Cultural Psychology

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Cultural Psychology

• Daniel S. Messinger, Ph.D.

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Cultural Psychology

• All social and emotional development occurs in a
  cultural context
• Culture involves shared beliefs and practices
  which unite communities and differentiate them
  from other communities
• What may appear to be a universal feature of
  development, is often one of myriad, cultural
  solutions to a problem

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Examples

• What to do when baby cries
• Where should baby sleep
• Who should play with baby
• Who should take care of baby
• What about rambunctious toddlers

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Questions

• What is cultural psychology (give examples)?
• Is psychology weve been studying cultural
  psychology?
• How are toddlers desires for objects handled
  differently in Salt Lake City and San Pedro? Do
  toddlers or siblings end up with object in each
  community and what do mothers believe about this?
• What are differences between American and
  Japanese toddlers in toddler task and do they
  reflect differences in autonomy and
  interdependence have reference to videotapes
  examples
• What types of attributions characterize
  traditional Japanese child-rearing? What is the
  developmental discontinuity in Japanese
  development?
• Child care
• How is the quantity and quality of child care
  associated with peer competence?

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Smile imitation differs by 3 months
Wörmann, V., Holodynski, M., Kärtner, J.,
Keller, H. (2012). A cross-cultural comparison of
the development of the social smile A
longitudinal study of maternal and infant
imitation in 6- and 12-week-old infants. Infant
Behavior and Development, 35(3), 335-347. doi
10.1016/j.infbeh.2012.03.002
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Current trend of human development

• Emphasizing the meaning of both individual and
  cultural factors of socialization
• Previously, individual autonomy, defined as
  independence from others a requisite of healthy
  human development

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Autonomy vs. Interdependence?

• Value system, rules, and the structure of the
  family unit have been formed through the societal
  demands which show variances across time and
  cultures.
• A model of family change (Kagitçibasi, 1996a,
  1996b) - analyzes the link between the self,
  family, and society in order to explain cultural
  differences

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Family Interaction Patterns(Kagitcibasi, 1996,
2005)

• Pattern of total interdependence
• The child is the economic value
• Independence of the child is not valued or
  evaluated
• Obedience is fundamental to childrearing
• Pattern of dependence
• The child a source of economic costs
• Independence of the child highly valued
• Autonomy is the basic childrearing orientation
• The pattern of psychological interdependence
• The child no longer the economic value
• Psychological interdependence of the child
  valued
• Closeness and relatedness (not separateness) is
  the ultimate goal in childrearing practices

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Physical contact tactile behaviors

• Hispanic mothers report touching more frequently,
  being more affectionate with their infants and
  having more skin-to-skin contact.
• Observations no overall differences in
  mother-infant touch, but the Hispanic mothers
  showed more close touch and more close and
  affectionate touch compared to Anglo mothers, who
  showed more distal touch.
• Infants were 9 months old
• Franco F, Fogel A, Messinger DS, Frazier CA.
  Cultural Differences in Physical Contact Between
  Hispanic and Anglo Mother-Infant Dyads Living in
  the United States. Early Development and
  Parenting 19965(3)119 - 127.

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What about Miami?

• Does parental touch differ between Hispanics and
  non-Hispanics?
• What functions might differences serve?
• Assortative mating

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Tronick, Morelli and Ivey (1992)

• Continuous Care and Contact model
• Primary relationship with one individual that
  widens only to one or two more people.
• Evidence of this in US Infants, and
  cross-culturally from the !Kung (Konner 1972)

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Efe People

• Ituri forest of Zaire
• Small communities of a few families
• Leaf huts face a communal space
• High mortality rates, low fertility
• High work load, not strong delineations of labor
  most gathering is communal
• Multiple caregivers, infants engaged withothers
  half the time, 5 every hour (Tronick et al.
  1987)
• Methodology issues
• Naturalistic, one community at both points
• Data gathered at different times
• Better data gathering methods
• Researchers living in these camps
• Some variation in when the observations were made

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Multiple, simultaneous relationships

• The Efe infant experiences a pattern of
  simultaneous and multiple relationships.
• Not a pattern initially focused on one person
  that gradually progresses to other relationships.
  
• This simultaneous pattern is influenced by
  physical and social ecological factors and
  cultural practices.
• This pattern of social experience leads to a
  sense of self that incorporates other people
• Assumptions that early relationships are
  hierarchical and sequential in nature, require
  reevaluation.
• Tronick, E. Z., Morelli, G. A., Ivey, P. K.
  (1992). The Efe forager infant and toddler's
  pattern of social relationships Multiple and
  simultaneous. Developmental Psychology, 28(4),
  568-577.

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Caretaker-Child Strategic model

• Motivation and goals, opportunities, constraints
  between infant and caregiver
• BUT...
• Social Factors - Group Composition, values
  customs -gt child rearing patterns
• Ecological Factors - climate, food supply,
  environmental risks -gt effort, protection and care

VS.
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Method and Results

• Quasi-cross sectional (Five Levels, N 40, n
  8, gender about the same)
• Four groups- Mother, Father, Adults, Children
• Compare to average person for Adults and
  Children, rather than the group as a whole for
  timing
• Solitary activity increases with age and Social
  contact decrease with age
• Overall less time spent with Mothers across the
  first three years, no significant difference for
  Fathers
• At first time point, Mothers more than father or
  adults, Children more than Fathers
• At last time point, More time with Children than
  any other, More contact with Mother than Father.
• More time spent with average child over the first
  three years
• At 5 months spent more time with mother than
  others, at 3 years Peers and mothers are similar,
  more children than adults.

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Conclusions and Further Questions

• Tronick suggests
• Society requires managing many relationships
  which are essential to be successful
• Close distances to work areas mean easy to return
  and console/tend to infant, in contrast with
  !Kung
• Mortality leads to many parent-less children and
  childless adults
• Care-giving style works to buffer from health
  risks
• Many people work as many "secure" bases
• Therefore this pattern suggest a more
  multi-layered process were each relationship may
  have an independent and meaningful impact.
• Is this exclusionary of CCC model?

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Time alone? Time with whom?
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(No Transcript)
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Privileged Treatment of Toddlers Cultural
Aspects of Individual Choice and Responsibility

• Christine E. Mosier Barbara Rogoff
  Developmental Psychology 2003, 39, 1047-1060

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Privileged Treatment of Toddlers Cultural
Aspects of Individual Choice and Responsibility.
Christine Mosier and Barbara Rogoff

• Collectivism v. Individualism?
• Treatment of toddlers Special treatment or same
  rules for sharing?
• Age of understanding
• Emphasis on individuality and choice promotes
  cooperation that is voluntary as opposed to
  guided by parental control
• The study
• 16 Mayan families from San Pedro, Guatemala
• 16 middle class families from Salt Lake City,
  Utah
• Interactions between toddlers (14 to 20 mo) and
  siblings (3 to 5 yrs)
• Interview with mother about child-rearing, social
  behavior, etc.
• Given 9 objects to toddlers and siblings to
  manipulate, with mothers help

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Access to Desired Objects

• How 3- to 5-year-old siblings and mothers handled
  access to objects desired by the siblings and
  toddlers, in Mayan families of San Pedro,
  Guatemala, and middle-class families in Salt Lake
  City, Utah.
• We observed whether toddlers (1420 months) were
  accorded privileged access to objects that their
  siblings also desired or whether toddlers and
  slightly older siblings were held to similar
  expectations.

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Guatemalan Mayan mothers

• almost never overruled their toddlers'
  objections to or insistence on an activitythey
  attempted to persuade but did not force the child
  to cooperate toddlers were not compelled to stop
  hitting others.
• Toddler hitting was not regarded as motivated
  by an intent to harm because they were expected
  to be too young to understand the consequences of
  their acts for other people.
• Mosier Rogoff, 2003

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(No Transcript)
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Interview your partner

• What do you do if the children fight over a toy?
  What if it belongs to the toddler? To the
  sibling?
• When do you think children begin to understand
  the consequences of their acts, for example,
  regarding places not to go and things not to
  touch?
• If the toddler were to destroy something, how
  would you handle it? Would she/he be punished?
  How? Is it possible for the toddler to destroy
  things on purpose at this age? If so, when did
  the toddler begin to understand? Is it possible
  for the sibling to destroy things on purpose?
  When did the sibling begin to understand?
• Does the toddler understand that hitting or
  pulling hair hurts? If so, at what age did the
  toddler begin to understand? When did the sibling
  begin to understand that what he/she does might
  hurt someone?

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Proportions of Events Regarding Access to an
Object
Event Salt Lake City San Pedro
Toddlers eventually gained access to the object .59 (.20) .87 (.09)
Mothers endorsed toddlers privileged position .43 (.24) .63 (.22)
Mothers endorsed toddlers nonprivileged position .25 (.13) .04 (.05)
Siblings endorsed toddlers privileged position .45 (.19) .80 (.09)
Siblings endorsed toddlers nonprivileged position .54 (.21) .19 (.09)
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Maternal education (acculturation)

• San Pedro mothers schooling related negatively
  to their privileged endorsements (r .50, p
  lt.05) and uninvolvement (r .57, p lt .05) and
  related positively to their nonprivileged
  endorsements (r .56, p lt .05).

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Affects siblings

• Salt Lake City The older brother (3 years 0
  months) was playing with the pencil box and lid.
  Sam (15 months) wanted the lid and grabbed for
  it. A tug-of-war ensued until both mother and
  father separated the two boys. The older brother
  ended up with the complete box and Sam ended up
  playing with the embroidery hoop.
• San Pedro The older brother (3 years 9 months)
  put his hand on the knob of the jar lid. Lidia
  (15 months) reached out and gently pushed his
  hand off. The brother removed his hand.
• Reverse dominance hierarchies?

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A hefty 15-month-old

• walked around bonking his brothers and sisters,
  his mother, and his aunt with the stick puppet
  that I had brought along. The adults and older
  children just tried to protect themselves and the
  little children near them, they did not try to
  stop him. When I asked local people what this
  toddler had been doing, they commented, He was
  amusing people he was having a good time.
• Was he trying to hurt anybody?Oh no. He
  couldn't have been trying to hurt anybody he's
  just a baby. He wasn't being aggressive, he's too
  young he doesn't understand. Babies don't
  misbehave on purpose. (p. 165)

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Other transitions

• In the Marquesas (Polynesia), the goal is
  likewise to coordinate personal goals with group
  goals. Marquesan toddlers go through a transition
  at 1824 months resembling that of the San Pedro
  toddlers, from having every demand met to being
  expected to cooperate.
• The ideal Marquesan situation is one in which
  people have similar or complementary goals and
  willingly collaborate in a mutually beneficial
  activity without anyone dominating anyone else.

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Kids Attention to Interactions Directed to
OthersGuatemalan Mayan European American

• Patterns of Learning
• Indigenous intent community participation
• Attending to ongoing events -- pitch in when
  ready
• Middle-class lessons not in context of
  productive activity
• Differences
• Indigenous toddlers/parents showed keen
  simultaneous attention
• EA toddlers/parents quickly alternated their
  attention
• Schooling often connected with parental attention
  management
• Method
• 3 groups Traditional Mayan, Kaxlaan Mayan,
  European-American
• Session 1 observed sibling learning how to make
  a toy
• Coded for attention to siblings lesson,
  disruption/attention seeking, and attempts to
  collaborate
• Session 2 Ten days later, put together siblings
  toy
• Coded for how much help the child needed

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Results

• Session 1 Attending
• Mayan children engaged in more sustained
  attention than EA children
• EA children engaged in more brief glances and not
  attending
• EA children disrupted more than Mayan children
• Session 2 Frog toy learning
• Effect of background on need for help
• Traditional Mayan lt Kaxlaan Mayan lt EA
• Effect of sustained attention on need for help
• Children with more sustained attention needed
  less help
• Effect of sustained attention, CONTROLLING for
  background
• Sustained attention significant, background not
  significant

• No differences on attempts to collaborate

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Silva, Correa-Chavez, and Rogoff

• Cultural variation in childrens attentiveness
• Indigenous vs. westernized learning styles
• Pueblo basic school vs. Mexican high schooling
• Maternal education level and cultural traditions
• Toy construction paradigm

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Silva, Correa-Chavez, and Rogoff
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Silva, Correa-Chavez, and Rogoff
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Child and Mother Play in Three U.S Cultural
Groups (Cote Bornstein, 2009)

• Mother-child dyads from three cultural
  backgrounds living in the U.S.
• European American mother-child dyads
• South American Latino mother-child dyads
• Japanese mother-child dyads

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Cultural Differences in Childs Play(Cote
Bornstein, 2009)

• European American children engage more
  exploratory or object-related play
• Argentina and Japan children engage in more
  symbolic, person-directed play
• Why?

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Interdependence vs. autonomy?

• American children are socialized to be relatively
  autonomous, while Japanese children are
  socialized to work interdependently in groups
• (Benedict, 1974 Conroy et ah, 1980).
• Japanese mothers more frequently focus their
  infants' attention within the mother-infant dyad,
  while American infants spend more time engaged
  with toys and vocalize or initiate vocalizations
  more frequently
• (Bornstein et al., 1985-1986 Caudiil and
   Weinstein, 1969 Shand and Kosawa, 1985)

38
Japan

• being voluntarily cooperative, sunao, is
  encouraged
• A child who is sunao has not yielded his or her
  personal autonomy for the sake of cooperation
• cooperation does not suggest giving up the self
  as it may in the West it implies that working
  with others is the appropriate way of expressing
  and enhancing the self.
• How one achieves a sunao child seems to be
  never go against the child.

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Child and Mother Play in Three U.S Cultural
Groups (Cote Bornstein, 2009)

• Participants
• 20-month-olds and their mothers South American
  Latino immigrants (37), Japanese immigrants (36),
  and European Americans (40).
• Procedure
• The child play alone (10 min)
• The child-mother play (10 min) with an identical
  toy set

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Findings(Cote Bornstein, 2009)

• Boys more exploratory and less symbolic play
  than girls for all groups
• Both Latino and Japanese children more
  exploratory and less symbolic play when they
  alone
• Japanese children more exploratory and less
  symbolic play when they alone than play was
  initiated by mother

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Findings(Cote Bornstein, 2009)

• Childrens play tends to be more sophisticated
  when their mothers encourage them than when
  children initiate play or play alone
• No cultural differences here

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Turtle task. 24- to 31-month-olds

• Japanese mothers more frequently assisted their
  toddlers in fitting a shape before the toddlers
  had tried to fit the shape on their own
  (interdependence)
• American toddlers did not attempt to fit more
  shapes on their own (autonomy)
• More American toddlers left the task than did
  Japanese toddlers (autonomy).

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Figure
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Video Turtle task
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Apparent developmental discontinuity

• While the desires of Japanese infants are
  indulged, school-age children are expected to
  regulate their desires to conform to the demands
  of working in a group (Hendry, 1986).
• A sharp contrast is thought to exist between the
  infant-centered relationship with the mother in
  the home and the expectation that 3-year-olds,
  upon entrance to nursery school, will learn to
  conform to shudan seikatsu, 'life in a group'
  (Peak, 1989)

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Japanese discontinuity

• In traditional practices that may seem indulgent
  to Western eyes, Japanese mothers do not go
  against the young child's will but use other ways
  to foster self-motivated cooperation
• Traditional Japanese belief holds that it is not
  appropriate to control young children from the
  outside, because use of controlling behavior
  (such as anger or impatience) leads children
  after age 10 or 11 to resent and disobey
  authority rather than to cooperate with others

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Differential attributions

• Children are never willfully bad
• What are the results of such a belief?

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How to study

• Should we take a (likely Western) construct and
  apply it across cultures
• E.g.Italian mothers were more sensitive and
  optimally structuring, and Italian children were
  more responsive and involving, than Argentine and
  U.S. dyads. (Bornstein et al. 2008)
• Or should we adopt constructs from the cultures
  we are studying?
• E.g. Rogoff
• What about subcultures here in Miami?