Cultural PSYC Final

aristotle

"A" could not equal "not A." This law is at the heart of much of logical reasoning. In stark contrast to this Aristotelian law, ancient Chinese thought, as captured in the I-Ching (The Book of Changes; 1991), includes a principle of contradiction. this acceptance of contradiction has been termed naive dialecticism both Americans and Chinese who received only Argument A tended to view it as more compelling than those who received only Argument B. Because these participants saw only one argument, they did not witness any potential contradiction. When Americans encounter two contradictory arguments, they come to view the better argument as even more compelling than when they encounter this same argument by itself. In contrast, when Chinese encounter two contradictory arguments, they come to view the weaker argument as more compelling than when it is presented by itself. When the Chinese participants encountered Argument B by itself, they did not find it to be very plausible. However, when they saw this rather unconvincing argument paired with the more compelling Argument A that makes the opposite case, they were then more convinced by the rather implausible Argument B. The idea that smoking is associated with weight gain was compelling to them only if they had also read an argument that smoking was associated with weight loss! These more contradictory self-views among East Asians are also associated with less consistency in their self-concepts there was no relation between how contradictory one's self-views are and how anxious and depressed they are. happens in the US. Nisbett (2003): reasoning diffs may reflect habits of thought dating back to classical Greek and Confucian Chinese thought • Analytic thought• Aristotle: objects possess properties such as "gravity"• Plato: world consists of discrete unchanging objects operating by universal laws

WHY IS RELIGION IMPORTANT IN PSYCHOLOGY?

1.Influences thoughts, attitudes, actions 2.Globally relevant 3.Explains uniquely human behavioursa. Markets, Religion, Community Size, and the Evolution of Fairness and Punishment (Henrich et al., 2010) 4.Diversifies academic space

who wants to be a millionaire

A real-life example of these weaker norms for civic cooperation can be seen in the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. in Russia, the contestants quickly found out that they couldn't trust the audiences. Frequently, the audience members would deliberately choose the wrong answers in an apparent effort to mislead the contestants. norms for civic cooperation remain relatively low in Russian and many other societies around the world, which makes it more difficult for governments to band citizens together in cooperative ventures.

Economic Games and Fairness

According to economic theory, if you're a rational person, you wouldn't give the other person a penny. People around the world feel that keeping all the money for themselves is not right, and it just seems fair to give the other person some money. In fact, the most common decision that people make is to split the money 50-50. Called the dictator game. When economists first learned that Western university students played these economic games in apparently "nonrational" ways, giving away money that would not lead to any benefits to them, they came up with an explanation: ----Humans must have an internalized motivation for fairness that guides their decisions, and it operates even under the unusual situations created when playing economic games that keep their behavior anonymous. Furthermore, economic models were proposed to argue that the reason large-scale societies and markets were possible was that people had these internalized motivations for fairness Most of the societies they selected were small-sale subsistence societies because people in these societies have lifestyles that are more similar to the ways of our human ancestors. RESULTS: dictator game offers made by the American sample were at the tail end of the distribution (a similar pattern was found for other kinds of economic games). The average American response was not representative of how people elsewhere made offers; rather it represents an extreme response The motivations for fairness were considerably weaker in most of the other societies. variables: average wealth of the society, sex, age, family income, household size, and education. Controlling for these factors, they found two variables that predicted which societies made larger (i.e., more fair) offers: MARGET INTEGRATION AND RELIGION. -Market integration was operationalized as the percentage of calories consumed in a society that are purchased in a market. This percentage ranged from an amount near zero for the Hadza and the Au to amounts near 100% in the city of Accra and in the United States. The more experience people had in dealing with markets, the stronger their motivations for fairness. rather than markets being the result of people with innate motivations for fairness coming together, the findings suggest that people learned norms to play fair as a result of cultural experiences with markets. In general, larger societies tend to have religions that offer moral guidance (whereas many tribal religions do not), and participating in these religions is associated with people playing an anonymous game more fairly, perhaps because of a belief that their behavior is not anonymous in the eyes of God.

principle of equity

this principle states that resources are distributed based on an individual's contributions. the more an individual produces, the more resources he or she receives. the ratio between individuals' inputs (their efforts and abilities in the course) and their outputs (their grades) are held constant. instructors everywhere operate exclusively on the principle of equity in the distribution of other kinds of resources such as salary, the principle of equity is not so universal. the principle of equity does appear to be the dominant form of resource distribution in the west. for ex. commission. Westerners are more likely than those from other cultures to view the equity principle to be the most fair.

emotions conclusions

Among Westerners, interpersonally disengaging acts feel especially good, subjective well-being is associated with positive feelings, people operate under the implicit theory that more positive feelings are better, positive emotions serve as a bulwark against depression, and high-arousal positive emotions are preferred. Among East Asians, in contrast, interpersonally engaging acts feel especially good, subjective well-being is associated with appropriate role behaviors, people operate under the implicit theory that it is good to experience both positive and negative feelings, positive emotions are not associated with less depression, and low-arousal positive emotions are more sought after. no evidence for accessibility universals here, however, because people perform worse when evaluating the facial expressions of those from other cultures than from their own.

understanding other people's behaviors

Analytic thinking involves understanding objects by identifying their underlying attributes, which is akin to trying to understand people and their behavior by considering their inner qualities—such as their personality traits. In contrast, explaining people's behavior by considering how the situation is influencing them is an extension of a holistic way of thinking. It requires considering the individual's relations with his or her context.

Emotion and Language

Anna Wierzbicka The problem, she argues, is that many other languages do not have labels that correspond to some of these so-called basic emotions. Natyashastra, which is an Indian treatise of emotion and identifies a list of eight basic emotions. it did not include words that corresponded to the basic emotions of happiness or surprise. Nor did it overlap with other contenders for the status of "basic emotions," love, amusement, wonder, and enthusiasm. English speakers are particularly well equipped to describe the most subtle of variations in their emotional experience. On the other extreme is the Chewong of Malaysia, who have only eight emotion words. Chewong of Malaysia No words for aggression, war, crime, fighting, or punishment. When confronted with threats, they flee; flight has been their normal response to violence. People categorize their emotions in very different ways as well. For example, Luganda speakers in Uganda do not make a distinction between sorrow and anger. The Gidjingali aborigines of Australia use one word (gurakadj) to express both shame and fear. Samoans use one word, alofa, to express both love and pity. The Utku Eskimos do not distinguish between feelings of kindness and gratitude. The Ifaluk in Micronesia do not even have a word for "emotion" but instead lump all internal states together there are many emotion words in other languages that have no equivalent in English. Some of these reflect feelings that English speak I would argue that the cultural diversity in emotion terms arises from the different clusters of meanings that are frequently encountered in different cultures. Some researchers argue that the diversity in emotion terms is relatively meaningless because our language use does not affect our underlying psychological experience. but whether this diversity is captured in people's own thoughts and internal states remains debatable.

rule - based reasoning

Another indication that an analytic or holistic orientation affects people's thinking is in the ways they reason. For example, if analytic thinkers tend to view the world as operating according to a set of universal abstract rules and laws, they will apply such rules and laws when they try to make sense of a situation. This is termed rule- based reasoning. SHAPE OF STEMS Analytic reasoners: more likely to apply abstract rules to solve problems. European-Americans more likely to base decisions on applying a rules (e.g., stem shape)

enlightenment

British historian Thomas Carlyle noted that, "'happiness our being's end and aim' Carlyle was referring to changes during the enlightenment. prior to this shift, happiness was largely the result of good luck. people who live in countries where happiness is defined as good luck report feeling less happy than those where luck is not seen as an important part of the definition. Is the pursuit of happiness universal? Pursuit begins in the West with the Enlightenment period of the 18th century; world became a more predictable and rational place. There are substantial cultural differences in terms of the average levels of happiness that people report • but how is happiness assessed?

altruistic punishment

By feeling motivated to punish those who weren't cooper ating, people were able to ensure that group members didn't free-ride, which allowed humans to develop norms for cooperation, and for large societies to flourish.

creativity

Creativity is the generation of ideas that are both (a) novel and (b) useful and appropriate the generation of novel ideas appears to be facilitated by individualism, and Westerners, accordingly, appear to generate more ideas than East Asians, maybe because of uniqueness. Westerners prefer novel objects more than East Asians do. Asian-Americans show more divergent thinking when primed with American culture compared with Asian culture an analysis of Chinese creative geniuses does not find as strong a link between creativity and mental illness. Collectivism appears to be associated with the generation of useful rather than novel ideas. This orientation toward finding practical solutions that can fit within an existing set of social concerns appears to lead to skills for creating useful ideas more generally. The useful component of creative ideas seems to be promoted in East Asian contexts. In general, more collectivistic East Asian cultures, with their emphasis on useful ideas, are more likely to foster incremental innovations, whereas more individualistic Western cultures, with their emphasis on novel ideas, encourage more breakthrough ones. even within the same country, companies that produce many incremental innovations rarely produce breakthrough innovations.

The Protestant Work Ethic

Cultural changes post Reformation: 1. Increased individualism in Christianity 2. Rise in the idea that one had a calling 3. Moralization of vocation 4. Misinterpretation of predestination SUPPORT FOR WEBER'S HYPOTHESIS 1.Protestants consider the prospect of being unemployed as more of a blow to their well-being than do non-Protestants 2.Protestant countries have more pro-market economic attitudes than people living in non- Protestant ones

paintings

East Asians have been socialized from such a young age to attend to relationships that they do it unconsciously by continually scanning scenes. A higher horizon calls attention to the depth of the setting and allows for all the different objects and places within a scene to be seen in relation to each other, whereas a lower horizon reduces the range of the scene that is visible. Western portraits tend to show larger figures than East Asian ones. the American drawings had lower horizons and fewer objects to contextualize the scene. East Asian art this seems to contain busier scenes than western art - the Western art is more likely to direct attention to the foreground - either by including low horizons or big central figures. Japanese scenes contained more boundaries and edges than the American ones - the physical landscape in urban areas is busier in Japan than the US. living in a busier physical environment seems to foster the ability to attend to a lot of information at once. In sum, Westerners and East Asians represent scenes differently. Westerners prefer lower horizons, which bring an emphasis to the foreground objects, and they prefer larger central figures. East Asians prefer higher horizons & busier scenes, highlighting the relations among objects, & they prefer smaller central figures.

FLOWERS

European-Americans were more likely to base their decisions on the application of the rule whereas East Asians were more likely to base their decision on the perceived resemblances of the stimuli. As would be expected, Asian-Americans fell in between the other two groups Holistic reasoning of East Asians only used when there is conflict between an analytic and holistic solution. Holistic thinkers tend to see actions as having distal, and sometimes unexpected, consequences. In contrast, analytic thinkers should focus their attention on the re- lations between a relatively small number of discrete objects or events. Americans discarded more information than Koreans did. For more analytical Americans, the murder mystery could best be solved by focusing only on those items that were most relevant to the case. In contrast, the more ho- listic Koreans felt that a greater number of the items had possible relations with the murder. For holistic thinkers the world consists of many overlapping and related events. Some details that might seem trivial at first glance could ultimately prove to be relevant.

ETHIC OF COMMUNITY IN INDIA

First, moral obligations are viewed as objective obligations. That is, people believe that they have an obligation to act in a certain way, even if there is no official rule or law that requires them. -Second, moral obligations are perceived as legitimately regulated. That is, people should be prevented from engaging in a moral violation, or they should be punished if they act in such a way. If people feel that someone should not be prevented from engaging in an act, they are viewing the act as a matter of personal choice and not a moral obligation. -Violations are considered to be moral ones only if they are objective obligations that can be legitimately regulated. -justice violation, interpersonal obligation. -We would expect, however, that his decision will indicate which violation he perceives to be more serious. -aside from the Indians in the minor justice breach scenarios, there was a great deal of variability within cultures. Within each culture, many people would choose the justice obligation and many would choose the interpersonal obligation. -Indians are more likely to resolve the conflict by fulfilling their interpersonal obligations than Americans are. Furthermore, other questions in the study revealed that whereas both Indians and Americans viewed the justice breaches in moral terms, Indians were far more likely to view the interpersonal breaches in moral terms (that is, objective obligations that could be legitimately regulated) than Americans. This demonstrates just how seriously Indians take interpersonal obligations, which were perceived as more serious than justice obligations. . In cultures where this ethic is more strongly embraced, such as in India, the de- cision of whether to act in ways consistent with one's role obligations is not perceived as a matter of personal choice—it is a moral imperative. -Among Americans, when they feel that they have an obligation to help someone out (such as seeing a family member in need) they feel less positive about their helping than when they don't have any specific interpersonal obligations (such as seeing a stranger in need). Indeed, the words obligation and duty have somewhat negative connotations for Americans; Americans prefer seeing their helping behaviors as a matter of personal choice.

EVIDENCE FOR CULTURAL VARIABILITY IN FACIAL EXPRESSIONS

Given that movements of the facial muscles can be seen as part of the physiological component of emotions, it follows that in this domain of facial expression, we would see much evidence for universality. The success rates for identifying American-posed faces was better among English speakers than among speakers of other Indo-European languages (e.g., Swedish, Greek, Spanish), and these samples performed better than those who spoke non-Indo-European languages (e.g., Japanese, Turkish, Malaysian), and all of these groups performed better than those from pre-literate societies (e.g., the Fore and Dani from New Guinea; on average, people were about 9% more accurate in judging the facial expressions of people from their own culture than those of another culture. The link between certain facial expressions and inferred emotions thus appears to be a functional universal—the facial expressions are interpreted to indicate similar emotions across cultures, but the degree to which each expression is recognized varies across cultures. For example, if you just show people pictures of people's eyes, without the rest of their face showing, and ask them to guess the emotion that the target is feeling, people do better when the target is from their own culture than from another culture. a tool to diagnose people with autism. Curiously, then, people appear to be somewhat autistic when they interact with people from other cultures, struggling a bit to interpret what kinds of emotions they are feeling. People also show a stronger fear response as measured by brain imaging (i.e., they show greater activation of their amygdala) when they look at fear faces that are made by people in their own culture than those made by people of other cultures people are better at accurately perceiving the emotional expressions of people they have been exposed to more. Another example of this is that straight men were more accurate in judging the sexual orientations of men just by looking at their faces if they had had much past real-life experiences with gay men. people can reliably guess the nationality of targets who are expressing emotions, even when the targets are of fairly similar cultural backgrounds. For example, Americans can guess better than chance whether a target is from the United States or Australia, or whether the target is Japanese or Japanese-American, just by looking at a target's face, but only when the target is expressing an emotion. people who are of a lower socioeconomic background are more accurate at identifying facial expressions of emotions, indicating that those who have relatively less status must attend more closely to what those of relatively higher status might be thinking and feeling. Japanese people are more likely to conceal emotions they feel are potentially disruptive by presenting a more neutral or pleasant face than Americans. if you want to discern the feelings of someone who may be disguising their emotions, you should focus on their eyes. In contrast, the mouth is a much larger source of information than the eyes, so if you're expecting that people's feelings are being accurately broadcast by their faces, then you would fare best by attending to their relatively large mouths The results revealed that the judgments of Japanese were more influenced by the top half of the photos (i.e., by looking at the eyes) than the judgments of Americans, and the judgments of Americans were more influenced by the bottom half of the photos (i.e., by looking at the mouths) than the judgments of Japanese Europeans judged facial expressions by attending to both the eyes and the mouths, whereas East Asians did so by primarily attending to an area near the eyes

money and happiness

However, the relation between money and happiness is not universally strong. Money and happiness seem to be most closely connected at very low levels of wealth, where a few extra dollars can make the difference between surviving or not. the relation between income and subjective well-being is much smaller in developed nations, although it is still positive. On average, those countries that promote human rights the most tend to have the happiest citizens. The Scandinavian and Nordic nations, which have various social policies to minimize differences in opportunities among its citizens, tend to have some of the happiest people around. many nations have average subjective well-being scores that depart considerably from what would be predicted from these factors alone. in Latin America, average subjective well-being scores that are much higher than would be predicted by the variables of wealth, human rights, and equality, whereas countries in East Asia show much lower subjective well-being scores than would be predicted by these factors

happiness and personality

If someone acts in ways consistent with those inner attributes, it should feel good, because this would represent a culturally appropriate way of being—that is, a good life, independent style. This question was investigated by exploring whether feelings of life satisfaction are more highly correlated with overall positive affect in individualistic cultures than in collectivist cultures. People in individualistic societies were far more likely than those in collectivist societies to base their life satisfaction on how many positive emotions they were experiencing. Positive emotions appear to be seen as the basis of a good life in individualistic cultures. Suh and colleagues reasoned that people with interdependent selves would feel good about their lives if they were living up to others' standards for being a good person. Indeed, people in collectivistic cultures showed a higher correlation between their life-satisfaction scores and being respected by others for living up to cultural norms when compared with people from individualistic cultures. Living up to cultural norms seems to be viewed as the basis of a good life in collectivistic cultures. the theory that you endorse will influence how you make sense of your satisfaction, regardless of your actual daily experience. European-Americans reported having a much better week than Asian-Americans did. That is, it seems that European-Americans and Asian-Americans were having comparable weeks in terms of the satisfying events that they experience, but the European-Americans were remembering their weeks as having been better than they really were, whereas the Asian-Americans seemed to be remembering their weeks as having been about as good as they had experienced them. However, when they consider a longer period, their estimates are more likely to reflect the theories they hold about what life should be like. European-Americans appear to be operating under an implicit theory that they should be happy, whereas Asian-Americans seem to operate under the theory that emotional experience, like other aspects of life, should be balanced and consist of both positive and negative experiences. This dialectical view on emotions means that East Asians can simultaneously experience both positive and negative experiences. These findings indicate that when people think back over their lives, they are likely to interpret their feelings with respect to these culturally divergent theories, but when they consider their feelings at a given time, those theories do not come much into play. Interpreting cultural differences in happiness is made more difficult by the find- ings that positive emotions appear to have different meanings and consequences across cultures. European-Canadians were more likely to choose the fun game, whereas Asian-Canadians were more likely to choose the useful game Euro-Canadians showed a strong preference for the fun game over the useful one. For Asian-Canadians, the decision was much closer; also preferred fun game, but many chose the useful game. Similar findings emerged when choosing hypothetical university courses. Life appears to be less about a pursuit of happiness for people with Asian cultural experiences than it does for Westerners. One reason that Asians might be less interested in positive feelings compared with Westerners is that there may be fewer benefits for them of having especially positive feelings. positive feelings do not seem to carry the same protection against depression in East Asia. Perhaps it's because positive feelings do not have the same beneficial consequences in East Asia that research finds that happiness-boosting activities do not seem to be as effective among East Asians as they are among Westerners. Similarly, experiencing negative emotions does not appear to have the same consequences across cultures.

anti-social punishment

In addition to a tendency for altruistic punishment, in many societies (such as Russia, Saudi Arabia, Greece, and Oman), people showed strong tendencies for antisocial punishment. That is, people some times paid their own money to punish another player, even if that player was cooperating. The motivations for this antisocial punishment seemed to be largely a function of revenge, in which people would punish a player who had punished them on a previous round. the notion that punishment promotes cooperation holds true only in societies characterized by norms for civic cooperation and high levels of trust. The researchers data shows that societies with weaker norms for civic cooperation and a weaker rule of law engaged in mire antisocial punishment in public goods games. that is, the idea that being virtuous is associated with feeling happy does not seem to generalize to contexts where norms for civic cooperation are low.

Explicit Versus Implicit Communication

In explaining these cultural differences, Edward Hall made a distinction between high-context and low-context cultures. In a high-context culture, people are deeply involved with each other, and this involvement leads them to have much shared information that guides their behavior. There are clear and appropriate ways of behaving in each situation, and this information is widely shared and understood so it does not need to be explicitly communicated. Much of what is to be communicated can be inferred because people have a great deal of information in common that they can rely on, and thus they can be less explicit in what they say. In contrast, in a low-context culture there is relatively less involvement among individuals, and there is less shared information to guide behavior. As a result, it is necessary for people to communicate in more explicit detail, as others are less able to fill in the gaps of what is not said. East Asian cultures are good examples of high-context cultures, whereas North American, and English-speaking cultures more generally, are good examples of low-context ones.

Fairness for Individuals vs. Groups

In some cases, what is best for an individual can be in direct opposition to what is best for the group, and how one resolves such conflicts is revealing about the moral values that one prioritizes. Most Westerners and (Western philosophers) condemn the decision by the Police Chief and Judge. ---individual rights should always be held above all else. Although people from both cultural groups tended to disagree with the Police Chief and Judge's decision, Americans were more likely than the Chinese to view the decision as morally wrong. in addition, Chinese participants were more likely than the American to hold the potential rioters responsible for the scapegoating, suggesting that they attributed more responsibility at the level of the group.

attention

It follows that analytic thinkers, who tend to perceive the world as consisting of discrete objects, would be more likely to focus their attention on separate parts of a scene—those parts that represent discrete objects of interest. In contrast, holistic thinkers, who tend to perceive the world as consisting of an interrelated whole, should direct their attention more broadly, across an entire scene. The European-Americans were more likely to describe what they saw based on a single aspect of the card—say, a little blotch on the bottom that looked like a Ferrari. In contrast, the Chinese-Americans were more likely to give "whole-card" responses, describing what they saw based on the entire image. to the extent that East Asians habitually perceive the world in holistic terms, they should be especially good at certain kinds of tasks; the attention that holistic thinkers direct to the entire scene should mean that they would be especially good at detecting relations among different events.

amae

Japanese word. amae. Amae captures the relatively pleasant feelings that one experiences when allowed to emphasize his or her dependence on another

Cross-Cultural Evidence for Kohlberg's Model

Kohlberg maintained that the three levels in his model represent a universal pattern of moral development the world over. The model is proposed to be universal because the levels are always seen to follow sequentially. One aspect of the model that is not proposed to be universal is in the levels that different cultures reach. Kohlberg makes no claim that Americans and Zambians are equally likely to reason at the same level. Likewise, Kohlberg never claims that the full range of moral levels should be evident in all cultures. The results indicated some universality in moral reasoning. In all cultural groups there were adults who reasoned at the conventional levels, and in no cultural groups did the average adult reason at the preconventional level, although many samples of children revealed evidence of preconventional reasoning. This review suggests that Kohlberg's model might be universally applicable in explaining preconventional and conventional moral reasoning around the world. However, evidence of postconventional reasoning—reasoning based on justice and individual rights—was not universally found. traditional societies do not provide the educational experiences necessary for their members to reason about justice and individual rights in postconventional terms. A second interpretation is to note that urban Western environments are one kind of environment and tribal environments are another kind of environment, and that people develop a moral framework that best fits their environment.

Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development

Lawrence Kohlberg. He maintained that cognitive abilities underlie moral reasoning and that these abilities progress as individuals develop, mature, and are educated. Preconventional (Consequences vs. Gains), Conventional (Society vs. Self), Postconventional ( Abstract vs. Logic)

Culture and Fairness

Liberals vs conservatives: there is relatively little difference between them in the strength of their concerns with the moral intuitions of protecting fairness. The most popular solution for the Americans was to favor the excellent employee (the equity principle), and the least popular one was to favor the needy employee. In stark contrast, the favorite solution of Indians was to give the majority of the money to the needy employee, and the least favorite solution was to reward the excellent employee.

field independence

Likewise, religious training in Calvinism, which emphasizes the independence of individuals, leads people to be more field independent than atheists or people with training in Catholicism or Judaism.

LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY AND ODOR PERCEPTION.

Majid & Kruspe (2018)• Hunter-Gatherers: Semaq Beri (A & B)• Swidden-Horticulturalists: Semelai (C & D) • Semaq Beri & Semelai speakers • both groups speak related languages & live in tropical rainforest of Malay peninsula • Odour & colour naming experiment• Sniffin' Sticks (e.g., orange, leather, banana, fish) • for hunter-gatherers, odour naming as easy as colour naming; for the horticulturalists odour naming more difficult than colour naming • Olfactory cognition appears to be a special form of thinking for hunter- gatherers • Semaq Beri believe that people have an inherent personal odour, & people manage their social spaces to avoid inappropriately mixing their odours Americans reached much more agreement amongst themselves when describing colors than when describing odors. There was almost no agreement among American participants in how they described odors. In contrast, the Jahai they reached about the same amount of agreement when describing colors as when they were describing odors.

ETHNOCENTRISM

Malcolm Gladwell "Who comes out on top, in any ranking system, is really about who is doing the ranking." Typically, ethnocentrism leads people to assume that their own culture's way of life is in some ways better or more natural than that of others. It is possible to rank cultures on any given variable; however, the problem is in choosing the variable that makes sense. In general, cultures tend to value more those characteristics for which their own culture is particularly accomplished. As Malcolm Gladwell put it, "Who comes out on top, in any ranking system, is really about who is doing the ranking". This problem is inherent in all efforts to evaluate phenomena across cultures; however, given the tight overlap between values and morality, it is most salient when we consider how cultures differ in their ideas of what is right or wrong.

Analytic thinking

characterized by a focus on objects and their attributes. Objects are perceived as existing independently from their contexts they are understood in terms of their component parts. is more common in Western cultures than it is elsewhere, particularly in East Asia. relatively unusual thinking style, in that is is largely restricted to people who have had much contact with western society or education systems. Arabs showed at least as much evidence of holistic thinking as Chinese did Even within cultures there are parallel differences—working-class Americans and Russians are more holistic than their middle-class compatriots • Understanding of the physical world is based in part on our lived experience in our cultural world. • Independent cultures: learn to think of others as being fundamentally independent from each other & composed of their component parts. • physical world can be understood the same way. separate objects from each other break down objects into their parts uses rules to explain and predict an object's behaviour relies on abstract thought

The Morality of Thoughts

Many of Freud's most memorable notions were generated, in part, as he explored his own dreams and introspections. These ideas included his views of the unconscious mind as a cauldron of seething urges. If having bad thoughts was a moral issue, then Freud was guilty indeed. -Freud did not share Carter's view that one 's thoughts fall into the domain of moral governance. -Carter and Freud differ in many ways and one of them that is relevant to their moral reasoning is their religious backgrounds. Jimmy Carter was born and raised as a Southern Baptist, one of the most fundamental sects in Protestantism. -Freud was raised as Jewish. -Jewish and Christian dogma differ in terms of their holy scriptures. ------ Jewish doctrine is based on the Hebrew Bible and the debates on this doctrine that are included in the Talmud. -Christian = bible Exploring these texts reveals some differences relevant to the morality of thoughts. The first place in the Christian Bible that we see clear evidence that thoughts were to be normalized is in the New Testament, where Jimmy made the point later echoed by Jimmy Carter "You have heard that it was said 'you shall not commit adultery' but I say to you, that everyone that looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart" 8/10 commandments refer to behaviors and only 2 refer to thoughts.

answering machines

One real-life situation in which nonverbal information is not communicated is when people leave messages on answering machines. Indeed, research reveals that Japanese tend to actively avoid leaving messages on answering machines and are less than half as likely as Americans to do so. they are worried that the target person might not check his or her messages, whereas Japanese don't like answering machines because they say that it's hard to speak without getting feedback. RESULTS: Although the two cultures did not differ in their performance on the cognitive task prior to leaving a message, while speaking into the answering machine the Japanese's performance on the cognitive task fell significantly below that of the Americans. Apparently, it is far more cognitively demanding for Japanese to leave a message because they are trying hard to imagine how their target person will react to it. The key variable of interest was how long it took participants to respond when the tone and the meaning of the words were in conflict. The Americans showed more interference in their judgments about the vocal tone (while ignoring the meaning of the words) than they did when making judgments about the meaning of the words (while ignoring the vocal tone). Japanese showed more interference when they needed to attend to the meaning of the word and ignore the tone than they did when attending to the tone while ignoring the meaning. This suggests that Japanese are habitually attending to the tone in which things are said more than they are to the precise content of what is being said. One alternative explanation to account for these results is that there is something about the Japanese language that requires people to attend to tone more than for English. Specifically, Filipinos are collectivist, and many are fluent in both Tagalog and English. If Filipinos have more difficulty ignoring vocal tones than the meaning regardless of the language they are speaking, this would suggest that the findings reflect cultural differences in attention to context rather than features of the language. Indeed, this is precisely what the researchers found.

iklas

Other less-familiar emotion words include the Javanese term iklas, which refers to somewhat pleasant feelings of frustration

holistic thinking

characterized by an orientation to the context as a whole. It represents an associative way of thinking, which gives attention to the relations among objects and the surrounding context. Holistic thinking also emphasizes knowledge gained through experience rather than the application of fixed abstract rules. more common in East Asian and other cultures, than the west. • Interdependent cultures: people learn to attend to relations among people. • generalize this attention of relations among physical objects in environment. • Richard Nisbett & colleagues provide evidence demonstrating this cultural difference in ways that we perceive the physical world. orientation to the entire scene attend to relations among objects predict an object's behaviour on the basis of those relationships relies on associative thought

EVIDENCE FOR CULTURAL UNIVERSALS IN FACIAL EXPRESSIONS.

Physiological sensations associated with emotions; similarity across cultures. Interpretations of those sensations; more evidence for emotional variability across cultures. facial expressions are part of our biological makeup, and because humans share the same biology every- where, facial expressions should be the same worldwide. Charles Darwin. various facial expressions evolved as a product of natural selection—perhaps as means to communicate information before our species had the linguistic capabilities to describe feelings. • What expressions correspond with what emotions? • Darwin - facial expressions from other animals seem to parallel those made by humans (i.e., from Victorian England). Assessing Universality of the Face Paul Ekman - similarly in emotional facial expressions around the world. First - much similarity across industrialized countries in recognition of posed facial expressions. Next - test people from a culture with little interaction with Westerners: Fore of New Guinea. Participants asked to show imagined expressions to a number of different events. Ekman and Friesen (1971) took thousands of photos of people making six different emotional expressions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise). participants tended to identify the emotion correctly in 80% to 90% of the photos. That is, people in these five different cultures showed a great deal of agreement about what feelings the different facial poses were expressing. these different cultures because the cultures weren't all that different to begin with. The five cultures they had explored were all industrialized, literate cultures, and people from them had all been exposed to a lot of the same media images. from those cultures all learned to express emotions with their faces in ways that are similar across cultures. Ekman's solution to addressing this shortcoming was to try to find a culture that had the least possible exposure to Western ways. He chose the Fore of the inner highlands of New Guinea. Ekman demonstrated this by creating some stories appropriate for each of the six emotions. This is strong evidence that some facial expressions are universally similar around the world. Ekman and colleagues proposed that there is a set of basic emotions that are uni- versally recognized around the world. This basic set is argued to include at least six emotions: anger, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise, and disgust. debate for universality: contempt, shame, embarrassment, and interest pride is universally recognized, involves the whole body. Jessica tracy

Level 1: The Preconventional Level

Preconventional moral reasoning suggests that people interpret morality based on a calculation of how much better or worse off they would be for acting in a certain way. what determines whether an action is good or bad is whether it benefits the individual themself.

CULTURE & PROTESTANT VALUES

Prosperity Gospel Biblical Model

protestants vs Jews

Protestants were more likely to view the commandment to honor one's parents in terms of having respectful thoughts towards them, Jews were more likely to view it in terms of behaviors. Evidence of a transition from a general emphasis on being a good person by behaving in moral ways characterized the Jewish half of the Bible (the Old Testament) to an emphasis on being a good person by thinking in moral ways, as stressed in the Christian has of the Bible (the New Testament). There is also a greater emphasis on faith in Christianity (especially Protestantism), than in Judaism. Jewish participants rated practices as more important than beliefs for being religious, whereas Protestants put greater emphasis on beliefs than practices. Having adulterous thoughts is viewed as more immoral by Protestants than Jews. Importantly, Jewish participants viewed sexual affairs in at least as negative terms as the Protestant participants did. There was no difference between the religions in how they viewed immoral behaviors. Protestants view one's thoughts to be governed by moral concerns whereas Jews do not. ---- The moral domain for Jews is focused on what people do, and not what they think about doing. Research reveals that Protestants believes that people have more control over their thoughts than Jews do. ---- one reason to be concerned about someone engaging in immoral thoughts is the possibility that these thoughts might increase the likelihood that the person will engage in the immoral behavior.

situational attributions

explanations of people's behavior that explain people's behaviors in terms of contextual variables, such as the weather, luck, accidents, or other people's actions. East Asians • Situational attribution: explaining other's behaviours by attending to contextual variables.

linear ways

Relative to East Asians, Westerners appear to view change as occurring in more linear ways. In contrast, East Asians appear to believe that change itself happens in rather fluid and unpredictable ways. The Chinese were almost twice as likely as Americans to predict that the trend would reverse direction in the future, whereas Americans were more likely than Chinese to assume that the trend would continue in the same direction as in the past.

orthodox

Religious adherents who are orthodox are committed to the idea of a transcendent authority. This authority is viewed to have existed long before humans and as operating independently of people. Furthermore, this authority is perceived to be more knowledgeable and more powerful than all of human experience. In the orthodox view, this transcendent authority originated a moral code and revealed it to human beings in sacred texts. This moral code is perceived to stand across all times and circumstances and should not be altered to accommodate any societal changes or individual differences. Rather, individuals and society are expected to adapt themselves to this ordained moral code. -ethic of divinity seems to bear a close affinity with orthodox conceptions of morality. -of the orthodox participants, 100% gave at least one reason that was consistent with the ethic of divinity - that is, they spoke of God's exclusive authority to end human life or they referred to the biblical injunction against taking another person's life. -the orthodox were more likely to make their judgments based on the ethic of divinity.

Cultural Variation in Subjective Well-Being and Happiness

happiness is associated with increased longevity, career success in North America. Happiness does seem to be a central value among many people from Western cultures. "unalienable right" in the Declaration of Independence. "happy nation" have steadily dropped over time, whereas the term "happy person" has steadily risen

associative reasoning

holistic thinkers should be more likely to make sense of a situation by considering the relationships among objects or events. they should look for evidence for events clustering together, such as similarity among events or of temporal continuity of events. Holistic reasoners: attend more to relationships among objects or events; look for similarities or temporal relations. --have round petals, have one leaf, and have only one circle. East Asians and Asian-Americans more likely to base decisions on overall similarity between targets & groups.

Whorfian (or linguistic relativity) hypothesis

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, or more commonly, the Whorfian (or linguistic relativity) hypothesis. The strongest version of this hypothesis is that language determines how we think—that is, we are unable to do much thinking on a topic if we don't have the relevant words available to us. This strong version of the hypothesis has been almost universally rejected. Much thought clearly occurs outside of language; for example, prelinguistic infants and toddlers show evidence for quite complex thinking in the absence of language. A weaker version of this hypothesis is that the language we speak affects how we think. It is mostly with respect to the weaker version that there has been much debate, controversy, and research. • Sapir-Whorf hypothesis/linguistic determinism (strong version): language determines thought - without access to words people are unable to have certain kinds of thoughts. • Inuktitut example snow words • qanik snow falling aputi snow on the groundpukak crystalline snow on the ground aniu snow used to make water • Linguistic relativity (weaker version): language influences thought - having access to certain words influences the kinds of thoughts that one has. What are the names of these things? • Sapir-Whorf hypothesis/linguistic determinism (strong version): REJECTED • Linguistic relativity (weaker version): language influences thought • Still a controversial topic • Very relevant to cross-cultural research as one way that cultures differ is in their languages and the words that are available to them. "politically correct," or to use words that are deemed to be consistent with desired outcomes. The reasoning is that if we use words such as "physically challenged" rather than "handicapped" to describe people confined to wheelchairs, we will be more likely to think of these people as being capable and competent, which should serve to empower them. In many ways, the words that we speak are assumed to affect the ways that we think. The reasoning for this is not that one language allows people to think about certain ideas but rather that one language obliges people to think about certain ideas.

Ethics of Autonomy, Community, and Divinity (Schweder)

Shweder argues that Kohlberg's model of moral reasoning represents just one of three codes of ethics - ethic of autonomy.

taxonomic categorization

Taxonomic categorization answers are especially common among Westerners in these kinds of studies. The second common answer is the dog. Rabbits and carrots go together because rabbits eat carrots. Rabbits and carrots have a relationship, which dogs don't share. This kind of answer reflects a thematic categorization strategy in that the stimuli are grouped together on the basis of causal, temporal, or spatial relationships among them. Thematic categorization is especially common among East Asians.

Taoism

holistic thinking was evident among the ancient Chinese in that their intellectual traditions of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism emphasized harmony, interconnectedness, and change. Although the Greek preference for discrete concepts and abstract principles led to the invention of science, the Chinese tendency to view the world as consisting of continuously interacting substances led them to discover the concept of action at a distance 2,000 years before Galileo did.

Fundamental Attribution Error

That is, they attributed the behavior of writing the essay to reflecting the essay writer's underlying personality even though it was clear to them that the writers had no choice in what they wrote. This tendency to ignore situational information (such as the conditions under which the writers wrote their essays) while focusing on dispositional information (the essay writers' assumed attitudes) is known as the fundamental attribution error. It is termed "fundamental" because it is viewed to be deeply ingrained in us. That is, Americans were more likely to conceive of people in terms of abstract personality traits than the Indians, who attended to others in terms of the concrete behaviors they engaged in. the implied trait words (e.g., helpful) were more strongly linked to the photos for European-Americans than they were for Asian-Americans, showing that the be- havior was more likely to be interpreted by the European-Americans as indicating an underlying trait Although Indian and American children show similar attribution patterns, as Americans get older they tend to make more dispositional attributions, and as Indians get older they tend to make more situational attributions. as the American sample got older, they were more likely to make dispositional attributions, whereas their situational attributions remained largely unchanged. by the time they were adults, the Americans showed clear evidence for the fundamental attribution error by explaining people's behaviors as largely due to their personalities. Attributions in India and the US (Miller, 1984). Participants (from 8 year-olds to adults), report on wrong things and good things that someone they knew had done. Then asked WHY the targets hade done what they did?•DV: Explanations coded as either dispositional or situational. American and Indian 8 year-olds gave similar attributions. As Americans got older, they made more dispositional attributions, but not situational ones; the fundamental attribution error. Older Indians made more situational attributions but not dispositional ones; show a reverse fundamental attribution error. cultural differences are most pronounced when the situational information is made highly salient American Protestants are more likely than American Catholics to make dispositional attributions. Moreover, this difference between the sects appears to be a function of Protestants having a greater commitment to the idea that people have individual souls. If people believe that God is judging them on the basis of what their soul has done, it follows that they are more likely to view the soul as being the cause of the individual's behaviors Working-class Americans make more situational attributions, and fewer dispositional attributions, than middle-class Americans

savannah

The American subjects showed more activation of object-processing regions in the brain (such as the bilateral middle termporal gyrus, left superior parietal gyrus, and right superior temporal gyrus) compared with the East Asians. In contrast, no cultural variation was found in areas associated with processing contexts and backgrounds. Moreover, other research found that the cultural differences in object processing are more pronounced in comparisons of elderly Westerners typically start off by describing the focal animal (e.g., a wolf). • East Asians typically start by describing the context of the scene (e.g., a snowy forest scene). Participants later shown series of photos: some which they had seen before AND some with the original animal but with a different background. • Asked if they had seen the animal in the picture before. Recognition Accuracy for Previously Seen Animals Westerners unaffected by the background of the scene. East Asians significantly worse if the background of the scene is switched on them. East Asians appear to see the scene as bound together holistically. Westerners see it as a collection of parts. Masuda & Nisbett, 2001.

yin and the Yang

The Yin and the Yang represent opposites (literally, they mean the moon and the sun), and they indicate that the universe is constantly in flux, moving from one opposite pole to the other and back again. The darkness of the night will yield to the brightness of the day, which will lead to the darkness again, and the cycle will continue to repeat. This belief in a fluid and cyclical reality is perhaps most clearly evident in the writings of Lao Tzu, the legendary founder of Taoism that reality is in flux but also indicates that opposing truths can be simultaneously accepted. • Holistic thought • Lao Tzu: classical Chinese ideas of harmony, interconnectedness, & change (e.g., Chinese medical traditions • Research suggests holistic thinking pretty much everywhere outside of the Western world

Level 3: The Postconventional Level

moral values and principles are seen to exist separately from the authority of the social groups that hold them. Postconventional moral reasoning is based on the consideration of abstract ethical principles of what is right and wrong, and moral decisions are reached based on the logical extensions of those principles

Level 2: The Conventional Level

people are able to identify themselves with a particular group and social order, and they show loyalty toward this group. Conventional moral reasoning is about viewing actions as moral to the extent that they help maintain and facilitate the social order. This level dictates that morality is about following the rules, and individuals should not question where those rules come from.

eye tracker

The best way to provide an answer to this important question is to use an eye-tracker, a device with which researchers can determine precisely where someone is looking at any given instant. RESULTS: Japanese judgments of the target person's emotional expression were influenced by the expressions of the people in the background. In contrast, the expressions of the background people had no impact on the judgments of the faces for the Americans. This again provides evidence that East Asians attend more to the background context than Westerners do. When looking at a picture, Americans focus more on the center figure than Japanese do, especially after the first second has passed. Japanese spend a relatively larger amount of time focusing on parts of the background. • East Asians' judgments of the centre target's facial expression more influenced by facial expressions of the surrounding others than are Westerners (Masuda, Ellsworth, et al., 2008). • Judging emotional expressions is more of a social event for East Asians. How are East Asians influenced by the background of scenes? Are their eyes processing the scene differently? Participants wear an eye tracker (monitors their gaze). 1st sec. - people from both cultures look mostly at the target figure; after that, East Asians look more to background than Westerners, who continue to be fixate on the focal target. Same pattern of results for non-social scenes; East Asians appear to more habitually look for relations in their environments. Furthermore, the Chinese participants made more saccades than the Americans. Saccades are the extremely quick eye movements that shift people's gaze from one fixation point to another. By systematically scanning scenes, Asians are better able to detect changes in backgrounds than Westerners are. Westerners' tendencies to attend to focal objects allows them to outperform Asians on tasks requiring keeping track of multiple objects

progressive

progressive religions emphasize the importance of human agency in understanding and formulating a moral code. Progressivists reject the view that a transcendent authority reveals itself and its will to humans; they believe that humans play an integral role in the formulation of a moral code. Progressivists believe that because social circumstances change, the moral code must change along with them. the ethic of autonomy has many similarities with progressivists' conceptions of morality. The ethic of autonomy allows individuals to choose what is right and wrong, provided they do not encroach on the rights of others or cause harm. -when the progressivists reasoned about abortion, 90% of them offered at least one reason that was consistent with the ethic of autonomy - that is, they tended to emphasize that individuals had to interpret the scriptures and reach a conclusion for themselves that avoided harming others. -Progressivists made moral decisions based primarily on the ethic of autonomy (stressing individual rights) and the ethic of community (stressing obligations toward others) -people from each sect occasionally offered justifications from each of the three different ethics.

newspapers

The researchers analyzed newspaper articles about the two events and noted each occasion when the reporters offered details about the disposition of the accused (e.g., having a "very bad temper," being "mentally unstable") or about the situation that was relevant to the killings (e.g., had a "rivalry with a slain student," "had been recently fired"). American stories overall made more references to the disposition of the accused than to the situation. In stark contrast, the Chinese stories made more references to the situations

NUMERICAL COGNITION.

The studies regarding color and spatial perception are consistent with a weak version of the Whorfian hypothesis. the strong version of the Whorfian hypoth- esis has been almost universally rejected. Mathematical principles exist outside of culture, regardless of our ability to understand them. However, mathematics is also a domain in which we can see pronounced cultural variation in people's understanding. the Piraha, a tribe from the Lowland Amazon region of Brazil, has a number system that contains only the numbers 1, 2, and "many." They have no terms for any specific numbers greater than 2. The strong test of the Whorfian hypothesis that begs to be asked here is whether people who do not have number terms in their language can understand the concepts of those numbers. The participants did well on this task when there were initially up to two nuts in the can; however, their performance steadily dropped in trials that contained increasing numbers of nuts. Those participants who were shown a can containing six nuts rarely were able to correctly determine when the last nut was removed. They did not seem to be able to perform this task well with numbers larger than 2. participants could do this task well with small numbers; however, their performance deteriorated considerably as the numbers got larger in all the tasks conducted, the magnitude of the errors that the Piraha made increased with the magnitude of the numbers they were asked to estimate. they do seem able to have rough quantity estimation skills. This suggests that rough quantity estimation skills might be innate whereas numerical skills beyond 2 are acquired through cultural experiences. This is some evidence for the strongest version of the Whorfian hypothesis. The way that people in industrialized societies learn about numbers is linear. They see larger amounts of space between small numbers than they do between large numbers. For example, they identify the number 10 to exist approximately halfway between the numbers 1 and 100, which is what its logarithmic value is Likewise, research with Mundurucu adults, an Amazonian indigenous group with a few number words, also finds that they map numbers onto space logarithmically.

LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY AND COLOR PERCEPTION.

There is tremendous diversity in the ways people label colors, and this diversity emerges in systematic ways. All known languages have a minimum of two color terms. The one identified language (Dani) with only two terms has words that roughly correspond to "black" (which included all dark-hued colors) and "white" (which included all lighter hues). • Although colour lies on a continuum, colour terms are discrete. • Colour terms vary around world; limited number of patterns of colour terms in different languages. • Language = Berinmo • Papua New Guinea • Hunters-gatherers • Colour Terms = 5 • Language = Himba• Namibia, SW Africa• Semi-nomadic herders • Colour Terms = 5 Cultural/language colour boundaries are in the same region of the colour spectrum, but colour names & cultural experience create sharper contrasts on where those boundaries will be found. Furthermore, the focal point of each of these color categories (e.g., the most prototypical green in an array of different shades of green) is largely similar across language groups. The Japanese word for blue is ao, and this word is also used to refer to the color of the sky, blueberries, and the South Pacific Ocean, but the same term is used to refer to the color of a lawn, a freshly shaven scalp, and what English speakers would call a green traffic signal. The results of her studies indicated that the Dani remembered colors in similar ways to Americans, despite having such divergent color categories. Furthermore, the Dani could learn and recall new words that were associated with colors that corresponded with the foci of the eight basic chromatic categories of English more easily than they could learn words for colors that occupied intermediate points along the color spectrum. language does not affect color perception; also, the results more generally were interpreted to suggest that the Whorfian hypothesis was untenable in other domains as well. Roberson studied monolingual Berinmo speakers from isolated villages in Papua, New Guinea, whose language contains five basic color terms. The Himba language also contains five basic color terms. they found considerable evidence for cultural variation in the ways that people in the different cultures learned and remembered colors. Second, they included some studies that went beyond some perceived shortcomings in the original methodology of Rosch Heider. The Roberson studies were based on the idea that different color categories should affect people's categorical perception of colors. Much research has shown that we tend to perceive stimuli in categorical terms—that is, we tend to perceive stimuli as belonging to separate and discrete categories, even though the stimuli may gradually differ from each other along a continuum Roberson and colleagues reasoned that a good test of whether color labels influence perception would be whether people given different color labels are similarly affected by the boundaries that exist between color categories. Namely, the English speakers were most likely to make judgments in line with categorical perception for stimuli that crossed the blue-green boundary. In contrast, the Berinmo speakers were most likely to show evidence for categorical perception when they discriminated between two stimuli that crossed the nol-wor boundary. Likewise, the Himba speakers were most likely to discriminate between colors that crossed the dumbu-burou boundary. People are asked to judge whether Chip1 or Chip 2 is more similar to the target chip. Even though Chips 1 and 2 are actually equally distant from the target chip in terms of hue, most English speakers would say that both Chips 1 and the target chip fall within the category of green, whereas Chip 2 falls within the category of blue. Because of this, most English speakers see Chip 1 as more similar to the target chip than Chip 2 is. People make more judgments consistent with categorical perception for stimuli that cross the boundary between two color labels in their own language, compared with stimuli that cross a color-label boundary in other languages

Laetoli footprints

revealed a wider foot front part of the foot, with the big toe more separated from the second toe and a more pronounced arch. Although bipedal, the Laetoli Austrolopithecenes did not appear to be as fully bipedal as modern humans. consider whose feet one is examining Laetoli footprints participated in some cultural traditions that differ from those of most modern humans - they didn't wear shoes. People who habitually wear shoes tend to have narrower feet. the shape of your feet can also be a cultural product. wearing shoes can change the way you run. People run differently in bear feet, such that they are more likely to land on their fore-feet or mid-feet compared with those who are more likely to run with their shoes on, who tend to land on their rear feet. having experience with throwing leads to the development of more muscles on the dominant arm, and thicker bones.

Cultural Variation in Kinds of Emotional Experiences

This suggests that people with independent selves and interdependent selves will interpret situations differently—looking at situations as providing opportunities to distinguish themselves from others or to affect their relations with others. the Surinamese and Turks expressed more relational concerns and attended more closely to how situations affected others, compared with the Dutch. Moreover, the Surinamese and Turks were more likely than the Dutch to ensure that others attended to the same events, thereby sharing the experience with the participants. we should expect that common cultural concerns should be associated with the kinds of emotions relevant to those concerns. For example, defending one's honor is a significant concern among Turks, whereas maintaining face is a particular concern among Japanese. The kinds of emotions that arise when people are concerned with defending their honor are feelings of anger and shame, and these are experienced more frequently in Turkey. In contrast, a concern with maintaining face is associated with feelings of shame but not anger, and in Japan people are far more likely to experience shame compared with anger. In contrast, Americans are more likely to experience situations that anger, not shame. Japanese athletes are more likely than their American counterparts to discuss their relationships when describing their emotions. Japanese participants inferred more emotions when the athlete mentioned relationships, whereas American participants inferred more emotions when the athlete focused only on herself. One dimension was whether the emotion was positive or negative. A second dimension was whether the emotion was interpersonally engaged or disengaged—that is, whether the experience involved connecting with others or distinguishing oneself from others. they correlated how often participants reported experiencing the positive interpersonally engaged and disengaged emotions with how often they reported feeling some general positive emotions. Those Japanese who reported feeling a great deal of positive interpersonally engaged emotions reported a lot more positive feelings in general. In contrast, Americans who reported feeling a great deal of positive interpersonally disengaged emotions reported much more positive feelings in general. In contrast, the positive interpersonally disengaged emotions for Japanese and the positive interpersonally engaged emotions for Americans were not closely tied to general positive feelings. This suggests that Japanese feel especially good when they're focusing on how their emotional experiences lead them to connect with others, whereas Americans feel especially good when they're dwelling on those emotional experiences that distinguish them from others.

field dependent

Those who are more outgoing are more field dependent than people who are more introverted. Similarly, farmers who live in societies where they must coordinate their actions with others are more field dependent than people who hunt and gather or who herd animals. The Japanese participants made about 60% more references to background objects than the Americans, who tended to talk more about the fish at the center of the scene. --they seemed to have seen the fish and the background scenery as bound together.

public goods game

Using this game, the economists Fehr and Gaster gave groups of four Swiss university students the opportunity to contribute some of their money to a common pool. suppose each participant started with $10 each. For every dollar that was contributed, the experimenter multiplied by 1.6 and the redistributed it to all four members (40 cents each). Hence, overall the group would earn the most money if everyone contributed all of their money as in the end everyone would review a total of 1.6 times the original contribution. However, the game is set up so that the participants are tempted to free-ride. The best scenario for a single player would be to refuse to donate any money and have other teammates contribute all of their money, as then that player would then take home their original $10 AND the $12 earned from the contributions of their teammates. This game captures the dynamics that people routinely face in real-life decisions such as whether to pay their taxes in full or whether to reduce their carbon footprint. Teams didn't contribute all that much money, and their contributions got smaller and smaller after each round. The temptations to free-ride were just too great. And players seemed quite willing to pay their own money in order to punish others. The researchers found that with the addition of this punishment rule, cooperation increased quite dramatically and remained stable across time. introduce altruistic punishment

Creative thinking

Westerners seem to fare better: For example, Nobel Prizes Chinese scientific innovations arguably led the world in the 15th century; excelled in classical music.

LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY AND PERCEPTIONS OF AGENCY

when English speakers wish to avoid blame for an event, they are more likely to describe it in nonagentive ways, breaking a vase either by acting intentionally (in which agency is typically reported both in English and in Spanish) or unintentionally (in which agency is more likely to be reported in English than in Spanish). Later, the participants were shown pictures of different people and were asked to recall which one had broken the vase. The En- glish and Spanish speakers were equally accurate when identifying the targets who had acted intentionally (the languages do not differ in how they describe intentional agency); however, the English speakers were more accurate than the Spanish speak- ers in recalling who had broken the vase unintentionally.

Cultural Display Rules

What varies, they argue, are the display rules that cultures maintain for emotional expression . Display rules are the culturally specific rules that govern which facial expressions are appropriate in a given situation and how intensely they should be exhibited. Some cultures encourage people to display their emotions in clear, if not exaggerated, form. Arabs show anger. Kaluli of New Guinea show emotions dramatically Utku Eskimos: don't show anger. Balinese: avoid display of emotions Evidence of cultural variability in display rules of emotions can also be found in hospitals. AMS: acute Mediterranean syndrome. This syndrome refers to the observations by some ER personnel that people from many Mediterranean cultures communicate their discomfort and pain at several deci- bels louder than those from many other cultures. self report measures do not reveal these consistent cultural differences. pain expression appear to be more pronounced among older patients emotional expression is shaped by culture overtime. display rules also shape the kinds of facial expressions that people might display. for ex, Indians and the tongue bite. Voluntarily produced emotional expressions such as the tongue bite suggest the existence of cultural display rules that lead people to express idiosyncratic facial expressions, known as ritualized displays, that differ from the ostensibly universal facial expressions identified by Ekman. Ritualized displays: The cue of authority figures Japanese and American participants watched an unpleasant film either (a) in private,or (b) in presence of authority figure. (a) no differences in facial expressions(b) differences observed in the intensity of expression Cultural Display Rules Facial expressions of basic emotions are universally recognized, but there is important cultural variation (cultural accents). Cultures vary in "display rules" of emotional expressions. • Intensity of expressions • "Ritualized displays Learned Ritualized Displays Cultures can thus vary in the intensity of their expressions, as well as a number of "ritualized displays" - that is, expressions that are not made universally. Recognizing Ritualized Displays • Even very subtle "emotional accents" can be identified when making comparisons of individuals expressing emotions from quite similar cultures • Own culture vs similar culture • Japanese American vs Japanese expressions • Marsh, Elfenbein, & Ambady (2007) • American vs. Australian expressions • Marsh, Elfenbein, & Ambady (2007) • Cultural display rules help explain why we are more accurate at recognizing facial expressions made by people from cultural ingroup than people from cultural outgroup. • ingroup advantage (Elfenbein & Ambady) • smaller for closer groups (geography & frequency of contact Recognizing Ritualized Displays Cultures can vary in parts of the face they consider when judging another's emotion. In Japan, cultural display rules more often require concealment of potentially disharmonious emotions. More difficult to control eye muscles than those around the mouth. Japanese more likely than Americans to judge emotions by looking at the eyes. Results - small cultural accents in emotion detection Japanese viewed the expression as somewhat happier than Americans if the eyes were expressing a happier emotion than the mouth. Americans judged target to be happier if mouth was expressing a happier emotion than the eyes. Summary of facial expression research • Facial expressions are largely universal with a smaller culturally-learned component. • Ekman's neurocultural theory• Universal facial affect program + conscious cultural display rules• Elfenbein & Ambady's dialect theory • Universal + culturally specific affect program (subtle expression + display & perception + decoding rules)

seniority system

time with the company or age is being rewarded. Seniority systems reflect the principle of equality because there is no competition among individuals for compensation. It is determined by the same calculus for everyone. Seniority systems weaken the link between one's inputs and outputs so that individuals might not be motivated to work as hard, although they do promote harmonious relations by decreasing intragroup competition. Interestingly, although it is often assumed that merit-based pay is the way to ensure the greatest amount of effort from one's employees, Japanese workers have traditionally been among the hardest working in the world (e.g., there is a great deal of voluntary overtime and many never take their vacations), and Japanese companies tend to have more seniority-based pay than American organizations. The relation between efforts and the principle of equity or equality appears to depend considerably on the cultural context.

meritocracy

a social system that rewards individuals on the basis of the equity principle is known as a meritocracy and meritocracies tend to be more common in individualistic societies. Meritocracies have their benefits and costs. PRO: they can lead workers to be highly motivated to work hard, because their earnings depend on their efforts, which tends to increase productivity. CON: Because there is unusually only a finite amount of resources that can be distributed among employees, when one worker does especially well, this means that the others are doing relatively worse and will be paid less. Meritocratic systems tend to breed competition amongst workers, thereby potentially disrupting harmonious relations among them.

Aristotle

a stone falls through the air because the stone possesses the property of "gravity" and that a log floats on water because the log possesses the property of "levity." Analytic thinking is further evident in the Greek development of an elaborate formal logic system that searched for the truth according to abstract rules and syllogisms that existed independently of observations.

examples

as an assessment of how much you have the intuition to avoid harm, how much money would you need to be paid to stick a pin into the palm of a child you don't know? If you'd be willing to do so for free, you don't have much of an intuition to avoid harm. Protecting fairness can be assessed by the amount you'd need to be paid to say no to a friend's request to help him move into a new apartment, after he had helped you move the month before. Loyalty to ingroups can be assessed by your willingness to burn your country's flag, in private, where no one else would see you. Respect for hierarchy is revealed by your willingness to slap your father in the face (with his permission) as part of a comedy skit. And your intuition to achieve purity could be as- sessed by your willingness to cook and eat your dog after it dies of natural causes. The more money you'd require to do any of these, the stronger your intuitions for them. -Americans who identify themselves as strongly liberal tend to have strong intuitions regarding avoiding harm and protecting fairness, but not such strong intuitions for the other three. -conservative, in contrast, tend to have fairly strong intuitions for all five. -Although this same set moral foundations may undergird the moral reasoning among people from different cultures, sometimes different foundations are called upon to solve the same problem.

dispositional attributions

attributions that explain someone's behavior in terms of factors internal to the person, such as traits or preferences. WESTERNERS • Analytic thinkers understand objects by focusing on their component parts & holistic thinkers understand objects by considering their relations with the context. • Same distinction can be applied to how we understand people. • Dispositional attribution: explaining other's behaviours by attending to their personal characteristics.

MORALITY OF THOUGHTS

bible: yes freud: no

ethic of divinity

concerned with sanctity and the perceived "natural order" of things. This code contains the ethical principle that one is obligated to preserve the standards mandated by a transcendent authority. It involves a belief that God. actions are seen as immoral if they cause impurity or degradation to oneself or others, or if one shows any disrespect for God or God's creations. seen as moral codes to the extent that they reflect an understanding of right and wrong that is not based on either one's own subjective preferences (which would indicate that the belief is viewed as a personal choice) or a community's view of what is right and wrong (which would indicate that the belief is seen to be a matter of convention) The abstract ethical principle that Shweder argued to be inherent in this moral code was that one is obli- gated to respect or preserve the sanctity of the natural order of things, as dictated by a transcendent moral authority (such as God). Remember that for something to be considered immoral it needs to be viewed as universally wrong and as something that should be prevented. the majority of Penn students did not view the man's behavior as immoral, although the vast majority perceived it to be quite disgusting. -Among the Brazilians, about 50% of the high-status participants viewed the practice to be universally wrong, and about 56% felt that the man should be punished. -For the low-status Brazilians, in contrast, about 87% viewed the behavior as universally wrong, and about 83% felt that the man should be punished. The low status Americans responded very similarly to the low status Brazilians with 87% universalizing their judgements and 80% believing that the man needs to be punished. -lower socioeconomic status show more of a concern with the ethic of divinity -In general, most people did not see the man's behavior as causing anyone much harm, but most people said they would feel bothered if they witnessed this event, and these responses did not differ across the samples. -For the high status samples, particularly from the students of Penn, participants were more likely view the man's behavior as immoral if they felt someone was being harmed, than if they would feel bothered by the event. -they appeared to operate under the ethic of autonomy principle that moral violations stem from causing harm. In contrast, the low status participants were more likely to view the man behavior as immoral if they felt bothered by the event than if they felt that anyone was being harmed. -The low-status participants were not relying much on an ethic of autonomy and instead seemed affected by their emotional reaction to seeing a violation of the perceived

principle of need

dictates that resources are directed toward those who need them the most Ex. A student, say, who was planning to goto law school as a means to earn themoney to support his sick motherwould receive a higher grade thana student who was going to be-come a professional athlete. the principle pf need is manifested in most modern industrialized societies through institutions such as universal health insurance, which gives the sick more benefits than the healthy, or a welfare system, in which those who are needy receive more benefits than those who are not. contributing to charities, giving money to beggars.

principle of equality

dictates that resources should be shared equally among members of a group. in much of the rest of the world, (and in industries in the west that have a more collectivistic base through the power of lobar unions), the principle of equality is adhered to more. Rather, equality tends to be preserved within a certain range of constraints, such as one's age or official credentials.

Facial Feedback Hypothesis

display rules is that they presuppose that emotional experiences are unaffected by facial expressions. are emotional experiences and expressions completely unrelated? One view, known as the facial feedback hypothesis, suggests that they are not. The facial feedback hypothesis proposes that one source of information we utilize when inferring our feelings is our facial expressions. So if we are trying to figure out if we feel happy, one clue that we might consider This correlation between our facial expressions and feelings might thus be relied on in interpreting our feelings. instructed to hold a pen between their teeth without having it touch their lips. A second group was instructed to hold a pen between their lips without having it touch their teeth. the pen-in-teeth group found the cartoons to be more amusing than the pen-in-lips group! Apparently, participants were inferring how amused they were by the cartoons by considering what their facial muscles were doing, although none of them appeared to be aware that they were doing so. if your culture encourages you to express your emotions clearly on your face, you may infer that you're feeling strong emotions.

ethic of community

emphasizes that individuals have duties that conform with their roles in a community or social hierarchy. actions are seen as wrong when individuals fail to perform their duties. Morality can be understood as one's duty to their community. (Interpersonal violations) *Culture determines interpretation of immoral* Morality is understood in purity terms as well as order vs. disorder. Derived from the belief that God (or the gods) created a perfect world that needs to be honoured through our actions. *Culture determines degree of purity concerns* Carol Gilligan has made the case that interpersonal obligations represent a kind of morality that is distinct from an emphasis on individual rights and that women are more likely to reason this way than men are. Tonnies argued that there are two means by which individuals can relate to each other in a group. -Some groups are categorized as Gemeinschaft, which loosely translates from German as "community." -Gemeinschaft groups are characteristic of smaller folk organizations, and within these groups interpersonal relationships play an especially important role. -Gemeinschaft relationships bind people together with the social glue of concord—that is, relationships are viewed as real, organic, and ends in themselves. People feel connected to others because they feel a unity of spirit, and these relationships tend not to be thought of in instrumental terms, nor are they often evaluated or negotiated. The integral role of interpersonal relations in Gemeinschaft groups suggests that obligations associated with one's relationships would take on the weight of full moral obligations Gsellschaft, which literally means "association" or "society". Gesellschaft groups, which are more characteristic of modern Western societies, treat relationships as imaginary, instrumental, and a means to an end. -The primary focus within these groups is on autonomous individuals who are bound to one another through social convention. That is, groups come up with their own sets of rules, norms, and laws which individuals need to behave, and these rules arise out of public consensus. -Relations in Gesellschaft groups tend to be perceived as relatively impersonal and somewhat contractual, which leads to the necessity of justice obligations to govern disputes between individuals. - In Gesellschaft groups, individuals can't be expected always to behave in prosocial ways toward others, because they don't have strong obligations toward them; so formalized rules are necessary to keep people in line. -a morality off justice should take precedence -In Gemeinschaft groups, the interpersonal obligations that bind individuals together are not objective or impartial enough to be governed by a system of justice and contracts. A good example of a Gemeinschaft group is the nuclear family. -unfamily-like for families to create contractual agreements regarding who will do the dishes, to govern disputes by appealing to abstract principles of justice, or to give each family member (including young children) equal rights and power over all family decisions

Schweder

ethic of autonomy. This ethic views morality in terms of individual freedom and rights violations. It emphasizes personal choice, the right to engage in free contracts, and individual liberty. An act is seen as immoral under the ethic of autonomy when it directly hurts another person or infringes on another's rights and freedoms as an individual. Views the highest form of moral reasoning under the priority of individual freedoms Do no harm. for ex. steal someone's money critical importance in all cultures

Haidt and Grahm

expanded on Shweder's three ethics by identifying five moral intuitions that guide people's moral reasoning. they argued that two separate intuitions constituted the ethic of autonomy: ----avoid and protect fairness: that is, people are sensitive to any behaviors that cause harm to others and they attend closely to whether resources or rights are distributed in a fair way. two additional intuitions roughly map onto the ethic of community: people are motivated to be loyal to their in-groups, identifying with them, making sacrifices for them, and trusting them more than they trust outgroup members. -Also people tend to respect hierarchy, admiring their superiors and believing that subordinates need to act in accordance with the wishes of authority figures. -Last, reflecting the ethic of divinity, people are motivated to achieve purity and are disgusted at behaviors ruled by the carnal passions (such as lust or gluttony) or behaviors that suggest contamination of any kind. SEE BELOW FOR EXAMPLES

Different form of shame in Chinese (Su, 2010)

shame - xiu chi: very deep shame; associated with a perceived social failure; a stain on the face shame - cankui: associated with a failure to attain a personal ideal shame - diu lian: associated with a loss of reputation or standing in the eyes of others; loss of face: shame - xiu kui: associated with a perceived personal failure resulting in harm to someone else. shame - nan wei qing: embarrassment due to social impropriety

Russian Stereotypes

stereotype that Russians live to suffer—that they dwell on all that is miserable in their lives and wallow in their despair. The findings? Russians were more likely to identify with the target that reflected on her feelings than Americans did, reflecting the stereotype of the Russian brooder. Moreover, whereas those Americans who identified with the self-reflective target were more depressed than those who did not identify with that target, for Russians there was a trend in the opposite direction. Self-reflective Americans were considerably more depressed than self-reflective Russians. This suggests that brooding over one's negative emotions, although common in Russia, does not lead Russians to feel more depressed, as it does for Americans.

Talking and Thinking

students of Asian background speak up less in class than those of other cultural backgrounds. Speaking is valued in the West because it is viewed as an act of self-expression and as inextricably bound to thought. Practitioners of many Eastern religions pursue truth through silent meditation rather than through spoken prayer. In many ways, Eastern cultural traditions have not cultivated a belief that thought and speech are closely related. Chinese infants as young as 7 months have been shown to vocalize less in response to laboratory events than European-American infants. less speech does not necessarily mean less communication. • What is the relation between talking & private thoughts? Are thoughts a silent monologue, involving processes the same as speech? • Talking is an analytic process. We state one idea at a time and arrange ideas in a sequence. It is difficult to discuss holistic ideas in which there are multiple connections that are simultaneously relevant. • Holistic thinking should be more impaired by saying one's thoughts out loud than analytic thinking. • Westerners value the spoken word. • Judeo-Christian view: the "Word" is sacred • Ancient Greeks: knowledge emerges through the spoken word. • 1st Amendment US constitution: freedom of speech. Lao Tzu: "He who knows does not speak. He who speaks does not know." Various Eastern religions emphasize silent meditation rather than prayer. Korean proverb: "An empty cart makes more noise." • When people verbally describe a face, this will later impair their recognition of the face, apparently because one's verbal descriptions do not capture the whole of the face (see Schooler & Engstler-Schooler, 1990)

Toleration of Contradiction

that reality is in flux but also indicates that opposing truths can be simultaneously accepted. Lao proposed the law of non-contradiction, in which he submitted that no statement could be both true and false, and thus "A" could not equal "not A." This law is at the heart of much of logical reasoning. In stark contrast to this Aristotelian law, ancient Chinese thought, as captured in the I-Ching (The Book of Changes; 1991), includes a principle of contradiction. this acceptance of contradiction has been termed naive dialecticism. Chinese show a relative acceptance for contradiction, which has been termed "naive dialecticism" (Peng & Nisbett, 1999). Based on view that everything is connected and constantly in flux. Symbolized by the yin and the yang; universe moves back & forth between opposite genes. Views regarding contradiction are also evident in attitudes towards the self. • East Asians more likely than Westerners to offer contradictory self-descriptions (e.g., they are both shy and outgoing (Spencer- Rodgers et al., 2004). • There are also cultural differences in people's predictions about the future. •Westerners are more likely to view the future as unfolding in a linear way from the past. East Asians, in contrast, view change to be more cyclical, where good times might be followed by bad. both Americans and Chinese who received only Argument A tended to view it as more compelling than those who received only Argument B. Because these participants saw only one argument, they did not witness any potential contradiction.The other half of the participants were asked to evaluate both of the contradictory arguments. These participants saw a potential contradiction. How did seeing the contradiction affect their evaluations of the arguments?

Culture Wars

there are pronounced differences of opinion on moral issues even within a country, something that has been described as a "cultural war", even in the us. -Some of the key topics of controversy are abortion, gay marriage, and euthanasia. -Although religious denomination is one important way that cultural worldviews differ within the country, it is probably not the most relevant difference for making sense of the opposing political alliances that divide the nation today. -Hunter: those who have an "impulse toward orthodoxy" and those who have an "impulse toward progressivism", regardless s of their religious denomination. -the ethic of community, which defines moral agents in terms of their social groups and views moral obligations as stemming from the individual's memberships in those groups, seems to characterize all religious orientations, regardless of whether one is more orthodox or progressivist. -demonstrates that this distinction within cultures is widespread, and possibly universal.

Cultural Variation in Intensity of Emotional Experience

the Americans reported feeling those emotions longer and more intensely than the Japanese. The Japanese were about three times as likely as Americans to report that they had not been feeling any emotions East Asians are less attentive to their visceral states when compared with Westerners Ghanians have also been found to attend less to their emotions than Americans. In some cultural contexts the expression of intense emotions may make it problematic to fit in well with others, particularly for the expression of such interpersonally disruptive emotions as anger. reason hostility leads to cardiovascular disease is that hostile people have more occasions when they need to inhibit their anger. people from cultures in which inhibition of anger is more common would suffer from more heart disease, because they would more often be trying to bottle up their angry feelings. RESULTS: first, Chinese-Canadians, on average, found the scenarios to be less anger-provoking than the European-Canadians did. whereas the European-Canadians felt much anger and tended to express it openly, the Chinese-Canadians adopted strategies to minimize their anger response, and accordingly, felt less angry. People from both cultural groups initially responded with similar degrees of anger to the obnoxious experimenter, as measured both by a self-report questionnaire and by their blood pressure. Both groups of participants showed an initial jump in their systolic blood pressure, which indicates an anger response. After that angry response, participants' blood pressure slowly dropped back down to baseline levels. Of interest here is that the blood pressure of the Chinese-Canadians recovered to baseline levels signifi- cantly more quickly than the blood pressure of European-Canadians inhibiting anger led to a slower recovery of blood pressure for European-Canadians than it did for Chinese-Canadians. negative emotions in East Asians are associated with fewer negative health outcomes and less of a neural response when suppressing their emotions, indicating that it is not as effortful for them to suppress negative emotions

schadenfreude

the German term describing the feelings of pleasure that one gets when witnessing the hard times that befall another. Someother cases of novel emotion terms seem

attention holistic thinkers

the attention that holistic thinkers direct to the entire scene should mean that they would be especially good at detecting relations among different events. This hypothesis was investigated by showing American and Chinese students pairs of pictures on a computer RESULTS: the Chinese estimates of the likelihood that the correct picture would appear were more accurate than the estimates of the Americans. Apparently, Americans focused more on the individual objects than they did on the relations between the objects.

subjective well-being.

the feeling of how satisfied one is with one's life. In general, the nations that score highest on this measure are Scandinavian and Nordic countries, much of Latin America, various English-speaking countries, and Western Europe. On the low end are the former Soviet republics and some impoverished countries in Africa and South Asia People in New England and the Mountain states, on average, were faring better on most domains of well-being than other regions in the country were. within variation • Nation differences in happiness are mirrored by ethnic differences in happiness within the US (Rice & Steele, 2004). Correlation of rank order of happiness among ethnic groups in the US with rank order of happiness among countries: r =.62 • Suggests that there exist cultural attitudes towards happiness that vary and persist across generations. On average, people who live in countries in which they have access to enough wealth to easily meet the basic needs of life tend to be considerably more satisfied than those who do not.

rod and frame task

the goal is to say whether the rod is pointing straight up. Analytic thinkers, with their tendency to perceive the world as separate objects, should fare well on this. Analytic thinkers tend to show field independence—that is, they can separate objects from their background fields. Ability to separate objects from each other is termed field independence. Easier for analytic thinkers than holistic thinkers. Field independence often tested with a Rod and Frame task; a rod is inside a frame and they are both rotated. Holistic thinkers, in contrast, tend to show field dependence, in that they tend to view objects as bound to their backgrounds. RESULTS: People in industrialized societies also tend to be quite field independent, except for people living in highly industrialized East Asia, where clear evidence for field dependence is found. That is, in general, East Asians do relatively poorly on tasks such as the rod and frame. East Asians sensitive to the contextual information (Frame). Made more errors when the frame was angled. (more field dependent). North Americans focused on the rod by itself. As a result, Made fewer errors when the frame was angled. (more field independent)

ideal affect.

the kinds of positive emotions people desire also seem to vary considerably across cultures. Not all positive emotions are created equal. Some positive emotions, such as excitement and elation, involve a great deal of arousal. Other positive emotions, such as feeling calm or at peace, involve a low degree of arousal. Research by Jeanne Tsai reveals that these two kinds of positive emotions are sought after differently by Americans and East Asians. Tsai and colleagues propose the notion of ideal affect—the kinds of feelings that people desire. for most Americans, ideal affect contains positive emotions that are high in arousal, whereas for most East Asians ideal affect contains positive emotions that are low in arousal. American faces more often showed feelings of excitement and had significantly bigger smiles than the Taiwanese faces. high-arousal states were encouraged more in the Christian texts whereas low-arousal states were encouraged more in the Buddhist texts. Furthermore, some Christian sects include enthusiastic religious practices such as jumping, shouting, and applause; Buddhist religious practices emphasize meditation. European-Americans are more likely to engage in active individual activities such as jogging or rollerblading, whereas Asian-Americans are more likely to engage in passive activities such as sightseeing and picnicking. European-Americans are more likely to prefer fast-tempo and ex- citing music, whereas Chinese are more likely to prefer calm music. European-Americans are more likely to engage in activities that lead to high-arousal positive states, whereas those from East Asian backgrounds aspire for more low-arousal positive states. Recent research reveals that Latin Americans prefer high-arousal positive emotions at least as much as (if not more than) Canadians or Americans.

secularization theory

the world is quickly becoming secularized. That is, as the world develops and progresses, and science continues to make one discovery after another, religious explanations of phenomena are becoming supplanted by rational and scientific explanations. This view, known as secularization theory, holds that religion is on the decline and that people around the world are discovering new secular and rational ways to make sense of their lives. approx. 94% of Americans report believing in God. NIETZSCHE 1882. God is dead

websites and web portals

web portals from East Asian websites contain a larger number of links and words than their North American counterparts. It seems that regular exposure to busier websites makes East Asians more efficient than North Americans at navigating them. However, when the websites were long, the East Asian students were significantly quicker than the Euro-Canadians at finding the hidden images.

Universals & cultural variations of 22 emotions

• Emotion story method: simple, concise, & universal stories that include the target emotion as a noun or adjective Participants asked to demonstrate a facial/vocal expression for each story Expressions coded with FACS (facial action code system) + new modalities (posture, gesture, head movements, breathing, chest touching, ...) More than 6 emotions! • Cordaro et al. 2018, Emotion • Other multimodal (facial & body) dynamic emotions • amusement, awe, boredom, confusion, contempt, contentment, coyness, desire, interest, embarrassment, pain, pride, relief, shame, sympathy, & triumph there are international core patterns of emotion that occur at above chance & that are independent of gender • true for happiness, surprise, fear, & disgust, but also amusement, awe, pride and others • Anger is a notable exception: 23% IP & 30% CP • there are cultural accents for all emotions• 19 of 22 emotions had unique cultural accents

James-Lange Theory of Emotions

• Emotions - follow physiological responses to stimuli. • Products of autonomic nervous system. • no physiology = no emotions. James proposed that emotions are the physiological responses or "bodily reverberations" to stimuli in the world. Carl Lange, proposed that these physiological responses were products of the autonomic nervous system, such as changes in heart rate, breathing, pupil dilation, tear secretion, blood flow to the skin, and stomach contractions, and their ideas became known as the James-Lange theory of emotions. The James-Lange theory maintains that our bodies respond to stimuli in the world by preparing us to react in a survival-facilitating way (such as running away from the bear), and our emotions are our bodily changes that signal how we should behave. According to James, emotions are precisely those physical sensations that make us feel human.

The dialect theory of emotion (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2003)

• Facial expressions are largely universal with a smaller culturally-learned component. • Ekman's neurocultural theory• Universal facial affect program + conscious cultural display rules• Elfenbein & Ambady's dialect theory • Universal + culturally specific affect program (subtle expression + display & perception + decoding rules)

Performance on Raven's Progressive Matrices Depending on Condition and Culture

• Heejung Kim (2002, 2008) noticed (as a Korean grad student in the US) that there was an unfamiliar emphasis on discussing your ideas. • She wanted to investigate whether the quality of people's thinking is affected by saying one's thoughts out loud. • Research participants attempted items from Raven's Matrices IQ test under different conditions. • Participants: Euro-American & Asian-American students • IV• Thinking Aloud Condition • first 10 IQ items silently; next10 IQ items saying thoughts out loud • Articulatory Suppression Condition • first 10 IQ items silently; next 10 IQ items while saying the alphabet out loud • DV: # items answered correctly (Block A - Block B) The key variable was the number of items in the second half of the study that participants answered correctly in the allotted time period compared to the number they had answered correctly in the first half. RESULTS: The European-Americans performed about the same on the test when they were speaking as when they were silent (the difference between the two conditions is not significant). This suggests that talking and thinking are very much related for European-Americans. In stark contrast, however, Asian-Americans performed significantly worse on the test when they were talking aloud. So why this difference? The nature of holistic thinking makes it difficult to express in words because speech is ultimately a sequential task. In contrast, analytic thinking, with the emphasis on focusing on separate parts, lends itself very well to the spoken word. Faces consist of various parts; however, people, including Westerners, tend to see them more as interrelated wholes. Interestingly, the results indicated that people were better able to recognize the faces they had previously seen if they had not tried to describe them before. Apparently, their verbal descriptions interfered with their ability to process the face as a whole, causing them to have poorer recall. if Asian-Americans were indeed thinking holistically as they tried to solve the items in the Raven's test, they should be relatively unaffected by a verbal task that was unrelated to the test. This was the purpose of including the articulatory suppression condition in her study. In contrast, however, if talking and thinking are fundamentally connected for European-Americans, being asked to recite the alphabet while thinking about something else should be challenging. RESULTS: European-Americans did very poorly on the IQ task when they were reciting the alphabet, indicating that their thoughts while solving that task apparently were verbal and were interfered with by their verbal recitation of the alphabet. In contrast, reciting the alphabet had no significant effect on the performance of the Asian-Americans. This suggests that the thoughts in the Asian-American participants' heads while solving the Raven's items were largely nonverbal thoughts. To the extent that talking and thinking are viewed as intertwined, it is reasonable for others to infer things about you based on what you say. Euro-Americans performance unaffected when thinking out loud Asian-Americans perform worse when they are thinking aloud Euro-Americans perform worse when saying the alphabet. Asian-Americans unaffected by saying the alphabet. Suggests that Asian-Americans' silent thoughts are non-verbal on this task, whereas Euro-Americans are thinking verbally about the task even when silent. However, what was noteworthy was that the European-American evaluations of the pen hinged on whether they had earlier been asked to express their pen choice verbally. Those who had expressed their choice verbally for the pen that was taken from them were less satisfied with the inferior pen than those who did not express their choice. In contrast, the evaluations of the Asian-Americans were not significantly affected by expressing their choice.

Two-Factor Theory of Emotions

• Schachter & Singer - emotions are the interpretations of our physiological responses. When "cause" of physiological responses is clear, interpretation does not seem necessary. When "cause" isn't so clear, there is evidence for Two-Factor theory. Cannon thought that such a simple and ponderous system could not provide the complexity to cover the wide array of emotions people feel. this competing school of thought maintained that emotions are primarily the interpretations of those bodily responses. This view, the Two-Factor theory of emotions (named for the factors of the physiological signals and the interpretation of those signals), redirected the focus of emotions away from the physical body and into the mind. Stanley Schacter and Jerome Singer Their reasoning suggests that the hiker in James's thought experiment experienced fear at sensing his pounding heart because there was no other reasonable way to interpret his bodily sensations in that situation. To separate their participants' interpretations from the source of their arousal, Schacter and Singer needed to do two things. First, they needed to provide the participants with situational cues to guide their interpretation. They did so by having participants assigned to either a situation that was to lead them to interpret their feelings as euphoria or a situation that would lead them to interpret their feelings as anger. The second factor that Schacter and Singer manipulated was the amount of physiological arousal the participants would be experiencing. This last condition was key; Participants should have felt a great deal of physiological arousal from the injection, but they wouldn't know where the arousal came from. Schacter and Singer reasoned that participants in this condition would look to the situation to interpret their feelings and would conclude that their arousal was due to their experiences in the situation. strongest emotions were experienced by those in the epinephrine-uninformed condition. Participants in this condition were feeling a great deal of arousal but they had no good explanation for it. So they came to interpret their arousal by looking to the situation they were in. The emotional experience came from participants interpreting their arousal in light of their beliefs of the situations that they were in. this suggests that despite the different physiological patterns that different emotional states might have, people don't have an especially fine-tuned awareness of their bodily sensations. If the various extensions of the James-Lange theory are correct - this suggests an evolutionary origin to human emotions. The James-Lange theory thus suggests that people in all cultures should have the same emotional experiences. The James-Lange theory, and other theories that focus on the centrality of physiology in emotions, make the case for universality in emotional experience. On the other hand, if the Two-Factor theory of emotions is correct—that emotions are interpretations of physiological signals—this suggests that in addition to a physiological basis, emotions are grounded in the belief systems that shape people's interpretations. Two-Factor theory suggests that people might interpret their physiological signals in different ways across cultures

LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY AND SPATIAL PERCEPTION.

• Some languages (Dutch) have egocentric spatial terms: right, left, in front of. • Other languages (Guugu Ymithirr) lack these terms: location described in terms of cardinal directions (e.g., north). • What will people do when asked to recreate a scene when they change the direction that they are facing? • Dutch & Guugu Ymithirr speakers shown some objects; then went to a different room and asked to recreate the scene. • One cond: faced same cardinal direction in the 2nd room. • Other cond: faced different direction in 2nd room. • DV: how they arranged objects in the second room. Original Stimulus - All participants facing North. In the second room, participants were facing South. • People also represent the passage of time differently. • English speakers: time moves left to the right (reading direction) Arabic-speakers: time from right to left (as they read). Australian aborigines who speak Kuuk Thaayorre arrange time as moving from the East to the West, following the sun. •So what happens when Kuuk Thaayorre speakers are asked to arrange pictures in a temporal order? speakers of Guugu Yimithirr, an aboriginal group in Australia, would not include any of these relative terms. Rather, the person would be guided by saying that the peas are located east of the Brussels sprouts and south of the pyrogies, a set of directions that are not influenced by the location of the speaker. That is, speakers of Guugu Yimithirr identify space in absolute terms, as described by the cardinal points on a compass. Most of the Dutch respondents tended to recreate the scenes based on their own position relative to the animals. Because the cow was left of the pig which was left of the person in the original room, they maintained these relative positions in the new room. In stark contrast, most of the Guugu Ymithirr speakers re-created the scenes in absolute terms Apparently, even when entering different rooms in a building, the Guugu Ymithirr speakers are constantly attending to which direction is which. The Whor- fian explanation is that because their spatial language is based solely on the cardi- nal directions, they conceive of the arrangement of their world only with respect to these directions. Dutch speakers, in contrast, elaborate more on directions relative to their physical selves, more common among subsistence populations throughout the world and is also more similar to the ways that chimpanzees understand directions English speakers tend to see time as passing from the left to the right. English speakers, time passes from one relative spatial marker (the left side of one's body) to another (the right side), and this does not change depending on the direc- tion one is facing. they tended to arrange the pictures from east to west. This means that when they sat in a room facing south, they usually arranged the pictures in the same way as English speakers, because east is on their left side. However, when they sat in a room facing north, they often arranged the pictures in the exact opposite order from English speakers, with the pictures going from right (east) to left (west)!

What Makes Life Satisfying?

• Suh et al. compared dozens of countries on their level of individualism, life satisfaction, overall positive affect, & the belief they were living up to cultural norms. • Most individualistic countries: life satisfaction strongly predicted by people's overall level of positive affect. • Least individualistic countries: life satisfaction strongly predicted by the extent to which people felt they were living up to cultural norms.

experiencing emotions

• when we consider the experiences (felt) of emotions (compared to expressions), there is more evidence for cultural variability. • some felt emotions (Kama Muta), however, may be universal Kama Muta: Universally felt emotion Seibt et al. (2017): 7 studies, 5 countries • USA, Norway, China, Portugal, Israel Method: viewed 6-10 videos Criterion variable: Kama Muta (moved, touched) Predictor variables: valence (positivity), physical sensations, communal outcomes (e.g., closeness to characters) • Featured article: Seibt et al. (2017) •Kama Muta:Being Moved • Other expressions: ému, ... • Affective character (valence) • mostly positive • Bodily sensations • goosebumps, shivers, teary, warmth in chest • Elevated communal sharing Hyp 1. Intensity of Kama Muta related to perceived positivity of experience Kama Muta: Sensations Hyp 2. Intensity of Kama Muta related to physical sensations (e.g., tears) Zickfield, Schubert, Seibt et al (2019) • 19 nations & 15 languages (N ≈ 3,500) from all 5 continents • Supports the measurement & validity of this universal construct • The world is in serious need of more Kama Muta! Kama Muta: Communal outcome Hyp 3. Intensity of Kama Muta related to communal outcomes (e.g., closeness to protagonists)

UN World Happiness Report

•life evaluation question (life satisfaction): 0 to 10 • 75% of var. in country difs - 6 key variables: GDP per capita healthy years of life expectancy social support (someone to count on in times of trouble) trust (perceived absence of corruption in govt & business) perceived freedom to make life decisions generosity (recent donations)