Cultural psychology: chapter 4

Two central themes when doing research in cultural psychology

1.) Goal is to either demonstrate cultural similarities in the way people think (thereby reflecting universal psychological tendences)

2.) to demonstrate cultural differences (thereby reflecting culturally shaped psychological tendencies)

Approaches for selecting cultures to study

• choose samples based on a theoretical variable you are investigating

• look for cultures that vary on a specific theoretical dimension of interest

• select two cultures that very greatly when exploring the degree of universality of a particular psychological process

How to make meaningful comparisons

• have knowledge about the culture prior to investigating it

• read existing texts and ethnographies

• find a collaborator from the culture you are studying who is interested in pursuing the same research

• combination of these and more

International association of cross-cultural psychology

organization of researchers studying culture and psychology from all around the world, and its members routinely find members from other countries to collaborate with on cross-cultural projects

Methodological equivalence

in cross-cultural research, the demonstration that participants form different cultures understand the research questions or situations the same way

What kinds of problems do you think emerge when psychologists emphasize students in their sample

generalizability, power

Generalizability

the extension of search findings form a sample population to larger or broader populations

Power

• the study’s capacity to detect an effect (such as cross-cultural differences) to the extent that such an effect really exists

• a reflection of the quality of the study’s design

Independent variable

culture; the variable that is manipulated

Dependent variable

the more variance in the dependent variable; variable being measured

One of the most common ways of ocnducting cross-cultural research

surveys

Challenges with conducting research across cultures

translation, various types of response biases, reference group effects, and deprivation effects

Issues with translation

• participant will likely have poorer English skills than the translators

• whether the participants with good English skills are representative of their culture; maybe more Westernized

• the language one is thinking can greatly affect the ways one is thinking

• no word equivalents

Back-translation

• method of translating a research materials from one language to another

• a professional translates materials form language A to language B, then a different translator translates the material back from B to A

• the original and twice-translated versions are compared, to identify and resolve any discrepancies

Weakness of back-translation method

might result in a very unnatural or hard-to-understand translation, even though the literal meaning is preserved

Response bias

a factor that distorts the accuracy of a person’s response to survey questions; especially problematic when comparing groups that differ in their response biases

socially desirable responding

a response bias to which people’s responses to survey questions are distorted by their motivation to be evaluated positively by others

moderacy bias

tendency for people from different cultures to vary in terms of how likely the are to express their agreement in a moderate fashion, by choosing a number at the midpoint of the scale

extremity bias

tendency for people from different cultures to vary in terms of how likely they are to express their agreement in an extreme fashion, choosing a number at or near either end of the scale

moderacy and extremity bias are both response biases because…

they affect how an individual responds to an item regardless of the item’s content

How can moderacy and extremity biases be controlled?

• avoid providing participants with a set of responses that has a middle option

  • ex.) yes/no

• might not provide you with a sensitive enough measure to detect nuanced differences in opinion across individuals

• consider standardizing data before conducting cross-cultural comparisons; assumes average is identical across cultures

Standardization

each participant’s scores are first averaged, and then the individual items are assessed according to how much they depart from the person’s personal average (z-scores) only for pattern of responses and not when we want to compare the average level

Acquiescence bias

tendency to agree with most statements one encounters

Solution for acquiescence bias

• reverse-scored, items are designed so that agreeing with them indicates an opposite opinion

• standardized data

Reference group effect

tendency for people to evaluate themselves by comparison with others from their own culture

Techniques for addressing reference group effect

• avoid subjective measures that might have different standards in the groups being compared

• behavioral, physiological measures

Deprivation effect

• a tendency for people to value something more when it is lacking in their culture

• no straightforward technique to correct

• must be cautious in interpreting what is valued in different cultures

independent variable in cultural psychology quasi-experiments

• cultural background

• not manipulated

Between-group manipulation

• independent variable

• a type of experimental manipulation in which different groups of participants receive different levels (conditions) of independent variable

Random assignment

• each participant has an equal chance of being assigned to any given condition

• ensures that participants in the different conditions are statistically equivalent at the beginning of the study

Within-group manipulation

• independent variable

• a type of experiment manipulation in which each participant in the different conditions are statistically equivalent at the beginning at the study

Replication

repeating the study and generating the same general pattern of results as original, thereby strengthening the study’s reliability

situation sampling

• method used in cross-cultural comparisons in which situations are generated by participants in more than one culture

• then those situations are presented to different groups of participants from multiple cultures

  • approach enables researchers to see whether common situations in one culture influence people differently than situations common in another culture and whether people in one culture responds to the same situations differently than people in culture

cultural priming

• method used in cross-cultural comparisons that makes ideas associated with particular cultural meanings more accessible to participants

Tightness-looseness

• degree to which a culture, or a society, has a strong social norms and low tolerance for people who violate those norms

Unpacking cultural findings

• identifying the underlying variables that give rise to cultural differences

Occam’s Razor

• the simplest solution to a problem tends to be the right one

• the simpler the theory

• the more likely it is to be correct

culture of honor

• a culture, especially men strive to protect their reputation through aggression

Case study: the culture of honor in the southern United States

• Topic: explaining violence of South comparative to the North

• hypothesis: first European settlers in the South were herders, who’s livelihood can be easily threatened, while the North were largely farmers

  • So you have to develop your reputation by showing you’re prepared to respond with violence to any threat to your honor

Archival data

evidence accumulated from documents and records of a culture

Physiological measures

measures of bodily responses, such as blood pressure, heart rate, used to determine changes in psychological state

Field experiments

conducted outside the laboratory in the real world with participants who are typically not aware they are in a study

Agent-based modeling

testing a hypothesis by creating simulations with virtual agents who are programmed to act autonomously in a computerized game

Difference between tight and loose cultures

• Tight cultures:

  • strong social norms, define rules, low tolerance for deviant behavior

  • driven by high historical threats that require coordinate to survive; high population density, resource scarcity, ect.

    • autocratic governing systems, media regulation/censorship

• Loose cultures

  • weaker social norms, higher latitude for acceptable behavior, higher tolerance for deviance

  • develops in environments with few ecological or historical threats where survival does not depend on strict coordination

    • broad socialization, greater civil liberties/rights, open media

Within and between culture variation

• Culture x person x situation (CuPs)

  • integrates cultural psychology and individual difference

• no universal behavioral signatures

  • traits like aggression or views on personal worth mean different things in different cultural systems

• Cultural rejectionism

  • individuals who actively reject their dominant culture’s norms often show non-cooperative behavior when social obligations are the highest

• CuPs prevents misinterpreting cultural differences as noise or reducing cultural systems to personality traits