Importance of studying cultural

diversity.
Week 2
1. To avoid making costly or significant
errors in social interaction
2. To be able to check the generality of social
psychology findings i.e whether they apply
across all cultures. We need to be able to
differentiate what is universal(etic)
and what is culture specific(emic)
amongst psychological phenomenon.
Etics and Emics of culture
Etics -processes that are consistent across different
cultures. i.e. universal psychological process e.g. smile,
anger, joy, sadness

Emics- Process that are different across cultures. i.e

culture specific e.g. handshake (luhya) Kamba an
elder person has to say hi to you first.

Emics is the flavor of culture

3.To be able to take advantage of the
natural experiments that different
cultures provide hence be able to study key
variables that we may not have been able
to study in our culture.
- E.g Effects of illiteracy of children is easier
studied in parts of developing countries
than in the developed world where its not as
easy to find totally illiterate children
4.To be able to study culture change. We may
be unable to study some kind of change in our
own culture since it has already occurred but
we can be able to study the same kind of
change in other cultures
E.g. Effect of TV introduction on children can
be studied in social communities that do not
have TV before and after its introduction and
find out how social behaviors change.
5.To be able to study acculturation-which is
another phenomenon of cultural change
Some patterns of acculturation that have
been observed include
Assimilation- Where new comers often want
to become absorbed by host culture
Separation - Where new comers may prefer
to stay separated from host culture.
Accommodation- Where new comers acquire
some attributes of host culture
Overshooting- Where some new comers may
become even more extreme on some traits than
the host culture
Affirmation - Where some new comers who have
been in the host country for some years become
more like their culture of origin on some
attributes than the immigrants who have just
arrived.
6.Helps in reducing ethnocentrism – as we
shift from a state of using our culture to
judge how good other cultures are, to
attempting to understand other cultures
and developing skills of successful social
behaviors with other cultures, we learn to
appreciate the best that humans have
produced no matter where it has been
developed.
Discuss
Tasks
Identify /give examples/discuss/share
behavior from your culture that
someone from another culture might
have difficulty understanding
Eating behaviors and Work
food types Status
Greetings Courtship
Personal Death and burial
grooming/hygiene/dr rituals
ess Religious practices
Health habits
Hospitality issues
Sexuality issues – sex