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Summary Cultural Psychology Part 1
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Comprehensive summary of chapters 1 to 5, 7, 14 of the book Cultural Psychology by Heine.
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Table of ContentsCHAPTER 1: WHAT IS CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY..................................................................................1
1.1 A PSYCHOLOGY FOR A CULTURAL SPECIES...............................................................................................1
1.2 PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESSES CAN VARY ACROSS CULTURES.........................................................................2
1.3 WHY SHOULD WE STUDY CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY?..................................................................................3
1.4 YOU ARE THE PRODUCT OF YOUR OWN CULTURE.....................................................................................3
1.5 WHERE DOES CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY COME FROM?...............................................................................4
CHAPTER 2: CULTURE AND HUMAN NATURE....................................................................................5
2.1 IS CULTURE UNIQUE TO HUMANS?........................................................................................................5
2.2 CULTURAL LEARNING.........................................................................................................................5
2.3 CUMULATIVE CULTURAL EVOLUTION.....................................................................................................5
2.4 WHY ARE HUMANS ADEPT AT CULTURAL LEARNING?................................................................................6
2.5 HUMAN BRAINS ARE FOR LEARNING FROM EACH OTHER...........................................................................6
CHAPTER 3: CULTURAL EVOLUTION...................................................................................................7
3.1 WHERE DOES CULTURAL VARIATION COME FROM?..................................................................................7
3.2 HOW DO IDEAS CATCH ON?................................................................................................................7
3.3 FACTORS THAT CAUSE IDEAS TO SPREAD................................................................................................8
3.4 HOW HAVE CULTURES BEEN CHANGING?...............................................................................................8
3.5 IN THE FACE OF CHANGE, HOW DO CULTURES PERSIST?............................................................................8
CHAPTER 4: METHODS FOR STUDYING CULTURE AND PSYCHOLOGY................................................9
4.1 CONSIDERATIONS FOR CONDUCTING RESEARCH ACROSS CULTURES..............................................................9
4.2 SOME METHODS PARTICULAR TO THE STUDY OF CULTURE.......................................................................11
4.3 CASE STUDY: THE CULTURE OF HONOR IN THE SOUTHERN UNITED STATES..................................................11
CHAPTER 5: DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIALIZATION...........................................................................12
5.1 SENSITIVE PERIODS FOR CULTURAL SOCIALIZATION.................................................................................12
5.2 CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESSES EMERGE WITH AGE................................................12
5.3 HOW DO EARLY CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES DIFFER ACROSS CULTURES?.......................................................12
5.4 DIFFICULT DEVELOPMENTAL TRANSITIONS............................................................................................13
5.5 SOCIALIZATION THROUGH EDUCATION.................................................................................................13
CHAPTER 7: LIVING IN MULTICULTURAL WORLDS...........................................................................14
7.1 DIFFICULTIES IN STUDYING ACCULTURATION.........................................................................................14
7.2 WHAT HAPPENS WHEN PEOPLE MOVE TO A NEW CULTURE?....................................................................14
7.3 DIFFERENT BUT OFTEN UNEQUAL........................................................................................................15
7.4 MULTICULTURAL PEOPLE..................................................................................................................15
7.5 MULTICULTURAL PEOPLE MAY BE MORE CREATIVE.................................................................................15
CHAPTER 14: MENTAL HEALTH........................................................................................................16
14.1 WHAT IS A PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDER?.............................................................................................16
14.2 CULTURE-BOUND SYNDROMES.........................................................................................................16
14.3 UNIVERSAL SYNDROMES.................................................................................................................17
14.4 MENTAL HEALTH TREATMENT..........................................................................................................17
Chapter 1: What is cultural psychology
1.1 A psychology for a cultural species
Although experiences shape psychological processes, they do not determine them. Psychological
processes are constrained and afforded by neurological structures. And because the brains that
,people are born with are virtually identical around the world, people from all cultures share the same
constraints and affordances of the universal human brain.
What is culture?:
- Any kind of information that is acquired from other members of one’s species through social
learning that is capable of affecting an individual’s behavior.
- People who are existing within some kind of shared context.
- Dynamic groups of individuals that share a similar context, are exposed to many similar
cultural messages, and contain a broad range of different individuals who are affected by
those cultural messages in divergent ways.
Challenges with thinking about cultures:
- The boundaries of cultures are not always clear-cut. Adding to this complexity, there are
other kinds of groups aside from countries that can be argued to have cultures.
- Cultures also change over time, and some shared cultural information disappears as new
habits replace the old.
- There will always be variability among individuals who belong to the same culture.
Individuals are nothing if not variable.
1.2 Psychological processes can vary across cultures
Cultural variation in psychological processes can extend much deeper than just preferences. Many
basic psychological processes, such as the ways people perceive the world, their sense of right and
wrong, and the things that motivate them, can emerge in starkly different ways across cultures.
Mind and culture:
- General psychology: Much of the field of psychology inherently assumes that the mind
operates under a set of natural and universal laws that are independent from content or
context. The underlying goal of general psychology is to provide glimpses of the brain
operating in the raw so that we can understand the set of universal and natural laws that
govern human thought.
- Cultural psychology: An assumption that tends to be embraced by cultural psychologists is
that in many ways the mind does not operate independently of what it is thinking about.
Because humans are cultural beings, their actions, thoughts, and feelings are immersed in
cultural information, and this information renders these actions, thoughts, and feelings to be
meaningful.
o Figure-line task: You get a large square with a line in it. When performing the
absolute task you draw a line that is as close as possible to the absolute length in a
smaller square. When performing the relative task you draw a line that is as close as
possible to the relative length in a similar small box.
Results: People from Western cultures tend to perform better at the
absolute task. People from non-Western cultures tend to perform better on
the relative task. This is an example of how mind and culture cannot be
disentangled; the mind is shaped by its experiences, and cultures differ in the
kinds of experiences that they provide.
o Explanation cultural differences: You are faced with a particular cultural idea → this
creates a network of thoughts, behaviors, and feelings that surround it → if you
consider it often enough it should become chronically activated → this is how culture
comes to shape the way you think.
Case study: The Sambia live in the eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea. Their environment is one
of the least accessible places on the planet. One cultural practice has persisted since their warring
days: their initiation practices to transform young boys into men. rid boys of their feminine habits
and transform them into brave and fighting men. Much of that initiation ritual involves painful
practices, such as piercing the septum of the nose and thrashing the boys with sticks. The goal of the
initiation is to give boys a sense of power, which is termed jerungdu. Without semen, a boy has no
, jerungdu, and he has no masculinity. And it is acquired by the boys through years of ritualized
homosexuality. From the age of around 7, boys regularly ingest semen by performing daily oral sex
on adolescent boys and men.
- Cultural view: Sambian views of sexuality and sexual identity stand in sharp contrast to those
of Western society. The Sambian sexual practices raise an important question: What aspects
of sexuality are human universals?
Levels of universality: When we consider culture and psychology we have two contrasting views. he
other is that psychological processes emerge differently across cultural contexts. It would seem that
it should be straightforward to demonstrate which view is better supported by the evidence.
- The controversy continues because it is difficult to agree upon what kinds of evidence would
be best suited to test a question of universality.
- Another reason it continues is that there are a number of different levels by which we can
consider evidence for universality.
o Nonuniversal: cultural invention -> not cognitively available for everyone.
o Existential universal: variation in function -> not everyone uses it the same.
o Functional universalism: variation in accessibility -> not accessible for everyone.
o Accessibility universal: no variation.
WEIRD: The vast majority of psychological studies have thus far been largely limited to explorations
of the minds of people living in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD)
societies. The extremely narrow samples used by most psychologists make good sense if the mind
really does exclusively operate according to universal laws. The available cross-cultural data reveal
that, for many of the key findings in psychology …
- … people from industrialized societies respond differently than those from small-scale
societies.
- … people from Western industrialized societies demonstrate more pronounced responses
than those from non-Western societies.
- … Americans show yet more extreme responses than other Westerners.
- … the responses of contemporary American college students are even further different than
those of non-college-educated American adults.
1.3 Why should we study cultural psychology?
- One reason to learn about cultural psychology is that we’ll have a distorted and incomplete
understanding of the human mind if we fail to consider the role of culture.
- With the increase in globalization over the past several decades, people are coming into
contact with others from diverse cultural backgrounds more than ever before.
- An increased understanding and appreciation of cultural differences can lead people of
different cultural backgrounds to get along better, be more engaged in their work, and be
able to detect discrimination when it exists.
- There are two conflicting perspectives about the best way for people from different cultures
to deal with each other:
o In some respects “people are the same wherever you go.” Taking this perspective is
called a “culture-blind” approach, and many people adopt this mind-set with the
best of intentions.
o In contrast, attending to and respecting group differences is frequently called a
multicultural approach. The rationale behind this approach is that people really do
identify strongly with their groups, and most group identities are far more
meaningful than the kind that can be artificially created in the lab.
1.4 You are the product of your own culture
For the most part, our cultures remain invisible to us, although everyone else can see them. Our own
thoughts and behaviors appear natural to us because we really don’t know how we could think and
behave otherwise. However, people from many other cultures around the world would be quite
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