Week 3 Lecture Notes: Indigenous Psychology and Self-Perception

Week 3 Lecture: Indigenous Psychology and Culture in Perceptions of the Self

Introduction

• Acknowledgement of traditional owners of the land.
• Review of the previous lecture:
  • History and crises of social psychology.
  • The replication crisis: many experiments cannot be replicated.
  • Social facilitation, drive theory, and individual differences.

Overview

• Cultural differences in psychological phenomena demonstrate the importance of broad psychological research.
• Brief mention of the erasure of trans, nonbinary, and gender diverse individuals in research.
• Discussion of indigenous psychology and cultural differences in the concept of the self.
• Understanding that psychological theories and experiments done with Western participants may not generalize to everyone.
• Cultural factors influencing individuals' views of themselves.

The Issue of WEIRD Participants

• Early Western psychological science used convenience samples of wealthy, white, socially advantaged young men.
• In the 1980s, the field started recognizing the need for diverse participants and cultures.
• Psychologists began declaring sample demographics for accurate judgments of generalizability.
• The replication crisis (started around 2005) and the issue of unrepresentative samples came to a head.
• Publication of "The Weirdest People in the World" by Heinrich, Heine, and Norenzayan in 2010.

What Does WEIRD Mean?

• WEIRD: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic.
• Refers to countries like the United States, England, Canada, and Australia.
• Most research participants and researchers come from WEIRD countries.

Statistics

• A study of articles published between 2003 and 2007 in top psychology journals found:
  • 68% of participants were from the United States.
  • 96% of participants were from WEIRD countries (North America, Europe, Australia, Israel).
  • 96% of psychological samples come from countries with only 12% of the world's population.
  • 73% of first authors were from American universities, and 99% were from universities in Western countries.

Why is this a problem?

• Assuming psychological responses are fundamental and universal, it doesn't matter whom researchers study.
• Studies may fail to replicate because the effect is constrained to some group of individuals during some time periods.

Cultural Differences in Psychological Effects

Industrialized vs. Nonindustrialized Communities

• Individuals from nonindustrialized societies show differences in susceptibility to standard visual illusions.

• Example: The Muller-Lyer Illusion.

• In this illusion, many people see the top line as being longer than the bottom line, when In reality, these lines are the same length.

• The Muller-Lyer illusion:

  • Industrialized societies (e.g., Americans) are more susceptible to the illusion.
  • Some participants, like the San foragers, are barely impacted by the illusion.

Fairness

• Differences in how much real money participants are willing to give to another participant in a game.
• US participants are at the higher end of this distribution.
• Individuals in industrialized societies are more risk-averse in monetary gambling games involving gains.
• Individuals in industrialized societies discount for the future less steeply.

Western vs. Non-Western Societies

• Differences in self-concept and reasoning.
• Analytic Thought: Detachment of objects from context, focus on object attributes, use of categorical rules to explain behavior.
• Holistic Thinking: Orientation towards the scene as a whole, focus on relationships between objects, explaining events based on relationships.
• European American participants are more analytic, while East Asian participants are more holistic in their reasoning.
• Differences in moral reasoning:
  • Western subjects rely on principles of justice and harm.
  • Non-Western adults and Western conservatives rely on fulfilling interpersonal relationships and divinity.
• Western societies display a higher motivation for consistency, are more prone to social loafing, and associate more benefits with physical attractiveness.

Differences Within Western Societies (US vs. Others)

• US participants are more individualistic and value choice more.
• They are also even more analytic in their reasoning style.

US College Students vs. Non-College Students

• US college students are even more individualistic.
• They have a stronger tendency to rationalize their choices.
• They are less conforming.
• Their moral reasoning is almost exclusively based on autonomy.
• They are less prejudiced.
• They are more susceptible to attitude change and social influence.

Conclusion on WEIRD Participants

• There is considerable variation in psychology and behavior among human populations.
• Capital WEIRD people may be one of the worst subpopulations to study for generalizing about Homo sapiens.
• Relying on capital WEIRD populations may cause researchers to miss important dimensions of variation.
• This narrow sample may lead to uneven and incomplete understandings of the human condition.

The Erasure of Trans, Nonbinary, and Gender Diverse Individuals in Psychological Research

• This group has historically been treated poorly by psychology.
• Cameron and Stinson (2016-2018) examined how sex and gender were measured in the APA's Psychological Science.

Findings

• None of the studies mentioned how gender and sex were measured in the main article.
• Most used a binary measure (male/female or man/woman).
• Some had a more inclusive measure.
• Others forced participants to check a box that said "other."
• The percentage of participants was reported only for those who selected a binary option.

Consequences of Mismeasuring Gender

• Denies and erases the identity of individuals who may not identify with the binary construction of gender.
• A violation of ethical principles of avoiding harm and having integrity and respect.
• Binary questions are harmful and transphobic.
• The APA requires psychologists to respect gender and gender identity and abandon binary measurements.
• Misclassification of participants threatens the validity of the results.
• Seeing only binary options may change how participants respond in the study.

Indigenous Psychologies

• Researchers trained in psychology outside of their own country realized that Western theories and experiments didn't make sense in their native context.
• These researchers started creating indigenous psychologies.
• Definitions of indigenous psychology:
  • Psychology anchored on the thought and experience of indigenous people from an indigenous perspective (Enriquez).
  • Psychological knowledge that is native and designed for its people (Kim).
  • Psychology that emerges from cultural tradition, lies in daily activities, and is interpreted in terms of indigenous frames of reference (Berry & Sinha).

Key Elements of Indigenous Psychology

• Gives primacy to indigenous, local, or culturally defined perspectives.
• Issues examined are relevant to the indigenous or native culture.
• Culture is the source of concepts and theories.
• Researcher concepts, theory, methods, tools, and results need to be appropriate to reveal the phenomenon in context.

Two Categories of Indigenous Psychology

• People residing in the country, regardless of origin (Philippines, Taiwan, India).
• Study of the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of the first inhabitants of the land (Australia, New Zealand, Canada).

Similarities Between the Two Camps

• Conceptualized in contrast to psychological theories and methods imported from the West.
• Consider colonization as having an enduring impact on the psychology of the populations they're interested in.

Characteristics of Indigenous Communities

• Pre-invasion and pre-colonial history.
• Distinct from other sections of society.
• Nondominant sectors seeking to preserve their culture.
• Their ways of life have been and continue to be impacted by colonization.
• They place importance upon maintaining their connection to lands and sustaining their ways of life.

Indigenization

• The process of developing indigenous psychology.
• Stages:
  • Acknowledgment of the limitations of Western theories and methods.
  • Correction of Western theories by adapting them or discovering indigenous concepts and methods.
  • Indigenous psychology becomes a self-perpetuating discipline.

Approaches to Indigenization

• Etic Approach (Indigenization from the Outside): Creating an indigenous version of the foreign imported material.
• Emic Approach (Indigenization from Within): The source of concepts and methods is indigenous culture.
• A hybrid approach is best.

Cosmologies of Indigenous Psychologies

• Cosmology refers to the origin narratives that explain the universe, our relationship to it, and our purpose in it.
• Filipino psychology developed from ethnic psychology.
• Taiwanese psychology from Chinese traditions.
• Indian psychology from Hinduism and folklore practices.

Psychology of Indigenous Australians

• Comprise both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
• In 2016, there were almost 800,000 indigenous Australians (3.3% of the total population).
• History going back more than sixty thousand years.
• At the time of colonization, there were 260 distinct language groups.
• Indigenous Australians understand the world as spiritually interconnected.
• They're seminormatic, nonmaterialistic peoples focused on social, religious, and spiritual activities.
• Each person belongs and has spiritual connections to the land.
• Colonization dramatically changed and destroyed indigenous peoples and their cultures.
• Commonwealth and State Acts (1883-1967) resulted in absolute state control over indigenous Australians.
• Indigenous Australians were only granted full citizenship rights in 1967.
• Many still experience psychological impacts such as trauma, grief, and loss.

The Self in Social Psychology

• Humans have a sense of self.
• We can recognize ourselves in the mirror.
• The self is comprised of two components: self-awareness and self-concept.
• Self-Awareness: The act of thinking about yourself or introspection.
• Self-Concept: The content of the self or our knowledge or beliefs about who we are.

Components of Self-Concept

• Personal attributes (gender, occupation, location).
• Personality traits.
• Likes and dislikes.
• Physical attributes.
• Ethnicity or nationality.
• Religion.
• Hobbies and interests.
• Relationship to other people.

Salience of Self-Concept

• Different aspects of our self-concept may be more or less salient.
• People who do not belong to nondominant or minority groups are more likely to include their gender, ethnicity, or other relevant identity in their self-concept.
• Some parts of our self-concept may be chronic.

Self-Construal

• Refers to how individuals define and make meaning of the self in relation to others.
• Can be independent or interdependent.
• Independent Self-Construal: Personal attributes highlight separateness and uniqueness.
• Interdependent Self-Construal: Close relationships, social roles, and group memberships are central to the sense of self.
• Individuals in Western countries display more independent self-construals.
• Participants in non-Western countries display more interdependent self-construals.

Research on Self-Construal

• Singelis (University of Hawaii) found that Asian American participants had a higher mean score on the interdependent dimension compared to Caucasian Americans.
• Caucasian Americans had a higher mean score on the independent dimension than the Asian Americans.

Subcomponents of Interdependent Self-Construals

• Relational Self-Construals: Focused mainly on close relationships with a small number of other people.
• Collective Self-Construals: Focused mainly on group memberships.
• Women tend to have a more relational self-concept.
• Men tend to have a more collective self-concept.

The Mediator Role of Self-Construals

• Having a certain cultural background leads to having a certain level of independent self-construal and a certain level of interdependent self-construal, and those different levels are what lead to different psychologies between different people.
• Differences in brain activity may be related to self-construals.
• Differences in cognitions, affect, and motivations.

Self-Construals and Financial Decisions

Hamilton and Bayhal (2009)

• Investigated how self-construals impact financial choices.
• Manipulated self-construals using different kinds of advertisements.
• Participants viewed an ad that urged them to invest and remember that living life is what it's all about which was supposed to activate an independent self construal.
• In Interdependent condition, they saw an ad that urged them to invest and remember that relationships are what life is all about.
• Those with an interdependent self-construal allocate less toward volatile funds because they're worried about financial loss.

Mandel Study

• Manipulated their self construal to be independent or interdependent by having them read the Sumerian warrior story.
• For the financial situations, Mandel thought that those manipulated to have an interdependent self construal would be reminded of the fact that they had friends and family who could help them if they suffered a financial loss so they could feel safer in making the more risky financial choice in the game.

Critical Analysis

• By manipulating self construals, the researchers have done a true experiment.
• The researchers randomly allocated participants to each condition.

Application: Indigenous Australians

• An indigenous Australian view of health and well-being recognizes the individual self, family, community, traditional lands, ancestors, and the spiritual dimensions of existence.

Conclusion

• The capital weird people crisis is not yet over, just like the replicability crisis.
• Indigenous psychologists recognize this problem a while ago and have been indigenizing psychology through the emic or etic approach so it's more relevant to their cosmologies.
• Differences in how individuals construe themselves seems to be related to a lot of differences in decision making and behavior.
• It's still unclear at this point whether the constructs of independent, interdependent, relational, and collective selves apply to indigenous peoples' conceptions of themselves.
• Research tends to misclassify or erase trans, nonbinary, and gender diverse individuals, which is in violation of our ethical principles. We also don't know how gender differences apply to this group.

Weekly Tasks

• One more thing to do before your tutorial this week, which is completing the self construal scale. After your tutorial, complete the group work training, do the prompt questions on Moodle, and attempt the next weekly exam.