2013 Cengage Learning

Outline

Culture as Cognition
Culture, Attention, Sensation, and Perception

Perception and Physical Reality

Cultural Influences on Visual Perception
Attention

Culture and Thinking

Culture and Categorization

Culture and Memory
Culture and Math Abilities

Outline (contd.)

Culture and Thinking (contd.)

Culture and Problem Solving

Culture and Creativity
Culture and Dialectical Thinking
Culture, Regrets, and Counterfactual Thinking
Summary

Culture and Consciousness

Culture and Dreams

Culture and Time
Culture and the Perception of Pain

Outline (contd.)

Culture and Intelligence

Traditional Definitions of Intelligence and its

Measurement
The Concept of Intelligence in Other Cultures
Recent Developments in Theories about Intelligence
in Contemporary Psychology

Conclusion

CULTURE AS COGNITION

Culture as Cognition

Psychologists view culture as cognition

Culture is viewed as set of mental
representations about world
Norms, opinions, beliefs, values, and worldviews
are all cognitive products
Knowledge systemculturecreated to solve
complex problems of living and social life
Humans have certain cognitive skills other
animals do not, allowing for culture

CULTURE, ATTENTION,
SENSATION, AND PERCEPTION

Perception and Physical Reality

Peoples perceptions of world do not necessarily
match physical realities of world
Once we begin to question our own senses, we
want to know their limits:

Do experiences and beliefs influence perception?

Do other people perceive things as we do?
What aspects of others experiences and backgrounds
explain differences in perception?
How does culture influence this process?

Cultural Influences on
Visual Perception

Optical illusions: perceptive discrepancy

between how object looks and what it actually is
Carpentered world theory: unconscious
expectation that objects have squared corners
Front-horizontal foreshortening theory:
interpretation of vertical lines as horizontal lines
Symbolizing three dimensions in two theory:
Westerners experienced in interpreting pictures
People of different cultures may be differently
motivated to perceive certain types of objects

Attention

Culture influences what we attend to

Masuda studies:

Americans and Japanese differ in attention to

background objects and individuals vs. groups
Cultural differences in environment affords cultural
differences in perception and attention
Holistic vs. analytic perception

Westerners use analytic perceptual processes by focusing

on salient object independent of context in which it is
embedded
East Asians engage in context-dependent and holistic
perceptual processes by focusing on object within context

CULTURE AND THINKING

Culture and Categorization

People categorize on basis of similarities and

attach labels to groups of common objects
Creating mental categories helps sort out
complex stimuli
Some categories are universal across cultures
Way in which people categorize things may be
culturally variable
Sorting tasks: common way to study cultural
differences in categorization

Culture and Memory

Differences in memory as a function of oral

tradition may be limited to meaningful material
Serial position effect: first or last item in list are
easiest to remember
Memory constants across cultures: age,
hindsight bias, collective remembering of past
Cultural differences in episodic memory are due
to differences in self-construals, emotion
knowledge, and interpersonal processes

Culture and Math Abilities

Math is universal human psychological process

National differences in math abilities and
achievements exist
Mapping of numbers onto space is universal
Gender stratification hypothesis: gender
differences related to cultural variations in
opportunity structures for girls and women
Even without formal educational systems,
members of all cultures learn math skills

Culture and Problem Solving

Problem solving: process of discovering ways of

achieving goals not readily attainable
Psychologists isolate process of problem solving
by asking people from different cultures to solve
unfamiliar problems in artificial settings
Luna (1976): hypothesized logical reasoning is
artificial; taught in Westernized schools
Illiterate people may not understand hypothetical
nature of verbal problems or view them with
same degree of importance

Culture and Creativity

Creativity depends on divergent rather than

convergent thinking
Constant across cultures:

Creative individuals have high capacity for hard work,

willingness to take risks, high tolerance for ambiguity
and disorder

Differences amongst cultures:

High on uncertainty avoidance: work within norms

Higher on power distance: gain support
Collectivistic countries: seek cross-functional support

Culture and Dialectical Thinking

Dialectical thinking: tendency to accept what

seems to be contradictions in thought or beliefs
Positive logical determinism: contradictions are
mutually exclusive categories
East Asians prefer dialectical thinking whereas
Americans prefer logical deterministic thinking
Nave dialecticism: belief that truth is always
somewhere in the middle
Westerners believe something cannot be both
truth and false at same time

Culture, Regrets, and

Counterfactual Thinking

Counterfactual thinking: hypothetical beliefs

about past that could have occurred to avoid or
change a negative outcome
Regrets related to thoughts of inaction are more
prevalent than regrets related to action
Degree to which people experience regret over
inaction than over action was comparable
across all cultures

Summary

Ancient cultural systems produce differences in

ways of perceiving and thinking about world:

Social orientation hypothesis:

Westerners: analytic thinking

East Asians: holistic thinking
Cultures differ in independent vs. interdependent
social orientation patterns

Many other factors for cultural differences

uncovered to date:

Educational systems, linguistic, genetic differences

CULTURE AND
CONSCIOUSNESS

Culture and Dreams

Differences in dream content amongst cultures:

Palestinian children from Gaza incorporated more

external scenes of anxiety in dreams
Finnish children had more "inner" anxiety scenes in
dreams

Role of dreams differs amongst cultures:

Dream sharing and interpretation common among

Mayans
American culture does not place much emphasis on
importance of dreams as symbol of individual and
social concerns

Culture and Time

People of different cultures experience time

differently
Long- versus short-term orientation is cultural
dimension that differentiates among cultures
Pace of life correlated with ecological and
cultural variables
Most cultures represent time spatially from left to
right or right to left, or from front to back or back
to front, with respect to body

Culture and the Perception of Pain

Culture influences experience and perception of

pain in several ways:

Cultural construction of pain sensation

Semiotics of pain expression
Structure of pain's causes and cures

Cultural display rules govern expression,

perception, and feeling of pain
Tolerance of pain may be rooted in cultural
values

CULTURE AND INTELLIGENCE

Traditional Definitions of Intelligence

and its Measurement

Intelligence: conglomeration of many intellectual

abilities centering on verbal and analytic tasks
Intelligence tests rely on verbal performance and
cultural knowledge, thus immigrants are at
disadvantage
Do cross-cultural differences in intelligence
reflect biological or cultural differences?

The Concept of Intelligence

in Other Cultures

Many languages have no word that corresponds

to our idea of intelligence
Because of enormous differences in definition of
intelligence, it is difficult to make valid
comparisons from one society to another
Tests of intelligence often rely on knowledge
specific to particular culture

Recent Developments in
Theories about Intelligence in
Contemporary Psychology

Gardner (1983), seven types of intelligence:

Sternberg (1986), three "subtheories of

intelligence:

Logical mathematical, linguistic, musical, spatial,

bodily kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal

Contextual, experiential, and componential

intelligence

Collective intelligence:

Strongly correlated with average social sensitivity,

equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking,
and proportion of females in group

Conclusion

Conclusion

Perception, cognition, and consciousness are at

the core of many psychological constructs:

Cultural differences in these processes exemplify

various levels of psychology that culture influences

Cultural differences and similarities in definitions

and processes of intelligence have considerable
relevance to various applied settings
Awareness of cultural differences in intelligence
raises difficult questions concerning testing and
use of test scores