Read the following passage carefully and compose a “Topic Outline” for it.
Knowledge About Different Cultures Is Shaking the Foundations of Psychology
Psychology was developed largely in North America and Europe. Some would argue it’s been remarkably successful in understanding what drives human behavior and mental processes, which have long been thought to be universal. But in recent decades, some researchers have started questioning this approach, arguing that many psychological phenomena are shaped by the culture we live in.
Consider which two of these objects go together: a panda, a monkey and a banana. Respondents from Western countries routinely select the two animals. This indicates an analytic thinking style, in which objects are largely perceived independently from their context. In contrast, participants from Eastern countries often select the monkey and the banana, because they share a relationship (monkeys eat bananas). This is a holistic thinking style, in which object and context are perceived to be correlated.
In a classic demonstration of cultural differences in thinking styles, participants from Japan and the USA were presented with a series of animated scenes. Lasting about 20 seconds, each scene showed various creatures, vegetation and rocks in an underwater setting. In a subsequent recall task, both groups were equally likely to remember the larger fish. But the Japanese participants were better at recalling background information, such as the color of the water. This is because holistic thinking focuses on background and context just as much as foreground.
The way Westerners describe themselves seems to be culturally bound. They tend to view themselves as free, autonomous and unique individuals, possessing a set of fixed characteristics. This feature regarding self-knowledge has even been demonstrated at the brain level. In a brain-scanning study, American participants were shown different adjectives. They were asked how well these adjectives represented themselves and how well these adjectives represented their mother. The study showed there was a clear difference in brain responses between thinking about the self and the mother.
However, in many other parts of the world, people describe themselves primarily as a part of different social relationships and strongly connected with others. This is more prevalent in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The brain-scanning study with Chinese participants showed little or no difference between the self and the mother, suggesting that the self-presentation shared a large overlap with the presentation of the close relative.
Clearly, the way we define ourselves is linked to differences in social relationships, motivation and upbringing. Culture has a massive effect on how we view ourselves and how we are perceived by others. The field, now known as “cross-cultural psychology”, is increasingly being taught at universities across the world. With more research, we may well find that cultural differences pervade into even more areas where human behavior was previously thought of as universal. But only by knowing about these effects will we ever be able to identify the core foundations of the human mind that we all share.
