Culture, acculturation, religion and politics

Transcript

RyanLinh moved from Vietnam to Texas when she was fourteen. At school, she's fluent in English and in every new slang word. At home, she speaks Vietnamese with her grandmother and helps keep the family altar.

SoheeHer cousin, who came over at the same age, won't speak Vietnamese anymore, even at home. Same family, same move, two very different paths.

RyanWelcome to EPPP Prep, the podcast. I'm Ryan.

SoheeI'm Sohee. Today we're on cultural and sociopolitical psychology. How culture shapes personality, how researchers compare cultures fairly, what happens psychologically when people move between cultures, and how religion and politics fit in.

RyanLet's define culture. The OpenStax psychology textbook says culture refers to all of the beliefs, customs, art and traditions of a particular society. It's transmitted through language and through modeling of behaviors that are rewarded or punished.

SoheeAnd it describes culture as one of the most important environmental factors shaping personality. There seem to be both universal and culture-specific aspects of personality.

RyanThe big comparison is individualist versus collectivist cultures. In individualist cultures, people tend to believe independence, competition and personal achievement are important. Western nations like the United States, England and Australia score high on individualism.

SoheeIn collectivist cultures, people value social harmony, respectfulness and group needs over individual needs. People in countries in Asia, Africa and South America score high on collectivism.

RyanAnd those values shape personality. In one study, people in individualist cultures showed more personally oriented traits, while people in collectivist cultures showed more socially oriented traits.

SoheeRemember from our attribution episode, this also changes how people explain behavior. Collectivistic cultures lean toward situational explanations and holistic thinking.

RyanSo how do researchers study personality across cultures? The textbook describes three approaches. The cultural-comparative approach tests Western ideas about personality in other cultures, to see if they generalize.

SoheeThat's how the Big Five was tested. Researchers found the Big Five applicable and stable in many cultures around the world.

RyanThe indigenous approach came about in reaction to the dominance of Western approaches. Because Western assessments can't fully capture personality constructs in other cultures, it develops instruments based on constructs relevant to the culture being studied.

SoheeAnd the combined approach is a bridge between Western and indigenous psychology, to understand both universal and cultural variations.

RyanPause and think. A team in the Philippines builds a new personality inventory from concepts that matter in local culture, instead of translating an American test. Which approach?

SoheeThe indigenous approach. Translating and testing the American instrument there would be cultural-comparative.

RyanThe textbook also has a clinical point. Dana suggested that personality assessment for Native Americans is often provided without proper recognition of culture-specific responses and a tribe-specific frame of reference. Assessors need knowledge of history, tribal differences, contemporary reservation culture, and levels of acculturation to interpret results with minimal bias.

SoheeWhich connects to a broader worry in psychology. An open-access article by Muthukrishna and colleagues in Psychological Science notes that psychological data are dominated by samples from Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic nations. WEIRD, for short. And overwhelmingly from the United States.

RyanThey write that decades of research designed to uncover truths about human psychology may instead have uncovered truths about a thin slice of our species.

SoheeAnd they note that even nations that could all be called WEIRD differ considerably from one another. So culture isn't just West versus everyone else.

RyanNow acculturation. We'll use an open-access review by Schwartz and colleagues in the American Psychologist. As applied to individuals, acculturation refers to changes that result from contact with culturally dissimilar people, groups and social influences.

SoheeIt was originally conceptualized as unidimensional. Keeping your heritage culture and acquiring the receiving culture were opposite ends of one line. Gain one, lose the other.

RyanThen Berry developed a model where those are two independent dimensions. Crossing them gives four categories.

SoheeAssimilation: adopting the receiving culture and discarding the heritage culture. Separation: rejecting the receiving culture and keeping the heritage culture.

RyanIntegration: adopting the receiving culture and keeping the heritage culture. And marginalization: rejecting both.

SoheePause and think. Back to Linh and her cousin. Which categories?

RyanLinh keeps her heritage and adopts the new culture, so integration. Her cousin adopts the new culture and drops the heritage, so assimilation.

SoheeAnd here's what research suggests. Berry's integration category, also called biculturalism, is often associated with the most favorable psychosocial outcomes, especially among young immigrants. Bicultural people tend to show higher self-esteem and lower depression.

RyanThe review also flags limits. The validity of marginalization has been questioned. Studies using empirical clustering find small or nonexistent marginalization groups. And the model's been criticized as one size fits all, and for implying acculturation is purely a migrant's choice, when some aspects are constrained by circumstances.

SoheeBerry also distinguished four kinds of migrants: voluntary immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers and sojourners, like international students. The review notes that the acculturation options open to a migrant may vary with the circumstances of the migration.

RyanAnd when the context of reception is unfavorable, there's acculturative stress, meaning adverse effects of acculturation like anxiety, depression and other maladaptation.

SoheeIt can come from two directions. The receiving culture may scorn the person for not being oriented enough toward it. Or the heritage community may be displeased with the person for abandoning their heritage.

RyanAnd then the immigrant paradox. Migrants with more exposure to the receiving cultural context report poorer mental and physical health outcomes. The review argues that unidimensional measures can't tell whether that's from gaining the new culture, losing the heritage culture, or both.

SoheeNow religion and spirituality, which the knowledge statement names directly. An open-access review by Harold Koenig defines religion as involving beliefs, practices and rituals related to the transcendent, such as God, Allah, HaShem, or a Higher Power, or Brahman, Buddha, Dao or ultimate truth in Eastern traditions.

RyanAnd he distinguishes spirituality from humanism, values, morals and mental health by its connection to the sacred, the transcendent. It's connected to organized religion but also extends beyond it.

SoheeWhat does research show? Take depression. Koenig counts at least 444 studies. 272 of them, 61 percent, reported significant inverse relationships between religion or spirituality and depression. 28, or 6 percent, found relationships with greater depression.

RyanOne mechanism he describes is coping. Religion provides resources for coping with stress, including beliefs that give meaning to hard circumstances and a sense of purpose.

SoheeBut he's balanced. Religion can also be used to justify hatred and prejudice, foster rigid thinking, and lead to anxiety and excessive guilt. On balance, he concludes, it's generally associated with greater well-being and better coping.

RyanAnd the psychology textbook adds context. Religiosity generally correlates with happiness, but it depends on societal circumstances. In nations with difficult living conditions, religiosity is linked with greater well-being. In nations with favorable conditions, religious and nonreligious people report similar well-being.

SoheeFor practice, Koenig recommends taking a brief spiritual history, respecting patients' beliefs rather than challenging them, at least not initially, keeping any spiritual discussion patient centered and free of coercion, and not letting the clinician's own beliefs or lack of belief drive these decisions.

RyanFinally, political differences. The psychology textbook reports research by Rentfrow and colleagues suggesting levels of openness and conscientiousness in a state may predict voting patterns, with correlations between personality and liberal or conservative views.

SoheeAnd it ties group polarization to partisanship. When people choose media that match their views, they encounter fewer opposing views, and hostility toward the other side grows. The textbook reports that political polarization leads to open discrimination on par with, or perhaps exceeding, racial discrimination.

RyanSo political differences connect to both personality and group processes.

SoheeHow does the exam test this? Berry's four categories are a favorite, usually through a short description of someone's choices. Ask two questions. Does the person keep the heritage culture? And do they take on the new one?

RyanAnd a classic distractor treats assimilation as the healthiest outcome. The research in this review points to integration instead, with the caveats we mentioned.

SoheeGood. Let's pull it all together.

RyanLet's recap. Culture shapes personality. Individualist cultures prize independence and achievement, collectivist cultures harmony and group needs.

SoheeCultural-comparative tests Western ideas elsewhere, indigenous builds from local constructs, combined bridges both. And watch for WEIRD samples.

RyanBerry: assimilation, separation, integration, marginalization. Integration, or biculturalism, is often most favorable. Acculturative stress can come from both cultures, and the immigrant paradox needs two-dimensional measurement.

SoheeReligion and spirituality are mostly linked with better mental health, but not always. Take a spiritual history and respect beliefs. And political differences link to personality and polarization.

RyanIf you come from a family that crossed cultures, you may recognize these ideas from your own life. That lived knowledge is valuable. Let it help these concepts stick.

SoheeThanks for listening to EPPP Prep.

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