Faculty presenters:

Phoebe Ellsworth, Law/Psychology
Joan Miller, Group Dynamics- ISR
Ram Mahalingam, Psychology
Richard Nisbett, Psychology, Group Dynamics-ISR

The following syllabus has been developed to provide:
a) a structured, comprehensive (if brief) introduction to fundamental issues in the study of culture and cognition; b) informative lectures by faculty as well as sufficient time for student response and unstructured open discussion; and c) bibliographic guidance for further study on individual topics.

Class time will be managed as follows:
class will begin promptly at 9:00. Please arrive at 8:45 to have coffee and refreshments, and be prepared to start at 9:00. A faculty member will speak until approximately 9:45 on the topic of the day. From 9:45 to 10:00 one or two student leaders will respond to the reading and lecture material, presenting focused questions for debate. A version of those questions should be sent to the class by email no later than Thursday morning so that everyone has a chance to think about them before class. Between 10:00 and 10:30 the floor will be open for discussion of the topics proposed, with the student leader moderating discussion to ensure that everyone who wishes to participate is able to do so fully.

READING:

J. W. M. Whiting (1954). The cross-cultural method. In G. Lindzey (Ed.) Handbook of Social Psychology, (pp. 523-531). Boston: Addison-Wesley.

FURTHER READINGS:

Piker, S. (1994) Classic culture and personality. In P. K. Bock (Ed.) Handbook of Psychological Anthropology. (pp. 1-18). Greenwood Press.

Wallace, A.F. C. (1970) Culture and personality (Rev. ed.). New York: Random House.

Whiting, B. B. (1963) Six cultures: Studies of Child rearing. New York: Wiley.

ISSUES: Culture and personality school, attempts to integrate case studies with comparative methods, influence of psychoanalysis, how to classify the world's cultures, degeneration into national character studies.

READING:

Aronson, E., & Carlsmith, J. M. (1963). The effect of the severity of threat on the devaluation of forbidden behavior. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 66, 584-588.

FURTHER READINGS:

Ross, L., Amabile, T.M., and Steinmetz, J.L. (1977). Social roles, social control, and biases in the social-perception process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 485-494.

Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relationships. Chapters 1-4. New York: Wiley.

Jones, E. E. (1984). Major developments in social psychology during the past five decades. In G. Lindzey and E. Aronson (Eds.), Handbook of Social Psychology. (Volume 1, pp. 47-107). NY: Random House.

Ross, L. (1988) "Situationist perspectives on the obedience experiments." Contemporary Psychology, 33, 101-104.

Ross, L. D. and Nisbett, R. N. (1991) The person and the situation. Chapter 1.New York: McGraw Hill.

ISSUES: How would Chinese children respond in the low threat condition of the A & C experiment? The high threat condition? How would working class European American children respond? How come no culture in mainstream psychology until very recently?

READING:

White, G. & Lutz, C. (1992). Introduction. In T. Schwartz, G.M. White & C.A. Lutz (Eds.), New directions in psychological anthropology (pp. 1-17). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

FURTHER READINGS:

Bock, P.K. (Eds.) (1994). Handbook of psychological anthropology. Westport: Greenwood Press.

Lutz, C.A. & L. Abu-Lughod (Eds.) (1990). Language and the politics of emotion: Studies in emotion and social interaction. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Strauss, C. & N. Quinn (1997). A cognitive theory of cultural meaning. New York: Cambridge University Press.

ISSUES: Critique of work in culture and personality, Rejection of psychological approaches after 1970s, Cognitive anthropology, Symbolic anthropology, Postmodern perspectives, Recent anthropological traditions of cultural psychology.

READING:

Fiske, A. P., Kitayama, S., Markus, H. R., & Nisbett, R. E. (1998). The cultural matrix of social psychology. In D. Gilbert and S. Fiske (Eds.), Handbook of Social Psychology . Vol. 2 (4th ed.), (pp. 915-981) Boston, MA: Mcgraw-Hill. NOTE: Read only pp. 915-939 for today.

FURTHER READINGS:

Miller, Joan (1984). Culture and the development of everyday social explanation. Journal Personality and Social Psychology 46, 961-978.

Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture's consequences. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Triandis, H. C. (1995). Individualism and collectivism. Boulder: Westview Press.

Trompenaars, F. (1993). Riding the waves of cultures. London: Breale.

ISSUES: Do you believe that East Asian and American cultures represent two genuinely different ways of being? Do you believe that East Asians are genuinely self-effacing or just pretending to a modesty they don't feel any more than Americans do? Why were psychologists caught unawares by the discovery of cultural differences in the dispositionist bias? Do the differences occur at the perceptual level or the interpretive level?

READINGS:

Ekman, P. and Friesen, W.V. (1971). Constants across cultures in the face and emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 17, 124-129.

Mead, M. (1975). Review of (ital.) Darwin and Facial Expression. Journal of Communication, Vol. 25 (1), 209-213.

FURTHER READINGS:

Ellsworth, P. C. (1994). Sense, culture, and sensibility. In S. Kitayama & H. Markus (Eds.) Emotion and Culture: Empirical Studies of Mutual Influence. (pp. 23-50). Washington DC: APA.

Lutz, C., & White, G.M.L. (1986). The anthropology of emotions. Annual Review of Anthropology, 15. 405-436.

Mesquita, B., and Frijda, N. H. (1992) Cultural variations in emotions: A review. Psychological Bulletin, 412, 179-204.

Rosaldo, M. Z. (1984). Toward an Anthropology of Self and Feeling. In Shweder and LeVine, (Eds.) Culture Theory: Essays on Mind Self, and Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wierzbicka, A. (1994). Language of emotions. In J. Russell, J.-M. Fernandez-Dols, A.S.R. Manstead, & J. Wellencamp (Eds.). Everyday concepts of emotion. (NATO ASI Series D, Vol. 81, pp. 17-47). Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Scherer, K. R., Walbott, H. G., & Summerfield A. B. (Eds.) (1986). Experiencing emotion: A cross-cultural study. New York: Cambridge University Press.

ISSUES: Biological vs. cultural roots of emotions, basic categories vs. culturally constructed categories vs. some other "basics", feeling vs. expression.

READINGS:

Cole, M. (1996) Cultural psychology: A once and a future discipline (pp. 130-145) Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Greeno, J. (1998). Situativity of knowing, learning, and research. American Psychologist, 53(1), 5-26.

FURTHER READINGS:

Chaiklin, S. & Lave, J. (1993) Understanding practice : Perspectives on activity and context. New York : Cambridge University Press.

Engestrom, Y. (1987) Learning by expanding. Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit.

Engestrom, Y. (1999). Activity theory and individual and social transformation. In Engestrom, Y. (Ed) Perspectives on activity theory (pp. 19-38). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Lave, J. (1990). The culture of acquisition and the practice of understanding. Stigler, J.W., R.A. Shweder & G.H. Herdt (Eds.) Cultural psychology: Essays on comparative human development (pp. 309-327). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Luria, A.R. (1976) Cognitive development: Its cultural and social foundations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Leontiev, A. N. (1978) Activity, consciousness, and personality. Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice Hall.

Martin, L., Nelson, C. & Tobach, E. (1995). Sociocultural psychology : theory and practice of doing and knowing. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Rogoff, B. (1995). Observing sociocultural activity on three planes: Participatory appropriation, guided participation, and apprenticeship. In Wertsch, J. V. (Ed) Sociocultural studies of mind (pp. 139-164). New York: Cambridge University Press.

ISSUES: The three different perspectives on sociocultural perspectives on learning (situated cognition, cognitive apprenticeship and activity theory) will critically examined with respect to their epistemological assumptions, the mechanisms for learning/development (?) and knowledge transmission.

READING:

Peng, K., & Nisbett, R. E. (In press). Culture, dialecticism, and reasoning about contradiction. American Psychologist.

FURTHER READINGS:

Chiu, L.-H. (1972). A cross-cultural comparison of cognitive styles in Chinese and American children. International Journal of Psychology, 7, 235-242.

Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Heath, S. B. (1982). What no bedtime story means: Narrative skills at home and school. Language in Society, 11, 49-79.

Hong, Y., Chiu, C., & Kung, T. (1997). Bringing culture out in front: Effects of cultural meaning system activation on social cognition. In K. Leung, Y. Kashima, U. Kim, & S. Yamaguchi (Eds.), Progress in Asian Social Psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 135-146). Singapore: Wiley.

Luria, A. R. (1931). Psychological expedition to Central Asia. Science, 74, 383-384.

Witkin, H. A., & Berry, J. W. (1975). Psychological differentiation in cross-cultural perspective. Journal of Cross Cultural Psychology, 6, 4-87.

ISSUES: How deep are the cognitive differences? Do people in cultures literally have different processes or do they just use them in different circumstances? Do Chinese believe literal contradictions such as "this is white and it is not white" or merely seeming contradictions such as "this is white and it is not white?"

READINGS:

LeVine, R.A. (1990). Infant environments in psychoanalysis: A cross-cultural view. In J. W. Stigler & Shweder, R. A. Cultural psychology: Essays on comparative human development, (pp. 454-474). New York.

Wiley, A., Rose, A, Burger, L & Miller, P. (1998). Constructing autonomous selves through narrative practices: A comparative study of working-class and middle-class families. Child Development, 69, No. 3, 833-847.

FURTHER READINGS:

Goodnow, J.J., Miller, P.J. & F. Kessel (Eds) (1995). Cultural practices as contexts for development New directions for child development, V. 67. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Greenfield, P.M. & Suzuki, L.K. (1998). Culture and human development: Implications for parenting, education, pediatrics, and mental health. In I.E. Sigel & K.A. Renninger (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology, 5th Ed., Vol 4. New York: Wiley.

Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in thinking: Cognitive development in social context. New York: Oxford University Press.

ISSUES: Classic treatment of culture in theories of child development, Comparison of Piagetian vs sociocultural approaches to cognitive development, Culture and normative developmental models, Processes of enculturation, Rethinking the concept of "development".

READINGS:

Landrine, H. (1992) Clinical implications of cultural differences: The referential versus the indexical self. Clinical Psychology Review; Vol 12, 401-415

Fredrickson, B. L., Roberts, T. A. (1997) Objectification theory: Toward understanding women's lived experiences and mental health risks. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 21, 173-206.

FURTHER READINGS:

Cooper, C. R., Jacquelyne, J. F., Margarita, A. & Lopez, E.M. (1998) Multiple selves, multiple worlds: Three useful strategies for research with ethnic minority youth on identity, relationships, and opportunity structures. McLoyd, V. C. Studying minority adolescents: Conceptual, methodological, and theoretical issues (pp. 111-125). Mahwah, NJ, USA: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers.

Freeman,M. (1999) Culture, narrative, and the poetic construction of selfhood. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 12(2), 99-116.

Holland, D. & Skinner, D. (1997). The co-development of identity, agency, and lived worlds. In Tudge, J (Ed) Comparisons in human development: Understanding time and context (pp. 193-221). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for selves and theories of selves. Psychological Review, 98, 224-253.

Peacock, J.L. & Holland, D. C. (1993)The narrated self: Life stories in process. Ethos, 21(4), 367-383.

Roland, A. (1997). How universal is psychoanalysis? The self in India, Japan, and the United States. In Allen, D(Ed) Culture and self: Philosophical and religious perspectives, East and West (pp. 27-39). Boulder, CO, USA: Westview Press.

Roland, A.(1996) The influence of culture on the self and selfobject relationships: An Asian-North American comparison. Psychoanalytic Dialogues; Vol 6(4), 461-475

Walkerdine, V. (1999). Behind the painted smile. In Appel, S (Ed) Psychoanalysis and pedagogy (pp. 17-25). Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey/Greenwood Publishing Group.

Watkins, D., Akande, A., Fleming, J., Ismail,M., Lefner, K., Regmi, M., Watson, S., Yu, J., Adair, J., Cheng, C., Gerong, Andres., McInerney, D., Mpofu, Elias., Singh-Sengupta, Sunita., Wondimu, Habtamu (1998). Cultural dimensions, gender, and the nature of self-concept: A fourteen-country study. International Journal of Psychology, 33(1), 17-31.

ISSUES: Various perspectives on self (cultural, narrative and psychoanalytic)and their relevance to cultural psychology will be discussed.

READING:

J. Jenkins & M. Valiente (1995) Bodily transactions of the passions: el calor among Salvadoran women refugees. In T. J. Csordas (Ed.) Embodiment and experience. (pp. 163-182) Cambridge University Press

FURTHER READINGS:

Devereux, G. (1980). Normal and Abnormal. In Basic problems of ethnopsychiatry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Scheper-Hughes, N. (1992). Hungry bodies, medicine, and the state: Toward a critical Psychological Anthropology. In Schwartz et al, (Eds.) New directions in psychological anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Jenkins, J. H. (1994). Culture, emotion, and Psychopathology, In S. Kitayama and H. Markus (Eds.) Emotion and culture: Empirical studies of mutual influence. (pp. 307-338) Washington: APA, .

Foucault, M. (1965) Madness and civilization: A history of insanity in the age of reason. New York: Vintage Books.

Good, B. (1992) Culture and psychopathology: Directions for psychiatric anthropology. In Schwartz, T., et al (eds.), New directions in psychological anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

ISSUES: Explanations of deviance, culturally vs. biologically constituted; the West's attempts to incorporate the cultural; ways in which deviance is constructed--physical, moral, supernatural.

READINGS:

Fiske, A. P. (1998). The inherent sociability of Homo Sapiens. International Society for the Study of Personal Relationships Bulletin, 14, 4-9.

Fiske, A. P., Kitayama, S., Markus, H. R., & Nisbett, R. E. (1998). The cultural matrix of social psychology. In D. Gilbert and S. Fiske (Eds.), Handbook of Social Psychology . Vol. 2 (4th ed.), (pp. 915-981) Boston, MA: Mcgraw-Hill. NOTE: Read pp. 950-954 only.

Fiske, A. P., TABLE 1: Manifestations and Features of Four Elementary Relational Models

FURTHER READINGS:

Fiske, A.P. (1991) Structures of social life: The four elementary forms of human relations: Communal sharing, authority ranking, equality matching, market pricing. New York, NY, USA: The Free Press

Fiske, A. P. (1992) The four elementary forms of sociality: Framework for a unified theory of social relations. Psychological Review, 99, 689-723.

Fiske, A. P., Kitayama, S., Markus, H. R., & Nisbett, R. E. (1998). The cultural matrix of social psychology. In D. Gilbert and S. Fiske (Eds.) Handbook of Social Psychology. (pp. 944-963).

ISSUES: Are the four forms proposed by Fiske found in every culture? Are there other candidates for forms at the fundamental level of these? Does the "forms" approach help in analyzing cultural diversity?

READING:

Mead, M. An investigation of the thought of primitive children, with special reference to animism. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 62, 173-190.

FURTHER READINGS:

Piaget, J. (1929) The Child's Conception of the World, Harcourt Brace.

Piaget, J. (1930) The Child's Conception of the Physical Causality, Harcourt Brace

Rozin, P., & Nemeroff, C. (1990) The laws of sympathetic magic: A psychological analysis of similarity and contagion. In J. W. Stigler, R.A., Shweder, & g. Herdt (Eds.), Cultural Psychology: Essays on comparative human development. (pp. 205-232) Cambridge: Cambridge Univesity Press.

ISSUES: Culture and thought, cognitive socialization, "logical" vs. "superstitious" thinking.

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