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Psychology: Six Perspectives

Sociocultural Foundations

By: Dodge Fernald

Book Title: Psychology: Six Perspectives

Chapter Title: "Sociocultural Foundations"

Pub. Date: 2008

Access Date: November 3, 2022

Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.

City: Thousand Oaks

Print ISBN: 9781412938679

Online ISBN: 9781452224862

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452224862.n9

Print pages: 302-331

© 2008 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please note that the pagination of the online

version will vary from the pagination of the print book.

Sociocultural Foundations

Sociocultural foundations

• The Inevitable Human Influence ◦ Interactions and Traditions ◦ Studies of Obedience

• Social Psychology ◦ Forming Impressions of People ◦ Modifying Others' Behavior ◦ Prejudice and Stereotypes

• Psychology and Culture ◦ Goals in Cultural Studies ◦ Individualism and Collectivism ◦ Cross-Cultural Comparisons

Social and cultural viewpoints, which are distinct from one another, both emphasize that virtually all human behavior takes place in a human context. Other people, past and present, inevitably influence our daily activities and experience. We are inescapably social creatures, so much so that we find it extremely difficult to live apart from others of our kind. Rightfully or not, we regard a hermit as a strange person, and solitary confinement remains one of our cruelest psychological punishments.

This chapter begins by noting the importance of social and cultural interactions and traditions in our lives. Afterward, it turns to the social domain separately and then to the cultural domain. Each, with its own aims and assumptions, pursues the same overall goal: to understand the ways people influence one another.

The Inevitable Human Influence

In this sociocultural milieu, we think about ourselves and other people almost constantly. Even when absent, other human beings become influential in our experience.

And so it was for Bertha at dawn on a dark November day in postwar Germany. She traveled a difficult pathway over roots and leaves and puddles, pelted by cold rain and snow. But her thoughts turned to Raymond Poincaré, the French premier whose troops ruled Germany in the aftermath of World War I. She held him largely responsible for her current troubles. He should plod that nasty pathway himself before dawn, she mused. Then he would know the hardships the Germans suffered (Pappenheim, 1923).

In fact, Bertha traveled with a teenage assistant and a baby in a rickety carriage. That little trio moved in a silent partnership. Bertha pulled, her helper pushed, and baby Emmy enjoyed the bumpy ride. In those early hours, Bertha's speechless companions, so distant in age and experience, provided a meager social setting.

The cultural setting also provided little comfort. Under French military rule, Germany had lost much of its native character. The Great War resulted in poverty, inflation ran rampant, and yet there was nothing to buy. Age 64, living under foreign dominance in her devastated country, Bertha plodded along, a weary, practically penniless senior citizen.

She was headed to Crumstadt to rescue little Irmchen Weingart, one of her adopted children. The foster father, Mr. Gruenbaum, had beaten his wife two days earlier. That home would not be right for any child. Bertha had alerted the Gruenbaum family to prepare for Irmchen's departure (Pappenheim, 1923). She had placed several foster children in this French-occupied village 20 miles south of Neu-Isenburg. It was time for another inspection of adoptive homes.

Baby Emmy was headed in a different direction. To make her mission more efficient, Bertha was taking the baby to Frankfurt, the first stage of Emmy's trip to Holland, where foster parents awaited her.

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Interactions and Traditions

This tendency to live and work in groups underlies the domains of social and cultural psychology, considered subfields owing to their great breadth and flexible paths of inquiry. Social psychology stands as a major subfield, and cultural psychology has become increasingly broad and prominent in recent years.

In restricted ways, social and cultural viewpoints appear in virtually all the perspectives—the family triangle in psychoanalysis, reinforcement principle in behaviorism, conditions of worth in humanistic psychology, influences on perception and thinking in cognitive psychology, and social exchange in the evolutionary perspective. Even biological psychology becomes responsive to sociocultural influences, for its mechanisms mature in a sociocultural context; they are shaped partly by environmental factors, especially in the early years. These mechanisms underlie all human behavior and experience, whether in a human context or otherwise. In fact, the biological perspective, at one end of the continuum, and the sociocultural, at the other, represent the outer borders of mainstream psychology, yet they have fundamental connections too.

In particular, social psychology examines the ways in which human behavior is influenced by the actual or imagined presence of other human beings. It approaches behavior as inevitably shaped by views of oneself in the context of others. The research methods are often experimental, for social psychologists have developed laboratory analogs of social situations in everyday life. Using role playing and videos, they examine with precision human interactions in almost all imaginable contexts: altruism, cooperation, competition, interpersonal attractions, leadership, pecking orders, roles and status, and numerous other situations.

This longstanding subfield has become so extensive that at times it seems like a separate discipline. Wherever people interact, there are opportunities for social psychologists.

Cultural psychology also lacks the coherence of the more systematic perspectives. Sometimes incorrectly known as cross-cultural and global community psychology, the broad domain of cultural psychology examines the ways a society's practices and products influence human behavior—through its laws, customs, language, religions, politics, and other institutions. It does so chiefly through descriptive research methods, far more common here than in social psychology. In particular, cultural psychology emphasizes participant naturalistic observation and case studies of individuals, groups, and institutions. In these ways, it examines shared activities and also shared meanings—the whole constellation of ideas and standards of behavior that define a particular community (Greenfield et al., 2003). In doing so, it looks to the past and future, as well as the present.

The impact of culture begins even before birth and extends into all significant spheres of human life—from the foods we eat to the ways we educate children, from the religions we adopt to the games we find amusing. A moment's thought suggests the tremendous influence of culture in Bertha Pappenheim's life. A social dimension is commonly present in all these contexts too. But the cultural spheres affect our thoughts and actions in profound, often unrecognized ways.

These influences can operate in unexpected directions too. Bertha's tolerant, supportive attitudes toward prostitutes and unwed mothers were completely unconventional in her day. Her sharp prejudices against women wearing makeup and fashionable clothes were inconsistent with her impeccable upper-class manners and grace, readily evident and widely admired. When smoking was considered improper for women, she adopted the practice. When it became acceptable, she abandoned the habit (Dresner, 1954).

In her leadership of The Home, she displayed a style well known to social psychologists. A so-called task specialist, she focused exclusively on identifying the problem, finding a solution, and implementing it, regardless of the cost to others (Bales, 1958; Hogan, Curphy, & Hogan, 1994). She expected and demanded immediate obedience, not only from the staff but also from the children. She set high standards and strictly maintained them.

In contrast, Bertha took no pains to become a social specialist, someone who focused on group cohesion and morale, gaining productivity through teamwork. She totally overlooked the benefits of satisfying personal and social relationships. Instead, she approached her colleagues and children by wielding her authority.

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Studies of Obedience

The most controversial research of the 20th century concerned obedience to authority. Stanley Milgram's dramatic findings in the United States stimulated investigators in other countries to repeat this research, prompting considerable interest in social and cultural psychology, as well as among the public. Disturbed by the Nazi leadership and war atrocities around the world, Milgram focused this research in the 1960s on obedience to a malevolent authority.

And it involved a pair of major deceptions. First, Milgram made no mention of obedience. He told each of the many volunteers in this research that the investigation concerned the influence of punishment on learning. Working alone as a “teacher,” each volunteer was instructed to administer an electric shock whenever a learner made a mistake. Moreover, each teacher was under orders to increase the shock by 15 volts after each mistake. In obedience, the conditions are not negotiable; an individual responds to a request or demand. Under these conditions, the individual is expected to follow orders. The social situation demanded that the teachers respond as instructed.

Before beginning this procedure, Milgram administered to each teacher a sample shock of 45 volts in order to help him understand the conditions for the learner. Strapped to a chair in another room, the learner made errors. As the teacher administered increasingly stronger shocks, the learner complained, screamed, and finally stopped answering. Unknown to the teacher, the electrical apparatus was rigged; the learner never received any punishment at all. That was the second deception. His yelling and screaming came from a prerecorded audiotape.

Various groups of people had predicted that no teacher would administer more than 300 volts, and certainly nobody would punish the helpless man with 450 volts, the maximum shock available. Yet 60% of all teachers applied the maximum shock. They followed all of the orders (Milgram, 1974).

Because of its deception, this study has been widely criticized. One dissident declared that Milgram himself had engaged in immoral behavior, deceiving the participants and demanding that they perform a disagreeable, apparently injurious task. According to this view, the research findings and their alleged importance did not justify the discomfort of the participants during the experiment. Moreover, several participants experienced self-doubt afterward (Baumrind, 1964). Milgram answered these criticisms carefully, but the issues implicit in this important investigation prompted psychologists to develop more extensive ethical standards for research.

Owing to its totally unexpected outcome, so different from common sense, this study has become a classic in social psychology, now called Milgram's obedience research. It shows the power of the social situation, which may override personal dispositions. In an extensive survey, experts in psychology identified this research as the most significant single investigation in the 20th century (Boneau, 1990). It reminds us that all human beings live their lives in a context of social constraints and prescriptions.

The totality of this social context is known as culture. Broadly speaking, culture is a system of shared meanings that goes beyond the interpersonal; its norms and expectations about ways of living influence our conceptions of reality. Culture provides a pervasive, influential framework for human development, shaping that development by its economic, political, religious, and other products of human life. It transmits to its members the nature of human experience and standards of behavior (Miller, 1999). From this viewpoint, a human society is not simply essential to the formation of psychological processes; it becomes a powerful selective force in setting the specific patterns of those processes.

In this context, one wonders about obedience elsewhere. How would people from other cultures perform as Milgram's “teachers”? Would they show similar levels of obedience to a malevolent authority?

The overall answer is affirmative. Among two dozen studies in eight countries, the median level of obedience was 65%, the same as found in Milgram's first study in the United States. The level ranged from approximately 30 to 90%, owing to changes in the procedure and different participants, as well as cultural influences. Of the eight countries, six were Western; the other two were South Africa and Jordan (Blass, 2000).

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Most of these studies were conducted three decades ago, and it might be argued that times have changed and people today would not be so obedient to a malevolent authority. But this viewpoint lacks empirical support. Ethical concerns have prevented more recent replications of Milgram's research. One review of the many earlier investigations showed no relationship between the date of the study and the amount of obedience. It also showed no significant difference in obedience between men and women (Blass, 2000).

A degree of obedience is, of course, essential to the functioning of any society. But circumstances arise when disobedience may be the proper course of action.

In Germany, an investigator assigned people to serve as teachers in one of three conditions. In the first, 46 participants followed the original Milgram procedure. In the second, with 25 participants, each teacher observed an accomplice of the experimenter posing as a teacher and refusing to continue to administer shocks after 45 volts, thereby demonstrating marked disobedience. In the third, with 30 participants, the experimenter gave each teacher the usual instructions and then clearly tolerated disobedience, saying, “It's up to you to decide if and how much to punish the learner.”

In the exact repetition of the Milgram procedure, 85% of the first group continued all the way to 450 volts. When participants in the third group were offered an opportunity to disobey, only 7% of them continued to the strongest shock. But the disobedient accomplice in the second group failed to deter most of the teachers, and 52% administered the maximum shock available. Overall the German participants were more obedient than those in the United States. Cultural forces also shape behavior, within and outside the laboratory. When asked after the experiment what they thought happened to the learner, many believed that he might have died or fallen unconscious (Mantell, 1971).

Looking back on all this research, Milgram decided that the social context and prescriptions led to the unexpectedly high level of obedience to malevolent authority. He concluded that comparable social conditions precipitated the Nazi rise to power. And he believed that similar conditions could arise elsewhere in the world. Certainly the studies in Western cultures support this conclusion (Blass, 2000).

In fact, the social unrest in Germany after World War I played a critical role in the rise of Nazi rule. Food had become scarce. Money became worthless. The French controlled communication. These frustrations laid the groundwork for Adolph Hitler.

Postwar travel had become almost impossible, especially in bad weather. For her journey to Crumstadt, Bertha could not find a taxi, and the French had closed the railway. So she guided her charges along their muddy route. When they reached the automobile waiting at the end of the pathway, the driver ordered Emmy to be placed in the car first. Then he told the helper to enter. Afterward, he turned to Bertha.

“Granny, with a few hops you'll get in too!”

In Frankfurt, Emmy departed for her new life in the Netherlands, still in the care of Bertha's helper. And Bertha caught a train for Eberstadt, her first stop en route to Crumstadt. She traveled in a cold, fourth-class car. Steam heat did not reach that section of the train. She gazed at the sullen faces of the passengers. “If one looks and listens in a fourth-class car,” she noted, “one will understand conditions in Germany—tired, worn, angry faces.”

A pale, sickly passenger, sitting next to Bertha, learned about the latest price of bread. She jumped up and yelled desperately. Then others began to complain. A man grumbled that the young folk, able to earn money, were unwilling to help. A woman protested that many young people smoked cigarettes and wore sheer stockings. A couple of men suggested that farmers were hiding their crops, feeding them to animals, and selling the livestock only for dollars.

Nearly all the Eberstadt passengers traveled with subdued expressions. In low tones, they voiced their frustrations to one another.

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Social Psychology

Bertha's journey to Crumstadt illustrates two basic topics in social psychology. The first, social cognition, concerns our judgments of people. How do we make decisions about them? How do we decide what they are like? The second, social influence, concerns the ways we modify one another's behavior. How do we alter the behavior of other people? Sometimes our efforts are direct and blatant; on other occasions, they are more subtle.

Forming Impressions of People

In the first of these topics, social cognition, people obtain and interpret information about themselves, other people, and their relationships, and they then reach conclusions. The interest lies in the ways people form impressions about social life, not how they react overtly. What do we think about the driver at the end of the footpath in Neu-Isenburg? He ordered Bertha to wait; then when everybody else had entered the taxi, he ordered her to enter by taking “a few hops.” A complete stranger, he also called her “Granny.” And what do we think about the sickly woman on the Eberstadt train? She suddenly jumped up and yelled about the price of bread. How do we view her? And how do we view the other passengers?

On the basis of her sudden, desperate yelling, an observer might decide that she is a nervous, tense person, prone to emotional outbursts. If so, the observer would be attributing her behavior to internal conditions, events inside her. An attribution is an explanation about the causes of a person's behavior. This explanation would be called a personal attribution, or internal attribution, because the behavior is assigned to traits or dispositions within the individual. The sickly woman behaved in a frightened, distraught manner because she is that way.

From another viewpoint, an observer might decide that she acted this way because of the poverty and destruction in her homeland, an explanation attributing her behavior to external conditions, events in the outer environment. This explanation would be a situational attribution, or external attribution, because the causes of the behavior have been assigned to the circumstances, not to the person.

Which explanation seems most appropriate? We do not know, of course, but we do know how observers typically assign causes, especially in ambiguous instances. In judging the behavior of other people, observers generally place too much weight on personal characteristics and too little on the situation, a tendency so pervasive that it is called the personal attribution bias. This tendency to overlook environmental influences arises because people usually do not have the time, inclination, or opportunity to make an investigation of the potential situational factors. Instead, they take a short cut, simply ascribing the behavior to factors within the individual (Gilbert, 1989; Gilbert & Malone, 1995). This inclination is so prominent and fundamental in social cognition that it also has been known as the fundamental attribution error.

But in the case of the sickly woman, we become somewhat less susceptible to the fundamental attribution error because the other passengers complain too. There was a consensus among them, suggesting that the situation also contributed to her behavior. In all probability, both sets of factors were involved. In explaining someone else's behavior, the appearance of the fundamental attribution error depends partly on the behavior of other people in that situation.

Especially when the circumstances seem otherwise normal, observers tend to make a personal attribution about unusual behavior. A taxi driver encounters a dignified, elderly woman, and yet he calls her “Granny.” He shows less respect for his prospective passenger than we might anticipate, and we make a personal attribution about him, perhaps that he is somewhat insensitive or obtuse.

What happens when people instead view their own behavior? How do they explain themselves? Knowing the details of their own circumstances, they tend to make situational attributions, particularly when their behavior has been inappropriate. They explain that the situation called for that behavior (Overholser & Moll, 1990). But there are exceptions. In instances of notable success, they may ascribe their behavior to personal characteristics. The later reaction is part of a broad self-serving bias, the inclination for people to view

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themselves in more favorable ways than others view them. These attribution errors are common, though not universal (Gilbert, 1989; McArthur, 1972).

We can summarize these findings readily. People tend to assign their own behavior to the situation; they explain that they acted according to the circumstances. People tend to attribute others' behavior to personal characteristics. They decide that others act in certain ways because they are that way (Nisbett, Caputo, Legant, & Marecek, 1973).

On the Eberstadt train, most of the passengers reacted in the same way, and we make a situational attribution. The circumstances in Germany caused their sullen expressions. Yet one woman stood out among the others, suggesting a personal attribution. But maybe in this instance we make the fundamental attribution error, explaining her behavior without knowing further details of her situation.

Modifying Others' Behavior

Arriving in Eberstadt, Bertha changed trains for Pfungstadt, her final train stop. That journey provides a clear illustration of social influence, a second basic topic in social psychology. It does not deal directly with how human beings explain their own and others' behavior. Social influence focuses instead on how people alter the behavior of others.

On the Pfungstadt train, Bertha rode in fear of the passengers' anti-Semitic remarks, which she heard as she entered the fourth-class car. The only seats lined the outer edges of the car with their backs to the walls, leaving an empty space in the center. A red-haired Galician Jew sat on the floor with his packages around him, taunted by loud, hostile outbursts.

“What did we pay for potatoes in peacetime?” cried his chief tormentor. “Three marks for 100 pounds,” the group hollered almost as a chorus.

“What did we pay for material for aprons?” the man called again, well aware that the Jew was a tailor, owing to the yardstick extending from the top of his high boots. “Eighty pfennigs,” yelled the spectators.

“And this dirty Jew asked today 100 pounds of potatoes for one meter of material for aprons!”

The group roared its disapproval.

“He is even worse than a Jew,” called out a woman. “You should be strung up,” she yelled to him. “All of them should be strung up,” she called to the crowd. “A stone around their neck, dumped into a river.”

Laughter followed. Bertha shivered at the dark humor behind this scene. The passengers were arousing one another. With a drop of alcohol, they might quickly become an ugly mob (Pappenheim, 1923).

Conditions such as these caught the attention of early social psychologists, raising the question of social influence, which is concerned with the ways people modify one another's behavior. How do we influence each other, purposefully or otherwise? At the purposeful end of the continuum, people make demands of others, who are expected to show obedience, as noted already. The conditions are not negotiable. But no one asked the Pfungstadt passengers to act aggressively or to behave more peacefully. Their behavior was not prompted by obedience.

At a lower level of social influence, compliance involves direct pressure to behave in a certain manner, but no individual has full authority over another; no one can request obedience. Instead, the interpersonal relationship involves persuasion or negotiation. A classic example occurs when an automobile salesperson employs various techniques to persuade a prospective buyer to make a purchase. In the foot-in-the-door technique, the salesperson begins by seeking a small degree of compliance, asking the prospective buyer simply to sit in the car and then just take it for a test drive. People who agree to a small request, or several small requests, are more likely to agree later to a larger one, such as buying the car (Wagener & Laird, 1980). In the door-in-the-face technique, the tactic is much the opposite, for the salesperson requests an unusually

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high degree of compliance, perhaps suggesting that the buyer pay cash for a very expensive, deluxe model immediately, before the price changes. The strategy here is that the prospective buyer will refuse but, not wanting to be a complete contrarian, may then become more receptive to a much smaller request, such as purchasing a standard model under a gradual payment plan (Cialdini, 1993).

At the lowest level of social influence, there is no effort to induce anyone to behave in any particular fashion. In conformity, an individual behaves in a certain way without any direct pressure to do so, reacting spontaneously to the presence of others. The social influence can be completely unintentional. In most groups, the members display some degree of agreement in interests, abilities, language, dress, or other characteristics, and those who join the group experience implicit pressure toward conformity. In any group, there are unstated expectations about behavior that most members do not want to violate. Examples of such groups range from adolescent gangs and athletic teams to people on advisory boards.

A subtle form of conformity appears apart from the similarity in dress, manners, and other relatively superficial characteristics of a group. In fact, its focus is not on group membership but instead on group behavior. It can occur even in an incidental group, in which the members do not know one another and have no recognizable common bond except as human beings.

Early investigations of social influence revealed this phenomenon, called social facilitation, meaning that the presence of other people increases or intensifies an individual's behavior. On the train to Pfungstadt, one passenger spoke, then another, and another. They aroused themselves without any call for obedience or compliance. The group presence became a force, perhaps inducing some sort of conformity. The Eberstadt passengers also incited one another, though in a lesser way.

Social facilitation appears regularly even among animals. Rats and fish eat more in groups than when eating alone (Harlow, 1932; Strobel, 1972; Welty, 1934). Ants increase their nest-building activities when in the company of other ants (Chen, 1938). These studies of animals are legion.

Among human beings, the more people at the table, the more food each individual consumes. This outcome occurs on weekends and also on weekdays, when gatherings are less festive (de Castro, 1991). In all sorts of situations, the presence of others augments the activity of a group member—whether eating, drinking, digging, fighting, or complaining (Zajonc, 1965).

But further studies eventually revealed another outcome. People learning mazes and memorizing nonsense syllables did not perform better in a group (Pessin, 1933; Pessin & Husband, 1933). People completing math problems and manipulating unfamiliar garments in a group setting performed at an even lower level than when engaged in these activities alone (Littlepage, Morris, & Poole, 1991; Markus, 1978). How might these contradictory findings be explained?

A moment's reflection shows that the tasks associated with these different outcomes are quite different too. Eating and digging are relatively simple, well-practiced habits. Memorizing nonsense syllables and completing math problems are more complex, less familiar tasks. Investigators hypothesized that the difficulty of the task played a role in social facilitation. Then they tested this hypothesis in diverse settings.

In one instance, four investigators played the role of an audience, observing college students playing pool in everyday life. Keeping unobtrusive records, they identified above-average and below-average pairs of competitors. Then, as a group, they approached each of the tables closely enough to make the players aware of them as an audience—without interfering with the play. There they silently counted the total number of shots and the number of successful shots in the next 24 attempts. They found that the success of above- average players increased from 71 to 80% in the presence of an audience. In contrast the success of below- average players decreased from 36 to 25% when they were being observed (Michaels, Blommel, Brocato, Linkous, & Rowe, 1982).

The explanation appears to lie with the person's level of arousal and the difficulty of the task. Performing in front of others, even with a small and inattentive audience, raises one's level of arousal. This increased activation enhances individual performance when the task is simple or well practiced. It disrupts performance

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when the task is difficult or unfamiliar (Zanjonc, 1965). In the latter instance, the outcome is called social interference, indicating a diminished performance in the mere presence of others.

But science is an endless process. Again, one investigation answers some questions and raises others. And so it has been for research on social influence. Yet another factor becomes influential, illustrating an old adage about the answer to any complex question: “That depends on several factors.”

The additional factor in this case is the size of the group. When it is large, and completion of the task requires extensive effort, the individual's performance often diminishes. In social loafing, people in a group exert less effort and perform at a lower level than when by themselves, providing that their individual contributions are unlikely to be noticed (Hardy & Latane, 1986). In other words, when the individual is one among many performing an arduous task, social loafing may occur. When the individual is one among few, social facilitation and social interference are likely outcomes, depending on the person's level of arousal and the difficulty of the task.

Owing to social interference and social loafing, which impair performance, all such studies sometimes are known collectively by a more general term, social contagion, which does not imply any increased or decreased performance. It simply means people are influenced by the mere presence of other people. But the traditional term, social facilitation, continues in widespread use.

These diverse studies of incidental groups give only the merest hint of the breadth and depth of social influence. One can just imagine the far greater influences of more intimate, longer-lasting groups, such as those in families, clubs, school, work, and political organizations.

The incidental group on the Pfungstadt train was small; the passengers could observe one another; and they engaged in a simple activity: complaining. They complained about other people and about the devastated economy. Their individual complaints incited one another, an instance of social facilitation. Suddenly the whole group became volatile, shouting aggressively and threatening physical violence.

Grateful to leave that scene and to complete the second leg of her journey, Bertha alighted at Pfungstadt, mentally and physically fatigued. She looked around for Mr. Bergen, the schoolteacher who was to take her to Crumstadt in a car. Except for a cold breeze, the place was deserted—no Mr. Bergen and no car.

She tried the telephone at the station. It did not work. She walked to the Blum General Store. It was closed. Then she discovered from a neighbor that the French would not permit anyone to meet her at the Pfungstadt station. She should take the mail coach. Teacher Bergen would meet her at Crumstadt.

Bertha walked to a tavern to wait for the coach. There she encountered again the red-haired tailor, sitting by himself. He spoke to no one, looked at no one, and soon departed. Afterward, a beer-drinking patron made loud, hostile remarks like those on the train. Again, the young man was accused of exploiting Germany's poverty, a prejudice spreading rapidly from Munich and Bavaria, the early seat of Nazi activities.

After she left the tavern, Bertha doubted her courage. “Did I remain silent out of cowardice when I twice experienced vulgar talk?” Then she consoled herself—the tormenters never would have been convinced in a few minutes.

Prejudice and Stereotypes

Blaming the young tailor for Germany's postwar poverty of course is preposterous, but prejudice toward people from certain religious, racial, political, and other identifiable groups has contributed immeasurably to worldwide human misery. As a form of social cognition, a prejudice is an emotional reaction, usually a negative judgment about someone, something, or some group of people, made without objective evidence. The instance has been prejudged, prior to adequate inquiry. The Pfungstadt passengers showed a prejudice against the tailor without knowing him at all, apparently because of his Jewish background.

When prejudice arises simply because someone or something is a member of a particular group or class, this

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oversimplified reaction is called a stereotype. Based on a rigid set of beliefs, positive or negative, a stereotype exaggerates differences among groups and overlooks differences among individuals in the same group. Shortly after World War I, the Nazis promoted the stereotype of Jewish citizens as shrewd and mercenary, just as stereotypes about other national and religious groups emerged or faded elsewhere. At this time, young Americans apparently showed a self-serving bias, stereotyping themselves as industrious and intelligent (Karlins, Coffman, & Walters, 1969).

Like other forms of social cognition, a stereotype saves effort and energy. Quite apart from whatever motives may be involved, it gives a prompt, easy answer to questions about people we do not know well, answers that range from reasonably accurate to partly correct to absolutely false. In forming first impressions some stereotypes may even be more useful than brief, direct observations of behavior (Gage, 1952). Think about adolescents, used-car dealers, and research scientists. Some characteristics within these groups are not widely shared with individuals in the other groups.

But stereotypes can be harmful too. Their accuracy often remains indeterminate; they certainly do not apply to all members of any large group; and, most critical of all, they may be negative.

Sitting around the tailor in that cold fourth-class car, the passengers took no interest in him as an individual. Instead, they viewed him in a negative, stereotyped fashion, as a member of an undesirable group. They ridiculed his speech, his possessions, and his religion. Then they made him a scapegoat. In irrational fashion, they held him responsible for creating the poverty in postwar Germany. This term, scapegoat, emerged centuries ago when people sacrificed a goat in order to escape or avoid misfortunes. In modern terms, a scapegoat is some innocent human being or group made to bear the burden of others. People not responsible for certain problems are nevertheless blamed for them.

Prejudices and stereotypes, forms of social cognition, often precede scapegoating, a form of social influence placing an individual or group in cruel, unjustified circumstances. Through social facilitation, conformity, and other types of social influences, other people may join the scapegoating process. As Milgram emphasized, human beings are regularly caught in a web of social and cultural constraints.

The incidents Bertha witnessed on her trip to Crumstadt illustrate a basic tendency in human societies around the globe and down through history. People take the viewpoint of their own group as the appropriate outlook on the world. This tendency is called ethnocentrism when it places one's own group as superior to any other, especially those that have different customs and standards. Other cultures are regarded as odd, immoral, or “lower” because they do not share the standards of one's own group. At a simple, innocuous level, ethnocentrism appears in food and dress preferences, which vary in systematic ways across all cultures. In its most dangerous form, it can result in the savagery displayed throughout ancient and modern civilizations, illustrated on the broadest scale by the Nazi regime of the 20th century. Even today, subtle and unobtrusive measures of apparent egalitarianism suggest that the high ideals of groups of people are often accompanied by less-than-ideal practices (Devos & Banaji, 2005).

Thus the Jewish tailor became the target of displaced aggression. There he sat on the Pfungstadt train, abused with insults and threatened with physical violence by otherwise presumably normal citizens.

When the mail coach finally arrived at Pfungstadt, a half-hour late, it proved to be an open potato cart, pulled only by a hungry-looking nag. The horse moved slowly. Darkness fell. An icy wind blew half-frozen rain across their path. Bertha wore an old military coat, so thick and heavy that it did not hug her body. “We were freezing,” she reported.

Two hours later, she climbed from the cart in Crumstadt, introduced herself to Mr. Bergen, then paid her fare. It was 15 billion marks.

In their home, the Bergens escorted Bertha to a couch, took out their best china, and served noodle soup. Turli, their foster child, born to an unwed mother, began life at The Home in Neu-Isenburg. He happily unwrapped Bertha's gift. Later she spent the night on the couch. In the morning, Ms. Bergen appeared with ersatz coffee, jam, and homemade bread. She proudly offered her guest a small pat of butter and a bit of milk,

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which Bertha kindly refused. Little Turli, observing carefully, asked what holiday they were celebrating.

“I felt quite strange when the child was told that I was the holiday,” Bertha confessed. “I made thousands of good resolutions for my entire life to be worthy of this word” (Pappenheim, 1923).

Little Turli's innocent question revealed self-doubts in Bertha. Without taking any satisfaction from the compliment, which she certainly deserved, she decided that she had not yet earned it. How could she be worthy? It also revealed the influence of culture. The little boy, in a postwar society, knew only a poor neighborhood, a rural environment quite different from Bertha's upper-class Vienna and Frankfurt. These cultural differences contributed to his naiveté and to her embarrassment.

Psychology and Culture

In studies of these influences, cultural psychology focuses on the conventions in a society or group, investigating the ways in which political, economic, religious, and other institutions give meaning to human experience and standards of conduct (Miller, 1999). From this viewpoint, culture becomes a powerful force in setting the patterns of our knowledge and behavior. But the influences go in the other direction too. Our psychological processes affect our culture (Lehman, Chiu, & Schaller, 2004). Culture and the human mind mold one another (Markus & Kitayama, 1991).

Cultural psychology concentrates on the influences in both directions. Cross-cultural psychology is another matter, as noted later. It compares cultures, studying their similarities and differences.

As a body of behavioral and cognitive norms shared by some groups and not others, culture enables its members to achieve individual and group goals. According to the evolutionary perspective, culture emerged through its adaptive advantages. Living alone exposes an individual to excessive dangers. The cooperation in culture fosters success in survival and reproduction. According to a more existential view, culture arose as a shield against the anxiety associated with our knowledge of our own mortality. It provides a collection of rules and values for acceptance in a human community. From still another standpoint, culture may have arisen as an unplanned byproduct of everyday social interaction (Lehman, Chiu, & Schaller, 2004). However it originated, culture provides a context for human development.

Goals in Cultural Studies

Cultural psychology is not an integrated systematic school of thought in the same way as most of the perspectives discussed earlier. And it does not represent any new or radical break with mainstream traditions. In fact, it has been described as an interdisciplinary extension of general psychology (Valsiner, 2000). It is a point of view relevant to all approaches in psychology, urging a renewed commitment to the cultural dimensions of the environment (Miller, 1999).

Even in Wundt's work, laboratory and cultural psychology received more or less equal attention. The former served to investigate the basic mechanisms of the mind, the latter to understand how these workings are modified by the realities of culture (Blumenthal, 1975).

During the 20th century, especially with the domination of behaviorism, the cultural dimension fell to a secondary status, and attempts to reintroduce it into mainstream psychology have encountered considerable inertia. The proverbial fish fail to appreciate the significance of water in their lives, for it is always around them. Similarly, human beings underestimate the power of culture until they encounter one distinctly different from their own (Cole, 1996). Before regarding any findings as universal, mainstream psychology needs to demonstrate their generalizability.

In the last decade of the 20th century, psychologists in the United States began to recognize more fully that human psychological processes are inherently structured by culture, as well as by the brain. Cultural foundations began to emerge as the other bookend in the psychology curriculum, balanced against the old standby, biological bases of behavior (Berry, 2000).

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The “cognitive revolution” played a mixed role in this resurgence, both fostering and inhibiting the cultural viewpoint. At its outset, some leaders turned away from the biological bases of behavior, as well as away from the anti-mentalism of behaviorism, moving toward the external, cultural influences shaping our mental life. That tendency became a positive force. At the same time, the computer metaphor came into prominence, encouraging the view of the human mind as a general-purpose mechanism because the computer could solve so many problems. But, in fact, the computer could do so only if human beings very carefully instructed it in the solution of each separate problem. Thus, the cognitive revolution in general and the computer metaphor in particular did not approach the human mind as a domain-specific, context-driven mechanism, one inevitably bound to its cultural and historical origins. The particular culture became overlooked in the search for general patterns. The mind is content-oriented, especially after a lengthy exposure to a particular culture. It is constructed and altered by the processes of obtaining meanings and resources in that culture (Schweder, 1990).

Compared with investigations in mainstream psychology, research in cultural psychology today is often more naturalistic and holistic, concerned with lifestyles, themes, patterns, and emergent properties. Using descriptive methods, investigators observe and participate in a particular culture, studying individuals and groups in their everyday settings. Mainstream psychology, in turn, employs more experimental methods and laboratory settings, focusing on narrower units of behavior. From the cultural viewpoint, one solution to this divergence might incorporate into scientific psychology some of the more interpretive approaches of the humanities (Cole, 1996; Schweder, 1990). But a basic tension exists between the methods and goals of mainstream and cultural psychology (Lehman et al., 2004).

Cultural psychology seeks to understand how culture produces universal behaviors beyond language, gestures, emotional reactions, and other obvious commonalities. A universal behavior, or shared practice, occurs among all individuals in a given category, broadly or narrowly defined. How does culture produce these characteristic behaviors, despite inevitable variations among cultural environments?

Cultural psychology also seeks to understand how a unique cultural practice arises. It aims to discover why some responses and experiences become culture-bound, or culture-specific behavior, occurring only in a particular form or particular culture. How does culture produce this behavior, which does not appear elsewhere?

With its many complex and simultaneously influential variables, achieving the goals of cultural psychology appears challenging indeed, perhaps even unrealistic at this stage. But these concerns with universal and culture-specific behavior are not incompatible. In fact, they are almost inseparable. Cultural psychology cannot expect to encounter universal behavior without the study of many cultures, just as it cannot expect to examine culture-specific behavior without the study of many cultures (Bond & Smith, 1996). A common goal remains: to discover how general and specific cultural patterns arise and function.

The criteria for the measurement of cultural patterns are another issue. They may involve cultural values. From what viewpoint should someone judge human roles, rituals, religions, myths, morals, mores, and other practices? Their assessment raises a common concern, expressed in the context of cultural relativism.

According to cultural relativism, our most fundamental human concepts cannot have an absolute or universal meaning. Each culture is unique; no culture can be evaluated by the standards of any other culture. Virtue, honesty, beauty, and work are regarded differently in different cultures. Principles derived from one have a particular meaning in that culture; they cannot be applied elsewhere.

But this view also has its critics. According to cultural absolutism, some standards and methods of psychological measurement can be broadly applied across cultures. There are, for example, widespread restrictions against relatively rare practices, such as sacrifice, serious body mutilation, and genocide. But the importance of culture is diminished here, and in a broader context the issue remains. To what extent can there be universal standards for the scientific study of human beings? All such investigations must take into account the potential for different meanings in different cultures (Berry, 2000).

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Individualism and Collectivism

Exposure to cultural differences occurred several times during Bertha Pappenheim's life. Raised in artistic Vienna, she worked in commercial Frankfurt. Socializing with the upper class, she cared for the lower class. She knew peacetime Europe and wartime Europe. Psychologists interested in culture often make comparisons between and among such settings.

These studies reveal two markedly different patterns. People in the major cities of northern Europe and North America display a noticeable orientation toward personal interests, pursuing their own goals. In East Asia and other parts of the world, an orientation toward group or community goals becomes more prominent. This cultural difference is referred to in numerous ways, commonly as individualism versus collectivism or independence versus interdependence. These two orientations, although not universal, are indeed pervasive, representing contrasting approaches to the vexing social questions of individual autonomy and group allegiance. From a relativistic standpoint, each has its merits and constraints.

In a so-called individualistic society, members regard personal goals as more important than group goals. They emphasize self-enhancement, explaining behavior in terms of the person and pointing to personality traits. The orientation is toward individuation and independence. In a collectivist society, members often place a higher value on group goals than on personal goals. They are more inclined to explain behavior in terms of the situation, that is, on the basis of social expectations, constraints, and roles. The orientation is toward membership and interdependence (Greenfield et al., 2003; Markus & Kitayama, 1991).

In one extensive study, investigators developed three different measures of these independence- interdependence orientations. European-American and Asian-American participants were placed in groups ranging in size from 27 to 52 members, approximately equal in gender distribution, and comprising 205 participants altogether. They viewed 35 abstract geometric figures, each composed of 9 subfigures, and ranked their favorite among the subfigures. Sometimes eight of the subfigures were alike and one was unique, such as a diamond intermixed with eight triangles. Sometimes an abstract figure contained two, three, or four subfigures that differed from the rest, rather than just one. The aim of this first task was to assess individual preferences for conformity or uniqueness in an abstract context.

On a different task, participants were asked to choose as a gift one pen from a set of five, each pen orange or light green in color. Presented as a random set from a large supply, any color split for the five pens was always 4:1 or 3:2. The aim of this task was to assess an individual's choice for conformity or uniqueness in a social context.

On both tasks—preferences among abstract figures and choices of material goods—the results confirmed cultural differences. With the abstract figures, Americans exceeded the Asians by approximately 2 to 1 in preferring the unique subfigures. On the choice of pen, 74% of the Americans chose the more uncommon item, as opposed to only 24% of the Asians.

The third measure required no participants. It involved a study of the themes in 157 Korean and 136 American magazine advertisements, all full-page ads extracted from four comparable categories of magazines published in the same month in both countries. The aim here was to discover whether the cultural preferences and choices made by individuals were represented at a collective level in the national media. Three themes were chosen to represent conformity: collective values, group harmony, and following a trend. Four formed the uniqueness category: choice, freedom, uniqueness, and resistance to collective values. Native coders made these judgments for the ads in their national magazines, and the results were again consistent with prior findings. Among the Korean ads, 95% employed conformity themes, as opposed to 65% in the American magazines. In contrast, uniqueness themes appeared in 89% of the American ads and only 49% of the Korean ads (Kim & Markus, 1999).

Note that both orientations can be labeled favorably or unfavorably. Individualism can be regarded as uniqueness or deviance, collectivism as harmony or conformity. From this standpoint, assertiveness, highly valued in the United States, may be viewed as a lack of cultivation or respect in certain Asian societies (Kim & Markus, 1999).

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A simpler study provides still further evidence. Large samples of students at Japanese and American universities supplied written answers to a series of questions in this form: “What proportion of students in this university have higher intellectual abilities than yourself?” Other questions asked about memory, athletic ability, sympathy, and similar characteristics. American students reported that, on average, only 30% of their peers exceeded them on the various traits and abilities, suggesting that they lived at the fictional Lake Wobegon, “where all the children are above average.” The Japanese students estimated that about 50% possessed more of a certain ability or trait, which of course is the logical outcome for any representative sample of students evaluating themselves in an objective fashion (Markus & Kitayama, 1991).

Overall, the differences between these two orientations can be summarized in three variables: traditional styles of thinking, sense of life satisfaction, and mode of social involvement. In general terms, tradition among European North Americans emphasizes linear, logical, analytical thinking; tradition among East Asians fosters more holistic, relational, inferential thinking. With regard to life satisfaction, personal feelings and sense of self are more important to European North Americans; interpersonal relationships are more important for East Asians. And finally, in social activities, European North Americans more often project their views onto other group members; East Asians are more inclined to recognize or accept the viewpoint of another group member (Lehman, Chiu, & Schaller, 2004).

All people everywhere face the conflicting demands posed by individual expression versus loyalty to the group (Marjoriebanks, 1997). At the international level, these orientations sometimes become loosely known as the West and the Rest, respectively. The individual becomes the fundamental unit in the former, the family or community in the latter, which may include African, Latin American, and other cultures (Hermanns & Kempen, 1998). Extensive empirical research supports the distinction between independent and interdependent orientations.

But this dichotomy, like most others, oversimplifies the issue, ignoring the fact that families and cultures exist on a continuum. No culture is completely egocentric or sociocentric. All social groups possess common and distinctive features (Hermanns & Kempen, 1998).

Resistance to the independence-interdependence research has been confined largely to survey investigations that compare national samples of college students. Objections have been raised about the cultural insensitivity of the questionnaires, evident in the failure to consider socioeconomic status and level of education as cultural influences. Also, the use of national labels overlooks subcultural differences (Greenfield et al., 2003). China, for example, with several times the land mass of the United States, has a high potential for subcultural differences. Populations in the coastal regions show characteristics different from those of people living in distant inland areas, and both groups show differences from regions undergoing cultural transitions. Similar regional differences occur in the United States. Rapid cultural change also blurs this independence-interdependence distinction. Young adults from collectivist orientations converge toward individualism when compared with their parents, especially following immigration to the United States (McCrae et al., 1998). Moreover, as Asian countries have undergone economic development, mothers have entered the workforce outside the home and child-rearing changes have occurred in an individualistic direction (Greenfield et al., 2003).

One study examined the extent to which the individualistic-collectivistic orientations of young adults could be attributed to the orientations of their parents. The investigators surveyed 320 families in Australia, all with Anglo, Greek, or Italian backgrounds. Collecting data from these families on two occasions, when the offspring were 11 and 21 years old, they found Anglo parents most individualistic and Greek parents the most collectivistic. In all three groups, the scores for the offspring as young adults converged toward the individualistic orientation when compared with the scores of their parents (Marjoriebanks, 1997).

Without question, the cultural viewpoint offers a special perspective on human life, stressing economic, religious, political, educational, and moral convictions. All of these standards and expectations leave their mark. Friendships with classmates, for example, might have diminished Bertha's early personal problems, but educational and religious restrictions deprived her of the necessary opportunities. And discrimination against women blocked her later career aspirations. These cultural realities, encountered during her formative years, perhaps became the personal issues driving her later life.

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That night, still ruminating on Turli's question, Bertha had an odd idea for dealing with the deprivation in her postwar culture. Out of the old newspapers in her briefcase, she would make herself some warm clothing. The next morning, she fashioned herself a vest and wore it under her dress. It crinkled a bit when she moved.

“My stuffing did not protect my lower limbs,” she noted.

After a walk across town, the critical moment arrived. She knocked, and Mr. Gruenbaum answered the door. Then Irmchen appeared with a cheese sandwich and cardboard box containing her few possessions. She promptly announced that she would never return. That spirit pleased Bertha.

The whole business turned out to be much easier than expected. For the return trip to the Pfungstadt station, they sat in a small open carriage, which drove off in a great hurry. After almost an hour in the cold, they arrived—10 minutes too late for the noon train. But the newspaper vest showed its merit, shielding Bertha from the frigid weather.

Suddenly she thought again about this underwear. The French prohibited newspapers in the occupied zone. Suppose they noticed the slight rustle in Bertha's movements. Would they order her to undress? No one would believe that she wore the forbidden newsprint just to keep warm.

Waiting for the next train, Irmchen chattered incessantly, predicting that Bertha would die soon because her hair was so old. She asked if each child at The Home had a bed. Satisfied with the answers, she turned to questions about Bertha, her husband, and marriage. To change the subject, Bertha resorted to changing Irmchen's underwear. That kept both of them occupied.

“A cookie helped me out of this difficult situation,” Bertha added later (Pappenheim, 1923).

Bertha's discomfort with the child's questions testifies partly to her sexual inexperience. She avoided discussions of sex with everyone. It also testifies to her culture and times. In that era and place, more closed than our society today, people did not discuss sexual matters in public. Acceptable and even admired in some contexts today, open expressions of sexuality were regarded as vulgar and wrong in Bertha's era. We must consider her behavior in the context of her culture, not ours.

Cross-Cultural Comparisons

With comparatively few absolute standards for judging culture and its behaviors, cultural psychology includes a range of research methods. Some are scientific in the traditional sense. Others are more informal and spontaneous, adapted to the immediate circumstances. The primary goal is to study the ways culture and psychological characteristics influence one another. The concern lies with understanding psychological processes.

In contrast, cross-cultural psychology, using largely empirical methods, examines cultural similarities and differences, such as those evident between individualistic and collectivist societies. Those findings came largely from cross-cultural studies, which also make comparisons within a particular society, noting similarities and differences among subcultures or between them and the dominant culture.

Cultural psychology and cross-cultural psychology are alike in seeking to understand human behavior in the context of human environments. But cultural psychology seeks basic explanations of human behavior by focusing on the acculturation process, the ways culture influences behavior and experience. Cross-cultural psychology focuses more on the outcomes, making comparisons among cultures (Valsiner, 2000). The two approaches overlap, but the terms are not synonymous.

In fact, cross-cultural psychology has been described as a subdiscipline in mainstream psychology aimed at determining the generalizability of its findings on human mental life (Schweder, 1990). Thus, this chapter closes with several cross-cultural comparisons in basic realms of human functioning: perception, thinking, personality, and maladjustment.

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With perception as the gateway to knowledge, early cross-cultural studies began with this question: Would people from markedly different cultural settings view a relatively simple stimulus differently?

One group of investigators developed the “carpentered-world hypothesis,” stating that people living in traditional Western buildings, regularly exposed to the rectangular shapes of walls, doors, tables, and the like, become especially prone to visual illusions involving right angles. They tested this hypothesis in cross- cultural studies. Observing straight lines of different lengths meeting at different angles, residents of the United States, living in a carpentered culture, were distinctly susceptible to a rectangular illusion of distance. The Zulus of southeast Africa, who live in circular huts, keep their cattle in circular corrals, and engage in religious ceremonies oriented to the circle, were notably less susceptible (Herskovits, Campbell, & Segall, 1969). Similarly, people living in cultures with open vistas are more susceptible to a simple illusion of vertical and horizontal distance than are people living in densely vegetated environments that prevent broad vistas (Figure 9.1).

Figure 9.1 Culture and Illusions of Distance. Susceptibility to some illusions varies with experience. In the image on the left, if the parallelogram were a table top viewed obliquely from above, AC would represent a greater distance across the surface than would BC. In the image on the right, if the vertical and horizontal lines extended across the earth's surface, the vertical line, receding into the distance, would encompass a greater length than the horizontal line, extending across the horizon

Studying more than a dozen cultures, the investigators found susceptibility to these illusions in all of them, showing the role of biological factors. But the large differences between some cultural groups when observing a few straight lines clearly indicate the role of culture as a mediating factor. If a difference occurs when perceiving a simple stimulus, one can only imagine the cultural differences implicit in the more abstract dimensions of human civilization, such as ethics, religion, government, and interpersonal relations.

Cross-cultural research on thinking has focused on how culture shapes children's thought, especially in the context of Piaget's theory of cognitive development. One investigation considered rational thinking, called

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“concrete operations,” in children from 6 to 14 years of age living in one of three rural cultures: Dorset Eskimos on the tip of Baffin Island, Australian Aborigines in the Northern Territories, and Ebrie Africans on the Ivory Coast. With children of various age levels from all three cultures, the total sample involved 190 children, equally divided between males and females. The tasks involved explanations of changes in quantity, weight, and volume when these conditions were manipulated in various ways.

One hypothesis stated that the African children, living in a sedentary culture of agricultural production and high food accumulation, would understand the conservation of quantity, weight, and volume at an earlier age than the Eskimo and Aboriginal children, living in cultures with low food accumulation, reliance on hunting, and nomadic tendencies. The findings offered partial support for this hypothesis, especially in children at the older ages. One possible explanation lay with differences in Western values in the different school environments.

In any case, the overall results showed that the development of early logical thought was not uniform among the groups. The differences in level of thinking may reflect the adaptive value of knowing about quantity, weight, and volume in specific cultural, ecological settings (Dasen, 1975).

Cross-cultural research on personality addresses one of the broadest concepts in psychology. The term personality refers to a person's characteristic and unique ways of responding to the world over an extended period. With this emphasis on typical and unusual behavior, it includes the full array of a person's abilities, interests, personal relationships, and almost all other psychological characteristics. In a sense, personality describes the whole person as known by others.

In the most prominent cross-cultural studies, investigators have reported the similarities in personality makeup to be greater than the differences. Rather than regarding personality as solely culture-specific, they emphasize a universal personality structure, referring to the building blocks of personality. From this standpoint, five central traits may provide a reasonably comprehensive framework for depicting the personality of any individual, regardless of culture. Called the Big Five traits, they are agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness to experience (Costa & McCrae, 1992; Norman, 1963). In nonalphabetical order, they produce an acronym: OCEAN.

Each central trait represents a continuum from one extreme to the other. In a broad sense, openness to experience refers to behavior that is inquisitive, spontaneous, and artistic versus rigid, close-minded, and unimaginative. Conscientiousness implies a tendency to be orderly and respectful as opposed to impulsive and unconventional. With regard to extraversion, some people are extremely outgoing, others are remarkably introverted, and most are somewhere between the two extremes. Agreeableness reflects the fact that some people are consistently good-natured, a few are downright nasty, and most are in the middle. The neuroticism factor ranges from emotional stability to chronic agitation. Bertha, like the rest of us, would show some constancy in her particular positions on these traits and some variation from one situation to another.

Moreover, each central factor or trait includes subtraits with different shades of meaning, specific manifestations of the central trait. Worried, poised, impatient, temperamental, comfortable—all are variations of neuroticism. The central trait with the widest divergence in subtraits is openness to experience, also called culture. On this trait, Bertha might show considerable variation.

The Big Five traits emerge through nomothetic research on personality. Extensive cross-cultural studies indicated the presence of these five factors in many large groups of people. Now this set of traits can be used in idiographic research, assessing the personality profile of a particular person. On a rating scale for these five variables, Bertha, for example, might reveal relatively high scores on conscientiousness and extraversion, a low score on agreeableness, and intermediate scores on neuroticism and openness to experience.

Not all cross-cultural studies have supported the Big Five traits. Sometimes only four factors appear consistently, and sometimes seven describe personality more adequately, as in a Spanish sample (Benet- Martinez, 1999). One confounding factor is education. Another is the cultural distance between the groups, which has not been extensive in such studies. People from nonliterate cultures, compared with those from highly literate communities, have different standards of living, types of families, religions, and other

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characteristics (Triandis & Suh, 2002).

Nevertheless, each of the Big Five traits, collectively called the Five Factor Model, offers survival advantages in a human culture and may have become universal on that basis. Even as adaptive traits, of course they carry somewhat different meanings in different cultures, but the overall structure of personality may be more universal than previously understood (McCrae et al., 1998).

Personality, of course, does not emerge solely from isolated traits. People with similar standing on central and even subtraits may have different personalities owing to situational influences, developmental changes, and especially interactions among these traits. The human environment inevitably plays an influential role, shaping culture-specific dimensions of personality.

And personality sometimes goes awry. Cross-cultural research therefore includes psychopathology, the study of mental abnormality or maladjustment, although the boundaries between normal and abnormal often remain elusive (Lilienfeld, 2000). They depend on the specific situation, era, and culture, as well as the individual's age, gender, and even outlook on life. Many reactions acceptable in children, for example, are not acceptable among adults. Bertha's construction of The Home for Wayward Girls and Illegitimate Babies, tolerable in semi- rural Germany early in the 20th century, would have been regarded very differently in downtown Vienna a century earlier.

In this context, two broad criteria sometimes define psychological maladjustment: personal discomfort and socially disruptive behavior. All normal adults have experienced discomfort at one time or another, and intentionally or otherwise, they have disrupted the lives of others in some way. Thus, the frequency and intensity of these occasions must be considered in any instance of an alleged adjustment disorder.

Among them, schizophrenia is a serious condition, observed in one form or another in cultures around the globe. A condition of special interest in abnormal psychology, schizophrenia involves extreme withdrawal from reality, including loss of mental and emotional control. A form of psychosis, it has become a prime research target, owing not only to its severity and widespread incidence but also to its puzzling, often idiosyncratic symptoms.

Some investigators focus on a core of schizophrenic symptoms existing across cultures. Others study cultural differences; they aim to understand the unique expression of this disorder in one culture or another. Identifying cultural similarities and differences eventually may prove helpful in understanding the fundamental components of this disorder. In any case, different approaches have provided tentative evidence that schizophrenia in developing countries has a more favorable prognosis than in developed countries (Lopez & Guarnaccia, 2000). If this finding is supported, does the explanation lie with differences in the schizophrenic condition, the community response, or both? These kinds of questions frame cross-cultural research in psychopathology.

Schizophrenia also tends to be viewed differently depending on the individualism-collectivism orientation of a particular culture. People in the former cultures, regarding the self as independent and separate from others, generally view schizophrenia as a personal issue. For those in a collectivist culture, with stronger family and interpersonal ties, it becomes more of a community issue (Lopez & Guarnaccia, 2000).

Culture-specific syndromes of mental illness occur in all parts of the world. In taijin kyofusho, a distinctive Japanese phobia, an individual becomes fearful that his or her body parts or functions are offensive to others through their appearance, odor, or movement. The Spanish expression mal de ojo means “evil eye,” suggesting that an individual, usually a child, has fallen under some sort of spell, inducing diarrhea, vomiting, fitful sleep, and crying without apparent provocation. Chinese and other East Asian societies recognize koro, a disorder of sudden, intense anxiety about the penis, or vulva and nipples, receding into the body and causing death. These diverse disorders, pervasive in certain cultures, merely suggest the array of culture- bound syndromes for which there are seldom clear equivalents in the United States (American Psychiatric Association, 1994).

In summary, any culture creates much of the reality perceived by its citizens. People are sociocultural

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creatures, enmeshed in local customs, constraints, and conformities. These influences penetrate deeply into the ways in which they view themselves and others. They leave an indelible mark, especially early in life.

Vienna left its mark on young Bertha. Frankfurt did later. The hardships in postwar Germany did likewise. As the saying goes, “You can take the person out of the culture, but you can never take the culture out of the person.”

Sitting in that cold Pfungstadt tavern, alone with her thoughts except for squirming little Irmchen, Bertha remained only too aware that her prewar culture had vanished. She now knew poverty too well.

Suddenly she decided that she and her little waif had stayed too long in that chilly place. With Irmchen wearing new underpants, and Bertha wearing a newspaper vest, they returned to the railroad station, which they found even colder. The train finally arrived, barely heated, and brought them to Eberstadt; then they changed trains to their final destination, the Frankfurt station.

Back in her unheated apartment, Bertha could not go to sleep. “I heard the clock strike twelve, and one, then two,” she later wrote in her journal. “I could not get warm, nor fall asleep, until a good cry gave me some release from my tension” (Pappenheim, 1923). Bertha's two-day mission had ended in complete success. Perhaps she cried in relief, for that achievement required considerable stamina and prudence in her devastated country.

Perhaps she wept for another reason. Despite Irmchen, Turli, and the hundreds of other adoptees and their families whom Bertha had assisted, she lived a lonely life. When work was over, she always went home—alone. Her tears perhaps expressed her sense of isolation, her lack of intimacy and close personal support in our inescapably social world.

Culture promotes and sustains our ways of behaving and experiencing our social milieu, so much so that our responses to our own culture seem natural and universal. Many of them we do not question. Much research has revealed the potency of culture in forming our perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and overt reactions. No social response occurs apart from a culture of some sort.

Summary

The Inevitable Human Influence

Human beings live with one another amid the practices and products of other human beings. The sociocultural viewpoint examines both dimensions: the interpersonal relationships in our social lives and the shared customs, laws, and artifacts in our cultural lives. A prominent study of obedience to malevolent authority showed that human behavior can be markedly influenced by social and cultural factors.

Key Terms: social psychology, cultural psychology, obedience, Milgram's obedience research

Social Psychology

Social psychology examines the ways in which people understand and modify one another's behavior, called social cognition and social influence, respectively. In social cognition, attribution theory explains that people tend to view other people's behavior as a function of internal characteristics, a personal attribution. They are more likely to view their own behavior as called forth by the circumstances, a situational attribution. Studies of prejudice and stereotyping have shown how scapegoating can occur, commonly arising through the belief that one's own group is superior to others.

Key Terms: social cognition, personal attribution, situational attribution, fundamental attribution error, self- serving bias, social influence, compliance, conformity, social facilitation, social interference, social loafing, prejudice, stereotype, scapegoat

Psychology and Culture

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1.

2.

3.

Culture exerts a pronounced influence on human behavior and experience, sometimes resulting in universal behaviors, those that appear in most cultures, and sometimes producing culture-specific behaviors, those found only in one or a few cultures. In an individualistic culture, personal achievement and self-enhancement are primary; in a collectivist culture, group goals become ascendant. Human beings everywhere experience cultural influences on perception, thinking, personality, adjustment reactions, and all other mutable characteristics.

Key Terms: culture, universal behavior, culture-specific behavior, cultural relativism, cultural absolutism, individualistic society, collectivist society, cross-cultural psychology, personality, Big Five traits, psychopathology

Critical Thinking

The cost effectiveness of Milgram's obedience research has been debated for 40 years—the gain in knowledge versus the anguish and self-doubt endured by participants. Explain your view today, acknowledging the changes in ethical standards. A tourist in a foreign land mistakenly assumes that a customs officer's friendly gesture is the sign of a nasty disposition. Explain how the fundamental attribution error might be involved. Also explain how ethnocentrism may play a role. Consider research in cultural and cross-cultural psychology with regard to their potential for promoting world peace. Focusing on their different research goals, make an argument for each approach, including an example in each instance.

• foundations • cultural psychology • social cognition • personality • social psychology • psychology • cross-cultural psychology • social influence • prejudice • social facilitation

http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452224862.n9

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