Culturele psychologie
Inhoud
Culturele psychologie ..............................................................................................................1
Module 1: What is culture? And why is it relevant? ....................................................................2
Module 2- Methods & bias ..................................................................................................... 13
Module 3- Enculturation & Development ................................................................................ 18
Module 4- Acculturation ........................................................................................................ 25
Assessment of Acculturation: ............................................................................................. 30
Acculturation in context: .................................................................................................... 31
Current Developments in Acculturation Research ............................................................... 35
Module 5- Self, Identity, and Biculturalism .............................................................................. 38
The Self and self-esteem: ................................................................................................... 38
Identity and multiculturalism.............................................................................................. 41
Module 6- Personality ............................................................................................................ 44
Non FFM/WEIRD Approaches to Personality........................................................................ 47
Module 7- Culture and Cognition ........................................................................................... 55
Module 8- Emotions .............................................................................................................. 62
Module 9- Culture, Health, Mental Health, Interventions ......................................................... 67
Physical health: ................................................................................................................. 67
Mental health: ................................................................................................................... 71
Psychological Interventions ................................................................................................ 75
Module 10- Language & Communication ................................................................................ 79
Language & nonverbal communication ............................................................................... 79
Intercultural communication and bilingualism .................................................................... 82
Module 11- Social behavior .................................................................................................... 85
Culture and Intergroup Relations ........................................................................................ 87
Intergroup contact: ............................................................................................................ 91
Module 12- Culture and Organizations ................................................................................... 94
Hofstede’s cultural values model and its criticism ............................................................... 94
Organizational culture, leadership and decision-making ..................................................... 97
Working in diverse environments ...................................................................................... 100
1
,Module 1: What is culture? And why is it relevant?
Culture is a unique meaning and information system, shared by a group and transmitted across
generations, that allows the group tomeet basic needs of survival, pursue happiness and well-
being, and derive meaning from life” (Matsumoto & Juang)
Culture is also a pair of glasses that we are constantly looking through– a schema to help us
evaluate and organize information.
Culture is built on four sources:
1. Group Life: Living in groups increases your chances of survival. A distribution of workloads is
created, which makes the group functional. A disadvantage of groups can be the
development of conflicts, because people are so different.
2. Environment: The environment in which a group lives has a significant influence on how they
live. Important aspects here are temperature and population density.
3. Resources: There are natural resources such as water or agricultural land that can influence a
group. But humans have also created their own resources, namely money. People with more
money can afford more and are less dependent than others, which influences culture.
4. Developed Human Mind: People have a psychological toolkit with which they
can adapt and survive, such as norms and values and other universal skills that other animals
do not possess. Such as shared intentionality, which means that everyone knows the same rules
for expressing and interpreting emotions.
Goals of Cross-Cultural Psychology:
1. Build a body of knowledge about people
a) Transport and test hypotheses and findings to other cultural settings
b) Explore cultures in order to discover cultural and psychological similarities and
differences
c) Integrate findings into a more universal psychology
2. Improve people’s lives.
Psychological research is mostly based on studies among WEIRD samples (Western, educated,
industrialized, rich, and democratic)
o 73% of first authors were at American universities; 99% were at universities in Western
countries.
o 96% of psychological samples come from countries with only 12% of the world’s population.
o This is not representative for mankind
o 88% of the world’s population is not included. And what about uneducated,
unindustrialized, poor people?
Where are we headed?
- There is considerable growth in cross-cultural psychological research.
- Editorials in journals acknowledge the need for better sampling.
- There is a clear need to keep asking: “Can we apply/use previous psychological findings
for all groups and populations?”
Reminder: Culture is a pair of glasses that we are constantly looking through– a schema to help
us evaluate and organize information.
→ This can link to ethnocentrism: The tendency to view the world through one’s own cultural
filters. This is not good or bad, we grew up like that, it’s our standard. It would be problematic if
were not updating our information and think it’s everybody’s standard.
2
,Conflict: “African people are lazy” → you meet a successful African businessman: the options:
o Assimilation: “That’s only because of his political friends” You change the data = belief
perseverance effect Exception /subtyping
o Accomodation: “it seems that Africans are not laze per se” You change your schema → It is
less effortful to change the data than change the schema people often use assimilation.
Fundamental attribution error: tendency to over-emphasize dispositional, or personality-
based, explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing the role and
power of situational influences. If a friend of yours has a bike accident, you think oh he has been
reckless again. But when you get in a bike accident, you think oh the road was slippery. →
Interdependent people are more likely to attribute to situational influences because of their
desire to fit in.
Self-fulfilling prophecies: expectation creates reality: expectations communicate those
expectations (cues) people respond by adjusting their behavior original expectation becomes
true.
The low effort syndrome: you put in low effort because you think you have no chance anyway
because of biases and stereotypes.
Comparison of culture in Henrich et al.:
Henrich et al. (2010) focused on the fact that many psychological processes are assumed to be
universal without evidence. They questioned the ability to distinguish universal psychological
phenomena based on WEIRD samples. Four contrasts were examined:
• Modern industrialized vs. small scale societies: the Muller-Lyer illusion doesn’t seem to
apply with people in small scale societies. It’s because they see less angles, like walls,
they’re not taught that wall A is closer to us dan wall B. This is called the Carpentered world
hypothesis.
The Dictator game: person A get 10 points and has to distribute these points between person A
and person B. Person B must accept this. A difference in this distribution is found between the
two different societies, but we don’t know why we find this difference. Are there difference in the
results only of is it because of the methods that are used?
• Western vs. non-Western industrialized societies
Conformity Ash test: people need to chose which line in exhibit two is the same length as in
exhibit one. There is a very clear answer. But, people seem to adjust their answer whenever
the other participants all choose the wrong answer. Only 25% of the people never conformed
their answer.
A meta-analysis of Ash studies: the bigger the majority, the bigger the effect. The effect of
this becomes smaller in the US over time, this seems to point to the more individualistic
society → the more individualistic the culture, is the smaller the effect.
• Americans vs. other Westerners
3
, Americans hold on average the highest score in individualism. They think success in life is
not determined by forces outside our control. This is also very relevant when you think
further, when you interpret failure instead of success. They are more prone to show
depressive feeling, they feel more at fault.
• University vs. non-university educated Americans
Highly educated Americans occupy an even more extreme position than less-educated
Americans. For example, more or less post-decisional spread: cognitive dissonance (Leon
Festinger). This is about justifying decisions post-decisional. This effect is the biggest
whenever a decisions is difficult.
People want to justify for themselves why they didn’t keep the similar attractive product, this is
why people change their evaluation of the products.
Heine & Lehman (1997): people were asked to rate and rank CD’s. After that they get informed
that they have to keep one CD, but there were only 2 CDs they could choose between. These
were items that were ranked somewhere in the middle. When people had to re-evaluate the
CDs, Canadians seemed to change their evaluation a lor more than Japanese.
This is the same for university vs. non university educated Americans: the more educated
Americans have more post-decisional spread.
→ Short: it matters when we vary the context and it matters when we vary the cultural group that
participates.
Critical questions (on the basis of the Henrich et al. and other previous studies): Can we
apply/use previous psychological findings for all groups and populations? How do we find out
whether we can do so, and whether findings would hold in another cultural context?
Conceptualizing culture:
Culture → Behavior, is used a lot. But can we actually see that culture predicts behavior?
Culture:
1. Independent variable: certain factors vary with culture and influence psychological
phenomena. Are you independent, are you from a tight or loose society?
2. Confounding variable: psychological phenomena are supposed to be universal: culture
does not play much of a role in psychological processes because you think they’re universal.
3. Genuine psychological phenomenon: it’s not a variable but it is something we need to
understand on it’s own. It’s a genuine psychological phenomena. Every psychological
phenomenon takes place in a cultural context, culture is inside one‘s head.
4. Placeholder: something that we do not necessarily know yet. Specific contextual
differences instead of large, overarching differences.
4
Inhoud
Culturele psychologie ..............................................................................................................1
Module 1: What is culture? And why is it relevant? ....................................................................2
Module 2- Methods & bias ..................................................................................................... 13
Module 3- Enculturation & Development ................................................................................ 18
Module 4- Acculturation ........................................................................................................ 25
Assessment of Acculturation: ............................................................................................. 30
Acculturation in context: .................................................................................................... 31
Current Developments in Acculturation Research ............................................................... 35
Module 5- Self, Identity, and Biculturalism .............................................................................. 38
The Self and self-esteem: ................................................................................................... 38
Identity and multiculturalism.............................................................................................. 41
Module 6- Personality ............................................................................................................ 44
Non FFM/WEIRD Approaches to Personality........................................................................ 47
Module 7- Culture and Cognition ........................................................................................... 55
Module 8- Emotions .............................................................................................................. 62
Module 9- Culture, Health, Mental Health, Interventions ......................................................... 67
Physical health: ................................................................................................................. 67
Mental health: ................................................................................................................... 71
Psychological Interventions ................................................................................................ 75
Module 10- Language & Communication ................................................................................ 79
Language & nonverbal communication ............................................................................... 79
Intercultural communication and bilingualism .................................................................... 82
Module 11- Social behavior .................................................................................................... 85
Culture and Intergroup Relations ........................................................................................ 87
Intergroup contact: ............................................................................................................ 91
Module 12- Culture and Organizations ................................................................................... 94
Hofstede’s cultural values model and its criticism ............................................................... 94
Organizational culture, leadership and decision-making ..................................................... 97
Working in diverse environments ...................................................................................... 100
1
,Module 1: What is culture? And why is it relevant?
Culture is a unique meaning and information system, shared by a group and transmitted across
generations, that allows the group tomeet basic needs of survival, pursue happiness and well-
being, and derive meaning from life” (Matsumoto & Juang)
Culture is also a pair of glasses that we are constantly looking through– a schema to help us
evaluate and organize information.
Culture is built on four sources:
1. Group Life: Living in groups increases your chances of survival. A distribution of workloads is
created, which makes the group functional. A disadvantage of groups can be the
development of conflicts, because people are so different.
2. Environment: The environment in which a group lives has a significant influence on how they
live. Important aspects here are temperature and population density.
3. Resources: There are natural resources such as water or agricultural land that can influence a
group. But humans have also created their own resources, namely money. People with more
money can afford more and are less dependent than others, which influences culture.
4. Developed Human Mind: People have a psychological toolkit with which they
can adapt and survive, such as norms and values and other universal skills that other animals
do not possess. Such as shared intentionality, which means that everyone knows the same rules
for expressing and interpreting emotions.
Goals of Cross-Cultural Psychology:
1. Build a body of knowledge about people
a) Transport and test hypotheses and findings to other cultural settings
b) Explore cultures in order to discover cultural and psychological similarities and
differences
c) Integrate findings into a more universal psychology
2. Improve people’s lives.
Psychological research is mostly based on studies among WEIRD samples (Western, educated,
industrialized, rich, and democratic)
o 73% of first authors were at American universities; 99% were at universities in Western
countries.
o 96% of psychological samples come from countries with only 12% of the world’s population.
o This is not representative for mankind
o 88% of the world’s population is not included. And what about uneducated,
unindustrialized, poor people?
Where are we headed?
- There is considerable growth in cross-cultural psychological research.
- Editorials in journals acknowledge the need for better sampling.
- There is a clear need to keep asking: “Can we apply/use previous psychological findings
for all groups and populations?”
Reminder: Culture is a pair of glasses that we are constantly looking through– a schema to help
us evaluate and organize information.
→ This can link to ethnocentrism: The tendency to view the world through one’s own cultural
filters. This is not good or bad, we grew up like that, it’s our standard. It would be problematic if
were not updating our information and think it’s everybody’s standard.
2
,Conflict: “African people are lazy” → you meet a successful African businessman: the options:
o Assimilation: “That’s only because of his political friends” You change the data = belief
perseverance effect Exception /subtyping
o Accomodation: “it seems that Africans are not laze per se” You change your schema → It is
less effortful to change the data than change the schema people often use assimilation.
Fundamental attribution error: tendency to over-emphasize dispositional, or personality-
based, explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing the role and
power of situational influences. If a friend of yours has a bike accident, you think oh he has been
reckless again. But when you get in a bike accident, you think oh the road was slippery. →
Interdependent people are more likely to attribute to situational influences because of their
desire to fit in.
Self-fulfilling prophecies: expectation creates reality: expectations communicate those
expectations (cues) people respond by adjusting their behavior original expectation becomes
true.
The low effort syndrome: you put in low effort because you think you have no chance anyway
because of biases and stereotypes.
Comparison of culture in Henrich et al.:
Henrich et al. (2010) focused on the fact that many psychological processes are assumed to be
universal without evidence. They questioned the ability to distinguish universal psychological
phenomena based on WEIRD samples. Four contrasts were examined:
• Modern industrialized vs. small scale societies: the Muller-Lyer illusion doesn’t seem to
apply with people in small scale societies. It’s because they see less angles, like walls,
they’re not taught that wall A is closer to us dan wall B. This is called the Carpentered world
hypothesis.
The Dictator game: person A get 10 points and has to distribute these points between person A
and person B. Person B must accept this. A difference in this distribution is found between the
two different societies, but we don’t know why we find this difference. Are there difference in the
results only of is it because of the methods that are used?
• Western vs. non-Western industrialized societies
Conformity Ash test: people need to chose which line in exhibit two is the same length as in
exhibit one. There is a very clear answer. But, people seem to adjust their answer whenever
the other participants all choose the wrong answer. Only 25% of the people never conformed
their answer.
A meta-analysis of Ash studies: the bigger the majority, the bigger the effect. The effect of
this becomes smaller in the US over time, this seems to point to the more individualistic
society → the more individualistic the culture, is the smaller the effect.
• Americans vs. other Westerners
3
, Americans hold on average the highest score in individualism. They think success in life is
not determined by forces outside our control. This is also very relevant when you think
further, when you interpret failure instead of success. They are more prone to show
depressive feeling, they feel more at fault.
• University vs. non-university educated Americans
Highly educated Americans occupy an even more extreme position than less-educated
Americans. For example, more or less post-decisional spread: cognitive dissonance (Leon
Festinger). This is about justifying decisions post-decisional. This effect is the biggest
whenever a decisions is difficult.
People want to justify for themselves why they didn’t keep the similar attractive product, this is
why people change their evaluation of the products.
Heine & Lehman (1997): people were asked to rate and rank CD’s. After that they get informed
that they have to keep one CD, but there were only 2 CDs they could choose between. These
were items that were ranked somewhere in the middle. When people had to re-evaluate the
CDs, Canadians seemed to change their evaluation a lor more than Japanese.
This is the same for university vs. non university educated Americans: the more educated
Americans have more post-decisional spread.
→ Short: it matters when we vary the context and it matters when we vary the cultural group that
participates.
Critical questions (on the basis of the Henrich et al. and other previous studies): Can we
apply/use previous psychological findings for all groups and populations? How do we find out
whether we can do so, and whether findings would hold in another cultural context?
Conceptualizing culture:
Culture → Behavior, is used a lot. But can we actually see that culture predicts behavior?
Culture:
1. Independent variable: certain factors vary with culture and influence psychological
phenomena. Are you independent, are you from a tight or loose society?
2. Confounding variable: psychological phenomena are supposed to be universal: culture
does not play much of a role in psychological processes because you think they’re universal.
3. Genuine psychological phenomenon: it’s not a variable but it is something we need to
understand on it’s own. It’s a genuine psychological phenomena. Every psychological
phenomenon takes place in a cultural context, culture is inside one‘s head.
4. Placeholder: something that we do not necessarily know yet. Specific contextual
differences instead of large, overarching differences.
4
