ESSAY 1
Psych 200
Due April 21st, 2014
Cultural Narratives
The assignment is to pick out a video which presents a developmental cultural narrative that is one you
are less familiar with and identify how it is different than your own. The objective is to develop critical
thinking skills in exploring different cultural development narratives and reflect on their significance in
relation to our ways of studying development itself. The video you review could be from another
historical period or even from a science fiction perspective.
1. Watch a video which you feel represents psychological development from another cultural
perspective. Pick out illustrative examples of scenes that show different types of developmental
dynamics than you are used to.
2. Write a 500 word essay answering the following questions:
Introduction
a. What different cultural perspective did the video represent and why did this interest you?
b. What was the basic story plot?
c. What sector of the population is it trying to represent?
Body of the paper (3 paragraphs)
d. Give three examples of scenes which demonstrated developmental dynamics which are of interest to
you and present differences from your culture. You can use quotes of the dialogue or descriptions to
illustrate the examples.
e. Explain how you understand these dynamics to be different than your own cultures and what you
think the implications might be for understanding the psychological dynamics of that culture.
f. Do you imagine the film is giving an accurate representation of the cultural dynamics it is depicting?
Summary statement
g. Summarize what you think the value of this video is in terms of understanding psychological
development cross culturally.