What Is Cultural Psychology?

This book is further processed by the author based on the doctoral dissertation. This is the first academic monograph that systematically introduces and studies "cultural psychology" in China so far: it is not only innovative and pioneering, but also has certain value and significance for people to understand and develop cultural psychology research . This book explores cultural psychology from multiple perspectives and dimensions, and basically shows the complete face of cultural psychology. As a new psychological orientation, it has made great breakthroughs in psychological theory and methods, which has great reference value for the psychological research in China. In particular, it takes culture as the center and emphasizes the role of culture, which is very enlightening and instructive for building a psychological theory system with Chinese characteristics.

Cultural psychology

(Department of Psychology)

Cultural psychology is one of the latest research areas of psychology. It is a discipline that studies the relationship between psychology and culture. Its main purpose is to reveal the mechanism of mutual integration between culture and psychology. ^[1]

1. Cultural anthropology: pay attention to the characteristics and operation of social culture.

2. Cross-cultural psychology: explore the similarities and differences of people s psychological and behavioral patterns in different cultures as the research object to explore the cultural background and psychological meaning of these similarities and differences.

3. Cultural psychology: study the influence of culture on human psychology.

1. The influence of culture on physiological activities.

2. Culture and information processing mechanism.

3. Culture and symbolic representation.

4. Culture and society.

5. The impact of cultural diversity.

(1) Individualism and Collectivism

Individualism: Gould and Kolb (1964) first defined the concept of individualism-collectivism, and believed that individualism was an individual whose ultimate purpose was self-awareness, self-awareness, and self-determination, and herdsmen under social pressure. belief. Lukes (1973) further deepens the theme of this concept, arguing that it includes the emphasis on personal dignity and self-development, autonomy and personal privacy, while emphasizing that the individual is the foundation of society.

Collectivism: In contrast to individualism, collectivism is a belief that emphasizes inner groups (as the core, it focuses on the goals and needs of inner groups rather than the individual itself, and emphasizes the norms and responsibilities of the group, not the happiness of the individual himself And willing to accept others.

Collectivism and Individualism

He Youhui (Hui) and Triandes (1988) constructed an Individualism-Collectivism Scale (IC), from the individual's attitude towards spouses, parents, relatives, friends, neighbors and colleagues. Aspects measure a person's collectivist tendency. They also used this as a tool to prove that this personality structure is universal across cultures.

The influence of individualism and collectivism

Obedience

People from collectivist cultures have a high tendency to obey. Leung (Leung 1986), when studying Chinese students studying in the United States, found that when they deal with the relationship with their mentors, the tendency to obey is much higher than that of American students. When they encounter difficulties, they are more willing to ask for help from their superiors and subordinates than to American friends like their students.

Self-concept

According to Marcus, the dependent self-structure in Eastern culture extends the content of the self to others who are closely related to the self. For Chinese people, the self overlaps with the inner group to a certain extent, so when dealing with relations with the outside world, the inner group always prevails. The so-called inner groups of Chinese people include parents, brothers, friends and colleagues, and many people with close personal relationships.

(2) Social behavior

In resolving interpersonal conflicts in reality, collectivists prefer to negotiate rather than resort to the law more than individualists. In terms of social perception and interpersonal relations, collectivists value the joy and harmony of groups, while individualists emphasize competition and control of others.

Independent View of the Self is the main form of self in Western culture. This form of self emphasizes individual independence, pays attention to individual characteristics and goals, encouragespersonal achievement and realization, values individual rights and freedoms, and opposes obedience, as shown in Figure (A). In the figure, the large circle represents the self, the small circle represents a specific other person, and X represents the respective attributes of the self and others.

Dependent View of the Self

Marcus believes that dependent self values the relationship between people, emphasizes collective goals and solidarity, believes that relationships and responsibilities are the most important things in society, and opposes human selfishness. This self-structure often appears in Asian and some third world cultures.

(3) Culture and attribution

Basic attribution bias:

Attribute behavior internally and ignore external causes of behavior. However, some studies have shown that this deviation mainly occurs in Western cultures that emphasize individual autonomy. Because in such a cultural environment, a person is considered to be independent, and his or her behavior reflects its internal characteristics, motivations, and values.

In countries such as China, Japan, and South Korea, the emphasis is on the sense of self that groups and individuals get from their social groups. At this time, the question arises: Does the western culture that emphasizes individual freedom and autonomy through socialization make its members prefer intrinsic attribution and not situational attribution? Research confirms the above speculation: People in individualistic cultures do prefer to attribute internal attributions to others, while people in collectivist cultures prefer situational attributions. But it is wrong to think that people in a collectivist culture never do intrinsic attribution.

Actor and bystander differences

It was found that when attributing their behaviors, Korean subjects and American subjects did not have much difference-they both made contextual attribution to their behaviors, and the only difference was that they used a familiar Ways to attribute the actions of others: Americans are more likely to think that another person s behavior is due to their personality, while Koreans are more likely to think that another s behavior is caused by a situation.

Self-interest bias

Chinese traditional culture values humility and interpersonal harmony. It is expected that Chinese students will attribute their success to others, such as their teachers or parents, or certain aspects of the situation, such as the quality of teaching in schools. As expected, American subjects attribute their success to themselves more than Chinese subjects; Chinese students attribute their success to certain aspects of the situation, which reflects the values of their culture.

Just world: In a culture where most people tend to believe that the world is fair, economic and social inequality can be seen as "fair". In such a society, people believe that the poor and the disadvantaged get less because they should get less. Therefore, a just world attribution can be used to explain and justify injustice. Some studies have shown that in cultures where the rich and the poor are extremely divided, a fair world attribution is more common than in cultures where wealth distribution is more fair.

(4) Culture and thinking

Dialectical thinking:

Chinese dialectical thinking includes three principles: the theory of change, the theory of contradiction, and the theory of neutrality. From the perspective of the variability of the world, the theory of change holds that the world is always in change, and there is no eternal right and wrong; the theory of contradiction holds that everything is a contradictory unity composed of opposites. It is reflected in the doctrine of the mean, that everything is reasonably reasonable.

logical thinking:

This thinking emphasizes the unity, non-contradiction, and exclusion of the world. Think that the nature of things will not change; believe that a proposition cannot be right or wrong at the same time, either right or wrong, without intermediateness.

The source of differences between East and West thinking

social background

The ancient Greek society emphasized individual characteristics and freedom. It was a society dominated by individualism. However, the ancient Chinese society was the opposite. Emphasizing the relationship between individuals and society was a society characterized by collectivism.

Social cognitive system

Different philosophies and epistemologies in the East and the West have constructed different psychological theories in the context of social history. The complex social relationships in Chinese life make Chinese have to focus their attention on the outside world, so the Chinese self-structure is dependent; on the contrary, the social relationships in Western life are simpler, so they are more likely Focus your attention on the object and your goals.

Ecological background

Chinese culture is based on an agricultural society, which is a complex hierarchical society that emphasizes hierarchy and harmony; the Greek civilization, which is in sharp contrast to the Chinese civilization, does not rely entirely on agriculture. Due to the ecological environment, they rely more on hunting and fishing, and these industries have higher requirements for personal characteristics. Therefore, in order to adapt to this ecological environment, Western people's thinking is personal and interpersonal with Chinese people. The orientation of the formula is different. ^[2]