Week 29

27 April 2016

29.01 Cultural Norms and Dimensions of Behaviour

Read pp. 123-127 of your Crane and Hannibal textbook, Section 4.2:
Sociocultural level of analysis: social and cultural norms.
Read pp. 28-33 of the Pamoja Supplementary eText, The Sociocultural Level of
Analysis: Section 4, Cultural Norms: A. Cultural norms, cultural dimensions
and behaviour & B. Emic and etic research.

4.2: SCLOA: social and cultural norms

According to Kuschel (2004) culture cannot be seen but we can see the
manifestations of culture.
Surface culture and deep culture
Cultural factors affect behavior
Hofstede (2002) described culture as mental software, that is, cultural schemas
that have been internalized so that they influence thinking, emotions, and behaviour
o Shared by memebers of the same sociocultural group
Etic approach
o Looks for generalizations or rules of behavior
o Commonly used in cross-cultural psychology
Emic approach
o Culture specific
o Tries to find truth in regard to the culture
Mead (1935)
o documented many instances of cultural variations in gender in her study of
three different cultures living close to each other in New Guinea.
o Arapesh people - men and women have sensitive, non-aggressive behavior
o Mundugamor - ruthless and unpleasant
o Tchambuli - women are dominant and men are emotional
Reverse of western norms
o society can powerfully influence gender-role development
Culture is defined by Matsumoto (2004) as a dynamic system of rules, explicit and
implicit, established by groups in order to ensure their survival, involving attitudes,
values, beliefs, norms, and behaviours
Dynamic - changes ober time in response to environmental and social changes
Explicit - written guidelines
Implicit - implied/ understood guidelines
Cultural norms are behaviour patterns that are typical of specific groups.
Cultural dimensions of behaviour
o dimensionsthe perspectives of a culture based on values and cultural
norms.
o Hoefstede (1973)
Employees of the multinational company IBM
Content analysis on responses, looking at key differences in 40
countries
Trends = dimensions

o
o
o

Individualism - the ties between individuals are loose: everyone is

expected to look after himself or herself and his or her immediate family
Collectivism - people are integrated into strong, cohesive in-groups, often
extended families, which provides them with support and protection
Markus and Kitayama (1991)
characterized the difference between US and Japanese culture by
citing two of their proverbs: In America, the squeaky wheel gets the
grease; in Japan, the nail that stands out gets pounded down.
Uncertainty vs. Avoidance - sociertys tolerance to feel uncomfortable or
comfortables in unstructured situations, focus on truth
Bond (1988)
argues that Chinese culture replaces the
uncertaintyavoidance dimension with Confucian work
dynamism, focus on virture
Asian countries have a long-term orientation
need to protect the collective identity and respect
traditionwhat is often called saving face.
Hoefstede
Finland, France, Germany, and the US have a short-term
orientation
Value personal steadiness and stability, focus on
future
o ecological fallacywhen one looks at two
different cultures, it should not be assumed that two
members from two different cultures must be
different from one another, or that a single member
of a culture will always demonstrate the dimensions
which are the norm of that culture
o Anthropologist Edward T. Hall
Halls proxemic theory (1966) is based on a cultures need for
personal space
Europeans sit half the distance than Americans in
conversation
Time consciousness - monochronic cultures and polychronic
cultures

SCLOA: section 4, cultural norms (28-33)

A.

Cultural norms, cultural dimensions and behavior

Matsumoto (2004)
Dynamic culture - constant change in response to environmental and social changes
Cultural norms are part of the culture
Hofstede originally distinguished four cultural dimensions by which life in a society
is organised.
o Power distance
Acceptance of hierarchial order
o Individualism vs. collectivism
reflected in whether peoples self-image is defined in terms of I or
we.
o Masculinity vs. feminity
competitive (masculine) or cooperative (feminine)
o Uncertainty avoidance

A society high in uncertainty avoidance tries to control peoples

behaviour through rigid codes of belief and is intolerant of
unconventional ideas
o Long-term orientation
Societies with a short-term orientation show great respect for
traditions, a relatively small propensity to save for the future, and a
focus on achieving quick results.
In societies with a long-term orientation, people believe that truth is
relative, depending on context and they show an ability to adapt
traditions to changed conditions, a strong inclination to save and
invest, and perseverance in achieving results
o Indulgence vs. restraint
attitude of a society to the gratification of natural human
Restraint stands for a society that suppresses gratification of needs
and regulates drives by means of strict social norms
Critiques of Hofstedes cultural dimensions
o IBM = etic/comparative approach to make correlations
o Bond 1997
o Gelfand, et al. (2006)
Societal tightnesslooseness
They argue that most of Hofstedes cultural dimensions are
cultural values and despite the intuitive appeal of values,
there has been growing skepticism that values can fully
explain cultural differences in behaviour
the strength of social norms, or how clear and welldeveloped norms are within societies; and the strength of
sanctioning, or how much tolerance there is for deviance
from norms within societies.
Tight = clear boundaries, less tolerance of ambiguity and
difference, and stronger socialization of children into these
norms
distinct from individualismcollectivism
Taras et al. (2010)
o conducted a meta-analysis of Hofstedes original 4 cultural dimensions,
using data from 598 studies representing over 200,000 individuals.
o conceptualization of societal tightnesslooseness, finding significantly
stronger effects in culturally tighter, rather than looser, countries
B. Emic and etic research
Emic
o Insiders perspective
o Theory grows out of the material
o Data creates the meaning
o Koerner et al. (2013)
examined the role of religious/spiritual beliefs and practices among
Latino family caregivers of Mexican descent
58 caregivers (majority women caring for child with disabilities)
Inductive thematic analysis conducted by a bilingual-bicultural
coder, and confirmed by a second coder yielded six thematic
categories:
Reference to a divine being or spiritual system
Methods of religious or spiritual practice,
Timing of practices,
Beliefs/spiritual perspective as related to providing care,

o
o
o
o
o
o

o
o
o

How religious/spiritual beliefs and practices help caregiving.

Reasons for believing/practising
religious/spiritual involvement seems to have a consistently
beneficial effect for Latino caregivers
Etic
Outsiders perspective
Holistic picture of human behavior
Focused on universals
Uses existing theory to conduct research
Allows for comparison across contexts and populations
Becker et al. (2012)
examined the construction of a distinctive identity in individualistic
and collectivistic cultures
meta-analysis of data from 4,751 participants in 21 cultural groups
The results showed that the distinctiveness motive was not weaker
and, if anything, was strongerin more collectivistic nations
distinctiveness was associated more closely with difference and
separateness in more individualistic cultures and was associated
more closely with social position in more collectivistic cultures
Combing the approaches
may be impossible to be purely emic
An etic code is one developed from the literature or prior research, while an
emic code arises from the data and is often built from a participants own
words.
Fedor et al. (1999)
investigated 102 nurses' reactions to a peer rating system
Predictors of system acceptance were: perceived purpose, recipient
outcomes, opportunity to voice opinions or concerns regarding own
performance, rater outcomes, demographics, and rating experience.
assessed with both quantitative and qualitative measures
. Content analysis of the participants' comments revealed four main
themes: the need for additional training; biases believed to influence
peer ratings; the time required to perform the ratings; and the
criteria used for those ratings

29.02 Role of Cultural Dimensions on Behaviour - M2017

Psychology SL Y1(2) A - Helen Loughran

Visit this website (Links to an external site.) and view the data presented about your
country on any two dimensions. Select another country and compare and contrast.
Write a post discussing your findings and reflect on the dangers of making an
ecological fallacy (Links to an external site.). (Note: This forum will remain open until
Week 31).
Contribute to the discussion.

https://geert-hofstede.com/united-states.html

I decided to compare the United States, the country I come from, with Italy, the
country I'm currently living in.
One of the dimensions I found interesting is the Uncertainty Avoidance. The U.S. is
obviously a place where new ideas are accepted. We definitely have a strong sense of
freedom of expression. We try to control some aspects of the future, but many others
are unknown, which is why we scored a 46 in this dimension. On the other hand, Italy
scored a high 75, meaning they may feel more threatened in unknown situations and
that they take pleasure in order. This connects to the masculinity, as Italy has a
difficult and stressful environment because of the combinations of these two
dimensions. Because Italy scored highly in masculinity, it means they are
competitive, but this also contrasts with the idea that they are emotional and
expressive people. The U.S. also scored highly. Both countries seem to be motivated
by wanting to be the best, even if it's unattainable, and rather gain a title than doing
something they like.
I found the comparison of masculinity to be so interesting. I lived in Sweden, which
I'm assuming isn't too different from its Scandanavian neighbor. While I was there we
discussed the welfare state and gender equality in great detail. Sweden seems to be
quite a neutral society in that regard. Although I was aware of the obvious inequality
of the U.S., I didn't realise there was this much of a difference.