Sociocultural approach
Sociocultural approach
The individual and the group
Social identity theory
- Person does not just have one self but multiple different socials selves depending on the group membership
- We need to understand who we are and our value in social setting
- When a person describes themselves as male, Australian, runner, teacher they are describing their social identities.
- Social selves can become more salient in social settings. If there is something about them that stands out like being Danish in America their Danish side becomes more salient if they view being unique as good.
- Three mechanisms are used when creating a social identity: social categorisation, social comparison, and the tendency for people to use group membership as a source of self-esteem.
- Social categorization works so that we put people into in-groups (us) and out-groups (them).
o Even when randomly assigned to these groups it works.
- Once a person has identified in and our groups their self-esteem is held up by social comparison.
o That is the benefits of of belonging to an in-group.
- This theory describes but doesn’t accurately predict human behaviour.
Study: tajfel
Social cognitive theory
- Formerly known as social learning theory
- This assumes that humans learn though observation.
- This teaching model that the person is following the models can either directly or indirectly teach.
- Learning through positive reinforsment or negative feedback is called vicarious reinforsment
- According to bandura there are 4 factors that need to be met in order for learning to occur:
o Attention
o Retension
o Motivation
o Potential
- Motivation of the learner is a complex thing and there are multiple factors affecting the motivation of the learner:
o Consistency
o Identification with the model
o Liking the model
- This theory also argues that if the learner has high self-efficacy they are more likely to learn
o Self-efficacy is the belief of an individual that they can succeed in a task.
- Can be applied to children watching war shows or aggressive games etc.
o Studies of children who watch violent shows or play violent games have bidirectional ambiguity.
Stereotyping
- Defined as a social perception of an individual based off of group membership and physical attributes
- There are multiple ways for stereotypes to form and affect one’s life.
o Out-group homogeneity is us seeing members of an out-group to have similar traits
o Grain of truth hypothesis means that we have a personal event with someone of an out-group and then generalize that event to all members of an out-group.
o Illusory correlation is when we see a relationship between two factors even when there isn’t any correlation.
§ When people have created an illusory correlation they are likely to have confirmation bias in the future.
- For those who have a stereotype agains them might experience Stereotype threat.
o Occurs when one is in a threat of being judged or treated stereotypically.
- Another effect of stereotypes is memory distorsion.
o Here people remember things that are their stereotype schema congruent but did not actually happen.
Studies: Hamilton and Gifford 1976 and Steel and arson 1995
Culture, behaviour, and cognition
Cultural dimensions
- Cultural dimensions are shared values of a culture.
- Individualism and collectivism is a cultural dimension.
- In individualistic societies one must fend for themselves. They are not expected to support their extended family or expect support from their family.
- In collectivistic societies from the moment, you are born you are a part of a large societal web that is there to support you.
o In these societies for an individual to stand out it is seen as bad and they might face discrimination.
- Ecological fallacy is when looking at two different cultures people expect that they are different.
Study: Berry 1967
Culture and cognition
- Culture plays a big rone in our cognition
o It might dictate how our schemas are made, how we retrieve information and what we remember.
- Education is a large part of how we form our schemas, so even if your home life is of different culture to your school, your schemas will most likely to be formed like the culture of the school.
Study: Kearins 1981
Enculturation
- A significanct part of one’s identity and the development is also learning their culture. This is called enculturation
- Babies aren’t born with a culture, so they need to be encultured
- When talking about enculturation and behaviour we are talking about music taste, participation and language use.
- When talking about enculturation and cognition we are reffering to the attitudes towards social relationships, gender roles, time orientation etc. also known as values enculturation
- Enculturation can happen by direct tuition, social cognitive theory or participation learning.
Study: greenfield 2006
Acculturation
- When people have immigrated to a different culture and they begin to adopt the norms and behaviours of the other culture.
- Assimilation is when a person replaces their own culture’s behaviour or values by the new cultures behaviour or values.
- When there is a want to adopt the values of th new culture while maintaining the old culture’s values is called integration.
- When immigrants try to avoid the other culture and fully keep their values, this is called separation.
Because of marginalization it is not possible for one to assimilate into the new culture nor is it possible for them to keep their own values
