Elainna Simpson

Dr. Grinde

Cross-Cultural Psychology

5/17/2020

Final Assignment

Essay 1: Cultural Identity

My cultural identity, I believe, revolves around where I am local. I live in the country in a very

small town and attended a small school, where I graduated with about 40 people. Despite the positive

aspects of living in a small town, one major negative is the lack of diversity, especially when it comes to

race or ethnicity and views on mental health.

The area I live in is predominately White, and those from other races were usually either biracial

or had been adopted by White parents and did not seem to be raised culturally different than me. This is

something that I never really analyzed because I have always been a part of this in-group, so I had the

privilege and right not to worry about the color of my skin or about the way I was being perceived by my

town. Although at the time I hadn’t realized it, I had stereotypes of what people from different races

were like, yet the people I went to school with didn’t fit those stereotypes. So as we discussed in class, I

experienced cognitive equilibrium and I assimilated by deciding that those of another race I knew were

different because they were from my town and were raised similarly to me. Although I had accepted the

people I knew for who they were, I wasn’t very open to learning more about anyone else from another

race or background. Once my brother moved to downtown Chicago for school, I had the right to visit

him and experience firsthand the cultural diversity there, and not just as a tourist but through the eyes

of my brother. I saw and met people who fit their race’s classic stereotypes, but also people who didn’t

and that first opened my eyes to diversity. After moving to Loras I met a lot of people from various

backgrounds and actually got to know them, this helped me to accommodate my schema to my new

knowledge. It was my relationship with my boyfriend, who is black, who helped me to learn and
experience a different culture than my own. I was restricted by my small town’s lack of diversity and

wasn’t able to have the confidence or means to meet someone of a different race or ethnicity. Yet, now

I believe it is my responsibility to meet new people from many different backgrounds, hear their stories,

understand their culture and their life. Our class discussion about Black Lives Matter, also helped me to

realize that it is something that I support heavily, but perhaps people from my town do not since some

trucks fly the confederate flag. I think that this is a large part of my cultural identity because as I become

closer with my boyfriend the possibility of having biracial children someday is a possibility. I think it will

be important to raise them in way that celebrates their cultures from both sides, but also to be aware of

the struggles of raising black children in the U.S. Although I do support equal rights for all, I do know that

there are certain areas where I still do have a prejudice for certain races and ethnicities I have not had

the chance to have conversations with or get to know and it’s my responsibility to change that.

Another huge part of my cultural identity is my empathy and my passion for brain health. In my

town, there was minimal education on brain health and no one in our community was open about

having a mental disorder. In junior high school, I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety and it

affected my ability to go to school until I graduated from high school. If it weren’t for my parents, I

wouldn’t have known what that meant or what to do. I felt like an alien in my home town, the kids at

school didn’t understand, my teachers didn’t know how to react, and people in my community looked at

me differently. I realize now I had been a part of that in-group and had now been cast into an out-group.

I lost friends and spent a lot of time in the counselor’s room. Due to lack of education on mental health

my school didn’t have much of a protocol for kids like me, the only kids who spent time in the

counselor’s room were druggies, misfits, and “trouble kids”. In that room is where I made relationships

with people I had put in my out-group because I didn’t understand them, but when the tables were

turned and we all had been cast as the out-group, is when I saw them as my in-group. I accommodated

my schema and learned that these kids were not so different from me. We all came from families who
were not well-off, we were all labeled as different, and we had real issues we were trying to fight. I

learned to try not to judge people based on the way they’re being perceived and get to know people

before you stereotype them. I know now it’s my responsibility to be a voice for those people and to be a

voice of advocacy to end mental health stigma. I hope to also share my story and what I have learned

about mental health with my community, right now that may just be posting on Facebook, but I hope to

do more someday. I think that this strongly connects to the TedTalk video called “Toward a New

Understanding of Mental Illness.” In this video, Thomas Insel discussed how common brain disorders are

and how disabling they can be. To correct the stigma behind brain health and to support treatment,

Insel suggests that we focus on how it is a brain disorder and has a direct correlation to the body. He

also suggests that people attempt to detect brain changes sooner to intervene quicker so that there can

be better outcomes. I think that this knowledge could be beneficial to those in my hometown, a lot of

people told me to just get over it or stop crying about it, yet they comforted those who had physical

injuries. This is a large part of my personal cultural identity because this lack of knowledge is what

stemmed my passion to learn more about psychology and neuroscience and to pursue a career where I

can help those with brain disorders.

My small town’s culture has taught me a lot and has helped me grow into the person that I am

today. I realize that there are aspects that I have kept as a cultural identity such as the close-knit and

caring community, yet I also am aware of the aspects of my culture that negatively impacted me. I think

that my cultural identity when I was a child was not very diverse, yet as I grow and learn, I think, that my

cultural identity grows and I can control in small ways what is a part of that identity. The cultural

conversation with Michael from Ireland, I think proves that in some ways we can choose which cultural

identity we want and in other ways, we cannot. He also demonstrates that the experiences that you

have can shape your cultural identity. I never had a strong “traditional” culture towards my heritage or

my religion, yet I think my culture is who I have become because of my experiences.

Essay 2: Cultural Learning

It is important to study cross-cultural psychology because it focuses on how the small cultures

(race, gender, sexual orientation, SES, religion) within a larger culture are represented. After learning

about different cultures during the semester, it is clear that many different countries struggle with a

version of discrimination towards at least one of these cultures. Once someone learns about these

smaller cultures they are then able to analyze how each country values these cultures. Once we are

aware of what causes us to have these stereotypes we can work against them and hopefully someday

eliminate them.

Although it seems there is a large difference from culture to culture, there might be other

cultures that connect them. For example, it is assumed that those from a different race are very

different from those from another, yet this is not true. Actually, it is the discrepancy in people’s

socioeconomic status (SES) that there is a greater difference. People who have a high SES will have much

more in common with another person from a different race with a high SES than someone in their race

with a low SES. This demonstrates that although we often categorize by race and attend more to race,

we perhaps need to pay more attention to SES. Yet, it is also important to know that often minorities

have lower SES due to discrimination that has led to fewer opportunities to improve their SES. One

artifact from our class that demonstrated this visually was the TedTalk video by Anna Rosling Rönnlund,

titled “See how the rest of the world lives, organized by income”. Rönnlund shows images of 50

countries of people’s homes, beds, toys, etc. but organized by income. She demonstrates that regardless

of the country, families with a similar income have the same homes, beds, cooking utensils, and toys. A

higher-income family in China and the US live in the same way, but a lower-income family in Nigeria and

China live in the same way. The country or race tells us nothing about how people live, but income does.
This video indicates that there is not much difference across cultures as we may be led to think when

analyzing the commonalities.

From the different cultural conversations that we had this semester, we learned that despite the

country someone lives in, they most likely discriminate in some way, but the victims of the

discrimination can very. From our experience in the US, we know that a large issue in our country is

discrimination by race. When we spoke to Eric in China he said that skin color can also be discriminated

against there. The discrimination there is based more on vague ideas rather than deeply held beliefs like

the US. In China, the darker someone is can indicate their time spent in the fields and the Chinese

perceive them as less valued compared to lighter skin Chinese people. When we spoke to Sister Rose

from Togo, Africa she explained that the discrimination there is usually based on SES and that higher SES

often discriminates against people of lower SES. Sergio, who is from northern Mexico, explained that in

northern Mexico many people discriminate or even just ignore the LGBTQIA+ community where more

people do not feel comfortable sharing their connection with the LGBTQIA+ community. When

discussing culture with Sari for Ireland, she said that school affiliation played a large role for people in

Dublin, perhaps indicating that SES could also be a factor of discrimination in Ireland as well. From all of

these different cultural conversations, it is apparent that discrimination can happen within almost any

country but those being discriminated against can very. Often, I think, Americans view race as a large

issue of discrimination that mostly only happens in our country, yet other countries discriminate by race

or other aspects and it also has a large impact on their culture. It is extremely important to learn about

different cultures' similarities and differences to realize that perhaps not all cultures are very different.

Lastly, I think it is also important to learn that despite being from different cultures we often all

have similar cognitive functions that create in/out groups and stereotypes. Our class conversation about

cognition demonstrates that our brains are designed to categorize to make life more efficient.
Unfortunately, this also means that our brains categorize people into those who are like us, our in-

group, and those who are unlike us, our out-group. This categorization also can cause the homogeneity

effect where you see those from your out-group as all similar and don’t appreciate their individual

characteristics. This effect can cause people to create stereotypes about a group because they have an

incomplete understanding of the different perspectives, personalities, and lives that people from

another group have. I think it is incredibly important to understand the cognitive underpinnings of why

we stereotype or see people from another culture as all the same. If we are unaware of why we think

this way, it can make it very difficult to try to stop stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination amongst

groups. If we are aware of why we stereotype we can make a conscious decision to include more people

into our circle and get to know different cultures and actively work against the homogeneity effect.

Cross-cultural psychology can give the insight to help people better perform their jobs and help

countries as a whole make better decisions. Once we are aware that race is inconsequential compared

to SES in many different countries and that each country discriminates we can see that different

countries can be more similar than dissimilar. As soon as we are aware that we are alike, we can combat

our cognitive instincts by learning and getting to know those from other cultures. Together, these ideas

demonstrate why it is important to learn cross-cultural psychology.