Introduction to culture and psychology

1. How did cultural psychology start?

 Initial studies were based on American university studies
 Later criticized for being based on WEIRDOS (Western, educated, industrialized, rich and
democratic)
Mainstream psychology and cultural psychology are interested in the same phenomenon but the
latter focuses on:
 Understanding cultural influences on behavior
 Testing the limitations to knowledge using cross-cultural research methods

What is the meaning of culture?

Used to describe activities or behaviors refer to the heritage
Etics are the things that are consistent across cultures
Emics: things that are culture specific
Some people believe culture is internal or external, this will affect the definition
There is disagreement in how to define culture.

2. Dialects between cultural and cross-cultural psychology

There are 3 perspectives and 5 dimensions they differ on:
1) Indigenous psychology:
 focus on the meaning of keywords, concepts, categories that are widely used in culture
 Describe their meaning and changes in meaning across demographic categories within a culture
 Ex: what do we mean by honor. Would go and live with an African tribe to look at their values,
do interviews and gather qualitative data.
2) Cultural psychology:
 Focus on ethnographic information (real life, not lab setting) to study culture intensively
 Usually use one-to-one interviews and qualitative methods
 Example: why do people in India see anger, shame and happiness as very distant in meaning vs
Americans
The difference between the two: indigenous psychology studies behaviors of people in one
culture vs cultural psychology is interested in the effect off culture in the mind/behaviors and
vice/versa
 3) Cross-cultural psychology:
 Sample information across cultures (experimental design)
 Obtain data from many people in many cultures using the same methods across all
 Ex: looking at the nature of the attachment relationship comparing a Lebanese and American
sample.

5 dimensions on which the 3 perspectives differ: (indigenous and cultural are both qualitative so
its them vs cross cultural)
1. Content vs context: what was said vs the events that surround the content and how it was said
respectively (indigenous and cultural focus on context and cross-cultural, the content)

2. Culture outside the person vs culture inside the person: culture influences aspects of the
person’s perception, judgement and behavior, so culture is seen as an independent variable in
research versus culture linked to every psychological process, culture and psychology make up
each other (indigenous and cultural are inside vs cross-cultural outside)

3. Culture is static vs dynamic: more or less stable vs constantly modified by people (indigenous
and cultural dynamic vs cross-cultural is static)
Kahima (1997) postulates that some aspects are relatively stable while other elements
change from onetime to another

4. Culture studied in artificial situations vs studied in real-life situations (indigenous and

cultural are real-life and cross-cultural is artificial)

5. Meaning is a barrier to research vs meaning is the focus of research: differences in meaning

make measurement of constructs more difficult, needs standardization, but helps focus on
individual differences and focus on attitudes vs and they tend to ignore individual differences
and focus on what members of a culture have in common and focuses on context. (Indigenous
and cultural focus on meaning and cross-cultural regards meaning as a barrier).

Universal toolkit
 set of cognitive tools and personality traits which help people adapt to their environment to
address basic needs and social motives
 people are intentional agents and unlike anials we can share our intentions with others. We can
also symbolize our physical and metaphorical world through oral and written language.
 relates to the ratchet effect (improvement never goes backward)
 of course individuals differ in how much of these toolkits they have or how they use them but we
all have the same toolkits
 universal but changes across cultures
Cognitive abilities: language, complex social cognition, memory (that’s why we can create
history), hypothetical reasoning, problem solving, planning
Emotions: basic emotions, self-conscious emotions
Personality: extraversion, neuroticism, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness
These constructs are studied to see how the individual affects culture and how the culture is
affected by individual.

Article 1: Where does culture come from?

In other words, going back to Matsumoto & Juan (2013), there are 3 important sources of the
origins of culture:
Ecologies:
 Climate (spaion working hours): people organize their lives according to climate.
Example: Some areas in the world have harsh winters and summers whereas other areas like
southeast asia have milter temperatures. Its not about temperature per say that affects cultural
ways of living but mostly the deviation of temperetures. People need to regulate their body
temperatures and have an easier time doing that in temperate climates. harsher weathers are
harder to adapt in. you would need specific ways of transportation, food rots faster… if its very
cold u would need to organize your life and works in doors and have specific arrangement. If its
hot then work would be under shade. In spain it is part of the culture to close shops in mid
afternoon, the hottest time of day and then continue working after.
 Population density: number of people who live vs the amount of land to grow food.
Arable land (amount of land to grow food)
 Global changes in climate also affect diseases and thus the evolution of humans
Resources:
 Food/water (influences psychological characteristics such as teamwork, community spirit , and
interdependence)
 Money (less money means more cooperation): people with more money can afford to be less in
sync and can help buffer the affect of being in a harsher environment or having less resources
Harsh climates and scarce resources tend to push cultures towards valuing the idea of hospitality
and helping one’s family and neighbors. Also, people who live in a place with high population
density and low resources have to cooperate more.  middle east (Saudi arabia)
People :
 Group living (few people want to live in seclusion)
 Basic human needs and motives (reproductive resources and needs for safety and security//
physical needs like drinking, eating, repreoducing; and safety needs like shelter warmth and
security)
 Universal psychological kit
 Not only culture affecting people but people affecting culture itself

We have seen that culture is a meaning and information system, an abstraction that we use
to refer to many aspects of our ways of living.
Its contents can be divided into 2 broad categories:
 Objective elements: explicit, physical elements (architecture, clothes, food, eating utensils,
program, social media)
 Subjective elements part of a culture that do not survive people physically: psychological
processes (values, beliefs, norms, attitudes, worldviews)
ABC (affect, behavior, cognition)
Subjective elements: values (affect)
 Guiding principles that refer to desirable goals that motivate behaviors
 They define the moral, principle, social economic, esthetic or spiritual ethics of a person or as
group of people
Two levels:
 Personal values: guiding principles in people’s lives
 Cultural values: shared, abstract ideas about what a social collectivity views as good, right, and
desirable
There are 5 different factor that affect our values:
Hofstede (2001) studied work-related values around the world (using cross-cultural research) and
suggested 5 values dimensions that differentiate cultures:
1. Ind vs col: tendency for people to look after themselves and their immediate family vs
tendency for people to belong to intergroup that are supposed ti look after its members in
exchange of loyalty
2. Power distance: the degree to which cultures will encourage less powerful members of a
group to accept that power is distributed unequally (not only governments but also at work with
boss). (how do we deal with the difference btwn the authority and the people, how big is the
distance, am I allowed to question the authority. This is important because who im prioritizing
affects values. Power distance also affects how much we believe we can change))
 3. Uncertainty avoidance: the degree to which people feel threatened by the unknown or
ambiguous situations and have developed beliefs, institutions or ritual to avoid them (what ppl
do in times of uncertainty affects values) (in Lebanon the uncertainty)
4. Masculinity vs femininity: on one pole is success, money and material things and on the
other is caring for others and quality of life, This dimension refers to the distribution of
emotional roles between males and females
5. Long vs short term orientation: the degree to which cultures encourages delayed
gratification of material, social and emotional needs among its members.
Subjective element: beliefs (cognition)
 These differ between culture and are called social axions: general premises about oneself, the
social and physical environment and the spiritual world.
 They are assertations that people endorse and use to guide their behaviors in daily living (ex:
religion)
Subjective element: norms (behavior)
 Generally accepted standards of behavior for any cultural group
 It is the behaviors that has been defined by members as the most appropriate in any given
situations
 Normal behavior is related to social rituals in different cultures (rituals/etiquette are important
because they reinforce cultural meaning systems (ex: engagement/wedding ceremony rituals)
 An important dimension of cultural variability is tightness vs looseness
Subjective elements: attitudes:
 Evaluations of events/behaviors occurring
 Culture facilitates attitudes concerning actions and behaviors, which produces cultural filters
(stereotypes, prejudice, etc) WACTH perfect strangers
Subjective elements: worldviews
 Note: some cultures do not embrace worldviews, rather they believe life in the hands of gods,
fate
 An important aspect of worldviews is that it includes the way we think of ourselves: self-concept
 Just world belief is a worldview
 Cultural worldviews: assumptions people have about their physical and social realities.
(Americans believe their fate is in their hands whereas in other cultures they might believe its in
the hands of god)
the way we understand the world is a mix of the above dimensions and it affects how I see the
world and how I see myself (helps create self-concept)
However, two other factors (besides culture) influence our view of ourselves:
Situational context (family, environment, other people, historical context)
 Individual factors (personality, biological and physiological factors and human nature)
How can we view contents of culture ?
1) Symbolic approach is subjective
 Defines culture as:
 Shared symbols, concepts, meaning and linguistic terms
 They are socially constructed as they are produced by individuals (however, no mention of how)
 Cultural symbols are regarded as organizing psychological phenomena
 Subjective elements based on values
 Examples: cultural arrangements for sleeping are generated by moral concepts (the couple is
sacred) rather than material resources
 Children in some cultures are not punished because humans do not control life in general,
supernatural forces do (so cannot control behaviors)

2) Activity approach is objective

 Activity theorists argue that psychological phenomena are formed as people engage in socially
organized activity
 Practical, socially organized activity is the primary cultural influence on psychology
 Thinking is grounded in the objective nature of social organization. Dewey (1910)
 Vygotsky (1987) emphasized the role of practical activity and social life
 A child’s behaviors that have been passed down from other generations is viewed as objective
and not “inside of the person but outside of them”
 Social institutions, established political customs, effect and perpetuate modes of reaction of
perception that compel a certain grouping of objects, elements, and values…
 in activity, how does the parent instruct the children to behave and such, we don’t care about
why they do that or the values behind it  that would be symbolic approach
 A part of your daily interaction you either say I want to adopt a few things but change others.
Eventually this approach will become subjective but initially it is objective.

3) Individualistic approach is both

 The individualistic approach emphasizes individual factors (such as creativity) which mediate
and assimilate culture
 Culture is seen as an external context which the individual utilizes and reconstructs as he sees fit
 Culture is seen as the outcome of a negotiated interaction between an individual and social
institutions/conditions
 Social life is like a tool kit which provides individuals with the means for constructing what they
like (both objective and subjective)
 Wikan (1996): I do not attempt to analyze poverty masalan but how it is experienced and
transforms people.
 Example: boy growing up in poverty decides to make inventions to bypass his conditions so
through creativity
 In other words, individual processes determine the effect that social life
 4 main tenets of cultural psychology:
1) Psychological phenomenon are cultural in their essence (symbolic + activity):
 They are formed as:
 People participate in social life
 They embody characteristics of a particular social life and
 They generate behavior that perpetuates particular social relationships
 They are shared and transcend individuals processes
 Even emotions are cultural phenomena as culture shapes the occasion meaning and expression of
affective experience
2) The cultural essence of psychological phenomena consists in practical social
activities (activity):
 Activity relates the individual to objective reality
 Activities meet people’s practical needs and are conducted according to particular social norms
 The social organization built into an activity constitutes its concrete character
 This organization also account for the diversity of psychological phenomena within a society
(individual differences depend upon social order)
3) Psychological phenomena are organized by social concepts (symbolic + activity):
 Symbolic concepts are not purely mental, they are based on people’s activities which are devised
for dealing with conceptions of things (concepts depend upon experience with the natural
environment)
4) Social activities concepts and psychological phenomena are devised by humans
(individualistic):
 But agency develops through participating in broad and collective social activities
 One’s agency becomes constrained by their objective form (through social activities)

Topic 2: Research Methods in Cultural Psychology

Thinking in terms of health and mental health, people can be divided into 2 groups based on their
perspective of the impact of culture:
1) Universalists: illness happens everywhere and in the same form
2) Culture relativists: culture relativists culture is powerful enough to create unique forms
of suffering in different societies
Example from 1st article here.
Another example is conceptualization of Alzheimer’s: some culture believe people who are
showing these symptoms is a way of understanding they are becoming a child again - metaphor
for rebirth. (in rural Senegal)
How can we account for cultural differences in research? There are 3 types of studies in
cultural psychology
 Method validation studies (validity and reliability):
 Concerned with validity (important) and reliability of the measurement
 Validity: is a scale/tests/measure accurately measuring what it is supposed to?
 Reliability: whether a scale is consistent in its measurements
 Cross-cultural validation studies: examine whether a measure of a psychological
construct that originates in a single culture is applicable, meaningful and
psychometrically equivalent in another culture (tests for the equivalence)

 Indigenous cultural studies:

 Rich descriptions of complex theoretical models of culture that predict and explain
cultural differences
 Based on the idea that psychological processes and behavior can only be
understood within the cultural situation in which it occur (for example, view of the
self, emotions etc…)

 Cross-cultural comparison studies

 Compare cultures on some psychological variable of interest (example: COS)
 So what are the dimensions that characterize the different types of cross-cultural
comparison
Dimensions in cross-cultural comparative research:
I. Exploratory vs hypothesis testing
Exploratory: examine the existence of cross-cultural similarities and differences (descriptive)
 Strength: provides broad score for identifying cross-cultural similarities and differences
 Weakness: limited capacity to address the causes of observed differences.
Hypothesis testing: examine why the cultural differences may exist by testing theories.
 Strength: leads to more substantial contribution to theory development and explicit
attempts to deal with rival explanations
 Weakness: less likely to discover interesting differences outside of the realm of the
tested theory

II. Presence or absence of contextual factors

What are contextual variables:
  May involve characteristics of the participant or their cultures which can explain
partly or fully, observed cross-cultural differences
 Including such factors in a study will enhance its validity and help rule out the
influence/biases and equivalence because as evaluation of their influence can help
to confirm or disconfirm their role in accounting for the cultural difference
observed
 What could these include: SES, education age, religious institutions
 Hypothesis testing studies usually include contextual variables.

III. Structure vs level oriented:

 Structure oriented: comparisons of constructs, their structures or relationships
with other constructs
 Focus on relationships among variables to identify similarities and differences in
these relations across cultures
 Ex: is depression conceptualized in the same way across cultures?

 Level-oriented comparisons of scores across cultures

 Focus on whether people of different cultures have different mean levels of
different variables.
 Ex: is the mean score of depression in Lebanon the same as that in the U.S.

IV. Individual vs ecological/cultural level

 Individual: individual participants provide data and are the unit of analysis
 Ecological: use countries/cultures as the unit of analysis
Data may be obtained from individuals in different cultures, but they are averaged for
each culture and those averages are used as data points for each culture
Nowadays these 2 are combined: multi-level analysis studies:
 Level 1: how individual differences in performance on a cognitive task
 Level 2: may be related to personality traits of those individuals
 Level 3: and how those personality traits may be related to cultural value or other
ecological variables
However, documenting differences between cultures on a psychological variable does not say
anything about whether the source of the difference is cultural
So how can we establish linkages between the contents of culture and the variables of
interest in the study?
Two types of linkage studies
Unpacking studies (“culture” is replaced by more specific variables)
  Like contextual variables which examine the degree to which they can account for
cultural differences. Ex: like the economic crisis in Lebanon, political crisis,
 Context variables should be measured to examine the degree to which they can account
for cultural differences
 Examples of unpacking studies:
o Individual-level measures of culture (ind vs col)
o Self-construal scales (independence vs interdependence)
o Personality (introversion vs extraversion)
o Cultural practices (child rearing)
Experiments:
 Studies in which researchers can create condition to establish cause-effect relationships
 These are different from cross-cultural comparisons because researchers cannot create
cultural groups based on random assignment
 So which methods are used to randomly assign participants into “cultural groups”
a) Priming studies:
 Involve experimentally manipulating the mindsets of participants and measuring
the resulting changes in behavior
 If there is a change, we can then provide a link between the cultural product
(mindset/independent variable) and a psychological process (behavior/dependent
variable)
 An example of primers:
 Many psychologists have developed different techniques to prime individualism
and collectivism
 For example: some researchers have primed participants with a short article with
personal pronouns “I,me” to prime for individualism, and another with pronouns
like “we and our” to prime for collectivism
 Oysterman published a meta-analysis of these techniques on Psychological
Bulletin in 2008, mayhaps read it (the effects of implicit and explicit)

b) Behavioral studies
 An example of a behavioral study (Yamagishi, 1986):
 Using a questionnaire, participants are categorized into two categories (high trust/
low trust)
 All participants then participated in an experiment in which they could cooperate
with others by giving money to them
 Some had a sanctioning system that provided punishment
 Some did not have such a system
 Results were compared
Bias: is a state of non-equivalence between cultures. Biases are the differences that do not have
the same meaning within and across a culture. If there is a bias then the comparison loses its
meaning (as if comparing apples and oranges). Bias refers to a state of non-equivalence and
equivalence refers to a state of non-bias.
 Conceptual bias: equivalence in meaning of the overall theoretical framework and
hypothesis. American researchers are used to reducing the world to a rational world were
theories are two dimensional. Other cultures might not have that education so the
theoretical framework would not be equivalent.

 Method Bias: sampling bias (whether samples are appropriate representatives of a

culture. Are people in Seattle representative of American culture? And whether the
sample is equivalent on the demographic variables also affects. Imagine ure doing an
exploratory study and u take 50 rich americans vs 50 indians from a different
background), linguistic bias (is the translation of a word or construct equivalent to the
same construct in the other culture?), procedural bias (if u are comparing students from
two unicersities in different cultures, sometimes participation is forced but other places
might consider it a luxury to participate in an international study. That affects the results).

 Measurement bias: the degree to which measures used to collect data are equally valid
and reliable. (is a questionnaire valid in the other culture as well?)

 Response bias: the systematic tendency to respond in a certain way to items:

o Socially desirable responding (European americans scored higher than korean
americans on self-deceptive measures-seeing urself in a positive light- whereas
Korean americans scored higher on impression management-other people seeing
them in a positive light )
o Acquiescence bias: the tendency to agree rather than disagree with items on a
questionnaire.
o Extreme response bias: tendency to use ends of a scale (countries near the
medditerreanean exhibit more of both acquiescence bias and extreme response
bias than countries in northwestern Europe. This can be explained by the rigid
masculinity in Mediterranean that value power and decisiveness
o Reference group effect

 Interpretational bias
o Analysis of data (when analyzing data u shouldn’t just see if its statistically
significant, u should also study the effect size so u don’t just generalize and make
false conclusions)
o Dealing with non-equivalent data
o Interpreting findings (instead of saying Japanese people suppress their emotions,
further research showed that americans exaggerate their emotional responses. The
interpretation matters)
3-Sociocultural approach to learning and development:
One cannot discuss languages and culture without thinking of Vygotsky and his collaborators
who based their theory on the concept that human activities:
 Take place in cultural contexts
 Are mediated by language and other symbol systems
 Can be best understood when investigated in their historical development
Vygotsky conceptualized development as the transformation of socially shared activities into
internalized processes which can be summarized in 3 main themes:
1. Individual development and mental functioning has its origins in social sources
 Human development starts with dependence on caregivers the infant relies on
transmitted experiences of others which emphasizes the primacy of social interaction
in human development
 It starts as an interpsychological interaction between infant and caregiver then it
becomes and intrapsychological interaction?
 Even if the child are not conversational partners with adults, they are involved in
adult world as participants in adult ag
 ricultural and household work: joint activity that provides an opportunity for
synthesizing several influences into the learner’s novel modes of understanding and
participating
 Language and shared attention are also seen as social sources of development as they
serve as cognitive tools for learning. (joint attention: parents paying attention to the
activity the child is doing, they will find out her interests and help her conduct herself
in specific situations
 Example: if the child is talking to mom and mom is looking around and not watching
child’s face, she will understand that where mom is looking is where she should focus
on and the same goes for language
 In sum, culture shapes the children’s cognitive development by guiding children to
stimuli of interest as well as culture-specific assigned meanings

2. Human actions (social and individual) is mediated by tools and signs (semiotic
mediation)
 Semiotic mechanisms (including the psychological tools ) mediate social and
individual functioning and connect the external and the internal, the social and the
individual
 Semiotic means include: language, counting systems, mnemonic techniques, writing,
schemes, maps, which are culture-specific. (the previous point was the basis of the
theory and this explains the mechanism through which it is internalized).
 Semiotic mediation: knowledge is not internalized directly but through
psychological tools such as appropriation.
 Vygotsky called it an internalization.
  Thus, psychological tools are the products of sociocultural evolution to which
individuals have access by being actively engaged in the practices of their
communities.
 Almost all sociocultural researches place language in central psotion, however, other
tools are also available which have been created to adapt to children with special
needs.
 These tools might be different but serve the same purpose as language in attaching
meaning to the child’s experiences
 They are reflected in cognitive strategies.
3. Social sources and semiotic mediation can be best examined through genetic (not genes
but functional analysis) or developmental analysis:
 Genetic analysis: it examines the origins and the history of phenomena, focusing on
their interconnectedness- learning and development take place in socially and
culturally shaped contexts.
 Given that these are constantly changing and evolving, there can be no universal
schema that adequately represents the dynamic relation between external and internal
aspects of development: use of functional system analysis to capture how these are
applied in different contexts.
So how did Vygotsky study the process of internalization?
 On a theoretical level: he used dialectical logic to understand the interrelationships
between components of the systems
 On a psychological level: he focused on capturing the dynamics of what proves
consistent with his theoretical approach.
 In other words, he used the dialectical method to analyze a central psychological tool,
verbal thought.
Vygotsky examined the way that thought and speech, which initially have separate levels of
development in children, become inextricably intertwined.
Rather than being a sign of cognitive immaturity, Vygotsky suggested that mutterings play an
important role in cognitive development. How does internalization occur?
a) In first few years, thinking is independent of language
b) When language appears, it is first as means of communication rather than mechanism of
thought.
c) When they merge, self-talk plays an important role in cognitive development- children
can plan, guide and monitor own behaviors.
d) Then, it develops to inner speech- children talk to themselves mentally rather than out
loud: self-regulation

 Note: we think in terms of the specific words that our language provides.
 So this is how he theorized language moves from being external to internal.
2nd article: Constitution of the self: intersubjectivity and dialogicality:
How are the I and OTHER related to create meaning?

Coelho and Figuerido (1999) provided 4 martices of intersubjectivity in terms of their

natures:
Matrices of intersubjectivity:

1. Other is an irreducible dyad:

 Martix 1: trans-subjective intersubjectivity
 Otherness emerges as a constituent of subjective experiences in which the
other makes sense of experiences for us
 The other is just telling me the rules of society but there is no interaction as
opposed to what Vygotsky proposed. The self is fully dependent on the other.
 Less flexible than Vygotsky’s theory.

 Matrix 3: interpersonal subjectivity (Vygostky)

 The self is built on the idea of Ego and Alter (self and other respectively) in
relationship with one another and co-developing (Vygotsky related to this
through his conceptualization of how language is internalized)
2. Other are existentially separate = I OR other
 Matrix 2: traumatic intersubjectivity:
 Due to the gap between self and other, we experience the world not through
private formations in the mind but as intersubjectivity constituted experiences
 Goes back to Husserl (using horizons taught by others to understand concepts,
but the other’s existence is bracketed and independent of our being)
 Example: child crying and mother tending.
 Therefore, this gap is characterized by the fact that language is not bridging
the barrier of communication between mother and child.

 Matrix 4: intrapsychic subjectivity (Freud):

 The I undergoes changes through socialization to bring impulses of
subjectivity under control
 Mother is superego and will help child regulate Id
Other-I:
 Communication presupposes that the two participants contribute reciprocally, through
asymmetrically, to the construction of the message
 They are co-authors and their responsibility for communication is mutual
 The words of the self and of his interlocutor are called forth by the state of the
discussion and they are inserted into a shared operation of which neither is the creator
I OR Other:
 Communication can be seen as superimposed on I and Other
 Language present before words (intersubjective communication can take place without
words or gestures)
 At times, the other is to be without identity, communication is the passivity of the Other
(example: therapy)

Article 3: Culture and language: cultural dimensions and personal pronoun use:
For instance, Smein and Rubini (1990) investigated the relationship between individualism-
collectivism and verbal abuses. They found:
Insults in collectivist culture were more directed toward relations of individual (khara 3lek w 3a
3ayltak)
Insults in individualist were more geared toward the individual (you are shithead)
More generally, this implies culture and language are connected through the conception of the
person

Personal deictic pronouns index the person we are talking to within the specific social context. It
contributes to:
 Identity negotiation (who am I talking to?)
 Construction of social reality…?
(a language where male and female are addressed in pronouns of distinct form may attend
automatically to gender-relevant information in interpersonal situations)
(in French u use tu and vous to refer to someone from the same or lower status or someone ure
intimate with vs someone of higher status respectively. In English it is just you. So French care
more about power and status)
What does the linguistic practice of pronoun drop say about the culture?
 Omission of ‘I’: no differentiation between the speaker and the context of the speech a,
including the conversational partner (reduce the difference between the two)
 Emphasis of ‘I’: the person is highlighted as a figure against the speech context that
constitutes the ground.
 Omission of ‘you’: deemphasize the importance of the addressee
 Emphasis of ‘you’: objectifies the addressee
In English you cand address people without i/you as opposed to Japanese language
In Korean there is a word for need without necessarily saying I need it.
In Indian if you ask did you give food to nadia the answer would literally translate to yes give so there is
no I or you.

This then allows the speaker to manipulate WHAT?

Main results: pronoun drop languages were found to be associated with:
1) Individualism: languages who use pronoun drop scored lower on individualism (less of a
separation)
2) Uncertainty avoidance: could be explained by the idea that speakers of a pronoun drop
language face a constant choice between mentioning or not mentioning the subject in the
sentence. And these people are more likely to be collectivistic

Topic 4: Parenting
Food for thought: 4 babies, 4 countries, 1 year official trailer. What does that tell you about the role of
culture in development
When you fight with your sibling, do your parents get involved?
Childhood in any society is dynamic period of life:
Similarities: One aspect of childhood that is constant across cultures is that people from this period want
to be competent
Differences: what cultures perceive as competent is different
Two important related concepts relating culture and development:
Socialization:

 process by which we learn and internalize the rules and patterns of the society in which we live
 Occurs over a long time, involving learning and mastering societal norms, attitudes, values, and
belief systems
 Starts early from the very first day of life
 (the bonding itself)
Enculturation:

 This is the process by which youngsters learn and adopt the ways and manners of their specific
culture
 enculturation is one aspect of socialization
 (what we understand form a healthy bond)
So, What is the difference between the two?
Socialization- process and mechanisms by which people learn the rules of society
Enculturation- products of the socialization process (the subjective, underlying, psychological aspects of
culture that become internalized through development
The similarities and differences between the terms socialization and enculturation are thus related to the
similarities and differences between the terms society and culture
So who helps the socialization and enculturation? Who are the socializing agents? parents siblings
extended families peers school…
Let’s look at it in a theoretical framework
Bronfenbrenner
In Bronfenbrenner’s view, human development is a dynamic, interactive process between individuals and
various ecologies that range from the proximal immediate environment to the more distal
Bronfenbrenner argues thus it is only by examining the child in relation to his or her own context, can we
understand how a child develops
These environments include:

1) Microsystem: the immediate surroundings, such as the family, school, peer group, with which the
children directly interact. (its bidirectional between effect of individual and immediate
surrounding) child temperament will affect how the child will interact with the family and how
the family will treat them
2) The mesosystem: the linkages and mutual interaction between microsystems, such as between
school and family (relates to appropriation. What if ur parents teach you certain values. But then
school or friend show u different values. You need to choose which values to take in)
3) The exosystem: the context that indirectly affects children, such as a parent’s workplace.
4) The macrosystem: culture, religion, society, and
(all these systems affect one another and will in terms effect you and you effect them in return)
5) The chronosystem: the influence of time and history on the other systems
Example1: covid changed all these layers worldwide. Covid affected the culture but also each
culture dealt with it in a different way
Example2: if there’s a war. How the war is affecting these layers and the child’s development)
This framework is important as it highlights that children are not simply passive recipients of the
enculturation and socialization processes
  Rather, children also contribute to their own development by influencing and interacting with the
people, groups, and situations around them
 Thus, children are active producers and architects of their own development
Developmental niches:
Another important framework was proposed by Super and Harkness (1986) In the notion of development
niches:

 In their niche, children are influenced by the various socialization agents and institutions around
them ensuring their enculturation
 At the same time, the child also brings his or her temperamental disposition, motivation, and
cognition to the interaction
1) Custom of childcare and child rearing (what cultures tell them is the best child care practices)
2) Physical and social setting (is their an economic crisis where they need the child to be mature
faster)
3) Psychology of the caregivers (their own understanding of their culture, mental health, how they
perceive their importance, of their role in the development of the child)
Difference between developmental niches and Bronfenbrenner: how they explain the factors. There’s
more focus on personal factors than Bronfenbrenner. The developmental niches Focus the influences on
three things.
Similarities:

 it’s a back and forth influence (child is active not passive)

 The child can affect the physical or social setting by changing it.
Example: The child that saw the limitations of the physical setting and created electricity using
junk
 Child becoming independent quicker would change the social setting because for example you
don’t need the neighbors to help take care of them, instead the child would take care of the
siblings.

Contexts of enculturation

So lets explore in more detail the culture, families, and parenting context of enculturation:

 Six cultures study

 Extended and multigenerational families
 Siblings
 Domain specific to parenting
 Parenting goals and beliefs
 Parenting styles
 Parenting behaviors and strategies
 Diversity as function of economics
Whiting and whiting (1975) conducted a study about parenting, children, and culture. The aim was to
examine child rearing and children’s behaviors in various culture contexts based on in-depth observations
and interviews
Two main findings:
Type of ecology/society (hunter/gatherers vs urban) affect child rearing

 Affected parent’s experiences of time spent with child

 Affected activities children are exposed to
 Affected behaviors and personality trait values encourages
Women’s work role contributed to children’s social behaviors:

 If women contributed to subsistence of family-children learned to share family responsibilities –

low on dependence
 If women were not expected to contribute to subsistence if family- children scored high on
dependence

Another context to consider is the economic conditions under which child rearing takes place

 If a society has a high infant mortality rate- parents focus on meeting the child’s basic physical
needs rather than other developmental needs
 This can be positive: in Sudan mothers spends the first 40 days after delivery exclusively with the
child
 This can be negative in northern Brazil, if the infant is weak, mothers show little responsiveness
and affection, infants are seen as temporary “visitors”.

Topic 5: Self and Identity

If we go back to the previous topic, we can say that:

 “interdependent” self-construal cultures -,> relatedness and communion among
individuals is a key social value. Identity becomes a relational matter in which one’s
social location in a community supersedes a focus on individual uniqueness in identity.
 “Independent” self-construal cultures so the characteristics used to describe your identity
would be to describe your uniqueness and individuality and your distinction from the
community.
Gjerde and Onishi (2000) proposed that: theories should move beyond the categorical-
comparative paradigm the original perspective (ind vs col and independent vs interdependent) is
too broad and does not allow to understand the complex depth of the individual experience of
identity development in the cultural context.
This led to the development of a new tripartite model in which identity is defined as:
Hammack (2008, p.230) ideology recognized through the individual engagement and manifests
in a personal narrative and reconstructed across life within social interactions.
The tripartite model:
Content

Identity

Process structure
Content: ideologies and values
Structure: how you explain the content to yourself (according to how you explain, you will create
a personal narrative (coherence: Coherence is being able to take in why we internalize things and
discuss it. We can make sense of why we are the way we are and can attempt to explain it) if you
explain content without being overwhelmed then you have coherent structure.
Personal narrative is being able to take in the good and bad life events without being
overwhelmed.
Process are the tools that are allowing to bring together content and structure (example language)
Cohler (1982) explained: it is through the construction of personal narrative that the life course
achieves its coherence, its continuity in social, cultural and historical time

The relationship between identity and ideology started with Erikson (1958):
Ego identity vs Role Confusion adolescence (12 to 18)
He claimed that identity is primarily connected to processes of ideological identification that are
themselves connected to the intergenerational transmission and social reproduction of a culture
Erikson connected processes of individual identity formation in the form of ideological
identification to larger sociohistorical movements.
Based on this idea St. Aubin (1996) presented his own idea of the role of ideology in identity
formation:
Personal ideology was found to be associated with a person’s:
  Values
 Beliefs about human nature
 Beliefs about religion and politics
 The nature of remembered life event (what does culture say is an important life event)
In this case, personal ideology possesses emotional correlates and is therefore central to the
formation of identity as it offers value-laden content to the life story associated with
identifications (religious, political etc..)
In sum, Van Dijk explains the role of ideological identity:
Cultural component:
 Allows individual to organize and synthesize the shared representations of a group, a
culture, or a nation, to construct a sense of person-culture symbiosis= internalization of
shared representations in the form of abstract beliefs or historical narratives
 How you internalize
Individual cognitive component
 This serves both an individual and a cultural function: how we make sense of the world
If ideology provides the basic cognitive content of identity, it is in narrative that ideological
identifications assume a coherent structure (kind of like appropriation)
Reflecting on the things you intenalized

According to Mcadams (1995) this is primordial because: To fully know a person, we must
know more than just his or her “traits” or “personal concerns” we must know his or her identity.
(understanding why we accept certain things and not others)
Given that this process is time consuming, when is this most useful to apply this technique?
CHECK YOUTUBE LINK (third culture kid)
Conceptualizing identity as narrative may be especially useful in the context of competing
discourses created by a globalized, postmodern world because identity becomes increasingly a
reflexive project (Giddens, 1991)
It becomes more useful when its more pressing like in morrocco there are extremely religious
froups and other that are more open so they have to figure out their identity and personal
narrative. Local and global discourse compete
No longer can identity proceed along the clearest of lines between generations for it is no longer
a single local discourse to which an individual is exposed rather local and global discourses
compete for primacy
Summary:
  The personal narrative provides meaning and purpose by creating continuity in time for
the individual
 Life experience is given temporal structure with a beginning, middle and end through the
construction of the life story
 More significantly, in linking identity and narrative in an individual defined as life story
that is both cultural and historical
But the narrative’s effect on identity is also dependent on the context /culture in which the person
lives (ted talk is: identity given or created?)
So how do we bring the content (which is the attribute) and the structure (coherence) together? It
is the process
Going back to the first sessions, we explained that
 The self is constituted by or in terms of social process and our individual reflections of it
= importance of interaction and social mediation (Mead, 1934)
 Identity development is connected to mediated action and symbolic tools such as
language
Bringing it all together Penuel and Wetsch (1995) propose that: the act of narrating one’s life
story involves the transformation of inner speech into social speech, offering an expression of
identity = it is a social process
Thus, self and society are linked in a cyclically reproduced pattern of activity that both produces
and is reproduced by individual selves.