Dr. Jill Norvilitis

Journey’s End Refugee Services Financial literacy 6 sessions with newly arrived families

About 20 hours Teams of three students Orientation next week

Smiling to express happiness Kissing Temperament Anorexia nervosa Depression

1) Build a body of knowledge about people

2) Apply this knowledge to intervene in people’s lives

  How do we get this knowledge?

Not from a single study Most research has been done with American

college students

Does our knowledge about people hold up in another culture?

Cultures is the independent variable Look for universals and culture-specific

information.

Diverse influences Interests in human diversity began to emerge in the

15th century Philosophers of the 17th and 18th century began to

debate the nature of human beings By end of 19th, early 20th cent—anthropologists,

psychologists, and other social scientists began to speculate on cc human behavior

Slowly things began to get empirical Galton—cc work on intelligence William Rivers—New Guinea Richard Thurnwald—Melanesia—cognitive functions

C-c psych really came into its own in 1960s Until recently, though, people viewed CC Psych as

something only a few esoteric psychologists did

APA Division Memberships2.  Experimental:  9256.  Behavioral Neuroscience:  5387.  Developmental:  1,14220.  Adult Dev. and Aging:  1,13250.  Addictions:  99353.  International:  714

 PsycInfo:  hits for "cross-cultural"1980:  289/28,737=.00971990:  839/58,451=.0142000:  1545/70,567=.0212010:  2931/161,743=.018

Added as major subject heading in PsycInfo in 1997

Critical and comparative study of cultural effects on human psychology At least two cultural groups Not the same as cultural psychology—seeks to

discover links between a culture and the psychology of individuals living in that culture

Race—a group of people distinguished by certain similar and genetically transmitted physical characteristics

Ethnicity—a group of people with a shared cultural heritage

Nation— a group of people who have a common geographical origin, history, and language and are defined as a unified political entity

Kroeber & Kluckholn (1952)—6 categories in which culture is discussed Descriptive Historical Normative Psychological Structural Genetic

Different aspects of these will be emphasized by people in different cultures

General characteristics Food and clothing Housing and technology Economy and transportation Individual and family activities Community and government Welfare, religion, and science Sex and the life cycle

Tylor (1865) culture—all capabilities and habits learned as members of a society

Linton (1936)—social heredity A set of attitudes, behaviors, and symbols

shared by a large group of people and usually communicated from one generation to another

Scientific Popular or folk Ideological Legal

The environment—available natural resources If few, must work together and with others If many, less need for teamwork

Population density—higher may require greater social order

Affluence—related to individualism and emotionality

Technology Climate—food, clothes, health, housing

Dimensions along which cultures vary Typologies Hsu, 1972—dominant family role Hall—high vs. low context communication Triandis—social distance

Murdock and Provost Writing and records Fixity of residence Agriculture Urbanization Technological specialization Land transport Money Density of population Level of political integration Social stratification

Traditional Rooted in traditions, rules, symbols, and

principles established predominantly in the past. Tends to be more conservative and intolerant of

innovations. Nontraditional

New principles, ideas, and practices; often science and technology based.

Individuals’ choices are not strongly restricted to the social prescriptions.

Embrace individualism. Good and evil is relative. Often associated with economic and social

change.

Factors leading to tightness— Cultural homogeneity Isolation from other cultural influences Population density Where there is need for coordinated action

Factors leading to looseness Heterogeneity Much space between people Strong influences from other cultures Many solitary occupations Warmer climates favor looseness

Began in 1960s Culture’s Consequences   Cultures and Organizations “Cultural atlas”—helps person from X

position self around Y Over 50 countries 4 dimensions emerged, then 5th

Power distance—how we deal with the inequality between people that is inevitable—are we highly stratified or not?

Lower PD—preference for consultation/interdependence

High PD—preference for dependence or counterdependence

Scores are largely for middle class High PD at work—wide salary range between top

and bottom at work, subordinates expect to be told what to do

Low PD at work—ideal boss is a resourceful democrat, privileges and status are frowned upon

Power of the group vs. the power of the individual; relatively independent form PD

Collectivist—people are born into extended families or other ingroups which continue to protect them in exchange for loyalty

Individualist—everyone grows up to look after him/herself and his/her immediate family only

We vs. I Collectivist—relationships over task Individualist—task prevails over relationship Collectivist—harmony and consensus; Individualist—self-actualization is the goal

Degree to which culture holds to traditional gender roles

Differences by gender in scores on this dimension

Feminine cultures More leveling More likely in colder climates Dominant values—caring for each other and

preservation; people and warm relationships Masculine cultures

Dominant values—material success and progress; money and things are important; men should be tough and assertive, women should be tender and take care of relationships;

Degree to which members of a society feel uncomfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity

Importance of punctuality—clocks Weak UA—Low stress, uncertainty is a

normal feature of life and each day is accepted as it comes; no more rules than necessary

Strong UA—Uncertainty inherent in life is felt as a continuous threat which must be fought; high stress; lots of rules

Bond designed questionnaire with non-Western bias and 10 basic Chinese values—did no locate uncertainty avoidance, but did id this.

Long term vs short term orientation

Basic question of how do we get social order

Perceived potential to explain economic development

Allocentrism Idiocentrism Emotions and IC Fundamental Attribution Error Self-Serving Bias/False Uniqueness Effect Social loafing vs. social striving

Considerations in hypothesis testing 1) Choice of theory and hypothesis—begin

with a question 2) Design the methodology

Pick a research paradigm Participants Selection of variables Environment, setting, and procedures

3) Decisions about analyzing data and reporting findings Choice of statistics Interpretation of results

4) Ethics

Equivalence Hypothesis generation Design issues

Comparativist Application-oriented Explanatory Ecological or cultural-level

Sampling adequacy SES Literacy

Equivalence of language Test translation

Words that seem straightforward may not be. Need to avoid words like ‘it’ and ‘former’ or ‘latter’ Some phrases have no equivalent in some

languages Avoid metaphors like ‘foot in mouth’ and vague

words like ‘frequently’ Even when words are the same, strength may

differ Back translation Give the same scale to bilinguals

Response sets Cultural influences on the interpretations

of findings Can’t make causal statements if you didn’t

test Can’t assume something is related to, say,

indiv-collect if you didn’t assess IC Researcher bias/value judgments

1) Don’t compare—the conservative choice

2) Reduce the nonequivalence 3) Interpret the nonequivalence 4) Ignore it—a mistake that many make

Absolutist Relativist Emic (between) and Etic (within) Most researchers combine these.

Ask someone who is knowledgeable about the cultures to collaborate with you

Get a full demographic assessment of all your subjects

Search for measures that have psychometric reliability and validity for all subjects

Run a pilot study Develop a culture-free analysis plan that involves

raw scores as well as a standardized ones Have people of different culture backgrounds

check your interpretations of the data In designing your study and interpreting its results,

give some thought to what kinds of underlying psychological dimensions of culture produced or should produce differences 

Draw a map of the world Whittaker and Whittaker, 1972

Small group discussion of questions

Making judgments about other ethnic, national, or cultural groups and events based on the observer’s own ethnic, national, or cultural group’s outlook.

Have a tendency to view the outgroup as inferior. 

Many say we need to rid ourselves of ethnocentrism.

Others say it is a natural psychological process. Alternative view: cultural relativism—using

one’s own country’s standards to judge that culture

Ingrained rules from childhood Expect these rules to be widely shared

Become annoyed, frustrated, angry when others don’t share these

Expect people of other cultures to act like we do

Flexible ethnocentrism vs. Inflexible ethnocentrism

Triandis, 1994 What goes on in our culture is seen as natural

and correct. What goes on in other cultures is unnatural and incorrect.

We perceive our ingroup customs as universally valid.

We unquestionable think that ingroup norms, rules, and values are correct

We believe that it is natural to help and cooperate with members of our ingroup, to favor our ingroup, to feel proud of our ingroup, and to be hostile/distrustful of outgroups

Contact reduces prejudice when Contact is between groups that are roughly = in

social, economic, or task-related status People in authority and or the general social

climate are in favor of and promote the contact The contact is intimate and informal enough to

allow participants to get to know each other as individuals

The contact is pleasant and rewarding The contact involves cooperation and

interdependence Superordinate goals are more important than

individual goals

Contact increases prejudice when Contact reinforces stereotypes Contact produces competition between groups Contact emphasizes boundaries between

groups Contact is unpleasant, involuntary, frustrating

or tense Contact is between people of unequal status

Evaluative bias of language Differentiating dichotomous variables and

continuous variables Similarity-uniqueness paradox The Barnum effect The assimilation bias

Remember to accommodate Representativeness bias The availability bias

Political Difficulties in Doing Research in this Area People assume that biology causes the

psychology Improper reliance on race as a measure of

culture Biases in interpretation can be used for

personal/political agendas

Sensation—process by which receptors are stimulated and transmit their information to higher brain centers. Absolute threshold Difference threshold Sensory adaptation

Perception—process that organizes various sensations into meaningful patterns

Perceptual expectations that make certain interpretations more likely to occurmakes perception fast and efficient

Varies by culture Personal experiences shape this

Related to education and socialization Picture scanning

Linked to reading and writing patterns Also draw circles in the way you write

Three dimensions in two

Three universal dimensions Hue Brightness Saturation

Is color universal? Language-related theories of color perception Emphasize the role of language in the identification

and labeling of colors in every language Even though the majority of healthy individuals can

identify the same colors, some languages lack certain words for particular colors Red always has a separate word, but green and blue

are sometimes not distinguished linguistically

Adams and Osgood, 1973—looked at 23 cultures Red—salient and active Black and gray—bad White, blue, green—good Yellow, white, gray—passive

Around the world, people view white with more + feelings than black

Roberson et al., 2004 Followed English (11 basic terms) and Himba (5 basic

terms) from Namibia 3 and 4 yo longitudinally Looked at language and color. Acquired color terms the same way. Children in both cultures didn’t acquire terms in any

particular order, in contrast to the widely held idea that primary colors + green are learned first

Carpentered world hypothesis Front-horizontal foreshortening Symbolizing three dimensions in two

All cultures respond to the same 4 basic tastes—sweet, salty, sour, bitter

Fifth taste—umami—savoriness The ability to taste varies only slightly by

culture Preference for salty and sweet is universal. All

cultures avoid spoiled or rotten foods A supertaster is a person whose sense of taste

is significantly sharper than average. Women are more likely to be supertasters, as are Asians, Africans, and South Americans.

Regions closer to the equator prefer spicier foods

Taboo foods vary

Pressure, temperature, pain Lots of individual factors affect it Anxiety can increase pain, anger can

decrease it, pride can cause people to hide it

Cultural norms—labor pain is lower in cultures where childbirth is not considered to be defiling and where little help and comfort is offered

Halonen and Santrock (1995)—lower access to health care may create increased threshold for pain

CategorizationOn basis of similaritiesSome appear to be universalTend to categorize on the best examples of basic formsBut, among cultures, differences may occur in

The elaboration of language codes for the categories

Category boundaries The organization of categories in superordinated

structures The treatment of interprototype stimuli The rules for the use of categories (Mesquita,

Frijda, Scherer, 1997)

Within Euro-Am cultures, we use prototypes How people sort—

People pick categories by shared attributes Young kids—sort by striking, superficial properties

like color or number Sorting by form is slightly more advanced Older kids—shared function or taxonomic label This development appears to be related to

education Yupno of Papua New Guinea

Illiterate adults sorted by form, but educated sorted by color (Wassman & Dagen, 1994)

The highest, most abstract level is that everything is either hot or cold

Early work—Bartlett, 1932 Ross and Milson, 1970 Oral traditions: better memories

But memory is not better overall. Cole and colleagues—Kpelle of Liberia did not

perform better on lists of words than Americans. Kpelle didn’t use categories that were logical (but

imposed by researchers) or learn by rote (serial position effect, primacy, recency)

Overall—some things like STM and rates of forgetting seem universal

But mnemonics, strategies, structure vary and formal education play a role

Drawing inferences and predicting future events based on analysis of past events

Western value to behave scientifically is to see the world as it really is

But other modes of thought include intuition and mysticism Inferential reasoning

Using a new combination of previously learned elements To study this, have to create new situations

Kpelle and US children Verbal logical reasoning—

Syllogisms—In the north, were there is snow all year, the bears are white. Novaya Zemyla is in the far north. What color are the bears? This formal reasoning is a specific school-related task

Creativity CC, people think of divergent thinking, not convergent thinking Also, hard work, risk taking, tolerance for ambiguity and disorder But, how creativity is fostered varies

In high uncertainty avoidance, people prefer creative people to work through organizational structures

High power distance, get permission from authority

Westerners define punctuality using precise measures of time—1 min, 1 hr, etc

Prior to information revolution, Arabs used only 3 sets of time—no time at all, now (which varied), and forever (too long)—Hall, 1959

Akbar (1991)—In West, time is a commodity to be bought and sold, but not in Africa—time is very elastic

What is late? Asked US and Brazilian students what is late for lunch—

How long to walk 100 ft down a street at business time as a sign of time pressure Japan—20.7 sec England—21.6 US—22.6 Indonesia—27.2

Hamermesh (2003)—US, Germany, Australia, Canada, South Korea—as wealth increases, people become more dissatisfied with their lack of time

The amount of sleep that each of us needs is physiologically determined

In each culture, some sleep for 5-6 hours, some 9-10 hours

Dream Monophasic—cultures that value cognitive

experiences that take place only during waking hours—more materialistic

Polyphasic—value dreams and treat them as part of reality—more spiritual view

Manifest content—actual content—varies, though falling, eating, swimming, death, exams—are common

Latent content—meaning

Phenomena that are different from normal waking consciousness and include mystic experiences

But ASC are widely reported around the globe Trance—sleeplike state marked by reduced sensitivity to stimuli,

loss or alteration of knowledge, automatic motor activity Worldwide sample—experienced in 90% of countries—Bourguignon, 1994

Beliefs about possession Need to examine from observer’s standpoint, victim’s view, and

community’s view Associated with stress due to job dissatisfaction, work conflicts, economic

hardship May be associated with mental illness Also a cultural belief

Meditation Quiet and relaxed state of tranquility in which person achieves integration

of thoughts, perceptions, and attitudes Usually obtained through a special principle or belief Therapeutic—reduces stress