Literature Introduction to Cultural Psychology
Book: Cultural Psychology- S. Heine (4th Edition)
Chapter 1- A Psychology for a Cultural Species ..................................................................................... 2
Chapter 2- Culture and Human Nature .................................................................................................. 6
Chapter 3- Cultural Evolution .............................................................................................................. 11
Chapter 4- Research Methods ............................................................................................................. 17
Chapter 5- Development and Socialization ......................................................................................... 23
Chapter 6- Self and Personality ........................................................................................................... 31
Chapter 7- Living in multicultural worlds ............................................................................................. 39
Chapter 8- Motivation.......................................................................................................................... 46
Chapter 9- Cognition and Perception .................................................................................................. 52
Chapter 10- Emotions ......................................................................................................................... 58
Chapter 11- Attraction and Relationships ............................................................................................ 64
Chapter 14- Mental Health .................................................................................................................. 69
ARTICLE: Most people are not WEIRD (Henrich, Heine & Norenzayan, 2010)- WEEK 1 ......................... 77
ARTICLE: Scale psychological differences within China explained by rice versus wheat agriculture
(Talhel, et al.,2014) – WEEK 3 ............................................................................................................... 78
ARTICLE: The cultural construction of self and well-being: a tale of two cities (Plaut et al., 2011)- WEEK
5.......................................................................................................................................................... 80
ARTICLE: Culture and the physical environment: holistic versus analytic perceptual affordances
(Miyamoto et al., 2006)- WEEK 6 .......................................................................................................... 83
ARTICLE: Universality reconsidered: diversity in making meaning of facial expressions (Gendron et al.,
2018)- WEEK 7 ..................................................................................................................................... 85
,Chapter 1- A Psychology for a Cultural Species
It is our reliance on culture that has enabled us to succeed in diverse environments.
Cultural psychology: people from different cultures also differ in the ways they think and
behave.
- Psychological processes are shaped by experiences → because people from in various
cultures have different experiences, we should expect variations in the ways they think
- People all around the world share the same abilities and limitations of the universal
human brain
What is culture?
Culture:
1. It is a particular kind of information: culture is any kind of information that is acquired
from other members of one’s species through social learning that can influence an
individuals’ behaviour
2. It is a particular group of individuals: a culture is a group of people who are existing
within some kind of shared context
a. Challenges with this:
▪ the boundaries are not always clear-cut, and they are not distinct;
Western culture is also US, Australia, Canada
• nationality is often used as a rough indicator of culture
• There are other groups apart from countries that have culture
(LGBT, Jewish, vegetarian)
• Groups qualify as a culture when:
o their members exist within a shared context
o communicate with each other
o have some norms that distinguish them from other
groups,
o have some common practices and ideas
▪ Culture changes over time
• Some shared cultural info disappears as new habits replace the
old
• Cultures are dynamic and ever changing
East Asian cultures: countries that have been exposed to Chinese Confucian cultural traditions,
e.g. China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam
Culture: a dynamic group of people who share a similar context, are exposed to similar cultural
messages, and contain a broad range of different individuals who are affected by those cultural
messages in various ways.
Psychological processes can vary across cultures
Psychological processes emerge in different ways across cultures, e.g. sense of humour
How can we understand the workings of the human mind when it apparently works in different
ways in different contexts?
Is the mind independent from, or intertwined with, culture?
General psychology: the mind operates according to a set of natural and universal laws that are
independent from context or content.
, - Mind is a highly abstract central processing unit (CPU) that operates independently of
the context within it is or the content that it is thinking about
- Context and content are seen as unwanted noise that clouds our ability to perceive the
functioning of the CPU → this is why experiments are mostly conducted highly
controlled environments
Cultural psychology: thinking is not merely the operation of the universal CPU; it also involves
participation in the context within which is doing the thinking and interaction with the content
one is thinking about
- Action, thoughts and feelings are immersed in cultural information, and this information
renders these actions, thoughts and feelings to be meaningful
o The shared ideas that make up cultures provide the kinds of meanings people
can get from their experiences
o The mind is made by the context
- The idea of general psychology distorts and misinterprets what the brain actually is →
people are forever bound up in their own system of cultural meanings and will never
think as a universal human
Figure line task
1. In one box draw a line that is identical to the length of the line in the stimulus box-
absolute task
2. In another box draw a line that is identical in proportion of the stimulus box- relative task
→ European Americans have more difficulty with the relative task
→ East-Asians found the absolute task very difficult
The nature of the brain is not fixed from birth but rather changes in the response to certain
experiences.
- People in one culture consider a particular cultural idea → focuses on it a great deal →
creates a rich network of thoughts, behaviours and feelings → gets activated whenever
they see a reminder of the cultural idea → gets activated automatically
Culture and mind make each other up.
- Cultures emerge from the interaction of the various minds of people that live within them
- Cultures shape how those minds operate
Case study: The Sambia
Changed from warriors to peaceful hunters.
Cultural practice: the initiation ritual to transform young boys into men
- Believed that boy are contaminated from their mother’s womb and existing in the female
world
- Masculinization process where the boys get rid of the feminine habits and transform into
men
- Give boys
- When boys are born, they don’t have any jerungdu, but they get it through homosexual
semen, because they think semen needs to be acquired from the age of 7 → become
heterosexual when they get married at 17
- Females are exclusively heterosexual
- Sambian men go through homosexuality → bisexuality → heterosexuality
- Sambians do not have the social concept of sexual orientation
Psychological universals and levels of analysis
Marriage being universal?
, - Abstract sense: formal arrangement in which men and women stay together in an
enduring relationship, along with public recognition of exclusive sexual access among
those that are married, and centered on the rearing of children
In discussing human universals, it depends if we are talking about specific, concrete terms or
general, abstract terms
From lowest to highest:
1. Nonuniversal: a particular psychological process that does not exist in all cultures
a. E.g. numerical reasoning
2. Existential universal: a psychological process exists in all culture, although the process
is not necessarily used to solve the same problems, nor is it equally accessible across
cultures
a. It is latently present, but might be used to achieve different ends
b. E.g. Westerners find experiences with success motivating; East Asians find
failures more motivating
c. Same use could also be read as “Does it have the same function?” “Does it have
the same meaning”.
3. Functional universal: psychological processes that exist in all cultures, are used to solve
the same problems across cultures, yet are more accessible to people from some
cultures than others
a. Serves the same function everywhere but is not used in some cultures
b. Used in different degrees in different cultures
c. E.g. costly punishment, but in Bolivia 28% of their earnings is used for this, in
Kenya 90%
d. E.g. the negative affect in depression
4. Accessibility universal: a psychological process exists in all cultures, is used to solve the
same problem in across cultures, and its accessible to the same degree across cultures
a. Accessibility: the likelihood of a person using the particular psychological
process
b. E.g. social facilitation: the tendency for individuals to do better at well-learned
tasks and worse at poorly learned ones when in presence of others → also seen
in insects, so for sure in all cultures
Book: Cultural Psychology- S. Heine (4th Edition)
Chapter 1- A Psychology for a Cultural Species ..................................................................................... 2
Chapter 2- Culture and Human Nature .................................................................................................. 6
Chapter 3- Cultural Evolution .............................................................................................................. 11
Chapter 4- Research Methods ............................................................................................................. 17
Chapter 5- Development and Socialization ......................................................................................... 23
Chapter 6- Self and Personality ........................................................................................................... 31
Chapter 7- Living in multicultural worlds ............................................................................................. 39
Chapter 8- Motivation.......................................................................................................................... 46
Chapter 9- Cognition and Perception .................................................................................................. 52
Chapter 10- Emotions ......................................................................................................................... 58
Chapter 11- Attraction and Relationships ............................................................................................ 64
Chapter 14- Mental Health .................................................................................................................. 69
ARTICLE: Most people are not WEIRD (Henrich, Heine & Norenzayan, 2010)- WEEK 1 ......................... 77
ARTICLE: Scale psychological differences within China explained by rice versus wheat agriculture
(Talhel, et al.,2014) – WEEK 3 ............................................................................................................... 78
ARTICLE: The cultural construction of self and well-being: a tale of two cities (Plaut et al., 2011)- WEEK
5.......................................................................................................................................................... 80
ARTICLE: Culture and the physical environment: holistic versus analytic perceptual affordances
(Miyamoto et al., 2006)- WEEK 6 .......................................................................................................... 83
ARTICLE: Universality reconsidered: diversity in making meaning of facial expressions (Gendron et al.,
2018)- WEEK 7 ..................................................................................................................................... 85
,Chapter 1- A Psychology for a Cultural Species
It is our reliance on culture that has enabled us to succeed in diverse environments.
Cultural psychology: people from different cultures also differ in the ways they think and
behave.
- Psychological processes are shaped by experiences → because people from in various
cultures have different experiences, we should expect variations in the ways they think
- People all around the world share the same abilities and limitations of the universal
human brain
What is culture?
Culture:
1. It is a particular kind of information: culture is any kind of information that is acquired
from other members of one’s species through social learning that can influence an
individuals’ behaviour
2. It is a particular group of individuals: a culture is a group of people who are existing
within some kind of shared context
a. Challenges with this:
▪ the boundaries are not always clear-cut, and they are not distinct;
Western culture is also US, Australia, Canada
• nationality is often used as a rough indicator of culture
• There are other groups apart from countries that have culture
(LGBT, Jewish, vegetarian)
• Groups qualify as a culture when:
o their members exist within a shared context
o communicate with each other
o have some norms that distinguish them from other
groups,
o have some common practices and ideas
▪ Culture changes over time
• Some shared cultural info disappears as new habits replace the
old
• Cultures are dynamic and ever changing
East Asian cultures: countries that have been exposed to Chinese Confucian cultural traditions,
e.g. China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam
Culture: a dynamic group of people who share a similar context, are exposed to similar cultural
messages, and contain a broad range of different individuals who are affected by those cultural
messages in various ways.
Psychological processes can vary across cultures
Psychological processes emerge in different ways across cultures, e.g. sense of humour
How can we understand the workings of the human mind when it apparently works in different
ways in different contexts?
Is the mind independent from, or intertwined with, culture?
General psychology: the mind operates according to a set of natural and universal laws that are
independent from context or content.
, - Mind is a highly abstract central processing unit (CPU) that operates independently of
the context within it is or the content that it is thinking about
- Context and content are seen as unwanted noise that clouds our ability to perceive the
functioning of the CPU → this is why experiments are mostly conducted highly
controlled environments
Cultural psychology: thinking is not merely the operation of the universal CPU; it also involves
participation in the context within which is doing the thinking and interaction with the content
one is thinking about
- Action, thoughts and feelings are immersed in cultural information, and this information
renders these actions, thoughts and feelings to be meaningful
o The shared ideas that make up cultures provide the kinds of meanings people
can get from their experiences
o The mind is made by the context
- The idea of general psychology distorts and misinterprets what the brain actually is →
people are forever bound up in their own system of cultural meanings and will never
think as a universal human
Figure line task
1. In one box draw a line that is identical to the length of the line in the stimulus box-
absolute task
2. In another box draw a line that is identical in proportion of the stimulus box- relative task
→ European Americans have more difficulty with the relative task
→ East-Asians found the absolute task very difficult
The nature of the brain is not fixed from birth but rather changes in the response to certain
experiences.
- People in one culture consider a particular cultural idea → focuses on it a great deal →
creates a rich network of thoughts, behaviours and feelings → gets activated whenever
they see a reminder of the cultural idea → gets activated automatically
Culture and mind make each other up.
- Cultures emerge from the interaction of the various minds of people that live within them
- Cultures shape how those minds operate
Case study: The Sambia
Changed from warriors to peaceful hunters.
Cultural practice: the initiation ritual to transform young boys into men
- Believed that boy are contaminated from their mother’s womb and existing in the female
world
- Masculinization process where the boys get rid of the feminine habits and transform into
men
- Give boys
- When boys are born, they don’t have any jerungdu, but they get it through homosexual
semen, because they think semen needs to be acquired from the age of 7 → become
heterosexual when they get married at 17
- Females are exclusively heterosexual
- Sambian men go through homosexuality → bisexuality → heterosexuality
- Sambians do not have the social concept of sexual orientation
Psychological universals and levels of analysis
Marriage being universal?
, - Abstract sense: formal arrangement in which men and women stay together in an
enduring relationship, along with public recognition of exclusive sexual access among
those that are married, and centered on the rearing of children
In discussing human universals, it depends if we are talking about specific, concrete terms or
general, abstract terms
From lowest to highest:
1. Nonuniversal: a particular psychological process that does not exist in all cultures
a. E.g. numerical reasoning
2. Existential universal: a psychological process exists in all culture, although the process
is not necessarily used to solve the same problems, nor is it equally accessible across
cultures
a. It is latently present, but might be used to achieve different ends
b. E.g. Westerners find experiences with success motivating; East Asians find
failures more motivating
c. Same use could also be read as “Does it have the same function?” “Does it have
the same meaning”.
3. Functional universal: psychological processes that exist in all cultures, are used to solve
the same problems across cultures, yet are more accessible to people from some
cultures than others
a. Serves the same function everywhere but is not used in some cultures
b. Used in different degrees in different cultures
c. E.g. costly punishment, but in Bolivia 28% of their earnings is used for this, in
Kenya 90%
d. E.g. the negative affect in depression
4. Accessibility universal: a psychological process exists in all cultures, is used to solve the
same problem in across cultures, and its accessible to the same degree across cultures
a. Accessibility: the likelihood of a person using the particular psychological
process
b. E.g. social facilitation: the tendency for individuals to do better at well-learned
tasks and worse at poorly learned ones when in presence of others → also seen
in insects, so for sure in all cultures
