PSYC 307

Social domain: Human children vs chimps and orangutans

When immitating an action, children are much more successful than chimps or orangutans (about 80% success rate vs 50%) -they carried out the specific steps that were modeled

How can we tell that cultural differences in the self-concept underlie cultural differences in other ways of thinking?

Priming!

Define Heritability

The variance in a population that can be explained by genetics

define back translation:

first language translated into 2nd language. Then do back translation with different translator, and compare two versions. -this translate literal meaning including idioms

what folktales are most successful?

ones that have between 2-3 counter-intuitives had the most success

Self-Esteem and Exposure to North American Culture RESULTS

-"Never Been-Abroad" Japanese have moderate self-esteem scores whereas European-Canadians have high self-esteem. -The self-esteem of East Asians increases with exposure to North American culture. -The self-esteem of 3rd Generation Asian-Canadians is indistinguishable from European-Canadians. If this result can be generalized, it suggests that three generations is necessary for complete acculturation. -evidence for blending

East Asians Self-Enhance Less than North Americans: AMERICAN RESULTS

-64% of the American sample siad they thought more positive thoughts about themselves than about their 4 other club members -36% Americans said they evaulated themselves more critically

Motivations to Fit In or to Stick Out

-A key goal in interdependent cultural contexts is to achieve belongingness with others. This is facilitated by trying to fit in. -In independent cultures, people are motivated to highlight their distinctiveness, which fosters a sense of independence.

Divinity Violation STUDY

-A man goes to the supermarket once a week and buys a dead chicken. But before cooking the chicken, he has sexual intercourse with it. Then he cooks and eats it. -Is this morally wrong? What are some arguments for or against? -This, and other divinity violation scenarios were posed to high and low socioeconomic status Americans and Brazilians. -Participants were asked if this was a moral violation - that is, is it universally wrong, and should it be regulated

Cross-Cultural Evidence for Kohlberg's Model

-A meta-analysis summarized evidence from 27 different cultures. -In all cultures there were adults at Level 2. In no cultures were most adults at Level 1. Everywhere more children were at Level 1 than adults. -In all urban cultures there were at least some adults at Level 3 (especially so in Western cultures). -In no tribal societies were there any adults at level 3.

Making Choices and primary control

-A way that primary control is perhaps most directly evident is when people make choices. -Making choices, the freedom to choose, is emphasized more in North American contexts than it is elsewhere. -North Americans are more used to making choices than are people in other cultures

CHAPTER 10 TEXTBOOK: comparison of cultural display rules in hospitals

-AMS: acute Mediterannian syndrome--> observations by some ER personnel that people from the Mediterannean communicate their discomfort and pain at several decibels louder than those from many other cultures -e.g. Italians and Jews more vocal than Irish and anglo -cultural differences in pain more prominent among older people

Study by Keller (2007): Percent of Time in Face-to-Face Contact with Infants

-All mothers made much face-to-face contact. -Greeks and Germans made considerably more face-to-face contact than those from other cultures.

STUDY: comparing psychiatric outpatients of depression in China and Canada

-All patients had to report at least one of the nine diagnostic markers of depression. -Patients' symptoms were assessed with three different methods. -A spontaneous problem report, where they described their concerns with little prompting. -A standard clinical interview, in which the patients responded to specific questions about symptoms from an interviewer. -A standard questionnaire, which was completed in private, in which patients gave answers to specific symptom questions. -Patients also completed measures of stigma and attention to emotional states.

Language and Color Perception

-Although color exists along a continuum, color terms are discrete. -Color terms vary dramatically around the world, although there are only a limited number of patterns of color terms in all languages. -e.g. some cultures only have words for 2 colors: Black and White, 3) Red Black and White, 4) Red Black and White and Green or yellow, 5) Red Black and White Green and yellow, 6) the above plus blue 7) the above plus brown, 8) the above plus purple, pink, gray, orange etc

One study investigated advice-giving on American and Russian online parenting forums: RESULTS

-Americans only offered advice if it was explicitly requested -Russians offered more advice, regardless of whether it was requested. The Russian advice giving was not affected much by whether it was requested. -In interdependent contexts advice is given more, as the benefits of supporting others outweighs the perceived threats to autonomy.

Self-Awareness: study of memories from 1st or 3rd person perspective RESULTS

-Asian Canadians: more 3rd person imagery when they were the center of attention -European Canadians: about the same amount of 3rd person when the memories were center of attention or not.

Collectivism Facilitates Useful Ideas

-Being concerned about others leads to solutions that fit with the goals of the group. -Working with others leads Asians to generate more appropriate ideas. -When Koreans were more motivated to do well, they came up with more useful ideas. When Dutch were motivated to do well, they came up with more original ideas (they were paid in these cases) -East Asian cultures have more incremental innovations, whereas Western Cultures produce more break through ideas -Japan has most pattents because of incremental innovation

Do primes of cultural ideas lead people to switch between different thinking styles? STUDY

-Biculturals have been investigated to see whether primes of cultural ideas lead them to switch between different cultural thinking styles (Hong et al., 2000). -Students from Hong Kong were shown images that were either neutral, or primed Western ideas, or Chinese ideas. -they are asked why is the front fish swimming ahead of the others? Is it something about the fish (internal attribution) or about the school (external) -internal attributions are more commonly made among Westerners and external attributions more common among non-westerners

Divinity Violation STUDY RESULTS

-Both high status Americans and Brazilians (especially Americans) were likely to view the actions in non-moral terms. -Both low status Americans and Brazilians viewed the actions as immoral (ethic of divinity) -High status participants (especially Americans) viewed the actions as more immoral if they perceived harm had been done (ethic of autonomy e.g. his poor girlfriend)

Canadians vs Japanese and similarity attraction effect STUDY RESULTS

-Canadians showed a standard similarity attraction effect - they liked the target more if they felt similar to them than if they did not. -Japanese, in this study, didnt show a reliable similarity-attraction effect In most other studies, the similarity-attraction effect is usually significant in other cultures too, however, it is consistently weaker in magnitude than that found with Westerners. -what mediates this cultural difference? -self esteem: the higher ones self esteem the more one likes people who are similar to them -Ease at forming new relationships: People in high relational mobility contexts show a stronger similarity-attraction effect.

STUDY: comparing psychiatric outpatients of depression in China and Canada RESULTS

-Chinese expressed greater somatic symptoms than Canadians with all measures except the private questionnaire. -Canadians expressed greater psychological symptoms with all measures. -Chinese scored higher than Canadians on a concern for stigma. -However, concerns with stigma correlated with the severity of all symptoms, both psychological and somatic - Chinese thus do not somatize more because of stigma concerns. -Chinese scored lower than Canadians on emotional attentiveness -This measure mediated the cultural differences in somatic symptom reporting. Hence, a key reason that Chinese somatize depression symptoms more than Westerners is that they attend less to their emotions.

Composite photos and attractiveness STUDY

-Composite photos tend to be viewed as more attractive than approximately 95% of photos that make up the composite. -Composite photos of Caucasians, East Asians, and Eurasians (people with European and Asian parents) were created (Rhodes et al., 2005). -Further composites were made of the composites across races. -Participants then viewed these composite faces, and rated them for attractiveness

What Kind of Happiness Would you Prefer? "Ideal Affect"

-Cultures also differ in the kinds of positive emotions that people want to pursue - "ideal affect." -Cultural variation is more pronounced for the kinds of affect that people want to have than for their actual affect. -East Asians prefer low arousal positive states (e.g., calm, relaxed, peaceful) compared with North Americans, who tend to prefer high arousal positive states

Cross cultural differences in depression

-Depression is found everywhere, but rates vary across cultures. -Depression rates in China are only about 1/5 that observed in the West -However, a challenge in comparing depression across cultures is that the presentation of depression varies. -Some symptoms of depression are primarily physiological, such as appetite and sleep disorders--> somatization. -Other symptoms of primarily psychological, such as mood or feelings of guilt --> psychologization

Universal psychopathologies: Depression

-Depression is the most familiar psychopathology. It is found everywhere. -Major depressive disorder involves at least five of the following nine symptoms and at least one of the first two, for two weeks or more: a) depressed mood, b) an inability to feel pleasure c) change in weight or appetite, d) sleep problems, e) psychomotor change, f) fatigue or loss of energy, g) feelings of worthlessness or guilt, h) poor concentration or indecisiveness, or i) suicidality.

Doctors Have Culture Too: Cross cultural study of lay people and doctors

-Doctors and lay people were asked 25 questions about diet, eating, and health in five Western countries: -France, Germany, Italy, UK, and USA. -Sample questions included the value of vitamin pills, the healthiness of dairy products, wine, meat, the importance of food, exercise, and moderation for health. -The participants' answers to the 25 questions were correlated with other participants' answers to the same questions. -physicians show much agreement with lay people from their own culture -However, physicians show rather poor agreement with physicians or lay people from other cultures, underscoring the cultural foundation of their views on health and diet.

Jonathan Haidt has expanded Shweder's 3 ethics into 5 moral foundations:

-Ethic of Autonomy consists of the moral foundations of Harm and Fairness -Ethic of Community consists of the foundations of Ingroup and Authority. -Ethic of Divinity consists of the foundation of Purity.

CHAPTER 8 TEXTBOOK: cultural differences in self enhancement

-Euro American university students vs Native American uni students, Native Americans had less positive self views (listed fewer than half as many positive statements). -They have less independent self concepts but there are exceptions to this rule e.g. Maori of New Zealand, African Americans, Israeli Druze, Indians making predictions about future have levels of self enhancement comparable to individualistic socieities

CHAPTER 10 TEXTBOOK: Asians vs Americans and self-reports of happiness

-Euro Americans remembered having a much better week than the Asian Americans BUT there was no cultural difference on the satisfaction on each day of the week -Europeans were remembering their weeks as better than they really were (more likely to reflect their theories about what life should be like)

CHAPTER 9 TEXTBOOK: cultural differences between the relation of speech and self expression PEN STUDY

-European Americans who verbally expressed their pen preferences evaluated a pen that was forced upon them more negatively than those who did not express a pen preference earlier. Asian Americans pen evaluations were unaffected by whether they had expressed their preferences

How do people distribute resources? Principle of equality

-Everyone gets the same amount, irrespective of contributions. (Example - gov't issues identical rebate cheques to every citizen in Alberta for surplus of oil wealth).

How do people represent close relationships? Study with Americans and Chinese in FMRI scanner Results

-Figure shows the differences in brain activation when people thought of themselves compared with when they thought of their mothers. -Americans showed different activation patterns - mother and self were represented in different regions. -Chinese areas of activation for mother and self were identical (same brain regions) -No cultural differences in representations of other targets (not shown in this image)--> different brain regions for this

When people have different theories of the nature of abilities, they respond differently to feedback about their abilities: Japanese vs American STUDY JAPANESE RESULTS

-For Japanese participants, they persisted as long when they received incremental instructions as when they received no instructions. This suggests that the incremental instructions conveyed no new information to them. They persisted for a long time in these conditions. -In contrast, the entity instructions affected their behavior and made them persist less.

Evidence in Support of Weber's conclusion about Protestantism and capitalism

-German Protestants have stronger achievement motivations than German Catholics -Protestant parents encourage their children to become self-reliant earlier than Catholic parents. -American Protestants who are primed with words regarding "salvation" work harder than those not primed. -Protestants suffer a bigger blow to their well-being when they become unemployed.

Asch's Conformity Studies

-Had participants provide answers to an unambiguous task after several confederates gave incorrect answers (had to judge which line was the same as the target line) -After hearing other people provide the wrong answer, most American participants (approximately 3/4) will also give the wrong answer at least once on subsequent trials.

Analytic Thinkers Can Better Separate Objects Within a Scene

-Holistic thinkers perceive a scene as an integrated whole. It is difficult for them to separate objects from each other - field dependence. -Being able to separate objects from each other is termed field independence. -Field independence can be tested with a Rod and Frame task, where a rod is inside of a frame and they are both rotated (frame provides distracting information-- more difficult for holistic thinkers, easier for analytic thinkers)

Women's weight and attractiveness

-In 1951, some anthropologists concluded, based on the evidence that they could find, that heavier women were universally found to be more attractive. -The data available at that time was largely consistent with this -In many ways, body ideals for women in the West have become unusually thin. -They've become thinner over the past few decades, while average body weights have increased. -Not only attracted to what we see as healthy but what we see as high status (e.g. in the past being overweight= wealthy, now poor people weight more than wealthier bc of fast food)

Study of objective self awareness: Mirror study

-In a study of ours, we had Japanese and American students evaluate themselves with a measure of actual (how intelligent/ funny you are) and ideal (how intelligent/funny would you like to be?) self-discrepancies. A larger discrepancy indicates a more self-critical view. -Half completed the questionnaire in front of a mirror. The other half did not (see Heine et al., 2008).

Humans Live in Cultural Worlds

-In addition to living in a physical environment, and in a social environment, humans live in a cultural environment that consists of shared cultural ideas. -It is adaptive for humans to rely on cultural ideas to succeed and survive - we have evolved to depend on such information. What are you doing today that doesn't involve shared cultural ideas? breathing..etc

Summing up variation in happiness

-In sum, there is pronounced variation in levels of happiness across cultures. -There are some things that universally appear to predict happiness, such as a minimum level of wealth, human rights, and income equality. -On the other hand, there is important cultural variability in the pursuit of happiness. People from different cultures are not all striving for the same kinds of good feelings.

Perceptions of fairness are often studied using economic games - most commonly the Dictator Game (DG) and the Ultimatum Game (UG)

-In the UG two players are assigned to be either a proposer or a receiver. The proposer is given some money (e.g., $10) and can offer any amount of this to the receiver. Both players never meet each other. The receiver makes a decision to either keep what the proposer gives them, or s/he can reject the proposer's offer. If the proposer's offer is rejected, then neither person gets any money. -If people were being completely rational then proposers should give the receiver the smallest possible amount (e.g., 1 cent), and the receiver should accept this, as 1 cent is better than nothing. However, usually, receivers reject low offers, at a cost to themselves, as they view the transaction as UNFAIR

Graph of interdependent view of self

-Individual's circle has dotted line and it overlaps with those close to you = SHARED IDENTITY -large X's are drawn at intersection with relationships= relational aspects are most important to your identity, smaller X's within the individual= less important -solid line keeping out the outgroup= enduring distinction, difficult to make it into the ingroup

Impacts of having 6 types of jam vs 24 jams: Study

-It's worth noting that there are costs involved in making choices, even for North Americans. -Americans provided with free samples from 24 kinds of jam or 6 kinds of jam, buy more jam when there are only 6 kinds (Iyengar & Lepper, 2000). -Making choices depletes self-regulatory resources. Americans persist less, and make more errors, if they have made a series of choices (Vohs et al., 2008).

Study examining primary and secondary control in aerobics classes: difficult movement results of the experiment

-Japanese are more likely to try harder when the move is difficult than are Americans. -Americans are more likely to do their own thing when the move is difficult than are Japanese. -That is, Japanese adjust themselves to the requirements of the class, whereas Americans continue to do what they would rather do.

Study: completion of the TST by Americans/Japanese in different situation- Japanese data

-Japanese self-descriptions varied significantly across different situations. -They were more positive when alone and most critical when with their professor. -Their self-descriptions were also less positive than the Americans.

CHAPTER 10 TEXTBOOK: comparisson of emotions between Japanese and Americans

-Japanese who reported feeling a great deal of positive interpersonally engaged emotion reported more positive feelings in general -Americans who reported more postivie interpersonally disengaging emotions reported more positive feelings in general

The Righteous Mind- Jon Haidt TED Talk

-Liberals are much higher on openess to experience -harm-care: strong feelings about those who cause harm -fairness/ reciprocity: foundation of religions -ingroup loyalty: united to fight others, comes from tribal psychology -Authority/ respect: based on voluntary difference -purity/sanctity: ideology that tells you that you contain virtue through your actions -we come as prepared to learn all of these things -liberals care more about fairness and harm, less about authority, ingroup, and purity -conservatives have all 5 -cooperation decays without punishment and goes back up when punishment is introduced-- key to large groups -our righteous minds were evolutionarily designed to: unite us into teams, divide us against other teams, be biased against the truth

Study of Hong Kong Immigrants to Lower Mainland: Identification with Canadian Culture

-Looking at how well they have acculturated as a result of their age coming to the country -Participants: -Hong Kong immigrants to Lower Mainland (N = 231) -Average age = 32.91 (range from 18-60) -Average age of immigration = 19.60 (range from 1-50) -Vancouver Index of Acculturation -Mainstream subscale: I enjoy North American entertainment (e.g. music, movies), I enjoy North American jokes and humour -Heritage subscale: I enjoy entertainment from my heritage culture, I enjoy the jokes and humour of my heritage culture

Heritability of IQ and the problem of samples

-Many behavioral genetic studies of IQ provide estimates of the heritability of IQ to account for more than 50% of the variance, with shared and non-shared environments accounting for a negligible proportion of variance. -However, studies of adopted siblings and twins typically have a restricted range of socio-economic status (SES) among the families adopting them (familys who are successful in adopting typically have stimulating environments- SES within 70th percentile). Almost all participants are of middle to high SES. -This raises the possibility that heritability estimates of IQ look so large because there is a restricted range of environments. -SES also predicts whether or not people will show up for a study - high SES= interested in studies

Chinese and Neurasthesnia

-Many chinese psychiatric patients are diagnosed with neurasthenia -Neurasthenia has symptoms of poor appetite, headaches, insomnia and inability to concentrate -neurasthenia was dropped from the DSM because it seemed to be more about physiological symptoms rather than psychopathology -Arthur Kleinman argued that the most Chinese neurasthenia patients could be diagnosed as having depression, even though only 9% of them reported depressed mood as a chief complaint. Depression manifests itself among Chinese chiefly though somatization--> usually happens to chinese after a loss and they can be treated with anti-depressants

But why do Primates have such Big brains? 3 Competing Theories

-Many species of primates eat fruit, and a fruit diet requires remembering where you found fruit trees so you can return when they're ripe. -Many different species of primates eat nutrient-rich food that is difficult to extract like termites (use a tool like a stick to get them out of holes) or nuts where you have to crack them open with a rock. -Many species of primates live in large social networks which require one to keep track of social relationships, and to learn from each other (social brain hypothesis)

Ultimatum and dictator games from rural Missouri and explanation

-Means people will give away: Mean UG: 47.7 Mean DG: 47.3 -robust pattern among real adults -To make sense of the "non-rational" behaviors in these studies, economists proposed that people must bring with them an internalized concern for their reputation. And it is perfectly rational to protect your reputation. -Hence, economists argue that humans evolved to be concerned about their reputation, and this led to norms of fairness that allowed for large-scale cooperation and trust to develop.

Level 2: Conventional Moral Reasoning

-Morality is based on external standards, regarding that which maintains the social order. -there are laws & rules--> if it violates these then the action is immoral e.g. historically slavery would be moral because it was not illegal

Evidence for North American Self-Enhancement

-Most North Americans possess high self-esteem. -Most North Americans view themselves in unrealistically positive terms e.g. 94% university professors think they're better than average (self serving bias) -Most North Americans use self-esteem maintenance strategies to discount any negative feedback that they might encounter--> you can say that circumstances happened because of internal/external reasons e.g. external reasons when they did poorly, internal reasons when they did well OR self-handicap- ensure you do poorly bc you had an excuse

Medicine and Culture: The West versus traditional societies

-Much medical knowledge derives from cultural learning. -Modern medicine finds that the three leading causes of illness are deteriorating organ systems, stress, or infections. -In contrast, among traditional societies, none of these causes were common - supernatural causes of illness are the most common. -Even among industrialized societies there is considerable variation in medical attitudes.

Similarity is Attractive, Especially in High Relationally Mobile Contexts

-Much research, largely conducted with Westerners, shows that people are attracted to those who are similar to themselves. -perceived similarity is attractive in a wide variety of different domains, such as attitudes, personality, demographics, and preferred activities -This similarity-attraction effect may reveal the ultimate egotism - we're most attracted to ourselves. -Research on the similarity-attraction effect in non-Western cultures reveals a weaker effect.

Ranking of Countries by Subjective Well-Being

-Near the top in happiness: Northern European or Latin American, wealthy, respect for human rights, more income eqaulity e.g. #1 Puerto Rico, 2 Mexico, 3 Denmark, 4 Colombia 5) Ireland etc.. Canada is number 10 -Near the bottom in happiness: Zimbabwe, Ukraine, Armenia, Russia, Moldova, Romania (former soviet Bloc, South Asian, African, less wealthy, fewer human rights, less income equality)

Identity Denial

-Often, visible minorities are viewed as not really fully belonging -others might not believed that they're really from North America -This Experience can be frustrating and is known as identity denial -Minority members might try to overcompensate to demonstrate how much they fit in

Tolerance for Contradiction: Chinese approach

-One kind of reasoning, related to holistic reasoning, may have come from China. -Chinese show a relative acceptance for contradiction, which has been termed "naive dialecticism" (Peng & Nisbett, 1999). -Based on a view that everything is connected and is constantly in flux. Symbolized by the yin and the yang - the universe moves back and forth between opposite poles. -"Belief A" is connected to and is always changing into its opposite, "Belief Not A." Hence, there can be no real logical contradiction.

Culture-Bound Syndromes: Hysteria

-One of the most diagnosed disorders throughout Europe in the 19th century. -Includes symptoms such as fainting, insomnia, sudden paralysis, temporary blindness, and loss of appetite, tendency to cause trouble -sometimes called the great neurosis -It is no longer common, and it has been removed from the DSM -Some argue that people with hysteria-like symptoms are now diagnosed with other disorders, such as disassociation disorders, somatofrom disorders, and schizophrenia. -Others say its prevalence was a response to the repressive social norms of Victorian Europe, and the great attention it received led people to express their distress with familiar symptoms.

How do people represent close relationships? Study with Americans and Chinese in FMRI scanner

-One study asked Chinese and American students to either think about how well adjectives describe themselves, their mothers, or another target (Zhu et al., 2007). -They did this while in an fMRI scanner. -e.g. funny- does that describe you or not? Does that describe your mother or not? Or another person e.g. Chinese political leaders

Scenes and focal objects: Westerners vs east asians

-Participants are first asked to describe the original pictures while they are looking at them -When Westerners describe such scenes, they typically begin by describing the focal animal (e.g., a wolf). -East Asians, in contrast, more often describe the scene by starting off with the context (e.g., a snowy forest scene). -Later, participants are shown other photos, some of which they've seen before, and some which include the original animal with a different background. They are then asked whether they have seen the animal in the picture before. -Westerners' performance is relatively unaffected by the background of the scene. -East Asians performance is worse if the background of the scene is switched on them -East Asians appear to see the scene as bound together in an irreducible whole. Westerners see it as a collection of parts.

Sleeping arrangements vary across cultures: Indian vs American attitutes--> justification of the responses

-Participants were asked to justify their decisions, and their justifications revealed some common underlying moral concerns -one moral concern emerged for both Indians and Americans "incest avoidance" -Other key Indian concerns were "Protection of the Vulnerable ," "Female Chastity Anxiety," and "Respect for Hierarchy." -Other key American concerns were "Sacred Couple," and "Autonomy Ideal."

Capilano Suspension Bridge Study Results

-Participants were especially likely to call the RA if she was female and they had met her on the bridge. -Apparently, the men misattributed their arousal from the bridge to be due to their attraction to the RA -The same physiological arousal can be interpreted as two very different emotions -on the low platform there was no major difference between calls to the male and female RA's

Twenty Statement Test: Who am i?

-People are asked to describe themselves with a number of statements that begin with "I am _______." - The kinds of statements that they list are counted and analyzed--> e.g. people may write personal adjectives e.g. smart or in terms of relationships e.g. daughter -People from some different cultural groups often provide different kinds of statements.

Recognition of expressions in own culture vs another

-People are more accurate at recognizing expressions made by people from their own culture compared with other cultures -About 58% of recognition of facial expressions reflects universal expressions, whereas about 9% reflects culturally specific expressions. -People do better at the "Eyes test" measure of autistic tendencies when they're judging people from their own cultures compared with those from other cultures

What predicts which Aboriginal bands will have high rates of suicide?

-People at risk for suicide often don't have a clear narrative about how their life fits together - they lack self-continuity. -A sense of cultural continuity can be related to a sense of self-continuity. -Many First Nations bands do not have a strong sense of cultural continuity as a result of Western colonization. -Chandler and Lalonde (1998) assessed various markers of cultural continuity among 196 Native bands in BC, and compared these with the suicide rates for those bands.

motivation for Control

-People from different cultures vary in terms of how they get control. -How you seek control depends on the theories that you have about both yourself and the social world. -Two key ways to seek control are evident in how people might build a stone wall.

How do people distribute resources? Principle of need

-People get an amount based on the degree of their needs. (Example - universal health care. The sick get more benefits than the healthy)

Modesty norm impacting the study on rival universities in Vancouver and Kyoto:

-Perhaps modesty norms make it difficult for East Asians to express their self-enhancing feelings. -That is, the cultures might have similar self-enhancing motivations, but self-presentation norms conceal this.

Priming Ideas Associated With Culture

-Priming refers to a technique to make ideas more accessible, by presenting them to participants -The most common cultural ideas that are primed are ideas associated with independence and interdependence. -This is done through a variety of techniques, such as asking people to circle singular or plural first-person pronouns in a paragraph. -When people are exposed to these kinds of primes they should start thinking in ways that are more closely related to independence or interdependence. -Any differences that are found between groups with different primes should parallel those differences that are found between independent and interdependent cultures.

Kohlberg's Stage Theory of Morality

-Proposed that there was a universal set of moral levels that people advanced through. This rested on cognitive capabilities--> some would develop higher levels of moral reasoning than others -There are 3 key levels (further refined into 6 stages) by which people can reason morally. -These were proposed to depend on the individual's level of cognitive development. -Sad irony is that he died trying to test the universality of his theory.

Psychology across cultures

-Psychological processing can vary substantially across cultures. -It follows that departures from normal processing will also vary. -Biological factors may underlie various psychopathologies, but how symptoms are interpreted and experienced varies significantly across cultures.

Freud and psychoanalysis: development of talking as a cure

-Psychotherapy originated with psychoanalysis and Freud in 19th century Europe. -It centered on the notion that people benefitted by discussing difficulties with a therapist who helped them to interpret it. -Numerous other therapies have centered on this notion of people talking through their difficulties and gaining personal insights by doing so. -This approach is more culturally foreign in places where people don't typically seek explicit social support, and can be stigmatized.

Two states of awareness:

-Research on self-awareness reveals that people oscillate between two states of awareness. -In a state of subjective self-awareness people are taking on the perspective of a subject - an "I." They are in the position of being the judge and can evaluate themselves according to their own standards. -In a state of objective self-awareness, people experience themselves as an object - a "me." They are aware of being evaluated by the standards of others.

Field study evidence: culture of honor

-Researchers sent letters requesting job applications to large national companies with branches in the US North and South. -The letters mentioned that the applicant was a convicted felon. In a control condition he describes how he had been convicted of stealing a car. In an "honor letter" condition he describes how he had been convicted of manslaughter for killing a man in defense of his honor. -Key dependent measure was the tone of the letter that was received in response from the potential employer.

Independent vs. Interdependent Views of Self

-Seminal paper by Markus and Kitayama (1991). -Argued that much of what is known in social psychology, has been studied with people who share a primarily distinct view of self - an independent self. -In much of the non-Western world, in contrast, an interdependent self is more common (hasn't been studied to same degree)

Western morality according to Sweder

-Shweder argues that although these 3 concerns are universal, much of Western moral reasoning is exclusively concerned with the ethic of autonomy. -Many other cultures view the ethics of community and divinity as important as an ethic of autonomy.

Why is support lacking for the slavery account of US South violence?

-Slaves had been far more common in farming regions than in herding regions, yet the violence rate is higher in the herding regions. -this goes against the slavery account

Acquired Variation: Culture and Sleep

-Sleep is a basic physiological process, common throughout the animal kingdom. -The physiological functions of sleep remain poorly understood and contested. -But sleep too is shaped by culture.

Social anxiety diagnostics

-Social anxiety has been studied in two ways: endorsing symptoms on self-report surveys and clinical diagnoses through interviews. -Interdependence strongly correlates with self-reports of social anxiety, and East Asians report more symptoms than Westerners. -But clinical diagnoses of of social anxiety disorders are far lower among East Asians (about 0.5% lifetime prevalence) than among North Americans (about 7%). -One possibility for this discrepancy is that in interdependent contexts social approval is valued more, so it is viewed as natural that one experiences distress in social situations.

Universal psychopathologies: Social Anxiety

-Social anxiety is a disorder that is found universally across cultures. -The diagnostic criteria include: a marked fear of social situations in which the person is exposed to unfamiliar people, exposure to the feared social situation invariably provokes anxiety, the person recognizes that the fear is excessive, the feared social situation is avoided, and interferes with a person's normal routine.

STUDY comparing two rival universities in Vancouver and Kyoto JAPAN RESULTS

-Students from both schools evaluated Doshisha more positively than Ritsumeikan. -However, Doshisha students viewed the gap between the schools to be smaller than did students from Ritsumeikan. -This indicates an overall university-critical bias -they have less positive evaluations of themselves and their groups

STUDY comparing two rival universities in Vancouver and Kyoto VANCOUVER RESULTS

-Students from both schools evaluated UBC more positively than SFU. -However, UBC students viewed the gap between the schools to be larger than did students from SFU. -This indicates and overall university-enhancing bias

Outside in perspective in Asia vs inside out perspective in the West

-Suggests people understand themselves in different ways across cultures. -An "Outside-In" perspective is more common in Asia, whereas an "Inside-Out" perspective is more common in the West

What is the relation between talking and our private thoughts? Are our thoughts a silent monologue, involving processes the same as speech?

-Talking is an analytic process. We can only specify one idea at a time that is arranged in a sequence. It is difficult to discuss holistic ideas in which there are multiple connections that are simultaneously relevant. -Holistic thinking should be impaired more by saying one's thoughts out loud than would analytic thinking

Explanation of Joe Henrich's results

-The American pattern of an internalized norm for fairness was not held to the same extent elsewhere. -In the small-scale societies, people acted in more rational ways. The results fit better if you do not assume that people have an internalized concern for their reputation. -If economists had studied small-scale societies they would have different theories of how human cooperation motives evolved. -The researchers explored what variable best predicted people's norms for fairness - Market Integration. -people LEARN motivations for fairness BY PARTICIPATING IN A MARKET--> not innate

Poverty Can Impair Thinking

-The experience of poverty doesn't just lead to stress; it can also lead to poorer thinking. -Poverty makes people more risk-averse, and makes them focus on the present. This limits future opportunities for improvement. -Poverty poses cognitive demands, as each economic decision imposes trade-offs. This weakens self-control and performance on other demanding tasks.

Creativity of Fashion Designers

-The fashion industry rates the creativity of different fashion designers each year -This study compared the rating of the creativity of the designers based on: -Breadth (number of foreign countries lived in ~2 is ideal) -Depth (number of years spent abroad)--> this is linear relation, larger number of years spent abroad = more creative -Cultural distance (how culturally different are the places they've lived) -Each of these was associated with more creativity -Breadth and cultural distance showed a curviliniear realtion (meaning that the ideal was a moderate amount of multicultural experience)

Self-Consistency

-The interdependent self should be more contextually variable than the independent self. -If the identity of the interdependent self is importantly grounded in roles, than across situations, identity should vary.

Treating Mental Illness

-The most common way that Westerners deal with stressful experiences is to seek social support from close others. -Social support is key for coping with stress and is a buffer for physical health. -However, not all cultures actively seek it -Westerners are more likely to seek explicit social support than are East Asians. -East Asians avoid explicitly asking for social support for concerns about stigma and because it is seen to potentially disrupt a relationship.

Upper middle class vs working class Americans and choice STUDY

-Upper middle class Westerners are particularly motivated by making choices. -One study contrasted upper middle class and working class Americans in their evaluations of a pen @ a shopping mall. Had to choose one out of five pens (equally desirable) -In one condition participants kept the pen they chose. In another condition the experimenter replaced their chosen pen with another pen -how were subsequent ratings of then pen? working class pen rated "free choice" pen and "usurped pen" equally, for upper middle class they preferred the chosen pen, much less satisfied with usurped choice -choice is more important to upper middle class

Sleep Study UBC Students vs Kyoto Ui Students

-We had 76 University of British Columbia students (37 European, and 39 Asian descent) and 40 Kyoto Japan University students wear an Actiwatch for one week. -It measured the amount of time spent sleeping, as well as various indicators of sleep efficiency (such as sleep onset latency, number of awakenings). -Japanese slept about 1.2 hours less than the two Canadian samples (euro canadian and asian canadian) -The cultures did NOT differ significantly in their sleep efficiency. -Japanese are NOT sleeping less time because they are more efficient sleepers. -Despite sleeping less, Japanese rated themselves as LESS tired during the day compared with Canadians. -In an ideal world, Japanese would like to sleep about one hour less than Canadians. -Japanese perceive a weaker relationship between sleep and health than Canadians. -Asian-Canadians and Euro-Canadians did not significantly differ on any of our measures. This suggests that cultural sleeping norms are affected by local norms, and are not innate, nor do they seem to persist across immigration.

Studying examining Raven's Matrices while talking/not talking RESULTS

-When Euro-Americans are thinking aloud their performance is relatively unaffected. -In contrast, Asian-Americans perform significantly worse when they are thinking aloud compared with when they are silent. -Conversely, Euro-Americans perform worse when they are saying the alphabet. -Asian-Americans are relatively unaffected by saying the alphabet -This suggests that Asian-Americans' silent thoughts are non-verbal on this task, whereas Euro-Americans are thinking verbally about the task even when silent

Emotion Intensity across cultures

-cultures vary in the intensity with which they report experiencing emotions -For example, East Asians report experiencing emotions less intensely, and for shorter periods of time than do Westerners.

CHAPTER 9 TEXTBOOK: what is contradictory self views associated with in the West?

-depression and anxiety, but not in Japan--> actually better health outcomes!

Are Friendships Only Positive?

-low relationally mobile people are sometimes suspicious of friends -In low relational mobility contexts, you're not in a position to really choose who all of your friends are- you have to deal with them regardless if you like them or not. -Kind of like many people's relationships with their in-laws. -Friendship in many low mobility contexts, particularly in Ghana, is a more ambivalent construct -Ghanaians report having fewer friends than American, and feel that someone who has many friends is foolish.

More Residentially Unstable American Neighborhoods Have

-more "fair-weather" sports fans. -higher crime rates and lower pro-community action. -more national chain stores per capita, and more goods sold at those stores. (residentially stable neighbourhoods prefer local businesses)

Disgust and hypnotism STUDY

-one study hypnotized participants so that they would feel a strong feeling of disgust whenever they encountered a particular word (half for the word take and half for the word often) -participants then read some scenarios and were asked to rate how immoral the person was from 0 to 100 -then see people's reaction to control word and hypnotized word -hypnotized word: Perceived the act to be much more immoral with the presence of the hypnotized word than the neutral word

Chapter 6: cognitive dissonance

-people have powerful motivations to remain consistent and cognitive dissonance is the distressing feeling we have when we observe ourselves acting inconsistently -to rid ourselves of this feeling we can: act more consistently, change our attitudes so we no longer appear so inconsistent

Acculturation: and current study of this process

-process of acquiring a culture -Research on acculturation is very important but difficult to do. Ideally, studying how people acquire new cultures would be conducted longitudinally, but this is rarely done. -People move to different cultures for many different reasons - some move as refugees, some move to study, and some as young children with their families.

CHAPTER 14 TEXTBOOK: Naikan therapy

-seeks to provide clients with insight into their past, in particular, it encourages people to appreciate how indebted they are to the kindness of significant others -used to treat people with addiction, depression, sociopathy -clients led through guided introspection to reflect on the kindness they have receieved from their close relationships and to consider how little they had offered in return -goal is to have clients reinterpret past and give new meaning to life -used often in Japanese prisons

Chapter 5: study by Alexander Luria demonstrating the effects of education on thinking

-studied uneducated peasants in Uzbekistan -interested in taxonomic categorization -e.g. which one does not fit? saw, log, hammer, hatchet -they could not come up with the right answer -with absence of education people cant form abstract categories and engage in logical reasoning

Chapter 6: dissonance reduction in Jaoanese vs Canadians

-studying involving CD's in which they had to pick one to keep -then observed if they rationalized their decision by asking them to evaluate the CD's again -Canadians showed clear evidence of rationalization -Japanese showed no rationalization -BUT east asians will rationalize decisions that they make for others

CHAPTER 11 TEXTBOOK: Four elementary forms of relationships- market pricing

-the last kind of relational structure, it is concerned with proportionality and ratios -usually involves money -people expect to receive something equivalent to what they have given and both sides of the exchnage usually occur at once

CHAPTER 8 TEXTBOOK: conclusions on East Asians and self enhancement

-they like themselves as much as Westerners (measured through unconcious associations btwn the self and other pos/neg words) -but when it comes to competence, they're more critical

CHAPTER 9 TEXTBOOK: Linguistic relativity and perceptions of agency

-when describing an action in English people commonly use an agentic description, suggesting blame and a larger fine e.g. Justin tore the bodice off of Janet Jackson -in spanish non-agentic sayings are common -English and Spanish people equally accurate in recalling the targets who acted intentionally in a scene but english speakers more accurate than spanish in recalling who had broken a vase unintentionally

Maintaining face entails two key points:

Attending to public information about the self and -being more sensitive to losses than gains East Asian self-evaluations should be influenced more by what others think of them.

Do cultural differences in self-enhancement generalize to private thoughts? Results

Independent variable: number of items needed to make a decision -Canadians needed to view more trials before being able to conclude that they had done worse than average than when they concluded they had done better. -Japanese showed the opposite pattern. They were more easily convinced that they had done poorly than that they had done well. -It is difficult to explain these results as a function of self-presentation as there was no one to present to.

does Baumrind's tripartite model of parenting apply universally?

May not apply very well outside of the west

Study by Nagel et al., 1993 contrasting how chimps and 2-year-olds learned from a model

-An object was put out of reach, rake pointing down or up to retrieve object -1/2 saw teeth down, half saw teeth up

Chapter 2: encephalization quotient

-ratio of the brain weight of an animal to that predicted for a comparable animal of the same body size- about 4.6.

Chapter 5: Explanation of the terrible twos

-when a toddler begins to assert their own independence from their parents -terrible twos is not a worldwide phenomenon

Degree of Defensive Responses to Death Thoughts

Americans respond most defensively to thoughts about their death (more than other westerners and non-westerners) -This could reflect the heightened existential anxiety associated with extreme individualism.

Potential Solutions to Acquiescence Biases

Data can be standardized (although, as before, this means that some comparisons are no longer possible). -data can be reverse scored- half statement written in positive direction, half can be written in negative direction e.g. I'm an amazing person, i'm a loser

CHAPTER 9 TEXTBOOK: naive dialectism

The acceptance of contradiction

CHAPTER 13 TEXTBOOK: epidemiological paradox

the surprisingly healthy outcomes of Latinos across a variety of conditions -Latinos have lower mortality rates for 10 of the 15 leading causes of death compared to Eruo Americans even though they tend to be of Lower SES -why? Latinos less likely to drink and smoke, high value placed on child bearing, significant emotional support, simpatica, high positive affect

Developmental Transitions

-"Terrible Twos"--> more terrible in individualistic socities because 2 year olds are learning to become independent (not as bad in collectivistic societies) -Turbulent Adolescence--> more rebellion and violence in individualistic society- finding their own way. Also where people have more choice available--> bc of overwhelming number of options there is failure to launch children in the West. -not prevalent in every culture, seem to be more of a phenomenon in the West

East Asians Self-Enhance Less than North Americans: JAPANESE RESULTS

-16% of Japanese tended towards self-enhancement -84% self critical

Results of Study by Cullum and Harton, 2007: attitudes changing while living in residence at uni

-All attitudes showed an increase in clustering over the term -This was especially true for the attitudes that were rated as more important - these attitudes were discussed more. -New subcultures were formed on the basis of the ideas that people regularly communicated

Study: completion of the TST by Americans/Japanese in different situation- American Data

-American self-descriptions were highly similar across different situations. -Their self-descriptions were also uniformly positive regardless of context

Why do we see this cultural difference in 1st and 3rd person perspective?

-Being a member of an interdependent group makes it more important for one to understand how others are viewing them. -it is others' opinions about one that especially matter for one to be successful in the interdependent contexts

Study by Keller (2007): Warmth Shown in Response to Infant's Positive Signals

-Compared with other mothers, Greek mothers showed the warmest response to infant's positive signals, and Gujarati mothers showed the least warm response.

Self-Awareness: study of memories from 1st or 3rd person perspective

-In that study participants indicated whether their memories contained 1st person or 3rd person imagery for a variety of events. It involved Euro-Canadians and Asian Canadians -In some of the events they were the center of attention (e.g., your birthday party) and some they were not the center of attention (e.g., watching a movie with friends).

What is intelligence based on? Innate abilites or efforts--> cross cultural perceptions

-Japanese: 55% effort, innate: 45% -Asian american: 45% effort, 55% innate -Euro americans: 36% effort, 64% innate

Evaluating the Evidence for Self-Enhancement Across Cultures: Meta Analysis

-Many studies have compared Westerners and East Asians on different measures of self-enhancement. -We conducted a meta-analysis on all published studies comparing Westerners and East Asians on various measures of self-enhancement. -Each study produces an effect (d) which is the measure of self-enhancement - positive effects show evidence for self-enhancement.

Ethic of Community

-Morality is tied to an individual's interpersonal obligations within the social order. -Concerned with whether someone showed a lack of loyalty, betrayed their group, failed to fulfill the duties of their role.

One study conducted at UBC compared how Chinese-Canadians and Euro-Canadians responded to an anger provocation

-Participants were run through an "anger paradigm," where they were badgered by a rude experimenter, while their blood pressure and heart rate were assessed--> e.g. told to count backwards with 7's and told they're ruining the experiment etc -All participants showed physiological responses consistent with anger (their systolic blood pressure increased), but there were differences in how quickly their anger dissipated.

How do people distribute resources? Principle of equity

-People get an amount based on what they have contributed. (Example - a salesperson may earn her salary based on commission)

Chapter 6: View of Gender as Essentialized

-gender thought of as underlying unchangeable essence -Americans view male gender identity as more essentialized--> find it distrubing for men to present themselves as women -Indians see female gender as more essentialized

Mentions of I love me 1920-2008

this phrase has risen dramatically

Culture-Bound Syndromes: Arctic Hysteria

-A unique hysterical attack observed among Arctic Inuit communities, particularly among women. -People suddenly tear off their clothes, roll in the snow, and convulse, with no clear precipitating factors.

Study by Keller (2007): Percent of Time in Bodily Contact with Infant

-All mothers show much bodily contact. -The Nso mothers were observed carrying the infants in every observed instance. -Greeks and Germans showed the least amount of bodily contact.

CHAPTER 8 TEXTBOOK: success vs failure memories and Euro vs Japanese students

-American self enhancing memories: 62%, 27% failure memories -Japanese 48% success memories, 52% failure memories -Americans find successful memories more memorable, vice versa for Japanese -Also differences in what happens after a failure: Americans more likely to downward social compare & discount task, Japanese more likely to upward social compare & stress importance of the task

Strength of Convergent Evidence from Multiple Methods

-Any single study or single method is limited in what you can conclude. Each method has limitations and there are alternative explanations. -If the same pattern emerges across multiple methods it becomes far more difficult to explain it as due to alternative accounts -A single account, such as Southerners have a culture of honor, is more parsimonious than the multiple accounts that are based on the sum of the weaknesses from all of the individual experiments.

Choosing Pens: majority vs minority pen

-In another study, people were given a choice of a pen to choose from after completing a survey. -East Asians tended to choose the majority-colored pen, whereas Westerners tended to choose the minority-colored pen (e.g. chose the one green pen and 4 red colored pens). Counterbalanced so the red pen in majority and minority condition.

Aristotle's approach to contradiction

-In contrast, Aristotle proposed a different system for dealing with contradiction. -He offered 3 principles. -Law of Identity: A = A -Law of Excluded Middle: A = B, or A = Not B, these are the only two possibilities -Law of Noncontradiction: A = Not A -according to this perspective, there cannot be any contradiction

CHAPTER 9 TEXTBOOK: reasoning for differences between East Asian and Western Art

-Japanese scenes contain more boundaries and edges than American ones--> busier environment= better ability to attend to a lot of information at once

Least common acculturation strategy?

-Marginalization is the least common, and it has the fewest positive outcomes. Some suggest that this reflects neuroticism.

What Happens When People Move to a New Culture?

-Moving to a new culture involves psychological adjustment, and psychological adjustment can often be associated with stress. -One common pattern of acculturation is captured by a U-shaped curve: typically go through honeymoon phase (love being in the new place, new and exciting), then major dip "crisis or culture shock" (all thats new and exciting starts being unfamiliar, different and annoying. Hard to form new relationships, practical difficulties, potential poor language abilities etc), then there is adjustment (more positive over time, people adjusting, forming new relationships, better language skills)

The Benefits of Experiments

-One key solution to the problems of incomparability in cross-cultural studies of survey means is the experiment. -By an experiment I mean that an independent variable that is manipulated by the experimenter is introduced into the study design, and its effect on the dependent variable is assessed.

Study in New Guinea / SW Africa

-Papua New Guinea (Berinmo language) -monolingual hunter gatherers -5 color terms -Namibia, SW Africa (Himba language) -monolingual semi-nomadic herders -5 color terms -Participants were shown triads of color chips and were asked to identify which two chips were more similar -The chips were equidistant in terms of hue, however, two of the chips crossed a boundary between two different color terms. -people's judgements for colors were compared when the two chips crossed a color boundary in their own language, or in anothers language -People make more judgements based on whether the color of the chips crossed the boundaries of the color terms in their own language than in the other languages -when the chips share the same color label they are rated more similar -color labels influence how we see colors

Clear Complexion and attraction

-People are attracted to healthy mates--> healthy mate is more likely to survive and produce healthy offspring -Skin signals health more directly than any other visible aspect (correlates with ill health or pathogens) -The cosmetics industry provides people with ways to make their complexion look clearer--> cultural solution to biological adaption -People have strong aversive reactions to skin conditions.

Ethic of Divinity

-People are viewed as bearers of something holy, and have obligations not to degrade that holiness. -Concerned with whether someone violated standards of purity, was not able to control their desires, acted in a way that God would disapprove.

"Tyranny of the Beautiful"

-People care a lot about physical attractiveness - North Americans spend more money on beauty products than on education. -Much research, largely conducted with Westerners, finds that physically attractive people receive many other kinds of benefits. This is known as the "Tyranny of the Beautiful."

General Principles of secondary and primary control strategies

-Secondary control strategies are more common in non-Western contexts than in Western ones. (getting what you want) -Primary control strategies are more common in the West than elsewhere. (wanting what you get)

Evaluating the Evidence for Self-Enhancement Across Cultures: East Asian Data

-There is almost an effect of 0, a null effect for east asian and self-enhancement -d=-0.2

Brand Consciousness

-To enhance one's face, people strive to present themselves in ways that are publicly recognized as desirable. -luxury brands communicate high status -East Asia accounts for about half of luxury brand purchases.

Summary of emotion expressions

-To summarize all of the cross-cultural facial expression research, facial expressions are largely universal with a smaller culturally-learned component. -However, there is more evidence for cultural variability in the experiences of emotions.

Male Foot-Tapping by Condition Results of protestant vs non protestant STUDY

-Women did not differ across conditions or religions. They show a lot of unconscious mimicry. Apparently they're more relationally-engaged. -Male Protestants were more relationally-engaged in casual than work settings (work settings they didn't show much mimicry) -Male non-Protestants were equally relationally-engaged in both casual and work settings

Study: Moral Dilemmas

-based on their responses to different moral dilemmas they were identified as level 1 2 or 3 level of moral reasoning e.g. man has wife dying of cancer and he cant afford the expensive medicine so he considers stealing it

CHAPTER 13 TEXTBOOK: why is there more genetic variability among Africans than among Africans vs other races?

-because they have had up to 200,000 years to accumulate genetic changes and other cultural backgrounds have only had 60,000 years -in comparison to other species, humans have less genetic variation

Individual vs group agency

-in collectivistic societies, groups are the primary focus, rather than individuals, and groups should be seen as more powerful

Chapter 6: What percent of the world comprise collectivistic cultures?

80%

POST MIDTERM

:)

CHAPTER 14 TEXTBOOK: Voodoo death

Africa- is a condition in which people are convinced that a curse has been put on them or that they have broken a taboo, which results in a severe fear reaction that sometimes leads to their own death

Level 1: Preconventional Moral Reasoning

What is bad is determined by internal standards regarding the physical or hedonistic consequences of the action (reward vs punishment) -if you can do something and its not punished then its not wrong

Chapter 4: Occam's Razor

a principle that states any theory should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating or shaving off any extraneous assumptions. Simpler the theory the more likely it is to be correct.

CHAPTER 12 TEXTBOOK: metiocracy

a social system that rewards individuals on the basis of equity principle is known as a metiocracy

Chapter 7: Integrative complexity

a willingness and ability to acknowledge and consider different viewpoints oon the same issue

Chapter 4: define power (in an experiment)

capability of your study to detect an effect to the extent that the effect really exists

Chapter 1: interaction between culture and mind

culture and mind make eachother up

universally, are children happy or unhappy with controlling parents?

less happy with controlling parents

Chapter 7: migrants

those who move from a heritage culture (their original culture) to host culture (their new culture) and include those who intend to stay temporarily (sejourners) and those who intend to move permanently (immigrants)

Chapter 2: Humans and cultural learning

1) learn new info from eachother often with only a single exposure to it 2) humans are unique in who they immitate--> prestige bias: copy people who have skills and are respected by others

CHAPTER 14 TEXTBOOK: Kufungisia

"thinking too much" in Shona, language spoken in Zimbabwe -anxiety and somatic problems that are thought to stem from mental exhaustion -panic attacks and irritability

cultural continuity among 196 Native bands STUDY

- The markers that they identified were whether the band was negotiating a land claim with the government, whether the bands had self-government, whether the bands had control over their educational services, whether the bands controlled their police and fire services, whether the bands managed their own health services, and whether the bands had their own cultural facilities. -if they had all 6 of these factors then there was practically no suicide, but where all six of these were missing, suicide was much higher

Some Universals of Physical Attractiveness

-Clear complexion. -Bilateral Symmetry -Average Features

Standard item comparison (canadian/japanese study)

-Comparison found that Canadians are more independent than Japanese, which makes sense. -Also found that Canadians are more interdependent than Japanese, which doesn't make sense. -Overall, the interaction was NOT significant. When people compare themselves to different standards the comparisons are confounded

Uniqueness vs conformity: magazine ads in US & East Asia

-Cultural messages are commonly expressed in advertisements. -Analyses of magazine ads have been compared across the US and East Asia regarding the use of themes of uniqueness and conformity -American ads more frequently contained themes of uniqueness than fitting in. -Korean ads more frequently contained themes of fitting in -The cultural messages that people encounter in their daily lives differentially emphasize the value of fitting in or sticking out

Cultural basis of psychopathologies

-Culture-bound syndromes demonstrate the cultural basis of some psychopathologies. -There are also many psychopathologies found universally around the world. -Universal psychopathologies still vary in prevalence and presentation across cultures.

Why is support lacking for temp account of US South violence?

-If anything, the farming areas are hotter (and considerably more humid) than the herding areas, yet the violence rates are higher in the herding areas. -this goes against the temperature account on these differences

How do we decide whether something is morally wrong or not?

-Jonathan Haidt (2001) argues that people come up with reasons to make sense of the feelings that moral violations arise in them. Our feelings determine whether we view something as a moral violation. The rationale comes later. -One source of evidence for this is that, if probed enough, people often can't articulate clearly why they believe that certain things are wrong - they just feel it.

Study comparing arranged vs love marriage in india

-in early stages, more love in love marriages but as time goes on arranged marriages increased in love and the love marriages dropped significantly (potentially around the time of children)

Is traveling abroad as a tourist enough to improve creativity?

-Merely traveling abroad, as a tourist, in contrast, did not improve performance. -An alternative explanation is that creative people might be more likely to live abroad - perhaps creative people are more interested in living in other cultures. -To address this, it's necessary to manipulate adaptation

Chapter 5: what variables increase turmoil in adolescence?

-individualism and modernity -vast number of choices for life outcomes -in individualistic societies children see their parents control as a constraint they must resist

Studying culture of honor with experimental method: cortisol and testosterone levels

-Northern subjects showed little physiological arousal to the insult -Southern subjects showed a strong physiological response: spike in cortisol and testosterone--> They were angry

Acquired Physical Variation: Obesity and Diet

-Obesity rates vary dramatically across countries, from a low of 1.5% for Chinese women to a high of 55% for Samoan women. -These differences across countries are most likely cultural as opposed to genetic -Obesity rates have been growing remarkably across many countries. Americans have gained about 1.5 lbs. a year over past 20 years (30 pounds heavier)

Objective levels of wealth vs subjective experiences of SES

-Objective levels of wealth are less relevant than subjective experiences of SES for health outcomes. Feeling poor can matter as much as being poor--> in countries with less income ineqaulity life expectancy is longer e.g. Japan -The relation between a country's GDP and longevity is strong among poor countries, but weak among wealthy countries (there is a cut off point at a GDP of 30,000 dollars where there no longer seems to be a relation between wealth and health-- may be the result of provision of basic medical services)

Do East Asians Enhance their Groups?

-One alternative explanation is that East Asians enhance their group selves rather than their individual selves. -We explored this in a study by comparing how people evaluated their universities (Heine & Lehman, 1997).

Survey evidence exploring culture of honor:

-Participants in various regions of the US were called at home by a survey company and posed questions to them about how people should respond in certain situations when their honor was threatened. -They ranged in severity from imagining that someone had insulted a man named Fred, to imagining that someone had raped Fred's daughter.

Primary Control

-People with independent views of self tend to have entity theories of self, but incremental theories of the world. -People strive to change circumstances to fit their desires. -the is known as primary control

Study by Keller (2007): Summary of findings

-People's minds develop in highly different circumstances. -It is not unreasonable to expect that these early experiences are critical to shaping people's development.

Universality and Pride

-Pride also is a universally recognized expression, although the expression involves a bodily posture

Stress and Primal Heirarchy (in relation to humans)

-Primates lower in the hierarchy show greater stress hormone levels when they belong to a social system where: -the heirarchy is stable -is maintained through intimidation rather than physical attacks, -the subordinates cannot avoid dominant individuals, and -they have low availability for social support. -There are many similarities to those experienced by low-SES people in modern industrialized societies

How can we judge what is moral in other cultures?

-Problem is that we've been socialized to respect a certain set of moral values. -Many cultures emphasize different values, so how can we judge these without being ethnocentric? Cultures tend to judge others by their own standards

CHAPTER 14 TEXTBOOK: Ataques de nervois

-Puerto Ricans- emotionally charged settings such as funerals or family conflicts, leads to symptoms such as palpitations, numbness, sense of heat rising to the head

Evidence for Frame-Switching

-Rather than blending two self-concepts, an alternative account is that people switch between two different self-concepts. -The blending evidence might reflect the proportion of people who are currently thinking in a Western style or in an East Asian style. -evidence of frame-switching is clear in language use -There is much evidence for frame-switching in ways of thinking.

variability in attraction

-mentawe women: filled teeth like a shark -Thai women: brass circles around neck -Inu Japan: mustache tattoo -African woman: lip stretching -woman vary more in standards of attractiveness (more weight placed upon this than for men)

CHAPTER 14 TEXTBOOK: where is catatonic schizophrenia the most common?

-near absence of motor activity and an insensitivity to external stimuli -more than 20% of cases in India, very uncommon in the West

Canada and its model of multiculturalism

-Societies vary in the model of multiculturalism that they pursue -Canada strives for a "salad bowl" model, where each ethnic group maintains its distinct characteristics, and adds unique flavor to the whole

Study of cultural and language similarity

-Sojourners who have greater cultural distance from the host culture tend to show more distress, have more medical consultations, and have more difficulty in making friendships with people from the host culture. -For example, Malaysian exchange students who studied in culturally-similar Singapore showed more successful adjustment than those who studied in more culturally distant New Zealand (Ward & Kennedy, 1995).

example of experimental design with Chinese and Americans

-Study compared perspective-taking skills of Chinese and Americans (Wu & Keysar, 2007). -Much research suggests that Chinese are better able to take on the perspective of other people compared with Americans, because it is of more importance for Chinese to attend to how others think. -The Director tells the Subject to move the Target Object. The dependent measure is how many times the Subject looks at the Competitor Object (the block that is out of view of the director). The independent measure is whether the Subject is asked to move an object that does or does not have a Competitor (others are Baselines).

Trend with counter intuitive findings

-overtime, a few but not too many counter-intuitive items are recalled better -This is true of most religions, myths, and successful folk tales

Chapter 6: Individualism varying as a function of social class

-people from higher SES have more independent selves than those from poorer backgrounds -periods of economic growth are linked with growing rates of independences, opposite true for recessions

Chapter 4: Deprivation effects

-represents what people actually have in contrast to what they would like to have -e.g. people may value personal safety MORE in a place that is quite dangerous

Disgust and hypnotism neutral scenario STUDY

-similar pattern even holds for scenarios in which there is no immoral behavior -ex) Dan is a student council representative at his school. this semester he is in charge of scheduling discussions about academic issues. he tries to (TAKE/ OFTEN picks) topics that appeal to both professors and students in order to stimulate discussion. -why is dan immoral? "it just seems like hes up to something" "hes a popularity seeking snob" "it just seems so weird and disgusting"

CHAPTER 8 TEXTBOOK: motivation to play a game depending on the kind of choice allowed in 5th grade students

-students of Euro background attempted the most games when they were able to choose thier own spaceship, they played significantly fewer games when their classmates/ third graders chose the space ship for them -Asian American students attemped the most games when their classmates chose their spaceships for them, not motivated by outgroup members but are motivated by ingroup members

U shaped curve of acculturation

-The U-shaped curve is quite common, although some people never experience the Honeymoon phase e.g. refugees -people also often go through similar pattern when they return home after being abroad. They can experience reverse culture shock upon returning. -In more homogenous cultures (E.g. Japan) the adjustment phase of the curve is sometimes not experienced. For example, one study of immigrants to Japan showed an L-shaped curve --> less tolerance for diverse ways of being, people experience constant "crisis" and no adjustment

CHAPTER 11 TEXTBOOK: Four elementary forms of relationships- communal sharing

-the members of a group emphasize their common identity rather than consider their differences. Every person is treated the same- identical rights and priveldges e.g. the family but the parents in this case do have more say (authority ranking)

Summary of cultural and language similarity

-the more similar one's native tongue is to english, the easier it is to learn english -Likewise, the more similar one's heritage culture is to one's host culture, the easier it is to acculturate

Acquired Physical Variation: your feet

-the shape of your feet are also the product of cultural experiences -people who never wear shoes develop a wider forefoot, the big toe is separated more from the other toes, and the arch is much more pronounced

Contents of Helpful Book Reviews

-The helpful reviews for American books contained about the same amount of positive and negative information. T-he helpful reviews of Japanese books contained more negative than positive content. -Unhelpful reviews, in contrast didn't show this pattern Japanese find critical feedback more helpful than do Americans - a desire to maintain face is associated with attention to public information about the self and a prevention orientation

Representing space in absolute terms is common among most subsistence societies in the world.

-This is common even among people who are bilingual and have learned egocentric direction terms in one of their languages - apparently, they prefer to represent space in absolute ways. -Chimpanzees also don't represent space in egocentric ways. -egocentric space representation appears to be a relatively recent development in human history (likely came about with indoor lifestyle)

Self-Esteem Change After 7 months: Evidence of Blending

-We assessed the self-esteem of people longitudinally across two points in time: prior to moving to a new culture and then again 7 months after moving. -When Japanese had lived in Canada for 7 months, their self-esteem increased significantly. -in contrast, when canadians had lived in Japan for 7 months, their self-esteem decreased significantly

Social Class and Self-Concept

-Within countries groups also vary in their self-concepts. -The wealthier and better educated groups tend to be more independent than the poorer and less educated groups. -Many of the cross-cultural findings discussed in this course also hold for comparisons of wealthy and poor within the West. -Studying university students means our samples are more independent than if we targeted other groups.

Chapter 1: Russian Cultural-Historical School

-argued that people interact with their environments through the tools or human made ideas that have been passed down to them across history -e.g. the wheel, argirculture, democracy

CHAPTER 13 TEXTBOOK: 10 year study English Civil Servants

-civil servants belonged to one of four heriarchically ranked employment categories: compared with the top adminstrators, members of the executive class were 60% more likely to die over that 10 year period and the clercial staff were 120% more likely to die, and the unskilled laborers were 170% more likely to die -these differences are bigger than the differences between smokers and non smokers

Study by Keller (2007): Warmth Shown in Response to Infant's Negative Signals

Compared with other mothers, Costa Rican mothers showed the warmest response to infant's negative signals

What Domains Does Morality Extend to?

In all cultures people view some behaviors as being more moral than others. Nowhere is it acceptable to harm others without cause. -Can bad thoughts be sins? -e.g. Jimmy Carter (Christian) Thinks bad thoughts are sins and Freud (thoughts are harmless) is Jewish

CHAPTER 14 TEXTBOOK: susto

Latin America- frightening experience has caused their soul to get dislodged from their body leading to a wide range of physical and psychological symptoms

Chapter 4: where have the most comparissons between cultures been made?

North Americans and East Asians

Correspondence between animal and human facial expressions

Originally Darwin noted that facial expressions from other animals seemed to parallel those made by humans.

How do Ideas Catch On? minimal number of counter-intuitive findings

People are more likely to prefer, remember, and discuss ideas/ narratives that contain a minimal number of counterintuitive statements.

Evidence Inconsistent with Weber's conclusions about Protestantism and capitalism

Self-report surveys show that the countries with the highest Protestant Work Ethic, are countries which are not predominately Protestant nations (e.g., Mexico, Sri Lanka, Uganda).

Is this a basic human need for self-enhancement or is it culturally learned?

Some evidence for the latter is that the motivation has been increasing over time (cullturally learned)

Survey evidence exploring culture of honor: Results

The Southerners were more likely than Northerners to view violence as an appropriate solution to the threats to Fred's honor -Most extreme difference for the scenario where Fred's daughter was raped. 47% of Southerners but only 28% of Northerners felt that Fred would be "extremely justified" to shoot the man who had raped his daughter.

The WEIRDEST people in the world- paper by Heine

Weird means exceptional (unusual). Also, by WEIRD we mean people from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic Societies. People from these societies are highly exceptional in many aspects of their psychology

CHAPTER 14 TEXTBOOK: Agonias

anxiety disorder identified among Portugese and Azoreans in which people report a wide array of different symptoms including a burning sensation, loss of breath, hysterical blindness, sleeping, eating disorders

Circus entertainment man vs chimp

circus pays men 5 dollars to pin down chimp to floor--> not a single guy could do this and had to put mouth guard and gloves on chimp to prevent serious injury -Gorilla tommy also much larger and stronger than humans

What is the simplest network?

dyad or pair -dyads agglomerate to form large interconnected webs

CHAPTER 9 TEXTBOOK: define saccades

extremely quick eye movements that shift peoples focus from one point to another

reference group effects

in cross cultural research there often isn't objective measures -e.g. people who are 5'8 would say they're short in the Netherlands and tall in Japan (same height leads to different answer) -People come to understand themselves by comparing themselves to similar others. In different cultures, the comparison others are different, resulting in divergent standards. -This can result in making comparisons between apples and oranges.

Chapter 5: Noun Bias

large quantity of nouns relative to verbs and other relational words in young children's vocabulary--> likely because they refer to more concrete concepts -not cross cultural! Chinese babies use more verbs than nouns -this is due to the different structure of languages and where emphasis is placed by the mom (e.g. on the verb or noun)

Chapter 4: Cultural priming

making certain ideas more accessible to participants and to the extent that those ideas are associated with cultural meaning systems, we can investigate what will happen when people start to think about certain cultural ideas

CHAPTER 8 TEXTBOOK: self serving biases

tendencies for people to exaggerate how good they think they are -e.g. 94% of American college profs think that they're better than average

CHAPTER 10 TEXTBOOK: subjective wellbeing

the feeling of how satisfied one is with ones life Scandanavian and Nordic countries score highest on this, much of Latin America and various english speaking countries and Western Europe too -on the lower end are the former soviet republics and Africa and south asia

CHAPTER 11 TEXTBOOK: mere exposure effect

why is propinuqity attractive? mere exposure effect -the more were exposed to a stimulus, the more we like it -appears to be a cultural universal

CHAPTER 11 TEXTBOOK: propinquity effect

people are most likely to become friends with people with whom they frequently interact e.g. police academy study --> the alphabetical ordering of the recruits last names played a large role in determining whom they chose as friends. 45% of all the friendships were among those whose last name was adjascent to the choosers name in alphabetical order

Chapter 4: socially desirable response bias

people are strongly motivated to be evaluated positively by others and as a result they disguise their true feelings to appear more socially desirable

Parenting styles: The Tiger Mom

-Rules of this "Tiger Mother:" -No play-dates or sleepovers -No TV, computer games -No choosing own extracurricular activities. -No being in school plays -Must practice violin/piano 3 hours a day -Must be top student in class (except gym/drama) -No complaining about any of these. -she states that this is a reflection of Chinese parenting

Perceptions of fairness and understanding norms for cooperation:

There are only 2 ways that cooperation is understood strictly in terms of biological evolution: 1) Kin selection: it is adaptive (IE you pass on more genes) if you take care of your kind 2) Reciprocal altruism: it is adaptive if I help you provided that I keep track of whether you are likely to help me back in return -however, these 2 explanations cannot explain why there is substantial cooperation and trust in large societies, where people cooperate with strangers who they'll never meet again. We need another explanation for why norms of fairness evolved.

CHAPTER 10 TEXTBOOK: Facial feedback hypothesis

one source of information we utilize when inferring our feelings is our facial expression e.g. this is supported in study where people had to hold pencil between lips (Frown) and teeth (smile). Pencil in teeth group found cartoons to be more amusing than the pencil in the lips group

Indigenous Healing Practices

-Many therapies focus on the family, rather than on individuals, as the family shares in the suffering and stigma. -Also, in many cultures mental illness is viewed as a spiritual challenge, and is treated as such. -A popular international therapy that originated in Japan, Morita therapy, which doesn't try to change a client's symptoms, but to get their clients to accept them as they are.

Chapter 5: Cultrual differences in psychological processes emerge with age--> comparisson of American and East Asians outlook on "trends"

-North Americans more likely to predict that trends will continue in the same direction -East Asians more likely to see trends as decreasing and increasing (non-linear)

Why is there support lacking for the poverty account of violence in the US South?

-People in the farming areas make slightly more than those in the herding areas. -This difference in wealth is much smaller than the difference in violence rates between the two areas, so this argues against the poverty account.

What is an Emotion? Two perspectives

-The James-Lange Theory of Emotions -The Two-Factor Theory of Emotions

What consititutes a choice?

-choice is an act of self-expression -do cultures differ in what they view to be a choice? -one study had Americans and Indians go through a series of set actions (such as picking up one of two pens to sign one of two consent forms) -after they were asked to list all the choices that they made while in the experiment -Americans viewed more of their behaviors as choices than indians

CHAPTER 10 TEXTBOOK: happiness and human rights

-countries with highest wellbeing also have highest human rights, greater happiness in Scandanavian and Nordic countries

Do Multicultural Experiences Foster Creativity?

- A key part of creativity is insight - when you see a problem in a novel way. -Creative insight might be fostered by adjusting to new cultural environments, where you learn to see things differently. Having more than one perspective leads to more creative insights. -Many famous artists and writers had multicultural experiences.

Obesity of Americans- negative forces of acculturation

-the longer immigrants have lived in the US, the more likely they are to pick up the eating habits and obesity levels

Anger provocation study RESULTS

-Both chinese and euro canadians had initial spike in BP -The Chinese-Canadians systolic blood pressure returned to baseline levels more quickly than did the Euro-Canadians. -The suggests the Chinese-Canadians resolved their anger faster

Forced Acculturation of First Nations to European Society: Study of similarities and differences between societies

-For example, consider the success in adjustment of various First Nations tribes since Western colonialization began. -Three distinct tribes were assessed in terms of their cultural similarity to Western culture, and in the hardships that they faced. -The Tsimshian of the Northwest BC coast traditionally relied largely on subsistence practices (mostly fishing) that allowed them to accumulate large quantities of food and establish permanent highly stratified settlements. -The Eastern Cree from Northern Quebec were migratory, did not accumulate many resources, and had little stratification. -The Carrier, of Northeastern BC were intermediate in terms of their resource accumulation and social stratification. -Paralleling the cultural similarities with colonial culture, the Tsimshian acculturated to mainstream Canadian culture with the least acculturative stress, the Eastern Cree showed the most difficulties, and the Carrier were intermediate.

Evidence for Blending:Do the self-concepts of multicultural people look intermediate to those of monocultural people from different cultures?

-For the most part, yes. For example, the ways of thinking of Asian-Americans are in between those of Americans and Asians. -We have investigated the self-esteem of people with exposure to both Canadian and East Asian cultures.

Self-Concept

-How we perceive ourselves, and understand our identity plays a crucial role in how we think about many things. -The self-concept is implicated in: directing what information we should attend to, how we derive meaning from events, the kinds of relationships that we have, our emotions,what we are motivated to work towards -culture shapes self concept

East Asians and objective self awareness:

-If East Asians tend to habitually consider themselves from the perspective of others, they may tend to view themselves more often in a state of objective self-awareness. -As such, manipulations of objective self-awareness should have less impact on East Asians. They are habitually considering themselves in terms of how they appear to others. -objective self awareness is often manipulated by putting people in front of mirrors, where they can see themselves as the world sees them -this typically makes people more critical of themselves

Evidence of an SES gradient in health has been found in every industrialized country investigated. There is also evidence from non-industrialized countries:

-In Burkina Faso, there are three ethnic groups: the Fulani, Mossi, and Rimaibe -A major cause of death in the region is Malaria. The Mossi and Rimaibe have evolved genetic resistance over thousands of years. The Fulani arrived less than 200 years ago, and lack most of the genetic resistance to malaria. -Howeverm the Fulani have higher SES- they conquered other groups -Despite that they have less genetic resistance to malaria, the Fulani contract malaira less often than do the Mossi or the Rimaibe. Could be through ability to afford mosquito nets, multiple paths to the way SES affects health

STUDY comparing two rival universities in Vancouver and Kyoto

-In Vancouver they assessed UBC and SFU and how students evaluated UBC and SFU -in Kyoto, they assessed how Ritsumikan and Doshisha students evaluated both these schools

Socioeconomic Status (SES) and Health

-One of the strongest predictors of health within a given country is one's SES. -The higher one's SES, the longer one lives, on average. Even relatively small increments are associated with longer life outcomes.

Analytic Thinking

-There appear to be two basic systems for reasoning: analytic and holistic reasoning -Analytic thinking involves: separating objects from each other, breaking down objects to their component parts, using rules to explain and predict an object's behavior, relies on abstract thought.

CHAPTER 11 TEXTBOOK: Four elementary forms of relationships- equality matching

-balance and reciprocity -people keep track of what is exchanged and are motivated to pay back what has been exchanged in equivalent terms -e.g. exchanging christmas cards

CHAPTER 12 TEXTBOOK: orthodox vs progressivism and moral decisions

-progressivists made more decisions based on ethic of autonomy and ethic of community -orthodox made more decisions based on ethic of divinity

What can we make of the cultural variation?

- can argue in favor of Kholberg, some societies never reach the highest level due to lack of education OR maybe these stages are biased toward Western Morality.

Chapter 1: key assumption of cultural psychologists

-the mind does not operate independently of what it is thinking about (in contrast to Sweder's general psychology)

Example through arctictural space? Japan

-wall around the house, clear distinction between public/private -inside-- people co-sleep, doors made of paper, not much distinction of space within the family

Average group size people evolved in:

150 people -seen in hunter gatherer and subsistence societies today -we have the capacity to keep track of 150 people and both know eachother on first name basis

Chapter 2: what do humans cultural learning skills rest upon?

2 key capacities: -ability to consider the perspective of others -ability to communicate with language

CHAPTER 13 TEXTBOOK: how long ago did modern humans emerge?

200,000 years ago -50,000-60,000 years ago migrated out of Africa

Study: are you above average?

American Freshman Survey: nationally representative sample of entering college students 1966-2014 -N= 9 million -rate yourself on each of the following traits as compared with the average person your age: highest 10%, above average, average, below average, lowest 10% -compared boomers vs millennials--> boomers rated themselves lower constantly than millanials -at the top was drive to achieve and academic ability -bottom was artistic ability and public speaking ability

CHAPTER 1: How are humans well adapted to survive?

CULTURE--> populated many parts of the world in diverse ecologies with a broad range of subsistence systems and social arrangements -we are not very fast, no sharp teeth/claws, don't ensure survival of our species through rampant reproduction

What predicts how likely it is for a person to have an easier time acculturating to a culture?

Cultural Distance: That is how similar is their heritage culture to the host culture -A parallel phenomenon exists for learning another language -Languages can be categorized by how recently they shared a common linguistic ancestor - this indicates how similar they are in terms of grammar and morphology. -easier to learn language that is close to your heritage language--> e.g. germanic, romantic languages (both indo-european languages) -more difficult to learn non-indo euro lang like Japanese

Industrialized vs. Non-Industrialized Societies: Comparisson

Domains in which Industrialized Societies Occupy an Extreme Position: -Some Visual Illusions e.g. Mueller-Lyer Illusion -perceptions of fairness -Folkbiological reasoning--> projecting human qualities onto animals more prominent in West because we have less contact with them Egocentric spatial reasoning--> space in terms of how it relates to us "its on my right"

Entity theories of self

Entity theories of self involve the belief that abilities are largely fixed, and reflect innate features of the self.

Cultural fit and extraversion

Extraversion might predict who is more likely to move to new environments -However, extraversion does not universally predict acculturation success. What is more important is cultural fit - whether the individual's personality matches with that of the dominant host culture. -Extraverts fare well in a largely extraverted culture, such as the US, but extraverts have more problems fitting in in less extraverted cultures, such as Singapore (see Armes & Ward, 1989)

Proportion of IQ Variance Accounted for By Heritable and Environmental Factors

In wealthy families there is not as much variation in their environments -In poorer families there is often great variation: some try very hard to provide a stimulating atmosphere for their children and others cannot provide this -In high SES families: looks as if genes are largely important -In low SES families the environment looks like it plays a much larger role -Our best estimate of how much IQ is heritable is greatly influenced by the SES of the sample

Incremental theories of self

Incremental theories of self involve the belief that abilities are malleable and are capable of being changed, with efforts. -people with more interdependent selves have more incremental and less entity-based theories of self

What Happens when Ethics Collide? Autonomy or Community violation STUDY RESULTS

Percent protecting interpersonal obligation, violate the justice obligation: -in the extreme, moderate, and minor situation Indians protected interpersonal obligation at a much higher rate than Americans -Americans have more of an ethic of autonomy and Indians have more of an ethic of community

CHAPTER 14 TEXTBOOK: Latah

Southeast Asian cultures, Siberia, Ainnu of Japan, fall into transient dissociated state after some kind of startling event, such as being tickled or thinking that they have seen a snake. Unusual behavior like barking, shouting sexually charged sentiments, acting in culturally inapropriate ways, and then they have no memory of this.

CHAPTER 12 TEXTBOOK: culture war exists between those who trend toward orthodoxy and those who have an impulse toward progressivism

are committed to the idea of a transcendent authority -- authority exsited way before humans and operates independently of people -more powerful and knowledgeable than humans and revealed a moral code to humans though sacred texts (aligns with ethic of divinity) -progressive religions emphasize the importance of human agency in understanding and formulating a moral code -social circumstance change so should moral code (aligns with ethic of autonomy)

TED TALK: Daniel Kahneman: the riddle of experience vs memory

cognitive traps: -word happiness is no longer useful--> applied to too many things -contusion between experience and memory (happy in life and being happy with life) -distort importance of events -two selves: experiencing self (living in the present) and remembering self (maintains story of life) -remembering self is a story teller-- our memory tells us stories. Critical part of a story is how it ends--> ending can cloud our memory. -experiencing self is the here and now -time is the critical variable that distinguishes remembering self vs experiencing self

Chapter 7: Identity Denial

individual's cultural identity is called into questions because he or she doesnt seem to match the prototype of the culture

Chapter 3: Dynamic social impact theory

individuals come to influence eachother and they do so primarily in terms of how often the individuals interact, which ultimately leads to clusters of like-minded people who are separated by geography

CHAPTER 9 TEXTBOOK: Whorfian hypothesis=

linguistic relativity hypothesis

Chapter 3: transmitted culture and example of Dinka and Nuer

people come to learn about a particular cultural practice through social learning or by modeling others near them -Dinka: rely on meat, tribal memberships based on who lives next to who in wet season, small flexible payments -Nuer: larger herds of cattle, rely on milk, kinship based on male line, larger and more military powerful, large inflexible dowry payments

CHAPTER 14 TEXTBOOK: Malgri

syndrome of territorial anxiety that has been identified among various Australian Aboriginal groups. When afflicted individuals enter the sea or a new terriroty without engaging in the appropriate ceremonial procedures, they belueve that they are invaded by a totemic spirt that makes them physically sick, tired, and drowsy

Chapter 7: bicultrual identity integration

the extent to which people see their cultural identities as compatible or in opposition to eachother

Chapter 7: culture shock

the feeling of being anxious, helpless, irritable, and in general, homesick that one experience upon moving to a new culture -there can also be reverse culture shock upon returning to host culture--> puzzling why you don't quite feel at home anymore and feel alienated from those people around you

"The spread of contagion"

the more paths that connect you with other people in your network the more susceptible you are to what flows within it

Control: Building a Stone Wall as an anaolgy

-one way is to find stones of similar size, cement them into the wall as they are (integrity of stone is preserved and shape of wall is compromised)--> relate to society: preserve people's individual unqiueness -another way is to carve stones so that they fit into the wall (integrity of wall is preserved, have to adjust stones to fit in)--> relate to society: change people's unqiqeness to fit into society

Phoneme perception and the early window & practical applications

-Some aspects of language learning (phoneme perception) start to be acquired in a very early window. -Some other aspects of language learning, in particular, accent, are learned poorly after puberty. -Militaries have made use of this by asking suspicious people to pronounce shibboleths--> can recognize if the person is native speaker or not if they use it

Where are most of the murders happening in US South?

The murder rate is higher in the areas where herding is more commonly practiced than it is in the areas where farming is practiced

Another example of clustering

amount of classic rock albums sold in different parts of the US -also terms for pop: soda, coke

Baumrind's Tripartite Parenting Styles: Authoritarian

High demands on children, strict rules, little open dialogue between parents and children, low levels of warmth or responsiveness to child's protests

Baumrind's Tripartite Parenting Styles: Permissive

High involvement with children, much warmth and responsiveness, but few limits and controls on behaviors

Social learning in humans

Humans are distinctive in that they engage in so much social learning. Being able to learn skills from observing others is a key reason behind the evolution of our big brains

Level 3: Postconventional Moral Reasoning

Morality is based on internalized standards of abstract ethical principles regarding justice and individual rights -If something violates justice and individual rights it is immoral even if its written into law

cultures evolving

-Cultures are never static and are always changing -cultures evolve when new ideas spread -social change is happening much more rapidly in current times -e.g. historically, interracial marriage took a very long time, so did prohibition, womens suffrage -more recently abortion laws, same sex marriage and marajuana use have happened more rapidly

Acquiescence Biases: response bias

-People differ in the degree to which they agree with statements. Some people tend to agree with most statements, whereas other people tend to disagree with most statements, regardless of the content. -Cultures differ slightly in this tendency which makes it problematic to compare cultures on scales.

Examples of sample items on study manipulating reference groups (canadian/japanese study)

-Sample Item - Standard Format: "I have respect for the authority figures with whom I interact." -Sample Item - Cross-Cultural Format: (for Canadians) "Compared to most Japanese I know, I think I have respect for the authority figures with whom I interact."

Psychologists and their samples: Stats

-Top psychology journals - 68% of participants are from the US, and 96% are from Western industrialized countries. -70% are undergrad students

Geography plays an important role in the formation of culture: e.g. Interdependence, Holism, and Rice in China--> cultures persist

-Two key related ways of thinking are interdependent selves and holistic reasoning. -could the agricultural practice influenc people's ways of thinking? -Rice cultivation requires much more coordination between families than wheat cultivation. -Would rice cultivating areas show more ways of thinking that reflect their greater orientation to others? -Paddy farming requires some central control, and coordination with other families to manage water supplies. -Wheat farming requires very little interaction with neighbors -the more rice that was cultivated, the higher were people's holism rates -A similar pattern was found for measures of interdependent selves -Also, divorce rates were much higher (= less interdependence) where wheat was grown

Comparisons of Analytic vs. Holistic Judgments

-Westerners emphasize analytic thinking at the expense of holistic thinking more than any other group. -East Asians tend to prefer holistic thinking over analytic thinking

Defensive Responses to Thoughts of Death- Terror Management Theory

-When people are reminded of their own death they show a variety of defensive responses. -Specifically, they become more likely to endorse supernatural beliefs, they become more patriotic, they are more eager to protect the status quo, and they dislike outgroup members more. -This is TMT, try to make ourselves feel more immortal by aligning ourselves with our cultures which are immortal

Some Issues to Consider when Comparing Cultures with Surveys

-ensure that you have a good translation of all materials. back translation can be useful--> translate to other language and then get seperate translator to translate back to english -if you survey bilingual people, the language they are thinking in can effect their responses -Be aware of response biases (habitual way of responding independent of the content of the item e.g. moderacy/extremacy bias, aquiescence bias) -when conducting survey research its a good idea to have an investigator who is bilingual in both languages

Problems with using people's second language in experiment

-even in the same language you can have varying levels of proficiency -people have different thoughts when speaking different languages -people who have learned a second language in a different country probably differ from the rest of the native populations

Analyses of word frequencies in American books: indicative of American culture

-more words: individual, self, unique, child, choose, get -less word: obedience, authority, belong, pray, obliged, give

Researchers and universality

-often assume findings are universal, but really they represent a WEIRD sample and for the most part do not extend to people in other parts of the world -rarely discuss the findings in terms of their samples -It is not only a problem that researchers generalize from a narrow sample. The standard database is not representative, and is often a distinct outlier in the distribution of findings.

Results of Study investiagating ideas eliciting strong emotional reactions

-with very strong emotions e.g. disgust of swallowing part of a rat people were more likely to tell others -mild emotion= less likely to tell others

Extractive vs. Non-Extractive Foraging Methods and neocortex size correlation

No significant correlation between extractive method and neocortex size--> doesnt support thoery

Physical task: Human children vs chimps and oranguatnags

bring a toy toward them with a stick with same success (action was not modeled) -they have relatively similar responses child as compared to chimp

Mueller-Lyer Illusion

we see this illusion in the West because of carpentered corners that give us cues of depth. They are right angles that tell us proximity cues. In places where carpentered corners dont exist the lines look equal -The industrialized, particularly the American, samples are the outliers. -This effect is not an illusion for those samples on the left of the graph (mostly African)

Odds of a randomly chosen American undergrad vs. a randomly chosen non-Westerner participating in a psychology study?

4000+ : 1

Result of Study by Nornezayan et al 2006 about counterintuitive findings

Three minutes after reading the items, participants were asked to recall them -more intuitive word pairs = remembered the best after 3 min -BUT for ideas to spread they must be lasting -The researchers called back 1 week later, best recall=minimally counter-intuitive (few counter-intuitive, mostly intuitive)

"The spread of contagion" and the obesity epidemic

your friends can make you fat -66% of Americans are overweight or obese -from 1990- 2000 the percentage of obese people in the US increased from 21% to 33% -people who are obese cluster together, non obese cluster together, indicating people are influencing the weight of their close relationships

Independent View of Self

-Identity is experienced as largely independent from others. -Important aspects of identity are personal characteristics. -Identity remains largely constant across roles and situations. -Considerable fluidity between ingroups and outgroups.

ALTRUISTIC PUNISHMENT outside of WEIRD societies

-there is not a great deal of variability across societies for altruistic punishment

Chapter 2: Theory of mind

-when humans learn from others they can take on their perspective --> theory of mind means that people understand that others have minds that are different from their own and thus people have perspectives and intentions that are different from their own

CHAPTER 11 TEXTBOOK: Western assumptions about love

1) you will only love someone if you chose them yourself (but arranged marriages can grow love) 2) it is ultiimately an individualistic choice (only you know you) Other cultures view marriage as the intersection between two families. 3) marriage that does not have love at the foundation is bound to be miserable (in some cultures arranged marriages are perceived to be more successful than love marriages)

Baumrind's Tripartite Parenting Styles: Authoritative

Child-centered approach, high expectations for children's maturity, try to understand child's feelings, encourage children to be independent while maintaining limits on behaviors.

Holistic Thinking

Holistic thinking involves: an orientation to the entire scene, attending to the relations among objects, predicting an object's behavior on the basis of those relationships, relies on associative thought -much research finds that these two very fundamental ways of thinking differ across cultures

What is the relation between talking and our private thoughts? Example of this in facial recognition

Studies find that when people verbally describe a face that this later impairs their recognition of the face, apparently because one's verbal descriptions do not capture the whole of the face --> verbal overshadowing -better at recognizing a face if you haven't described it (this is holistic)

Chapter 6: NEO-PI-R

The revised neuroticism, extraversion, and openess personality inventory -it has shown that the same 5 personality factors are evident in many cultures -but it was developed through the english language -if personality tests developed in host culture then you see a change e.g. in chinese they have a measure of interpersonal relatedness and no openess to experience

Example of pluralistic ignorance study on campus

asked people about their thoughts on binge drinking on campus: -privately, people admitted to the researcher that they thought the binge drinking was excessive -when the researcher asked them about other people's attitudes towards binge drinking they assumed other people were comfortable with it -pluralistic ignorance!

Battle of the speices: Japanese Sumo Wrestler vs female orangutan

orangutan won the tug of war (stronger than people)

CHAPTER 10 TEXTBOOK: amae

pleasant feelings that one experiences when allowed to emphasize his or her dependence on another (Japanese)

CHAPTER 12 TEXTBOOK: Gemeinschaft

"community" in German. Characteristic of smaller folk groupsand within these groups interpersonal relationships are especially important -obligations of social relationships take on the weight of full moral obligations

Do cultural differences in self-enhancement generalize to private thoughts? STUDY

- Canadian and Japanese first completed 20 IQ test items on a computer. -They were told that the second part of the study investigated their ability to make decisions with limited information. -The decision they were to make is whether their performance across all 20 IQ items is better or worse than that of the average student from their school. -Half were assigned to receive scores better than the average student, and half were assigned to receive worse scores. -Participants viewed their performance alongside that of the average student for each of the individual IQ items, one item at a time. -They were asked to make a decision about their overall performance (across all 20 items) as soon as a pattern was evident to them.

Self-admiration phrases: 1890-2010

-"Love yourself," "I am special," and "just be yourself" on the rise

Generalizability of Authoritative parenting success?

-"Strict" parenting is common in many non-Western cultures. But these parenting styles seem different from "authoritarian" parenting. -In some non-Western cultures, infants and toddlers are indulged until they start school, when parents become much stricter. -Warmth and responsiveness by parents are communicated very differently across cultures. -"Authoritarian" parenting misses the role of "training" (in Chinese, chiao-shun - 教訓), which is central to many culture's parenting ideals. It is an effort provide children with explicit examples of proper behavior ).

CHAPTER 12 TEXTBOOK: Gesellschaft

-"association" or "society" in German -characteristic of modern Western society -treat relationships as imaginary, instrumental, and a means to an end -focus on autonomous individuals who are bound to one another by social convention -formalized rules necessary to keep people in line because they dont have strong obligations towards eachother

Preschool in three cultures movie:

-"preschool in three cultures method"--> Japan, China, US -select preschool in each country with good reputation, not atypical, where students/staff enthusiastic about participating -show footage to teacher and ask them to explain thinking behind behavior -conduct focus groups about the videos -each show an example of typical days in each country -Chinese preschool: in Kuming, China. The school nurse checks each child's health upon arrival, provide meals to the children throughout the day, 35 children for 1 teacher, group exercises are important for achieving sense of collectivity, some chinese children are being neglected by their parents, there is a larger focus on play learning and active learning now in China -Japanese preschool: Kyoto Japan, children take shoes off before entering building, 17 children per one teacher (lower than average- due to falling birth rate), children do origami, then go swimming (male teacher drying off children after swim critisized by American teachers), when the children get in fights the japanese teacher didn't get involved (critisized by Chinese and American teachers), hot lunch provided at school, older children at the school get to assist with toddlers -American preschool: Honolulu, Hawaii. supports language development by saying use your words and asking many questions, 20 children and 2 teachers (low student teacher ratio important quality indicator), give children choice--> assumed to be more pleasurable, fosters motivation, tied up with democracy, staff intervenes immediately when children fight -universals in preschool: naptime, lunch time

CHAPTER 8 TEXTBOOK: Japanese vs Americans and control strategies

--Americans better able to recall the situations in which they had influenced other than those in which they had adjusted to others and Japanese remembered the opposite -both agreed that primary control led to more feelings of power

CHAPTER 8 TEXTBOOK: Factors contributing to cultural differences in self enhancement

--Euro American parents tell stories of past successes of their child -Taiwannese parents tell stories about past transgressions of the child -Euro Americans see self esteem as very important for rasiing a child, Taiwanese parents say that it can lead to frustration when things aren't working right -protestant reformation: start of self enhancement, held belief of predestination: before your born its already determined if you will be one of the elect (live eternally in heaven vs in hell)

CHAPTER 8 TEXTBOOK: study on Euro Americans vs Mexican Americans and self enhancement in pre-school and elementary children

--shown photos of 8 other children and themselves -then asked to chose the photos of the children who posessed a number of positive characteristics e.g. smart, nice -overall, all children viewed themselves quite positively and usually included own picture. -Eruo Americans did so at rate of 92% for their own picture and Mexican Americans chose their photo for 82% of positive characteristics

-Joe Henrich and colleagues wanted to test these claims by studying economic games in more than a dozen small-scale societies (results are largely similar for both UG and DG, so I only discuss DG here).

-11 different societies--> herders, subsistence farmers, foragers -Basic ground rules of experiments: All money in games is real, The stake is one-day's wage. Games are always one-shot and completely anonymous. Procedures are identical everywhere and have been carefully translated. There are many standardized pre-game tests to ensure rules are understood. -RESULTS: Americans show strong desire for fairness but others, especially the Hadza and Tsimane act rationally and give very small amounts of money.

Comparison of Infant and Toddler Sleep

-A large-scale sleeping survey of the parents of 29,000 infants and toddlers in 17 countries was conducted using standardized methods -Parents reported on several different questions regarding sleep practices. -Asian toddlers slept the least (2 hours less on avergae than those of Euro descent) Japan anchors the low end and New Zealand is at the high end. -The authors noted that the causes of these differences remain entirely unknown. -Perhaps there are innate differences. -A limitation is that this study is based on parental report. This might measure perceived cultural norms (ideals) rather than actual behaviors

taijin kyoufushou (TKS): related culture bound syndrome to social anxiety

-A related culture-bound syndrome from East Asia is taijin kyoufushou (TKS), which translates to the fear of confronting others. -similar to social anxiety, this fear is elictied by social situations -However, the primary concerns are with physical symptoms, many imaginary, such as body odor, blushing, sweating, and a penetrating gaze. -People with severe TKS are afraid of the discomfort that others will feel because of their physical symptoms - it has been referred to as the "altruistic phobia." -People are often most fearful around acquaintances, rather than around strangers.

Does Language Influence Thought? Whorfian hypothesis

-A strong version of the Whorfian hypothesis is that language determines thought. Without access to the right words people are unable to have certain kinds of thoughts. -The strong version of this hypothesis has been largely rejected. -A weaker version of the hypothesis is that language influences thought. Having access to certain words influences the kinds of thoughts that one has. -There is a lively controversy regarding the weaker version of the hypothesis. -This is highly relevant to cross-cultural research as one way that cultures differ is in their languages and the words that are available to them.

Seeing abilities as malleable or fixed

-Abilities are perceived very differently when they are seen as malleable vs. fixed. -cultures differ in whether they think of their self as a changing process vs a largely set product

What impact did protestant ideas have on moral duty?

-According to Weber, these ideas made it a moral duty to work to achieve. -people needed to find their calling and devote their lives to it -Because no one knew whether they were among the "elect," they needed to look for clues. One was that God would only reward the elect. -It was perceived as sinful to enjoy the fruits of one's labor, so one should reinvest to further pursue their calling. This accumulation of capital laid the groundwork for capitalism.

Negative forces of acculturation

-Adapting to a new culture does not only bring positive outcomes. -Acculturation can be negative when immigrants pick up the less desirable characteristics of a culture. -Many immigrants live in the poorest neighborhoods. The crime rate and the drop-out rate in these neighborhoods can be quite high. -Ironically, those immigrants who are especially adept at fitting in with their new surroundings, are more likely to drop out of school and engage in criminal activities.

ANTI SOCIAL PUNISHMENT outside the West

-Although altruistic punishment was universal, anti-social punishment was strong in many societies. -In some societies, cooperation was not enhanced by allowing punishment. -Anti-social punishment appeared to be driven by revenge and a desire not to let others get ahead. Anti-social punishment is the sanctioning of people who behave prosocially -Acting against own interests. -Punishment only seems to promote cooperation in societies with norms for civic cooperation and trust. -Anti-social punishment may be adaptive where the rule of law is insufficient. -Civic virtue is correlated with happiness where civic cooperation is high; it's not correlated with happiness where civic cooperation is low. -Russian audiences in "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" often provide the contestants with the wrong answers.

Display rules and emotion

-Although the basic emotional expressions are universally recognized, there is also some important cultural variation. -Cultures vary in terms of "display rules" of emotional expressions. -They vary in the intensity of their expressions, as well as in "ritualized displays" - i.e., expressions not made universally, in India people show embaressment by biting their tongue

Newspaper References to Individuals and Firms (individual vs group agency)

-American newspapers referred more to the individuals than to their companies. -Japanese newspapers made more references to the companies than to the individuals. -Groups are a key source of agency in Japan, whereas Americans consider agency more in individuals.

Results of Study of objective self awareness: Mirror study

-Americans had larger self-discrepancies (i.e., are more self-critical) when in front of a mirror than when not. -Japanese were unaffected by the mirror (as if they have a mirror inside their head) -mirror reduces cultural disparity in self-critisicm -When Americans were in front of a mirror they seemed to think of themselves in ways more similar to that of Japanese.

CHAPTER 10 TEXTBOOK: embarassement Americans vs Indians

-Americans turn head away, look down and to the side, smile with pressed lips and touch their face -Indians bite their tongues -these are ritiualized displays (voluntarily produced facial expressions)

Study examining primary and secondary control in aerobics classes: scheduling results of the experiment

-Americans were more willing to choose classes on times that were convenient for them than were Japanese. -Japanese were more willing to choose classes based on the level that the class was. -Americans attended more to finding classes that were convenient for them, whereas Japanese attended more to ensuring that they were a good fit for the class.

Residential Mobility and Identity STUDY

-Americans who have never moved view group membership to be almost as important as personality traits for their identity. -Those who move value personality traits more, and group memberships less

Example Study: Cushion hypothesis and financial risk seeking Results

-Americans who received the interdependent prime became more financial risk-seeking. -social risk seeking was more evident among those who were primed with independence -These findings parallel the cultural differences and suggest that the cultures differ in their risk-seeking because of differences in inter/independence.

Photo study with east Asians and Americans

-Americans zoomed right in to take a portrait photo of the person -East Asians situated the person in the context (less zoom)

3 Examples of the tyranny of the beautiful

-Among Canadian government election candidates, physically attractive candidates received three times as many votes as unattractive ones. -People with MBAs were rated on a 5 point scale in terms of attractiveness. Each unit of attractiveness was associated with an additional $2600/yr salary for men, and $2150/yr for women. -attractive defendants in misdemeanor cases are assigned less than half of the bail amounts as unattractive defendants -often explained with halo effect: "good face=good person"

Cultural Fit and Personality in humans and lizards

-An individual's personality is also predictive of their motivations to migrate elsewhere and in their acculturative success -extraversion should foster acculturative success, because extraverts communicate more, and are thus socialized more quickly to new cultural norms -Extraverted Finns from rural Finland are more likely to move to urban parts of Finland, than are less extraverted rural Finns. Apparently, people with a preference for social engagement enjoy the diverse social opportunities in urban regions -Curiously, the same is true with lizards. Lizards with high "social tolerance" are more likely to move to densely populated patches than those low in social tolerance

Understanding Other People's Behaviors

-Analytic thinkers focusing on objects' component parts, whereas holistic thinkers consider objects' relations with the context. -The same distinction can be applied to how we understand people. -Explaining people's behaviors by attending to their personal characteristics is known as a dispositional attribution. -Explaining people's behaviors by attending to contextual variables is kn own as a situation attribution

Culture-Bound Syndromes: Anorexia/Bulimia Nervosa

-Anorexia - a person refuses to maintain a normal body weight because of a preoccupation with their body. -Bulimia - one uncontrollably binge eats and then takes inappropriate measures to prevent weight gain. -Builimia is a culture-bound syndrome as it is absent in most cultures of the world -Anorexia is more complicated. Rates of anorexia have increased this century, and some cultures show much less evidence of it. -However, there are reports of self-starvation in numerous cultural contexts, but for reasons other than bodily preoccupations (not doing it to reach idealized body type). Anorexia may be an existential universal. It is present everywhere but the frequency varies considerably across cultures. Doesn't meet requirements for functional unviersal bc in some contexts self starvation (motivation) is associated with different ends (avoiding weight gain vs spirituality)

Bilateral Symmetry and attraction

-Another marker of health is bilateral symmetry. -When an organism develops under ideal conditions it's right and left sides will be symmetrical. -Genetic mutations, pathogens, or stressors in the womb can lead to asymmetrical development. -On average, asymmetrical faces are viewed as less attractive -This is especially so in hunting-gathering societies where rates of infant mortality are higher. -very sensitive to this even if not visible

Importance of action and choice: Indians vs Americans

-Another study had Americans and Indians describe the most recent time they engaged in some actions (e.g., purchasing a computer). -They indicated whether they thought the action was a choice, and how important the action was to them. -The more important the action, the more likely Americans were to view it as a choice -For Indians, the more important the action, the less they were likely to view it as a choice (sought others input)

Egocentric space terms in the West

-Another way that languages vary is that some have egocentric spatial terms, such as right, left, in front of. -Many languages lack terms for these. People describe location in terms of cardinal directions (e.g., north, east,...). -What will people do when asked to recreate a scene when they change the direction that they are facing? -In one study, Dutch speaking and Guugu Ymithirr speaking participants were shown some objects. They then went to a different room and were asked to recreate the scene. -In one condition they faced the same cardinal direction in the second room. In the other condition they faced a different direction in the second room. The DV was how they arranged the objects in the second room. -Original Stimulus - All participants facing North -In the second room, participants were facing South: Dutch replicate what they did in first trial, but the GY organize differetly to account for cardinal direction

Evidence for Culture of Honor Account: Archival evidence of White, non-hispanic males and murder rates. Why does this disprove temperature accusations?

-Archival evidence: Evidence that exists in the population at large -Explored how various kinds of indices of violence varied across regions of the US -The South doesn't differ from the North in just any kind of violence. The difference is most pronounced for argument-related murders, where one's honor is at stake (not much difference btwn north and south in felony-related murders). -The regional differences are more pronounced in less urban areas. In urban areas there is less influence from traditional herding cultures. -This data challenges a temperature account of the regional differences, as both the urban and rural areas should have similar climates.

Are Arranged Marriages Satisfying?

-Arranged marriages may be puzzling to Westerners, but they are often quite successful. -Most arranged marriages end up becoming loving relationships, even if they start out without love. -Studies find that arranged marriages are at least as happy as love marriages (e.g., Turkish, Israeli, Indian, Chinese, and Japanese - although not by women in China and Japan).

Acquired Physical Variation: Obesity and Diet SUPPORT FOR CULTURAL PHENOMENON (France vs US and food attitudes)

-Aside from portion sizes, French have different attitudes towards food compared with Americans. -French savor their food more, and take more time eating it. It takes them 50% longer to finish a McDonald's meal. -A far smaller proportion of French food products have been altered to make them healthier, such as being low salt, low fat, or sugar-free. -Americans are more likely to associate food with fat (negative food attitudes) -People from France, Belgium, Japan, and the US completed several questions about their attitudes towards various food products -Their attitudes are summarized with Chernoff figures, where the size of each feature of the face is linked to people's responses. Positive attitudes towards food are associated with large and happy features (France= happiest, then Belgium, Japan, US and men constantly have more positive attitudes than men) -People were asked what was the best metaphor for the human body: the French chose a tree, whereas the Americans chose a car (food is fuel)

Assimilation vs separation

-Assimilation and separation are intermediate in frequency (about same level) -Assimilation has more positive outcomes than separation. Separation bears the cost of rejecting the host culture and all the protective features that it offers, and one gets further separated from the younger generations.

Work in East Asia on parental control and child outcomes:

-Better academic achievement, more perceived parental warmth and acceptance, and increased family cohesion are associated with strong parental control in East Asia. -Euro-Americans viewed pressure from mothers to be negative and a sign that they weren't being supported. Asian-Americans viewed such pressure as a sign of support.

Structure of the Self: Study of TST

-Comparison of American college students vs. various groups in Kenya. -Personal Characteristics: Personality traits, attitdues and opinion (inner psychological world) -Roles and memberships: Social identity like UBC prof, father, mother -American undergrads: MOST personal characteristics- few roles and memberships -Nairobi Undegrads: Less of an efect than American but still primarily personal, less roles -workers in Nairaobi: Primarily roles and memberships, few personal characteristics -Masia and Samburu: MOSTLY ALL roles and memberships

Study by Keller (2007): interaction between 3 m.o infants and parents

-Contrasted parenting interactions with 3-month-old infants in five cultural contexts: urban middle-class Germans, urban middle-class Greeks, urban lower-class Costa Ricans, rural Indian Gujarati, and rural Cameroonian Nso -Researchers made 20 unannounced visits with mothers and infants over a one week period and videotaped them for 15 minute intervals. Within these 15 minute intervals, detailed behaviors were coded for interspersed 10-second intervals.

Chapter 4: Cultural Level Measures

-Country music more popular among working class people and rock music more popular among upper-middle class Americans -working class messages: emphasized resilience -upper middle class messages: carving ones own path --> Coders determined these messages by going through the songs

Does Dwelling on Negative Feelings Produce Negative Emotions?

-Cultures vary to the extent that people strive to enhance positive feelings and avoid negative feelings. -For North Americans, the more positive feelings they experience the less depression they report. For East Asians the amount of positive feelings and risk of depression is uncorrelated. -russians are famous for apparently wanting to wallow in their despair

Culture and happiness

-Curiously, national differences in happiness are mirrored by ethnic differences in happiness within the US -The correlation of the rank order of happiness among ethic groups in the US is r =.62 with the rank order of happiness among countries. -This suggests that there exist cultural attitudes towards happiness that vary, and persist across generations

Cultural variation in Schizophrenia

-Despite its biological basis, and similar incidence rates across cultures, there is noteworthy cultural variation. -Subtypes of schizophrenia vary substantially. The most common subtype among Westerners is paranoid schizophrenia with rates as high as 75% of schizophrenics in the UK, but only 15% in India. -In contrast, catatonic schizophrenia accounts for only 1-3% of schizophrenics in the UK, but 20% in India. -Patients in less-developed societies have a far greater rate of recovery than in more industrialized societies. -This pattern is opposite to that for other physical and mental pathologies. -The cause of this cultural difference remains unknown. It may be that schizophrenics are more likely to remain members of a community in less-developed societies, rather than becoming homeless in industrial societies (more interdependence)

Cultural factors have influenced the genome (selected for): detoxification of alcohol

-Different regions of the world differ in the prevalence of variants of genes associated with an enzyme that detoxifies alcohol. -Asians are less likely than Europeans to have this variant, and they are more likely to turn red when drinking - the so-called "Asian flush." -This may have emerged because Europeans drank alcohol to avoid contaminated water, whereas Asians boiled water to make tea.

Disgust and Morality

-Disgust is a common emotional response to moral transgressions. -People show some facial muscle movements associated with disgust when they smell something unpleasant, see photographs of contamination, or witness unfair treatment -Much research finds that when people feel disgusted, they are more likely to interpret dubious behavior as morally problematic.

This leads to the Whorfian question, if people don't have a word for green do they still see green the same way?

-Earlier research was conducted with the Dugum Dani who only have 2 color terms (e.g., Rosch Heider, 1972). The studies showed that the Dani could better learn new color terms that were closer to the prototypes of English color labels (e.g. Red over fushia), than they could learn new color terms that were further from the English prototypes. -This research was enormously influential in arguing that language is independent of thought. -However, numerous researchers called attention to various technical problems with these studies. Recently, new research has been exploring whether color terms affect perception of colors.

CHAPTER 9 TEXTBOOK: horizons in east Asian versus western paintings

-East Asians 15% higher on average -in portraits western faces 3x as large -even in drawings by college students East Asians include 75% more contextual objects than Americans, busier scenes, higher horizons

CHAPTER 9 TEXTBOOK: fMRI study and attention at the neural level

-East Asians and Americans were shown pictures of individual objects (elephants), empty background scenes (savannah), and embedded scenes (elephant in savannah). Americans showed more activation in object processing regions compared with East Asians and these effects are more pronounced in elderly individuals

Study: completion of the TST by Americans/Japanese in different situation- explanation of data

-East Asians are consistent in a different way than are Westerners. They are not unpredictable. -East Asians show much consistency across time within each kind of relationsip -That is, although East Asians may feel differently about themselves when they're with their family than when they're with their friends, they are quite consistent across time within each of these relationships. The family self remains constant, and the friend self remains constant (see English & Chen, 2007).

Chapter 5: Case study of east asians and math education

-East Asians compared to Americans on math ability -researchers administered same math exam to children in Japan, China, Taiwan, and the US for first and fifth grade -trends: far greater spread between schools in the US in terms of math ability -greater similarity in Asian schools -East Asians perform much better than Americans -These differences grow over time -FACTORS TO CONSIDER: asians had more teaching days with more of a lecturing style and more homework, asian parents more likely to provide child with a desk, American mothers had lower expectations, numbers harder to learn in English

Why are East Asians Self-Critical?

-East Asians show more concern for maintaining face -Face is the amount of social value others give you if you live up to the standards associated with your position. -Face is more easily lost than it is gained, so it is crucial to attend to potential shortcomings. -Self-criticism allows for self-improvement by directing attention to those areas where there is the most room for improvement.

Center target facial expression: East Asians vs Westerners

-East Asians' judgments of the centre target's facial expression are more influenced by the expressions of the surrounding others. -Judging emotional expressions is more of a social event for East Asians.

East Asians Self-Enhance Less than North Americans: STUDY

-Example Study - Students at Japanese and American university clubs were asked to evaluate themselves and four clubmates. -We compared how positively people evaluated themselves compared with how positively their four clubmates evaluated them. -Self-evaluations that were more positive than evaluations by one's peers were evidence for self-enhancement. -Self-evaluations that were more negative than evaluations by one's peers were evidence for self-criticism.

Example Study: Cushion hypothesis and financial risk seeking

-Example study - In most domains, Westerners appear more risk-seeking than East Asians, however, in the domain of financial risk-seeking, East Asians seek more risk than Westerners. -This is argued to be due to East Asians having a bigger support network to turn to if they encounter financial difficulties - the "Cushion Hypothesis." -This study contrasted Americans who were primed with ideas associated with independence or interdependence, and then their tolerance for financial and social risk-seeking was assessed. -American participants completed two different kinds of risk-seeking (Mandel, 2003). -The financial risk-seeking items assessed how much people wished to buy a lottery ticket, and the social risk-seeking items assessed to engage in potentially embarrassing behaviors.

Study examining primary and secondary control in aerobics classes

-Example study - Morling (2000) studied aerobics classes in the US and Japan. -People completed a questionnaire about why they chose the class, and what they do when the instructor initiates a difficult move.

Protestant Vs Non-protestant STUDY: Male Foot-Tapping

-Experiment by Sanchez-Burks (2002). Had Protestant and non-Protestant students take part in a task. -For half the participants, the task was in a serious work situation. For the other half, the task was presented as a fun task. -Throughout the interaction with a confederate, the confederate shook his foot. -The dependent variable was whether the participant would also shake their feet to mimic the confederate. -Unconscious mimicry is a marker of one's motivation to get close with a person -People may be less likely to attend to relationships when they are working, especially if they're Protestant for whom work is a serious duty.

Why are experiments powerful?

-Experiments are powerful because they shift the comparison away from comparing means between two cultural groups, to comparing means between two conditions within each culture. -Because the focus is now on comparing two experimental groups within a culture, then all of the culture's various response biases and reference groups are held constant. You are back to comparing apples with apples again.

When people have different theories of the nature of abilities, they respond differently to feedback about their abilities: Japanese vs American STUDY AMERICAN RESULTS

-For American participants, they persisted as long when they received entity instructions as when they received no instructions. This suggests that they the entity instructions conveyed no new information to them. Didn't persist much in either of these cases. -In contrast, the incremental instructions affected their behavior and made them persist more.

Relational mobility and the number of times people have moved

-For Americans who have never moved, their identity is wrapped up in both their personality traits and the groups to which they belong. -For Americans who move more frequently, their personality is known by people in the new community, but some of their group memberships might not be.

Field study evidence: culture of honor, Tone of letter from potential employer

-For those companies receiving the control letter, there were no regional differences in terms of how warm the response from the employer was. -In contrast, for those companies receiving the honor letter, Southern employers were significantly warmer in their response compared with Northern employers.

Ghanians vs Americans and Enemies

-Ghanaians also report having more enemies than Americans (71% vs. 26%). -Many Westerners say they don't have enemies because they avoid people that they don't really like, so enemyships don't develop. -This view seems naive to many Ghanaians, as they view enemyships as a natural state of life. -When Westerners acknowledge having enemyships they most often identify outgroup members. -For Ghanians, enemyships are most often identified as ingroup members

Attending to public self-information STUDY RESULTS

-Hong Kong participants viewed themselves more positively if someone had seen their high score than if someone had seen their low score. -American participants' evaluations were not affected by knowing that someone else had seen their scores. -Hong Kong self-evaluations are influenced by what information is known by others.

The Price of Different Moral Violations

-How much would you need to be paid to... -Stick a pin into the palm of a child you don't know (no ethic of autonomy, not worried about causing harm/ violating rights) -Say something bad about your country while calling in, anonymously, to a talk-radio show in a foreign country (no ethic of community, being disloyal) -Attend a performance art piece in which the actors act like animals for 30 minutes, including crawling around naked and urinating on stage (no ethic of divinity)

Shape Study: Euro Americans and East Asians (measure of conformity)

-How would East Asians and Euro-Americans respond to alternatives that were either in the majority or the minority? -In one case participants had to rate which shape they viewed as more attractive (square vs diamond). -East Asian participants tended to rate the common shape as more desirable (e.g. a bunch of squares and one diamond), whereas the Euro-Americans rated the uncommon shape as more desirable.

Harmful discrimination and stereotype threat

-Immigrants and their descendants are often subject to harmful discrimination. -Some of the effects of discrimination are direct. People might not get hired, banks might not lend money, and they might be the victim of harassment and violence. -Other harmful effects of discrimination are more indirect. People may internalize stereotypes, which shape their expectations, and ultimately come to act in ways consistent with those stereotypes. -stereotype threat is the fear that one might confirm a negative stereotype about one's group

France versus the US and perceptions of health

-In France, the metaphor of the body is the "terrain,"which emphasizes a sense of balance. -French doctors prescribe more long rests and spa visits. -Dirt and germs are seen as something that can strengthen one's terrain, and as a consequence, there is relatively less emphasis placed on daily bathing. Trreatment is often tonics and vitamins for the immune system or spa visits to rejuvenate the terrain. Hospital stays 2x longer than American. -In the US, the metaphor of the body is a machine. American doctors are far more likely to treat the body with surgery, to fix malfunctioning parts. -Also, American doctors view germs to be a key threat to health, and they prescribe more antibiotics than anywhere else.

What Happens when Moral Worlds Collide? Bride-Capture among the Hmong in the USA

-In a California case, a member of the large Hmong Laotian refugee community was charged with rape and kidnapping by the parents of a young woman from the same community after he attempted to marry her through the practice of zij poj niam, or bride capture. The defendant Kong Moua claimed that according to this custom, after an initial flirtation that is considered mutual, the would-be husband should carry the woman off to his parents' home, where he is expected to overcome her protests by having intercourse and thus consummate his marriage. -Kong Moua stated that he picked up the young woman at the university where she worked, drove her to his parents' home, engaged in sexual intercourse over her protests, and then claimed to have effectuated their marriage. He was surprised by his arrest.

Studying culture of honor with experimental method: behavior index

-In a second study, after participants had been insulted they were instructed to go to another lab room. On the way, they encountered another confederate who was in a direct collision course with them. -The dependent measure was the point at which participants yielded to the oncoming confederate. -In the absence of the insult, Southerners yielded way at a greater distance than Northerners. -The Northerners were relatively unaffected by the insult -southerners responded to the insult by challenging the second confederate and getting much closer

Gender Equality and the Plough

-In agricultural societies where the plough is not used, women are heavily involved in food production -The plough requires much physical strength and it is dangerous to use around children. -The earlier a region historically adopted the plough (both between and within countries), the lower is the female labor force participation in that region today (see Alesina, Giuliano, & Nunn, 2011).

Cross cultural differences in support

-In contrast, East Asians depend on implicit social support, and cope better when they reflect upon their close relationships. -Euro-Americans show more health benefits when they have much social support. Asian-Americans don't show health benefits of social support. -East Asians and Russians offer more problem-focused support than emotion-focused support, however, North Americans typically offer more emotion-focused support.

Dictator Game

-In contrast, the DG is identical to the UG except that the receivers are not given the opportunity to reject the proposer's offers. They must accept what they are given. -It would be maximally rational if proposers would give the receivers 0. -However, in studies conducted in the US, people almost never behave in the "rational" way predicted by economists. -Instead, they behave in ways guided by internalized norms of fairness.

Sleep in the Ancestral Past

-In industrialized societies, the bed is often in a sterile environment, with little sensory stimulation. -In many subsistence environments, sleep is a noisy event, around a campfire, with people chatting, an absence of comfortable bedding, with many bodies entangled. -The notion of a single 8-hour period of sleep is also not common in subsistence societies. -More typically, people have two sleeps, interrupted by a period of wakefulness (also happened with Europeans before artificial light)

Cultural Competence

-In multicultural settings, therapists can expect to work with clients of a different culture from their own. Achieving cultural competence requires: -Recognizing their own cultural influences, -Developing knowledge about cultural background of their client, and learning of their client's expectations. -Responding in culturally sensitive ways. -Always treating the client as an individual, and listening carefully to see whether the client is approaching things in ways more similar to their heritage culture or their host culture.

Study: completion of the TST by Americans/Japanese in different situation

-In one study, Japanese and American students completed the Twenty Statements Test in different situations (Kanagawa et al., 2001). -There were 4 test-taking situations: alone, with peers, in a professor's office, and in a large class. -the key variable of interest was how similarly positive were people's self-descriptions across situations

Canadians vs Japanese and similarity attraction effect STUDY

-In one study, we asked Canadians and Japanese participants to evaluate a same-sex target that they very briefly met, before being taken to different rooms (Heine et al., 2009). -Participants completed a survey about their personality and/or demographic information. They then saw a survey which was apparently completed by the other participant. The other survey had been completed by the experimenter, such that the responses were either highly similar (80% similarity), or not very similar (20% similarity), with the responses of the participant's. -Participants then evaluated how much they thought they would like the other participant

Why might we see these cultural differences in the benefits of being physically attractive?

-In some cultures (particularly Western ones), people have much freedom in deciding who they will have relationships with. They can associate with people who are not from their ingroups - they have high relational mobility. -In other cultures (more often non-Western ones) there is less freedom in deciding who are your relationships - they have low relational mobility. Significant relationships come from various ingroups (e.g., family, neighborhood, school, club, office). -In high mobility contexts qualities that attract relationship partners are important. Physical attractiveness should be associated with better outcomes in these contexts.

Summary of personality and culture

-In summary, personality structure appears to be largely similar around the world, with a possible exception of small scale societies that remains unclear -Moreover there might be some significant cultural variation depending on the language that personality traits are derived from

CHAPTER 8 TEXTBOOK: Indians vs Americans and choice

-Indians assume people who are trying to influence their decsions are doing it in an altruistic manner -Americans assume the opposite -Indians more likely to say they would go along with the influencers choice in the study than Americans -Americans see their preferences and choices as more related than do Indians

Interdependent View of Self

-Individual's identity is importantly interdependent with others. -Key aspects of identity include roles, relationships, and memberships. -As roles change across situations, identity is also somewhat fluid across situations -Clear distinction between ingroups and outgroups

Individualism Facilitates Novelty

-Individualism is associated with a greater motivation for uniqueness. -When primed with individualism people from multiple cultures generate more novel ideas -Western artists are more likely than the average person to suffer from mental illness (seeing world really differently causes you to become detached from reality) - not true of Chinese artists

STUDY: expressed emotions vs real emotions

-Japanese and Americans were shown photos of expressed emotions, and guessed the target's emotion. -The researchers swapped the eyes and mouths from photos of different expressions, so that the eyes and mouths conveyed different emotions. -Japanese viewed the target's emotion as happier than Americans if the eyes were expressing a happier emotion than the mouth. In contrast, the Americans judged the target to be happier if the mouth was expressing a happier emotion than the eyes --> people are attending to different parts of the face -this is represented in Japanese Anime and even text symbols

Culture-Bound Syndromes: Koro

-Men develop morbid anxiety that their penis is shrinking into their body and that they will die from it. -women can get same experience that their nipples are shrinking into their body (more rare) -This occurs largely in South and East Asia, especially Southern China and Malaysia. -There can be epidemics of koro, where hundreds of people develop symptoms. -Some koro-like symptoms have been reported by Americans having negative marijuana-induced experiences.

Gender distinction in language:

-Most languages have a gender distinction, such that all nouns are assigned distinct genders in quite arbitrary ways (not in english) -each noun is assigned to two types (e.g. feminine vs masculine), different nouns assigned to different genders in various languages -For example, in German bridges are feminine (die Brucke) but are masculine in Spanish (el puente). -When learning to associate names (like Patrick vs. Patricia) with objects, Spanish and German speakers find it easier to remember the names that fit the gender of the objects -these languages oblige people to think about gender even when speaking about unrelated topics

Numerical Cognition in the Absence of Words

-Much of numeric cognition is a cultural invention - people have few innate math abilities - they mostly emerge with cultural learning. -Young children are able to represent numbers up to 3 and after that, they require cultural learning to represent larger numbers -Some cultures do not have number terms beyond "two." The Piraha from the Amazon have terms that correspond to 1, 2, and many.

Expression of Ideal Affect: East asians vs Westerners--> music, leisure activities/ active ones, drug use, books, magazines, religious texts

-Music: East Asians prefer music with slower tempos than Westerners (e.g. westerners like rock concert- mostly white people) -East Asians say they prefer more leisure passive activities (e.g., sightseeing, hanging out, picnicking) and Westerners prefer more active ones (e.g., running, rollerblading). -East Asians use more drugs that elicit calm states (e.g., heroin and opium); Westerners use more that elicit excited states (e.g., cocaine and amphetamines). -Children's books in the US include bigger and more excited smiles than those in Taiwan. -When kids from the two cultures were shown either exciting or calm storybooks, they subsequently chose activities that were either exciting or calm. The books appear to socialize kids into preferring different affective states. -Western self-help books encourage more high arousal positive states than East Asian self-help books, where calmness is emphasized more. -Christian religious texts encourage more energetic states than do Buddhist religious texts, which encourage more calm states. -Chinese magazines contain ads with more calm smiles and fewer excited smiles than American magazines.

Where do Reasoning Differences Come From?

-Nisbett (2003) argued that these reasoning differences reflect habits of thought dating back to classical Greek and Confucian Chinese thought. -Analytic thought is evident in Aristotle's view that objects possess properties such as "gravity," and the Platonic view that the world consists of discrete unchanging objects operating by universal laws. (rule-based reasoning) -Holistic thought is evident in classical Chinese ideas of harmony, interconnectedness, and change, e.g., early Chinese discoveries of action at a distance (moon's gravitational pull) and in Chinese medical traditions e.g. accupuncture. (associative reasoning) -However, more recent research finds evidence for holistic thinking pretty much everywhere outside of the Western world.

What Causes the Lower Health Risks for Higher SES People?

-No simple single answer. -Access to health care cannot explain this - the relation is similar where there is universal health care and for conditions that are the least amenable to treatment. -lower SES people might have riskier and hazardous jobs, but doesn't explain civil servant study where SES was still a factor -Lower SES people engage in more unhealthy habits, such as smoking, and eating fast food. However, the SES differences still remain if you control for health habits. -One mediating role between status and health outcomes is stress

Webpages: East Asians vs Westerners

-North Americans webpages have less links and words than comparable East Asian ones -A similar cultural difference was seen in comparison of scientific conference posters -moreover, when given the challenge to find a particular image (e.g. wheres waldo), East Asian perform better than North Americans in busier scenes

African American and Euro American GRE Verbal Test and stereotype threat

-One classic study by Steele and Aronson had African-American and European-American students at Stanford take the GRE verbal test. -In one condition they took the test as is, in another condition, they took the test after first checking a box to indicate their race. -African-American students answered fewer items correctly when they were asked to indicate their race -Eruo Americns were unaffected by indicating their race -subtle primes can elicit stereotype threat with dramatic consequences

STUDY: How to distribute money for a bonus between two employees (US vs India)

-One employee was a very effective worker, whereas the other didn't contribute so much. However, the latter employee was in a poor financial situation because of an illness in the family. -The most popular principle for Indians was Need. This was the least popular principle for Americans. -Americans preferred the principle of Equity. Equity was the least popular solution among Indians. -Perceptions of fairness vary across cultures.

Culture's variation in terms of the importance of happiness: Euro Canadian vs Asian Canadian STUDY

-One study asked UBC students to choose between tasks -Participants decided between two puzzle games. -One game was described as fun, but not very useful, whereas the other was described as dull, but would improve thinking skills. -Euro canadians showed an overwhelming preference for the fun game -Among Asian-Canadians the decision was much closer (still chose fun game but the result was close) -Similar findings emerged for studies where people chose hypothetical university courses (fun course vs boring course that is applicable)

What Makes Life Satisfying? Study comparing most individualistic countries and least individualistic countries

-One study compared dozens of countries on their individualism, their life satisfaction scores, their overall positive affect, and the extent to which people felt they were living up to cultural norms. -In the most individualistic countries, life satisfaction was more strongly predicted by people's overall level of positive affect. -In the least individualistic countries, life satisfaction was more strongly predicted by the extent to which people felt they were living up to cultural norms.

Attributions in India vs US

-One study explored people's attributions in India and the US (Miller, 1984). -Participants, who ranged in age from 8 year-olds to adults, read a number of scenarios where a target person did something, and then offered explanations for the target person's behaviors. -e.g. friend took other friend for ride on bike, they had an accident, unharmed friend dropped off injured friend at hospital and didnt stay with him, then participants asked to explain this behavior -Their explanations were coded for being 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. American adults show the fundamental attribution error. -older Indians made more situation attributions but not dispositional ones. Indian adults show a reverse FAE

Testing the universality of the tyranny of the beautiful US vs Ghana

-One study investigated the role of physical attractiveness to life outcomes in the US and in Ghana (Anderson, Adams, & Plaut, 2008). -Participants indicated how satisfied they were with various life outcomes (e.g., their career, their abilities, their friendships, their romantic relationships). -The researchers took a photo of the participant, and this photo was rated for physical attractiveness. -phsycial attractiveness ratings were used to study relationship btwn this and life outcomes

Friendship and advice

-One thing that friends sometimes do is offer advice. -Giving advice benefits the recipient by providing new information, however the recipient might see it as a threat to their autonomy. - North American culture values autonomy, so unsolicited advice is often perceived negatively -Russian culture is more collectivistic, so threats to autonomy are less of a concern. Advice is largely viewed as supporting relationships.

Religion and Achievement Motivation

-Over a century ago, Weber argued that motivations for achievement are importantly tied to cultural ideas that came with the Protestant Reformation. -Some ideas from early Protestant sects included: -people have an individualized relation with god (opposite to catholics who believed people had interaction with church and church had communication with god) -each person has a "calling," a unique God-given purpose to fulfill on earth. -a belief in "predestination." Before one was born it was already determined whether one was going to heaven or hell.

When people have different theories of the nature of abilities, they respond differently to feedback about their abilities: Japanese vs American STUDY RECAP

-Overall, Japanese persisted longer in the face of failure than Americans, which suggests that they have more incremental theories. -When Japanese are given American ideas (i.e., entity theories) they act more like Americans. And when Americans are given Japanese ideas (i.e., incremental theories) they act more like Japanese.

Contradiction study with Americans and Chinese RESULTS

-Participants tended to view one argument to be more plausible than the other (argument A was more plausible). -Americans who received both arguments showed a counternormative reasoning style in that they were more convinced that the stronger argument was correct when they also heard of a contradictory argument than if they had only heard the strong argument by itself. -In contrast, Chinese viewed a strong argument to be less plausible if they heard a contradictory argument. -However, they showed a counternormative response in viewing a weak argument as being more plausible if it was paired with a contradictory argument than if it was presented by itself--> they accept the contradiction, Americans try to resolve it

Are creative people more likely to live abroad? Study RESULTS

-Participants who thought about adapting to a new culture were more creative in their drawings compared to the other conditions. -Thinking about observing another culture didn't yield the same effects. It seems to be that adaptation to other cultures is what is key to enhanced creativity.

Ekman's facial expressions

-Paul Ekman and colleagues explored how similarly people made emotional expressions around the world. -They initially found much similarity across industrialized countries. -However, this could be due to shared cultural learning. It was important to test people from an isolated culture: the Fore of New Guinea. -Participants were asked to show their expressions imagining if a number of different events had happened to them in New Guinea e.g. you see a dead pig that has been lying there for a long time (disgust) -Ekman proposed that there are a set of "basic emotions" which are reflexively reproduced and recognized for all humans: Happiness, fear, sadness, surprise, disgust, anger

Personality

-People everywhere do think of each other in terms of underlying personalities. -This appears to be even more true among Westerners (e.g., recall Twenty Statements Test)

Cultural factors have influenced the genome (selected for): Lactose intolerance

-People from cultures in which cows have been domesticated over a longer history are more likely to have a mutation that allows them to digest lactose into adulthood (ancestral humans weren't able to digest lactose into adulthood- just babies) -a parallel African genetic mutation emerged in groups that raised cattle, suggesting that the selective pressures to be able to digest lactose into adulthood were strong enough to emerge at least twice -lactase persistence! LActase is an enzyme that helps digest dairy -culture-gene-co-evolution: evolved biological predispositions to depend on cultural information and cultural information enhances their fitness as it continues to evolve

Acculturation and complexity

-People move to many different kinds of contexts - cultural ghettos, homogenous neighborhoods, expatriate communities, or cultures which actively discriminate against them. -Cultures vary in their similarity to people's heritage culture. -Furthermore, people have different personalities, goals, and expectations that affect their acculturation. -hense, people's experiences vary tremendously and there are few universal acculturation findings

Moral Foundations Guide Diet Choices Differently Across Cultures: Vegetarians

-People often make dietary choices based on moral values, such as avoiding meat. -Both North America and India have large minorities of vegetarians. -However, the moral foundations of vegetarians differ from omnivores in different ways between the two cultures. -On average, North American vegetarians endorse more politically liberal values than omnivores, emphasizing the harm caused to the animals and the environment. -Indian vegetarians are more religious and traditional than omnivores, and they also endorse more concerns about purity and pollution -The same choices are based on different moral foundations across cultures.

Secondary control

-People with interdependent selves tend to have more incremental theories of self, but entity theories of the world. -people strive to adjust themselves to accept the circumstances as they are -This is known as "Secondary Control."

Testing the universality of the tyranny of the beautiful US vs Ghana RESULTS

-Physically attractive Americans were more satisfied with their lives in general. -physically attractive Ghanians were not more satisfied with their lives -Other research finds that the relation between attractiveness and well-being is stronger in urban America than it is in rural America. -The tyranny of the beautiful may not generalize well beyond Western cultural contexts.

Western research finds that depressed people show diminished emotional reactivity to both positive and negative situations. They often seem emotionally numb. Does this generalize across cultures?

-Research compared non-depressed and depressed European-American and Asian-Americans -Participants saw a neutral film, a sad film, and an amusing film, and their emotions were assessed. There were no differences across cultures in the neutral and amusing film conditions. In the sad film conditions, there were cultural differences. -Depressed European-Americans showed less crying and reported sadness to the sad film than did non-depressed participants - they were more emotionally numb. -Asian-Americans showed the opposite pattern - the depressed were more emotionally reactive. -Perhaps depression disassociates people from cultural norms. Normally expressive European-Americans become less expressive, and normally less expressive Asian-Americans become more expressive.

what is associated with the best outcomes (Tripartitie Parenting styles)

-Research shows that overall, authoritative parenting is associated with the best outcomes: -More parental warmth, acceptance, better school achievement, autonomy, and self-reliance.

Attribution theory and Westerners (evaluation of Casto essay)

-Research with Westerners consistently finds that they attend more to dispositional information than situational information when explaining others, even when the situational constraints on people's behaviors are obvious. -In one classic study, American students were asked to evaluate an essay writer's true attitudes by reading an essay that they had written which espoused either positive or critical attitudes towards Fidel Castro (Jones & Harris, 1967) -Participants assumed that the writer of the pro-Castro essay had more positive feelings towards Castro than the writer of the anti-Castro essay. -In other conditions, participants were told of some significant situational constraints on the essay-writers behaviors. -In one condition, participants were told that the authors had been assigned their positions (i.e., either pro-Castro or anti-Castro). -In another condition, participants watched as another subject was asked to read a pre-written essay (either pro-Castro or anti-Castro). -Regardless, participants assumed that the person reading the anti-Castro essay had more negative feelings towards Castro than the person reading the pro-Castro essay -this is termed the "fundamental attribution Error"--> take dispositional factors into account, not situational ones

Costly Punishment Results in the WEST:

-Research with Westerners typically finds that people will punish those who don't contribute their share - this is known as altruistic punishment. -Evolutionary models were subsequently created that argued that it was a desire to engage in altruistic punishment that allowed for humans to engage in sufficient cooperation to form large societies -However, more recently, this public goods game has been studied in a broader array of societies

Results of Phoeneme discrimination

-Results indicated that English infants younger than 8 months could reliably distinguish between the Hindi phonemes. -indeed, phonemes from all languages can be discriminated by young infants -However, by 10 to 12 months of age, the English infants could no longer discriminate between the two Hindi phonemes. They had learned to categorize sounds into English categories which don't have perfect overlap with Hindi categories.

Romantic Love

-Romantic love is an evolutionary adaptation to ensure that children had adequate resources and protection. -Romantic love exists everywhere - 89% of subsistence societies have shown clear support of it, and it's likely that it exists in the remaining 11%. Babies are very vulnerable at a young age, anything that glues parents together (like love) is adaptive for the babies survival from an ancestral viewpoint. Longer periods of dependency = higher likelihood for pair bonding -However, the idea of marriages being based on romantic love is not universal. Arranged marriages have been common in many cultures.

Russians vs Americans brooding and ruminating STUDY

-Russians and Americans were compared in terms of how much they tend to brood, how much they identified with a ruminating target in vignettes, and how depressed they were -Russians reported brooding more than Americans and they identified more with the ruminating target. -Americans who ruminated were more depressed by those who didn't -There was no difference in depression levels between ruminating and non-ruminating Russians.

Two-Factor Theory of Emotions

-Schacter and Singer argued that emotions were our interpretations of our physiological responses. -Interpretation often isn't important, because usually it is clear what caused our physiological responses. -But sometimes the source of our feelings isn't so clear to us. In these situations there is evidence for the Two-Factor theory. -stimulus--> response--> interpretation--> subjective emotion

Universal psychopathologies: Schizophrenia

-Schizophrenia is one of the most debilitating mental disorders, and is universally found around the world. -A diagnosis requires that one has two or more of the following symptoms for a significant period of time: delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior, or negative symptoms (e.g., a loss of speech, or flattening of mood). -There are relevant genetic factors, prenatal experiences, and neuroanatomical features. The biological basis of schizophrenia is better understood than other mental disorders. -Rates of schizophrenia range from 0.7 to 1.4 annual incidents per 10,000 across diverse cultures. This is less cultural variation than for most other mental disorders

Motivations for Self-Enhancement

-Self-enhancement is a motivation to focus on and elaborate more about one's strengths than on one's weaknesses. -As with most psychological phenomena, it had primarily been studied with Western populations, which suggested the motivation was very pronounced.

Geographic influences on genome: Genetic Adaptations to High Altitude

-Several populations in Tibet live at extremely high altitudes of > 4000m, where oxygen is low (have access to only 60% of the oxygen that exists at sea level) -They have several genetic adaptations not commonly found in people living at lower altitudes. -these are the products of natural selection -Skin color and coping with low oxygen are examples of how geographic factors have influenced population variation in the human genome.

"Big 3" Moral Ethics: Ethic of Autonomy

-Shweder proposes there are 3 key moral ethics that are evident around the world. -Kohlberg's model taps into the "Ethic of Autonomy." -Morality is that which protects justice and individual rights -Concerned with whether or not someone was harmed, denied their rights, acted unfairly, tried to dominate someone else--> if answer is no then no moral violation

Case Study: Culture of Honor in the US South

-Since the early 18th century, a number of observers have commented on the greater violence in the US South than the North. -This has been evident in a greater frequency of feuds, duels, homicides, lynchings, sniper attacks, violent pastimes, and greater support for corporal punishment, gun ownership, and war.

Geographic influences on genome: In what ways does the biology of humans vary around the world?

-Some biological variation is due to differences in inherited genes. The most salient example of biological variation is skin color. -Skin color is strongly correlated with the amount of ultraviolet radiation (UVR) that reaches different parts of the globe. People need light enough skin to allow sufficient UVR to synthesize Vitamin D, but dark enough skin to prevent the breakdown of folic acid (which can cause anemia or birth defects or skin cancer) -melanin contributes to the differences in skin color we see -exception to the correlation among skin color and UVR? Inuit of Greenland, they have light skin for the low amount of UVR they receive but its bc they have cultural solution to low UVR- diet rich in fish and sea mammal blubber, which are high in Vitamin D -Similarly Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia have lighter skin color than predicted but its because they recently migrated South and havent adapted yet -Asian and Euro light skin evolved independently through different genetic route

Culture and Happiness: is the pursuit of happiness universal?

-Some date the beginning of this pursuit in the West to the Enlightenment, from the 18th century, when the world became seen to be a more predictable and rational place. -There are substantial cultural differences in terms of the average levels of happiness that people report.

The majority of adaptive gene variations have been associated with thermal regulation, resistance to pathogens (e.g. hemoglobin and malaria), and enduring dietary practices (survival purposes). There is also much variation associated with non-adaptive genetic drift:

-Some genes associated with psychological characteristics such as social sensitivities differ in prevalence around the world e.g. Asians have more of these genes than Americans which may suggest underlying influence of collectivism -However, it's not clear that the genes are correlated with the same traits across cultures. A number of genes are expressed differently and have opposite relations with psychological characteristics across cultures (e.g. gene in one culture may influence increaded emotional support seeking but decreased emotional support seeking in another culture) -As of yet, no strong evidence to demonstrate that cultures differ in ways of thinking because of the prevalence of different genes.

How does culture relate to creative thinking?

-Some have noted that Westerners appear more creative than East Asians (e.g., more Nobel prizes per capita, and more original art work). -But creativity has been operationalized as the generation of ideas that are both a) novel and b) useful and appropriate -these need to be considered separately

Culture-Bound Syndromes: Dhat

-Some psychopathologies are far more prevalent, or manifest in highly different forms across cultures. -One example is dhat syndrome - men from parts of South Asia become morbidly anxious that they are losing semen. In this culture it is a source of vitality that has great health benefits, and if you're losing it then you're engaging in morally questionable activities. -One could only develop the symptoms of dhat syndrome if one had associated cultural beliefs. -Symptoms tend to be identified in Western samples, but it's not always clear whether Western cultural beliefs are involved.

CHAPTER 14 TEXTBOOK: Dhat syndrome

-South Asian cultures- belief among young men that they are leaking semen which causes them to be morbidly anxious because semen is seen to be a source of vitality -crippling feelings of guilt and anxiety about having indulged in disapproved sexual acts (such as masturbation) that resulted in a more enduring break

Stereotype threat: African Americans vs Euro Americans

-Stereotype threat explains the persistence of negative outcomes among discriminated minorities. -For example, African-Americans underperform European-Americans at university, even after controlling for their level of preparation. -Stereotype threat explains this because of the negative stereotype that exists about African-American academic performance. Whenever an African-American student encounters a difficult academic challenge, they will be reminded of the negative stereotype. This leads to worse performance, so in the end, the student has proven the stereotype. -Much research shows how subtle reminders of one's group can activate stereotype threat.

SES: Stress and Health

-Stress affects health in at least two ways: Stress leads people to engage in health-compromising behaviors like smoking and drinking, stress weakens the immune system's ability to fight off infections -Some cultural environments produce more stress. For example, being in New York City makes people feel more stressed, and they are more likely to suffer a heart attack while there. -People also feel stress when they feel a lack of control over their lives - this can result from being lower in a hierarchy. -Lower-SES people feel less in control of their lives and show less vulnerability to illness when they are provided with control.

How Universal is Personality Structure?

-Students in 50 different cultures have completed the Big 5 questionnaire, and a highly similar factor structure has emerged in each culture. -However, this research has all been based on translations of English personality terms. Would the same set of personality factors emerge from indigenous personality traits? -Investigations in a number of cultures, including Spain, Greece, the Philippines, and China have found most of the Big 5 factors, but also some additional factors. -The results do not support the Big 5 well in small scale subsistence societies, however the quality of the data is poor and makes it difficult to draw conclusion

Sleeping arrangements vary across cultures: Indian vs American attitutes

-Study by Shweder et al. asked Indian and American adults to decide how various combinations of family members could be arranged in the bedrooms of a house. -In one version, they were told the house had 3 bedrooms, and the family included a mother, a father, two daughters (aged 14 and 3), and three sons (aged 15, 11, and 8). -results: American: Put three sons together, put two daughters together, parents have their own room-- 90% -Indian had three top groupings invluding one listed above, along gender lines and not along gender lines

Will Jews and Christians View People with Impure Thoughts Differently? STUDY

-Study compared Jews and Protestants in how they responded to various vignettes where someone thinks about inappropriate things e.g. someone married university sweetheart, he works with attractive women at the office, Mr.B thinks sexual thoughts about her 20 min a day. What do you think of Mr.B? -When participants were asked if it was immoral if Mr. B actually had the affair there were no differences between Jews and Protestants - both agreed equally that this would be immoral behavior. -However, Protestants viewed Mr. B more negatively than did Jews for just thinking about having an affair. -Protestants are also more likely than Jews to believe that thoughts are under one's control. Protestants also view thoughts as being more likely to lead to behaviors than do Jews.

Study of Phoneme Discrimination

-Study compared infants from English speaking and Hindi speaking parents (Werker & Tees, 1984). -Task was whether infants could discriminate between two Hindi phonemes that are indistinguishable to adult non-Hindi speakers. -result: 6-8 m.o. English babies could distinguish the phonemes, but they lost this capacity at the age of 10-12m.o. Only Hindi babies at 10-12m.o. could discriminate between the phonemes

Representation of numbers logarithmically:

-Subsequent studies reveal that very young children, as well as those from other tribes without number words (e.g., the Mundurucu from the Amazon) represent numbers logarithmically (Dehaene, Izard, Spelke, & Pica, 2008). -Mundurucu participants were shown on a laptop a line between the values of one and 10 dots. They were then shown a set of dots and were asked to indicate the position on a line -Participants placed the line at positions that roughly corresponded to the logarithmic value of the number. For example, they rate the middle of the scale to be about a 3 rather than a 5. -Young children do the same. This suggests that people's innate number sense may be logarithmic, and they learn linear numbers greater than 3 through cultural learning -Much of what we understand about numbers only occurs as the result of cultural learning

Universal psychopathologies: Suicide

-Suicide rates vary dramatically around the world. Eastern European nations tend to have the highest rates (e.g., Hungary, Lithuania)- former Soviets, whereas Muslim nations have the lowest (e.g., Egypt, Saudi Arabia)- suicide forbidden by Quran -In Canada, some of the highest suicide rates that are found are among Aboriginal youth -However, there is much variability across Native bands from different tribal councils. The suicide rates for one five year period ranged from a low of 0/100,000 people to a high of 633/100,000 people.

Is it a moral failing if one has undesirable thoughts? Jewish vs Christian worldviews

-The New Testament (i.e., the Christian half of the bible) explicitly discusses private thoughts as moral domains. -It specifies how one is not saved until one has appropriate beliefs (have to believe in Jesus) -Further, it discusses how impure thoughts themselves are sins. -In contrast, the Old Testament (aka, the Hebrew Bible) has little to say about beliefs - mostly it is about behaviors. -For example, 8 of the 10 commandments are about behaviors, and the remaining 2 (honoring one's parents and not coveting anything of your neighbor's) appear to be interpreted differently by Jews and Christians. -Judaism emphasizes a wider variety of behaviors, such as keeping kosher, than does Christianity. (e.g. Kosher: don't mix milk and meat)

What happens when the Piraha are asked to do simple tasks that require counting to numbers beyond 3?

-The Piraha were asked to do a series of matching tasks, such as to guess whether there were any nuts remaining in a can after watching some be taken out, trying to copy some matching lines, or trying to match a series of knocks. -In general, they had an approximate understanding of magnitude, such that they matched larger quantities with increasingly large quantities, however, they were only accurate up to small numbers, such as to 3 or 4. -The larger the number they were asked to represent, the larger was their error, however, they did show a general sense of approximate quantities. -They often would use their fingers to aid their performance, however, this was highly inaccurate, even for numbers smaller than five. -There is still much debate whether these indigenous tribes cannot represent numbers because they don't have the number terms (a Whorfian argument) or because they lack the cultural learning.

US and its model of multiculturalism

-The US strives more for a "melting pot" model, where each ethnic group's distinct characteristics are melted away as they learn to assimilate to the dominant culture

3rd-Party Punishment and fairness:

-The evolution of cooperation norms are also argued to be sustained by people having motivations to engage in costly punishment (it is costly to the punisher) to those who don't cooperate with others. -If people can be expected to be punished by others when they do not cooperate, they will have increased incentive to cooperate. -In a Public Goods Game people play in a group where money is contributed to a pot where it is multiplied before being distributed to everyone. -People also have the chance to pay some of their own money to punish another member of the game, by having some of their money taken away.

Most common acculturation strategy?

-The most common strategy is integration. This is hypothesized to be the most successful strategy, as a person should have two cultural communities from which to draw support -However, research finds mixed evidence where both integration and assimilation strategies yield the most positive outcomes. IE it is very important to have positive view of host culture

Cultural variability in physiological reactions: emotions

-The physiological sensations/ muscle movements associated with emotions do not vary much across cultures. -There is more emotional variability across cultures in people's interpretations of those sensations.

Studying examining Raven's Matrices while talking/not talking

-The relation between thinking and talking has been explored by Heejung Kim (2002, 2008), who 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. -She had participants (all english-speaking) attempt some items from the Raven's Matrices IQ test under different conditions. 2 conditions: -In a Thinking Aloud Condition participants first completed 10 IQ items silently, and then they completed another 10 IQ items while saying their thoughts out loud. -In an Articulatory Suppression Condition participants first completed 10 IQ items silently, and then they completed another 10 IQ items while saying the alphabet out loud -the dependent variable was how many IQ items they answered correctly when they were thinking aloud or saying the alphabet compared to when they were answering the items separately

One study investigated advice-giving on American and Russian online parenting forums:

-The researcher posted a question, describing a parenting challenge. In one condition the poster did not explicitly request advice. In the other condition, the poster directly asked for advice. -The researchers coded how many responses were received, and whether the responses made specific recommendations to the poster

Physical world vs the social world: Projection

-The way people understand the physical world is based on how they understand the social world. -In independent cultures, people learn to think of others as being fundamentally independent from each other, and composed of their component parts. -likewise, the physical world can be understood the same way -People who are socialized in an interdependent context come to learn to attend to relations among people. -This is generalized to an attention of relations among objects in ones environment -Research by Richard Nisbett and his former students provides much evidence for this fundamental cultural difference

What Happens when Moral Worlds Collide? US/ Afghan collide court case

-There are many instances when immigrants to a country engage in actions that are culturally appropriate in their heritage cultures but against the law in their new host culture. -Infant Genital-Kissing Among Afghani in the USA: 18 m.o. genital kissing of his own son--> Kargar claimed that his gesture is customary and familiar to members of his family and within the Afghani community, where it is understood as a display of love and affection for baby boys.

Cultural Variation in Gender Equality

-There are striking differences across cultures in beliefs in gender equality. -Protestant countries in Northern Europe have the highest degree of gender equality, whereas South Asian and African countries have some of the lowest degrees of gender equality. -Urbanization and individualism contribute to more gender equality. -Using a plough for agriculture is associated with less gender equality?

Personality Structure

-There are thousands of personality trait terms in the English language. However, almost all of these tend to be related to five underlying personality factors. -The Five Factor Model of Personality argues that there are five core traits that universally represent personality (Costa & McCrae, 1992) -Openess to experience, concientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism

What kind of self-concept do people have who live in more than one culture?

-There are two ways that multicultural experiences impact the self-concept, and there is some evidence for both. -Blending - People's self-concepts reflect a hybrid of their two cultural worlds. -Frame-switching: People maintain multiple self-concepts and switch between them depending on context

Gender and Culture: Interdependence/ independence

-There is some similarity between the distinctions of independence and interdependence and masculinity and femininity. -Are men from America and women from Asia? -There are 4 dimensions that underlie the constructs of indep/interdependence: agency, assertiveness, collectiveness, and relatedness -men and women only seem to differ in terms of relatedness-- women have increased relatedness than men

Emotion and Language

-There is tremendous diversity in emotion terms around the world. English has the most - over 2000 words - whereas the Chewong of Malaysia only have 8 words. -Emotion words don't always map on to the basic emotions. Many languages don't have words for the basic emotions. -Many languages have emotion words that are absent in English. Iklas in Javanese refers to a pleasant feeling of frustration, and liget refers to a feeling of frothy anger and passion among the Ilongot.

Contradictions in attitudes towards the self:

-These attitudes towards contradiction are also evident in attitudes towards the self. -East Asians are more likely than Westerners to offer apparently contradictory self-descriptions, saying, for example, that they are both shy and outgoing (even at the same instant- simultaneously shy and outgoing) -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.

Studying culture of honor with experimental method

-These studies contrasted white male students at the University of Michigan who had either grown up in the North or in the South. -Half of them were assigned to an "insult" condition where a confederate insulted them. -The other half were in the control condition where everything was identical except for the insult. -In one study, following the insult, the experimenters assessed changes in the participants' cortisol and testosterone levels, as these increase when people are feeling aggressive.

Rating of satisfaction: Asian americans and euro americans

-They rated both their satisfaction as it happened on a regular basis, and then they also rated their satisfaction retrospectively, describing what their past week had been like -There were no cultural differences in actual daily reports of satisfaction. -However, there were pronounced cultural differences in people's retrospective reports (Americans had much happier retrospective self-report) -Retrospective accounts are influenced largely by people's theories of what they think their life is like. -Euro-Americans are more likely than Asian-Americans to possess a theory that they are happy, even when their daily reports might not be

Asch's Conformity Studies: replication in other countries

-This study has now been replicated in 17 countries. -everywhere there is considerable conformity -The more collectivistic the country, the more conformity there is. Collectivists are especially conforming with other ingroup members.

Explaining the Behavior of Fish STUDY

-Those who saw American primes were the least likely to explain the fish's behavior in terms of the group of fish. -those who saw Chinese primes were the most likely to explain the fish's behavior in terms of the group of fish -Hong Kong participants have access to both Western and non-Western ways of making sense of the fish's behavior, and which one they use depends on which cultural context has been activated for them.

-How is it that East Asians are influenced more by the background of scenes?

-To address this the researchers had participants wear an eye monitor and tracked their gaze -East asians looked more to the other person's faces in the background (seeing and encountering different info) -In the first second, people from both cultures largely look at the target. After that, East Asians look more to the background than do Westerners, who continue to fixate on the focal target. -This cultural pattern also occurs for nonsocial scenes. East Asians appear to more habitually look for relations in their environments.

Evaluating the Evidence for Self-Enhancement Across Cultures: summary of data

-To summarize, there are large cultural differences in self-enhancement motivations. -Whereas Westerners show consistent and strong evidence for self-enhancement, East Asians do not. -in many studies, east asians show evidence for self-criticism

When people have different theories of the nature of abilities, they respond differently to feedback about their abilities: Japanese vs American STUDY

-We conducted a study where we had Japanese and American students take a bogus creativity test which was rigged such that everyone did poorly (Heine et al., 2001). -Example item: Which word goes with the following three? meal deal peg --> answer is square (square meal, square deal, square peg) -After they had found out that they had done poorly they were left alone with a second version of the test and their persistence on the test was assessed. -The second test came with one of three sets of instructions which were the independent variable. -One set of instructions explained that performance on the creativity test was based on an incremental theory - efforts improve one's score. -A second set of instructions provided an entity theory - some people are just naturally good at the test, and some people aren't. -A third condition was a control condition and contained no instructions. The dependent variable was how long people would persist after receiving these different instructions.

Comparing talking across culture

-Westerners appear to value the spoken word more than East Asians. -In Judeo-Christian beliefs the "Word" is sacred. -The ancient Greeks viewed knowledge to emerge through the spoken word. -The First Amendment to the US constitution is to protect one's freedom of speech. -Lao Tzu said that "He who knows does not speak. He who speaks does not know." -Various Eastern religions also emphasize silent meditation rather than prayer. -A Korean proverb states that "An empty cart makes more noise."

Perceptual styles and art: East asians vs Westerners

-Westerners: *low horizon*, eyes drawn to what is closer to the perspective of the artist. *Portraits: person fills up the whole scene* -East Asiains: Everything is the same size, emphasizes relations between objects, observer seems to be floating above (birds eye view flattens image) objects same size whether closer to artist or not. *Portrait: more background, target takes smaller amount of space*, *horizon typically higher* -this was based off of painting in museums -in comparisson of student drawings: Americans drew low horizons and few number of additional objects -East Asians drew a higher horizon, and richer context (more objects included in their drawings)

Indians and Americans Make Choices Differently

-When given a list of objects to indicate which ones they like, Americans and Indians are equally quick in indicating their preferences. -When given a list of objects to choose from, Indians take significantly longer in making choices of which one they would like to receive than do Americans.

STUDY comparing rich/ poor persons on ravens IQ Test

-When poor people are led to focus on money decisions, their thinking suffers. It doesn't for rich people. -One study had poor and wealthy Americans think about a difficult financial problem (figuring out how to pay an expensive car repair bill) or an easy (cheap) one. -Then they measured their performance on the Raven's IQ test. -The poor people suffered when thinking about the difficult financial stiuation but rich people didnt. (Neither suffered with the easy money decision) -The same results were found when comparing Indian farmers before their big harvest (poor) and after their harvest (wealthy).

What Happens when Ethics Collide? STUDY

-Which moral ethic is more important? Autonomy or Community? -One study contrasted Indian and American adults by giving them several moral dilemmas where the two ethics were in conflict -People read scenarios in which the moral violation ranged from minor to extreme e.g. Ben was trying to make it to friend's wedding (he has ring bearer), Ben's wallet stolen with ticket to train to wedding, should he steal ticket from well-dressed man? -what would you do if you were ben?

Chapter 1: Who is the father of psychology?

-William Wundt, he was a cultural psychologist -wrote Volkerpsychologie or Elements of Folk Psychology

Acquired Physical Variation: Obesity and Diet SUPPORT FOR CULTURAL PHENOMENON (France vs US and portion size)

-Within the West itself, there is considerable variation in obesity rates. -France has about one fifth the obesity rate of the US -This is despite that French food is rich in fat. French have higher blood cholesterol levels than Americans, yet have less heart disease - the "French Paradox." -One reason is French live in a culture where food comes in smaller portions than it does in North America (Rozin and colleagues). -Yogurt containers are about 80% bigger in the US than they are in France. -McDonald's french fries are about 70% bigger in the US than in France. -A meal at a Chinese restaurant in France is less than 60% the size of a meal at a Chinese restaurant in the US. -Recipes in US use larger portions than they do in France -Even fruit is bigger in the US! About 28% larger for the same fruit. -Curiously, cat food cans are slightly larger in France than in the US. -Large American portion sizes are the result of fairly recent cultural change.

Capilano Suspension Bridge Study

-Young males met either an attractive female research assistant (IV) or an average-looking male research assistant (IV), either just as they stepped off of the Capilano Suspension Bridge (IV), or when they were standing on the wooden platform at the base of the park (IV). -They were asked to complete a questionnaire. -One of the dependent measures was the percentage of participants who later called up the research assistant

Culture-Bound Syndromes: Frigophobia

-a morbid fear of catching cold -It is found largely in China. -People will avoid cold air, eating cold food, and dress with several layers, even in summer.

Some aspects of culture are learned in a sensitive window:

-a sensitive window indicates a biological preparation for the acquisition of the information -In particular, some aspects of language are learned in a sensitive window. -Humans have evolved such that they learn a language in a particular period of life (from very early, and the sensitivity declines markedly after puberty)

CHAPTER 14 TEXTBOOK: Why is there so much Suicide in Micronesia?

-adolescent males living at home (no outward signs of psychological disorder or substance abuse) -suicides sparked by arguments with peers or families, often over trivial matters -became part of the local cultural environment, potentially due to the shift to nuclear family structure, loss of employment opportunities, loss of traditional roles for young men as society was Westernized, copycat suicides

Identification with Canadian Culture Results

-after the age of 15, time in canada didn't lead to more identification with Canadian culture -if you came to Canada at younger age, you will enjoy north american culture the longer you stay (as opposed to those who just arrived). -if you came to canada at age 16+ there is no evidence of acculturation--> may be because you can live in Vancouver within the Chinese culture (Chinese newspapers, Chinese restaurants, Chinese businesses) -In contrast, there was no effect of age on identification with ones' heritage culture.

Chapter 3: evoked culture

-all people regardless of where they are from have certain biologically encoded behavioral repitoires that are potentially accessible to them and these repitoires are engaged with the appropriate situation is present e.g. everyone can act in intimidating way when offspring threatened or physical attractiveness is more important in places with rampant parasites

Culture-Bound Syndromes: Amok

-an acute outburst of unrestrained violent and homicidal attacks, preceded by brooding, and followed by exhaustion and amnesia. -most common in Southeast Asia -May result from not having acceptable means to express frustration. -Could have parallels with Western mass homicidal attacks.

Video clip on choice:

-assumption: if a choice effects you then you should be the one to make it, only way to ensure your preferences will be accounted for -America: locus of control is the individual -study with 7-9 yo.o children: anagram puzzles and markers for which they would like to use (children had a choice to choose which ones they want, told what to do by ms. Smith or their mother) -Anglo-americans did 2x times more anagrams when they chose (as compared to Ms Smith and her mother) -Asian children perform best when mother chose > individual choice > ms smith -only holds when the self is divided from others--> turn choice as self-defining act -assumption: more choices--> better options -people in non-democratic societies (Eastern European) think 7 different sodas are individual choices, others think the choice is soda or no soda -sometimes choice can be overwhelming and imposes constraints -when you give people 10+ options they make worse choices -assumption: never say no to choice -US: the final decision with whether their child would live/die due to removal of life support was their decision, in France it was the decision of the doctor. US had more negative opinions about the process & more clinical depression, but all americans said they wanted to have the decision regardless of this fact.

CHAPTER 10 TEXTBOOK: east asians and negative emotions

-compared with Americans, east asians negative emotions are less associated with negative health outcomes, less of a neural response will experiencing the emotion, less effortful for them to supress negative emotions

"Emotional accent" and guessing who is from your own culture

-comparisons of similar cultures even show differences in subtle "emotional accents" -people can guess better than chance who is from their own culture when they are making an emotional expression but not when they are showing a neutral expression

Chapter 6: Poles vs Americans and Self consistency vs consistency with others

-conditions of self consistency and peer consistency with marketer's request -Americans more influenced by their own past behaviors -Poles more influenced by their classmates past behaviors

Example through arctictural space? Canada

-front yard is open, no boundary to public space -inside individiduals have own rooms, space divided within the family

CHAPTER 13 TEXTBOOK: culture and height

-cultural dietary habits have a striking influence on height -Dutch are the tallest people on the planet -genes do play a key role in explaining individual differences in height within a particular culture but genes are less useful for explaining height differences between cultures -during periods of greater wealth people get more vitamins and nutrients (americans used to be the tallest due to their prosperity, curiously, Americans have seemed to stop growing taller now- may be because of fast food or income ineqaulity )

Chapter 2: ratchet effect

-cultural information can continue to accumulate without ever losing earlier innovation -no other species demonstrates this

Chapter 3: ecological and geographic variation--> cultural variation

-culture varies partly due to the ecologies in which people live -humans are in more diverse physical environments than any other species -this has a very direct impact e.g. in there are no large indigenous mammals in Hawaii--> so there is no hunting culture -food available directly affects foraging behavior, indirectly affects how societites are structured and the values people adopt e.g. gender roles--> easy fishing in Tahiti vs island of Truk deep sea fishing and ensuing masculinity

Chapter 4: Situation Sampling

-cultures do not affect people in the abstract but in the concrete -you can think of a your day as a series of situations -researchers can see how people respond to situations that are regularly experienced by people in another culture.

Cultural variation in the aspects of the face that are considered when judging an emotion

-cultures vary in the aspects of the face that they consider when judging another's emotion -For example, in Japan, cultural display rules more often require that people conceal potentially disharmonious emotions. -Because it is more difficult to control the muscles around your eyes than it is around your mouth, Japanese are more likely than Americans are to judge people's emotions by looking at their eyes.

Being more sensitive to losses than gains:

-cultures vary in the extent to which they're attentive to approaching good things (promotion) or to avoiding bad things (prevention) -this cultural difference extends broadly beyond self-relevant information -one study compared how helpful people viewed book reviews from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.jp -The researchers coded books reviews in terms of the amount of positive and negative information that it contained

CHAPTER 13 TEXTBOOK: Why do African Americas in the US have higher hypertension rates than Euro Americans?

-discrimination and racism leads to stress causing hypertension -perceptions of discimination and education are positively correlated among African Americans, explaining higher hypertension rates among high SES african americans

CHAPTER 8 TEXTBOOK: How do people maintain positive self-view despite negative feedback?

-downward social comparisson (comparing performance with someone who did worse than you- opposite of upward social comparisson) -compensatory self enhancement (acknowledging poor performance on some task but then choose to think about unrelated great accomplishment on something else) -discounting (reduced perceived importance) -external attribution (cause of the actions is outside yourself- opposite of internal attribution) -basking in reflected glory (connection to successfully performing others e.g. using pornoun we instead of they)

CHAPTER 11 TEXTBOOK: Four elementary forms of relationships- authority ranking

-e.g. when a parent has more power over a child or ranking in military -people are linerally ordered along a heirarchical structure, but people at the top also expected to care for those below

What does happiness mean?

-early english definitions of happiness emphasized that it was the result of good luck -a recent analysis of dictionaries from 30 different countries found that definitions of happiness include a definition involving luck in 24 of them (but no longer in english)

James-Lange Theory of Emotions

-emotions are physiological responses to stimuli -These responses are products of our autonomic nervous system. -If we didn't have such physiological sensations, we would feel emotionless -e.g. attacking bear (stimulus)--> pounding heart (response)--> fear (subjective emotion) -but ANS is not well calibrated, its either on or off. There are not enough distinctions in ANS for all the emotions.

English Language and terms for odors

-english speakers have few words for odors, in contrast to the Jahai of Malaysia -english speakers are also notoriously bad at identifying odors -When given a series of colors and odors to identify, Americans reach much more agreement among each other for colors than odors (very poorly with odors) The Jahai do about as well for both colors and odors.

Attraction and average features (average proporitions)

-exceptions: men larger chin= + attractive, women with +eyes= more attractive -Faces with averagely proportioned features are more attractive than faces that deviate from average. -Average features are less likely to contain genetic abnormalities, and are more symmetrical. -Further, we can process any kind of stimulus that is closer to a prototype easier than one that is further from a prototype. Easy processing is associated with a pleasant feeling that gets interpreted as attractive.

Universal potential of intelligence

-indians are more likely than Americans to believe that anyone can become highly intelligent (can acquire through experience) -BUT when americans are led to believe that high intelligence is widely attainable, they become more supportive of government policies to distribute income more evenly

CHAPTER 11 TEXTBOOK: the critical role of idealization of one's partner in the experience of romantic love

-in the West, people who idealize their partners the most love their partners the most and were most likely to stay together -this distracts people from their partners unlovable characteristics -Japanese and Canadians both showed degrees of idealization (viewed own romantic relationships as more positive than others) but this was a larger effect among Euro americans

Chapter 1: Case study on the Sambian

-group of people living in highlands of Papua New Guinea (one of least accessible environments in the world) -today they are largely peaceful, not like the warring society they used to be -hunt, taro gardens, pandanus nut groves -believe femaleness is an innate natural essence, whereas maleness is a tenuous essence that must be cultivated -boys viewed as existing in female world (hanging out with mother, babysitting, weeding, wear same grass skirts as mother) -older men openly hostile to young boys -young boys must go through long initiation process to rid themselves of feminine habits--> pierce septum nose, thrash boys with sticks -want to give boys sense of power and strength--> "jerungdu" -boys believed to be born w/o any jerungdu, they get it through semen (body can't produce it, must be acquired), from age of 7 boys perform daily oral sex to older men, in late teens they switch roles, provide semen to younger men until fatherhood -then men can get jerungdu from white tree sap once they reachfatherhood and are in monogamous heterosexual relationship with woman -homosexual--> bisexual-->heterosexual

Happy person vs happy nation expressions

-happiness has become more of an individual concept -the expression happy person has become more common over time, and happy nation has become less common in published american books

Chapter 3: Factors that cause ideas to spread--> Communicable ideas

-have to have some way of moving from someone's head to anothers e.g. language -common example: stereotypes e.g. Americans used to percieve Irish as obese drunks -culturally shared stereotypes tend to be formed based on the kinds of traits people are most likely to communicate and for the kinds of groups that people are most likely to be talking about

CHAPTER 9 TEXTBOOK: high context and low context cultures

-high context culture: people are deeply involved with eachother and this involvement leads them to have much shared info that guides behavior (things dont need to be explicitly said) e.g. East asians -low context culture: relatively less involvement among individuals and there is less shared information to guide behavior (necessary for people to communicate in explicit detail). e.g. north americans -as a result Japanese leave less than half as many messages on answering machines (no context) and it is more cognitively demanding for them (will do poorer on cog test while leaving message)

CHAPTER 11 TEXTBOOK: evolutionary purpose for love?

-humans have an especially long period of dependence on their parents and if it weren't for love, then it would be very difficult to allocate so many resources to the raising of a child -children more likely to survive if parents stay together- love is the glue that holds them together -clear evidence for romantic love in 89% of cultures, the other 11% likely due to ethnographic oversight

Chapter 1: Existential universal (heirarchical framework for determining cultural universality)

-if a psychological phenomenon is cognitively available in all cultures -must also consider whether the phenomenon is used the same way in different cultures--> if the answer is no then it is an existential universal -psychological phenomenon is said to exist in multiple cultures but the phenomenon in not used to solve the same problem/ nor is it equally accessible -e.g. Westerners find experience of success motivating and experiences with failure to be demotivating, opposite is true for East Asians -intrinsic motivations for both groups are there to do one's best

Chapter 1: functional universal (heirarchical framework for determining cultural universality)

-if a psychological phenomenon is cognitively available in all cultures, and is used to solve the same problems across cultures -BUT it is not equally accessible to people in all cultures -example: the amount of money people are willing to pay to punish offenders--> it varies across cultures

Chapter 1: accessibility universal (heirarchical framework for determining cultural universality)

-if a psychological phenomenon is cognitively available in all cultures, and is used to solve the same problems across cultures and is eqaully accessible -strongest case for universality -folk understanding of the laws of physics (e.g. that objects can't just disappear).

Results of experimental design with Chinese and Americans

-if only one variable was explored, such as the fixations on the competitor object, then there could be multiple explanation for the cultural difference. -by comparing across trials that included a competitor with those that did not, we can see that Americans only have more fixations on competitor objects, not all objects. This narrows the explanations to the reasons why Americans differentiate between competitiors and baseline objects more than chinese. -most defensible explanation is that americans have more trouble taking on the perspective of their partner than chinese

CHAPTER 9 TEXTBOOK: East asians and relationships between objects

-in a study where two objects were paired e.g. light bulb presented first then coin presented 0% of the time, 40%, 60% or 100% Asians were better at determining the likelihood of the other picture appearing next to the lightbulb

CHAPTER 10 TEXTBOOK: Schacter and Singer Experiment for the two factor theory of emotions

-in an experiment it was shown that participants who received uniformed epinephrine shot had the highest emotion, feeling a great deal of arousal but no explanation for it so they interpreted their arousal by looking to their situation. Those in the euphoria condition (with confederate making paper airplane or hula hoopiing) attributed their arousal to feeling euphoric and giddy, those in anger condition (confederate upset about rudeness of questionnaire they were answering) attributed their feelings to anger -people dont have fine-tuned awareness of bodily sensations, rather they look to the situation

Self-Esteem and Exposure to North American Culture STUDY

-in another study, we compared the self-esteem of people with exposure to East Asian and Canadian Culture Cross-sectionally -We had a very large sample (about 5000) that we divided in terms of people's exposure to North American culture along a continuum. Starting with the least exposure we had: -"Never Been-Abroad" Japanese, who had never left Japan. -"Been-Abroad" Japanese, who had spent some time in the West. -Recent East Asian Immigrants, who had been in North America for less than 7 years. -Long-Term East Asian Immigrants, who had been in North America for more than 7 years. -2nd-Generation East Asian Canadians. -3rd-Generation East Asian Canadians -European-Canadians

CHAPTER 11 TEXTBOOK: Simpatico

-in many Latin American cultures, people place an emphasis on maintaining harmonious relationships and on making expressive displays of graciousness, hospitality, and personal harmony -this is called simpatico

Graph of independent view of self:

-individual in center--clear border around individual (identity doesn't overlap with others), large X's within individual= important aspects of identity, smaller X's less central (relationships less central to identity) -ingroup surrounded by dotted line, smaller distinction between ingroup and outgroup. The boundary is fluid, new people can come in.

African Americans switching between code of the street and code of the decent

-inner-city African-Americans switch between the "code of the decent" and the "code of the street." Different contexts require different ways of speaking and interacting with people. -people are responsive to contextual clues about how they should act and present themselves to others

Chapter 7: The Test of English as a Foreign Language

-international students must take this test in order to be admitted into school in english speaking countries -average entry scores are based on many factors such as countries GNP and amount of students who take the test -Most importantly, scores vary on the person's own mother language -those who grew up speaking languages similar to English (germanic languages such as Dutch or German) will do better than romance languages e.g. Spanish, Portugese, and least successful will be Arabic, Sawhili, Vietnamese, Japanese etc (Non-indo european languages)

Chapter 3: Natural selection

-mechanism through which biological evolution occurs -natural selection occurs when: 1) individual variability exists among members of a species on certain traits 2) those traits are associated with different reproductive rates 3) those traits have a hereditary basis

Are creative people more likely to live abroad? STUDY

-multicultural people (i.e., MBA students who had lived in more than one culture) were randomly assigned to a number of conditions. -Participants in an "Adaptation prime" condition were asked to imagine adapting themselves to a foreign culture. -In an "Observation prime" condition, participants were asked to imagine observing a foreign culture. -And participants in a control condition received no priming materials. -In the creativity task, participants were asked to draw an alien. They were to imagine they had gone to a planet very different from earth. -Coders rated the similarity to earth creatures and the number of sensory atypicalities

Acquired Physical Variation: the Moken and visual acuity

-one example of physical variation is that the Moken, sea gypsies from Southeast Asia, have twice the underwater visual acuity as Europeans -From a young age, Moken children swim underwater to retrieve seafood -their enhanced underwater visual acuity appears to be the result of experience rather than a genetic adaption

Study of identity denial

-one study asked asian americans and euro americans whether they could speak engish (control group not asked) -asian americans felt their identity was denied, they stated preferences more similar to euro americans -other research finds that when their identity is threatened asian americans will also order more Western food, event though in the study they end up consuming more calories for doing so

Attending to public self-information STUDY

-one study assessed how much people's self evaluations are affected by other's knowledge of their performance -Hong Kong and American Participants took a bogus creativity test that was evaluated by two computer programs. They all recieved two scores: 92 and 53rd percentiles -through an apparent mixup, another subject saw one of their scores -participants then rated their own performance

Chapter 1: nonuniversal (heirarchical framework for determining cultural universality)

-particular cultural tool said to not exist in all cultures -these are cultural innovations -e.g. Abacus is a calculation tool used in the Middle East and Asia

CHAPTER 13 TEXTBOOK: barefoot running research

-people more likely to land on their fore-feet or mid-feet as compared to those in runners who land on their rear-feet -barefoot running may lead to less injury -children take longer steps in running shoes

Chapter 1: consequences of adopting a multicultrual world view

-people of different cultural groups get along better and are more engaged

Composite photos and attractiveness STUDY RESULTS

-people rated the mixed race composites and Eurasian composites to be most attractive -Mixed race faces may be viewed as more attractive because they represent the average of all faces seen. -Whereas average facial features are perceived as attractive, when we consider people's weight, height, muscles, breasts, and hips, often it's bodies that depart from average that are seen as more attractive -The kinds of body weights that are perceived to be most attractive vary considerably across cultures.

Acculturation strategies

-people vary in the strategy they use -the two keys variables are how positively people view their host culture, and how positively they view their heritage culture -Integration: positive view of host and heritage culture -Marginalization: negative view toward host and heritage culture -Separation: negative attitude towards host culture and positive attitdue towards heritage culture -assimilation: positive attitude towards host culture, negative attitude toward heritage culture

Americans Prefer More Choice Options than Do Europeans

-percent that prefers 50 flavors over 10 flavors of ice cream -US is only country surveyed that over half preferred 50 flavors of ice cream

Why do differences of presentation of depression differ across cultures?

-perhaps depressed Chinese are worried about the stigma of having a mental disorder and thus conceal it with somatic symptom reporting -alternatively, Westerners may be more attentive than chinese to their emotions. Western psychological symptoms might thus be more accessible to them.

Preferences vs choices

-preferences seem to be more closely related to choices among americans than indians - in one study, people were shown a set of 5 pens and were asked to rate how much they liked them -they later chose one of the pens to take home -indians were less likely to choose their top preference than Americans

CHAPTER 9 TEXTBOOK: Non-verbal communication study Japanese vs Americans

-presented with words with pleasant words (e.g. grateful) or unpleasant words (E.g. ungrateful) and accompanied by either pleasant sounding or unpleasant sounding tone -participants instructed to either ignore the tone of the word and answer whether the meaning of the word was pleasant or not OR ignore the word and decide if the tone was pleasant or not -Americans showed more interference in their judgements about the vocal tone (spent longer) than the meaning of the word. They attend to the meaning of words more. Opposite pattern for Japanese who attend to tone more.

Evaluating the Evidence for Self-Enhancement Across Cultures: Western Data

-some studies show very large effects of self enhancement -d=.86, this is a large and strong effect

CHAPTER 8 TEXTBOOK: German study analyzing different psychologies in East Vs West Berlin before reunification

-studied notions of primary control and efficacy, West Berlin children had more of both of these -East Berlin became communist which then lead to decreased feelings of control, they may be showing notions of learned helplessness -East Berliners more likely to show outward sings of depression

Grade distribution at US four year colleges and universites 1940-2013

-test makers are making more and more people get A's over time--> the share of A's has trippled over the last 7 decades, sharpest increases during the 1980s -The percent of people getting B's and A's is rising drastically and the incidence of C's, D's and F's are decreasing

Language of study affecting biculturals

-the language of the study appears to effectively prime different cultural thoughts among bilinguals. -when bilinguals switch languages they also appear to be switching their self-concepts as well -These studies raise the question of whether biculturals are the only ones who show frame-switching. -Indeed, much research finds that priming ideas in anyone, monocultural or multicultural, leads to the activation of associated networks. However, multicultural people show more pronounced frame-switching.

Chapter 3: How have cultures been changing?

-they're becoming increasingly interconnected--> globalization of ideas, companies -becoming more individualistic -more intelligent

Does Money Make you Happy?

-this is a universal predictor of happiness but not linear, its curvilinear -low levels of wealth, its a strong predictor (when it is a life or death issue, more money makes you happier to meet your basic necessities) -levels off for wealthier countries (once you have a certain amount of money, no longer impacts happiness)

Chapter 3: distal causes in relation to cultural variation--> the spaniards and Incans

-those initial differences that led to effects over long periods, through indirect relations. How did the Spanish take over the Incans? 1) Spanish lived in fertile crescent--> plant and animal domestication, this left time for development of tools and artifacts--> steel, ships, writing systems thus appeared faster than in the Americas 2) domestication of animals in fertile crescent caused humans in Eurasia to live in close proximity to animals over long periods of time --> developed resistance to animal disease

Culture-Bound Syndromes: Hikikomori

-typical response is to drop out from the social world, often barricading oneself up in a room for years, at least 6 months in this asocial state with no initmate relationships with anyone outside of the immediate family -Doesn't map on to any diagnoses in the DSM-IV. Some could also be diagnosed as depressed, autistic, socially anxious, or schizophrenic. -Approximately one child per classroom in junior high and high school years in Japan (3x more males than females). -Was largely non-existent in pre-war Japan, and is not commonly found in any other culture (except isolated cases in Taiwan and Korea). -Appears to be the result of failing to succeed in a social world where there are few options for those who don't fit in. -In Japan, there is decreasing valuation or work due to economic comfort of Japan, more lenient and overprotective parenting norms, decline in birthrate=children have own bedrooms, eroded secruity of jobs -most common among eldest sons where there is pressure to carry on family name

CHAPTER 9 TEXTBOOK: attirbutions and social class

-working class americans make more situational attributions and less dispositional attributions than middle class americans who may be making more FAE (saying something is due to disposition when its due to situation) -This same pattern is found in France, Russia, and India

Chapter 3: how are biolgocial and cultural evolution different?

1) Biological: genes copied faithfully from one generation to the next, with copying errors or mutations being very rare and emerging randomly. IN CONTRAST copying errors much more common in cultural transmission are much more frequent and often intentional 2) genes passed vertically from parents to offspring, ideas passed horizontally to many different people 3) cultural ideas dont have to be adaptive unlike evolutionary processes

Contradiction study with Americans and Chinese

Consider the following two arguments: A: A sociologist who surveyed college students from 100 universities claimed that there is a high correlation among college female students between smoking and being skinny. B: A biologist who studied nicotine addiction asserted that heavy doses of nicotine often lead to becoming overweight. -A number of contradictory pairs of arguments were created, and American and Chinese participants received either just one argument from the pair, or they received both arguments. -They were asked to evaluate how plausible they found the arguments

CHAPTER 1: what is culture?

Culture is a particular kind of information--> any kind of information that is acquired from other members of one's species through social learning that is capable of affecting an individual's behavior (can incluce ideas, beliefs, technologies, habits, practices) -Culture is a particular group of individuals who are existing in some kind of shared context

Results of Study of cultural accumulation in the lab

Group size predicts better cultural learning -those run in groups of 2 were able to recreate the net less than half the time -in contrast, more than 90% of participants in the largest group could accurately recreate the net -in a larger group you are more likely to have access to a successful model to copy from -bar graph depicting increased success (higher bars) for proportion that could accurately recreate the net -the whole world is becoming interconnected with the Internet, so rate of innovation should continue to grow

Self Esteem in the US- Rosenburg self esteem score

Positive Views Have Been Increasing Over Time in the USA

reasons for culture of honor in the south:

Nisbett and Cohen: the south was settled laregely by herders, whereas North was settled by farmers. This led to development of culture of honor in US South. -Herders live a precarious existence as their wealth is portable. Others can steal your herds. -The problem is made worse because herding is usually done on marginal lands which are sparsely populated, and thus difficult to police. -People will be more likely to protect their herds if they can develop a reputation as someone who would respond to threats with violence

Why are humans so much weaker than our nearest primate relatives?

We cannot keep our strength and our brain size--> we would have to eat 5,200 calories a day like the rock to maintain this -1/6th of our calories go feeding energy to the brain -food can be unreliable with famine -Having smaller muscles allowed humans to evolve larger more resource-intensive brains. -Another way that humans differ from other primates, is that their intestines are shorter - about 60% shorter--> more energy for brain -how can we have shorter digestive track? cooked food! Less energy to extract nutrients

Chapter 7: cultural fit

cultrual fit is the degree to which an individuals personality is more similar to the dominant cultural values of the host culture

Chapter 3: proximal causes in relation to cultural variation--> the spaniards and Incans

direct and immediate relations with their effects e.g. How did Spaniards take over Incans? 1) political organization that drew on the experiences of thousands of years of written history 2) ocean going ships that allowed them to reach the Americas 3) Steel armour and swords, guns (unlike their opponents who had sling shots and guns) 4) horses 5) the time of invasion: Incans were decimated by an outbreak in smallpox that was introduced first by spanish explorers

Chapter 4: methodological equivalence

having ones method percieved in identical ways across different cultures -sometimes involves a slightly different procedure in different cultures

CHAPTER 10 TEXTBOOK: liget

key emotion in the lives of the Iiongot- hunting and gathering society in the philippines -"anger, passion, and energy" -its experienced when one is disappointed, insulted, or irritated but mostly ENVIOUS -There are liget head hunting rutuals where they engage on raids in neighboring tribes, they kill because of liget

Chapter 2: neocortex ratio

ratio of the volume of outermost portion of the brain (neocortex responsible for higher functions like sensory perception, motor control, conscious thought) to the volume of the rest of the brain--> measure of intelligence e.g. the fruit hypothesis of animals and intelligence seems uncorrelated, and same for extractive foraging methods. BUT there is a clear relation between neocortex ratio and average group size

CHAPTER 12 TEXTBOOK: seniority system

reflects principle of equality because there is no competition among individuals e.g. a raise for every year a person has been with a company

Humans vs chimps working memory

relatively equal--> about same level of W.M. -Humans aren't necessarily much more intelligent than chimps for all kinds of intellectual tasks

CHAPTER 12 TEXTBOOK: secularization theory

religion is on the decline and people around the world are discovering new secular and rational ways to make sense of their lives -religion is dropping in places like Scandinavia and east asia but in much of the world it remains a significant force, including america where 94% of individuals believe in god -Islam and christianity growing in popularity

CHAPTER 14 TEXTBOOK: which psychological disorder is one of the most universally similar psychopathologies across cultures?

schizophrenia

CHAPTER 14 TEXTBOOK: most famous example of suicide in Japan

upon being humiliated by a high official emperor, a feudal lord names Takumi no Kami committed a form of ritual suicide known as seppuku whereby he killed himself by thrusting a sword into his own belly

What WAY do humans learn? What way do chimps learn?

-Human social learning appears to be imitative. They internalize the model's goals and behavioral strategies. -Chimpanzee social learning appears to be emulative. They focus on the environmental events that are involved and not the model's goals and behavioral strategies e.g. Imo (female Macaque) washing sweet potato, others joined in, chimps who are bark and twig fishers, dolphins use sponge as foraging tools, killer whales have different dialects

Who should cultural psychologists study?

-Ideally, populations for which you have theoretical reasons to predict the responses. If you are studying 2 or more populations, they should vary on a meaningful cultural variable. -populations for which someone involved in the research has much cultural knowledge, or becoming immersed in the culture itself before you begin to study it

Key Benefit of Imitative Learning

-Imitative learning allows for a faithful and high fidelity reproduction of the target behavior. -New cultural information cannot only be accurately reproduced - it can also be improved. -Allows for cultural accumulation of humans e.g. evolution of hammers--> shaping rock to rocks with sticks, to modern hammer etc.

Example of culture affecting the mind: absolute vs relativity task (figure line task)

-task in which there are two boxes and you have to draw the absolute length (identical to the top stimulus) of a line or the relative length (identical in proportion to the stimulus box) -East Asians show more activation of these regions (i.e., the left inferior parietal lobule and the right precentral gyrus) on the absolute task, Americans showed more activation on the relative task. -In other words, when people performed the culturally "less-familiar" task, they showed more evidence for attentional control. -Different tasks are associated with increased attentional control across cultures. -indicates cultural differences in analytic vs holistc reasoning -mind cannot be untangled from culture-->our cultures provide us with distinctive sets of experiences

Does cultural knowledge accumulate at the same rate everywhere? No- not a constant!

-the speed of cultural accumulation has been increasing over time -one possibility is that cultural accumulation rates are tied to population size -with larger populations one should be more liekly to find a successful model to imitate -also the world is much more interconnected now than ever before -places with severe population loss have loss of technology -large cities and industrial hubs tend to have more cultural innovations

College-Educated Americans vs. Other Americans.

Domains in Which College-Educated Americans differ from Other Americans: -Higher heritability estimates for IQ (as a function of SES, not college education per se). -More independent views of self. -Less conforming -More desire for choice. -More justice-based morality. -More defensive responses to death thoughts.

Western vs. Non-Western Societies

Domains in which Western Societies Occupy an Extreme Position: -More Analytic reasoning (breaking things down into parts). -More Independent Self-Concepts. -More Motivations for Self-Enhancement. -Less Conforming. -more desire for choice -Morality Exclusively Based on Justice Concerns

Explanation of social network graph

Line= relationship btwn 2 people, more embedded=central, less embedded = periphery, node (circle)= person, "embedded"= the degree to which a person is connected within a network

-What about practical reasons? --> How does attending to cultural differences affect the ways that people think about others?

Multicultural (attend to different cultures/experiences ppl have) vs. Culture-Blind (do not attend to people's cultural differences) -Social psychology research shows that highlighting any kind of group difference can lead to discrimination. -But people do identify strongly with their groups - especially for minority or disadvantaged groups. (e.g. female, ethnic, queer)

Questioning response bias

One difficult question regarding response biases is whether these are things that really should be statistically controlled because they represent unwanted, "content-independent" noise, or whether they accurately reflect the ways that people really think, and thus should be preserved.

cultural accumulation loss in the history of tasmania

Tasmania was orignially inhabited by Australian aboriginals- they had the smallest toolkits ever discovered e.g. they lost the ability to make the boomerang -settlement here was so small that there were not enough people to keep the technologies alive

What is cultural evolution?

how cultures change over time

How do ideas catch on? Must be communicated in order to spread

ideas need to be communicated to spread. they spread within social networks, so some ideas vary across different groups

Why do cultures persist?

-Another force of persistence is that people show pluralistic ignorance. -Collectively people incorrectly judge the thoughts of others based on their actions. Because people often act in ways that are different than what they privately think, others incorrectly judge their thoughts. -People strive to act in ways to fit in with their incorrect beliefs about what they think others value and can thus perpetuate the culture.

Cultures Persist: Six Centuries of Anti-Semitism

-Many regions in Germany have a long history of anti-semitism -in the 14th century, during the black plague, in some regions the plague was blamed on Jews being suspected of poisoning the wells -those german countries that had anti-Jewish pogroms in the 14th century were far more likely to have anti-Jewish pogroms in the 1920'a during the rise of the Nazis -anti-semitism in Germany remained concentrated in some regions across centuries

Study by Nornezayan et al 2006 about counterintuitive findings

-participants recieved list of 18 items to read -some of these items were intuitive and some were counter-intuitive -participants divided into four conditions that varied in the percent of counter-intuitive items 1) entirely intuitive (100%) 2) minimally counterintuitive (72% intuitive, 28% counterintuitive) 3) Equal frequencies (50/50 split) 4) Maximally Counterintuitive (28% intuitive, 72% counterintuitive) e.g. intuitive: closing door, thirsty cat Counterintuitive: thirsty door, closing cat

Contrast between general psychology and cultural psychology: According to Shweder

-A key goal of general psychology is to reveal the underlying, and universal, central processing unit (CPU). -We need to isolate the mind from context (e.g. put in lab) and content(everyone must respond to same stimuli), to reduce the noise and allow us to detect a clear signal. -From this perspective, there's no point to study people from different cultures, as they're assumed to share the same CPU. -Studying people from different cultures would only add noise that would interfere with our ability to detect a clear signal.

Study Manipulating Reference-Groups (canadian/japanese study)

-Asked Japanese and Canadians to complete a measure of independence/interdependence. -We manipulated the reference-group by explicitly asking participants how they viewed themselves in comparison to specific others. -Importantly, our samples all had a great deal of familiarity with the two cultures. The Japanese respondents had been living in Canada for an average of 8 months. The Canadians had lived in Japan for an average of more than a year.

Cross-Cultural Reference Group Comparison (canadian/japanese study)

-Comparison found that Canadians are more independent than Japanese, and that Japanese are more interdependent than Canadians, which both make sense. -the interaction was highly significant -Evidence that people's self-reports match other findings better when they explicitly consider the cross-cultural reference groups.

Human vs. Ape Learning Face-Off

-Contrasted the learning abilities of three primates: chimpanzees, orangutans, and 2.5 year old human children. -Some tasks involved general problem-solving skills about the physical world. -Some tasks involved social learning

Example of cultures persisting: Africans and the slave trade

-Cultural norms can persist over time because each new member of the culture adjusts to the existing norms, and thereby perpetuates them. -Likewise, any new cultural ideas need to be incorporated into the existing structure. -One example can be seen in the persistence of "mistrust" norms in Africa. -Millions of slaves were taken from Africa prior to 1900. -The amount taken varied across region. -Those countries with high historic slave exports have worse GDP growth today. -This effect is mediated by trust -Raiding neighboring villages for slaves by Africans lowered local trust norms and these have persisted for more than a century.

Study by Cullum and Harton, 2007: attitudes changing while living in residence at uni

-Explored how students' attitudes changed while living in residence halls. Importantly, the students were randomly assigned to the different residences. -The students completed surveys that assessed their attitudes after spending 2 vs. 13 weeks in the residences. -Did their attitudes become more similar to their dormmates over this time?

Humans aren't just social; they're ultra-social- how?

-Humans live in larger groups than other primates -Humans appear more interested in each other's activities than do other primates-->and gossip is the biggest component of human conversation -Humans engage in more cultural learning than do other primates

Contrast between general psychology and cultural psychology: Cultural psychologist's view

-In contrast, cultural psychology maintains that the mind cannot be separated from content or context. -Mind and culture are mutually constituted (they make eachother up). -That is, minds arise from participating in cultures and cultures are created and maintained by individuals minds

Some Causes Identified by Putnam

-Increased time pressures from families with dual incomes (~ 10% of change accounted for the fact that people have less time). -Suburban lifestyles (~ 10% change accounted for the fact people have long commutes/ less neighbour interaction). -electronic entertainment (around 25% accounted for the fact people spend more time with TV and less with others) -Generational Difference (living through had the effect of people being more connected to their communities, sense of shared fateWW2~50%)

Study by Nagel et al., 1993 contrasting how chimps and 2-year-olds learned from a model: RESULTS

-children used rake in same way target did -Chimpanzees used the rake in the more effective "teeth up" position -- regardless of the way the target used it. -That is, the children demonstrated imitative learning, and the chimpanzees demonstrated emulative learning.

Studying university students in industrialized countries

-Most cross-cultural studies have contrasted university students living in industrialized countries, largely because of convenience. -This raises the question of whether the results generalize to other samples in those same countries. -Such studies are assumed to represent conservative tests of cultural differences. If samples which share so many features (i.e., students living in complex and reasonably wealthy industrialized environments) differ in their psychology, it is expected that samples with fewer shared experiences would differ even more

Why Study Cultural Psychology?

-Scientific reasons are clear: we can't fully understand what is human without understanding culture.

Standardizing scores- Preventing the moderacy/ extremity bias

-Standardizing allows you to compare how people's pattern of responding differs across cultures. -this means converting people's responses to a z score -However, you cannot compare people's average responses across cultures as each group's mean is set to a Z of 0

Study investiagating ideas eliciting strong emotional reactions

-Study investigated how much the emotional intensity of a story predicted whether people would relay that story to others (Heath et al., 2001). -The researchers created 12 stories and made three different versions of each story, that varied in emotional intensity. -1) Man finds rat in soda can: mild degree of disgust -2) halfway through soda man finds rat in can: moderate degree of disgust -3)man swallowed something lumpy, part of a rat: strong degree of disgust -Participants read only one version of each of the 12 stories. -They were asked to indicate how likely they would be to pass this story along to a friend.

Study of cultural accumulation in the lab

-Study investigated how well groups of undergrads could learn to make a complicated fishing net on the computer. -Participants were put either in groups of 2, 4, 8, or 16 members. -They were first shown the net and then had 15 trials to recreate it -After each trial they received a score for the quality of their net, and they could see the scores of their teammates. -After each trial, they could select to see one of the nets of their teammates.

How much has the average IQ gone up in the past 50 years?

-The Flynn effect! 17 points inc in IQ in past 50 years -people perform drastically better on the raven's progressive matricies (problem solving). Increase by 2 standard deviations since 1950. It was originally designed to be "culture-free" but there is no such thing. -information, arithmatic, and vocabulary have increased only slightly -BUT decreasing scores on SAT

Why are we seeing gains in intelligence?

-The gains appear to be most concentrated in analytic and problem-solving skills -Part of the story is that people are receiving more education than before. -rising professional class added incentives for people to receive more education. -people are exposed to more information as they deal with an increasingly complex world -popular culture is even more complex now with multiple plot lines in one show and more complex video games

More recent changes in American high school students:

-The questions are not identical to those investigated by Putnam, but assess intrinsic motivation, concern for others, as well as general civic orientation. -Increasing Extrinsic Goals, Decreasing Intrinsic Ones--> dec in need for philosphy of life, more importnace placed upon well-off financially, money, and being a leader -Slight Decrease in Concern for Others, But Increase in Volunteering -Decreasing Civic Orientation (thinking about social problems, writing to gov, helping enviro, trust)

Surveying within/outside culture and reference group effects

-The reference-group effect is more problematic for items in which people evaluate themselves by comparing themselves with others. -surveys are most useful for conducting analyses within a culture, to see if people's answers to some items relate to others answers -Various response biases make it extremely problematic to compare means of scales across cultures. It is best to avoid comparing cultures in mean scores on self-report measures. -it is sometimes better to have behavioral measures bc they dont involve people's understanding of how they compare against others

But how can humans extract enough energy from their foods if their digestive tracts are shorter?

-They cook their food- less energy required to extract nutrients -The cultural invention of cooking allowed humans to evolve shorter intestines and larger brains.

Bachelors degree frequency since 1940

-before men outnumbered women and the rate was below 10% -in 2000 the rate is close to 30% and women outnumber men

Empirical Evidence for Cultural Psychology being practical and progressive

-companies with more multicultural policies have more employee engagement and trust -Euro-Canadian and First Nation students have more positive interactions when multicultural messages are present -White Americans exposed to color-blind arguments acted in more prejudiced ways to minorities than those exposed to multicultural arguments -Intergroup relations appear to benefit from attending to cultural differences -Taking a course on cultural psychology boosts cultural awareness, cultural intelligence, and improves intercultural understanding

Argument in Guns, Germs and Steel movie

-economic development of the world can be boiled down to the geography of the land -e.g. if there are enough native plants to feed the population, where agriculture is prominent there is time to spend on other tasks, access to domesticable animals (there are as few as 14), waterways are important for transportation of goods and people

The brain and changes as a result of experience e.g. juggling and taxi driver study

-for example: juggling ca change the brain--> increased grey matter in regions that process and store complex visual motion -taxi drivers who have been driving for a long time have a larger posterior hippocampi as a result of cab driving

Our Culture is changing some examples from the USA:

-people participating in less civic affairs -people are attending less church -people entertaining less at home -families eat together less often -people socializing less -people becoming less trusting -people becoming less law abiding

Reference groups and school achievement

-schools vary around the world in their overall average achievement -you would expect that students from schools near the top would rate themselves as better than students from schools near the bottom -but the opposite pattern emerged -this is bc those near the top are evaluating themselves according to a higher standard than the ones near the bottom

Holistic vs. Analytic Thinking

Analytic thinking is breaking things down into parts -this was viewed as the dominant reasoning style originally -A few years back, researchers found that analytic thinking was much less evident in East Asia (e.g., Nisbett, 2003). -More recent evidence reveals that analytic thinking is less common almost everywhere in the non-Western world

Average group size and neocortext size

As group size goes up, neoxortex size goes up--> primates in larger groups have larger brains **Primate brain evolution appears to be largely driven by their highly social lifestyle

Summary of Guns, Germs and Steel movie

Barley and Wheat in Middle East more nutritious than sego in New Guinea -Wheat and Barley stored by the people in the middle east for difficult times (discovered through archeology) -start of agriculture in difficult times when there was drought, brought seeds with them to reliable water source -people started to control nature through domestication-- selecting the best of the crops -hunter gatherers cannot produce as much food as farmers -Farming in new guinea actually began about 10,000 years ago -reasoning for thier lack of success: more work to cultivate their crops and less protein in the crops -other steady source of food in the middle east: animals -around 9000 y.a. there were domesticated animals-- used for milk, meet, hair, skins -goats and sheep first to be domesticated -only muscle power in New Guinea is humans -for domestication animals must be: social, interalized social hierarchy, need to get along with humans -only 14 types of animals have been domesticated -M.E. known as fertile crescent because they are geographically blessed--> free from the burden of farming other people had time to form new technologies e.g. the invention of plaster and the mastery of fire

Americans vs. others

Domains in which Americans occupy an extreme position. -More defensive reactions to thoughts of death. -More independent selves. -More analytic reasoning -More desire for choice.

Moderacy/ Extremity Bias: response bias

I am a creative person. SCORE A 9 I am a creative person. SCORE A 6 -It is possible that two people who both think they are highly creative would give different answers because they differ in their moderacy and extremity biases. -And, because cultures differ slightly in their levels of these biases it can be problematic comparing scale means across cultures. -one solution to moderacy/extremity bias is to give people yes/no response format (but this is less sensitive) -Another solution is to standardize people's responses through conversion to a z score (although this prevents you from making some 'average' comparisons, only good for pattern of data)---> each persons scores are averaged and then see how much some scores deviate from the average -e.g. African Americans and Hispanics more likely to have extremity bias than European decent Americans, East Asians even more moderate

How do Ideas Catch On? Ideas that elicit Strong emotional reactions

Ideas that elicit a strong emotional reaction are more likely to be communicated. People can connect with others better when they are experiencing similar feelings

Summing up on weird samples

For many psychological phenomena, WEIRD samples are real outliers -This is problematic as psychologists have built their theories largely from WEIRD samples. -Underscores the importance of attending to other samples for understanding human nature.

Grimm brothers tale and counter-intutitive findings

Nornezayan et al compared whether the contents of the successful Grimm tales differed from the unsuccessful ones -they counted how many counterintuitive elements were present in each tale -popular tales like cinderella, hanzel and grettel, snow white, little red riding hood had 2-3 elements of counterintuitivity -unsuccessful ones e.g. farmer little, hans my hedgehog, the knapsack the hat and horn, the jew in the brambies

How do ideas catch on? Ideas that convey useful information spread

ideas that convey useful information are widely discussed and spread -useful information motivates us to tell others e.g. video of grandpa shucking corn, put it in microwave for 8 minutes, cut huss off, corn comes right out -shared 8 million times

Example of pluralistic ignorance: prohibition

many people believed that others in society wanted prohibition -not until surveys were received about people's TRUE thoughts that no one actually wanted prohibition except for a few spokepeople on the cause

Correlation of fruit consumption and neocortex size

zero correlation- theory of fruit eating primates and big brains not supported