group as diverse, rewards based on individual input, motivated by individual feedback.
- Collectivistic Behavior
- Out group is diverse, in group is homogenous, rewards based on group effort, motivated by group feedback.
- Bad Stereotyping
- Assumes homogeneity, makes that group inferior, takes an essentialist view.
- Good Stereotyping
- Assumes heterogeneity, asserts pluralism, or sees group as equal, assumes that cultural attributes are changeable.
- Idiocentrism v. Allocentrism
- Individual level of I v. C. All cultures have both versions of these people.
- Vertical and Horizontal Individualism
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V is competition is the law of mankind, winning is everything.
H is often doing own think, unique individual.
- Vertical and Horizontal Collectivism
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V is children should be taught duty before pleasure, sacrifice for family, parents at home.
H is helping family if you can, maintain harmony is group, happiness depends on people around.
- Fiske's 4 Relational Schemas
- Communal sharing- equally share with community and people around you, Authority ranking- people are at different levels, things should be divided accordingly, Equality matching- relationships divided by even balance, equality is the goal, Market pricing-
- Etic Approach
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Phonetics- Study of human speech sounds and vocal apparatus.
Study of value dimensions along which all cultures can be placed.
- Emic Approach
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Phonemics- Study of sound in a language.
Study of a culture's values using constructs specific and indigenous to that culture.
- Self Construal Theory
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Independent self- Self is fundamentally separate, bounded, distinctive, autonomous, context-independent.
Interdependent self- Self is fundamentally connected to others, one is in position in a social network, context-dependent.
- Tripartite Model of Self
- The components, private, public and collective self.
- Twenty Statements Test
- Trait and relationally oriented answers.
- Autonomy and Uniqueness
- The ability to have choices, and to make your own choices.
- Face (East Asian)
- The amount of social value other give to you. Difficult to gain, but easy to lose.
- Emotion
- An event-specified feeling, associated with physiological changes in face and brian, expressive behavior, subjective experience.
- Basic Emotion Theory
- Some emotions are basic and innate, culture might shape some other ones. HSASDF.
- Schweder's 3 Moral Themes
- Community, autonomy, divinity.
- Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
- Language determines thought.
- Relativist Color Perception
- Languages either separate, or put together different things. If they are separate you don't see them as two anymore.
- Universalist Color Perception
- Physiology determines color experience, can label things differently, but see the color universally.
- Analytic v. Holistic Attention
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Analytic focuses more on the narrow scope, holistic on the broader.
Little details v. Big picture.
- Hallmarks of Implicit Theories
- Implicit, dynamic and domain specific.
- Types of Physical Causes
- Internal, discrete properties, and relational, field forces.
- Implicit Theory of Personality
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Entity- People are unchangeable entities, personalities are set in stone.
Incremental- People can change, personalities are malleable.
- Law of Category Coverage
- Requires that we generate a mental category to encompass all the objects in question.