Discuss how social or cultural
factors affect one cognitive process.
What is culture?
Wang and Ross (2007)
said that culture is..
1. A system (values,
schemas, artifacts)
2. A process (rituals, daily
routines and practices)
Culture and Memory
• Culture affects how people remember, why
they remember, when they remember, what
they remember and whether they find it
necessary to remember at all.
Did we GTL yet or not?
Did we shoot them in the head?
• In memory studies where
participants are asked to
memorize random words
that are NOT related to
each other, people from
Western cultures usually
do better.
• Why?
• Such tasks are
meaningless to nonWestern people.
Swazi Herdsman and Memory
• Our old buddy Bartlett
(1932) claimed that Swazi
herdsman were got all
Will Hunting about their
cattle.
• Since there culture
revolved around cattle,
they had an extraordinary
memory to recognize and
care for their cows.
Another more culture and memory
example….
• Roger and Waddel
(1982) compared the
memory of Mayan kids
to kids from the good ol
USA.
• Made a model of a
Mayan village.
• Made 80 little plastic
figurines of stuff you
would find in the
village.
The Mayans vs USA…Memory
showdown!!!!
• They then put 20 of the
figures in the model
village and let he kids
look at it.
• Then they took out the 20
figures and put them back
with the other 60.
• Asked the kids to recreate
the village with the 20
figures in it.
• Who did better?
The freaking Mayans!!!!
Why?
• Maybe because their
culture (and schemas)
were more suited
towards memorizing
their own village.
• If it was recreate items
from Snooki’s closet we
would have taken them!
So…..
• We all memorize the
same…we all have a
brain (the same
hardware)
• But context
(software) matters
when trying to
remember stuff.
Uno ejemplo mas of how culture can
effect cognition.
Individualistic Culture
• Focus on yourself
• encouraged to express
emotions because it is
viewed as unique and
shows individual and
distinctive qualities.
Collectivistic Culture
• Focus in on the group
• discourages the expression
of emotions, seen as
unimportant and is often
disregarded of.
Korea vs. USA
Who is more emotional?
Rime et al.did a study where
they discovered that….
• 20% of Koreans
(collectivist country)
never shared their
emotional experiences.
• Compared to only 5% in
the US (individualist
country).
• They hypothesized that
Suppression of emotional
experiences can lead to
memory impairment.
Emotional movie study by…
Richards & Gross
Aim:
• Investigate whether the
regulation of emotion will
affect memory.
Procedure:
• 53 subjects were split into 2
groups
• One group was told to
suppress their emotion while
watching a film about and
argument between two
parents with the presence of a
little girl.
• The other group was asked to
watch the film.
Richards & Disgusting (Gross…get it, I
am just really tired now).
Results:
• The group that was
suppressing their emotion
throughout the film
(regulation of emotion) had
poor recall.
• They did a natural
observation and compared
the memory of those who
regulate and freely express
their emotions.
• Those who express their
emotions have better
memory.
Why did suppressing their emotion zap
their memory?
• The Cognitive Cost of
regulating emotions
took up the capacity for
memory encoding.
• Those who express
their emotions have
better memory.
Was this a good study?
• Ecological validity was
low in the initial
experiment, because it
was in lab conditions.
• Their methodology not
scientific so they make
a big assumption that
regulating emotion took
up the capacity of
memory encoding.