SCA - Cultural influences

SCA key vocab

Acculturation

The process in which people adopt the norms and behaviors of another culture they’re in contact with (mainly the majority culture).

Culture

How we describe behavioural habits, beliefs, gender roles, rituals, and communication patterns within a society. Transmitted generationally.

Affects both cognition and behaviour

Surface Culture

What we easily/instantly notice as different when we have contact with another group. (eg. music, food eating culture)

Deep Culture

Beliefs, attitudes, and values of a group.

Eg. group’s perception of time, the importance of personal space, respect for authority, or the need to save money for the future.

These cultural factors may lead to specific kinds of attitudes, beliefs, and behavior.

Cultural Norms

A set of unwritten rules based on socially or culturally shared beliefs of how an individual ought to behave to be accepted within that group.

They regulate behavior within a group. If not followed, individual might be punished, marginalized, stigmatized, or—more positively—seen as creative and affecting change in society.

Cultural Groups

Groups of individuals who share common norms, behaviours, and conventions.

Dimensions of Culture

The values of a society that affect individual behaviour.

Enculturation

The process of learning and maintening traditions and norms in one’s culture.

Ethnocentrism

The belief that one’s own culture is superior, and there for one evaluates another’s culture based on preconsieved notions rooted in the standards and customs of our own culture.

ETIC Approach

Behaviour is compared at a cross-cultural level. Involves drawing on the notion of universal properties of cultures which share common perseptial cognitive and emotional structures. We know what we want to study and how to analyse it before deciding on a culture → Deductive approach

EMIC Approaches

Research that studies one culture. Challenges psychologists to re-examine their ideas of “truth“ with regards to culture. Researchers immerse themselves in the culture they want to study, use local people and knowledge of the culture and language to carry out the research. (maybe also adapt and creat enew tests to carry out reserahc)

Goal is not to draw universal conculdiond about human behaviour, but to understand and apply the dinsing to the culture in which the research was done

→ more phenomenological

Individualism

In individualist societies, the ties between individuals are loose.

Everyone is expected to look after himself or herself and his or her immediate family

Collectivism

People are integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups, often extended families, which provide them with support and protection.

Deductive Approach

Involves beginning with a theory, developing hypotheses from that theory, and then collecting and analyzing data to test those hypotheses

Inductive Approach

Begins with a set of empirical observations, seeking patterns in those observations, and then theorizing about those patterns

Penomenological

It’s an approach to understnding behaviour. Understand meaning from the perspective of the individual culture.

Positivist

Psychologist have their own ideas and hypotheses and try and apply those theories unto otehr cultures.

Allocentrism

Collectivistic personality attribute whereby people center their attention and actions on other people rather than themselves

→

Idiocentrism

Set of personality traits indicating an individualistic orientation. People who are idiocentric are relatively self-reliant and autonomous.

Mediational Processes

We don’t immediately do things, we do some thining before atcions

Acculturation study

Lueck & Wilson (2010)

Lueck & Wilson (2010) - Aim

To investigate the variables that may predict acculturative stress in a nationally representative sample of Asian immigrants and Asian Americans.

Lueck & Wilson (2010) - Procedure

Semi-structured interviews (Interviewers had cultural and linguistic backgrounds similar to the pps),

Measured the participants’ level of acculturative stress and how it might be impacted by:

• Language proficiency

• Language preference'

• Discrimination

• Social networks

• Family cohesion

• Socioeconomic status

Randomly selected sample was contacted to validate the data taken from their interviews.

Lueck & Wilson (2010) - Results

Bilingual language preference: Lower acculturative stress.Can build up networks of support within and outside community.

Prefer English: High acculturative stress. Do not know the native language well enough to discuss sensitive issues with family.

Negative treatment (prejudice, xenophobia, harassment, and threats): Significantly contributed to higher acculturative stress.

Similar values and beliefs as a family: Significantly lowered acculturative stress

Satisfied with economic opportunities in the US: Significantly lower acculturative stress

Lueck & Wilson (2010) - Findings