Culture is two things: . Information (in the broadest sense of the word) o Acquired from other people through social learning o e.g. language, hair style, clothes, buildings, tools, food, customs, etc. · Groups of individuals O Within a shared context o They share cultural information o Can be broad: "Western culture" o Can be narrow: "classroom culture" Many challenges with studying culture · Cultural boundaries are vague o People are exposed to variety of cultural ideas Nationality is typically used as indicator of culture · Cultures change over time · Considerable within-culture variation exists o Unique experiences give us within-culture variation " Even if we grew up in the same neighbourhood, we join different clubs/play different sports/take different classes/ have different families " Our groups might be influenced by other cultures. E.g. Asian Canadians are influenced by both Canada and heritage (Asianff culture " These unique histories influence peoples' views " Result is within cultural variation: e.g., even if a culture is "expressive" you can have members that are not overly expressive Things change, but there is also similarity (e.g. distract ourselves while waitingff . Western cultures used to find heavier women attractive than what is typical today A (very brief) history of cultural psychology · Wilhelm Wundt /Father of psychology/First psychologist & psychology lab in Germany, wrote Volkerpsychologie translated differently: o Social, Folk, Ethnic psychology . Russian cultural-historical school o Lev Vygotsky and others, Soviet psychologist o known for developmental psychology o His work is influential in education o Thought people interact with world via cultural "tools" e.g., wheel, democracy o Cultural tools are basically cultural information
Cultural psychology today · Cultural psychology has been around since psychology first formed as a field . Interest declined then re-emerged several times . Generally there were few cultural psychologists . Not fully established as a field until 1980s & 1990s . Today there are cultural psychology degrees around the world o But none at UBC despite having famous cultural psychologists in the department (e.g., Steve Heineff Cultural psychology as a field General psychology · Focuses on universals . Views the human brain as a CPU . Goal of psychology is to understand the CPU . Context and content obscure the CPU Cultural psychology . Focuses on cultural variation . Thoughts are shaped by context and content (they don't obscure itff . View the mind and culture as entangled mind is intertwined with culture Mueller-Lyer illusion . Originally thought this illusion indicated an innate structure of the human brain · interacting with carpenter corners (cultural artifactff :< strongly experiencing the illusion . For the Swazi, cattle are an important part of their culture, so they have well-developed schemata to process cattle related information, so they remember details better Unlike general psychology that assumes psychology is more universal, cultural psychology assumes that culture shapes the mind Psychological universals There are different levels of universality · Psychological phenomena are cognitive tools (e.g .: Do you use quantity estimator?ff No -> nonuniversal or numerical