Culture plays a significant role in shaping people’s behaviors. Humans start to expose to culture the day they are born and they learn cultural values through their everyday life interacting with the people and environments around them. The cultural values often help us in guiding our behaviors and provide us a context in helping us identify the proper way of responding to various situations. Culture can help to determine human behaviors because culture can influence individuals’ psychological processes, development of self, and motivation. However, individual differences should also be examined in determining people’s behaviors.
Humans’ behaviors are often guided by their culture because culture can influence their psychological processes.
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659). According to Heine (2010), “being exposed to carpentered corers in the early years of life organizes the visual system…this illusion develops as a function of the environmental input of a carpentered world” (p. 658). The Muler-Lyer illusion experiment showed that culture or environments can help shape our minds and it can affect how people perceive things differently. Understanding how culture influences our most basic fundamental psychological processes can help better predict someone’s behaviors in response to different situations.
Culture can also shape individuals’ development of self, which also influence their behaviors. According to Smith (2014) an individual from Western cultures tend to develop independent self-construal which he or she tends to “strive for self-expression, uniqueness and self-actualization, acting autonomously based on his/her own thoughts and feelings, and pursuing his/her own goals” (p. 160). In contrast, an individual from East Asia tends to acquire interdependent self-construal where he or she tends to view “the self as closely connected to the social context” which he or she strive “to fit in and maintain harmony with relevant others, basing their actions and expectations and social norms” (Smith, 2014, p. 160). The different types of self-construal give rise
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For example, personality can help explain why people from the same culture behave differently in the same condition. According to Carver (2010), “extraverts are less cooperative than introverts when facing a social dilemma over resources” (p. 761). People from collectivistic cultures with interdependent self-construal tend to have more cooperative behaviors, but someone who is extraverted from a collectivistic culture might be less cooperative when competing for personal gains compared to other people in the collectivistic culture. Another example is that people with interdependent self-construal are more likely to be agreeable than people with independent self-construal because people with interdependent self-construal are motivated to maintain social harmony; therefore they are more likely to present themselves as agreeable in order to maintain their relationships with other people. However, someone who has a interdependent self-construal, but a low level of agreeableness might not necessarily behave in a cooperative way or show agreeableness to other people’s idea. When predicting someone else behaviors, it is important to keep in mind that individual differences such as personality can also influence one’s behaviors. However, Hofstede and McCrae (2004) found a correlation between personality and cultural values (as
Culture often means an appreciation of the finer things in life; however, culture brings members of a society together. We have a sense of belonging because we share similar beliefs, values, and attitudes about what’s right and wrong. As a result, culture changes as people adapt to their surroundings. According to Bishop Donald, “let it begin with me and my children and grandchildren” (211). Among other things, culture influences what you eat; how you were raised and will raise your own children? If, when, and whom you will marry; how you make and spend money. Truth is culture is adaptive and always changing over time because
Today, you can observe someone and see how much of their cultural background influences them when deciding or they are acting on morals. Culture is made up of many aspects such as knowledge, beliefs, morals, law and habit. Culture is not an innate ability rather, it’s something people learned. In “Being Weird: How Culture Shapes the Mind” Ethan Watters explores a work of an anthropologist Joe Henrich, who uses a game called “ultimatum game” with small communities to tell whether they have the same universal human behavior. The way people learn their culture is through observing. Culture defines people’s world, it is how they should act, guide their behavior and perceptions throughout their lives.
"Whereas animals are rigidly controlled by their biology, human behavior is largely determined by culture, a largely autonomous system of symbols and values, growing from a biological base, but growing indefinitely away from it. Able to overpower or escape biological constraints in most regards, cultures can vary from one another enough so that important portion...
Cultures are infinitely complex. Culture, as Spradley (1979) defines it, is "the acquired knowledge that people use to interpret experiences and generate social behavior" (p. 5). Spradley's emphasizes that culture involves the use of knowledge. While some aspects of culture can be neatly arranged into categories and quantified with numbers and statistics, much of culture is encoded in schema, or ways of thinking (Levinson & Ember, 1996, p. 418). In order to accurately understand a culture, one must apply the correct schema and make inferences which parallel those made my natives. Spradley suggests that culture is not merely a cognitive map of beliefs and behaviors that can be objectively charted; rather, it is a set of map-making skills through which cultural behaviors, customs, language, and artifacts must be plotted (p. 7). This definition of culture offers insight into ...
Shiraev, E., & Levy, D. (2007, 2004). Cross-Cultural Psychology (3th ed.) United States of America.
One difference in social psychology and cultural psychology is the impact in an individual’s life. While both are
As cited by the National Institute of Health, “Culture is often described as the combination of a body of knowledge, a body of belief and a body of behavior. It involves a number of elements, including personal identification, language, thoughts, communications, actions, customs, beliefs, values, and institutions that are often specific to ethnic, racial, religious, geographic, or social groups” (NIH, n.d).
With this paper I wanted to focus on psychological aspects that had to do with a different side of the culture. There are three key aspect of information from the c...
Humans, as a whole, are naturally affected by others around them. We all assimilate to be the most likeable and successful we can be. Due to this, we are extremely affected by our upbringing and culture, some argue. Others argue that this is false, as every individual has the ability to choose their outlook on the world. In my opinion, I believe that our culture affects how we view others around us, though we do pick and choose the manner in which we conduct ourselves--either accepting and promoting our cultures, or refusing to acknowledge certain aspects of them.
Each person has its own point of view on how culture is develop and which aspect is beneficial and enjoy the history behind the culture. On the other hand, we make assumption about cultural identify without analyzing the factual data. Additionally, individual experiences does reflex the life the person has lived and the achievement embody a sense resiliency and failure for a certain period. “A study reveals culture as potentially ephemeral beliefs, beliefs, feelings, and behavior, unique in their details to each individual. No two people can live precisely identical life histories” (Handwerkker, 2002,
Psychology is the study of different behaviors and acts of each individual based on the way they are raised and brought up. Cultural psychology is specified as the study of behaviors and actions based on different cultures and traditions. The world is full of cultures. Each culture attempts to have its own psychological belief when it comes to different matters and events. Some cultures agree on some matters; while they disagree on others. Almost every culture view things differently. Yet sometimes they decide to accept these differences, and sometimes they do not. Also, some cultures view some psychological matters at the same level unexpectedly.
The Role of Culture in Shaping us as Individuals Culture has a big impact on how we all fit in as individuals in today’s society, and since this assignment is about that I decided to include some of my own experiences to illustrate my point of view and compare it with those of my classmates and some of the readings. My family and I moved to United States in 1998 from Albania. My parents believed that I and my sister would get a better education here and also it would be useful and interesting to learn another language and its culture.
Culture can be defined by one’s family history. Without a doubt, the way a person a raised has a huge impact on their life. Parents teach their children how to be a good person based on their own beliefs. If a parent grew up from a poor background, then that parent may instill the importance of education and hard work. If a parent grew up being overweight, then that parent may instill the importance of eating healthy and exercising. In other words, the next generation is learning behavior patterns to hopefully better themselves as a whole.
The Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition defines Culture as the “shared patterns of behaviors and interactions, cognitive constructs, and affective understanding that are learned through a process of socialization. These shared patterns identify the members of a culture group while also distinguishing those of another group.” (Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition)
How do personal values shape culture, and how does culture affect our understanding and interpretation of seemingly ordinary things?