C ulture and the Individual

1. Culture and the Individual Culture, Anthropology and Psychology

2. Disciplines • Anthropology Culture and Personality Psychological Anthropology • Psychology Cross-Cultural Psychology • Education • Interdisciplinary/Multidisciplinary Cultural Psychology

3. Key Terminology • Culture • Personality • Society • Biology • Ecology • Diversity • Universal traits • Culture Specific Traits

4. Culture • Abstract • Learned • Shared • Rules/Standards/Templates • Generating Behavior • Understanding experience

5. Culture Culture is the abstract, learned, shared rules/standards/templates used to generate behavior and to interpret experience.

6. Personality • Characteristics of individuals • Genetics • Socialization • Enculturation • Life experience • Ongoing interaction

7. Personality • Personality is the characteristics of an individual arising from the ongoing interaction of genetics, socialization, enculturation and life experience.

8. Society A group of people using a shared culture

9. Biology • Anatomy • Physiology • Genetics

10. Epigenetics • Epigenetics • Environmental on/off switches • Regulatory Genes vs Structural Genes • Environmental learning • Imprinting

11. Ecology • Environment • Subsistence strategy • Subsistence technology

12. Diversity Terminology • Race • Ethnicity • Cross Cultural • Cross Ethnic (Multicultural) • Cross National • First, Second, Third World • Developed, Developing • Traditional, Modern • Peripheral, Core

13. Race An arbitrary social category used for purposes of discrimination. Ethnicity A group with which one chooses to identify on the basis of shared ancestry or heritage.

14. Universal Traits Traits that all humans have Culture Specific Traits Traits that only occur in a particular culture or particular type of culture

15. Key Terminology • Absolutism • Relativism • Ethnocentrism • Cultural Relativism • Reductionist • Determinist

16. Absolutism Belief that things are what they are without regard for their context/environment. Relativism Belief that things differ depending on the context/environment in which they are found/grow/develop.

17. Ethnocentrism Judging another culture using your own culture’s rules and standards. Cultural Relativism Judging another culture using its own rules and standard’s.

18. Reductionist Trying to explain complex phenomena using single, simple explanations. Eg. Determinism

19. Determinism • Environmental Determinism • Economic Determinism • Ecological Determinism • Sociopolitical Determinism • Biological Determinism

20. Levels of Analysis • Population Level • Community • Family • Individual level • Socialization • Enculturation • Acculturation

21. Socialization The process of learning when content is consciously taught by others within the society. Enculturation The process of absorbing the culture(s) in which an individual is raised.

22. Acculturation The process of acquiring a culture other than the one in which an individual was raised.

23. Processes in the Individual • Ontogeny • Perception • Emotion • Cognition • Learning

24. Ontogeny The process of growth and development in an individual organism Perception The process of detecting and interpreting stimuli from the outside world

25. Emotion The conscious experience of a feeling or state which leads to both internal and external reactions Cognition Thought processes

26. Learning The process of acquiring and storing information