CULTURE, BEHAVIOUR AND COGNITION

key definitions

ACCULTURATION: The process through which someone becomes acquainted with another culture and tends to adopt its norms and practices.

ENCULTURATION: the procedure of absorbing or incorporating your culture's schemas

CULTURAL NORM: a system of norms based on socially or culturally held views about how a person should act in order to be accepted by that group

SURFACE CULTURE: What we easily and straightly notice as different when we come into contact with another group.

DEEP CULTURE: A group's views, attitudes, and values

ENCULTURATION: Enculturation refers to the process of adopting or internalising your culture's schemas. it is an unconscious process

ACCULTURATION: The process through which someone becomes acquainted with another culture and tends to adopt its norms and practices.

DYNAMIC CULTURE: It evolves over time as a result of environmental and societal changes.

study of culture - its approaches

ETIC APPROACH

EMIC APPROACH

Etic techniques are commonly used in cross-cultural psychology, when behavior is compared between cultures.

Etic research is based on the concept of universal cultural qualities, which share fundamental perceptual, cognitive, and emotional structures.

STRENGHTS:

Because the research employs standardized techniques and materials, it may be easily duplicated, boosting its trustworthiness.

Using the same questionnaires and tests boosts the study's validity.

There might be a worldwide application that would benefit many individuals.

LIMITATIONS:

Strangers doing the research may be viewed with distrust, and participants may be reluctant to reveal much to the researchers.

Researchers may be oblivious to cultural complexities.

a more effective approach to cultural research

Psychologists are challenged to reconsider their cultural "truths."

In order to improve comprehension, learners should immerse themselves in the culture they wish to study.

To assist with the study, utilize locals with cultural understanding and language abilities.

involves also the creation of new tests

GOAL: comprehend and apply the findings to the culture in which the study was conducted

STRENGTHS:

problem-solving and generates answers that may be immediately applied to the society under study

interaction f the researchers with the community in order to foster trust and transparency

LIMITATIONS: :

takes a long time to finish and may only be useful in certain situations

Because the exams were designed exclusively for that culture, establishing a high degree of dependability is impossible.

cultural dimensions - Dimensions describe how a society's ideals influence conduct. A dimension explains the behavioral tendencies of a certain culture.

HOFSTEDE'S CULTURAL DIMENSIONS

power distance index: the degree to which a culture honors authority and position

individualism vs. collectivism: the extent to which individuals are incorporated into groupings
It is also known as a change in perspective.

Uncertainty avoidance index: tolerance for ambiguity in a culture. Tolerance for ambiguity implies looser social standards and a willingness to change.

Masculinity vs. femininity: Masculine civilizations emphasize success, competitiveness, and prosperity, whereas feminine society emphasize collaboration, relationships, and quality of life.

Long-term vs. short-term orientation: the link to the history and the mindset toward the future Traditions are preserved because of the short-term emphasis. Long-term orientation is more concerned with the future.

Indulgence vs. restraint: People may enjoy life and have fun in indulgent cultures. Stricter social rules are used to maintain control in restricted societies. Indulgent societies think they have control over their lives, whereas restrained ones are more fatalistic.

Understanding cultural characteristics will aid in cross-cultural communication.

individualism and collectivism

Individuals' bonds are loose in individualist societies: everyone is expected to take care after himself or herself and his or her direct relatives.

People in collectivist civilizations are incorporated into strong, solid in-groups, sometimes extended families, from birth.

BERRY (1967)

sample: 3 distinct and different cultures, 120 participants

Each group consisted of individuals who had never received a Western education and continued to live the traditional way of life, as well as others who were "in transition" - either having Western education or working in the West.

They were given nine lines to work with. They were instructed to match the line on the bottom that most nearly matched the line on top.

When informed what other Temne believed, even if it was inaccurate, the Temne, which is the collectivistic culture, had a considerably greater percentage of adherence. The Inuits, on the other hand, were even less conformist than the Scots.

results: There was no substantial difference between groups, which suggests it made no difference whether the subjects lived a traditional life or were heavily exposed to Western society.

hofstede - ecological fallacy: When comparing two cultures, it should not be expected that two people from different cultures must be different, or that a single person of a culture would constantly exhibit the dimensions that are the norm of that culture.

PAY ATTENTION TO RESEARCHER'S BIAS - danger that their biases confirmations could be seen by the observations

culture and cognition

Culture influences the formation of our schema. It also has an impact on how we recall.

COLE AND SCRIBNER (1974

this observation employed an emic technique to investigate how culture affects memory They were interested in seeing how schooling affected children's skills for memorizing word lists.

contrasted the development of memory among tribal people in rural Liberia to adolescents in the United States

aim: to investigate if culture has an influence on how one memorizes.

memory used: "Free" recall, which means that people can recall the items in whatever sequence they like.

results: After the age of 9 or 10, children who did not attend school exhibited no consistent improvement in memory skills.

school children were able to cluster their responses and use categorical similarities to help recall
non-school children didn't use the clustering method

another trial, involving a story, instead showed that The objects were easily remembered by the students, who chunked them according to their roles in the tale.

strategies for remembering are not universal.

The conclusion is that individuals learn to recall in ways that are relevant to their daily lives, and they do not necessarily correspond to the activities used by cognitive psychologists to explore mental processes.

KEARINS (1981)

investigated: Why do Aboriginal children perform poorly on Western verbal intelligence tests?

Kearins attempted to compare Aboriginal children's memory recall to that of non-Aboriginal Australian kids.

sample: 44 adolescents (12-16) of desert Aboriginal origin and 44 adolescents of white Australian original

Kearins arranged 20 things on a board split into 20 squares.

they had to relocate the objects they saw in a pile moments before

More items were appropriately moved by Aboriginal children than by white Australian adolescents.

According to Kearins, first generation established parents educated their children in ways that mirror traditional lifestyle and beliefs.

KULKOFSKY ET AL (2011)

China, Germany, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States were researched to discover if there was a difference in the rate of flashbulb memories in collectivistic and individualistic cultures.

There were 274 adults from the five nations represented.

Participants were given five minutes to recollect as many memories of public events from their lives as they could.

Personal relevance and intensity of emotion had less of a role in forecasting flashbulb memories in a collectivistic society like China, compared to more individualistic cultures that place a larger priority on an individual's personal engagement and emotional experiences.

enculturation

Babies do not inherit a "culture." Through interactions with gatekeepers, they get a grasp of the culture's values, language, and expectations. Through connection with their classmates, they also build a culture. It is a continuous process that strengthens your cultural identity.

VALUES ENCULTURATION - Social interactions, gender roles, time orientation, health and sickness views, and moral beliefs

DIRECT TUITION - our parents tell you what you are supposed to do

PARTICIPATORY LEARNING - children engage in an activity and then transfer that learning to later situations.

ODDEN & ROCHAT (2004)

investigated the impact of Social Cognitive Learning Theory on the formation of cultural norms in Samoa

looked at line fishing behavior and mental knowledge of rank and hierarchy The researchers conducted a 25-month longitudinal study on 28 adolescents in a single Samoan community.

Samoan children are mostly left to their own devices to learn, with no adults seeking to inspire or arrange their learning.

Young guys spend a lot of time observing adult men fish, but little direct teaching is provided. They discovered that youngsters around the age of ten would steal an adult's fishing equipment and experiment on their own, with no adult supervision. Most adolescents could fish on their own by the age of 12.

There is no clear training about the system until high school, but adolescents witness and overhear their parents' talks about it.

The majority of the adolescents had a wide comprehension of their society's beliefs and traditions.