SGroups - Culture and Group Dynamics

from slides
1. FARR - 1996 - stated that social psychology has neglected culture has it has been dominated by Anglo-Saxon American, middle class people
  1. TRIANDIS - 1980 - 80% of the world's psychologists are American
  2. GARFINKEL - 1967 - there is a tendency for people to fail to recognise that their life is only one of many possible lives
2. 57 % Asian, 21 European, 14 Western Hemisphere, 8 African..... 70 Non-white, 30 White... 70% unable to read, 80% in sub-standard housing, 50% suffer from malnutrition.
3. CROSS-CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY - comparing cultural effects on human psychology. looks at diversity and the reasons for that diversity. looks at new psychological universals.
4. RACE is a group of people distinguished by similar and genetically transmitted physical characteristics
  1. ETHNICITY = cultural heritage, NATION = people who share common geographical origin, TRADITIONS = rules and symbols etc.
CULTURE-BOUND - theory and data conditioned by a specific cultural background
CULTURALLY BLIND - theory and data tested outside the host culture
WHAT IS CULTURE?
1. BOND - 1998 - culture is a system of shared meaning.
  1. BOAS - 1930 - culture is the social habits of a community.
    1. HOGG & VAUGHAN - 2007 - culture is an expression of group norms at a national, racial and ethnic level
2. MORELAND ET AL - 1996 - culture is an instance of group memory and so the term culture can be applied to social collectives of all sizes
HISTORY - culture and personality in the 1920s emphasised there are close parallels between each society's culture and the common characteristics of its people
1. MEAD - 1928 and BENEDICT - 1934 - wrote about ethnographic research, immersion of the researcher in the everyday life of its people
2. TAJFEL - 1972 - has social psychology neglected culture, experiments do not consider cultural differences in the variables, you cannot do experiments in a cultural vacuum
FACE RECOGNITION - BRIGHAM AND BARKOWITZ - 1978 - OUTGROUP HOMOGENEITY EFFECT - recognise own race more accurately than pictures of other races. outgroup are seen as more similar than ingroup. "they are the same, we are diverse"
TYPES OF CROSS-CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGISTS
1. CROSS-CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGISTS - test theories about the differences between groups using traditional methods, questionnaires, interviews
2. CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGISTS - focus on universal processes where cultures are transformed using qualitative methodology
  1. INTERCULTURAL - look at communication across cultures
ETIC-EMIC DISTINCTION. ETIC - similiar, focus on universals, e.g. we all eat. EMIC - different, culturally different.
CULTURAL VARIATION IN BEHAVIOUR
1. HEIDER - 1958 - people motivated by two needs. 1. the need to form a coherent view. 2. the need to gain control over the environment
2. ATTRIBUTION STYLES
  1. DISTRIBUTIONAL ATTRIBUTION - individual behaviour as a result of INTERNAL CAUSES
  2. SITUATIONAL ATTRIBUTION - individual behaviour as a result of the environment
  3. FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR - bias in attributing another's behaviour more to internal than to situational causes.
    1. LEHMAN - 2004 - there are subtle but inconsistent differences in thought processes between east Asians and north American
    2. MILLER - 1984 - Hindu Indians were much less likely than North Americans to make distributional rather than situational attributions
      1. internal = dispositional vs. external = situational.
      2. COLLECTIVIST cultures - high value on conformity and interdependence, group membership = asian and african cultures. INDIVIDUALISTIC = north american and western european
        people from collectivist cultures (asia) are more likely to believe that a person's behaviour is due to situational demands and individualistic are more likely to see behaviour as dispositional
3. VARIATION IN CONFORMITY
  1. SMITH AND BOND - 1998 - replication of ASCH's line study, in 17 countries, and found considerable cultural variation in conformity to group pressure. NON-WESTERN had the highest conformity, seen as escaping embarrassment instead of conforming
  2. BERRY - 1967 - more conforming found in a food accumulating culture than in a hunter gatherer society BECAUSE the food accumulating culture requires cooperation to harvest a single crop whereas the hunter society is concerned with hunting on an individual basis.
EAST MEETS WEST
1. FISKE ET AL - 1998 - refers to two cultural patterns, europe and america = west, east asia = east.
2. TRIANDIS - 1994 - "I am kind" (west), "my co-workers think I am kind" (east)
3. HOFSTEDE - 1980 - VALUES DIFFER BETWEEN CULTURES - 1. power distance. 2. uncertainty avoidance. 3. maculinity-femininity. 4. individualism - collectivism
4. TWO KIND OF SELF
  1. TRIANDIS - 1989 - cultures mainly vary in the extent of their focus on the self, individualistic vs. collectivist.
  2. MARKUS AND KITAYAMA - 1991 - WEST = independent. EAST = interdependent.
  3. FIJEMAN ET AL - 1996 - COLLECTIVIST cultures contribute to others and support them. INDIVIDUALISTIC cultures expect to contribute less to others.
  4. PROSOCIAL BEHAHIOUR - NADLER - 1986 - compared a collective farm with a city and found prosocial behaviour more likely to occur in rural areas than cities, as self-reliance and individual achievement is focused on in western cultures
  5. PERSONAL SPACE - cultures vary, westerners are more likely to stand further away than easterners
5. VIGNOLES ET AL - 2000 - self-distinctiveness may be universal, however there are different meanings dependent on culture.
  1. COLLECTIVIST CULTURES such as CHINA, people are employed on the basis of ties to current employees rather than traditional ways
6. No signle dimension, such as individualism and collectivism can explain the complex and varied cultures, the impact of RELIGION HAS BEEN NEGLECTED IN CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH despite its impact in international affairs.
7. CONTACT BETWEEN CULTURES - cultural groups come into contact with one another which should be enriching howevr, perceived threats might boil over into conflict. most intercultural contact does not last long enough to cause a change in attitudes / stereotypes.
  1. ETHNOCENTRISM - belief in the superiority of one's own ethnic group.
  2. difficulties with communication between cultures, may be seen as aggressive when those are the cultural norms.
  3. VAUGHAN - 1962 - the extent to which a culture is perceived as dissimilar to our own can affect intergroup contact. the more dissimilar a culture is seen to be, the more people want to distance themselves
    1. cultural variations in KINESICS, the linguistics of body communication.
from book
1. WUNDT- 1897 - social psychology is all about collective phenomena such as culture.
2. GARFINKEL - 1967 - social psychology is CULTURE BOUND and CULTURE BLIND. culture bound is theory and data conditioned by one specific cultural background. culture blind is when theory and data is untested outside the host culture.
3. HOFSTEDE - 2001 - culture is the set of cognitions and practices that identify a specific social group and distinguish it from others.
4. ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH - fieldwork requiring immersion of the researcher in the everyday life of its people.
5. BARTLETT - 1923 - WAR OF THE GHOSTS folk tale and participants had to reconstruct it from memory. they found that the original story was constructed to bring it more into line with what they would remember easily, resulted in cultural transformation of the tale.
6. cross cultural psychology is the study of the interaction between cultures. cultural psychology focuses on how people extract meaning from their environment
  1. ULTIMATE ATTRIBUTION ERROR - to attribute bad outgroup and good ingroup behaviour internally and good outgroup and bad ingroup behaviour externally.
    1. FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR - another's behaviour more to internal than situational causes.
7. LEHMAN ET AL - 2004 - there are differences in thought processes between cultures. COLLECTIVIST cultures tend to be more holistic and relationship orientated whereas INDIVIDUALISTIC cultures tend to be more analytic and linear in their thinking
  1. COGNITIVE DISSONANCE - conflicting attitudes produces a feeling of discomfort
8. CONFORMITY TO GROUP PRESSURE - smith and bond - 1998 - ASCH'S is the most replicated social experiment of all time. found conformity was stronger outside western europe, which can be interpreted as indicating escape from embarrassment
  1. AGGRESSION - COHEN AND NISBETT - 1994 - greater violence is linked to the south of america due to the herding economy where they are more violent in order to protect their property.

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SGroups - Culture and Group Dynamics

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	Created by becky.waine over 11 years ago