Describe And Evaluate Research (Explanations Or Studies) Relating To The Differences Between Relationships In Western And Non Western Cultures. (24 Marks)

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Describe and evaluate research (explanations or studies) relating to the differences between relationships in Western and non western cultures. (24 marks) Sub-cultural differences are those which are found within a particular culture, society or country. There are considerable differences in the way in which people see relations, how they are formed, and the notion of relationships within western and non western cultures. For example whilst Western cultures place great emphasis on the desirability of romantic love in dyads, most non western cultures attach greater emphasis to family ties and responsibilities noted by Segall (1992). Culture has been defined by Hofstede (1994) by way of computing analogy when he says it is ‘the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes one group or category of people from another’. It also travel through time and physical distance to provide relatively stable sets of values and rules by which people live their lives. Hofstede also created a culture classification model. This was created when data was analysed on work experience from over 100,000 employees, working in 50 different countries. He contended that over half of the variance between countries was accounted fro by four dimensions- Individualism/collectivism, Power-distance, masculinity and feminity, uncertainty avoidance. However this model has been criticised for not considering situational variables as some people can be individualistic in some situations and collectivist in others. Westerners think of monogamy as the normal, even moral, form of marriage (Price and Crapo 1999). Indeed this belief is enshrined in the law as bigamy is a criminal offence, and reflects basic judeo-christianity doctrine. Monogamy is ‘natural’ from a Western perspective, and probably less than 0.5 per cent of human societies have practised polyandry as a common form of

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