Unit 4: Sociocultural Approach

Enculturation

The process of learning the cultural norms and values of one's heritage (home) culture.

Acculturation

The change in attitudes or behaviour that happens as a result of interacting with a new culture.

Child training practice (cultural transmission)

A general, umbrella term that refers to how parents (and societies) raise their children.

High food accumulation culture

A culture that produces and stores food for long periods of time (e.g. farmers).

Low food accumulation culture

A culture that produces small amounts of food that aren't stored.

cultural norms

A common behaviour or way of thinking that is accepted (and expected) across a group.

Cultural value

A belief about the importance of something that is shared by a cultural group.

Compliance

To obey or follow a request or demand.

Conformity

To behave in a way that is consistent with social norms.

Acculturation strategy

The way someone adapts to a new culture. Berry identified four strategies that people use when adopting to a new culture.

Assimilation

An acculturation strategy that involves dropping one's home culture and adopting fully the new culture.

Separation

An acculturation strategy that involves rejecting the new culture and maintaining one's home culture.

Integration

An acculturation strategy that involves keeping one's home culture and participating in the new culture.

Marginalization

An acculturation strategy that involves rejecting one's home culture and rejecting the new culture.

Acculturative Stress

Any negative psychological stress that results because of acculturation, often called culture shock

discrimination

Behaving differently, usually unfairly, toward the members of a group.

stereotype

a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or belief of a particular type of person or group.

stereotype threat

the apprehension experienced by members of a group that their behavior might confirm a cultural stereotype

prejudice

an unjustifiable (and usually negative) attitude toward a group and/or its members.

Cultural Iceberg

Symbol for the idea that most of culture is "hidden;" there is usually much more meaning than what we can see and hear

surface culture

Part of culture that can be seen: Language, clothing, food, customs, and art.

deep culture

Below the surface are the more meaningful and powerful aspects of culture: a. Beliefs- what we see as truth b. Norms- unwritten rules for behavior c. values- what we hold most important

software of the mind

According to Dutch management professor Geert Hofstede, culture can be referred to as the:

emic approach

anthropological research approach to studying behaviors from within one culture

etic approach

an approach that is cross-cultural, searching for generalities across cultures

cultural dimensions

Six fairly permanent and enduring sets of related norms and values according to Geert Hofstede.

Individualism vs. Collectivism

describes whether a person functions primarily as an individual or as part of a group

content analysis

applying a systematic approach to record and value information gleaned from questionnaires or surveys used by Geert Hofstede to develop his theory.

ethnocentrism

Belief in the superiority of one's nation or ethnic group.

Pygmalion effect (self-fulfilling prophecy)

A process that explains how the expectations in the mind of one person, such as a teacher or researcher, come to influence the behaviors of others, such as students or subjects, such that the latter achieves the former's expectations.

expectancy-based illusory correlation

when a relationship is believed to exist between two variables due to our pre-existing expectations surrounding them

distinctiveness-based illusory correlation

when a relationship is believed to exist between two variables due to focusing too much on information that stands out

confirmation bias

a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence

Clark Doll Study

out of black or white doll, asked kids which are better, nicer, smarter, etc.; even present day studies show that these stereotypes still exist

social identity theory

Tajfel's theory that in-groups consist of individuals who perceive themselves to be members of the same social category and experience pride through their group membership

social cognitive theory

Bandura's theory that emphasizes both cognition and learning from models as sources of individual differences in behavior

vicarious reinforcement

process where the observer sees the model rewarded or punished making the observer more likely or less likely to imitate the model's behavior

Attention-Retention-Motivation-Potential

The cognitive "mediating processes" that Bandura argued play a role in whether an observer will imitate a model or not.

mirror neurons

Frontal lobe neurons that fire when performing certain actions or when observing another doing so. The brain's mirroring of another's action may enable imitation, language learning, and empathy.

Testability, Empirical Evidence, Applications, Constructs, Unbiased, Predictive Validity

Teacup Model to evaluate theories

Positive distinctiveness

the motivation to show that our ingroup is preferable to an outgroup in Social Identity Theory

social categorization

the assignment of a person one has just met to a category based on characteristics the new person has in common with other people with whom one has had experience in the past, within Social Identity Theory

salience

when a particular social identity is made more important or accessible than others at a particular moment.

Priming

the activation, often unconsciously, of certain associations, thus predisposing one's perception, memory, or response

heritage culture

a culture identified as a person's culture of origin

Informational social influence

the influence of other people that results from taking their comments or actions as a source of information about what is correct, proper, or effective

normative social influence

influence resulting from a person's desire to gain approval or avoid disapproval and fit into a social group

confederates

in psychological and social research, a person who is working with the experimenter and posing as a part of the experiment, but the subjects are not aware of this affiliation

reciprocal determinism

Bandura's idea that though our environment affects us, we also affect our environment (bidirectionality)

Stanford Prison Experiment

Philip Zimbardo's study of the effect of roles on behavior. Participants were randomly assigned to play either prisoners or guards in a mock prison. The study was ended early because of the "guards'" role-induced cruelty.

social comparison theory

the hypothesis that people compare themselves to other people in order to obtain an accurate assessment of their own opinions, abilities, and internal states, a part of Social Identity Theory

acculturative gaps

generational differences in acculturation and how this leads to conflict within the family. Immigrant parents and their children live in different cultural worlds

reverse culture shock/reentry shock

culture shock experienced by travelers upon returning to their home countries