Cultural origins of behavior and cognition
Aspects of culture that can be seen: for example, language, clothing, food, customs, and art.
What is surface culture?
The process, beginning in early childhood, by which particular cultural values, ideas, beliefs, and behavioral patterns are instilled in the members of a society.
What is enculturation?
A set of cognitive generalizations (e.g., beliefs, expectations) about the qualities and characteristics of the members of a group or social category.
What is a stereotype?
A model that helps us understand how we learn according to Social Cognitive Theory. The model implies that there is a mutual influence between three sets of factors: personal factors, environmental factors, and behavioral factors.
What is triadic reciprical determinism?
The high side of this dimension, can be defined as a preference for a loosely-knit social framework in which individuals are expected to take care of only themselves and their immediate families.
Its opposite, represents a preference for a tightly-knit framework in society in which individuals can expect their relatives or members of a particular ingroup to look after them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty. A society's position on this dimension is reflected in whether people's self-image is defined in terms of "I" or "we."
What is individualism vs. collectivism?
Aspects of culture that cannot be seen: for example, attitudes, values, beliefs that drive surface culture
What is deep culture?
The dual process of cultural and psychological change that takes place as a result of contact between two or more cultural groups and their individual members.
What is acculturation?
The co-occurrence of distinctive stimuli can result in an overestimation of the frequency with which the two events occur.
What is an illusory correlation?
Learning by observing models of a behavior, and then evaluating consequences of the behvaior, as well as self-efficacy, or one's believed ability to perform said behaviour
What is observational learning?
The trends of behavior in a given culture which reflect the values of that culture.
What is a cultural dimension?
An approach to studying behavior in a culture, from the perspective of an insider, where the researcher doesn't have any preconceived ideas of how, or what exact behaviors they will study before they arrive.
What is an emic approach?
The purpose of this study was to test the cross-cultural musical understanding of trained and untrained listeners from two distinct musical cultures by exploring the influence of enculturation on musical memory performance. Reasearchers played 30 seconds of Western, Chinese, and Turkish orchestral music for participants who then completed a recognition memory task. Participants were significantly better at remembering novel music from their native culture, however, Turkish participants remembered more Western music than Western musicians remembered Turkish music. Musical recognition memory for novel musical excerpts is enculturated.
What is Demorest et al 2008?
To determine the effect of group size on the formation of stereotypes. Participants were asked to read a list of facts about two fictitious Groups- Group A and Group B. There were 26 statements made about Group A, and 13 made about Group B. Of the statements made about both groups, 50% held positive connotations and 50% held negative connotations. Participants were then asked to complete memory, and evaluative judgment tasks about both groups. Participants over-estimated the frequency of undesirable behaviors belonging to Group B, despite the desirable and undesirable traits being even across both groups. Stereotypes are more likely to be formed against minorities.
What is Hamilton and Gifford 1976?
The classification of persons into groups on the basis of perceived common attributes.
What is social categorization?
Investigated whether cultural differences in individualism versus collectivism affect conformity. Researchers used the Asch paradigm on a group of Temne (collectivistic), Inuit (individualistic, and Scottish (control). Participants were told, «Most Temne (or Inuit or Scottish) people say this line is equal in length to this one at the top. Which one do you say». This revealed higher levels of conformity amongst the Temne.
What is Berry, 1967?
The approach to studying behavior in a culture from the perspective of an outsider, for example, looking at conformity in non-western countries by using the Asch paradigm.
What is an etic approach?
A correlational study investigating the negative acculturation effect and obesity among second and third generation migrants that gathered data of Asian migrants from "The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health". Found that second and third generation Asian Americans had a higher probability of obesity, supporting NAE. This was mitigated (reduced) by living in a high density migrant neighborhood, and by living in a non-majority language household.
What is Ishizawa and Jones 2016?
Followed the Hamilton and Gifford paradigm, except participants were assigned a membership role a) before reading about the groups, b) after reading about the groups, or c) they were not assigned to a group. If not assigned to a group = Illusory correlation effect, and if assigned to group before reading the sentences = Eliminated IC if assigned to minority group, but little effect on majority members. Membership in a minority group can lower stereotype attitudes towards that group.
What is Johnson, Schaller and Mullen (2000)?
A conceptual perspective on group processes and intergroup relations that assumes that groups influence their members' self-concepts and self-esteem, particularly when individuals categorize themselves as group members and identify strongly with the group. According to this theory, people tend to favor their ingroup over an outgroup because the former is part of their self-identity. Henri Tajfel and John C. Turner
What is Social Identity Theory?
Investigated the behaviour of helping strangers in collectivistic and individualistic cultures in a sample of 92 European Americans, 97 Americans of Asian descent at Stanford University, and 57 Japanese at Kyoto University. Participants assigned traits to members of in-goups vs. out-groups ("kind-unkind," "bold-timid," "extroverted-introverted,» «depends on the situation»). The researchers found that out-group discrimination is stronger in collectivistic cultures, which was contrary to the common assumption about collectivistic cultures.
What is Iyengar, Lepper, and Ross (1999)?
Researchers aimed to explore the extent to which bilingual individuals shift the underlying strategies used to resolve choice problems in 90 Chinese participants from Hong Kong, who were equally influenced by Chinese and Western traditions. The idea is that when speaking Cantonese, their schema for Chinese cultural norms are activated. When speaking English, they are influenced by Western cultural norms. The findings showed that instructing Hong Kong participants in Cantonese versus English led to decisions that emphasized moderation and a greater tendency to compromise in a product choice task, i.e. follow the cultural norms of their Chinese social identity.
What is Briley, Morris and Simonson (2005) ?
With a sample of 156 Asian American University Students, from multiple Asian backgrounds, and varying from first to fifth generation, researchers used the Asian American Multidimensional Acculturation Scale to examine how enculturation interacts with acculturation to influence identity. They found that acculturation and enculturation positively correlated with collective self-esteem, enculturation correlated with having "Asian American" as an important aspect of one's self-concept, and being acculturated correlated with cognitive flexibility, and that the general public viewed Asian Americans positively.
What is Kim and Omizo 2006?
Investigated the effect of stereotypes on behavior by giving black and white Americans a test. Participants were either told the test measured aptitude (intelligence) or problem-solving skills, they then completed a task to activate stereotype threat- being faced with a negative stereotype about their in-group. Black participants scored worse when told it was a test of verbal ability, but scored higher when told it was a test of problem-solving. The researchers concluded that stereotype threat was the cause of this difference in performance.
What is Steele and Aronson 1995?
An experiment using a virtual reality simulation of a fire in the London underground. Participants could either push people out of the way to get out as quickly as possible, or they could help others, but this would slow their escape from the fire. In one condition, the participants were given a "shared identity" - for example, all fans of the same football team. In the other condition, they were not given a shared identity - for example, "you are on your way back from buying a pair of shoes." The team found that those who shared a common identity were more likely to help one another, even at risk to their own safety. An example of how SIT has been applied is in crowd control during emergency evacuations.
What is Drury et al 2009?
Responses from 194 undergraduates at a US university revealed that collectivism correlated with the behavior of helping when its motivation was to sustain one's role identity. Individualism, on the other hand, correlated with volunteering for career-related purposes. The study concluded that the cultural dimension Individualism/Collectivism does not result in a difference in individuals' willingness to volunteer, only in their motivation.
What is Finkelstein 2010?