Category: Culture & Psychology

Initially, I had difficulty grasping the concept of enemyship especially because I thought of collectivist cultures to be interdependent focusing on social harmony. If they focus on social harmony, how is enemyship so prominent in this culture? Later, I understood that enemyship, as a concept, might be completely different than what I imagine it to…

While preparing for my discussion on this topic, the four theoretical perspectives of social class acted as a model for my understanding of the concept of social class as culture. Specifically, the integration of evolutionary science in the life-history theoretical framework was surprising as low resources in families and societies lead to early reproductive strategies.…

When we discussed this topic in class, I was curious to know whether personality traits are genetic or inherited by parents in some way. Through discussion, I understood that personality is not entirely genetic or physiological but certain genes play an important role in determining certain personality traits. Other than this, some genes are particularly…

When I started reading this chapter, I could remember the concepts from my course ‘Social Identity and Intergroup Relations’. In that course, I learned about acculturation in the light of social identity theory, especially Berry’s Strategy Model considering the perspective of majority and minority groups. However, this chapter only focuses on the model from the…

The chapter ‘Culture and Development’  starts with a brief introduction of the typical theories of development and moves towards ecobiocultural framework that introduces the idea of how culture is a product of ecology, biology and culture. When studying Bowlby’s attachment theory in Developmental Psychology, I had a question in my mind: How can this theory…

    This week, I was really excited to read the chapter because it talks about my emotions – my favorite topic to discuss with respect to culture. Personally, I think culture plays a significant role in the feeling, expression and interpretation of emotions. After reading the chapter, I can summarize and elaborate some key…

    As I started reading this chapter, I was unconsciously relating the ideas to my ‘Language Acquisition and Development’ course. For example, I learned how language affects mentalization (ability to infer states of self and others) in individuals in that course. After reading this chapter, I connected the dots to reckon that every language…

    To start with, the chapter discusses how culture governs cognition and perception typically under the light of two factors: i) independent and interdependent cultures, and ii) analytic and holistic cognitive styles. However, as I mentioned earlier, other aspects must be studied as well to understand and interpret the interaction effects of culture, cognition,…

To start with, I really enjoyed reading this chapter even though it had less theories and more methodological stuff that I usually don’t like. It took me back to research methods courses but then this is completely different because it focuses on four main issues and within those issues, there are very specific issues to…

To start with, I think the inclusion of this chapter in this Culture & Psychology book is a mere attempt to connect culture with neuroscience in order to give a biological perspective in this case. I like the concept of biological plasticity but the author failed to connect the idea to culture directly which seemed…