Cross Cultural Psychology Key Terms

● Access to resources – The indicator of availability of material resources to a population.

● Activity – A process of the individual’s goal-directed interaction with the environment.

● Availability of resources – A measure indicating the presence of and access to resources essential for the individual’s well-being.

● Collectivism – Behavior and experience based on interdependence, collective responsibility, concern for others, and care for collective traditions and group values.

● Cross-cultural psychology – The critical and comparative study of cultural effects on human psychology.

● Cultural psychology – The study that seeks to discover systematic relationships between culture and psychological variables.

● Culture – A set of attitudes, behaviors, and symbols shared by a group of people and usually communicated from one generation to the next.

● Ecological context – The natural setting in which human organisms and the environment interact.

● Ethnicity – A cultural heritage shared by a category of people who also share a common ancestral origin, language, and religion.

● Ethnocentrism – The tendency (often unintentional) to view other ethnic or cultural groups according to the preconceptions originating in the standards and customs of one’s own culture.

● Ideological (value-based) knowledge – A stable set of beliefs about the world, the nature of good and evil, right and wrong, and the purpose of human life—all based on a certain organizing principal or central idea.

● Indigenous groups – People who identify as part of a distinct group or are descended from those originating in areas where their traditional lands, which existed prior to the establishment of modern-day borders.

● Individualism – Complex behavior and experience based on personal independence, self-reliance, and concern for oneself and one’s immediate primary group.

● Legal knowledge – A type of knowledge encapsulated in the law and detailed in official rules and principles related to psychological functioning of individuals.

● Multiculturalism – The view that encourages recognition of equality for all cultural groups and promotes the idea that the various cultural groups have the right to follow their own paths of development.

● Nation – A large group of people who constitute a legitimate, independent state and share a common geographic origin, history, and, frequently, language.

● Nontraditional culture – The term used to describe cultures based largely on modern beliefs, rules, symbols, and principles, absorbing and dynamic, science-based and technology-driven, and relatively tolerant to social innovations.

● Popular (or folk) knowledge – Everyday assumptions ranging from commonly held beliefs to individual opinions about psychological phenomena.

● Power distance – The extent to which the members of a society accept that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally.

● Race – A large group of people distinguished by certain similar and genetically transmitted physical characteristics.

● Religious identity – A term indicating an individual’s acceptance of knowledge, beliefs, and practices related to a particular faith.

● Scientific knowledge – A type of knowledge accumulated as a result of scientific research on a wide range of psychological phenomena.

● Sociopolitical context – The setting in which people participate in both global and local decisions; it includes various ideological issues, political structures, and the presence or absence of political and social freedoms.

● Traditional culture – The term used to describe cultures based largely on beliefs, rules, symbols, and principles established predominantly in the past, confined in local or regional boundaries, restricting and mostly intolerant to social innovations.

● Uncertainty avoidance – The degree to which the members of a society feel uncomfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity.

● Uncertainty orientation – Common ways in which people handle uncertainty in their daily situations and lives in general.

● Antidote – A remedy to prevent or counteract an adverse effect.

● Assimilation bias – The propensity to resolve discrepancies between pre-existing schemas and new information in the direction of assimilation rather than accommodation, even at the expense of distorting the information itself.

● Availability bias – Any condition in which the availability heuristic produces systematic errors in thinking or information processing, typically due to highly vivid although rare events.

● Availability heuristic – A cognitive strategy for quickly estimating the frequency, incidence, or probability of a given event based on the ease with which such instances are retrievable from memory.

● Barnum effect – A phenomenon that refers to people’s willingness to accept uncritically the validity of Barnum statements.

● Barnum statement – Any generic "one-size-fits-all" description of or interpretation about a particular individual that is true of practically all human beings.

● Belief perseverance effect – The tendency to cling stubbornly to one’s beliefs, even in the face of contradictory or disconfirming evidence.

● Bias – A prejudicial inclination or predisposition that inhibits, deters, or prevents impartial judgment.

● Bidirectional causation – A mutual, reciprocal relationship between two variables wherein each is both a cause and an effect of the other.

● Cognitive bias – Any systematic error in attribution that derives from limits that are inherent in people’s cognitive abilities to process information.

● Continuous variable – Any variable that lies along a dimension, range, or spectrum, rather than in a discrete category, that can theoretically take on an infinite number of values and is expressed in terms of quantity, magnitude, or degree.

● Critical thinking – An active and systematic cognitive strategy to examine, evaluate, and understand events, solve problems, and make decisions on the basis of sound reasoning and valid evidence. More specifically, critical thinking involves maintaining an attitude that is both open-minded and skeptical; recognizing and distinguishing between facts and theories; searching for factual accuracy and logical consistency; objectively gathering, weighing, and synthesizing information; forming reasonable inferences, judgments, and conclusions; identifying and questioning underlying assumptions and beliefs; discerning hidden or implicit values; perceiving similarities and differences between phenomena; understanding causal relationships; reducing logical flaws and personal biases, such as avoiding oversimplifications and overgeneralizations; developing a tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity; exploring alternative perspectives and explanations; and searching for creative solutions.

● Dichotomous variable – Any variable that can be placed into either of two discrete and mutually exclusive categories.

● Fundamental attribution error – A bias in attempting to determine the causes of people’s behavior that involves overestimating the influence of personality traits while underestimating the influence of their particular situations; that is, overutilizing internal attributions and underutilizing external attributions.

● Heuristic – A mental shortcut or rule-of-thumb strategy for problem solving that reduces complex information and time-consuming tasks to more simple, rapid, and efficient judgmental operations, particularly in reaching decisions under conditions of uncertainty.

● Metathinking – The act of thinking about thinking; engaging in a critical analysis and evaluation of the thinking process.

● Metathoughts – Thoughts about thought, which involve principles of critical thinking.

● Motivational bias – Any systematic error in attribution that derives from people’s efforts to satisfy their own personal needs, such as the desire for self-esteem, power, or prestige.

● Naturalistic fallacy – An error in thinking whereby the individual confuses or equates objective descriptions with subjective value judgments, in particular, by defining what is morally good or bad solely in terms of what is statistically frequent or infrequent.

● Parataxic reasoning – A kind of "magical thinking," frequently responsible for superstitious behaviors, in which two events that occur close together in time are erroneously construed to be causally linked.

● Post hoc error – A shortened form of post hoc, ergo propter hoc ("after this, therefore because of this"), referring to the fallacy that follows Event A, then B must have been caused by A.

● Representativeness bias – Any condition in which the representativeness heuristic produces systematic errors in thinking or information processing.

● Representativeness heuristic – A cognitive strategy for quickly estimating the probability that a given instance is a member of a particular category.

● Schema – A cognitive structure or representation that organizes one’s knowledge, beliefs, and past experiences, thereby providing a framework for understanding new events and future experiences; a general expectation or preconception about a wide range of phenomena.

● Self-fulfilling prophecy – A phenomenon wherein people’s attitudes, beliefs, or assumptions about another person (or persons) can, with or without their intent, actually produce the behaviors that they had initially expected to find.

● Twitification effect – The amplification and disproportionate influence of a limited number of voices via the use of mass media platforms.

● Unidirectional causation – A relationship between two variables wherein one is the cause and the other is the effect.

● Absolutist approach – A view in cross-cultural psychology that psychological phenomena are basically the same in all cultures.

● Application-oriented strategy – An attempt to establish the applicability of research findings obtained in one country or culture to other countries or cultures.

● Comparativist strategy – An attempt to find similarities and differences in certain statistical measures in a sample of cultures.

● Content analysis – A research method that systematically organizes and summarizes both the manifest and latent content of communication.

● Correlation coefficient – A number that summarizes and describes the type of relationship that is present and the strength of the relationship between variables X and Y.

● Dependent variable – The aspect of human activity that is studied and expected to change under the influence of (an) independent variable(s).

● Direct surveys – The type of surveys in which the interviewer maintains or can maintain a direct communication with the respondent and is able to provide feedback, repeat a question, or ask for additional information.

● Equivalence – Evidence that the methods selected for the study measure the same phenomenon across other countries chosen for the study.

● Experiment – The investigative method in which researchers alter some variables to detect specific changes in the subjects’ behaviors, attitudes, or emotions.

● Focus-group methodology – A survey method used most intensively in both academic and marketing research. The most common use of this method is a procedure in which a group responds to specific social, political, or marketing messages. The typical focus group contains 7–10 participants, who are either experts or represent potential buyers, viewers, or other types of customers.

● Holistic – The study of systems with multiple interconnected elements.

● Independent variable – The condition(s) that is (are) controlled by the researcher.

● Indirect surveys – The type of surveys in which the researcher’s personal impact is very small because there is no direct communication between the respondent and the 5 interviewer. The questions are typically written and handed in, mailed, or e-mailed to the respondents in their homes, classrooms, or workplaces.

● Laboratory observation – Recording people’s behavior in an environment created by the researcher.

● Measure of central tendency – The measure that indicates the location of a score distribution on a variable, that is, describes where most of the distribution is located.

● Meta-analysis – The quantitative analysis of a large collection of scientific results in an attempt to make sense of a diverse selection of data.

● Naturalistic observation – Recording people’s behavior in their natural environments with little or no personal intervention.

● Psychobiographical research – A longitudinal analysis of particular individuals, usually outstanding persons, celebrities, and leaders, representing different countries or cultures.

● Relativist approach – A view in cross-cultural psychology that psychological phenomena should be studied mostly from “within” a culture where these phenomena occur.

● Representative sample – A sample having characteristics that accurately reflect the characteristics of the population.

● Survey – The investigative method in which groups of people answer questions about their opinions or their behavior.

● Absolute threshold – The minimum amount of physical energy needed for the observer to notice a stimulus.

● Aesthetic experience – A term used to identify the feeling of pleasure evoked by stimuli that are perceived as beautiful, attractive, and rewarding. The term also refers to displeasure evoked by stimuli that are perceived as ugly, unattractive, and unrewarding.

● Altered states of consciousness (ASC) – The general name for phenomena that are different from normal waking consciousness and include mystic experiences, meditation, hypnosis, trance, and possession.

● Behavioral environment – A mental representation that orients people to dimensions such as time, space, and the interpersonal world.

● Consciousness – The subjective awareness of one’s own sensations, perceptions, and other mental events.

● Depth perception – The organization of sensations in three dimensions, even though the image on the eye’s retina is two-dimensional.

● Difference threshold – The lowest level of stimulation required to sense that a change in the stimulation has occurred.

● Dreams – Story-like sequences of images occurring during sleep.

● Exorcism – The spiritual practice of removing demons or any other evil spiritual entities from an individual or a place, believed to be possessed or invaded by these evil entities.

● Meditation – A quiet and relaxed state of tranquility in which the individual aspires to integrate emotions, attitudes, and thoughts.

● Perception – The process that organizes various sensations into meaningful patterns.

● Perceptual set – Perceptual expectations based on experience.

● Sensation – The process by which receptor cells are stimulated and transmit their information to higher brain centers.

● Sensory adaptation – The tendency of the sensory system to respond less to stimuli that continue without change.

● Sleep – A non-waking state of consciousness characterized by general unresponsiveness to the environment and general physical immobility.

● Trance – A sleeplike state marked by reduced sensitivity to stimuli, loss or alteration of knowledge, rapturous experiences, and the substitution of automatic for voluntary motor activity.