Advances in Social and Personality Psychology:
Cultural Psychology
PSYCH 547 (Winter 2009)
Professor Janxin Leu
Guthrie 217, 206-616-1371; E-mail address: janleu@u.washington.edu
Meeting Time: Wednesday 10:30-12:20 in Gould 17
Office Hours: Wednesday 12:30-1:30 in Guthrie 217
COURSE SCHEDULE
*S/P general exam reading, ** Empirical article
Below you will find a schedule for the lecture topics, readings and assignments
which should give you an indication of what we will be doing this term. You are
required to keep up with the readings. Note, the schedule may change as the
course progresses – I will try to give you plenty of time when this happens, but
you are responsible for knowing about any changes.
1/7: Syllabus
1/14: Introduction to American cultural models: Protestantism and
individualism
Hochschild, J. L. (1995). What is the American Dream? In Facing up to the
American Dream (pp. 15-38). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for
cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98, 224-253.*
Shweder, R.A., Much, N.C., Mahapatra, M., & Park, L. (1997) The "big three" of
morality (autonomy, community, divinity) and the "big three" explanations of
suffering. In Allan Brandt & Paul Rozin (Eds) Morality and health. Florence, KY,
US: Taylor & Frances/Routledge, pp. 119-169.
Quinn, D. & Crocker, J. (1999) When ideology hurts: Effects of belief in the
Protestant Work Ethic and feeling overweight on the psychological well-being of
women. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(2), 402-414.**
1/21: Introduction to American cultural models: Race and socioeconomic
status
Jones, J. (1996). Racism: what is it and how does it work? (Ch. 13). In J. M.
Jones, Prejudice and racism (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Steele, C. M., & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and intellectual
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performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 69, 797-811.* **
Adler, N.E., Boyce, T., Chesney, M.A, Cohen, S., Folkman, S., Kahn, R.L, Syme,
S.L. (1994). Socioeconomic status and health: The challenge of the gradient.
American Psychologist, 49(1), 15-24.
Snibbe, A.C. & Markus, H.R. (2005). You can't always get what you want:
Educational attainment, agency, and choice. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, Vol 88(4), 703-720.**
1/28: Interpersonal Relationships
Miller, J.G. & Bersoff, D.M. (1992). Culture and moral judgment: How are
conflicts between justice and interpersonal responsibilities resolved? Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 62(4) Apr 1992, 541-554. **
Kapadia, S. & Miller, J. (2005). Parent-adolescent relationships in the context of
interpersonal disagreements: View from a collectivist culture. Psychology and
Developing Societies, 17(1), 33-50.**
Adams, G., & Plaut, V. C. (2003). The cultural grounding of personal
relationships: Friendship in North American and West African worlds. Personal
Relationships, 10, 333-347. **
Uchida, Y., Kitayama, S., Mesquita, B., Reyes, J.A.S., & Morling, B. (2008) Is
perceived emotional support beneficial? Well-being and health in independent and
interdependent cultures. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(6), 741754.**
MONDAY, 2/2: UCHIDA TALK 12:00-1:30 Guthrie Annex 1 Rm. 120
2/11: Rethinking emotion
Haidt, J. & Keltner, D. (1997). Culture and facial expression: Open-ended
methods find more expressions and a gradient of recognition. Cognition and
Emotion, 13(3), 225-266.**
Masuda, T., Ellsworth, P. C., Mesquita, B., Leu, J., & Veerdonk, E. (2008).
Putting the face in context: Cultural differences in the perception of emotions
from facial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.**
Leu, J., Mesquita, B., Ellsworth, P.C., Zhang, Z.Y., Yuan, Huijuan, Buchtel, E.,
Karasawa, M., & Masuda, T. (in press). Situational differences in dialectical
emotions: Boundary conditions in a cultural comparison of North Americans and
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East Asians. Cognition and Emotion.**
Tsai, J.L, Louie, J.Y., Chen, E.E., & Uchida, Y. (2007). Learning What Feelings
to Desire: Socialization of Ideal Affect Through Children's Storybooks.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33(1), 17-30.**
2/18: Rethinking self-esteem
Heine, S. J., Lehman, D.R., Markus, H.R., & Kitayama, S. (1999). Is there a
universal need for positive self-regard? Psychological Review, 106, 766-794.*
Valdes, G. (1996). Con Respeto: bridging the distances between culturally diverse
families and schools: an ethnographic portrait. New York:Teachers College
Press. (Ch. 2,3,4,6 : pp. 41-93, 116-139).
Yamaguchi, S., Greenwald, A. G., Banaji, M. R., Murakami, F., Chen, D.,
Shiomura, K., Kobayashi, C., Cai, H., & Krendl, A. (2007). Apparent universality
of positive implicit self-esteem. Psychological Science, 18, 498–500.**
2/25: Rethinking cognition and perception
Nisbett, R. E., Peng, K., Choi, I., & Norenzayan, A. (2001). Culture and systems
of thought: Holistic versus analytic cognition. Psychological Review, 108, 291310.*
Ji, L., Nisbett, R.E., & Su, Y. (2001) Culture, change, and prediction.
Psychological Science, 12(6), 450-456.**
Kim, H. (2008). Culture and the cognitive and neuroendocrine responses to
speech. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(1), 32-47.**
Kitayama, S., Duffy, S., Kawamura, T., & Larsen, J. T. (2003). Perceiving an
object and its context in different cultures: A cultural look at new look.
Psychological Science, 14(3), 201–206.* **
3/4: Non-experimental methods
Heine, S. J., Lehman, D. R., Peng, K. & Greenholtz, J (2002). What's wrong with
cross-cultural comparisons of subjective Likert scales? The reference-group
effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 82(6), 903-918.* **
Movie: Preschools in three cultures
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3/11: Experimental methods
Oyserman, D. & Lee, S.W.S. (2008). Does culture influence what and how we
think? Effects of priming individualism and collectivism. Psychological Bulletin,
134(2), 311-342.
Cohen, D., Nisbett, R.E., Bowdle, R., & Schwarz, N. (1996). Insult, Aggression,
and the Southern Culture of Honor: An experimental ethnography. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 70(5), 945-960.* **
Kitayama, S., Markus, H.R., Matsumoto, H., & Norasakkunkit, V. (1997).
Individual and collective processes in the construction of the self: Selfenhancement in the United States and self-criticism in Japan. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 1245-1267.**
Benet-Martinez, V., Leu, J., Lee, F., & Morris, M. (2002) Negotiating
biculturalism: Cultural frame switching in biculturals with oppositional versus
compatible cultural identities. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology,33(5), 492516.**
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Course Objectives:
By the end of this course, you should be able to explain how several psychological
processes, considered to be universal by most psychologists, are influenced by
cultural context. You should also be able to provide examples of how research
results often differ in diverse samples when compared with middle-class,
European American North American college samples. To expose you to
culturally sensitive research methods, you will be asked to design and write an
empirical paper that builds on one of the studies covered in this course.
Course website:
http://faculty.washington.edu/janleu/Courses/CulturalPsychology/547.shtml
Course e-mail: psych547a_wi09@u.washington.edu
GoPost URL:
https://catalysttools.washington.edu/webtools/gopost/board/janleu/9259/
Course requirements:
1. Discussion Posts: The assigned readings are to be completed by the date
indicated. Please post your discussion of the readings on GoPost by 6PM the day
before the readings are due. Each post is worth up to 5 points; discussion posts
will be graded as either worth 3 or 5 points.
In your posts, please choose at least two papers assigned for the week and address
the following questions:
A. How do the ideas/theories across the papers relate to one another?
B. How do the findings across the papers relate to one another?
C. What questions do you have? What would you like to learn more
about in class discussion?
For instructions on how to post, please go to the following website:
http://catalyst.washington.edu/web_tools/gopost.html
2. Participation: You are expected to participate in all class discussions in a
manner that respects the views of others. You are also expected to challenge your
own views and those of others based on empirical data.
3. Leading Discussion: You will lead at least one class discussion on a set of
readings, synthesizing the discussion points that other students have contributed to
the GoPost.
4. Article Summary: For the week that you are leading discussion, summarize
one of the assigned empirical papers (not a review paper or a book chapter).
Please make enough copies for everyone in the class. Alternatively, you can post
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the article summary on GoPost by 6PM the day before the readings are due to
avoid photocopying. This assignment is worth 10 points; 2 points for each section
of the article summary listed below:
A. Briefly, what were the goals of the paper and what was discovered?
B. Is the theoretical idea sound? Why is the idea important?
C. Are the methods appropriate for testing the hypotheses?
D. Are the analyses appropriate/adequate?
E. Are the conclusions appropriate given the data? What contribution does this
study make to the field?
5. Original Empirical Paper: You are expected to write an original empirical
paper based on one of the readings. Describing the rationale, methods, ideal
results, and discussion. The paper should be designed as the next logical study in
an empirical article read in this course. The paper is worth 50 points, and is due
on Monday, 3/16 at 5PM in Dr. Leu’s faculty mailbox. No extensions will be
given. Papers may be submitted in advance of the deadline.
Evaluation:
Reading discussion postings:
Article summary:
Research paper:
Total
40 points (5 points for each discussion post)
10 points
50 points
100 points
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Original Research Paper: DUE MONDAY 5:00PM, March 16, 2009
One of the most important skills as a researcher is to learn how to design the next
study in a program of research. Scientific progress may be made through
incremental discoveries that build on previous work, but extend the field into a
new direction.
For your final research paper, please choose one empirical paper assigned in this
course (preferably not a review). Your task is to design the next study in the
program of research, building on the theory and findings presented in the
published paper. Obviously, there is no single “correct next study” so there is
room for a lot of creativity as long as you explain how your study relates to, or
extends, the framework in a relevant way.
The research paper will be worth a total of 50 points. Each section (Intro,
Methods, Results, Discussion) will be worth 10 points; additionally, clarity in
writing will be worth 10 points.
1. Introduction: Describe your research question, including how it is linked to the
original article.
2. Methods: Outline one study that may be run to test or explore a prediction,
including examples of appropriate measures.
3. Results: Describe the analyses that would be run and summarize the predicted
results, accompanied by a table or figure, if relevant.
4. Discussion: Describe why your proposed project and findings are important to
the field. What questions remain? What limitations are there to your study?
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