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cross-cultural psychology
- the study of similarities and differences in individual psychological functioning in various cultural and ethnocultural groups; of ongoing changes in variables reflecting such functioning; and of the relationship of psychological variables with sociocultural, ecological, and biological variables.
- cause and effect relationships between culture and behaviour
- kinds of cultural experiences may be factors in promoting human behavioural diversity
- culture-comparative
- are culture and behaviour distinct entities?
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overt behaviour
observable actions and responses
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covert behaviour
thoughts, beliefs, meanings
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universalism (psychic unity)
- To what extent are psychological functions and processes common to humankind?
- overt and covert behaviour should be seen as culturally shaped reflections of common psychological functions and processes.
- focus on how different ecological and sociocultural environments impact shared human psychological functions/processes and lead to differences in behaviour repertoires
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cultural psychology
- culture and behavior are essentially inseparable and different psyches will emerge in different cultural contexts
- shift in interest to internal culture and covert behaviour
- psychological variables are interpreted as differences in functioning rooted in psychological histories
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culture-comparative approach
- cultural conditions are seen as existing independently of particular individuals
- x-cultural differences in behaviour do not imply differences in underlying processes
- goal of finding what might be psychologically common to a range of cultures/human species
- any theoretically meaningful psychological concept should make sense everywhere, despite large variations in behaviour manifestations
- cultural context = antecedent conditions, and psychological variables = outcomes
- selection of populations with different antecedent conditions to measure differences in behavioural outcomes
- leans toward universalism, culture is both internal and external
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ecocultral framework
- conceptual scheme where features of a culture are understood via the manner of their relationships
- human beings are active participants in their relationships with their physical and social contexts
- population-level variables influence individual outcomes and vice versa; mediated via various forms of transmission (pg. 19-21)
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ecological context
- the setting in which human organisms interact with he physical environment
- eg. economic activities, socioeconomic status
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sociopolitical context
host of variables covering norms, beliefs, attitudes, and ideas
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biological/genetic transmission
individuals acquire part of the total gene pool of the population to which they belong trough their biological parents
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cultural transmission
processes of socialization and enculturation through which the individual acquires part of the total pool of cultural information available in the society or community
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acculturation
contacts between populations due to historical and contemporary experiences which involves mutaual influence between the groups in contact
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internal culture
- the extent to which culture is conceptualized as part of the person
- eg. ideas, philosophies, beliefs, etc
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external culture
- the extent to which a set of conditions outside of the person is considered culture
- eg. mode of subsistence, political organization, ecological/social context, poverty, climate, acculturation
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relativism
- To what extent are psychological functions and processes unique to specific cultural groups?
- focus on how the functions and processes themselves are the outcome of interactions between oragnism and context; they are inherently cultural
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Whorf's Hypothesis
- most of people's thinking involves mainly language
- therefore, thoughts are different when languages are different
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culture-as-a-system
- (organization of cultural differences)
- far-reaching generalizations, largely dismissed
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cultural dimensions
- (organization of cultural differences)
- broad conceptualizations eg. individualism-collectivism
- concern with validity because difficult to properly validate and impossible to falsify
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styles
- (organization of cultural differences)
- patterns of cognitive abilities
- how peoples in certain cultures tend to approach cognitive problems
- inferential distance from actual behaviour to the underlying concept is smaller
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behaviour domains
- (organization of cultural differences)
- generalization of fields of behaviour organized in terms of skills and knowledge
- more descriptive and less inferential than cognitive styles
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indigenous psychology
- research done by psychologists outside of Europe/NA that is more appropriate and relevant to their local contexts
- existing instruments/methods/theories were less applicable to local context, esp poverty
- local psychological concepts that don't have an equivalent in European languages
- replication with Westerners successful
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majority world
the large part of the world population which is living in a context of poverty and illiteracy
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"a" culture
- a population of persons who have certain artifacts and mentifacts more in common among themselves than with outsiders
- repertoire of heaviour, including overt and covert aspects, of such a population
- most frequently a nation state or society
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mentifacts
ideas, beliefs, conventions, etc.
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differentiation
the variance between populations in the behaviour that is being researched should make up a worthwhile part of the total variance
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permanence
culture has an existence of its own beyond the psychological make-up of its individual members because of its permanence; a culture is still there when all its current members are no longer alive
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cultunits
- "culture-bearing units"
- distinction between separate cultures has to match the kind of grouping for which differences in the psychological variables studied are expected
- which populations to include is only clear after deciding which variables are to distinguish them
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emic approach
attempt is made to look at phenomena and their interrelationships through the eyes of the people native to a particular culture
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etic approach
- concepts and notions of researchers are rooted in a influence by their cultural background
- culture comparative: start with imposed ~, evaluate personal conceptions for appropriateness, derived ~ identified from cross-cultural comparisons that can be fairly made
- cultural approach: never more from imposed to derived, b/c derived doesn't exist
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Qualitative research (aka field research)
- conducted in natural settings with application of multiple, interactive methods
- data is unstructured and subject to procedural changes as researcher learns
- heavily depended on researcher interpretation; difficult to establish validity
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Quantitative approach
- culture-comparative research
- independent variable = cultural condition
- dependent variable = behavioural variable
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Quasi-experients
- studies that look at groups that already exist and therefore allocation is fixed (ie not random)
- differences in outcome could be result of uncontrolled variable
- must consider all possible alternative explanations before accepting hypothesis
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