This is a participant observation project on a cultural event, practice, or activity. The chosen event should be one that you are UNFAMILIAR with. The goal of the project is to observe a new culture, participate in a culturally significant activity, and reflect upon how this experience has changed your understanding of culture, cultural practices, and passing on of cultural traditions.
The chosen event must be one you are unfamiliar with. Think about it, when we know what to expect, how to behave, we do it automatically and culture becomes the water we "swim in." By entering a new cultural space we are forced to become aware of our cultural biases and behaviors, in order to let them go, to respectfully participate in another culture's practices.
Grading Rubric:
1. Address your cultural site proposal
2. Field notes from participant observation
3. Description and background of the culture and event, you should cite at least two sources about the historical or cultural significance (sources do not include wikipedia)
4 Reflection about the event and tie it back to what we have learned in class, including at least two things we have covered during the semester. Be it a theory, a method, or study that helped you to reflect upon your experience.
(I will attach some chapter's subject that we have learned in class)
5. Grammar and format: paper should be at least 3 pages in length (double spaced 12 point font), field notes should be neatly written or typed out and included in the participant observation and is not counted towards the three pages. Any citations should be in APA format
Chapter 1
1. Culture describes activities or behaviors, refers to heritage or tradition, describes rules and norms, describes learning or problem solving, defines organization of group, refers to origins of a group. A working definition of culture is unique meaning and information system, shared by a group and transmitted across generations, that allows the group to meet basic needs of survival, pursue happiness and well-being, and derive meaning from life. Factors that affect culture are ecologies (climate, population, arable land), resources (food, water, money), people (group living, basic human needs and motives, universal psych toolkit). Zeitgeist, cultural and social leaders shape cultural behaviors.
2. Objective culture: explicit, physical representations of culture. Ex: clothes, food, art.
Subjective culture: intangible elements of culture. Ex: values, beliefs, norms.
3. Individualism v Collectivism: degree cultures encourage people to look after themselves and immediate family or encourage people to belong to in groups that look after members in exchange for loyalty.
Power Distance: degree culture encourages less powerful members to accept unequal distribution of power.
Uncertainty Avoidance: degree people feel threatened by know or ambiguous situations and have developed beliefs or rituals to avoid them.
Masculinity v Femininity: success money and things v caring for others and quality of life, and distribution of emotional roles between males and females.
Long v Short Term Orientation: degree cultures encourage delayed gratification of material, social, emotional needs among members.
4. Etics: universal psychological processes.
Emics: culture-specific processes.
Chapter 2
1. Bias: differences that do not have exact same meaning within and across cultures. Equivalence: similarity in conceptual meaning and empirical method between cultures that allows comparisons to be meaningful. Bias refers to a state of non-equivalence, and equivalence refers to a state of no bias.
2. Method Validation Study: looks for similarities across cultures.
Cross Cultural Validation Study: type of method validation study that tests equivalence, reliability and validity of psychological measures across cultures and is important to conduct before cross-cultural comparisons.
Quantitative Study: uses numbers and employs survey techniques to assess large number of people across set number of questions to assess concept of interest, but has concerns of validity, reliability, equivalence and generalizability.
Qualitative Study: use interviews, naturalistic observation, ethnography and rich thick descriptions when phenomenon is difficult to measure.
Indigenous Cultural Study: rich descriptions of complex theoretical models of culture that predict and explain cultural differences using ethnographic techniques to understand behaviors and psychological processes within specific cultural milieu.
Cross Cultural Comparisons: compare cultures on psychological variable of interest to find commonalities across cultures to understand psychological universals, used as backbone of cross-cultural research and are most prevalent type of cross cultural study.
3. Conceptual Bias: meaning of overall theoretical framework and specific hypotheses are not equivalent across cultures so study is not meaningful.
Method Bias: biases associated with how the study is administered-
Sampling Bias: samples being tested are not representative of culture
Procedural bias: procedures, environments, and settings of testing are not equivalent across cultures.
Language/Linguistic Bias: research protocols are not semantically equivalent across languages, linguistic equivalence does not guarantee measurement equivalence, back translation and committee approach used to ensure no linguistic bias.
Measurement Bias: measures used to collect data in different cultures are not equally valid and reliable in regards to their conceptual definitions and empirical operationalization- uses
Psychometric equivalence: measurement/structural equivalence on a statistical level Factor Analysis: factors are groups of items on a questionnaire that represent different constructs in the minds of participants
Structural Equivalence: same factors emerge in different cultures so same mental constructs are working and responses between cultures are comparable.
Response Bias: systematic tendency to respond in a certain way to items or scales is it is not clear whether there are differences in what is being measured or merely differences in how people respond using scales.
Types of Response Bias: socially desirable, acquiescence, extreme response, reference group effect.
Interpretational Bias: statistically significant results from one sample interpreted as meaningful for an entire culture.
4.Exploratory studies: examine existence of broad scope of cultural similarities and differences with limited capability to address cause of differences v Hypothesis Studies:examine why cultural differences exist providing more substantial contributions to theory development but is less likely to discover interesting differences outside the realm of the tested theory. Contextual factors are any variable that can explain the observed cultural difference which enhances validity and helps rule out influence of biases and inequivalence and are generally needed in hypothesis testing studies. Structure: comparisons of constructs, structures or relationships with other constructs focused on relationship between variables v Level oriented: comparisons of scores across cultures looking for different mean levels of different variables between different cultures. Individual: individual participants provide data as unit of analysis v Ecological/Cultural level: countries or cultures are units of analysis. Unpackaging studies: identifying context variables that give rise to theorized cultural differences- Individual Level Measures: assess variable on individual level thought to be product of culture. Experiments: researchers create conditions to establish cause-effect relationships- Priming studies: experimentally manipulating mindsets of participants and measuring resulting change in behavior and Behavioral studies: manipulating environments and observing changes in behavior
5. Validity: accuracy, is study measuring what it is supposed to. Reliability: consistency, does it produce the same results every time it is tested.
6. What is important to keep in mind when defining culture and how to study it?How you operationalize the definition of variable of interest determines how you measure it.
Chapter 3
1. Parenting style: goal of how to promote children's well-being, positive outcomes, develop good character and morality.
Parental ethnotheories: parental cultural belief systems which shape what parents think is the right way to parent and guide parent practices that structure children's daily lives.
Universal Parenting Styles- Authoritarian: expect unquestioned obedience and controlled child; Permissive: warm and nurturing allow child to regulate own lives with few guidelines; Authoritative: sensitive to child's maturity and fair, reasonable and affectionate; Uninvolved: don't respond appropriately to child and act indifferent. Domain Specific Parenting: focus on parenting behaviors rather than styles, include- protection, control, reciprocation, guided learning, and group participation, appropriate parenting practices correspond to relevant domain.
2. Brofenbrenner ecological systems theory: theory of how your development is shaped by our environment to varying degrees. Microsystem- environment of daily lives with direct interaction (school, family, peer group), Mesosystem: microsystem and context work together to influence child (link between school and fam), exosystem: contexts that indirectly affect child (parent's workplace, friends of fam, neighbors, media), macro system: culture (religion, society, attitudes of culture), chronosystem: time and history's impact on systems.
3. Language better if learned before age 8. Culture best before 15 worse after 31.
4. Enculturation: process of young learning and adopting ways and manners of culture, refers to products (psychological aspects of culture) of the socialization proves, process by which individuals retain norms of their cultural group. Socialization: is the process by which we learn and internalize rules and patterns of society deliberately starting from first day of life, related to society and processes and mechanisms by which we learn the rules.
5. Child rearing and children's behavior in 6 countries: Mexico, Kenya, USA, Okinawa, India, Phillipines. Found child's behavior and personality connected to broader ecology and women's work roles contribute to children's social behaviors more than big social change.
6. Differences in language, school systems, parental and familial values, teaching styles and teacher student relationships, and attitudes and appraisals of students.
7. Most important contributing factor to identity and behavior ages 13-17
Chapter 4
1. Temperament is biologically based style of interacting with world that exists from birth including reactivity and self-regulation.
Goodness of Fit: How well child's temperament matches expectations and values of the parent. Indicates personalities and behaviors in adult life- shyness, activity level, smiling and laughter, fear, soothability and distress to limitation. Results in differences in learning, social experiences, behaviors, personalities, and worldviews.