Required Reading: Chapter 1, 2, 3 & 4

Slides 1:
Themes of cultural psychology:
- Psychological processes are shaped by cultural experiences

Defining Culture: (3, last one is the best/preferred definition for this class)
- A group of people who have a shared context (geographical, historical, linguistic, etc.) - A group of people who have shared beliefs - BEST definition: Information acquired from other members of a species through social learning.

Challenges to defining culture:
Cultural boundaries are not distinct and often unclear Cultural are dynamic and change There is substantial within-culture variation Fuzzy category(模糊的)

Compare and Contrast: Cultural PSYC vs. General PSYC (different focuses and premises假定)
- General Psychology: • Focused on: human universals(普遍性): does not vary across human cultures • All people everywhere are the same • Context and content of thought is largely just noise (Ignore the ability to understand the human mind) - Cultural Psychology: • Focused on: cultural variation and causes of variation • Humans are a cultural species - culture informs how we think • Thoughts are shaped by contexts • Minds and culture are entangled( 缠绕在⼀一起) with each other

Mueller-Lyer illusion(哪个更长):
- Trick of perspective - A lot of cultural variation is susceptibility(易受影响的) to this illusion

Psychology is W.E.I.R.D.:
- Most of what we know about psychology is based on WEIRD samples: • Western • Educated • Industrialized • Rich • Democratic 第 1 ⾴頁

- Biased: • WEIRD countries only make up about 16% of world’s population (small sample size) • 96% of participant are from Western, industrialized countries • 68% of psychology participants are Americans • 70% of participants are psychology undergraduates - Conclusion: most of what we know about is based on Americans between the age of 18~22, while they are in university

Psychological