Download Heider Chapter 5

Psikologi dan budaya
 Ahli antropologi psikologi
tertarik untuk menjawab
pertanyaan-pertanyaan
seperti bagaimana
kebiasaan menonton
televisi anak-anak
mempengaruhi struktur
kepribadian mereka, dan
bagaimana kepribadian ini
mempengaruhi bagianbagian lain dari kultur.
 Margaret Mead
mengabdikan banyak dari
karier dan waktunya dalam
bidang kajian antropologi
psikologi: bagaimana
kultur mempengaruhi
proses dan tumbuh
kembang/pendewasaan
seseorang
pengantar
 Kita mengkaji proses psikologis (mental) sebagai sebuah
proses sebagaimana mereka dibentuk di konteks budaya
yang berbeda.
 Pertama, kajian-kajian psikologi dalam budaya, pemahaman
tentang konsep diri, dan proses-proses psikologi seperti belajar,
berfikir dan emosi.
 Kedua, isu seksualitas lintas budaya
Psychology 1
 Psikologi adalah suatu istilah umum (suatu payung payung) untuk banyak
proses tingkah laku manusia dan mental yang beragam secara budaya.
 Proses mental meliputi:
• kepribadian: karakteristik unik pribadi dan perilaku seseorang
• pemikiran: cara berpikir, memahami, menyelesaikan masalah dan mengingat
• Persepsi: pengorganisasian dan interpretasi atas informasi yang masuk
(stimulus)
• Emosi: pernyataan perasaan yang didalamnya memasukkan aspek
psikologis, kognitif dan berbagai komponen ekspresi.
• Pembelajaran: pengembangan kemampuan, kapasitas dan perilaku
• Mental illness (sakit mental): kesalahan adaptasi atau disfungsi pola berfikir
dan berperilaku
 Psikologi telah banyak mengkaji aspek tersebut pada tataran individu, tetapi
antropologi memiliki fokus yang berbeda.
 Antropologi fokus pada “ beberapa cara yang digunakan oleh individu secara
bersama”= antropologi psikologi.
• Fokus pada: bagaimana budaya berpengaruh terhadap kepribadian, atau
berbagai aspek sebagaimana dikaji dalam psikologi.
• Apakah proses-proses tersebut berifat kultural atau alamiah? Masih banyak
perdebatan………
Psychology 2
 Beberapa permasalahan penting keterkaitan psikologi dan antropologi
• Psikolog tidak mendapat pembelajaran yang cukup untuk memahami
konsep kebudayaan dalam proses studinya.
• Kajian-kajian antropologi, terkait berbagai tema, telah berlangsung
lama tetapi tanpa memperhatikan kajian dalam psikologi
 Banyak buku pengantar psikologi telah memberikan porsi tentang
kajian lintas budaya tetapi pada dasarnya masih sangat terbatas.
Psikologi lintas budaya, sejauh yang kita amati, masih bias budaya
barat dan melupakan budaya timur.
 .
Culture, Personality & Self
 Bagaimana individu mengembangkan kepribadiannya?
 Dalam antropologi, banyak kajian tentang pola asuh anak, pola sosialisasi anak, berbagai
praktik adat istiadat (jawa, Bali, Papua, dll), kajian lintas dan perbandingan antar budaya
Sebagai contoh dalam hal pengasuhan anak: pada suku tertentu, pada malam hari anak
dan ibu tidur bersama, di suku lain terpisah.
Pada suku tertentu, waktu seorang ibu lebih banyak digunakan diluar rumah, pada
masyarakat lain, di dalam rumah,
Ritus peralihan terkait dengan siklus hidup anak (dibeberapa wilayah, terjadi praktikpraktik ini. Ritus memisahkan kehidupan anak dari ibunya, memisahkan kehidupan
anak-anak ketika menjelang dewasa, dll)
Tradisi memisahkan ibu dan anak laki-laki lebih dini dibandingkan dengan anak
perempuan
Margaret Mead, Puberty, and Gender
 Teori Mead : gender is culturally constructed (Student of Franz
Boas).
 Studied sex and gender
 Coming of Age in Samoa
• Mengkaji konstruksi budaya tentang pubertas
• Faham yang berlaku: seks dan gender murni biologis, Mead
tidak setuju dengan konsep ini.
• kesimpulan: banyak aspek perilaku pubertas adalah konstruksi
budaya.
 Kajian-kajian yang lain menunjukkan bahwa gender adalah
konstruksi kultural
 Diskusi:
 film
National Culture to Cultural Themes
 Many attempts have been made to describe the general psychological
make-up of a people.
 To bring these studies into context, we need to look at both national
character and national culture as concepts
 National character studies grew out of an effort by anthropologists to
make their discipline relevant to the World War II war effort, helping the
United States to understand its enemies, its allies, and its citizens
better
• Ruth Benedict’s analyses of the Japanese are the classic of the
national character, but she was not alone in this work. For instance:
• Geoffrey Gorer suggested the swaddling hypothesis “where the
discomfort produced by the Russian practice of tightly swaddling
infants led to suspicious, fearful adults cowed by authority”. 1
• Erich Fromm suggested that the German attraction to Hitler stemmed
from an "authoritarian personality" which feared the unpredictability of
democracy”.2
1
(Collins, S.G. (n.d.) Culture on the front lines: National character, evolution, and emergence. Retrieved January 1, 2009 from http://upress.kent.edu/Ammar/14%20Collins.htm)
Andrew Buckser, A. & Christodoulakis, c. (2006) Anthropology 341/Sociology 341: National character studies : Lecture outline. Retrieved January 1, 2009 from
http://www.cla.purdue.edu/courses/anth341/cpl14.htm
2
Ruth Benedict
Patterns of Culture (1934)
 Assumed each culture produces a dominant personality and stated this about three
cultures (Armchair anthropology)
• Zuni (a Pueblo culture of the SW of United States)
• She described as aesthetic and mild
• She labeled as Apollonian (as drawn from Nietzsche’s use of Greek prototypes)
• Kwakiutl (a people of the NW Coast, today called Kwa Kwaka’ Wakw)
• She described as aggressive and competitive
• She labeled as Dionysian
• Dobu (a people of eastern New Guinea and involved in kula rings
• She described as fearful and paranoid
• She discussed the role of witchcraft in creating their fears
 Tries to elevate folk ethnography to a science
 Studies culture at a distance during WWII
• Japan: aesthetic and military
• The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946)

•
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Critics say culture is more complex and anthropology has discarded the concept of national character (personality)
National culture remains a topic of discussion:
 The idea of that which is shared by most of the people of a nation, overarching regional
culture, promoted by radio and television
 Water cooler discussions of latest popular TV show
Sameness and Othering
 In Cambodia, the Khmer were known as a gentle, friendly, artistic
people.
 They were Theravada Buddhists who valued all life
 When the Khmer Rouge came to power in 19775-1979 a
genocide wherein priests, intellectuals, former government
officials and the entire middle class was massacred.
• This was accomplished by murder, starvation and forced labor
• An estimated 1.7 million people were killed
• Many of the leaders are only now being put on trial
• The story is portrayed in the film, The Killing Fields
 How did this massacre become validated by the Khmer Rouge?
 Othering: The process by which the basic principles of another
culture (sub-culture or group) are demonized.
 The Khmer Rouge used the hierarchical aspects of Cambodian
society to reinforce the hard line message
The Importance of Cultural Themes
 Today anthropologists look for the major psychological themes of a
culture (the basic principles by which everyone plays out his or her life)
 The focus is on those identified by the members of the cultural group
themselves and away from external labels
 Often looked at as pairs of opposites by many anthropologists
(ironically a theme of Western cultures to divide this way).
 Examples include:
• In Japan, inside (uchi) and outside (soto) is how they see themselves
• Peaceful (Dani) vs. Fierce (Yanomamo): While fighting is seen in both
cultures, daily life for the Yanomano is tense and aggressive, while for
the Dani, calm and relaxed.
• Individualism vs. Groupism: Americans are raised to be individualistic;
Japanese are raised to sacrifice for the group good
• This is changing in Japan
• Mister Baseball
Focus Culture
 Vietnam is the focus group for this chapter (although a nation-state and not a culture)
 Once divided into South and North Vietnam, today is ruled as socialist government
by the Communist Party
 Village farming is prevalent, but the French introduced plantation agriculture
 Today, ties with the US are strengthening
 Little anthropological research has been published for this country.
 Built on family ties, extended families and a worship of ancestors (as well as
Mahayana Buddhism and Confucianism)
• These religions emphasize a balance between yang and yin
• Today a yang of Chinese-oriented Confucianism and a yin of egalitarian village
life
 There are several fundamental times of Vietnamese cultures:
 Ly: The idea of a basic order in the universe
 Hieu: Filial piety, moral debt children owe their parents
 De: Proper behavior between brothers. Younger submissive to older & women to
all men (Confucian)
 Nighia: Proper behavior to fulfill Confucian obligations
 Nhan and tinh: Buddhist virtues, in some contrast to the Confucian virtues. These
terms are associated with compassion
Privacy and Self
 The emphasis on the emic (native) way of thinking about
personhood as seen today is called indigenous psychologies
and ethnopsychology
 One current arena of study is the boundary between self and
others (what is defined as privacy).
 Two types of privacy norms
• Limits access to standard behaviors (elimination, sex and the like) as well as
body parts (genitalia, face and the like)
• The other deals with access to behavior that is private, personal and
expressive (freedom of expression)
 People are not born with an ability to separate themselves
from the environment




Not born to see themselves as an object
Not born to react to themselves
Not born to appraise or evaluate their selves
They learn this through development of self-awareness
Learning Styles
 One study of how children learn was conducted by Peter Opie in England.
He noted that there was the approved learning of controlled by adults
(such as nursery rhymes)and the learning of ‘school rhyme’
 Heider noted that among the Dani there is no explicit teaching, it is
observation/practice that is the teaching method
 Teaching and learning styles
 Culture of Acquisition
• Acquire knowledge as a body of knowledge (college)
• The idea that an authority transmits to the uninformed
 Situated practice (the style of teaching) associated with the culture of
acquisition
• The learning itself can be called situated learning
• Apprenticeship" learning
• Learn by watching, then by taking on increasingly difficult tasks
• This is how we first learn language
Cognition


How people think, learn, and organize knowledge
 Example:
• Stars in the night sky—different cultures see different groupings and give different names and
meanings
• Different color names
• Different names for body parts
 Cognitive Style and Intelligence
• Heath looked at how two separate U.S. communities taught their children
• White community: Children quizzed, adults knew the answers
• Black community: Children asked questions demanding creative responses
• Implications
• Children of the white community were familiar with the types of questions on standardized
tests and scored higher
• Children of the black community had no experience with this type of questioning
Intelligence (definition of intelligence is hard to develop)
 I.Q. tests are culture-specific, do not have pan-cultural validity
 Gardner suggests 7 intelligences (review page 159).
• Theory of "multiple intelligences"
• Intelligence is not a single skill; there are different sorts of intelligences
• There is a difference between "education" and "knowledge"
 Hanson states that Americans have an "addiction to testing" which influences how we define
ourselves and our society
Organization of Knowledge
 This area of study is often called ethnosemantics (a
sub-set is ethnolinguistics) or cognitive anthropology
 All cultures make categories.
 All cultures rely on the elementary cognitive process of
category making
 There is no system of categories more correct; all have
their foundations in cultural understandings.
 That said, cross-culturally, the categories are remarkable
similar
 Examples of categories found in all cultures:
 Color categories (see Berlin and Kay)
 Classification of living things: generally very similar to the
scientific one
 Kinship classification: More on the details in Chapter 9
Emotions 1
 Facial expressions and eye contact across cultures
 The study of kinesics includes facial expressions, gaze, head movements,
and posture.
 Facial expressions can include: winks, blinks, eyebrow movements,
smiles, frowns, pursed lips, pouts, lip compressions, and so forth.
 All cultures have rules by which we are expected to show when feeling
certain emotions. These are called display rules
• Masking is when you hide your emotion (poker face, for instance)
• Muting is when the emotion is shown but not to the degree it is felt.
• In some cultures emotion is muted because of pain
• If we don’t know the display rules of a particular culture, we think we
know what someone is feeling
 Are there universals for emotional facial expressions?
 Paul Ekman is famous for studying this.
• Darwin said yes, Margaret Mead said no.
• Ekman went to highlands of PNG in 1965(most isolated from
Westerners at the time and now he says yes)
Emotions 2
Facial expressions and eye contact across cultures (continued)
 Ekman identified 6 universal expressions: anger, fear, surprise, disgust, happy, and sad
 Others suggest contempt
 Problem include:
• May see the emotion, but not the cultural reason it was created
• Culture groups may not read faces the same: Americans look at the mouth,
Japanese the eyes.
• The debate rages about this one!
 Even so this is an interesting video clip: Face Reader
 Expectations about gaze also differ
 Euroamericans
• Speakers tend not to look at the other until ready to signal the giving up of the
speaking role
• Listeners are to look attentively at speaker
 African Americans are more likely to feel looking at the speaker is rude (as do South
Dakotans if you do not know the person well), but speakers to look at listener.
 Author talks about Orthodox Jewish men avoid contact with women (also what I learned
as a child in SD)
 Winks
 Can be read as dominance-assertion signals if men make them to women
 But can be a sign of friendliness.

How to Behave
 This is a film that intends to tell the truth, in Vietnam
 The filmmaker is dying of cancer and after his funeral, his comrades go
around Vietnam and ask questions:
• What is happiness?
• What is leprosy?
 The result is a documentary that begins to reveal the cultural themes of
Vietnam
 One example is how victims of leprosy are treated with compassion by
nuns and others
 They find that ‘the people’, ‘kindness’, ‘leprosy’ and ‘greatness’ is the
starting point
 They conclude that kindness is an essential theme in Vietnam