The Cultural Context
The Study Of Culture
Culture is a program of shared rules that govern the behavior of members of a community or society, and a set of values, beliefs, and attitudes shared by most members of that community.
Cultural psychologists study how people are affected by the culture in which they live.
Cross-cultural psychologists compare members of different cultures, searching for commonalities and differences.
The study of culture is challenging because of difficulties in devising good methods and getting samples from many societies in order to make valid cultural comparisons, the difficulty of interpreting results when the same custom may have different meanings and functions across cultures, the risk of stereotyping, and the political sensitivity of many findings.
The Rules Of Culture
Some aspects of body language seem to be universal, but most, such as rules governing conversational distance and notions of when a smile is appropriate, are specific to particular cultures.
In some cultures, people pay close attention to nonverbal signs; in others, people pay more attention to words than to nonverbal cues.
People develop social identities based on their nationality, ethnicity, religion, and social roles.
One important social identity is an ethnic identity.
In ethnically diverse societies, many people face the problem of balancing ethnic identity with acculturation into the mainstream culture.
Depending on whether ethnic identity and bicultural, choose assimilation, become an ethnic separatist, or feel marginal.
Ethnic labels have great symbolic and emotional significance, which is why they are so politically sensitive.
Culture And Intelligence
Although most people everywhere can learn to reason deductively, the situations in which they apply deductive reason in will depend on their circumstances.
Cultural differences occur in the pacing of the stages described by Piaget, because cultures differ in which cognitive skills are needed and nurtured in their members.
IQ tests have been criticized for being biased in favor of which the, middle-class people.
However, efforts to construct culture-free and culture-fair tests have been disappointing.
Culture affects nearly everything to do with taking a test, including attitudes about achievement, expectations, and experience in solving problems independently.
The Origins Of Culture
Economic and social factors are also involved in the variations in male aggressiveness and in the status of women.
High rates of male violence and white homicide in the American South and West are related to a history of reliance on herding rather than farming.
Herding economies tend to foster a culture of honor, in which males are raised to be sensitive to perceived insults and respond aggressively to defend their honor.
As countries become industrialized and urban, their gender roles become more egalitarian.
Access to reliable birth control and the growth of jobs involving service skills and brainwork are eliminating the traditional reasons for a sexual division of labor.
Cross Cultural Relations
But stereotypes distort reality by exaggerating differences between groups, underestimating the differences within groups, and producing selective perception.
Cultural values influence stereotypes and therefore how people from different cultures interpret the same event.
A prejudice is an unreasonable negative feeling toward a category of people.
Prejudice wards off feelings of anxiety and doubt, provides a simple explanation of complex problems, and bolsters self-esteem when a person feels threatened.
Prejudice occurs in many varieties and degrees, a fact that causes debates about how to define racism, sexism, and other prejudices.
People often disagree on whether racism and other prejudices are declining or have merely taken new forms.
Four conditions are required for reducing prejudice and conflict between groups:
Both sides must have equal legal status, economic standing, and power
Both sides must have the legal and moral support of authorities and the larger culture
Both sides must have opportunities to work and socialize together (the contact hypothesis)
Both sides must work together for a common goal.
Can Cultures Get Along?
Cultural psychologists have identified many reasons for cultural conflicts and solutions for reducing them.
In the sociocultural view, conflict and aggression are not inherent in human biology, but in our circumstances.
Cultural psychologists study how people are affected by the culture in which they live.
Gender and Sexuality Lecture
social definition of what it means to be male or female in Males and females are similar in their overall genetic makeup.
Male-female differences include size, age of onset of puberty, and life expectancy.
Psychological differences include the greater tendencies for men to express physical aggression and to hold social power, and for women to form social connections.
Nature and Nurture Different sex chromosomes lead to differing concentrations of sex hormones.
Gender roles vary depending on cultural expectations.
Social learning theory: Children learn male and female behaviors through imitation and reinforcement.
concepts of male and female influence their perceptions and behavior.
Stages of Human Sexual Response Cycle Excitement Plateau Orgasm Resolution: Males enter refractory period in which renewed arousal and orgasm are impossible.
Sex Hormones The main sex hormones are testosterone These hormones direct sexual development in the prenatal period; trigger development of sexual characteristics in adolescence; and help activate sexual behavior from puberty to late adulthood.
Sexual Disorders Impaired sexual arousal or function.
Treatments include drugs and behavior therapy.
ehaviors and Use of Contraceptives Ignorance of facts Guilt about sexual behavior Poor communication about options Alcohol use Media modeling of casual unsafe sex Slide Use of Contraceptives Using condoms helps protect against most STDs but not those that are transmitted skin-to-skin.
There are many different types of STDs which are products of the human Stimuli and Sexual Arousal Erotic material and other external stimuli can trigger sexual arousal in both men and women.
Viewing sexually coercive material can lead to increased acceptance of violence toward women.
Viewing sexually explicit materials can cause men to devalue their own partners.
Sexual Orientation and the Current Research About percent of women are homosexual, and sexual orientation seems to be enduring There is no evidence that environmental factors influence sexual orientation.
Evidence for biological influences on homosexuality comes from same-sex attraction in other species; gay-straight differences in brain characteristics and other traits; higher rates of homosexuality in certain families and among twins; and higher rates among individuals exposed to abnormal levels of hormones during critical periods of prenatal development.
Evolutionary Explanation Evolutionary psychologists attempt to understand how natural selection has shaped behaviors found in all people.
more recreational attitude toward sex results from their ability to spread their genes widely by mating with many females, and women more relational approach to sex results from their need to incubate and nurse one infant at Critics point out the problem in starting with an effect and working back to an explanation and suggest that cultural and social factors are being understimated .
Gender and Sexuality Nature and nurture interact in the development of our gender-related traits and our mating behaviors.
Only together can nature and nurture explain why human sexuality is the way it is.