PSYCHOLOGY

I  need 6 substantial posts (comments)

 

 

Each post should be at least 100-200 words and be considered substantive which displays critical thinking and moves our conversation forward in a scholarly way. It is also required that students utilize properly cited scholarly resources in Main Forum postings. A scholarly approach to discussions will frequently involve references to the weekly readings, learning objectives, and scholarly information sources in a manner that sheds new light upon the topic of the discussion. To create a substantive posting, remember “ABC” – Acknowledge other student postings, Build upon the ideas with scholarly material and Conclude with a follow-up question for the classroom.

I need 6 substantial posts (comments)

Each post should be at least 100-200 words and be considered substantive which displays critical thinking and moves our conversation forward in a scholarly way. It is also required that students utilize properly cited scholarly resources in Main Forum postings. A scholarly approach to discussions will frequently involve references to the weekly readings, learning objectives, and scholarly information sources in a manner that sheds new light upon the topic of the discussion. To create a substantive posting, remember “ABC” – Acknowledge other student postings, Build upon the ideas with scholarly material and Conclude with a follow-up question for the classroom.

 

 

 

Chapter 4

CULTURE AND ATTACHMENT

Attachment  refers to the special bond that develops between the infant and his or her primary caregiver and provides the infant with emotional security. Many psychologists believe that the quality of attachment has lifelong effects on our relationships with loved ones. Once attached, babies are distressed by separation from their caregiver (separation distress or anxiety). There is evidence that seven- to nine-month-old infants in every culture studied show distress when they are separated from their primary caregiver (Grossman & Grossman,  1990 ).

Bowlby’s Theory of Attachment

Bowlby’s ( 1969 ) evolutionary theory of attachment proposes that infants must have a preprogrammed, biological basis for becoming attached to their caregivers. This innate behavioral repertoire includes smiling and cooing to elicit physical attachment behaviors on the part of the caregiver. He argues that the attachment relationship between caregiver and child functioned as a survival strategy: Infants had a greater chance of survival if they remained close to the caregiver for comfort and protection.

Attachment as a survival strategy is illustrated in a study in Nigeria of Hausa infants and their caregivers (Marvin, VanDevender, Iwanaga, LeVine, & LeVine,  1977 ). The researchers report that the attachment relationship protected infants from the dangers of their environment, which included open fires, tools, and utensils that were easily accessible. Infants explored their environment, but only when they were in close proximity to an attachment figure. Similarly, among the Dogon of Mali, infants were always kept in close proximity with the mother (being held most of the time) and infants did not roam freely, thus avoiding dangers such as open fires, snakes, and animal droppings (True, Pisani, & Oumar,  2001 ).

Bowlby and Ainsworth’s Classification System of Attachment

Based on Bowlby’s attachment theory, Mary Ainsworth’s ( 1967 ,  1977 ) study of mothers and infants in Uganda led to the tripartite classification system of attachment relationships. Based on her careful observations of 26 mother-infant pairs over a span of one year, she described three attachment styles:  secure ,  ambivalent , and  avoidant . The latter two attachment styles she labeled as “insecurely attached.” Infants who are securely attached become distressed when their mother leaves but are easily comforted by her when she returns. Infants who are ambivalent also experience distress when their mother leaves but when she returns they send mixed signals—they want to be comforted by her yet, at the same time, appear to have a difficult time letting her soothe them. Infants who are avoidant do not seem to be distressed when their mother leaves and when she returns these infants will actively avoid reuniting with their mother and instead focus their attention elsewhere. Ainsworth later replicated her results in a sample of Baltimore mothers and their infants. In her samples, she found that approximately 57 percent of mothers and infants were classified as securely attached, 25 percent as ambivalent, and 18 percent as avoidant.

Studies from other cultures have found a similar distribution of attachment classifications; others have found considerable differences. And some attachment styles are not reported in certain cultures. For example, no avoidant infants were found in True et al.’s ( 2001 ) study of the Dogon of Mali. Mali mothers kept their infants close to them throughout the day and practiced constant, responsive nursing (nursing on demand when the infant is hungry or distressed). This type of caregiving, True et al. argued, “prevents” avoidant attachment to the mother. These findings highlight the importance of understanding the attachment system in the context of parenting practices specific to each culture.

Cross-Cultural Studies on Attachment

Since Ainsworth’s early studies, hundreds of studies of attachment have been conducted in cultures all over the world. To measure attachment, the Strange Situation, developed by Ainsworth, is the most widely used measure. In the Strange Situation, infants are separated from their mothers for a brief period of time. The separation is thought to trigger the attachment system in the infant. The quality of attachment is derived partly from an assessment of the infant’s reaction to the separation and subsequent reunion with the mother.

Although this method has been used extensively across cultures, the cross-cultural validity of this method and the meaning of the attachment classifications themselves have been questioned. For instance, the meaning of the separation may differ across cultures (Takahashi,  1990 ). Japanese infants are rarely separated from their mothers, and the separation during the Strange Situation may represent a highly unusual situation that may imply something different for Japanese infants and their mothers than for U.S. infants and their mothers. It may also be the case that subtle attachment behaviors (for instance, those that characterize avoidant relationships) are difficult even for well-trained coders to observe in infants from different cultures (Crittenden,  2000 ; van IJzendoorn & Sagi,  1999 ).

In addition to criticisms leveled at the measurement of attachment, cross-cultural researchers have questioned the appropriateness of the different categories of attachment. For instance, researchers studying Chinese infants and their mothers question the validity of the avoidant category as an indication of insecure attachment (Hu & Meng,  1996 , cited in van IJzendoorn & Sagi,  1999 ). Chinese mothers emphasize early independence in their infants and, at the same time, stress their reliance on nonparental (usually the grandparent) caregivers. These factors, rather than an insecure relationship between the mother and her infant, may be responsible for why babies show avoidant attachment in China.

Van IJzendoorn and Sagi ( 1999 ) outline several important cross-cultural issues that Ainsworth’s Uganda study raised, including whether maternal sensitivity is a necessary antecedent of attachment. For instance, mothers of securely attached infants are described as sensitive, warm, and more positive in their emotional expression. Mothers of avoidant children are suspected of being intrusive and over-stimulating. Mothers of ambivalent children have been characterized as being insensitive and uninvolved. Thus, according to Ainsworth, a major determinant of attachment security is having a caregiver who is sensitive and responsive to the child’s needs. In a review of 65 studies of attachment, however, caregiver sensitivity was related only modestly to security of attachment (DeWolff & van IJzendoorn,  1997 ). And studies with other cultures found an even weaker connection between parent sensitivity and security of attachment (van IJzendoorn & Sagi,  1999 ).

One possible reason for why maternal sensitivity has not been consistently linked to secure attachment is that sensitivity may mean different things and expressed in different ways across cultures. One study contrasted U.S. caregivers’ with Japanese caregivers’ sensitive responsiveness (Rothbaum, Weisz, Pott, Miyake, & Morelli,  2000 ). In the United States, parents tend to wait for their child to communicate a need and then respond to that need. In other words, sensitive parenting in the United States allows the child to express his or her individual needs to the parent so that the parent can appropriately address those needs. In contrast, in Japan, parents tend to anticipate their child’s needs instead of waiting for their child to communicate a need. This can be done by being aware of situations that may cause distress to a child and anticipating ways to minimize the stress. Rothbaum and colleagues argue that researchers need to pay more attention to how different cultures conceptualize and demonstrate sensitive parenting to better understand what type of parenting leads to secure attachment. Further, parenting behaviors that, from a Western perspective, may seem to promote insecure attachment, may in fact do the opposite in other cultures. For example, Ainsworth suggested that parenting that is “intrusive,” namely, directive and controlling, leads to an insecure attachment. However, this type of parenting may have an entirely different meaning in non-Western cultures (Chao,  1996 ). Future research should consider the interaction between culturally specific parenting practices and infant temperament and behaviors to better understand how attachment relationships develop (Keller,  2008 ).

Is Secure Attachment a Universal Ideal?

In the United States, secure attachment is assumed to be the ideal. The very term that Ainsworth and colleagues chose to describe this type of attachment, and the negative terms used to describe others, reflects this underlying bias. Some research suggests that cultures may differ, however, in their notion of “ideal” attachment. For example, northern German mothers value and promote early independence and see the “securely” attached child as “spoiled” (Grossmann, Grossmann, Spangler, Suess, & Unzner,  1985 ). Children raised in traditional Japanese families are also characterized by a high rate of ambivalent attachment, with practically no avoidant types (Miyake, Chen, & Campos,  1985 ). Traditional Japanese mothers seldom leave their children (such as with babysitters) and foster a strong sense of dependence in their children. This dependence supports the traditional cultural ideal of family loyalty. As noted earlier, being separated, even for a short time (such as during the Strange Situation) may be highly unusual and thus it is more likely that children’s behavior in this situation be recorded as insecurely attached. Attachment scholars have suggested that researchers should stop using value-laden terms such as “secure” and “insecure” in describing the attachment relationship. Instead, they propose that it may be more useful to describe the attachment relationship as “adaptive” or “maladaptive” to the specific context, which would take into consideration how cultures differ in the particular attachment strategy that may be most appropriate for that culture (Crittenden,  2000 ; Keller,  2008 ).

Although cross-cultural studies of attachment have been criticized, there is still a keen interest in attachment relationships. One main reason for this interest is that attachment relationships in childhood may have long-term consequences—into adolescence and adulthood. A compilation of the most important longitudinal studies of attachment from Germany, Israel, England, and the United States, suggests that early attachment relationships are related to the quality of later peer relationships, the ability to develop close, intimate adult relationships, and how one parents (Grossman, Grossman, & Waters,  2005 ). These studies also show, however, that there is a complex relation between early attachment relationships and later development that depends on the temperament and personality of the child, the stability and characteristics of the caregiving environment, individual life events, and quality of interpersonal relationships throughout the child’s life.

In sum, the vast literature concerning attachment in different cultures suggests that attachment between infants and their caregivers is a universal phenomenon. What may differ across cultures, however, is the specific attachment behaviors exhibited by the infant that indicate secure or insecure attachment and the parenting practices that promote secure and insecure attachment (van IJzendoorn & Sagi,  1999 ). Further, as stated earlier, attachment scholars argue that viewing attachment through the lens of being “adaptive” and “maladaptive” may be more useful than using the evaluative terms “secure” and “insecure” (Crittenden,  2000 ; Keller,  2008 ). “Adaptive” attachments, then, would refer to relationships that promote the maximum level of safety for the child within a specific cultural context. Researchers could then define an “optimal” relationship between infant and caregiver as one that may be achieved in different ways, under different circumstances, in different cultures.

TEMPERAMENT AND ATTACHMENT: A SUMMARY

Much still needs to be done to understand the attachment patterns in other cultures and the relationship among cultural milieu, infant temperament, and attachment style. Notions about the quality of attachment and the processes by which it occurs are qualitative judgments made from the perspective of each culture. What is considered an optimal style of attachment in one culture may not necessarily be optimal across all cultures. Furthermore, because nonparental caretaking is a frequent form in most cultures (Weisner & Gallimore,  1977 ), examining the attachment “network” instead of focusing solely on dyads, as has traditionally been done, is of crucial importance (van IJzendoorn & Sagi,  1999 ). Studies involving an African tribe of forest-dwelling foragers known as the Efe, for instance, show a very different pattern from the one psychologists have come to accept as necessary to healthy attachment (Tronick, Morelli, & Ivey,  1992 ). Efe infants are cared for by a variety of people in addition to their mothers; the time spent with caregivers other than their mothers increases from 39 percent at 3 weeks to 60 percent by 18 weeks. Efe infants are always within earshot and sight of about 10 people and they have close emotional ties to many people other than their mothers. However, when infants are one year old, they clearly show a preference for being cared for by their mothers and become upset when left by their mothers. At this age, then, mothers once again become the primary caretakers. Thus, there is evidence that attachment to a primary caregiver is still formed and that children are emotionally healthy despite having multiple caregivers. Nonetheless, despite the fact that in many cultures there are multiple caregivers other than the infant’s biological mother, studies of attachment that focus beyond the mother, are still relatively rare.

Figure 4.4 Efe Infants are Cared for by Multiple Caretakers

 

Source: Michael Nichols/National Geographic

The information presented so far concerning temperament and attachment relationships speaks to just a few of the many ways in which enculturation occurs around the world. Children may be born with differences in biological predispositions or temperament that may make it easier for them to engage in the cultural learning that occurs throughout socialization and enculturation. Differences in attachment provide learning platforms for children that allow them to achieve developmental goals fostered by their particular cultures. Thus, the temperamental characteristics with which you were born, your caregiver’s responses to your temperamental style, and the resultant attachment relationship you develop with your caregiver together play important roles in how you come to acquire your culture. There is a close interaction then, between a child’s temperament, attachment relationship with his or her caregiver, and broader environment (e.g., cultural expectations of desirable temperament and attachment relationships) that contribute to a child’s development.

We turn now to examine culture’s role in two major developmental processes: cognitive and moral development. These topics are of great interest to developmental psychologists, both mainstream and cross-cultural.

 

 

CHAPTER 5

CULTURE AND THINKING

Culture and Categorization

One basic mental process is the manner in which people group things together into categories. People  categorize  on the basis of similarities and attach labels (words) to groups of objects perceived to have something in common. In so doing, people create categories of objects that share certain characteristics. People often decide whether something belongs in a certain group by comparing it to the most common or representative member of that category. For instance, a beanbag chair, a straight-backed dining room chair, and a seat in a theater differ in appearance from one another, but all belong to the basic category chair. All these things can be grouped together under the label chair because all share a common function. When we say “That thing is a chair,” we mean that the item can and should be used as something for people to sit on (Rosch,1978).

The process of categorization is universal to all humans. Creating mental categories helps us sort out all the complex stimuli that we are exposed to every day. It helps us create rules and guidelines for behavior and to make decisions. Verbal language is based on categorization and concept formation; words are merely symbols for objects in our physical environment.

Some categories appear to be universal across cultures. Facial expressions that signal basic emotions—happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust—are placed in the same categories across cultures (see  Chapter 8 ). Likewise, there is widespread agreement across cultures about which colors are primary and which are secondary (Lindsey & Brown,  2009 ; see also  Chapter 9 ). The way people select and remember colors appears to be largely independent of both culture and language. Regardless of whether people speak a language that has dozens of words for colors or one that distinguishes colors only in terms of whether they are bright or dark, individuals universally group colors around the same primary hues. They also remember primary colors with greater ease when asked to compare and recall colors in an experimental setting. Stereotypes are a type of category, and stereotyping is probably a universal psychological process ( Chapter 14 ). And there is universality in how people across cultures categorize shapes in terms of the best examples of basic forms (perfect circles, equilateral triangles, and squares) rather than forming categories for irregular geometrical shapes. These cross-cultural parallels suggest that physiological factors influence the way humans categorize certain basic stimuli. That is, humans seem to be predisposed to prefer certain shapes, colors, and facial expressions.

Although categorization itself is a universal psychological process, the way in which people categorize things may be culturally variable. For example, although all cultures may have a category for furniture, the prototype of a chair is likely to differ across cultures because the materials used to construct furniture differ across cultures.

One common way to study cultural differences in categorization involves the use of sorting tasks. When presented with pictures that could be grouped in terms of either function, shape, or color, young children in Western cultures tend to group by color. As they grow older, they group by shape, and then by function (Bruner, Oliver, & Greenfield,  1966 ). Western adults thus tend to put all the tools in one group and all the animals in another, rather than grouping all the red things or all the round things together. It had been assumed that this trend was a function of basic human maturation. But given similar sorting tasks, adult Africans showed a strong tendency to group objects by color rather than function (Greenfield, Reich, & Oliver,  1966 ; Suchman,  1966 ), suggesting that something other than simple maturation must be responsible for the category shifts.

East Asians may categorize differently altogether. In an early study by Chiu ( 1972 ), Chinese and American children were presented with sets of three objects and were asked to select two of the objects that should go together. The American children tended to group objects according to shared features, whereas the Chinese children tended to group objects according to shared contextual or functional relationships. For instance, when presented with a man, woman, and child, the Americans tended to group the man and woman together because they were both adults, while the Chinese tended to group the woman and child together because of their perceived relationship. More recently, Ji, Zhang, and Nisbett ( 2004 ) conducted similar tests with Americans and bilingual Chinese (mainland and Taiwan) participants, having them group sets of three words in either English or Chinese, and found similar results, suggesting that the cultural differences in categorization styles were not affected by language.

Culture and Memory

Many of us have heard the claim that individuals from nonliterate societies develop better memory skills because they do not have the ability to write things down to remember them (Bartlett,  1932 ). Is it true that our memories are not as good when we habitually use lists as aids in remembering? Ross and Millson ( 1970 ) suspected that reliance on an oral tradition might make people better at remembering. They compared the ability of American and Ghanaian college students to remember stories that were read aloud. They found that in general the Ghanaian students were better than the Americans at remembering the stories. But Cole, Gay, Glick, and Sharp ( 1971 ) found that nonliterate African subjects did not perform better when they were tested with lists of words instead of with stories. These findings suggest that cultural differences in memory as a function of oral tradition may be limited to meaningful material.

One of the best-known aspects of memory is the  serial position effect . This effect suggests that we remember things better if they are either the first (primacy effect) or last (recency effect) item in a list of things to remember. Early cross-cultural comparisons challenge the universality of this effect. Cole and Scribner ( 1974 ), for instance, found no relation between serial position and the likelihood of being remembered in studying the memory of Kpelle tribespeople in Liberia. Wagner ( 1980 ) hypothesized that the primacy effect depends on rehearsal—the silent repetition of things you are trying to remember—and that this memory strategy is related to schooling. Wagner compared groups of Moroccan children who had and had not gone to school and found that the primacy effect was much stronger in the children who had been to school. This makes sense; in a classroom setting, children are expected to memorize letters, multiplication tables, and other basic facts. Participants who have been to school, therefore, have had more practice in memorizing than have unschooled individuals. They are also able to apply these skills in test situations that resemble their school experience. A study by Scribner ( 1974 ) with educated and uneducated Africans supported this idea. Educated Africans were able to recall lists of words to a degree similar to that of American subjects, whereas uneducated Africans remembered fewer words. It is not clear whether culture or schooling or both contribute to the observed differences.

There may be some constants about memory across cultures. For example, memory abilities tend to decrease as people get older (or at least people become more selective about what they remember!), and one study showed that such memory decreases with age were consistent across cultures (Crook, Youngjohn, Larrabee, & Salama,  1992 ).

Another aspect of memory that studies have found to be universal is in the effect known as hindsight bias , which refers to the process in which individuals adjust their memory for something after they find out the true outcome. For example, when someone is asked to guess the number of beads in a jar, they may say 350. When they find out later that the actual number is 647, people will often remember their original estimate to be 450, or some number closer to the true outcome. Choi and Nisbett ( 2000 ) found that Koreans exhibited more hindsight bias than Americans, but Heine and Lehman ( 1996 ) reported no differences between Japanese and Canadians. A more recent study involving participants from Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America also found no cultural differences in hindsight bias (Pohl, Bender, & Lachmann,  2002 ), providing evidence for its universality.

But a lot of the studies reviewed above concerned memory for self-unrelated materials. What about memory for things that are relevant to oneself? Across two studies Liu and colleagues (Liu, Goldstein-Hawes, Hilton, Huang, Gastardo-Conaco, Dresler-Hawke, … Hidaka,  2005 ; Liu, Paez, Slaquta, Cabecinhas, Technio, Kokdemir, … Zlobina,  2009 ) asked respondents in 24 cultures about the “most important events in world history” and the “most influential person in world history in the last 1,000 years.” There was large cross-cultural consensus, with events focused on the recent past, centered around politics and dominated by world wars, with the most influential person being Hitler. Recency effects were pervasive, with events and figures from the past 100 years accounting for 72% of nominated events and 78% of nominated individuals. The results indicated that collective remembering of the past is dynamically interlinked to political issues of the present for all cultures surveyed.

Recent work by Wang and colleagues also point to interesting cultural differences in self-relevant memory. They have studied  episodic memory , which refers to the recollection of specific events that took place at a particular time and place in the past. Across several studies, European and European-American adults and children often exhibit greater episodic memories in the recollection of autobiographic events than Asian and Asian-Americans (Wang,  2001 ,  2004 ; Wang & Ross,  2005 ). In one study, for example, European Canadian and Chinese 8-, 11-, and 14-year-old children recalled early childhood memories of events that occurred before they went to school. Across all age groups, Canadian children produced more episodic memories than did the Chinese, with the cultural difference increasing with age. Moreover, studies have indicated that those cultural differences were not accounted for by general cognitive or memory capacity differences between the groups, language artifacts or narrative style, different norms of expression, different life experiences, or influences of the test context. Instead, the differences appear to occur because of differences in cultural differences in self-construals, emotion knowledge, and interpersonal processes. For example, memories of specific episodes are often distinct personal experiences that help individuals distinguish themselves from others, and individuals with an independent self-construal may be more motivated to attend to or encode such memories. Memories of generic activities (e.g., going to church every Sunday) often imply social conventions and interactions with others, and individuals with interdependent self-construals may be more motivated to attend to and remember such events. Consistent with this framework, when Chinese individuals are primed independently, they performed more poorly in a memory recognition test related to the concept of “mothers” (Sui, Zhu, & Chiu,  2007 ).

Culture and Math Abilities

One thing interesting about math is that it, like other symbolic languages, is unique to human cultures. Thus the ability to do math is a universal human psychological process. Clearly there are national differences in overall math abilities and achievements. For instance the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement conducts worldwide testing in mathematics and science. In its latest survey, conducted in 2007, they tested fourth and eight graders in 66 regions of the world. Their major findings were the following ( http://www.iea.nl/timss2007.html ):

· • Asian countries continued to have the highest percentages of students reaching the advanced International Benchmark, representing fluency on items involving the most complex topics and reasoning skills.

· • In mathematics, at the fourth grade, Singapore and Hong Kong SAR had 41 and 40 percent of their students, respectively, achieving at or above the Advanced International Benchmark. At the eighth grade, Chinese Taipei, Korea, and Singapore had 40 to 45 percent of their students achieving at or above it. The median percentage of students reaching this Benchmark was 5 percent at the fourth grade and 2 percent at the eighth grade.

· • In science, the highest performing countries at the fourth grade—Singapore and Chinese Taipei—had 36 and 19 percent of their students, respectively, achieving at or above the Advanced International Benchmark. At the eighth grade, Singapore and Chinese Taipei had 32 and 25 percent of their students, respectively, achieving at or above the Benchmark. The median percentage of students reaching this Benchmark was 7 percent at the fourth grade and 3 percent at the eighth grade.

· • At the fourth grade, in both mathematics and science, more countries showed improvement in 2007 than declines. A steady improvement was shown by a range of countries since the first survey in 1995.

· • At the fourth grade, the differences in achievement between boys and girls were negligible in approximately half the countries in both mathematics and science. In the remaining countries, girls had higher achievement in about half and boys had higher achievement in the other half.

Differences across countries clearly exist in math and science abilities. But, the source of these differences is not clear. Interestingly, recent research has demonstrated that the mapping of numbers onto space may be a universal intuition, and the initial intuition of numbers is logarithmic (Dehaene, Izard, Spelke, & Pica,  2008 ). Conceptions of numbers, such as the number line, are cultural inventions that probably occur because of a combination of cultural practices in everyday life and the educational system, the value placed on math and science at home and inschools, and even in the numbering systems used across cultures and languages. In many languages, for example, the number system is a base 10 system, with unique words for the numbers one through ten. Eleven is often counted 10-1, twelve is 10-2, twenty is 2-10, etc. In English, however, numbers 1 through 19 are unique, and an additive system similar to other languages starts at 20. And historically western math was influenced by Roman numerals, which has no zero, and modern math systems were acquired by acculturation with the Middle East. Other languages have different base systems. These differences may contribute to differences in math abilities.

One interesting cross-cultural phenomenon concerns the gender gap in mathematics achievement. This gap exists in some cultures but not others. Else-Quest, Hyde, and Linn ( 2010 ) recently provided evidence for a  gender stratification hypothesis  that suggests that gender differences are related to cultural variations in opportunity structures for girls and women. They meta-analyzed two major data sets representing 493,495 students in 69 nations, and found that gender equity in school enrollment, women’s share of research jobs, and women’s parliamentary representation were the most powerful predictors of cross-national variability in gender gaps in math.

Studies of an area known as  everyday cognition  indicate that, even without formal educational systems, members of all cultures learn math skills (Schliemann & Carraher,  2001 ). Kpelle rice farmers, for instance, estimate amounts of rice as part of their work, and are better than Americans at volume estimation. Farmers in some areas of Brazil use a nonstandard system of measures and formulas to calculate areas of land. Illiterate individuals in India can use the movements of sun, moon, and stars to tell time accurately. These examples abound all over the world, from Liberian tailors, to street vendors in South America, to carpenters in South Africa, to fisherman and cooks the world over. Knotted string devices known as khipu were used for bureaucratic counting devices in the Inke Empire in ancient Peru, and were used to keep census and tribe data (Urton & Brezine,  2005 ). Geometry, a topic we typically associate with middle- or high-school math classes, may in fact be a core intuition found in all humans. Even isolated indigenous groups of individuals living in the Amazon use geometric concepts to locate hidden objects (Dehaene, Izard, Pica, & Spelke,  2006 ). Findings from studies on everyday cognition provide fairly clear evidence that math abilities are universal to all humans.

Culture and Problem Solving

Problem solving  refers to the process by which we attempt to discover ways of achieving goals that do not seem readily attainable. Psychologists have tried to isolate the process of problem solving by asking people from different cultures to solve unfamiliar problems in artificial settings. One such experiment (Cole et al.,  1971 ) presented American and Liberian subjects with an apparatus containing various buttons, panels, and slots. After basic instruction in how to work the apparatus, subjects were to figure out how to open the device and obtain a prize. The solution involved combining two different procedures—first pressing the correct button to release a marble, and then inserting the marble into the appropriate slot to open a panel. American subjects under the age of 10 were generally unable to obtain the prize, but older American subjects combined the two steps with ease. However, Liberian subjects of all ages and educational backgrounds experienced great difficulty solving the problem; less than a third of the adults were successful.

This experiment, however, may have been biased in favor of the Americans. (Remember the first time you ever worked on a computer, or looked under the hood of a car?) Cole and his colleagues repeated their experiment with materials familiar to people in Liberia, using a locked box and keys instead of the mechanical contraption. In the new version of the two-step problem, the Liberian subjects had to remember which key opened the lock on the box and which matchbox container housed the correct key. Under these conditions, the great majority of Liberians solved the problem easily.

The success of the Liberians in solving a two-step problem with a familiar set of materials raises the question of whether the experiment tested their ability to think logically or tested their previous knowledge and experience with locks and keys. In an attempt to clarify this issue, the researchers designed a third experiment, combining elements from both the first and second tests. Liberian and American subjects were again presented with a locked box, but the key that opened the box had to be obtained from the apparatus used in the first experiment. To the surprise of the researchers, the third test produced results similar to the first experiment. While Americans solved the problem with ease, most Liberians were not able to retrieve the key to open the box.

Cole and his colleagues concluded that the Liberians’ ability to reason logically to solve problems depended on context. When presented with problems using materials and concepts already familiar to them, Liberians drew logical conclusions effortlessly. When the test situation was alien to them, however, they had difficulty knowing where to begin. In some cases, the problem went beyond confusion; uneducated Liberians appeared visibly frightened by the tests involving the strange apparatus and were reluctant to manipulate it. Although adult Americans did very well in these experiments in comparison to the Liberians, how might average Americans react if placed in a similar experimental situation that required the Americans to use wholly unfamiliar concepts and technology—for example, tracking animals by means of footprints and smells?

Another type of problem that has been studied cross-culturally involves syllogisms (for example: All children like candy. Mary is a child. Does Mary like candy?). As with other cultural differences in cognition and thought, the ability to provide the correct answer to verbal problems was found to be closely associated with school attendance. Individuals from traditional societies who were illiterate were generally unable to provide answers to syllogisms containing unfamiliar information. Individuals from the same culture and even from the same village who had received a single year of schooling could respond correctly.

Various explanations have been proposed to account for the inability of uneducated people to complete word problems. It may be that illiterate people actually think differently from those who are educated. According to this hypothesis, logical reasoning is essentially artificial; it is a skill that must be learned in a Westernized school setting. Some studies lend support to this interpretation. Tulviste ( 1978 ) asked schoolchildren in Estonia ages 8 to 15 to solve verbal problems and explaintheir answers. Although the children were able to solve most of the problems correctly, they explained their answers by citing the logical premises of the problem only in areas in which they did not have firsthand knowledge. Elsewhere, their answers were justified with appeals to common sense or statements about their personal observations.

Scribner ( 1979 ) questioned whether illiterate subjects are truly incapable of thinking logically and looked more closely into the reasons uneducated people fail to give correct responses to verbal problems. When uneducated peasants were asked to explain illogical answers to syllogism problems, they consistently cited evidence that was known to them personally or stated that they did not know anything about the subject, ignoring the premises given to them. For example, in response to the word problem “All children like candy; Mary is a child; does Mary like candy?” subjects might shrug their shoulders and comment, “How would I know whether Mary likes candy? I don’t even know the child!” or “Maybe she doesn’t like candy; I’ve known children who didn’t.” These individuals appear to be unable or unwilling to apply concepts of scientific thinking to verbal problems. But this is not because they lack the capacity to reason logically; rather, they do not understand the hypothetical nature of verbal problems or view them with the same degree of importance. People who have been to school have had the experience of answering questions posed by an authority figure who already knows the correct answers. Uneducated people, however, have difficulty understanding the notion that questions need not be requests for information.

Culture and Creativity

Another aspect of cognition that has received attention in the literature is creativity. Creativity is an interesting area of study because it highlights a universal and unique human process. Creativity is what enables humans and only humans to create art and symphonies, explore space and the sea, and design machines to improve life. Unfortunately creativity also is what enables humans and only humans to create and improve on weapons of mass destruction and other terrible deeds.

Research on creativity in the United States suggests that it depends on divergent thinking rather than on the convergent thinking that is typically assessed in measures of intelligence. Creative individuals have been shown to have a high capacity for hard work, a willingness to take risks, and a high tolerance for ambiguity and disorder (Sternberg & Lubart,  1995 ,  1999 ). These same characteristics appear to be true of creative individuals in other cultures as well. For example, Khaleefa, Erdos, and Ashria ( 1996 ) highlighted these characteristics in their study of creativity in a conformist culture (Sudanese); Simonton ( 1996 ) documented them in his study of creative individuals in Japanese history; and Satoh ( 1996 ) described their implementation in kindergarten programs in Japan to foster the development of creativity in children in that culture. All of these examples are consistent with Sternberg and Lubart’s ( 1995 ,  1999 ) studies of the processes that creative individuals go through, particularly in overcoming obstacles presented to them by conformist-centered organizations.

Some important differences have been noted, however, in the specific ways in which creativity can be fostered in different cultures. Shane, Venkataraman, and MacMillan ( 1995 ), for example, studied innovative strategies among a sample of 1,228 individuals from 30 countries who were employees of four different work organizations. The authors characterized the countries in terms of Hofstede’s dimensions of individualism, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance (see  Chapter 1  for a review). They found that countries high on uncertainty avoidance prefer creative individuals to work through organizational norms, rules, and procedures. Countries higher on power distance preferred creative individuals to gain support from those in authority before action is taken, or to build a broad base of support among members for new ideas. Collectivistic countries preferred creative people to seek cross-functional support for their efforts. Thus, although creative individuals may share some common core characteristics across cultures, they need to adapt their abilities to the specific cultural milieu within which they function, particularly in the implementation and adoption of their creative ideas (Csikszentmihalyi,  1999 ). Creativity requires people to “get outside of their own box” or framework; another area of cultural difference would be the degree to which this ability is fostered. These effects also exist on the group level, as individualistic groups have been shown to be more creative than collectivistic groups (Goncalo & Staw,  2006 ).

It is often said that intercultural experiences promote growth and creativity, and several recent studies have provided support for this idea. In one of set of studies, Maddux and Galinsky ( 2009 ) showed that time spent living abroad (but not time spent traveling abroad) was positively related with creativity, that priming foreign living experiences temporarily enhanced creative tendencies for participants who had previously lived abroad, and that the degree to which individuals had adapted to different cultures while living abroad mediated the link between foreign living experience and creativity. Subsequent research demonstrated that it was the specific multicultural learning experiences—learning how and why people of different cultures do what they do—that facilitated improvements in creativity (Maddux, Adam, & Galinsky,  2010 ).

Culture and Dialectical Thinking

Dialectical thinking  can be broadly defined as the tendency to accept what seem to be contradictions in thought or beliefs. This is in contrast to  positive logical determinism  that characterizes much of American and Western European thinking. Dialectical thinking tries to find the way in which both sides of an apparent contradiction are correct, tolerates the contradiction, and tries to find mutual middle ground. Logical deterministic thinking tends to see contradictions as mutually exclusive categories, as either-or, yes-no, one-or-the-other types of categories.

Cross-cultural research of the past decade has produced interesting cultural differences in dialectical thinking, demonstrating that East Asians tend to prefer dialectical thinking, whereas Americans tend to prefer logical deterministic thinking. Peng and Nisbett ( 1999 ), for instance, conducted an interesting series of studies to demonstrate these differences. In one, American and Chinese graduate students at the University of Michigan were presented with the following two vignettes:

· Mother-Daughter Conflict:

· Mary, Phoebe, and Julie all have daughters. Each mother has held a set of values that has guided her efforts to raise her daughter. Now the daughters have grown up, and each of them is rejecting many of her mother’s values. How did it happen, and what should they do?

· School-Fun Conflict:

· Kent, James, and Matt are college juniors. They are feeling very frustrated about their three years of routine tests, paper assignments, and grades. They complain that going through this process has taken its toll, undermining the fun of learning. How did it happen, and what should they do?

The participants were asked to write what they thought about both conflicts, including what they thought were the sources of the differences and what the persons in the vignettes should do. The researchers then categorized the participants’ responses as either dialectical or not. A dialectical response was defined as one that “(a) addressed the issues from both sides and (b) attempted to reconcile the contradictions, for example, a response such as “both the mothers and the daughters have failed to understand each other” (p. 746). Nondialectical responses generally found exclusive fault with one side or the other, such as “mothers have to recognize daughters’ rights to their own values” (p. 746). There were strong cultural differences in the responses ( Figure 5.8 ), with the Americans responses being much more nondialectical, and the Chinese responses as more dialectical.

Recent research in many areas of psychology, typically comparing East Asians with U.S. Americans, have shown that dialectical thinkers show greater expectation of change when trying to explain or predict events and greater tolerance of contradiction. These effects have been demonstrated in studies on self, emotional experience, psychological well-being, attitudes and evaluations, social categorization and perception, and judgment and decision making (Spencer-Rodgers, Williams, & Peng,  2010 ). For example, while it is typical to find that positive and negative feelings are negatively correlated in Western cultures, research on East Asian cultures has shown that they are either not correlated or even positively correlated with each other (Bagozzi, Wong, & Yi,  1999 ). These kinds of findings in many different domains of psychology have allowed researchers to expand on the concept of dialectical thinking to the construct of  naïve dialectivism  (Peng, Spencer-Rodgers, & Zhong,  2006 ), which is a constellation of lay beliefs about the nature of the world (rather than a cognitive style as suggested by dialectical thinking). Naïve dialecticism is characterized by the doctrine of the mean, or the belief that the truth is always somewhere in the middle. Contrarily, Western lay theories are dominated by the idea that something cannot be both truth and false at the same time, and the belief that all propositions must be either true or false (Peng & Nisbett,1999).

Incidentally, dialectical thinking is not a concept that is exclusive to East Asians. It was a central aspect of the work of the German philosopher Hegel, as well as prominent in the work of writers influential to modern psychology such as Freud and Piaget. Perhaps the zeitgeist of cognitive styles and lay theories may evolve over time, as do many other aspects of culture.

Figure 5.8 Comparison of American and Chinese Responses to the Conflicting Situations in Peng and Nisbett (1999)

 

Source: From K. Peng and R. Nisbett. “Culture, dialectics, and reasoning about contradiction,” American Psychologist, 54, pp. 741-754, 1999, Copyright © American Psychological Association. Reprinted with permission.

Culture, Regrets, and Counterfactual Thinking

Counterfactual thinking  can be defined as hypothetical beliefs about the past that could have occurred in order to avoid or change a negative outcome. For example, if you got a bad grade on a test, an example of counterfactual thinking would be “If I had only studied harder.” These types of counterfactual thoughts often are related to feelings of regret (Gilovich, Medvec, & Kahneman,1998).

Counterfactual thinking can be broadly classified into two types: actions and inactions. On one hand, “If I had only studied harder,” “If I had only been a better parent,” and “If I had only trained harder,” are examples of counterfactual thinking related to inaction. On the other hand, “If I hadn’t said what I said,” “If I didn’t eat that last piece of cake,” and “If I weren’t driving so fast,” are examples of counterfactual thinking of actions.

Research in the United States has shown that regrets related to thoughts of inaction are more prevalent than regrets related to action (Gilovich & Medvec,  1995 ). Interestingly, this same trend has been found in other cultures as well. In a study of Americans, Chinese, Japanese, and Russians, all participants in all cultures experienced more regret over inaction than action (Gilovich, Wang, Regan, & Nishina,  2003 ). Moreover, the degree to which they experienced regret over inaction than over action was comparable across all cultures and to previous data involving just Americans. Another study also demonstrated cultural similarity in the nature of counterfactual thinking, although cultural differences did emerge in specific domains (schoolwork, family) (Chen, Chiu, Roese, Tam, & Lau,  2006 ). Thus, the emotion of regret, and the potential causes of it, appears to be universal.

Summary

Clearly exciting research of the past two decades have demonstrated interesting and important differences in the ways people of different cultures perceive and think about their worlds. Cumulatively, these findings raise questions about the source of those differences. Some researchers believe that the source of the differences observed in many cognitive processes can be found in systemic cultural differences in individualism and rooted in differences in ancient philosophies in Greece and China, the former promoting autonomy and independence, the latter promoting relations and interdependence collectivism (Nisbett,  2003 ; Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan,  2001 ). According to this framework, these ancient cultural systems produce differences in ways of perceiving and thinking about the world, with the Westerners characterized by analytic ways of thinking, whereas the East Asians are characterized by holistic thinking.

More recently, Nisbett and his colleagues have suggested that the various differences in cognition that have been documented can be organized and explained by a  social orientation hypothesis (Varnum, Grossman, Kitayama, & Nisbett,  2010 ). According to this hypothesis, cultures differ in independent vs. interdependent social orientation patterns (according to their independent vs. interdependent self-construals; see  Chapter 13 ). These social orientations, in turn, influence and affect the ways members of those cultures attend to and think about their worlds (see  Table 5.1 ). On one hand, independent social orientations emphasize self-direction, autonomy, and self-expression, which fosters a tendency to focus on a single dimension or aspect when categorizing objects or evaluating arguments. On the other hand, interdependent social orientations emphasize harmony, relatedness, and connection, which in turn fosters a broad attention to context and relationships in visual attention, categorization, and explaining social behavior.

This theoretical hypothesis is interesting. Yet there are still many other potential factors for the cultural differences uncovered to date that have not been examined, including differences in educational systems and practices, linguistic, and genetic differences. In the educational systems of Japan, China, and South Korea today, for example, there is much more emphasis on rote memorization and passive learning in a didactic environment. In a nutshell, the teachers lecture, and the students listen and memorize everything. This is in stark contrast to the typical European or American educational style, in which students are much more active learners, and discussion is promoted. It may very well be that, after 12 or 16 years of such educational practices, East Asian students, who are generally the participants in cross-cultural research, remember more things and think differently about things than do their American counterparts. Thus, the differences observed in research may be attributed to educational practices and not necessarily to cultural ideologies rooted in ancient philosophies.

The differences may be rooted in other sources as well, such as the amount and type of technology used in the countries today, or the type of animated video games played. Our position at this point is that future research will need to explore exactly what are the sources of the observed differences. Some of the sources may be cultural, others not.

 

Reference

· Matsumoto, D., & Juang, L. (2013). Culture and psychology (5th ed.). Retrieved from The University of Phoenix eBook Collection database.