Culture and Norms

Culture Definition

A set of attitudes, behaviours and symbols shared by a large group of people, usually communicated from one generation to the next/cultural groups are characterised by different norms and conventions

Culture - attitudes, behaviours and symbols

The thoughts and feelings towards a person, thing or concept/overt actions that one can see from large cultural displays to subtle behaviours used in conversation/symbols are objects used to convey a deeper meaning

Culture - shared by a large group of people

Cultures are shared by a group of people/something that exists on the level of a country

Culture - communicated from one generation to the next

Mechanisms for passing culture from parents to children, from teachers to students, from elders to youth/enculturation is the process of teaching culture to the next generation

Culture - norms and conventions

The unwritten rules and standards that tell people how they should behave in a particular situation

Conformity

Changing one’s believes or behaviours to fit in with a group

Berry

A: cultural differences in the pressure to conform

P: 3 groups/1. Temne of Sierra Leone/2. Inuit people of Northern Canada/3. Scottish people/120 participants within each group/shown a series of cards/each card had one line indicated as the standard line and several indicated as ‘comparison lines’/select which comparison line matched the standard line in length/complete with 2 cards/told ‘here’s a hint: most Temne, Inuit, Scottish people think that the correct answer is line …'/experimenter points to the correct line'/researcher points out the wrong line for the next three cards

F: Temne had the highest rate of conformity/Inuit had the lowest rate of conformity

C: suggests that cultures vary in the pressure to conform/Temne culture is very conformist, while Inuit culture is individualistic/researchers speculate that the reason for this is how each culture produces food/Temne are a rice farming society, requiring the coordination of many people/Inuit are hunters and fishers, which is mainly done individually​​

Evaluate Berry

• Simple yet effective way of measuring conformity: highly reliable

• Large sample size

• Artificial task: low ecological validity

• Correlational study: difficult to see why some cultures appear to conform more than others