Social Psychology: Culture

Introduction

• The psychological aspects of culture are often overlooked because they are often invisible

Social Psychology Research Methods

• Study culture as a means of better understanding the ways it affects our emotions, identity, relationships, and decisions
• Ethnographic Studies or Cultural Psychology
  • What anthropologists are most likely to conduct
  • Scientist spends time observing a culture and conducting interviews
  • Often attempt to understand and appreciate culture from the point of view of the people within it
  • Likely to use interviews as a primary research methodology
• Place an emphasis on the participants’ own definitions, language, and understanding of their own lives
• Able to make comparisons between the groups, but these comparisons were based on loose themes created by the researchers
• Ethnographic Study vs Cross-Cultural Study
  • Ethnographic Study
  • (POSITIVE) Culturally sensitive, studies people in their environments
  • (NEGATIVE) difficult to make comparisons between cultures
  • Cross-Cultural Study
  • (POSITIVE) able to make comparisons between groups
  • (NEGATIVE) vulnerable to ethnocentric bias
  • Use standard forms of measurement to compare people from different cultures and identify their differences
  • Ethnocentric Bias
  • Researcher who designs the study might be influenced by personal biases that could affect research outcomes – without even being aware of it

What is Culture?

• Defining Culture
  • Social patterns of shared meaning
  • A collective understanding of the way the world works, shared by members of a group and passed down from one generation to the next
• Features of Culture
  • Versatility
  • Culture can change and adapt
  • Situational identity
  • Ex. Someone from the state of Orissa, in India may have multiple identities. She might see herself as Oriya when at home and speaking her native language. At the other times, such as during the national cricket match against Pakistan, she might consider herself Indian
  • Sharing
  • Culture is the product of people sharing with one another
  • Humans cooperate and share knowledge and skills with other members of their networks
  • The ways they share, and the content of what they share, helps make up culture
  • Accumulation
  • Cultural knowledge is cumulative
  • Information is “stored”
  • A culture’s collective learning grows across generations
  • Patterns
  • There are systematic and predictable ways of behavior or thinking across members of a culture
  • Patterns emerge from adapting, sharing, and storing cultural information
  • Patterns can be both similar and different across cultures
• Cultural Intelligence
  • The ability to understand why members of other cultures act in ways they do
  • People high in cultural intelligence can appreciate differences even if they do not necessarily share another culture’s views or adopt its ways of doing things

Thinking about Culture

1. Progressive Cultivation

• Refers to a relatively small subset of activities that are international and aimed at “being refined”
• This notion of culture formed the basis, in part, of a superior mindset on the behalf of people from the upper economic classes
• In late 19th century, as global travel began to rise, this understanding of culture was largely replaced with an understanding of it as a way of life

1. Ways of Life

• Refers to distinct patterns of beliefs and behaviors widely shared among members of a culture
• Shifts the emphasis to patterns of belief and behavior that persist over many generations

1. Shared Learning

• In the late 20th century, anthropologists and social psychologists developed the concept of enculturation to refer to the ways people learn about and shared cultural knowledge

• Enculturation

  • A fluid and dynamic process
  • Emphasizes that culture is a process that can be learned

• The understanding of culture as a learned pattern of views and behaviors is interesting for several reasons:

  • It highlights the ways groups can come into conflict with one another
  • Members of different cultures simple learn different ways of behaving
  • These differences can sometimes become politicized and a source of tension between groups
  • Understanding that culture is learned is important because it means that people can adopt an appreciation of patterns of behavior that are different than their own
  • Understanding that culture is learned can be helpful in developing self-awareness

The Self and Culture

• Individualism
  • Seek personal freedom and prefer to voice their own opinions and make their own decisions
  • People from individualistic societies often have more social freedoms
  • Independent Self
  • People see themselves as 
    • Being a unique individual with a stable collection of personal traits
    • These traits drive behavior
• Collectivism
  • More likely to emphasize their connectedness to others
  • More likely to sacrifice their personal preferences if those preferences come in conflict with the preferences of the larger group
  • People from collectivistic societies often have better social social safety nets
  • Interdependent Self
  • People see themselves as
    • Defined differently in each new social context
    • Social context, rather than internal traits, are the primary drivers of behavior
• Vertical and Horizontal Dimensions
  • Describe social status among members of a society
  • People in vertical societies differ in status, with some people being more highly respected or having more privileges, while in horizontal societies people are relatively equal in status and privileges
• Vertical Individualist
  • People are unique; some distinguish themselves and enjoy higher status
  • Ex. United States
• Horizontal Individualist
  • People are unique; most people have the same status
  • Ex. Denmark
• Vertical Collectivist
  • People emphasize their connectedness and must do their duty; some enjoy higher status
  • Ex. Japan
• Horizontal Collectivist
  • People emphasize their connectedness and work toward common goals; most people have the same status
  • Ex. Israeli Kibbutz
• Self-Construal: the way people define the way they “fit” in relation to others

Culture is Learned

• Begins with parents and caregivers, because they are the primary influence on young children
• Caregivers teach kids, both directly and by example, about how to behave and how the world works
  • Encourage children to be polite, reminding them
  • Teach kids how to dress in a way that is appropriate for the culture
  • Introduce children to religious beliefs and the rituals that go with them
  • Teach children how to think and feel
• Observational Learning: patterns of behavior are learned
• Rituals: cultures also use this to teach people what is important

Cultural Relativism

• Value-Free Research
  • Social psychologists try to avoid making value judgments
  • Considered an important approach to scientific objectivity
  • Difficult one to achieve
• Cultural Relativism
  • The principle of regarding and valuing the practices of a culture from the point of view of that culture
  • Considerate and practical way to avoid hasty judgments
  • At its most extreme it leaves no room for criticism of other cultures, even if certain cultural practices are horrific or harmful
  • When considering harmful cultural traditions, it can be patronizing to the point of racism to use cultural relativism as an excuse for avoiding debate
  • To assume that people from other cultures are neither mature enough nor responsible enough to consider criticism from the outside is demeaning
• Positive Cultural Relativism
  • The belief that the world would be a better place if everyone practiced some form of intercultural empathy and respect
  • Offers a potentially important contribution to theories of cultural progress: to better understand human behavior, people should avoid adopting extreme views that block discussions about the basic morality or usefulness of cultural practices

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