Understanding Culture

Issues and Debates – Cross Cultural Psychological Research

In this course, Dr Ayoub Bouguettaya (University of Birmingham) explores cross cultural psychological research. In the first lecture, we think about how we understand culture in the context of psychological research. In the second lecture, we think about what differences exist between cultures which psychological researchers might study, and the traditional consideration of psychology as an emic science. In the third lecture, we think about some ways in which researchers have tried to include different cultures in their studies and the failures that this process has given rise to. Next, we think about the presence and consequences of cultural differences in developmental and clinical psychology. In the fifth lecture, we think about how culture can impact cognition, perception, and social psychology, with a specific focus on collectivist versus individualistic cultural viewpoints. In the sixth and final lecture, we think about debates which exist in the field of cross cultural psychology, and whether the subject can be considered racist, given its continued ignorance of non-western cultures.

Understanding Culture

In this lecture, we think about understanding the role of culture in psychological research, focusing in particular on: (i) a novel example study demonstrating the power of differing object exposure on perception and expectation, contextualised in the differing shapes of a typical window around the world; (ii) further examples of cultural differences, including conversational volume, hand gestures when speaking, and buyer-seller interactions online; (iii) definitions of culture and cross-cultural psychology to be used throughout this course; (iv) the prevalence of WEIRD culture research and the problems with applying findings from these studies to the whole world’s population.