Culture, personality and

psychopathology
Traditional healing methods
Cross- cultural aspects of coping

Unit 4
Identify the dance forms and name the states.

Hojagiri - Tripura
Ghoomar - Rajasthan
Thiruvathira - Kerala
Identify the Festival and where is it celebrated?

Answer: Cascamorras, Spain

The Fiesta de Cascamorras is a festival

that takes place in the towns of Guadix
and Baza in the province of Granada,
Spain, annually on September 6.
 Identify the Festival and where is it celebrated?

La Tomatina, Buñol, Spain

 Identify the Festival and where is it Identify the Festival and where is it
celebrated? celebrated?

Answer: Songkran Water Festival,

Thailand Answer: Lantern festival,
Taiwan
 Culture and research
○ Ethnography
■ The method by which researchers attempt to understand a group or culture
by observing it from the inside, without imposing any preconceived notions
they might have.
○ Archival analysis
■ The researcher can also examine the accumulated documents, or archives, of
a culture.
○ Cross-Cultural Research
■ Research conducted with members of different cultures, to see whether the
psychological processes of interest are present in both (or multiple) cultures
or whether they are specific to the culture in which people were raised
 Culture, cognition & emotion
● The content of our schemas is influenced by the culture in which we live.
● Holistic (collectivist) vs analytical (individualistic) thinking (Masuda & Nisbett, 2006) - focus
on context
○ Meaning-making processes and perception of world around
● Attribution and comprehension
○ Facial expression and rules of emotional expression - encoding & decoding
■ In individualistic cultures, shame is a negative, stigmatized emotion that one hides
rather than displays (Robins & Schriber, 2009).
■ Powerful nonverbal cues, like Eye contact, gaze, personal space are culture-based.
■ Emblems
● Nonverbal gestures that have well-understood definitions within a given culture; they
usually have direct verbal translations—such as the OK sign or any other hand-gesture
Identify the Meaning of the Gesture
Gestures as a part of Global Language
 Culture & Personality
● Implicit Personality Theory
■ A type of schema people use to group various kinds of personality traits together- e.g. someone
who is kind is generous as well
■ Like other beliefs, they are passed from generation to generation in a society, and one culture’s
implicit personality theory may be very different from another’s (Chiu et al., 2000)
● Hoffman, Lau, and Johnson (1986): different cultures have different ideas about personality types
○ Western cultures - “artistic personality” - person with creative, intense, temperamental, and has an
unconventional lifestyle. Chinese people do not have a schema or implicit personality theory for an
artistic type. There are Chinese words to describe the individual characteristics, such as creative,
but no labels like “artistic” or “bohemian” conveying the whole constellation of traits.
○ Alternatively, in China a shi gú person is someone who is worldly, devoted to his or her family,
socially skillful, and somewhat reserved - not there in western culture.
 Culture & Psychopathology
● Cultural context defines (mal)adjustment of human behavior, which includes how people
usually behave, think, feel, and relate in social interactions
● Culture shapes the threshold of distress, and the range and forms of its expressiveness that
are acceptable and adaptive (e.g. think about disenfranchisement of grief)
● Primary ways culture shapes psychotherapy models
○ Patient care in psychiatry, influencing every moment and every process in patient
narratives of their suffering
○ How credible and/or acceptable are treatment types in the eyes of a patient and his/
her family
○ Consequently treatment adherence
■ Current DSM definition of mental disorder acknowledges the interaction of biological and
psychological processes, and sociocultural systems.
■ Increased focus in clinical field on intersectionality & meaning-making process - looking at
culture as process, opposed to static group membership
 Culture & Psychological assessment
● Assessment bias - ‘cultural malpractice’ (Dana, 2000)
● This construct and method bias has a variety of sources (e.g., instrument development,
standardized test norms that under-represent social minority groups, neglect for language
barriers and acculturation processes), and permeate the assessment process and results,
and treatment recommendations.
● Cultural Formulation Interview - presents a conceptual framework for clinicians to
identify the role of culture on the patient’s clinical presentation and care, in four domains
○ Cultural identity of the individual
○ Cultural explanations of the experienced signs and symptoms (i.e., explanatory
models of illness)
○ Cultural factors that may be associated with the psychosocial environment and
levels of functioning (i.e., protective and risks factors)
○ Cultural features involved in the communication and the clinical relationship
between the patient and the psychiatrist or psychologist.
 Traditional healing methods
● An emerging trend amongst many people in the Metropolitan cities of the West to
seek alternative, complementary and traditional healing (Moodley & West, 2005).
● More common in ethnic minority groups - now emerging in ethnic majority too
● Accessing alternative healing practices rather than conventional psychotherapy or
allopathic medicine appears to be a growing reaction to the pervasiveness of Western
biomedicine and its particular focus on psychopathology
● South Asian healing methods like - ayurveda, unani etc. emerging in western culture as
well
● The appeal for traditional healing is based on the holistic nature of traditional approaches
which seek to restore harmony and balance within the individual and between the
individual and their environment
● Muller and Steyn (2002) - process of traditional healing is holistic - engages the mind,
body, and soul of individuals, as well as their families and communities - mind-body-
spirit integration is major component of the healing process - binary divide of the
Cartesian body–mind split is interrogated, brought to consciousness and integrated
 Traditional healing methods
● In western culture currently legitimacy of therapeutic methods are questioned from
political power vs effectiveness model
● In mainstream society there is a growing consciousness of the failure of modern medicine
to treat the whole person resulting in clients turning towards alternative methods of
healing
● Cultural healing working as - traditional healers possess profound knowledge and
understanding of the community’s historical, religious and cultural beliefs, thus playing
a pivotal role in the life of the community, providing stability under conditions of
economic despair, political conflict and changing values (Crawford & Lipsedge, 2004)
● Cultural meaning of illness and wellness is easily infused with traditional healing
concepts
● In traditional healing there is a holistic conceptualization of health wherein spiritual,
physical, emotional, and mental wellness is regarded as inseparable, while in Western
mental health, the focus is often exclusively on the mental and emotional components
( Garrett & Carroll, 2000)
What could be some cross cultural
aspects of coping?