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. …show more content…
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 …show more content…
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
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.
A culture’s tendency to be individualistic or collectivistic can be found at the root of
Ayse K. Uskul is a Reader at the University of Kent. She has a Ph.D. in Social/Personality Psychology from York University. Her main focus research interests are Culture and Ethnicity (Social Psychology Network. ,n.d.). Socio-cultural perspectives, focuses on social behavior based off of people’s culture. (PSY 530 Lecture1, 2016). In one of Ayse K. Uskul studies, she discusses the difference between East Asia, North America, and Western Europe people (culture wise). The objective of the study is to understand
Sociocultural perspective contains two areas of study which are social psychology and cultural psychology. Both areas of study are about the effects one may have on another, which extends to large groups like cultures. Not only is the behavior of people for this perspective influenced by people, but also by society’s voice such as what’s “in” and what’s “not”. Cross- cultural research plays a part in this perspective because it shows the similarities and difference of a behavior in more than one c...
Giger (2013) defines culture as a response in behavior that is shaped over time by values, beliefs, norms and practices shared by members of one's cultural group. A person's culture influences most aspects of his or her life including beliefs, conduct, perceptions, emotions, language, diet, body image, and attitudes about illness and pain (He...
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...
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
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).
Culture is a society’s set of unique patterns of behaviors and beliefs (Rohall, D. E., Milkie, M. A., & Lucas, J. W. (2014). Social Psychology Sociological Perspectives (3rd ed.). NJ: Pearson). Culture can be identified in many ways, it can be identified by your family, the way you feel about certain things, your decision making, and so forth. For example, I was raised in a Mexican and sort of religious household so for me, my values and beliefs differ from other peoples’. My Mexican culture taught me to value our hard work and appreciate what we have in our lives. With that belief I grew up always appreciating what I had and even what I didn’t have at times. Another concept my culture taught me was to always respect my elders and show them manners regardless of their race,
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.
Schultz, D.P. & Schultz, S.E. (2009). Theories of Personality, Ninth Edition. US: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
To conclude, cultures are a major part of our lives and they constitute the image we see the world in. cultures can sometimes influence us, even in ways we don’t expect. Sometimes we find ourselves forced in cultures with negative stereotypes but that does not mean we should be ashamed of those cultural groups but rather embrace our culture and stray from the negative characteristics of that
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.
Culture, where and how a person is raised, affects a person no matter how much they dislike the way they are being taught the ways of life. However, moving to different places as a child and coun...
Diener, E., Oishi, S., & Lucas, R. E. (2003). Personality, culture, and subjective well-being: Emotional and cognitive evaluations of life. Annual Review Of Psychology, 54403-425. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.54.101601.145056