Cultural Psychology : Study with Video Lessons, Practice Problems & Examples

Cultural Psychology

This video we're going to be talking about cultural psychology, which also became popular in the 1980s. So this is a field of psychology that focuses on how culture impacts human behavior and mental processes. And historically, early psychologists actually did consider the impact of culture. As you can see, I've got our old friend Wilhelm Wundt down here. So this was being taken into account really early on.

However, tale as old as time, you've heard it before, behaviorism came in and overshadowed this topic. And then with the rise of all those other really big subfields, culture had gotten pushed to the wayside. Until about the 1950s or 70s when a handful of psychologists began to study culture again, often at the time using anthropology as a guide. So using the theory and methods of anthropology as kind of like a jumping-off point. And then by about the 1980s cultural psychology became like a formal subfield of psychology.

So the main research question here is something along the lines of how does culture shape behavior and other psychological processes. So in terms of founders, like I said, we have our old friend Wilhelm Wundt. So Wundt believed that studying mental processes required cultural context. And in the early 1900s, he actually wrote a 10-volume book talking about how culture shapes psychological processes. So this is not what he is particularly well known for or remembered for, but Wundt had been taking culture into account in his early work.

Now, fast forwarding a couple of decades to the 1970s, we have John Berry. And John Berry developed an ecological framework. Basically, he was examining how ecology and culture can impact cognition and behavior and he did quite a bit of research on something called acculturation, which is how people adapt when they are exposed to a new culture. And this is now a very well researched topic in psychology. And then finally, we have Richard Schweder.

And he really, he's an anthropologist and he really argued that Western psychological theories could not and should not be broadly generalized. So basically, we should not be doing all of our research on Western populations, you know, populations in America, Canada, Europe, and then just assuming that all of our findings would apply to anyone, anywhere in the world. That's a very Western-centric view and we don't want to be doing that. So, he really advocated for examining psychological phenomena within a cultural context. For example, he did some research on emotional experience and expression in India and then he compared and contrasted that with American samples and showed that there were indeed some differences and we have to be taking that into account.

And this is something that is now very well accepted and that is, you know, we're always striving to do in our research in psychology nowadays, but that obviously was not always the case and he really was one of the pioneers who advocated for that. Now very similar to like evolutionary psych, we're not going to have an entire chapter on cultural psychology just because culture impacts so many different psychological processes and behaviors. However, it is going to come up all throughout the course. When we discuss research, we'll often be talking about, you know, and interpreting the findings within a cultural context, and considering different psychological phenomena and how they look across cultures. So it will come up quite a few times throughout this course.

Alright, so that is our little introduction to cultural psychology and I'll see you all in our next one. Bye-bye!

Cultural Psychology Example 1

Okay, so this is a true or false question. If it's false, we're going to choose an answer to correct the statement. Wilhelm Wundt, the father of psychology, was one of the earliest pioneers of cultural psychology, and that is true. Remember Wilhelm Wundt back in the early 1900s wrote a 10 volume work discussing the importance of culture, and he did believe that we should be interpreting mental processes within a cultural context. So, despite the fact that it is not the thing that he is most well-known for or the most well-remembered for, he was one of the earliest cultural psychologists, if not the earliest cultural psychologist.

Alright, so our answer here is true. And there you have it.

Biological Perspective

This video we are going to be talking about the biological perspective or neuroscience which became very popular in the 1990s and is now a booming subfield of psychology today. So, this is a field that studies the relationship between the brain or the nervous system and behavior or mental processes. Historically speaking, humans have been trying to figure out how the brain works for thousands of years. Our first documented attempts at understanding the brain actually come from ancient Egypt about 3,700 years ago. So we've been at this for a while.

However, early neuroscience tended to involve studying brains that had been damaged in some way, either accidentally or purposefully in humans and animals. And this can be a useful technique, especially when you are deliberately damaging a specific part of the brain in a controlled animal trial. You can get some very useful information from that. However, this technique is just inherently limiting. You can only do so much, especially in humans.

Advancements in computers and other technology have really caused the field to grow rapidly since the 1990s, and we are getting better and better every single year as technology continues to improve. We now have multiple methodologies that we can use when studying neuroscience. So the main research question here is what are the biological mechanisms underlying human behavior and mental processes? And one important founder to be aware of is Santiago Ramon y Cajal, who was a Spanish neuroscientist and he is sometimes known as the father of modern neuroscience. Now, he was a very prolific researcher, he actually won a Nobel Prize, but he was the first person to actually propose that the nervous system is made up of cells.

Before this, people thought it was kind of like one big connected thing, and he was able to show that, no, it's actually millions and millions of these individual little cells. And he was also the first person to describe the structure of a neuron. And he was able to do that with this really novel staining technique that he and his colleague came up with where they could look at, like, a slice of brain with the stain on it under a microscope and they could see all of these amazing things. And he actually created thousands of very detailed anatomical drawings of nerve cells and neural networks. I highly recommend you look those up if you can. Many of them are actually in museums nowadays, but this is stuff he was able to do in the late 1800s. So obviously, he has been unable to see any of our modern advancements, but his work really laid a solid foundation for neuroscience to kind of kick off from, so we owe a lot to him. Alright. So that is our little introduction to the biological perspective.

We're going to have an entire chapter talking about the brain and neuroscience coming up for you very soon, so stick around for that, and I will see you in our next one. Bye bye.

Biological Perspective Example 1

Okay. So which of the following questions would you expect a neuroscientist to ask? Let's look through them. So a reads, "How do societal norms affect conformity and willingness to engage in unethical behavior?" And that is sounding very social psychology, very Solomon Asch, if you remember.

So we're going to cross that off. B is asking, "How does parental discipline differ across cultures? In what ways is it similar?" So that is sounding very cultural psychology, potentially even developmental psychology. Psychologists can work within multiple subfields or across different domains, but definitely not neuroscience, so we're going to cross that one off.

C is asking, "How do neurotransmitters influence mood and behavior?" And that is looking very neuroscience-y. We're looking at how some kind of biological or chemical event in the brain might be affecting mood, thought, or behavior. So that sounds super neuroscience-y. We'll underline that.

And then d is asking, "What role do the kidneys play in regulating blood pressure?" And that is certainly a biologically based question. However, it's not looking at the interaction of the brain or the nervous system and then some kind of behavioral or cognitive or, you know, mental outcome at all. We're not really getting that piece; it's just biology. So we're going to cross that out and our answer is going to be c.

And there you go.