Lecture 1 . Culture Descriptive definitions -things that people do in an environment Historical definitions -social heredity Normative -what are social procedures -standardized customs that characterize groups -violating these norms lead to punishment -mechanisms to enforce these norms - eg. bowing to elders, superiors Values that make these norms/ structural -each society has own values -structurally diff societies are diff Psychological -everything we do is in response to our environment -adapting/ adjusting to our environment · Nationality 1-Cultural boundaries are fuzzy, not clean cut like national boundaries - culture extends across boundaries -closer to boundaries- fusion of cultures -national boundaries do not envelop cultures
2- culture is constantly changing -in USA, support for gay marriage, marijuana legalization has dramatically shot up -in 20 years cultural principles, values have changes 3-we often underestimate/ exaggerate how much culture differs inside/among countries -there is overlap in countries also -variability also exists inside the countries · General Psych vs Cultural Psych Wilhelm Wundt- father of modern psych Low level cognitive processes Importance of experimental control Started studying folk stories Studying high level process don't develop experimentally · School of Behaviorism Everything we do is response to a stimulus Everything we can measure or observe only that is psychology · History of psychology based solely on white Americans and Canadians · Richard Shweder- brains are active agents in our culture · Mind and environment mutually constituted · 2
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