With detailed classroom activities and helpful pedagogical features, this detailed yet accessible book gives introductory psychology students access to a concise overview of key research, issues, controversies, and diverse approaches in the field of culture and psychology. 27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex, BN3 2FA Published simultaneously in the USA and Canada by Routledge.
Series preface
Preface
In the field of global psychology, researchers have approached these major psychological topics from different perspectives, and in the following pages you will find contributions from different global perspectives. The strength of the debate around these topics will serve to illustrate that there remain many questions to be answered in the global arena, such as the following.
Concepts and controversies
Searching for
What this chapter will teach you
Cultural universals are aspects of behavior and experience that are common to all cultural settings. A branch of global psychology that compares the behavior and experience of people from different cultures to understand the degree to which culture influences psychological functioning.
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 1
These assumptions support an approach to global research known as cross-cultural psychology: a branch of global psychology that compares the behavior and experiences of people from different cultures in order to understand the extent to which culture influences psychological functioning. Central to cross-cultural psychology in the search for cultural universals is the assumption of psychic unity (Shweder, 1991).
KEY CONCEPT
Cultural equivalence: a typical cross-cultural research scenario
But this small selection suggests the diversity of findings from replication research in the search for universals of human behavior. Ekman et al.'s view that some basic emotions are expressed in the same way in all cultures is a good example of this.
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 2
These studies are just a drop in the ocean of evidence that has emerged from cross-cultural replication research. Evaluation Type 1: Within Cross-Cultural Psychology Universal phenomena are out there, but replication research has consistently failed to uncover them.
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 3
Should cross-cultural psychology continue its search for the holy grail of psychic unity, refining its methods until it finally succeeds in establishing cultural equivalence. Alongside such theoretical concerns, this chapter presents a broad overview and evaluation of the preferred research method in cross-cultural psychology – replication research.
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 4
FURTHER READING
It also indicates the early exchanges between the thinkers who argued for the universal constancy of the human mind (universalists) and those who emphasized the unique manifestation of the mind in diverse cultures (relativists). Dégérando's field manuals are probably the most lasting outcome of the work of the Société des Observateurs.
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 5
After the Baudin expedition and the demise of the Société des Observateurs, intercultural research as a serious endeavor lost its way for a while. It sought knowledge about the language, society, folklore and cognitive skills of the Torres Straits islanders, who were threatened by colonial expansionism at the time (Hart, 1998).
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 6
The early part of the twentieth century gave rise to some similar studies of rivers; cross-cultural empirical comparisons of the sensory abilities of Europeans and non-Europeans (Bruner, 1908; Woodworth, 1910; Oliver, 1932; Thouless, 1933; Beveridge, 1935). The contribution of the early twentieth century school of thought known as psychological anthropology is a key concept.
KEY CONCEPT Psychological anthropology
The most well-trodden of these paths led to the emergence of cross-cultural psychology (see Chapter 1). The publication of books and articles written from an intercultural point of view grew significantly in the 1960s and 1970s.
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 7
For cultural psychologists, culture's role in human development (throughout history and throughout the life cycle) is even more prominent than it is for cross-cultural psychologists (Berry et al., 2002). To be more up-to-date, this chapter also outlines the development of contemporary approaches to cultural issues in psychology, including the distinction between cross-cultural psychology (see Chapter 1) and cultural psychology (see Chapter 5).
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 8
The Place of the 1898 Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Strait (CAETS) in the History of British Social Anthropology, lecture at the opening session of a conference at St John's College, Cambridge, United Kingdom, "Anthropology and Psychology: A History of Cross-Cultural Psychology and Cultural Psychology. 1997) in Berry , J., Poortinga, Y. eds.), Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology.
Culture and its
To speak of culture as a particular 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. Nevertheless, as Table 3.1 shows, several writers have argued that when I use phrases such as 'my nation', 'my culture', 'my ethnicity' and 'my race', I emphasize meaningfully different aspects of my identity.
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 9
As the key concept shows, successive definitions have become more sophisticated – and longer – over the years. Rohner's definition is called a relational definition because it emphasizes the shared spaces between people, rather than their material actions or products (Smith et al., 2006).
Defining culture down the years
Similarly, the idea of culture provides a useful, probabilistic guide to how we operate on the playing field of life. However, not only are cultures created by group members, they are perpetuated by a transmission process that ensures their survival (see definitions by Kroeber & Kluckholn; . Rohner; Matsumoto & Juang).
KEY CONCEPT Characteristics of culture
It is generally accepted that in the case of certain biological predispositions to act (known as instincts), even though they are present at birth, their expression in behavior depends on conditions prevailing to a greater or lesser extent there in the world ( known as indirect variables). The same applies to ideas, norms and behaviors that are created and maintained by people.
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 10
Global, and especially cross-cultural (see Chapter 1), psychology often operates at the cultural level of analysis. The assumption that findings demonstrated at the cultural level of analysis will be replicated within cultural groups.
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 11
After discussing the concept of culture itself at length in this chapter, we now turn to this complex issue of ethnocentrism (cultural bias). Segall et al.'s "eco-cultural" theory of cultural and biological inheritance is discussed. (1990), which places the influence of culture in an evolutionary context.
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 12
Is psychology
You might call this a sampling error (an error that involves taking results from a limited sample of participants and misapplying them to the population as a whole) that compromises psychology's claim to be the study of all human behavior and experience, everywhere that can happen. So the production of the printed word of psychology (books and journal articles) is over-concentrated in the 'west'.
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 13
It is estimated that approximately 40% of the world's approximately 1 million psychologists practice in the USA (Hogan, 1995; Pawlik & Rosenzweig, 2000) and that as many as 64% of psychological researchers working worldwide are North American (Rozensweig, 1999). There are approximately 290,000 trained psychologists in Western Europe, compared to 277,000 working in the USA (Tikkanen, 2004).
Two concepts borrowed from linguistics
Ethical research aims to highlight universals of human behavior and experience, just as phoneticians strive for linguistic universals. Meanwhile, emic research aims to highlight the distinctiveness of human behavior and experience as it manifests itself in different cultural settings.
Etic and emic approaches to global research
Behavior in the field can initially be seen through the eyes of an outsider, using an outsider's tools and devices for analysis. In fact, the research Undoubtedly the most enjoyable holidays are those where we allow ourselves to openly respond to unfamiliar places by fully participating in the ways and manners of diverse cultures (eating durian fruit in Malaysia, dancing the polka in Hungary).
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 14
Although adapting concepts and methods to new cultural settings is a useful strategy to reduce ethnocentrism, the etic-emic model does have its limitations. The imposition of concepts and methods from the researcher's own cultural environment in the cross-cultural field of study.
Three steps from imposed etic to derived etic
Perhaps global psychology's strongest defense against charges of ethnocentrism is that psychologists from all over the world are involved in the research process. Such indigeneity in response to local conditions is a recurring theme in the indigenous psychology movement (Sinha, 1997).
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 15
This combination of third-person objectivity and first-person insight arguably adds scientific rigor to the enterprise of global psychology (Stevens & Gielen, 2007): rigor that would likely elude cross-cultural psychologists and indigenous psychologists working exclusively with each other . The distinction between 'etic' and 'emic' research is identified and explored; the latter is widely seen as an attempt to challenge perceived ethnocentric tendencies of the “imposed etic” that is sometimes seen as characteristic of mainstream cross-cultural psychology.
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 16
Challenging
It is true that cross-cultural psychology has a coherent position in these debates, and many agree with them (see Chapter 1). After some jockeying for positions, you'll soon see mostly cross-cultural psychologists congregating on the left, while the right end of the line will be populated by cultural psychology advocates.
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 17
A key idea in cultural psychology is the portrayal of the relationship between cultures and minds, which are seen as inseparable (Cole, 1998; Shweder, 1991). Indeed, in cultural psychology there is no such thing as a neutral and objective observation of events.
Contexts for human behaviour (Brunswik, 1943)
It therefore seems logical that 'situating' research in a participant's life space is a defining methodological feature of cultural psychology. This non-comparative tendency reflects the common methodological roots of cultural psychology and cultural anthropology, where ethnographic methods are used to study single cultural groups broadly and longitudinally (see key term on next page).
Ethnography: research method and long-term commitment
They are shaped by the immediate surroundings of the participants, very much in the emic tradition (Stevens & Gielen, 2007). Here are some more research questions that have been addressed in the situated style of cultural psychology.
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 18
During his brief career, he was as critical of the state of Latin American psychology as he was of the military regimes that successively mismanaged his country. Martin-Baró's (albeit interrupted) project aimed to transform Latin American psychology into an independent discipline, indigenous to the region, based on the interests of the region's poor.
Conceptual cornerstones of the critical paradigm (based on Prilleltensky & Nelson, 2002)
Cases of scientific racism (see Chapter 2) provide several examples of the political misuse of psychological knowledge. Transformative inquiry is built on the four conceptual foundations of the critical paradigm (see key concept on p. 93).
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 19
Unless critical psychology can export its values and methods to areas such as North America (where poverty and inequality are also common), it may remain on the periphery of psychology. For now, we can see cultural and critical psychology, as well as the indigenous psychology movement (see Chapter 4), as valuable challenges to the dominant cross-cultural paradigm in global psychology.
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 20
Cultural issues
Culture, cognition
We will also learn that the complex issue of quantitative differences in intellect between cultures remains a contemporary concern. Rivers carried out pioneering field research on the Torres Strait expedition in 1889 (see Chapter 2 and Figure 2.4), and the influence of culture on perceptual habits was the foundation of cross-cultural psychology.
Nature, nurture, culture and visual perception
Participants who are sensitive to this illusion judge A to be longer, even though the lines are the same length. Participants who are sensitive to this illusion judge A to be longer, even though the lines are the same length.
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 21
Inhabitants of carpenter worlds are therefore likely to be more susceptible to the Sander parallelography illusion (below). First, the extra susceptibility of Westerners to the Sander parallelography supports the predictions of the carpenter's world hypothesis (see Figure 6.4).
KEY CONCEPT Depth cues
Another factor that has been associated with cultural differences in image perception in general (and the use of depth cues in particular) is schooling. Correlations between levels of Western-style schooling and the use of depth cues in image perception have often been observed (Duncan et al., 1973).
Pictorial perception and culture (Deregowski, 1972)
& Bentley, 1986), the use of depth cues increased when 3D objects for manipulation were part of the research design. He even suggests that while children in all societies may naturally gravitate to alternative aesthetic styles such as split-style drawing, most ultimately 'arrest' to the use of depth cues.
Some definitions of intelligence from around the world
When intelligence is defined differently across cultures, comparing intelligence levels between cultural groups is not. A valid definition (or test) of intelligence is one that refers to what it purports to refer to.
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 22
How is your perception of the upright affected by the potentially misleading frame around the bar. Wherever we look, we can see that whatever cognitive traits we share, our ecology, experience, and environment have been shown to have some influence on how we solve problems and make sense of the world.
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 23
Having begun this chapter with this question, we might end by summarizing some of the influences that cultural background can have on our intellectual habits. Cognitive psychology played a large role in the early development of the cross-cultural perspective, with several early twentieth-century writers conducting studies of visual perception to examine the influence of ecology and environment on the way we perceive the world.
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 24
Culture, social cognition and
In some research, US participants use a more interdependent self-construal than those from what might be considered less individualistic European nations (Gudykunst & Lee, 2003). Independent and interdependent self-construals have been shown to differ for the same person depending on whether they are at home or at work (Smith & Bond, 1998).
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 25
After all, it has also been shown that the same person can display selfish and self-denying biases in different contexts (Kagitcibasi, 1996). The likelihood of self-necessitous or self-denying attribution may depend on cultural and contextual factors that dominate the individualism-collectivism dimension.
KEY CONCEPT Stereotypes
KEY STUDY
Historical case study: the influence of context on attributions
Overall, there were no trends toward unrestricted within-group bias, nor were there any self-effacing attributions across the board. For example: Because I don't know the lifestyle and values of your group, I have prejudices against you.
Tajfel’s minimal groups experiment
A sense of threat also presupposed a desire to crack down on immigration, for example against Mexicans in the United States (Stephan et al., 2000). For example, in Jackson et al.'s study, French participants were significantly more keen to reduce immigration than were the Irish.
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 26
A re-examination of Buss' data revealed cultural differences that in some cases exceeded gender differences (Smith et al., 2006). For example, slim figures have not always been considered conventionally desirable, even in Western Europe (Smith et al., 2006).
KEY CONCEPT Arranged Marriages
Furthermore, some participants in Levine et al.'s (1995) study, who came from a collectivist context, were reluctant to marry without love (Smith et al., 2006). For example, an international sample of more than 18,000 respondents (Schmitt et al., 2003) showed that in most countries, if you are in an intimate relationship, you generally have positive feelings about yourself and others – also called a stable attachment type.
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 27
If a system of death camps were set up in the US of the kind we saw in Nazi Germany, one could find sufficient staff for those camps in any medium-sized American town. For example, one of the highest levels of obedience was recorded in the Netherlands (Meeus & Raaijmakers, 1986), and a closer look at this study highlights its unique design.
Behavioural study of obedience
This is interesting in itself, but when making cross-cultural obedience comparisons, we must keep in mind the lack of standardization in the designs of these studies. Well, while conclusions about national levels of compliance may be suspect, there are indications from these studies that some of the factors affecting levels of compliance in the original studies are universally applicable.
Asch’s study of conformity
Indeed, Bond and Smith found that compliance increased when more confederate judges participated in the study. Most cross-cultural replications of minority influence have occurred in Europe, although they reveal regional differences in the influence of the opposing minority (Smith & Bond, 1998).
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 28
Culture and child
Cole (1998) explores the relative contributions of these factors to human development in a broader context. Cultural mediation theory (which is central to the cultural psychology approach (see Chapter 5) places culture in the role of a filter through which other biological and environmental forces mediate.
Socialisation
The first three models presented here attribute different importance to biological and environmental factors in human development. Culture is seen as a special component of development, a medium through which biological and environmental factors are expressed.
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 29
Vocal intonation patterns directed at infants, characterized by raising the pitch of the voice, exaggerated variations in the sound. Supporters of the classic epigenetic view argue that the infant's bond with the mother is (biologically) qualitatively different.
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 30
The effects of these exosystem values on child development should not be ignored, especially when we consider that approximately three-quarters of non-European families in the US consider themselves extended organizations (Fields, 2001). Several writers have challenged the unconditional primacy of the maternal bond as an essential building block for healthy development.
Ainsworth et al.’s ‘strange situation’ experiment (1978)
Ainsworth's research strengthened the epigenetic view of the primacy of maternal attachment as a cornerstone for healthy development. Following Ainsworth's original studies, versions of the strange situation experiment were conducted in many cultural settings in order to investigate the cultural universality of attachment patterns.
Multiple attachments in the Congolese Ituri forest
Children who are relatively independent can thus be seen as the norm in the context of research from the USA, an individualistic culture. Conversely, since research from more collectivistic contexts is less prevalent in the literature, there is less evidence of other emotional responses to being separated from the mother, such as feeling comfortable in the presence of multiple caregivers, like infants raised in Israeli kibbutzim, f. example.
REFLECTIVE EXERCISE 31
This overreliance on the secure attachment pattern may be due to a corresponding overrepresentation of research from regions seen as individualistic (see Chapter 1 for more on the individualism-collectivism dimension), valuing independence over interdependence (Cardwell). , 2004). While the infant's response to being separated from its mother is informative in the study of attachment, this research scenario dominates the attachment literature, which thus does not fully represent the many forms of attachment that occur worldwide.
Female genital mutilation: a controversy in cultural psychology
The diverse gender roles evident across the three communities highlighted the importance of cultural factors in gender role formation. Further evidence of culturally constructed gender roles comes from various manifestations of psychological androgyny, further illustrating the influence of culture on gender identity (see key study).
Gender identity in three Pacific communities
Other accounts of culturally different gender roles, however, support Mead's view of culturally relative gender identities. We can reflect that Mead's albeit simplistic view of culturally constructed gender roles remains a useful point of reference and is in principle supported by other field workers.
Androgyny and sex-role transcendence across cultures
