In cultural psychology the mental processes are compared with the society and the individual who has grown up in that society. Comparatively, cross-cultural psychologists systematically research behavior across cultures in different cultural situations (Shiraev & Levy, 2010). Critical Thinking Critical thinking in cross-cultural psychology is important because cross-cultural psychology is about identifying the similarities and differences in individuals and how they function in his or her culture. Critical thinking is about making realistic, valid and reasonable evidence. Critical thinking is described as maintaining an attitude that is open=minded and doubtful (Shiraev & Levy, 2010).
Some of these relate to our individual differences whilst others relate to the situational factors we encounter. Individual differences are important personal factors such as gender, personality or culture that differentiate people. Individual differences between people may affect how they respond to situations where social influence is applied. Dispositional factors are individual differences including gender, age, ethnicity, self-esteem, personality, confidence and Locus of Control. The concept of Locus of control which was made by Rotter in 1966 refers to individual differences in people’s beliefs and expectations about what controls events in their lives.
It also aims to reduce ethnocentrism meaning the tendency to use our own cultural group as the norm and judge others as deviating from this. Finally the aim is to also consider culture as an important independent variable and to readdress the balance in gender research meaning to do more in other parts of the world to see if it's the same. Research showing cultural differences in gender roles, was carried out by Margaret Mead who was a renounced anthropologist arguing in favour of environmental determinism. Mead changed her view in light of further research. The first was that she found that in all three tribes, it was the men who went to war, suggesting some traits such as aggression may be innate.
Descirbe and Evaluate Cross Cultural Variations in attachment (12 marks) Due to the fact that the ways that people bring up their children can be very different all over the world as we share different attitudes, values and beliefs etc. People emphasize on developing distinct skills and qualities, so attachments formed can be different. For instance, countries like America and Germany would value personal independence and achieve more, whereas interdependence people is valued more in China. The two cultures mentioned are called individualistic culture and collectivist culture respectively. Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg carried out a meta-analysis that collates and analyses data from many studies carried out by other researchers of 32 separate studies in eight different countries over 2000 babies using Ainsworth’s ‘Strange Situation’.
The idea that all cultures are equaly respect, and cultural research is a way of seeing another way of life. Another main problem within psychology is eurocentrism, where psychologyists place more emphasis on europian theories and research at other cultures expence and in turn on more individualist cultures rather than collectivist. Such problems create an imposed etic of behavior. Imposed itics ignore the cultural context of behaviour creating culture bias as it means observing from a position outside the culture. b) Ethnocenrtrism is often found within the formation and maintenance of RS of social psychology.
Abstract The article “The Culture-Cognitive Connection,” written by Lea Winerman, explained the recent research on Westerners and East Asians and the differences in their cognitive processes based on their heritage. Psychologist Richard Nisbett, PhD (2006) researched East Asians and Western Americans and the differences in the ways they view the world. The studies are based on how the people’s cultural backgrounds affect their cognitive processes such as categorization, learning, causal reasoning, and even attention and perception. There are examples of case studies, from simple to complex observations, giving evidence to the connection. A Review of “The Culture-Cognition Connection” In the Culture and Cognition Program at the University of Michigan, psychologist Richard Nisbett, PhD (2005), and his colleagues study how people’s cultural backgrounds affect their basic cognitive processes.
Support Question #2 Lesson #3 We live in a world with many different cultures that look at our world as a whole in different ways due to their perception of beauty, morality, and good and evil. But what happens if some of these cultures that have nothing to do with each other are compared? What do we see? What are the differences? What are the similarities?
The Na’vi understand these emotions through a special form of interpersonal communication they call “Tsaheylu” or “the bond.” There have been studies done on Avatar on various cross-cultural issues. These studies have included topics like white supremacy. This study stressed that whites think that they can take whatever they want without thinking about how it will hurt other cultures and races. The purpose of this study is to learn about the Na’vi culture and to show that the Na’vi’s use of “the bond” is a form of haptics that is exemplified as superior to our preferred use of haptics as humans. The ways in which I will conduct my research is through the methods of textual analysis.
Discuss reasons as to why you believe different people react to the same type of stressful life events in different ways. What benefit can you achieve from your studies of human behavior in the social environment? Responses are limited 250 words. The response should reflect your own thoughts and ideas. I believe that different people react to the same type of stressful life events in different ways because that is the way they have learned to cope with difficult life events.
The differences of workgroup norms and behavior between high- and low-context cultures Hema Rohira COM-623-7325-Global Communication 10/23/2012 Professor Efrem Lieber Abstract Anthropologist, Edward T. Hall, in his book “Beyond Culture “presented the terms, High Context culture and Low context Culture, denoting inherent cultural differences between societies. As per, Hall, in, “High context culture most of the information is either in the physical context or initialized in the person” while, in, “Low context culture the mass of information is vested in the explicit code”. In order to understand the above definitions, we need to dwell more on these two sets of cultures in terms of their attitude towards relationships, tasks, time, and group, and individuality, verbal nonverbal words and the essence of gestures and body language in the communication. In High context culture the choice of words is essence since few words can communicate entire message effectively in the group belonging to that culture, the context, gestures and body language play significant role in the communication. The people belonging to this culture keep relationships on high pedestal, groups are valued over individuals, the group relies on their background to explain the situation, rather than words doing it.