Module 1 - What is culture?
- Meaning, information transmitted across generations, meets basic needs of survival, happiness and well-being,
where meaning in life is derived from
- A schema to help us evaluate and organize information so we can behave accordingly to our environment
Cross-cultural psychology:
1. Transport and test hypotheses and findings to other cultural settings
2. Explore other cultures to discover cultural and psychological variations
3. Integrate findings into a universal psychology
- What we know at present is influenced by WEIRD samples - western, educated, industrialized, rich,
democratic - not representative for mankind; 96% of samples come from countries with only 12% of the
world’s population
- KNOWLEDGE CLIP
Theoretical approaches
- Culture operationalized → behavior
- Hofstede: KNOWLEDGE CLIP
- General framework to classify cultural patterns from factor analysis
- Work-related values in employees of IVM
- 4 classic dimensions: power distance, individualism/collectivism, masculinity/femininity, uncertainty
avoidance
- Additional 2 after 2010: long-term/short-term orientation, indulgence
- Enabled national level comparisons - scores on dimensions, maps of certain dimensions
- Individualism: ties between individuals are loose - everyone is independent
- Collectivism: integration into strong cohesive in groups, which throughout life continue to protect them
in exchange for loyalty
- Criticism:
- Theoretical frameworks - not the truth, approximations
- The questionnaires that assess the dimensions may not ask the right questions (loosely
connected with concept) - low face validity
- What does the framework explain - variance explained? Is actually quite small in terms of
organizational problems -Empirical coverage is not uniform
- New dimensions: long-term orientation (normative societies score low on this dimension,
maintaining traditions and norms, viewing societal change with suspicion; the others are more
pragmatic, encouraging modern education toward progress, future oriented)
- Minkov (2017): does Hofstede’s initial sample (of IBM employees) adequately reflect national cultures?
Do the dimensions replicate? Do they have internal reliability - are their facets correlated as the
Hofstede model postulates? Can the model be used to predict behavior?
- Reliability meh
- Power distance seems to be a part of individualism/collectivism
- Uncertainty avoidance is not reliably measured, and does not predict criteria that it is supposed
to predict
- Masculinity/femininity does not predict either
- Hofstede/s model is supposed to be used on a national level of analysis → if not → ecological
fallacy
- UA, MAS/FEM falls apart, the rest needs revision
, - Triandis: Cultural Syndromes
- ind/coll and vertical/horizontal (referring to equality)
- Vertical collectivism = you are part of a group, but accept vertical inequalities in the
group
- Horizontal collectivism = everyone in your group has to have the same status
- Vertical individualism = autonomous self and acceptance of inequality
- Horizontal individualism = autonomy, where everyone is equal
-
- Markus & Kitayama
- There is a difference between interdependent self (where self is embedded into many other
people) and independent self (which is distinct from everybody else)
- Self is mediator of cultural differences, construal differs across cultures; public, relational and
private, or inner aspects - which is most important differs
- West - values being different, most important internal attributes help you distinguish
yourself , East - values similarity, most important attributes are what makes you similar to
others
- But,
- Little empirical support
- Past research assumed and documented these differences, but without searching for
mediating variables (a very black/white way of seeing things)
-
- ⇒ causality cannot be claimed
- Gelfand - tight vs loose cultures
- KNOWLEDGE CLIP
- Tight: strong norms, low tolerance for deviant behavior
- Loose: weak norms, high tolerance for deviant behavior
, -
- Also studies with non-weird participants - samples from ethnographic record (non industrial societies);
rationale: threat > tighter, and this holds
WEIRD psychology
- Western, industrialized, rich, democratic
- Outliers → we do not know a lot about psychology across cultural boundaries
- Henrich et al
- Psychological phenomena are taken as universal, without evidence - no explanation of sample
difference
- Modern industrialized vs small scale societies
-
- Carpenter world hypothesis - industrialized cultures (where surroundings are angular) perceive
the illusion because it is a schema that tells us about the distance between us and a thing
- Dictator game - one person has the power to share coins with another, who has no say
, -
- Industrialized vs small scale societies have differences, but not clear what they mean
- western vs non western industrialized
- Asch’s conformity test (line judgement task) - the conformity effect holds in westernized
societies; effect becomes smaller in the US over time; effect is smaller the more individualistic a
context is
- americans vs other westerners
- Americans hold highest scores on individualism and egocentrism
- ; failure may also be more attributed toward internal reasons
→ implications for mental health
- university vs non-university educated americans
- More or less post-decisional spread = justifying difficult decisions by liking the decision more
after making it (to reduce Cognitive dissonance (leon festinger))
- Heine & Lehman - music preferences and personality
- Canadians have more post decisional spread than japanese
- Snibbe & Markus (2005)
- More educated people have more post-decisional spread
- Meaning, information transmitted across generations, meets basic needs of survival, happiness and well-being,
where meaning in life is derived from
- A schema to help us evaluate and organize information so we can behave accordingly to our environment
Cross-cultural psychology:
1. Transport and test hypotheses and findings to other cultural settings
2. Explore other cultures to discover cultural and psychological variations
3. Integrate findings into a universal psychology
- What we know at present is influenced by WEIRD samples - western, educated, industrialized, rich,
democratic - not representative for mankind; 96% of samples come from countries with only 12% of the
world’s population
- KNOWLEDGE CLIP
Theoretical approaches
- Culture operationalized → behavior
- Hofstede: KNOWLEDGE CLIP
- General framework to classify cultural patterns from factor analysis
- Work-related values in employees of IVM
- 4 classic dimensions: power distance, individualism/collectivism, masculinity/femininity, uncertainty
avoidance
- Additional 2 after 2010: long-term/short-term orientation, indulgence
- Enabled national level comparisons - scores on dimensions, maps of certain dimensions
- Individualism: ties between individuals are loose - everyone is independent
- Collectivism: integration into strong cohesive in groups, which throughout life continue to protect them
in exchange for loyalty
- Criticism:
- Theoretical frameworks - not the truth, approximations
- The questionnaires that assess the dimensions may not ask the right questions (loosely
connected with concept) - low face validity
- What does the framework explain - variance explained? Is actually quite small in terms of
organizational problems -Empirical coverage is not uniform
- New dimensions: long-term orientation (normative societies score low on this dimension,
maintaining traditions and norms, viewing societal change with suspicion; the others are more
pragmatic, encouraging modern education toward progress, future oriented)
- Minkov (2017): does Hofstede’s initial sample (of IBM employees) adequately reflect national cultures?
Do the dimensions replicate? Do they have internal reliability - are their facets correlated as the
Hofstede model postulates? Can the model be used to predict behavior?
- Reliability meh
- Power distance seems to be a part of individualism/collectivism
- Uncertainty avoidance is not reliably measured, and does not predict criteria that it is supposed
to predict
- Masculinity/femininity does not predict either
- Hofstede/s model is supposed to be used on a national level of analysis → if not → ecological
fallacy
- UA, MAS/FEM falls apart, the rest needs revision
, - Triandis: Cultural Syndromes
- ind/coll and vertical/horizontal (referring to equality)
- Vertical collectivism = you are part of a group, but accept vertical inequalities in the
group
- Horizontal collectivism = everyone in your group has to have the same status
- Vertical individualism = autonomous self and acceptance of inequality
- Horizontal individualism = autonomy, where everyone is equal
-
- Markus & Kitayama
- There is a difference between interdependent self (where self is embedded into many other
people) and independent self (which is distinct from everybody else)
- Self is mediator of cultural differences, construal differs across cultures; public, relational and
private, or inner aspects - which is most important differs
- West - values being different, most important internal attributes help you distinguish
yourself , East - values similarity, most important attributes are what makes you similar to
others
- But,
- Little empirical support
- Past research assumed and documented these differences, but without searching for
mediating variables (a very black/white way of seeing things)
-
- ⇒ causality cannot be claimed
- Gelfand - tight vs loose cultures
- KNOWLEDGE CLIP
- Tight: strong norms, low tolerance for deviant behavior
- Loose: weak norms, high tolerance for deviant behavior
, -
- Also studies with non-weird participants - samples from ethnographic record (non industrial societies);
rationale: threat > tighter, and this holds
WEIRD psychology
- Western, industrialized, rich, democratic
- Outliers → we do not know a lot about psychology across cultural boundaries
- Henrich et al
- Psychological phenomena are taken as universal, without evidence - no explanation of sample
difference
- Modern industrialized vs small scale societies
-
- Carpenter world hypothesis - industrialized cultures (where surroundings are angular) perceive
the illusion because it is a schema that tells us about the distance between us and a thing
- Dictator game - one person has the power to share coins with another, who has no say
, -
- Industrialized vs small scale societies have differences, but not clear what they mean
- western vs non western industrialized
- Asch’s conformity test (line judgement task) - the conformity effect holds in westernized
societies; effect becomes smaller in the US over time; effect is smaller the more individualistic a
context is
- americans vs other westerners
- Americans hold highest scores on individualism and egocentrism
- ; failure may also be more attributed toward internal reasons
→ implications for mental health
- university vs non-university educated americans
- More or less post-decisional spread = justifying difficult decisions by liking the decision more
after making it (to reduce Cognitive dissonance (leon festinger))
- Heine & Lehman - music preferences and personality
- Canadians have more post decisional spread than japanese
- Snibbe & Markus (2005)
- More educated people have more post-decisional spread
