Chapter 4 methods for studying culture

Methodological challenges of applying methods to people from other cultures

1. what cultures to study?

   • Meaningful and easy-to-interpret results are more likely to be found if the research question guides the choice of research samples (cultures) instead of randomly selecting cultures.

2. meaningful comparisons

   • After selecting cultures to study, a study has to be designed in such a way that the results can be meaningfully interpreted. Several steps are important to do so:

     • Knowledge of cultures: study the cultures that will be in the study and learn about them;

     • Methodological equivalence: ensure that the cultures that you are comparing perceive (understand) the methods that are used in identical ways.

3. problems with methodological equivalence

   • sometimes slightly different procedures are needed in each of the cultures in the study, which results in some loss of experimental control. Therefore, the vast majority of cross-cultural research has been conducted between industrialized societies (especially college students). This poses some problems for:

     • Generalizability: only using certain samples makes generalizing the findings to other populations other than the sample hard.

     • Power: when groups of the independent variable are similar, there is not that much power.

Translation problems of surveys

Research participants and researchers often speak different languages, which can be especially hard when dealing with topics that are not really concrete (emotions, personality traits).

There are 2 options, both with their own problems:

1. Original language of materials

   • The original language of the materials is kept and only bilingual people with English and their native language are studied.

   • However, they will likely have poorer skills, might not be representative of their culture, and might respond different than if they would respond in their native language.

2. Translating materials

   • The materials are translated into other languages.

   • However, this can be really hard as some psychological terms do not have equivalents in other languages. The Back-translation method is a strategy that can reduce the variability in meaning between languages.

Back-translation method

a method of translating whereby a translator translates the materials from language A to B, and then a different translator translates the materials back from language B to A. The original and twice- translated versions are then compared so that any discrepancies can be resolved.

but.. It results in more literal translations in which some of the original meaning might get lost.

Response biases

factors that distort the accuracy of a person’s responses to surveys.

Cultures differ in their response biases, which makes interpreting and comparing responses from people of different cultures far more challenging than interpreting those from within a single culture.

look table

Standardizing data

The moderacy, extremity and acquiescence bias can also be avoided by standardizing the data before comparing cultures. Each person’s scores are averaged and then a z-scores is calculated to indicate how participants respond to each item compared to their typical way of responding.

However, this is only appropriate when we are interested in cultural differences in the pattern of responses and not when we want to compare the average level of responses across cultures in a single measure.

Reference-group effect

the tendency for people to evaluate themselves by comparing themselves with others from their own culture. People from different cultures use different reference groups. A Dutch woman of 160cm might evaluate herself to be short (average length is around 167), while a Chinese woman with the same length evaluates herself to be at average length (average length is around 159).

Solution: avoid subjective measures that might have different standards across groups and use more concrete measures instead. “If a friend of mine needed help with his studies, I would be willing to cancel my own plans to help him.” is more concrete than “I am helpful.”

Deprivation effect

the tendency for people to value something more when it is lacking in their culture. A culture that lacks personal safety might express valuing it more than a culture that doesn’t have this lack.

There is not really a solution other than to investigate whether the results of self-report measures converges with results from other sources of evidence.

Experimental method

In addition to surveys, the experimental method is also often used in cultural psychology research. Because cultural background cannot be manipulated, comparisons of cultures are quasi-experiments.

The experimental method eliminates the problem of response biases and allows us to compare the pattern of means across cultures.

Independent variable (IV) manipulations

In contrast to cultural background, there are many other independent variables that can be manipulated. Two kinds of manipulations can be performed in psychological research:

• Between-groups manipulation: different groups of participants receive different levels of the IV.

• Within-groups manipulation: each participants receives all levels of the IV.

Cultural psychology specific methods

1. situation sampling

2. cultural priming

3. unpackaging

Multiple methods. Occam’s razor

Because every study has potential shortcomings or alternative theoretical explanations, using multiple methods provides a more compelling case. We rely on the principle of Occam’s razor when there are multiple alternative explanations possible.

Occam’s razor = the principle that any theory should make as few assumptions as possible: the simplest theory is most likely to be correct.

(1) Situation sampling

= a method that is used to compare cultures with psychological measures. It involves a 2 step process:

1. Generating: participants from at least 2 cultures are asked to generate multiple specific situations they have experienced (list situations in which your self-esteem has increased or decreased).

2. Comparing: different groups of participants from the same (at least) 2 cultures are given the generated situations and are asked to imagine how they would feel if they had been in them themselves (how much would your self-esteem have increased or decreased in those situations).

Situation sampling allows for 2 kinds of analyses:

1. Are there differences in the ways people from different cultures respond to the situations?

   • If yes → learned cultural experiences govern people’s reactions across all kinds of situations.

   • Japanese participants report less increased self-esteem and more decreased self-esteem than American participants in self-esteem increasing and decreasing situations respectively.

2. Does the cultural origin of the situations lead to different responses in general?

   • If yes → the 2 cultures provide participants with different kinds of experiences.

   • Both American and Japanese participants report a bigger decrease in self-esteem in response to Japanese self-esteem-decreasing situations than in response to the American ones.

(2) Cultural priming

a method that makes ideas associated with particular cultural meaning systems more accessible to participants. Certain ways of thinking are more common in culture A than in culture B, but they are still likely present in culture B and can be made more accessible using this method.

(3) Unpackaging

identifying the underlying variables that give rise to different cultural differences

Case study: the Culture of Honor in the Southern US

Why does the U.S. South seem so much more violent than the North?

Herders - people that raise cows, pigs, and sheep. Their wealth is portable because a herder’s animals can be stolen way more easily than a farmer’s field full of wheat. Thus, keeping a reputation as someone who maintains his sense of honor by responding with violence when people take advantage could be adaptive (culture of honor).

Methods

Different methods were used that all found evidence for the main conclusion:

• Archival data: argument-related murder rates are higher in the South.

• Survey data: Southerners were more likely to have positive attitudes toward violence when it related to defending their families or honour.

• Physiological measures: testosterone levels (showing readiness to aggress) rose in Southerners but not in Northerners following an insult.

• Behavioral measures: Southerners moved away from an oncoming confederate much later when they were insulted before than when they were not insulted, while Northerners showed no difference in how fast they moved away.

• Field experiment: Southern employers were more sympathetic to applicants that ‘served time for manslaughter of someone that slept with his girlfriend’ than Northern employers were.

→ The historically larger numbers of herders in the South has given rise to a violent culture of honor that has continued to persist until this day.