PSYC 2130 Chapter Notes - Chapter 13: Richard Shweder, Emic And Etic, Cultural Anthropology

• School: York University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 2130
• Professor: Christa Philips

Document Summary

Chapter 13 cultural variation in experience, behavior, and personality: culture and psychology, personality psychology focuses on psychological difference between individuals. First, individuals may differ from each other to some extent because they belong to different cultural groups. For example, all cultures have some conceptions of duty, in the sense that a person should be responsible for doing what she is supposed to do. But beyond this basic etic, different cultures impose their own ideas about what the duty actually is. A dutiful person in new delhi will probably behave differently from a dutiful person in new york: some concepts might just be too emic to compare across cultures. The more common and much older practice is to try to find etic concepts that can be compared across cultures: tough and easy, o(cid:373)e (cid:272)ultures are (cid:862)tough,(cid:863) (cid:449)hereas others are relati(cid:448)el(cid:455) (cid:862)eas(cid:455)(cid:863) In easy cultures, individuals can pursue many different goals and at least some of them are relatively simply to attain.