StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...
Free

Cultural Psychology Issues - Essay Example

Cite this document
Summary
The essay "Cultural Psychology Issues" focuses on the criticla analysis of the major issues in cultural psychology. Culture is a very complex matter to deal with. It encompasses almost every major human activity whether it falls under the political, economic, or social sphere…
Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER96.8% of users find it useful
Cultural Psychology Issues
Read Text Preview

Extract of sample "Cultural Psychology Issues"

Cultural Psychology Culture is a very complex matter to deal with. It encompasses almost every major human activity whether it falls under the political, economic or social sphere. However, what is really culture? Culture consists of values, norms, traditions, customs and knowledge that are oftentimes influenced by the political, social, economic and spiritual conditions at some extent. However, there is an inevitable fact that it is the humans who have the innate capacity to determine, construct and implement culture. This fact must be assessed thoroughly because it cannot be neglected and disregarded that the thinking capacity of humans paved way for the conception of culture as a dynamic social construct. How complex is the mind that it is able to construct culture? At the same time, how come that there is quite a problem in determining the mind of a culture? This is quite a difficult to assess. At the first glance, humans, being a rational being, created culture. It is the creative mind that gave rise to it. Despite of the capacity to think, the human’s mind cannot be placed or confined in a culture. The very possible reason for this occurrence is that culture is changing and it is parallel to the changes that human’s undergone. Also, it is not really progress that changes culture but evolution. How is this possible? Critically assessing the matter being discussed, the relation of culture and humans encapsulates the complexities of the interaction between the mind and the emotions. The mind dictates the way humans act and emotions arises from the interaction between other species. Humans, being capable of rational thinking, separate them from other species. That is the most crucial element why they act differently. Since humans are regarded to be the highest form of animals, their capacity to think rationally influences how they act unlike other animals like tigers and dogs which act accordingly to their instincts and natural responses. It is inevitable that feelings oftentimes dictate the way humans interact with other animals because the mind already provided a premise or standards how they act in accordance to the things present around them. To some extent, this provides a dual context that the mind sometimes coincides or clash with our feelings that lead to commitment of acts which can be detrimental or beneficial. This duality can be seen beneficial for humans since there is a thorough consideration and deliberation of the effects of the act not just on humans but also to other animals. How will humans dictate the culture and shape it and relates to their feelings and emotions? It is asserted that culture cannot be equated to progress but to evolution. The dynamic nature of culture is related to the evolution that humans undertake. It is explicitly seen that as humans evolved from pre-historic man to homo-sapiens, the culture changed. One manifestation is the change in lifestyle from a nomadic, tribal culture to a centralized civilization. This provides the condition that humans, in the form of ancient man, has lived a nomadic lifestyle. As they evolved to homo-sapiens which furthered developed the mental faculties led to the development of a civilization. The difference of the two is that nomadic tribes have the tendency, in most cases, to be individualistic and after the welfare of their own tribe or kin while a civilization introduced collective lifestyle that somehow suppresses, represses and dominates the individualistic tendencies to achieve a common goal. It is clearly manifested in this case that the brains of humans constantly developed that made them introduce different changes on culture which eventually changed their lifestyle and manner of living. Act, emotions, habits, values, customs and traditions are oftentimes constant in humans. These components can be considered existent since humans came into this world. Love, anger, lust and other emotions are constantly passed manner of living. The same as acts like fighting, intercourse and the like are clear manifestations of the feelings that humans have. Therefore, these components show how humans make culture because of the interaction between different humans. Their acts and emotions are culturally transmitted. At the same time, a dominant culture gives way to easier assimilation of cultural practices because of the capacity of humans to mimic despite of conditions that make them act individually. How is this different from progress? Progress is focused more on how humans use their mind to change their living conditions and not their ways of life which are culturally dependent. Civilizations are actually after developing or using their mental faculties for general welfare and progress. Most ancient civilizations up to the modern society constantly innovated new technologies to improve their living conditions. However, it does not mean that their lifestyle and values change. They will still carry their culture, along with its components, no matter how their living conditions change for the better or for the worse. Even if the wheel is developed to improve the carriage and transport system, it is still inevitable that humans always transport and travel even if the wheel is present or not. It just made their act easy to accomplish but did not really changed the very fact that there is an innate desire to travel. Progress here entails more of the material flourish instead of the humanist premise. In any way possible, progress leans more on science and technology management while culture refers to the human nature and assessment of it. Another complexity of humans as rational beings is the formulation of universal ideas and concepts; at the same time relaying these universalities in a metaphorical manner. This further separates humans from animals. This gives additional premium on the rational minds of humans since it is capable of proving creative means in relaying their acts and emotions. Metaphors, in most conditions, are connected with the language use and they provide representations on how people perceive certain emotions. This shows that even metaphors are culturally relative since language varies per group of people together with the other elements of culture. At the same time, the evolution of sex, gender, ethnicity and race affect culture of humans. The mind dictates how one individual refers and complies with the prescribed social and political norms with regards to these issues. The prescribed norms and values of society about the aforementioned matters are defined by the behaviours of humans and the genetic codes that resulted to such. The genetic modification that humans had gone through during the evolution process affected the way they acted throughout the process. On a certain level, the traits developed from the start of the evolution like fighting has evolved as well. Fighting somehow evolved from savagery to argumentation. This evolution might relatively be the same to other human activities. This inherently justifies that cultural change is deeply parallel with evolution and progress celebrates the contributions of culture. It has been a common misconception that progress evolves with culture yet the anthropological and psychological evidences and factors that shaped the culture draw a line between progress and culture. Psychological anthropology provides a crucial premise that it is the human’s intellectual processes that shapes culture and highlights the dynamics of it together with the scientific evidences of evolution that furthered justified the uniqueness of humans. To concisely sum up things, culture has its foundation on the evolution of humans and the interaction with the environment. It has shown how the complex construction and intellectual rigor of the human mind created a construct that regards human as the sole arbiter. There is parallelism between the values, norms, customs and traditions and the evolution of humans. The development of both paradigms significantly made humans stand out. They have formed systematic conditions which become determinant of the roles they shall take and the brain becomes a natural tool in flourishing the culture. Culture may hamper progress yet progress cannot hamper the evolution of culture and the constant evolution of man. At the same time, the rational nature of man distinguishes them from animals. Their capacity to think on their own and not relying too much on instincts like the savage animals set humans apart. The development of the brain innovated the way humans have lived throughout time by changing culture, ensuring progress and intellectual fermentation. The brain, together with the other human faculties like the voice made humans special as well. The development of the brain and the other parts of human beings gives them methods to express themselves in a more coherent manner. In the end, the mind of human beings made the culture and society because their consciousness evoked these construct which are still present in the modern times. Cultures constant change cannot confine the mind that allowed its emergence. It is the culture which is chained within the processes of the brain and follows the behaviour of human which it must complement accordingly. Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(“Cultural Psychology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words”, n.d.)
Retrieved from https://studentshare.org/psychology/1434336-final-exam
(Cultural Psychology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 Words)
https://studentshare.org/psychology/1434336-final-exam.
“Cultural Psychology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 Words”, n.d. https://studentshare.org/psychology/1434336-final-exam.
  • Cited: 0 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF Cultural Psychology Issues

Is It Important to Pay Attention to Cultural Differences in Psychological Research

shows us that cross-cultural psychology is a branch in psychology that endeavors to evaluate the boundaries of knowledge concerning human behavior by contrasting it with two or more cultures.... Incorporating cultural divergences in psychology research has inherent limitations resulting from overgeneralization.... This helped in changing what the psychology field initially took as the best attachment and child nurturing, which was founded on research carried out exclusively in the United States to assimilate noteworthy differences in such practices across the globe....
8 Pages (2000 words) Essay

Social Psychology Issues

The essay "Social psychology issues" focuses on the peculiarities of social psychology as a particular discipline.... Social psychology, it can be said is the search for truth, while searching for the truth we must explain, and explain we must understand.... xperimental psychology, Patrick McGhee has described as the most dominant form of psychology in North America and Europe.... In the perspective of experimental social psychology, the most scientifically efficient, intellectually rigorous method for understanding human social behavior makes for the making of three assumptions viz:- Social behavior is objectively describable and measurable;- Social behavior is not just spontaneous, random....
5 Pages (1250 words) Essay

Cultural Diversity Issue Related to Biological Psychology

Sammons (2009), assert that biological psychology recognizes gender role and identity as arising from biological processes.... Gender identity is a complex system of ideologies that surround masculinity and femininity, in regard to the roles give to men and women by the society, and their relationship to maleness and femaleness relative to the self....
5 Pages (1250 words) Research Paper

Future Considerations of Issues of Psychology

Collaborations between multiculturalists have created emerging issues, such as racism and cultural identity crisis.... It is therefore pertinent for cultural psychologists to take into consideration such issues as racism and cultural identity crisis.... ssues of cultural identity crisis may have an impact on the future of professional psychology training and practices in that identity crisis may end up dictating people's lifestyles, eating habits and to some extent the types of clothes that people wear....
2 Pages (500 words) Term Paper

Culture and Psychology: How Cultures Communicate

cultural differences exist in how people communicate with each other.... For example, imagine if You knew the language, but you were not aware of the cultural influence on nonverbal behaviors, such as hand gestures and interpersonal space.... The cultural relativism applies to many social perspectives including the topic of aggression and violence....
7 Pages (1750 words) Essay

Approaches of Sociocultural Psychology

Since centuries, experts (Rosa, 2007) have been putting efforts to explain different aspects of humans, in order to acquire effective solutions of various issues in different fields, such as education, business, health, etc.... This paper focuses on the sociocultural psychology that has been able to acquire huge amount of supporters in a short span of time.... The paper identifies different approaches of sociocultural psychology that it offers to resolve an issue in the human society....
14 Pages (3500 words) Term Paper

The Fundamental Cross-Cultural Psychology

The paper "The Fundamental Cross-cultural psychology" discusses that the basic nature of human beings is to be able to acquire characters in the years that they have lived.... he scientific analysis of the behavior of human beings and their mental processes in the variety of different conditions of many cultures is known as cross-cultural psychology (Berry et al.... ross-cultural psychology is defined as the methodical analysis of the behavior of human beings and their mental processes including inconsistency in cultural circumstances (Keith, 2011)....
6 Pages (1500 words) Essay

Is It Always Necessary To Take Into Account Cultural Differences In Psychology Research

cultural psychology views culture as inside a person as a means of knowing and construing the world and other people.... ross-cultural psychology also refers to the scientific study of human conduct and its transmission, incorporating the ways in which behaviors are influenced and shaped by cultural and social forces.... Berry (2000, p, 198) assert that the objectives of cross-cultural psychology are to carry current theories and conclusions with regards to human conduct to other cultural contexts in order to assess their legitimacy and to discover new cultural systems to ascertain psychological experiences not available in the first culture....
8 Pages (2000 words) Essay
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us