Thinking Critically About Your Own Culture
Recall that your text defines cross-cultural psychology as “the critical and comparative study of cultural effects on human psychology” (Shiraev & Levy, 2017, p. 2). Throughout the course, you will be asked to think critically about your own culture so that you can understand how it differs from other cultures. To make those comparisons, you need to recognize defining qualities of your own culture. As you begin this examination process, keep in mind the definition of culture: a set of attitudes, behaviors, and symbols shared by a large group of people (Shiraev & Levy, 2017, p. 4).
For this Assignment, you will identify and analyze your own culture based on concepts covered in Week 1 of the course.
Important Note: Although you may view your family as having a particular “culture,” focus on a larger culture of which you are a part, such as one connected to your national, regional, racial, ethnic, or religious heritage. If you are multicultural or have no strong connection to a single culture, you may use a broad category, such as “American” or “Caribbean.”
How to prepare (Assignment instructions are in the next section):
Review the Week 1 Learning Resources. Pay particular attention to Chapter 1 in your course text.
Use guidance from the text reading, and any other sources you choose, to identify the culture that you view as “your own.” Consider what attitudes, behaviors, and symbols would define your culture.
Research your culture using resources in the Walden Library and other scholarly resources you find. As you work through your class materials, apply each concept to your own culture. Remember, many concepts represent a spectrum, so think about where your culture falls—clearly on one end, clearly on the other, or somewhere in between. Consider how traditional or nontraditional your culture is, the level of the power distance, the approach to handling uncertainty, where it falls on the individualism-collectivism continuum, and what cultural syndromes characterize your culture (please note this is not the same thing as culture-bound syndromes, which we will study during Week 6).
Use the Walden Writing Center for guidance on scholarly writing in preparing your Assignment.
What to submit:
By Day 7
Submit a 2- to 3-page paper that includes the following components. Be sure to reference the Learning Resources, including the media, in your Assignment. When providing examples, describe people and situations from outside of your own family.
Describe the attitudes, behaviors, and symbols that define your culture. (Be sure you address your larger cultural setting and not your family.)
Explain whether your culture is more traditional or nontraditional and provide examples to illustrate your thinking.
Diagnose the power distance level in your culture and provide examples to explain your thinking.
Explain your culture’s uncertainty orientation and provide examples to illustrate your thinking.
Assess where your culture falls on the individualism-to-collectivism spectrum and provide examples to illustrate your thinking.
Identify one or more cultural syndromes that are characteristic of your culture and provide an example for each cultural syndrome to support your thinking.
Note: Support your responses within your Assignment with evidence from the assigned Learning Resources. Provide a reference list for resources you used for this Assignment.
Submission and Grading Information
To submit your completed Assignment for review and grading, do the following:
Please save your Assignment using the naming convention “WK1Assgn+last name+first initial.(extension)” as the name.
Click the Week 1 Assignment Rubric to review the Grading Criteria for the Assignment.
Click the Week 1 Assignment link. You will also be able to “View Rubric” for grading criteria from this area.
Next, from the Attach File area, click on the Browse My Computer button. Find the document you saved as “WK1Assgn+last name+first initial.(extension)” and click Open.
If applicable: From the Plagiarism Tools area, click the checkbox for I agree to submit my paper(s) to the Global Reference Database.
Click on the Submit button to complete your submission.
Critical Thinking in Cross-Cultural Psychology
What luck for rulers that men do not think.
Adolf Hitler (1889–1945)—Nazi leader of Germany during World War II
It’s good to be open-minded, but not so open that your brains fall out.
Jacob Needleman (b. 1934)—contemporary American writer
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.
Albert Einstein (1879–1955)—German-Swiss-American physicist
THIS STORY COULD have been told in New Orleans. Or maybe in New York. Or perhaps in Tokyo, Cape Town, or Buenos Aires. A woman walks into a doctor’s office complaining that she’s a zombie. The doctor, trying his best to convince her otherwise, says, “You’re walking and talking, aren’t you?”
“Zombies walk and talk,” replies the patient.
“Well, you’re breathing, too.”
“Yes, but zombies breathe.”
“Okay, what don’t zombies do? Do they bleed?”
“No, of course not,” says the patient.
The doctor replies, “Good. Then I’m going to stick this needle into your arm, and we’ll see if your idea is right or wrong.”
So he plunges the needle deep into the woman’s arm, and, sure enough, blood starts to pour out of the wound. The woman is aghast. In utter dismay, she turns to the doctor and says, “My God, I was wrong…. Zombies do bleed.”
What is the moral of this story? Compelling facts are quite often not compelling enough. What matters more is our interpretation of these facts. One of the most significant characteristics of our thinking is the way in which we become personally invested in—and then tightly cling to—our opinions, beliefs, and interpretations. This tendency, called the belief perseverance effect, can frequently lead us to distort, minimize, or even ignore any facts that run contrary to our “personal” reality.
Thinking is one of the most essential of all human characteristics. It is intrinsic to almost everything we do. But do we ever think about thinking? How often do we subject our thinking process to critical analysis?
Educators rightfully profess that learning how to think critically is one of the most vital and indispensable components of learning; yet specific tools for critical thinking are rarely, if ever, provided to us. Thus, although we may be convinced of the value of critical thinking, we are left not knowing quite what to do about it.
Herein lies the theme of this chapter, the express purpose of which is to improve your thinking skills, to teach you to think critically, to help you think about thinking—in a word, to promote metathinking in cross-cultural psychology. Metathinking is not a magical, mystical, or mysterious abstraction. It is not an unattainable gift that is miraculously bestowed on the intellectual elite. Rather, it is a skill (or, more accurately, a series of skills) that can be successfully taught and learned (Levy, 2010). The thought principles or metathoughts (literally, “thoughts about thought”) contained in this chapter are cognitive tools that provide you with specific strategies for inquiry and problem solving in cross-cultural psychology. In this way, they serve as potent antidotes to thinking, which is often prone to be biased, simplistic, rigid, lazy, or simply sloppy.
For the purposes of this book (portions of which were adapted from Levy, 2010), each metathought is illustrated primarily from the theory and application of contemporary cross-cultural psychology. Despite worldwide sociocultural variability, the essential universality of these critical thinking principles transcends the confines of any specific cultural group. Further, they can be utilized in a diverse array of fields, ranging from philosophy and theology to law, political science, history, sociology, anthropology, journalism, business, medicine, sports, and even the arts—in fact, in all areas of education and learning.
The Evaluative Bias of Language: To Describe Is to Prescribe
Description is always from someone’s point of view.
Rhoda Kesler Unger (b. 1939)—American psychologist
It’s a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose your own.
Harry S. Truman (1884–1972)—thirty-third U.S. president
Language serves many functions. Certainly one of its most common and most important purposes is to help us describe various phenomena, such as events, situations, and people: “What is it?” Another purpose is to evaluate these same phenomena: “Is it good or bad?” Typically, we consider descriptions to be objective, whereas we consider evaluations to be subjective.
However, is the distinction between objective description and subjective evaluation a clear one? The answer, in the vast majority of cases, is no. Why? Because words both describe and evaluate. Whenever we attempt to describe something or someone, the words we use are almost invariably value laden in that they reflect our own personal likes and dislikes. Thus, our use of any particular term serves not only to describe but also to prescribe what is desirable or undesirable to us.
This problem is not so prevalent in describing objects as compared with people. Let us take, as an illustration, the terms “cold” and “hot.” For material substances, both terms refer literally to temperature: “That liquid is very cold,” or “That liquid is very hot.” When we use these same terms to describe an individual, however, they take on a distinctly evaluative connotation: “That person is very cold,” or “That person is very hot.”
Our best attempts to remain neutral are constrained by the limits of language. When it comes to describing people (e.g., in conducting research), it is nearly impossible to find words that are devoid of evaluative connotation. Incredible as it may seem, we simply do not have neutral adjectives to describe personality characteristics, whether of an individual or an entire group. And even if such words did exist, we still would be very likely to utilize the ones that reflect our own personal preferences.
|
From David’s Value System |
From Briana’s Value System |
|
Old |
Mature |
|
Naïve |
Idealistic |
|
Reckless |
Brave |
|
Manipulative |
Persuasive |
|
Spineless |
Cooperative |
|
Childish |
Childlike |
|
Weird |
Interesting |
|
Obsessed |
Committed |
|
Anal retentive |
Tidy |
|
Dependent |
Loyal |
|
Codependent |
Empathic |
|
Narcissistic |
High self-esteem |
|
Lunatic |
Visionary |
|
Psychotic |
Creative |
|
Bum |
Vocationally disadvantaged |
|
Sociopath |
Morally challenged |
|
Dead |
Ontologically impaired |
The evaluative bias of language is illustrated in
Table 2.1
and the accompanying exercise. Let us say that two different observers (David and Briana), each with a different set of values, are asked to describe the same person, event, or group. Notice how the words they use reveal their own subjective points of view.
Exercise 2.1 The Interdependence of Values, Perceptions, and Language
Ready to try some on your own? Remember that you are to select words that reveal Briana’s personal attitudes and values, which are consistently more “positive” than David’s.
|
David |
Briana |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Problem |
____________ |
Abnormal |
|||||||||||||||||||
|
Failure |
Ethnocentrism |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Terrorist |
Chauvinism |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Hostage |
Cultural impurity |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Murder |
Discrimination |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Genocide |
Reverse discrimination |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Brainwashed |
Child abuse |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Handicapped |
Child neglect |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Disabled |
Handout |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Primitive |
Kleptomaniac |
Understanding Cross-Cultural Psychology
Remember that all things are only opinions and that it is in your power to think as you please.
Marcus Aurelius (112–180 C.E.)—Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher
The West can teach the East how to get a living, but the East must eventually be asked to show the West how to live.
Tehyi Hsieh (1884–1972)—Chinese educator and diplomat
NOW THEY ACTUALLY saw the devastating consequences of the tsunami right before their eyes. Two psychologists, Fred and Rita, had rushed immediately to Thailand as soon as the reports about the tsunami reached America. Both of these professionals had seen a lot in their careers, but what they witnessed now was more than heartbreaking. The deadly impact of the wave was immediate. The destruction afterward was indescribable. The human suffering seemed endless.
Natural disasters affect all of us, regardless of our nationality or ethnic affiliation. Hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, and typhoons reap destruction and havoc on our lives, inflicting immediate, acute, as well as long lasting psychological impact. With this in mind, how are professionals to help people best overcome their emotional pain?
Fred Bemak has tried to tackle this question for years. As a professor, he developed several therapeutic methods of psychological intervention to help victims of large-scale disasters. These methods worked well in the laboratory, but their effectiveness in the real world is more complex. Is such therapy helpful to the poor, who are usually hardest hit by disasters? What about migrant Latino communities, Aboriginal peoples in Australia, and Native-American reservations? Do these methods work in Africa and Southeast Asia? Bemak founded Counselors without Borders, a nongovernmental organization focused on studying and alleviating suffering around the world, and has worked with his wife, Rita Chung, for over 17 years to implement various forms of psychological assistance to the victims of natural disasters. One of their main concerns and challenges remains: Can research methods and psychological interventions developed in one part of the world be effectively applied in other cultures? We know that sociocultural factors impact the way people act, think, and feel and that the same scientific study may yield different results in different groups. What remains unanswered is how substantial these differences are. If these differences are negligible, then regardless of where we are born and raised, human behavior and psychological experience should be based on similar, universal mechanisms. If, on the other hand, these differences are significant, then as scholars or researchers we need to pay closer attention to differences that distinguish people from dissimilar backgrounds. Psychology, as a field, cannot yet draw definitive conclusions regarding these different perspectives because of myriad issues that remain unresolved with regard to psychology as a field worldwide. A few of these issues are outlined in this chapter.
Most important, the current state of psychological research lacks diversity. Research published in the United States has focused too narrowly on Americans, who comprise less than 5 percent of the world’s population. A detailed analysis of peer-reviewed publications in leading academic journals in psychology showed that more than 90 percent of research samples came from a small group of countries representing only 12 percent of the world’s population (Henrich et al., 2010). Further, undergraduate college students composed almost two-thirds of research samples from the United States and more than three-quarters of samples in studies conducted in other countries. Summarized succinctly, the present state of psychological research does not adequately represent the global population (Arnett, 2008).
Further, English is the most acknowledged international language of psychology. Scores of prominent journals appear in English and international conferences use English as their official language. Researchers who have limited proficiency with English consequently have diminished opportunity to promote their research and hence enrich global psychological diversity. In addition to being limited by the use of English, diversity in psychological research is limited by the most prominent psychological research historically having been developed in a relatively small selection of countries: the United States, Canada, France, Germany, and a very short list of other European nations. Scientists from these countries have made the most influential contributions to psychology. However, there are no less noteworthy and outstanding contributions from many other parts of the world—including China, Indonesia, India, Japan, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, Iran, and Mexico, to name a few—which go unacknowledged by a majority of professional psychologists (Shiraev, 2011).
Cross-cultural psychology attempts to resolve these issues by identifying and exploring people’s similarities and differences, with the ultimate goal of uniting people worldwide through mutual understanding, curiosity, and appreciation.
What Is Cross-Cultural Psychology?
Before reaching adulthood, most of us do not choose a place to live or a language to speak. Growing up in cities, towns, and villages, or anywhere—near a snowy Boston or in a humid Kinshasa—people learn how to understand events around them according to the wishes of their parents, societal requirements, and traditions of their ancestors. The way people learn to relate to the world through feelings and ideas affects what these individuals do. Their actions, in turn, have a bearing on their thoughts, needs, and emotions.
Conditions in which people live vary from place to place. Human actions and mental sets—formed and developed in various environments—may also fluctuate from group to group. These kinds of differences (and, of course, similarities) are studied in cross-cultural psychology (Gudykunst & Bond, 1997). Cross-cultural psychology is the critical and comparative study of cultural effects on human psychology. Please notice two important elements of this definition. First, this is a comparative field. Any study in cross-cultural psychology draws its conclusions from at least two samples that represent at least two cultural groups. Second, because cross-cultural psychology inherently involves comparisons, and the act of comparison requires a particular set of critical skills, the study of cross-cultural psychology is inseparable from critical thinking.
Cross-cultural psychology examines psychological diversity and the underlying reasons for such diversity. In particular, cross-cultural psychologists study—again, from a comparative perspective—the links between cultural norms and behavior and the ways in which particular human activities are influenced by different, sometimes dissimilar social and cultural forces (Segall et al., 1990). For example, consider the question suggested by the opening vignette to this chapter: Do disaster survivors experience similar symptomatology across cultures (see Bemak & Chung, 2008)? If they do, can a psychologist use an intervention aimed at treating posttraumatic symptoms in the United States in other cultural environments such as Sudan or Iran?
Cross-cultural psychology attempts not only to distinguish differences between groups but also to establish psychological universals and phenomena common to all people and groups (Berry et al., 1992; Lonner, 1980). (See
Figure 1.1
.) For example, cross-cultural psychology attempts to identify commonalties with regard to the structure of human personality: relatively enduring patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting. Such universal traits include neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness (Costa & McCrae, 1997). These findings are supported by several global studies (Schmitt et al., 2007).
How is cross-cultural psychology different from cultural psychology? First and most important, cultural psychology seeks to discover meaningful links between a culture and the psychology of individuals living in a particular culture (which is defined later in the chapter). The primary belief of cultural psychology is that human behavior is meaningful only when viewed in the sociocultural context in which it occurs (Segall et al., 1999). For instance, a cultural psychologist may be interested in describing how Buddhism affects both the behavior and attitudes of young couples in
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