SOP 3723 Ch 1-4

Access to Resources

The indicator of availability of material resources to a population.

Activity

A process of the individual's goal-directed interaction with the environment.

Availability of Resources

A measure indicating the presence of and access to resources essential for the individual's well-being

Collectivism

Behavior based on concerns for other people, traditions, and values they share together.

Cross-Cultural Psychology

The critical and comparative study of cultural effects on human psychology.

Cultural Psychology

The study that seeks to discover systematic relationships between culture and psychological variables.

Culture

A set of attitudes, behaviors, and symbols shared by a group of people and usually communicated from one generation to the next.

Ecological Context

The natural setting in which human organisms and the environment interact.

Ethnicity

A cultural heritage shared by a category of people who also share a common ancestral origin, language, and religion.

Ethnocentrism

The view that supports judgment about other ethnic, national, and cultural groups and events from the observer's own ethnic, national, or cultural group's outlook.

Ideological (Value-Based) Knowledge

A stable set of beliefs about the world, the nature of good and evil, right and wrong, and the purpose of human life—all based on a certain organizing principal or central idea.

Individualism

Complex behavior based on concern for oneself and one's immediate family or primary group as opposed to concern for other groups to which one belongs.

Legal Knowledge

A type of knowledge encapsulated in the law and detailed in official rules and principles related to psychological functioning of individuals.

Multiculturalism

The view that encourages recognition of equality for all cultural and national groups and promotes the idea that various cultural groups have the right to follow their own paths of development.

Nation

A large group of people who constitute a legitimate, independent state and share a common geographic origin, history, and frequently, language.

Nontraditional Culture

The term used to describe cultures based largely on modern beliefs, rules, symbols, and principles, relatively open to other cultures, absorbing and dynamic, science based and technology driven, and relatively tolerant to social innovations.

Popular (or Folk) Knowledge

Everyday assumptions ranging from commonly held beliefs to individual opinions about psychological phenomena.

Power Distance

The extent to which the members of a society accept that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally.

Race

A large group of people distinguished by certain similar and genetically transmitted physical characteristics.

Religious Affiliation

A term indicating an individual's acceptance of knowledge, beliefs, and practices related to a particular faith.

Scientific Knowledge

A type of knowledge accumulated as a result of scientific research on a wide range of psychological phenomena.

Sociopolitical Context

The setting in which people participate in both global and local decisions; it includes various ideological issues, political structures, and presence or absence of political and social freedoms.

Traditional Culture

The term used to describe cultures based largely on beliefs, rules, symbols, and principles established predominantly in the past, confined in local or regional boundaries, restricting and mostly intolerant to social innovations.

Uncertainty Avoidance

The degree to which the members of a society feel uncomfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity.

Uncertainty Orientation

Common ways in which people handle uncertainty in their daily situations and lives in general.

Psychological research has been based on...

WEIRDOS (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic cultures) Not representative of all humans

Culture

Refers to general characteristics of a society \n Refers to heritage or tradition Describes rules and norms \n Describes learning or problem solving Defines the organization of a group \n Refers to origins of a group

Enculturation

Process of learning and adopting the ways and manners of a specific culture

Attributions

Ability to recognize others as intentional agents while drawing inferences. People of different cultures make attributions in different ways

Etics

Universal psychological processes

Emics

Culture-specific processes

Absolutist Approach

A view in cross-cultural psychology that psychological phenomena are basically the same in all cultures.

Application-Oriented Strategy

An attempt to establish the applicability of research findings obtained in one country or culture to other.

Comparativist Strategy

An attempt to find similarities and differences in certain statistical measures in a sample of cultures.

Content-Analysis

A research method that systematically organizes and summarizes both the manifest and latent content of communication.

Correlation Coefficient

A number that summarizes and describes the type of relationship present and the strength of the relationship between variables X and Y.

Dependent Variable

The aspect of human activity that is studied and expected to change under the influence of an independent variable (s).

Equivalence

Evidence that the methods selected for the study measure the same phenomenon across other countries chosen for the study.

Experiment

The investigative method in which researchers alter some variables to detect specific changes in the subjects' behaviors, attitudes, or emotions.

Focus-group Methodology

A survey method used intensively both in academic and marketing research.

Independent Variable

The condition(s) that are controlled by the researcher.

Indirect Survey

The type of surveys in which the researcher's personal impact is very small because there is no direct communication between the respondent and the interviewer.

Laboratory Observation

Recording people's behavior in an environment created by the researcher.

Measure of Central Tendency

The measure that indicates the location of a score distribution on a variable, that is, describes where most of the distribution is located.

Median

The score in a distribution located at the 50th percentile

Meta-Analysis

The quantitative analysis of a large collection of scientific results in an attempt to make sense of a diverse selection of data

Mode

The most frequently occurring score in a distribution

Naturalistic Observation

Recording people's behavior in their natural environments with little or no personal intervention.

Psychobiographical Research

A longitudinal analysis of particular individuals, usually outstanding persons, celebrities, and leaders, representing different countries or cultures.

Relativist Approach

A view in cross-cultural psychology that psychological phenomena should be studied only from "within" a culture where these phenomena occur.

Representative Sample

A sample having characteristics that accurately reflect the characteristics of the population

Survey

The investigative method in which groups of people answer questions about their opinions or their behavior.

What are the types of cross cultural research?

Method Validation Studies \n Indigenous Cultural Studies \n Cross-Cultural Comparisons

What are the Types of Cross-Cultural Comparisons

Exploratory vs. Hypothesis Testing \n Presence or Absence Of Contextual Factors \n Structure versus Level Oriented \n Individual versus Ecological (Cultural) Level

Types of bias and equivalence

Conceptual Bias \n Method Bias \n Measurement Bias \n Response Bias \n Interpretation Bias

Cross cultural validation studies

studies that examine whether a scale, test, or measure originally developed in a culture is valid in another culture.

indigenous cultural studies

rich descriptions of complex theoretical models within a single culture.

cross-cultural comparisons

studies that involve participants from two or more cultures who are measured on some psychological variable of interest. (responses are compared)

types of cross cultural reasearch

Cross cultural validation studies \n indigenous cultural studies \n cross-cultural comparisons

validity

Degree to which a finding, measurement, or statistic is accurate and performs its function

Reliability

Degree to which a finding, measurement, or statistic is consistent

Exploratory studies

Examines the existence of cross-cultural similarities or differences

what are the strengths and weaknesses of exploratory studies

Strength - Broad scope for identifying similarities and differences

Weakness - Limited capability to solve the causes of differences

Hypothesis-testing studies

Examines why cultural differences exist (includes contextual variables)

what is a weakness of hypothesis-testing studies

Inferences promote cross-cultural biases and inequivalence

Contextual factors

Any variable that can explain observed cross-cultural differences

what are some pros about contextual factors

Enhances the study's validity and rules out influence of biases and inequivalence

Includes the background characteristics of the participants or their cultures

Structure-oriented studies

Comparison of constructs, structures, or relationships with other constructs

Level oriented studies

Comparison of mean levels of scores between cultures

Individual-level studies

Individual participants provide data and are the unit of analysis

Ecological (cultural) studies

Countries or cultures are the units of analysis \n (Allow researchers to examine relationships between psychological and ecological-level variables \n Well-known ecological-level study - Hofstede's seminal work)

Multi-level studies

Involve data collection at multiple levels of analysis

Linkage Studies

Studies that measure an aspect of culture theoretically hypothesized to produce cultural differences

Empirically link that measured aspect of culture with the dependent variable of interest

types of linkage studies

Unpackaging studies

Experiments

Unpackaging Studies

Measurement of a variable that assesses a culture factor thought to produce differences on the target variable

Utilizes context variables

Context variables

Operationalize aspects of culture that produces differences in psychological variables

Individual-level measures of culture

Assess variable on the individual level that is thought to be a product of cultureIndividualism versus collectivism

type of unpackaging study

Measurement of a variable that assesses a culture factor thought to produce differences on the target variable \n Utilizes context variables

Idiocentrism

Individualism on the individual level

Allocentrism

Collectivism on the individual level

Self-construal scales

Measures independence and interdependence on individual level

Personality

Cultural differences can be explained based on different levels of personality traits in each culture

Cultural practices

Variables that assess child-rearing practices, nature of interpersonal relationships, or cultural worldviews

Priming studies

Experimentally manipulating mindsets of participants and measuring the resulting changes in behavior

Behavioral studies

Manipulations of environments and observation of changes in behavior as a function of those environments

Bias

Differences that do not have the same meaning within and across cultures

Equivalence def 2*

State or condition of similarity in conceptual meaning and empirical method between cultures (allows comparisons to be meaningful)

Conceptual bias

Degree to which a theory or set of hypotheses compared across cultures are equivalent

Meaning and relevance should be the same

Sampling bias

Are the samples in the cultures tested appropriate representatives of their culture and equivalent to each other?

Procedural bias

Do the procedures by which data are collected mean the same in all cultures tested?

Linguistic bias

Are the research protocols semantically equivalent across the languages used in the study?

What procedures are used to establish linguistic equivalence?

Back translation and committee approach

Measurement bias

Degree to which measures used to collect data in different cultures are equally valid and reliable

(Different cultures conceptually define a construct differently or measure it differently)

Psychometric equivalence

Measurement equivalence on a statistical level

Structural equivalence

Achieved when the same factor analysis is produced in a measure

Internal reliability

Degree to which different items in a questionnaire give consistent responses

Response bias

systematic tendency to respond in certain way to items or scales

\
Extreme response bias is found in cultures that encourage masculinity, power, and status

types of response bias

Socially desirable responding \n Acquiescence bias \n Extreme response bias \n Reference group effect

Cultural attribution fallacies

Inferring that culture had a role in producing the differences found in the study

how do you deal with nonequivalent data

Ignoring the nonequivalence \n Interpreting the nonequivalence \n Precluding comparison \n Reducing the nonequivalence in the data