Culture is: 1. Any information acquired from others of one's species through social learning capable of affecting an individual's behaviours, Ex: ideas, beliefs, technology, habits 2. A group of individuals, people existing within a shared context exposed to same cultural ideas, Ex: practices, advertisements, cultural institutions. Most global level: broad swaths of earth's population, up to multiple countries, Ex: Western culture (European countries and those stemming from British descent) Challenges of grouping people as constituting cultures: 1. Boundaries of culture not always clear: a. Fuzzy boundaries: influence from other cultures from relatives, travelling, or foreign media b Subcultures: groups aside from countries, especially when there's more shared contexts and experiences, Ex: gay culture, Jewish culture C. Solution: Use nationality as rough hand indicator. Ex: Russian vs German 2. Cultures change: a. Shared info may disappear as new habits emerge b. Not static but dynamic and ever changing 3. Variability among individuals: a. Different temperaments (Born with different personality traits, abilities, attitudes) b. Belong to many different social groups c. Unique history of personal experiences shaping views d. Solution: Culture can only define average tendencies Case study on Sambian demonstrating different cultures: 1. Boys do not have masculinity (jerengdu) 2. They must obtain from semen, and then give later in life 3. Men go through homosexuality, bisexuality, and then exclusive heterosexuality 4. Implications: a. Actions have meaning, semen ingestion for power b. What aspects of sexuality are universal? Psychological universals and levels of analysis: 1. Nonuniversal: cultural inventions, Ex: abacus 2. Existential universal: exist in multiple cultures, not necessarily used to solve the same problem, not is equally accessible across culture, Ex: Failure as motivation or de-motivating 3. Functional universal: exist in multiple cultures, used to solve same problems across culture, more accessible to people from some culture than others, Ex: amount of resources devoted to punishing wrongdoers 4. Accessibility universal: exists in all cultures, used to solve same problems across cultures, accessible to same degree across cultures, Ex: tendency to perform better at well learned tasks and worst at poorly learned ones in front of others East asians show more activation of the inferior parietal lobule and the right precentral gyrus on an absolute rask, Americans show more activation on the relative rask (activation indicates more attentional control) When people perform a culturally less familiar task, they show more evidence for attentional control Different tasks are may required increased attentional control across cultures -Brains and psychological processes change as a result of experiences -Culture provides us with distinctive sets of experiences -People in different cultures have different experiences -As a non-cultural example, when you learn to juggle your brain will change in predictable ways, increasing to have more grey matter in regions that process and store complex visual motion According to Shweder: 1. Psychology relies on the computer metaphor for the brain, revealing underlying and universal ways this computer functions 2. We must isolate the mind from context and content to reduce noise to detect a clear signal (General psychology)