Culture

'Cultural factors' is a term that appears in many topics, and I thought it could use a bit of explanation.

Most psychological research is done in North America and Europe, and theories are sometimes criticised for this - do the conclusions apply to other cultures around the world?

It used to be the case that in the unit 1 topics, you could get a tricky little 4 or 6-mark question on culture. However, the new format seems to make that less likely - I can't see a ten mark question on this coming up.

However, it would still be useful to know at least one piece of info or research for each topic that will allow you to show an awareness of cross-cultural issues. This will help you pick up extra marks, especially A&E marks, and give that 'WOW' factor to the examiner by knowing things that most candidates don't know!

Here are some possibilities:

Memory: a lot of our long-term memories form culture-based bundles of knowledge called schemas. Bartlett (1932) showed how people tend to distort info from other cultures. Any good theory of LTM must take culture into account.

Early Socialisation: Morelli & Tronick (1992) gave evidence that 'stages of attachment' apply to an African hunter-gatherer tribe, despite differences in child-rearing. A strength of Ainsworth's theory of attachment types (secure, avoidant, resistant) is that she studied Ugandan children as well as American.

Stress: Social support is one of the strategies for reducing stress. Kim & McKenry (1998) studied social support in the USA, and found that ethnic minorities (e.g. black, hispanic) tended to have better support from their parents/children than the white majority.

Conf & Obed: There have been various cross-cultural studies based on the Asch and Milgram paradigms. Smith & Bond (1998) looked at 31 studies of conformity, and found that people from 'collectivist' cultures (primarily African and Asian countries) tended to show higher levels of conformity than people from 'individualist' cultures (e.g. North America, Western Europe).

Intelligence: The main issue to be aware of is cultural bias in IQ testing. Gould (1982) disputed evidence of racial differences in IQ, as cultural background and knowledge of English were confounding variables.