Comparison Of Sociocultural Psychology And Cross-Cultural Psychology

Take a moment to think about the following question: what is culture? Culture is everything a person does, believes in, creates, came from, and has done. It is also so much more than this simple list, but this is a good idea of what it generally is. Culture affects a lot of things as well. It can affect what you do, how you do certain things, and how you see things comparison to others. Culture is a major factor in how people perceive the world and those around them. Everybody sees the world differently through their cultural glasses. Some people see things as foreign and confusing, while others see the same things as daily life. The idea of different cultural viewpoints is shown in many articles throughout the years. Each of these stories

The classic definition for culture was proposed by Tylor (1871/1958) and still commonly cited: Culture is “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law, custom, and many other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (p. 1). This definition focuses on attributes that are acquired through growing up or living in a particular society, rather than through biological inheritance (Kottak, 2002). In Giger and Davidhizar’s (1991) Model for transcultural care, culture was defined as a patterned behavioral response that develops over time as a result of imprinting the mind through social and religious structures and intellectual and artistic manifestations.

Have you ever wondered why do we do things that we do? Why do we act in a certain way? What compels us to follow a path or formulate habits? One perspective among many others is the sociocultural perspective. A sociocultural perspective is an approach to understand why humans behave the way they do. It seeks to understand human behavior and personality development by examining the influence of rules of social groups on individuals who are members of those social groups. Sociocultural approach is an emerging topic that looks at the important contributions that society makes to an individual. The sociocultural approach is based on the assumption that our personalities, beliefs, attitudes and skills are learned from others. It refers to a point of view that is built upon the idea that society and culture are major factors that influence personalities. This approach believes that people are heavily influenced by their social environment. What makes and defines us as individuals is the application of sociocultural approach. For example, if you look outside the window and see a man talking to a tree, what conclusions will you draw? You may think the man is a lunatic and needs some kind of medication. But would your opinion change if you knew that the man was Native American and Native Americans believe in a spiritual philosophy that trees can speak if you listen to them. So you see, the context of culture makes a huge difference in how you ascertain someone’s behavior and that’s

Have you thought of someone’s culture as weird? Have you thought that you are completely different from them? If so, what prompts us to make that assumption. Culture is a very good reason for this. So, to what extent does one’s culture inform the way one views others and the world? Culture informs a person on the way others are and the world.

Culture plays a paramount role in our lives. “It is what shapes who we are and how we view the world” (Thorp & Sanchez, 1998,

We all see the events and objects surrounding us in a cultural lens in which tints, alters, and shapes our perceptions. In a broader aspect, culture shapes how people experience their world. Though a culture is generally understood and thought of as the foods, clothing, holidays, and music a group of people engage in, culture dives deeper than just a group’s visible traditions.

“Culture is sometimes described as a lens through which we view the world, meaning that one’s culture influences their perceptions and interactions in everyday life” (Davis, 2006). Every culture has different beliefs and customs

Culture is universal and inescapable. Its expressed through different beliefs and ideas. It follows someone through their ethnicity and communities. The cultural impact is inevitable and permanent. Someone’s culture has a significant impact on the way they view the world and others. This influence is communicated through the individual's upbringing, their culture, as well as their current environment. Situations are perceived differently by those with different values. The fairly full extent of one’s cultural impact is clear.

Critics of cultural theory claim, since it has a microscopic view, that it is too narrow. A few questions that are proposed, but cannot be answered utilizing cultural theory alone: “So what is some people experience everyday life in certain ways?

Culture is the totality of learned, socially transmitted customs, knowledge, material objects, and behavior. It includes ideas, values, and artifacts of groups of people (Schaefer, 2006). Understanding culture can be tricky, ever ask “why do people act the way they do?”, “what made me do that”, “what was I thinking?” Physical abilities, educational background, and social background of how I was raised are important aspects of my life. The environment in which I was raised is very important aspect of my life.

Culture includes the habits, likes, and dislikes, habits, customs and rituals learned from the individual’s family (Andrew & Boyle, 2011). There a variety of factors that might influence the recognition of other cultures. Stereotyping occurs when one assumes that all members of a certain culture or ethnic group share similar attributes or behaviours (Beagan, Fredericks & Goldberg, 2012; Wilson & Neville,

Cultural psychology is an interdisciplinary program of research that explores the relationship between individual minds and the complex environments in which they are deployed. The approach focuses on the contribution that content-rich, complex environments – ranging from workplaces to cultural traditions to nation states – make in shaping basic cognitive processes. The comparative approach, or cross-cultural approach, uses experimental methods

Cross cultural psychology and cultural psychology are two fields of psychology that are often confused. Cross-cultural psychology and cultural psychology have many similarities and they differ in a few areas. Cross-cultural psychology is a comparative field of psychology that studies the cultural effects on human psychology. A cross-cultural study draws its conclusions from at least two samples of at least two different cultures and compares them in order to examine underlying reasons for diversity between the cultures, as well as the universals that each culture shares with another. Cultural psychology seeks to find the meaningful links between a culture and the psychology of the individuals living within that culture. Cultural psychology's main message is that human behavior is only meaningful when you're studying the behavior of individuals within the particular sociocultural, or in the culture in which the behavior occurs. The comparisons that cross-cultural psychology makes about each culture must begin with cultural studies.

The general idea of culture that is ingrained into the brains of many people, may consist of associating culture with countries or ethnic groups. One of the main key points to this term is that it incorporates much more than just those two aspects. When viewing it from a sociological perspective, culture can be deconstructed into 3 components. Through background knowledge after taking a sociology class, values, norms, and artifacts when combined, is what defines the term culture. These aspects that create culture, can differentiate a family from one another.

Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1962) identify over 150 scientific definitions of the concept of culture. Indeed, many authors have tried to define culture and this is why there are so many definitions and that a unique one is hard to find. First of all, Kroeber and Kluckholn (1952) assume that culture is a suite of patterns, implicit and explicit, “of and for behaviour acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiments in artefacts” (p.47). Later, Hofstede adds that culture is “the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one category of people from another” (Hofstede, 1991, p.51). This definition is the most widely accepted one amongst practitioners. For Winthrop (1991), culture is the distinctive models of thoughts, actions and values that composed members of a society or a social group. In other words,