Most important aspects Cross-cultural Psychology of Health and Illness
Enculturation
= transmitting the guidelines of the culture you’re a member of to the next generation
3 levels of culture
- Tertiary level: explicit manifest culture, visible to the outsider (social rituals, traditional
dress, national curiisn,e festive occasions) (‘facade of a culture’)
- Secondary level: underlying shared beliefs & rules, knows to the insiders but rarely
shared with outsiders (‘social norms’)
- Primary / deepest level: rules that are known to all, obeyed by all, but implicit, and
generally out of awareness (hidden, stable, and resistant to change) (‘roots’)
Absolutist approach: psychological phenomenon are the same across cultures, processes
and behaviors vary
- universality
Relativist approach: psychological phenomenon only exist within the context of a culture
- variability
General psychology: focus on universals & (sometimes) tries to control for cultural variation
Cultural psychology: focus on cultural variation in terms of the psychological consequences
of culture
Degrees of universality
- Nonuniversal (cultural intervention): cogn. tool not found in all cultures
- Existential universal: cogn. tool found in all cultures that serves different function(s)
and is available to some degree in different cultures
- Functional universal: cogn. tool is found is all cultures that serves the same
function(s) but is accessible to different degrees in different cultures
- Accessibility universal: cogn. tool found in all cultures that serves the same
function(s) and is accessible to the same degree
Cultural dimensions theory (Hofstede: 5 dimensions):
- Individualism-collectivism
- How interdependent is a culture?
- Uncertainty avoidance
- How do people deal with ambiguity
- Power distance
- How hierarchical is a culture?
- Long-term/short-term orientation
- Connection with tradition, also economic orientation
- Masculinity/femininity
- How distinct are gender roles? Distribution of classical male/female traits
Color-blind approach
- emphasizes common human nature, ignores cultural differences
- even trivial distinctions between groups often lead to discrimination
Multicultural approach
, - group identities are different (particularly minorities)
- ignoring such group differences tends to lead to negative responses
Ethnocentrism
- perceiving one’s own culture as standard of comparison
- tendency to judge people from other cultures negatively by comparing them to your
own culture
- mensen uit andere culturen beoordelen naar de normen vd eigen cultuur
Resolve response biases
1. Force choice answers (yes/no etc)
- nuances are lost
2. Standardization
- transformation into Z-scores, distributed around a 0-average
- removes differences in average → response pattern
3. Reverse-scoring items
Control ‘reference group effects’ (use objective & concrete measures)
- providing specific scenarios as questions
- asking quantitative questions (e.g. frequencies of specific behavior)
- using behavioral & physiological measures
Deprivation effects
- tendency for people (/cultures) to report to value what they would like, not what they
have
Unpacking
= identifying underlying variables that create cultural differences; 2 steps
1. demonstrate a cultural difference in the proposed underlying variable
2. show that underlying variable is related to cultural difference in question
Occam’s razor: any theory should make as few assumptions as possible
Culture-specific method
Situation sampling
1. participants from each culture generate situations during which they experiences
some psychological phenomenon
2. another group of participants assesses full compiled list of situations generated by
both cultures in step 1
Cultural priming (prime ideas & look for common ideas)
- assumes that while some ways of thinking may be different between cultures A & B,
cultures A’s way of thinking may still be present to some degree in CUlture B
Interpretation biases
Belief perseverance effect = holding on to your views in the face of conflicting evidence
Self-fulfilling prophecy = expectations lead to thinking you see confirmatory evidence
Availability bias = overestimation of freq. of occurrence of salient events
Representativeness bias = faulty categorizing based on inaccurate features
Enculturation
= transmitting the guidelines of the culture you’re a member of to the next generation
3 levels of culture
- Tertiary level: explicit manifest culture, visible to the outsider (social rituals, traditional
dress, national curiisn,e festive occasions) (‘facade of a culture’)
- Secondary level: underlying shared beliefs & rules, knows to the insiders but rarely
shared with outsiders (‘social norms’)
- Primary / deepest level: rules that are known to all, obeyed by all, but implicit, and
generally out of awareness (hidden, stable, and resistant to change) (‘roots’)
Absolutist approach: psychological phenomenon are the same across cultures, processes
and behaviors vary
- universality
Relativist approach: psychological phenomenon only exist within the context of a culture
- variability
General psychology: focus on universals & (sometimes) tries to control for cultural variation
Cultural psychology: focus on cultural variation in terms of the psychological consequences
of culture
Degrees of universality
- Nonuniversal (cultural intervention): cogn. tool not found in all cultures
- Existential universal: cogn. tool found in all cultures that serves different function(s)
and is available to some degree in different cultures
- Functional universal: cogn. tool is found is all cultures that serves the same
function(s) but is accessible to different degrees in different cultures
- Accessibility universal: cogn. tool found in all cultures that serves the same
function(s) and is accessible to the same degree
Cultural dimensions theory (Hofstede: 5 dimensions):
- Individualism-collectivism
- How interdependent is a culture?
- Uncertainty avoidance
- How do people deal with ambiguity
- Power distance
- How hierarchical is a culture?
- Long-term/short-term orientation
- Connection with tradition, also economic orientation
- Masculinity/femininity
- How distinct are gender roles? Distribution of classical male/female traits
Color-blind approach
- emphasizes common human nature, ignores cultural differences
- even trivial distinctions between groups often lead to discrimination
Multicultural approach
, - group identities are different (particularly minorities)
- ignoring such group differences tends to lead to negative responses
Ethnocentrism
- perceiving one’s own culture as standard of comparison
- tendency to judge people from other cultures negatively by comparing them to your
own culture
- mensen uit andere culturen beoordelen naar de normen vd eigen cultuur
Resolve response biases
1. Force choice answers (yes/no etc)
- nuances are lost
2. Standardization
- transformation into Z-scores, distributed around a 0-average
- removes differences in average → response pattern
3. Reverse-scoring items
Control ‘reference group effects’ (use objective & concrete measures)
- providing specific scenarios as questions
- asking quantitative questions (e.g. frequencies of specific behavior)
- using behavioral & physiological measures
Deprivation effects
- tendency for people (/cultures) to report to value what they would like, not what they
have
Unpacking
= identifying underlying variables that create cultural differences; 2 steps
1. demonstrate a cultural difference in the proposed underlying variable
2. show that underlying variable is related to cultural difference in question
Occam’s razor: any theory should make as few assumptions as possible
Culture-specific method
Situation sampling
1. participants from each culture generate situations during which they experiences
some psychological phenomenon
2. another group of participants assesses full compiled list of situations generated by
both cultures in step 1
Cultural priming (prime ideas & look for common ideas)
- assumes that while some ways of thinking may be different between cultures A & B,
cultures A’s way of thinking may still be present to some degree in CUlture B
Interpretation biases
Belief perseverance effect = holding on to your views in the face of conflicting evidence
Self-fulfilling prophecy = expectations lead to thinking you see confirmatory evidence
Availability bias = overestimation of freq. of occurrence of salient events
Representativeness bias = faulty categorizing based on inaccurate features
