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The role of culture in understanding human behavior
Culture effects on behavior
Culture and Causal Cognition
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Causal attribution is the study of the ways people explain their own and other people's behaviour. Many research studies have shown there is a cultural divide between western and non-western countries (Earley, 1993). Non-western countries are described as ‘collectivist’ proposing that people within this culture define themselves as a member of a collective group. The person has their own role within the group with little freedom or personal control over their lives but not necessarily wanting or needing this (Gilovich, Keltner, & Nisbett, 2010). In contrast, western countries are described as individualistic as individuals within this culture strive to be unique, work independently and choose their own path throughout their life. This cultural difference is the paradigm used for the majority of the research discussed in this essay. The fundamental attribution error (FAE) is a key concept which refers to the failure to recognise the importance of situational influences on behaviour as well as the tendency to overemphasise the importance of dispositions (Gilovich et al., 2010). This essay evaluates research which has shown that personality traits are no less important to East Asians than to Americans, but they are understood differently (Norenzayan, Choi, & Nisbett, 2002). This essay also discusses how East Asians emphasise both personal and situational factors in causal attribution, whereas Americans tend to neglect situational factors (Morris & Peng, 1994). Furthermore, how attributions are influenced by: the perceived changeability of personality, holistic and atomistic views (Choi, Dalal, Chu, & Park, 2003) and prior information (Jen & Lien, 2010).
Researchers have investigated whether cultural differences differ the way peo...
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...annot be oversimplified. Other research has shown personality traits are no less important to East Asians than to Americans, but they are understood differently. East Asians emphasise both personal and situational factors in causal attribution, whereas Americans tend to neglect situational factors. In addition, East Asians view personality as more changeable than Americans do (Norenzayan et al., 2002). East Asians’ tending to be holistic and Americans’ tending to be more atomistic leads to the prediction that East Asians will consider more information in causal attributions than Americans will (Choi et al., 2003). When the amount of information deemed relevant was controlled, the effect of culture on causal attribution was no longer significant, indicating culture affects attribution by influencing how much information people judge to be relevant (Jen & Lien, 2010).
This article provides me a detailed research on a group of American and Chinese adults with plenty of data and analysis. They provided a lot of real and objective opinion on the comparison between individualism and collectivism. The fact of the whole respondents are students gives me an advantage on finding better ways to understand and use this research in my
A culture’s tendency to be individualistic or collectivistic can be found at the root of
Thought processes can greatly influence people's social interactions, and the way that they live their lives. Cognitions develop how people perceive themselves and others on a daily basis. It is important to investigate how people attribute actions and behaviors exhibited, not only by themselves, but also those around them. These attributions shape the way an observer feels and reacts to others, and how people feel about themselves due to their own actions. The correspondence bias (fundamental attribution error) and the self-serving bias are two errors made in attribution by virtually every human being (Baron & Byrne, 2000). Both of these biases can be shown not only in adults, but also children (Guern, 1999). Even sport spectators display these biases when watching their favorite teams (Wann & Schrader, 2000). When the self-serving bias is absent in people's cognitions, they will show the self-defeating attributions. It is important to study people that demonstrate self-defeating attributions, because these individuals also show symptoms of depression (Wall & Hayes, 2000). Clearly, attributions are an imperative aspect of social cognition. Attributional bias is discussed by Marie Beesley. It is also important to investigate the factors that affect people's judgment biases in decision making and reasoning skills, which is explored by Amanda Wheeler. Because these two processes are so vital to the way in which people perceive themselves and others, and to the way a person chooses to behave, it is important to understand the factors that can cause inaccurate judgments. Judgment biases affect the way people form conclusions and make attributions about others, as well as abou...
Stereotypes are formed by categorizing certain features about an individual, and afterward using those categorized to make assumptions about the specific individual based on these categories. It is important however for one to question the assumptions at an individual level. The rationale behind a stereotype are often untrue, because they are broad generalizations. However in the case of the Asian population, the stereotype relating to Asian’s and their aptitude to be very good at math, and have the ability to put in long hours to reach success appears to be true. This in part is due to the cultural heritage, and it application to a large population of Asian society.
Each person in this world makes mistakes. Nobody is at all perfect. There is no such thing as someone having perfection. Anybody around myself makes mistakes. The false move may be big or may be small. No matter how small or big a mistake is everyone makes them. I personally do not feel like I have made an enormous mistake yet. Does not mean it will not happen, it will happen. I have made plentiful small mistakes, for examples, staying up to late on Sunday night watching Netflix. Waiting to do my homework last minute. Embarrassing myself somehow, everyone at least some point in their lives embarrass themselves. Blaming someone else for my mistakes, I blame my sister, Erica on things that I have done. Spending money on useless things, I have
Starting in the early twentieth century, Social Psychology emerged onto the global stage with a goal of explaining human nature. Social psychology as a science analyzes the cause and effect relationships between...
In an earlier study, Sue and Morishma (1982) found that East Asian American students showed higher level of anxiety than non-Asian students. The authors concluded that there are increasing rates of depression, school dropout, substance abuse, and juvenile delinquency among East Asian American adolescents. Also, according to Aldwin and Greenberger (1987), Korean students were significantly more depressed than European American students, as well as the participants’ perceived parental traditionalism was related to higher levels of depression among the Korean participated students. Okazaki (1997) measured differences in depression and social anxiety among East Asian American and European American college students. The author found that East Asian students were significantly higher on both measures of depression and anxiety than European American students. In addition, in a current study, Young and his colleagues (2010) concluded that Korean American students are more depressed than Chinese American, other Asian American, and Caucasian students. Also, the authors suggested that cultural norms and intergenerational conflict may contribute Asian American children have more depressive symptoms (Young et al., 2010). Thus, adapting Young et al.’s perspective, I consider perceived cultural norms and
Attribution theory correlates with how people exemplify events and how it affects their behavior and thinking. People making casual explanations is known as attribution theory. It was established over time from different social psychologists, especially Fritz Heider who played a major role in producing the theory in 1958. Heider wrote about attribution theory in his book called The Psychology of Interpersonal Relationships. External attribution is when behavior is altered by influences outside of your control. Internal attribution is caused from an inside factor that falls within your control. Your behavior is not influenced and you feel responsible.
(1997). McRae et al. (1997) attempted to find if the Five-Factor Model was a universal constant in all cultures. They also attempted to see if cultural views would change how the five traits were viewed. The researchers collected data from 6 different translations of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory, this inventory looks for universal trait dimensions in a variety of languages. These 6 translations were then compared to the American counterpart. It was found that while some cultures did differ slightly in their view of the five traits found in the Five-Factor Model in comparison to Americans, the traits were still universal. All six translations found the big five traits of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and opens to experience to be
McCrae, R. R., & Allik, I. U. (2002). The five-factor model of personality across cultures. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
The Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) is a concept within social psychology that assumes when someone is aggressive, it is due to a flaw in their personality as opposed to a reaction to their personal circumstances (Aronson, Wilson & Akert, 2015). However, there is typically a situational reason for the other person’s behavior that is not taken into account through the FAE (Aronson, Wilson & Akert, 2015). I have been guilty of making the FAE myself; for example, I can think of two situations where my frustration led me to believe that there were flaws in my antagonists’ characters. Recently, my mother wanted me to assist my brother in scheduling classes for the semester. Since I was annoyed that my mother was insisting that I assist him when
Ethnic groups, their present and their future, are determined by factors like history, education, religion and politics. These factors build and shape the cultural identity of people and have a major effect in their way of thinking, lifestyle, behaviour, habits, morals, ideology, preferences, traditions, etc.” For this reason “what constitutes normal behavior is not the same to people of different social, economic, political and cultural backgrounds (Bayne, Jinks, Collard, Horton, 2008).
In conclusion, humans use attribution to explain causal relationships in the world and to explain these relationships situational or dispositional factors are used. The two errors in attribution that are most commonly made are the fundamental attribution which involves overestimating the role of dispositional factors and underestimating the role situational factors and self- serving bias which is when people take credit for their successes by attributing them to dispositional factors, and dissociate themselves from their failures by associating them situational factors.
Attribution theory suggests that when we observe an individual's behavior, we attempt to determine whether it was internally or externally caused. That determination depends largely on three factors: distinctiveness, consensus, and consistency. Our perceptions of people differ from our perceptions of inanimate objects.
Sometimes, deductive stereotypes occur whenever an assumption is made that abstract cultural generalizations are relevant to each individual culture in the organisation. According to Issa et al. (2015), though it is sensible to generalize that the Americans as a group that they are strongly individualistic than their Japanese counterparts, it can turn out to be a stereotype to assume make an assumption that each American is very individualistic, and therefore, the person with whom you are communicating is likely to be a deviant (Pate & Sharafa, 2015). This nevertheless, cultural generalizations should mainly be used when as working hypotheses that needs to be tested if they really work well, and if there is a need to modify them if they do not apply to a particular