Sunday, September 12, 2010
Cultural Heritage
One of the seven unifying themes, Behavior is Shaped by Cultural Heritage, affects all of society which everyone can relate to in their own way. One's cultural heritage is invisible.(assumptions, ideals, attitudes and beliefs are not apparent to outsiders). My home town is made up of predominately people of an Asian background. Next time I travel back home, I'm going to consider cultural determinants of my neighbors to achieve an understanding of human behavior. Similarities and differences occur across cultures. It will be interesting to explore the cultural variance and invariance between my cultural heritage and that of my neighbors.
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Over the last several years, the discipline of psychology has indeed begun to recognize the importance of culture in understanding others' behavior. As a social psychologist, I'm interested (in part) in what influences people to attribute their own and others' behaivor to internal or external factors. In the west, we like to hold people responsible for their behavior so we're prone to attribute their behavior to internal causes. Other cultures don't necessarily share this bias and instead may focus on external circumstances (e.g., the situation, other people's influence) to explain a specific person's behavior. While in real life it's difficult to know exactly what cause or causes produced the behavior in question (since "control" conditions are typically absent), it's nevertheless still interesting to recognize that culture exerts a good deal of influence over our tendency to pick out the causes of behavior that seem to be most influential.
ReplyDeleteThis is interesting to think about because growing up in a prodominately white community I feel like I haven't seen any other culture. It felt like I was growing up in a bubble and it is unfortunate. Every culture has different views on different opinions and situations. Some countries do not have freedom of different cultures and sometimes in the US we take it for granted.
ReplyDeleteI definitely can see how one's cultural heritage influences and works to shape their behavior. Being raised in a Greek family, I began to notice several differences (in mannerisms, accepted norms, etc.) between myself and others around my age once I began going to school and being more exposed to others who have grown up practicing the ways of their own cultures. From culture to culture, one's traditions and values vary; cultural heritage is also one thing a person can never really lose, therefore making it a great determinant in shaping one's behavior.
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