PSYC 4030 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Arable Land, Intentionality, Eurocentrism
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Published on 10 Jan 2018
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PSYC 4030: Lecture 1
• First century of psychology
- Few cross-cultural explorations
- Carl Jung did the most work during this time (traveled to India and Africa, and
developed cross-cultural concepts such as the archetypes and collective
consciousness)
- Eysenck: First tested introversion/extroversion
- Spielberger: Translated concepts into multiple languages to see if they were true in
other cultures (created the Stat-Trait Anxiety Inventory)
- During this time, there was a Eurocentric, masculine view of the ideal person
(independence vs. interdependence)
• Definition of cultural psychology
- A subdiscipline of psychology that focuses on the cultural foundations of
psychological processes and human behavior. It includes theoretical and
methodological frameworks that posit an important role for culture and its impact on
mental processes and behavior
• Cultural psychology recognizes that there are “weirdos”
- Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic
• All or some?
- Universal: True or applicable for people of all cultures (example: grief)
- Culture specific: True for some people of some cultures but not others (example:
certain holidays like Halloween, focusing on sense of self, etc.)
• Environmental influences
- Deviation from temperate climate (72 Fahrenheit/22 Celsius): People stay indoors,
they hurry (people are faster in the north and slower in the south), etc.
- Population density: Urban vs. more spread out
- Arable land: Land that can sustain life through food production
- Climate change: Hurricanes in Puerto Rico
• Culture toolkit
- Shared intentionality: Knowledge about motivations concerning behaviors that are
common among people in a group
o Examples: Greetings are different in certain cultures, like kissing on the cheek
vs. shaking a hand; humor is also different and usually doesn’t translate well
between cultures
o What are the motivations behind these behaviors?
- Ratchet effect: The concept that humans continually improve on improvements. They
do not go backwards or revert.
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