influence 3
Exploring a key concept in global psychology
What this chapter will teach you
• What is culture?
• What’s the difference between culture, nation, ethnicity and race?
• How is culture transmitted?
• What is the validity of analysing behaviour at the cultural level?
• What is the ecological fallacy and how can we minimise it?
What do we talk about when we talk about culture?
Culture: the people around us and the things emanating from them (encompassing objects, institutions, beliefs, opinions, customs, norms of behaviour)
(Segall et al., 1990)
Along with mind, normality and consciousness, culture is one of the most disputed words in your psychology dictionary. Indeed, it hardly seems appropriate that words like these find themselves into dictionar- ies at all, since such volumes are meant to offer definitive meanings.
The truth is that culture has no single agreed definition. Segall et al. are neither the first nor the last to attempt to coin a workable definition.
We’ll look at several others presently.
First though, rather than striving for a once-and-for-all definition, to help gain a broader understanding of culture, let us look at how the word is used in everyday discourse (Eagleton, 2000; Matsumoto &
Juang, 2004). As Figure 3.1 shows, it comes up in conversation under various guises. Entry 1 certainly overlaps with Segall et al.’s definition.
Seeing culture as art means recognising it as a creative force ‘emanat- ing from people around us’. Yet entry 3 has most in common with Segall et al.’s idea. To speak about culture as a distinct way of life refers to those aspects of the human-made part of our environment (norms, traditions, architecture, art (Herskovits, 1948)) that distinguish one social group from another. Whatever culture is, then, it is certainly what renders one group different from others.
Short of striving for a once-and-for-all definition of culture, Berry et al. (2002) aid our understanding of the term by arguing that it is an idea that seeps into six areas of our lives. For them, when I talk about my culture I speak of my social group’s:
• History and traditions – Mid-winter celebrations are a tradition in my culture
• Conventions and norms – It’s conventional here to kiss both cheeks when greeting
• Activities and behaviours – Music, dancing and sport are some of our favourite pastimes
1 Culture as art. Culture can refer to those activities one might take part in (theatre, reading, opera) in the interests of self-improvement.
2 Culture as cultivation. As a verb with biological connotations, culture (derived from cultivation) is used to describe a process by which organisms, for example pearls, are grown (cultured) under laboratory conditions.
3 Culture as a distinct way of life. Culture is used as a noun to refer to a unique way of living (involving attitudes, norms, behaviours, traditions) shared by a social group with a particular origin or shared interest, distinct from that of other social groups, often associated with a particular location. We may, for instance, talk about ‘Western culture’, ‘Japanese culture’ or ‘the drug culture’.
Figure 3.1 Everyday ways of talking about ‘culture’
• Institutions and organisational infrastructure – The separation of Church and state is part of our culture
• Biological ancestry – Our ancestry dates back centuries
• Psychological characteristics – Modesty, pride and co-operation are part of our mentality.
It is interesting to note how these six contexts for culture encompass elements of both ethnicity (shared identity) and race (biological ances- try), as they are described in Table 3.1. This highlights the overlapping nature of all these concepts. Part of the reason why it is so hard to see where culture ends and nation and ethnicity begin is that these labels refer to phenomena that are partly intangible and unobservable, such as ‘feelings of belonging’ or ‘the psychological dispositions of different groups’. Triandis (2002) acknowledges this when distinguishing between material and subjective aspects of culture. The former refers to the visible, shared characteristics of my group: how we dress, our defining technologies, our favourite cuisine. Subjective culture encompasses the invisible yet influential ideas and values that my social group deems sufficiently valuable to pass on to future gener- ations (through a process known as cultural transmission). These may include moral codes, religious doctrines and social etiquette. Accord- ing to this formulation, when most people in a social group (from a
TABLE 3.1
My culture, my nation, my ethnicity, my race
My culture My nation My ethnicity My race
How my social group is distinctive in terms of its values, institutions, norms and
behaviours (Segall et al., 1990), as well as the shared meaning it attaches to events (Rohner, 1984). My culture can be changed by acculturation – a process whereby a member of one cultural group is integrated into another (Marshall, 1998).
My status as a citizen of a sovereign nation state, with precise geographical boundaries that are internationally recognised, if subject to change. The equation between my culture and my nation is unreliable, as within nations many cultural groups coexist.
My sense of belonging to my social group. We are bound together by a shared history, language, place of origin. My ethnicity reveals the subjective experience of feeling different from people from other groups.
Within nations, numerous ethnic groups coexist, such as Latinos or Native Americans in the US (Matsumoto &
Juang, 2004), Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda (Reader, 1998).
How groups with distinct ancestries differ from each other, often in terms of appearance, usually their skin colour.
Unlike culture, nation or ethnicity, race is generally seen as being permanent and inflexible, if relatively insignificant in terms of genetic underpinning (Gould, 1981;
Fernando, 2002).
particular region or time period) share these material and subjective elements, we have what is known as a cultural group, or culture. Such a group may or may not also share a national identity (Japanese culture), an ethnic identity (Latino culture) or even a particular occupa- tion or interest (student culture, drug culture, counter-culture).
Lines denoting the limits of one culture and the beginning of another are invisible to the naked eye. They are not plotted on maps, like national boundaries. Furthermore, the precise meaning of culture is arguably more difficult to arrive at than is a definition of a nation. We can, though, agree that ‘culture’ is a term that distinguishes between groups of people. Yet there are other terms that perform a similar func- tion. ‘Nation’, ‘ethnicity’ and ‘race’ are all labels that divide us into groups. This can be a little confusing, since such labels are frequently used interchangeably (Matsumoto & Juang, 2004). Nevertheless, as Table 3.1 shows, several writers have argued that when I use phrases like ‘my nation’, ‘my culture’, ‘my ethnicity’ and ‘my race’, I am emphasising meaningfully distinct aspects of my identity. While there is a degree of overlap between these four labels, they all refer to a differ- ent piece of me.
As a conceptual tool for distinguishing between groups, culture is a Swiss Army knife of a concept. It is multi-functional. At a simple level it serves as a means of describing and categorising people. At a more complex level it is used to explain (cultural) vari- ations in behaviours in different places (Matsumoto & Juang, 2004). Just as the use of culture as a descriptive and explanatory device in psychology has a long tradition, so does the race to find a satisfactory definition of the word itself.
Let us now see how some of these attempts have changed over the years.
The race to define culture
In a painstaking literature review, Soudijn et al. (1990) found 128 differ- ent definitions of culture. As the key concept shows, successive def- initions down the years have grown more sophisticated – and longer.
Inevitably, some of these definitions reflect various authors’ theoretical interpretations, with a number emphasising material aspects, and others more intangible, subjective ones. Rohner (1984) can be counted among the latter. For Rohner culture amounts to shared meanings and