As a multicultural individual,

because I was born in a country,

understood what the culture was there,

and then came here and had to adopt the culture here, culture,

for me, is the way people not just act but think as well as believe.

So there's the conscious part and the unconscious part,

sort of the cohort of behaviors and

thoughts that they operate in everyday and the sort of things they do without thinking.

You know, like the sort of things you do,

like when you say hello to someone in Argentina,

for example, you give them a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

In Italy, you give them two kisses on the cheek.

Here is mostly just like hello, right?

So things like that that are very obvious.

You know, things you don't think about are part of what culture is to me.

For me culture is a set of beliefs,

experiences, and traditions that different people around the world have.

When you have different people in your group or your team,

that adds to the overall experience of the team because you bring in

different perspectives of people into the group.

And that's how you know the group functions better

than it would have if it weren't for diverse teams.

I think culture didn't make that much sense to me

until I was exposed to a different thinking, habit,

and environment after I came to U.S. Before,

when I was in China, I think culture is more about cultural heritage and

the history part but I was not aware of the people's culture around me.

After I came to U.S. to study,

I find it's totally a different philosophy of thinking.

Sort of shared idea, concepts,

norms shared by group of people,

generation by generation, for a long time, I guess.

I feel culture is one of the important aspects of anthropology

and it's basically the collective knowledge and the practices of a group of people.

It involves a lot of concepts such as the way they dress, what they eat,

the religion they follow,

and the social norms within that group.

I think it's all collectively the culture of the group.

What is culture?

We become aware of culture when we travel to

a foreign country and need to interact with others.

How to greet? Do we shake hands? Do we bow?

Do we hug? Do we kiss?

Where should we sit?

How far we should stand from people?

In other words, we lack knowledge about the norms and standards for

social interactions and we crave for such knowledge,

but culture also operates more subtly to guide

our opinions and actions in a variety of situations.

Next, we're going to do a couple of examples to understand how culture operates.

In the first exercise,

you're going to be thinking about a couple of situations and you're going to

reflect on how you feel and what opinion you would have of the person in this situation.

I would ask you not to think too much and just indicate your first reaction.

The second exercise, you're going to be thinking about yourself.

You're going to be thinking how do you view yourself

and you're going to do a little bit of introspection.

So I want you to follow the instructions and, again,

for both exercises, don't think too much.

Just write what comes to mind.

The first impression that comes to mind,

just reflect that in the exercise.

Imagine you are a patient

waiting in the operating room for the

anesthesiologist to get started for a surgical procedure.

I want to talk to you about the anesthesia that I'll use for this procedure.

Sure. Tell me about it.

I'll use epidural anesthesia with a small catheter to provide pain relief after surgery.

This is very convenient for a patient like you

because you will be awake faster but still have some relief from the pain.

Sounds good.

Thanks, Doctor.

Imagine you are a patient

waiting in the operating room for the

anesthesiologist to get started for a surgical procedure.

I want to discuss with you the anesthesia you prefer for today's procedure.

Okay. What are the options?

There are two options.

One, general anesthesia, completely unaware.

Or, two, epidural anesthesia with a small catheter to provide pain relief after surgery.

Hmm, which one do you recommend?

Well, the second option will be very convenient for a patient like you because you'll be

awake faster but still have some relief from pain after waking up.

Sounds good. Thanks, Doctor.

Now that you've completed the exercises,

we can talk a little bit more about culture.

Culture is said to be the most basic cause of a person's wants and behaviors.

It is the cumulative knowledge of things that work in a society.

Some people refer to culture as culture is to society what memory is for computers.

It's a repository of knowledge that allow us to function as human beings in society.

A more formal definition that we're going to use in this course is this:

Culture is shared elements that provide standards for perceiving,

believing, and acting among those who share

a language in a certain region and at a certain time.

So let's review the three important aspects of this definition.

First, culture is shared elements.

Meaning, that anything that belongs to the culture is shared by all of us in society.

These could be values, beliefs,

things that we know work in social interactions.

Second thing is that these things are shared in a certain region.

Meaning, that people in a culture are either in close proximity or have

a way of interacting with each other to reach

consensus on the sharedness f these elements.

Third aspect is that this also occurs at a certain time.

Meaning, that cultures of

a thousand years ago are not necessarily the same as cultures of today.

Cultures change and cultures evolve as people reach different agreements

of what is shared to function properly in society.

So, for instance, in the second exercise you just completed,

that exercise is going to show us how culture has shaped your tendency to have

either a more individualistic view of yourself or a more collectivistic view of yourself.

In that exercise, if you remember,

you wrote things about yourself.

You wrote ten statements about who you were and

these statements could be categorized as personal self descriptors

that would reflect what is nurturing an individualistic culture

or this idea of the self being independent and separate from others,

or you could have written things related to you in relation to other human beings,

either in that relation or in

a collective group that is more common in collectivistic cultures or

cultures that nurture a view of the self as interdependent with others.

So, that first distinction in cultural differences between

individualism and collectivism is one that

we're going to be emphasizing throughout this module.

Individualistic cultures, as I said before,

the definition of the self in this culture is independent from others whereas,

in collectivistic cultures, the definition of the self is interdependent with others.

Individualism and collectivism also differ in the structure of goals.

In individualistic cultures, people give priority to personal goals whereas,

in collectivistic cultures, people give priority to

in-group goals or the goals of my collective group.

Finally, a third distinction is the drivers of behavior.

In individualistic cultures, we are driven by our personal attitudes.

Our own opinions are going to determine what we do.

But in collectivistic cultures,

it's given equal importance or more importance to collective norms,

things that we in society have agreed that should be

appropriate to behave in social interactions.

Let's talk now about the first exercise.

The first exercise focus on

a different cultural dimension and it's that between vertical and horizontal cultures.

Culture shape your responses in how do you react to interactions

in which there is either a specified hierarchy or people are related more egalitarian.

If you remember the situations you analyzed in exercise number one,

in one situation, a doctor came and wanted to tell you what to do.

Then, what's the understanding there?

That the doctor has a higher position in the hierarchy,

in which the doctor knows more than the patient and then knows what's good for you.

Then if you felt comfortable in that situation,

then that would reflect a vertical understanding of social interactions.

One in which some people are above,

some people are below,

and we follow the advice of people who are above us.

But the other situation was one in which the doctor tried

to level the playing field and talk to you in an egalitarian fashion.

What's the best approach in your particular context?

Then that's a more horizontal understanding of the world.

So if you felt more comfortable in that interaction,

that would reflect that you probably

have been nurtured in a horizontal cultural environment.

So when we establish the distinction between vertical and horizontal cultures,

what we focus now is not so much on how we view ourselves,

whether independent or interdependent as in individualism and collectivism,

but how do we view ourselves in relation to others?

Do we see ourselves in a hierarchy in which some of us are above and some are below?

Then that would be a vertical culture.

Or do we see

ourselves as being in an egalitarian framework in which we are all at the same level?

Then that would be referred as a horizontal culture.

So the key distinction here is that there are differences in status in

vertical cultures: some people enjoy

a higher status and some people enjoy a lower status,

or we are all equal in terms of status in a horizontal culture.

When we combine individualism and collectivism with vertical and horizontal which are

these two distinctions that we illustrated through the couple of exercises,

then what we get is a framework that talks about

four cultural orientations: horizontal individualism,

vertical individualism, horizontal collectivism, and vertical collectivism.

Let's talk a little bit more about each of these orientations.

Let's start with horizontal individualism.

In horizontal individualism, the major motivational concerns of

individuals is independence and self-reliance.

So in a horizontal individualistic environment,

we're not focused on being above or below others.

We're focused on our own things in an independent fashion.

So the nature of person-to-person relations is as needed with equal others.

And at the societal level,

there is a strong emphasis in individual rights and privacy.

Where are horizontal individualistic cultures common?

Are very common in Scandinavian countries such as Norway, Sweden, Finland, Holland,

or Denmark, and also in Australia, and New Zealand.

Second version of individualism is what we call vertical individualism.

In this case, the major motivational concern is power and status-seeking.

In a vertical individualistic environment,

people are still focused on themselves in terms of thinking about

themselves as independent human beings but they emphasize hierarchy.

Then, the focus is on being above others.

The nature of person-to-person relations is as dominance of low status others.

So we strive to be on top,

to be admired, and to be revered by others.

At the societal level then,

upward mobility is a very important concept,

of the possibility that people can race to the ranks and reach the top.

Where is vertical individualism common?

It's very common in North America,

particularly in the United States and parts of Canada,

and also in the United Kingdom.

Let's focus now on horizontal collectivism.

Horizontal collectivism come from

a collectivistic understanding of the world but people are equal to others.

Then the major motivational concern in

this cultural environment is interdependence and helping others.

The nature of person-to-person relationships is based on nurturing

undifferentiated relations with equal others and,

at the societal level,

social responsibility become a very important concept.

So this is a cultural orientation that is not very

common in a particular country or in a particular region.

We find pockets of it throughout the world.

And particularly, it's been studied horizontal collectivism in the Israeli kibbutz,

a type of agrarian arrangement in a society,

and also in some rural regions in Latin America.

Finally, we get vertical collectivism that comes

from a collectivistic understanding of the world in a hierarchy.

The major motivational concern in

a vertical collectivistic environment is duties and obligations to work in groups.

Nature of person-to-person relationships are based on

close-knit relationship within groups of different status levels.

At the societal level,

protecting an established hierarchy becomes a very important concept.

This vertical collectivistic orientation is very common in different parts of the world.

It's common in South and East Asia,

countries like Japan, China,

India, Korea, or the Philippines.

It's also common in some European countries particularly the

Mediterranean countries, southern Spain,

southern Italy, parts of Turkey and most of Latin America.

So, what's the key learning from this video?

First, culture is shared knowledge about beliefs,

values, and norms that provide standards for perceiving, believing, and acting.

Cultures differ according to patterns of belief, values, and norms.

We talked about two distinctions.

One, between individualism and collectivism,

and, the other, between vertical and horizontal.

But if we combine these two patterns of cultural variations,

we get four cultural orientations with

distinctive value priorities: horizontal individualistic

orientations prioritize independence and self.

Lesson 1-3 What is Culture?

Global Impact: Cultural Psychology

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