Understanding Other People's Behavior

I've always been interested in how others act, and why people do the things they do. I often found myself wondering what makes someone choose to do the things that they do? This is considered an analytical type of thinking, meaning that you try to understand things from different aspects; understanding objects, identifying their underlying attributes, and trying to understand their inner qualities such as their personality traits (Heine, 2012). I always thought that the situation and environment influenced people's behavior greatly. Heine, 2012 states that this is in fact a holistic way of thinking. It makes sense to me that we view how people act based on their dispositional attributions as opposed to situational attributions, and this is likely because of the culture in which I was raised. I think it is interesting now that I have learned more about dispositional and situational attributions to look at how people act differently, and how not only the influences, and environmental factors, but the internal traits and feelings can also affect ones behavior.

Pluralistic Ignorance

Pluralistic ignorance is; a preconceived notion that each person’s private attitude, beliefs, or judgments are different from the their public behavior, which is displayed by how they act, reflecting on popular cultures  (Lambert et al, 2010), (Reiber and Garcia, 2010).

Pluralistic ignorance is something I see everyday, through many stages of life. This year, I had the privilege of doing one of my clinical placements with toddlers and children. I found that a lot of the times, if one child was doing something that looked intriguing to another child, even if both of them knew it was wrong, the other would join in. This is just a minor example of how pluralistic ignorance effects us in most stages of life.

When reading about pluralistic ignorance, I could not help but think back to my High School years. After having time to reflect on my years in high school, I realized that many of my own actions were based simply on the fact that I thought that was what I had to do to fit in. This also brings me to the term "popularity." I was fortunate to have many friends, and many opportunities in high school, but what exactly does that even mean? I believe, from my personal experience that most of my high school years, and I do not think I was the only one, were wasted striving for "popularity" even if that meant going against my own beliefs. 

When I was reading "Pluralistic Ignorance and Hooking up" by Lambert et al, 2010, I realized that sadly, pluralistic ignorance has followed us to university. It very obviously effects the hook up culture, as this study has shown that many people rate themselves as less comfortable with hooking up than their peers, but in personal experience, I've seen pluralistic ignorance take an affect on alcohol intake, drug use, and bullying. 

The Ratchet Effect

The ratchet effect is known as the effect that comes when cultural information is learned, and then modified and improved which helps that culture to grow and gain complexity as well as utility (Tomasello et al, 1993). It is known as the ratchet effect, because as we know, a ratchet cannot slip backwards, just like one can not lose cultural information, but can continue to gain it.

I wanted to bring up the ratchet effect because of a controversial issue that has largely impacted my life. I grew up in a very religious Catholic family. As children, we were made to attend our local church service every Sunday, and then also had to participate in "Religion Classes." I do believe that there are some pros and cons to this situation. Quite obviously to me, my parents did not want me learning these things to become a closed minded being, but they hoped that I could have faith in something greater than I. This was a tradition passed down from generations on both my mother and father side. However, becoming more educated over the years I have learned that PERSONALLY, I had some issues with the way our religion sometimes had people think. Now, this all makes sense to me as these ideas can sometimes be out dated.

I think this is a form of the ratchet effect, because I have taken into consideration why religion is so important to my family, and although, there are some ideas I do not agree with, I have expanded my own personal values and beliefs to coincide with our rapidly changing societies today.

The Importance of Cultural Psychology

I think that cultural psychology is a beneficial topic to everyone because it can explain how and why there are different cultures, and how culture shapes people's psychology. Personally, as a nursing student, and soon to be (hopefully) Registered Nurse, that cultural psychology can help me understand each and every patients beliefs, values, and morals-- free of judgment. Cultural psychology can help us to understand the basic function of the human mind and how culture plays a role in shaping one's mind. As most of us know, there has been an increase in globalization over the past few years. For those who do not know what the term "globalization" means, it is simply; an interaction between individuals or groups from different nations. This increase in globalization, in turn increases the diversity of the cultures we deal with on a daily basis.
I grew up in a small rural village, where the word "diversity" was not even in our vocabulary. So, attending a University where the population is a bit more diverse, has opened my eyes to how important it is to understand not only my own but also, the culture of others.
A sentence that really stood out to me, while reading the text book from out Cultural Psychology class said something along the lines of; in-order for us to all get along, we should stop focusing on our cultural differences, instead, focus on common human nature (Heine, 2012). I found this relates largely to my personal life, because, I have found that the more I educate myself on these topics, the easier it is to understand why it is that we are all different.


 Heine, Steven J. (2012). Cultural Psychology: Second Edition. W.W. Norton. New York, London.

What is Culture?

I have come to learn that there are many different definitions and aspects of culture. Culture is an interesting term, because there is no one definite answer as to exactly what it is. Richerson & Boyd, 2005 say that culture consists of two different things, information and groups of individuals. The information in culture includes any idea, belief, technology, habit, or practice that is acquired through learning from others, and the groups of individuals being people who exist in a shared context. So my next question is, how and why is culture unique to humans? I do believe that non-human primates can posses some forms of culture, however their cultural behaviors are not proven strong enough to insist they are cultural beings. One thing I found interesting was the difference between imitative and emulative learning. Imitative learning is defined as a type of learning where the learner internalizes anothers goals and behavioral strategies in trying to mimic this (Tomasello et al., 1993). While emulative learning is when the learner focuses on the environmental events involved instead of the task itself. An emulative learner focuses on the events, rather than what is trying to be accomplished. It was found in many studies that children show imitative learning while non-human primates show emulative learning. The key difference that stood out to me and made the most sense in answering my questions; what is culture and how is it unique to humans was that-- although emulative learning is effective and no less intelligent than imitative, it does not allow for cultural information to build up. The accumulation of culture to me is what helps the culture continue to grow, and change for the better, to enable a culture to continue to thrive.