Me. And them. And us. And you (sir).

Until I began this course, self-concept wasn’t really something I thought much about. But after reading about the four concepts of the self mentioned in the text, I started to wonder about whether I could find examples of them within my own life. When it came to the independent concept, I simply saw myself with the surrounding members of the community – it seemed like instinct after contrasting myself about the other cultures I’d read about, who had much more collectively-oriented communities.

Despite this, though, I could see myself in the interdependent culture was well. I immediately thought of my view of myself when with my family, particularly when I read the phrase “the self must change if relationships change”. My relationship to my family has always felt like that, and not just in terms of physical support like food and shelter. I’ve always been able to lean on my familial relationships for emotional support when I was going through a rough time, and my family (especially my sisters) have gotten the same support from me. I think that even through we live in what is considered an individualistic society, many people in our culture feel the same as I do about their relationship toward their family. I feel pity for those who don’t.

Not surprising considering its name, the relational concept of the self made me reflect back on many individual relationships I have in my life. I immediately thought of my best friend – a lot of our friends weren’t around this summer, so most the time we had to depend on each other to find ways to fill up our free time (in the rare cases that I had some, with the combination of multiple summer courses and a full time job). Though you could most likely find a way to apply this to pretty much any relationship in your life, this is the one that I would, above all, describe as relational – to me, it feels the most “mutual” one I have.

The encompassing concept of the self is, to me, the easiest to identify. I’ve seen this within myself and others many times in the workplace. In my experience, it is often the people with more experience than you with whom you play the “subordinate” role in the relationship – and by contrast, when you have more experience than another, you feel like the “encompassing” figure. I remember a particular time when a new supervisor was hired at my part-time job in Antigonish. He was very nice, but clearly did not know much about the work environment as opposed to the staff who had been there for years, who really knew the ropes. You could feel the awkward stain within their relationships – though he was technically the “dominant” figure, he often ended up needed to slip into the “subordinate” role. Though it felt quite awkward, it was interesting to see it play out.

            I was surprised to be able to relate myself to the concepts pretty easily as I read through them – but afterwards, I understood that though some roles may be more dominant in certain cultures, they can be found pretty much anywhere. Nevertheless, it was eye-opening to really sit down and reflect on the different ways I see myself in relation to other people - it's the type of thing that's always there, but you don't tend to think about. This is one of the reasons I love Psychology - it gets you to reflect on aspects of living that aren't always explicitly obvious, but are fundamental parts of everyday life.

Mommy Issues

My sister laments that her 19 month old son is “too attached”.  He often gets very distressed when she leaves the room, and rushes to her side as soon as she returns. She often wonders whether he really is as sweet and manageable as his babysitter claims he is while she’s at work. Since attachment patterns often stay pretty stable throughout development, she worries that his strong attachment to her may somehow create problems in his future.

            To comfort her about this, I’ve told her about the “Strange Situation”  experiment. Though I recognize her concerns – having to leave your child when he is clearly visibly upset is an understandably hard thing to get used to – I let her know that the good sign in all of this is that he is instantly comforted when she returns. This is a sign of a securely attached child – as opposed to an insecurely attached child, who will often not be comforted by his mother’s reappearance right away.

            I found the information on children’s attachment patterns across cultures to be really interesting. Particularly, I was surprised to read that there were issues discovered within the children of the Israeli kibbutz – that many of them seemed to be insecurely attached, and that it seemed to be a result of their mothers’ “communal” parenting styles.  Often as I read through our text and the articles we discuss, I wonder whether there are factors of certain cultures that they may be better off doing without – the adaptability of the children to whatever culture they are born into often surprised me to the point of being a bit skeptical. It was almost a relief to see an example where this wasn’t necessarily the case.

            Children bode well when they have a parent as a secure base to which they can attach themselves as they explore the world, and cultures around the world have different ways of creating secure bases for their children. When I look at how my nephew uses my sister as his “home base” while he explores my house, I can see exactly how this works. I can understand my sister’s worries – and if I hadn’t known what I currently do about child development, I may have had some fleeting concerns as well. I think that in our individualistic society, we see independence as a type of triumph, but we may sometimes forget that it’s not typical for someone at such a young age. I feel very relieved to have realized that, and to be able to tell my sister that her son’s behaviour is not unusual.

Youtube Youngsters

The last time I spent time with my four year old nephew, we spent over an hour playing games. However, these weren’t the same games I played when I was four years old – hide and seek, dress-up, make-believe. We sat at the kitchen table on my laptop, playing kiddie computer games on Treehouse.com – my nephew sat on my lap, as he’s still too small to comfortably reach the keyboard on the top of the table.

I was amazed at the ease in which he clicked through the items and dragged things back and forth with the mouse. He even got me to type Youtube into the browser, where he clicked through cartoons like Peppa Pig (his favorite, an English cartoon which we can’t get through our TV programming), and videos of washing machines spinning (my nephew occasionally has slightly strange interests). My parents couldn’t even speed through the internet like this kid could. What was all that about?

It’s amazing to look at how quickly young kids can adapt to technology. Their minds are like a sponge – it reminded me of how the textbook mentions how much more easily young children can learn a second language than adults (I am actually a personal testament to this – when I was young, I learned French like it was nothing  - my dad has been trying to master it for over 20 years now and still struggles occasionally). When I think of this with a cultural perspective, it makes me wonder – will these young children in developed nations, who are exposed to vast amounts of technology practically from birth, develop notable differences in the way that they develop as opposed to children who are not?

This is more than just a question involving the children’s cognitive abilities when being able to master the cognitive ability to navigate themselves through the internet in the technical sense. As our textbook mentions, through advancing technology, children are much more exposed to other culture than they would have ever been before. Not just children either – their parents too. I wonder what this could lead to. Maybe it will help cultures to understand and relate to each other. Maybe parents from certain cultures will take pointers from how other cultures raise their children – I know that through these studies, I’ve considered some techniques shown by other cultures for how I plan to raise my own children some day. Who knows? I guess time will tell. 

The "Right" and "Wrong" of Parenting

The subject of parenting in this course is something I’ve found to be particularly interesting. Probably the most intriguing aspect to me would be the differences found between the levels of shelteredness of parents of different cultures. Take the children of the film Babies, for example – I was personally shocked at the scene where the tiny Mongolian child was climbing onto trees and crawling around the feet of a cow with seemingly little supervision. I couldn’t imagine this happening in the Western world – if someone witnessed a situation like that in our culture, they would likely call child services. However, it seemed like something that was relatively normal to this culture.

As I watched this film and read the articles comparing parenting styles of different cultures, it made me wonder – do these cultures feel that being what we would consider “lax” toward the supervision and control of their children’s whereabouts beneficial in some sense? We may see at as irresponsible, but they could simply see it as a good way of teaching independence to their children. They may even see the way we raise our children as overprotective, as though we’re giving our children too much shelter from the realities of the world around us.

As I’ve been mulling over these questions, I seem to keep coming back to the same thought – what could truly be considered “overprotective”? What about “underprotective”? Is there a definite answer to this, or could it vary from culture to culture, or from family to family? These are definitely questions worth exploring further, but it doesn’t have to stop there. What about parenting in general? Is there a definite “right” or “wrong” way to raise your child?

I feel that this last question in particular is essential when studying human development across cultures. There are obviously things that should be avoided when raising children – abuse, malnourishment, homelessness, etc.  – but what about the endlessly varying aspects of parenting found within the customs different cultures? Could there be some cultures that raise their children more efficiently, or less so? This, to me, is why taking culture into account when studying human development is so important. If we study other cultures’ customs and traditions when it comes to parenting, we could find wonderful opportunities to learn from each other, and to be able to raise our children to the best of our abilities. 

Nature vs. Nurture

Our textbook mentions Berry, Poortinga, and Pandey's definition of cross-cultural psychology in the revised Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology - "the systematic study of relationships between the cultural context of human development and the behaviors that become established in the repertoire of individuals growing up in a certain culture". Now that I've begun to delve deep into the study of different aspects of psychology during the pursuit of my degree, I've really started to notice just how much a person's culture can have an effect on how they develop psychologically.
This topic makes me keep coming back to, above everything else, the famous "nature vs. nurture" debate. To me, if there's one thing that is truly both immensely frustrating and immensely fascinating at the same time, it's trying to apply this debate to all the various psychological phenomenons that I've learned about in the past year. It feels like just about everything can be viewed from both sides of the argument, theoretically at least.
Take, for example, a boy getting abused by his father growing up to become abusive to his son himself. From the nurture standpoint, it could be his home environment during childhood that influenced him in this way. From the nature standpoint, he may have inherited genes from his father that caused him to have a penchant for violence. This is a pretty simple example, of course, but I feel as if I play out both sides of this argument in my head all the time. That peculiar sense of fascination about what makes people feel, think, and act the way they do is one of the reasons why I love psychology, and want to pursue a career in it.
Now, back on the subject of cultural psychology. I feel that the topic of how someone's culture affects them psychologically is something that especially intrigues me - both in terms of the topic itself, and how it ties into "nature vs. nurture". Is it the general environment created by a particular person's culture that produces a particular effect on their development? Or could it be that some genetic links passed on from ancestors cause people from certain cultures to develop in certain ways? Though I know that "nature vs. nurture" may never have a definite answer - be it nature, nurture, or (the most likely case) a combination of both, I'm hoping that as I go through this course, my interest in what makes people turn out the way they do will continue to be explored.

First Thoughts

I'm currently getting into Chapter 1 of our new textbook, and it's given me a few things to think about. The small section of the very beginning in particular was something that I could definitely relate to - the mention of the author's daughter being raised in a bilingual and cross-cultural home. I myself have gone through the very same thing, being raised as a half-Acadian half-Newfoundlander, and speak both English and French in the home.
When I first decided to take this course, I chose it because, first of all, I wanted to be able to get some extra credits in during the summer (ha ha), and also because it seemed like an interesting subject to delve deeper into. It surprised me that the very first paragraph of the textbook would make me realize that this was actually a subject that may hit home for me as an individual. Already I'm starting to reflect on how the terms "Acadian" and "Newfoundlander" were more than just labels indicating what general area my parents were from. It's gotten me thinking about how coming from these two very different cultures may have shaped me as a person.
Technically, I'd definitely say that I'm more closely linked to my Acadian heritage - all my life, I've lived in Cheticamp, a small French Acadian village on Cape Breton Island. I've been immersed in its culture my whole life - the music, the language, and most of all, all of my French relatives whose houses immediately surround mine. However, I've always felt a bit of a disconnect with this heritage - without subconsciously realizing it, I feel that I have this instinctual tendency to identify with my father's culture, even though I seldom get a taste of it. I wonder if there's some kind of psychological explanation for all of this, or if it's just due to my tendency to go against the grain (which is, in this case, the culture that I'm so very immersed in).
Either way, the beginning of this textbook has definitely sparked my curiosity, and I'm looking forward to seeing what else I might learn - not only about this topic in general, but quite possibly about myself.