PS389 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Positive Psychology
Document Summary
The us department of health and human services defines culture as common heritage or set of beliefs, norms, and values. it consists of shared beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours. In this course we will weave the idea of culture throughout our discussions, so we won"t spend a lot of time on it here. A more sensitive and nuanced understanding of culture helps us to understand the causes, effects, and treatment of psychological problems: traditionally, psychology hasn"t done a great job of this. One doesn"t have to look too far in the past to find boldly racist studies on the supposed genetic deficiencies of certain cultures. And a lack of scholars who are black, Most of the research on happiness and well-being has been conducted in western cultures, specifically north america, and there is a tendency to assume that these findings are generalizable to everyone.
