1,354,466 research outputs found
Evolution and Culture
No full textThe goal of cross-cultural psychology to identify and explain similarities and differences in the behavior of individuals in different cultures requires linking human behavior to its context (Cole, Meshcheryakov & Ponomariov, 2011). In order to specify this relation, the focus is usually on the sociocultural environment and how it interacts with behavior. Since cross-cultural psychology also deals with the evolutionary and biological bases of behavior, this focus on culture has regularly led to an unbalanced view (Berry, Poortinga, Breugelmans, Chasiotis & Sam, 2011). Too often, biology and culture are seen as opposites: what is labeled as cultural is not biological and what is labeled as biological is not cultural (Chasiotis, 2010, 2011a). This article will first introduce the central concepts of natural and sexual selection, adaptation, and the epigenetic (open) genetic processes in evolutionary biology, and indicate their psychological implications. It will then argue that biology and culture are intricately related. Finally, empirical evidence from diverse psychological research areas will be presented to illustrate why the study of the evolutionary basis is as essential as the analysis of the sociocultural context for the understanding of behavior. Due to space restrictions, cultural transmission will be the only research area which is addressed in more detail (more examples of evolutionary approaches in intelligence, personality, and behavior genetics and their implications for cross-cultural research can be found on the website accompanying Berry et al., 2011; see also further readings section)
Implicit Motives Across Cultures
No full textIn recent years, methodological and substantial progress has been made in the field of cross-cultural studies on implicit motives. We propose that cross-cultural studies on implicit motives are indispensable to understand universal and culture-specific variations in individuals’ mental processes and behavior. It is assumed that implicit motives represent the first motivational system to be shaped in a human being’s ontogeny and that they have far-reaching consequences for individuals’ development, their feelings and actions in everyday life across different cultural groups. Applying psychometrically sound measurements cross-culturally, researchers have revealed a number of universal relationships between implicit motives and psychological and behavioral correlates. Despite these promising advancements, fundamental work still needs to be done with respect to the developmental antecedents of motives and behavioral correlates, particularly focusing on affiliation and power, which have received much less attention compared to the achievement motive. We conclude that if we want to do a better job at predicting behavior both within and across cultural groups, we need to supplement our typical reliance on explicit measures with implicit measures of motivation, beliefs, and values
An epigenic view on culture:What evolutionary developmental psychology has to offer for cross-cultural psychology
No full text
Helping and Volunteering across Cultures: Determinants of Prosocial Behavior
No full textWhy do people help others and what motivates them to engage in voluntary work? Are the psychological mechanisms that initiate prosocial behavior similar across cultures? In order to find answers for these questions, we give an overview of the prominent approaches to helping, and report findings of studies investigating informal spontaneous help and formal, planned forms of helping. A linchpin of our review is to go beyond a mere descriptive comparison of helping and volunteering across cultures, and to examine the pathways leading to helping and volunteering, which we argue can be considered universal across cultural contexts. Previous studies demonstrate cultural differences in the frequencies of helping and volunteering. Particularly when the prosocial act is not directed at close others, i.e., at out-group members, differences between cultural samples are likely to emerge. In situations of spontaneous helping, helping is more frequent in rural and less affluent contexts than in urban and wealthier contexts. For long-term commitments of helping (i.e., volunteering) however, the reverse direction is found. Here, rates of volunteering are higher in more western and affluent countries.
We propose a model of helping that assumes different precursory mechanisms involved in these two forms of helping: spontaneous helping is an unconscious and implicit process activated by automatic affective components, whereas the decision and action of volunteering is a more conscious and explicit effort, initiated by elaborate considerations. We assume these two ways of initiating prosocial acting – implicit and explicit- to function similarly across different cultural groups. We conclude by highlighting conceptual, integrative avenues for a more systematic investigation of helping, and indicate methodological issues that need to be addressed in future research. In particular, we argue for the use of implicit measures in research of prosocial behavior, and present exemplary results for such an approach, which supports the proposed two-process model of prosocial behavior, and thus highlights the relevance for using both explicit and implicit measures in research on prosocial behavior
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