Cross Cultural Psychology. Critical thinking and contemporary applications.

Cross cultural Psychology
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Cross-cultural Psychology
1 According to the perception of psychologists, people from different cultural groups tend to pay attention first to their own cultures while describing their own beliefs as well as values. For instance, culture with predominantly collectivist values may not necessarily rate collectivism high since it forms part of their daily lives. This applies similarly to other psychological scenarios on self-evaluation. In the case of Japanese and Koreans, the facts, as well as observations, prove otherwise, contrary to their self-evaluation as not necessarily hardworking. Japan and Korea are basically highly productive as well as economically successful based on the world economic data. This is sure proof that the natives could be possibly very hard working as perceived by the outsiders. The reason as to why people from such nations give themselves low evaluations could be explained from the perspective of hard work as well as conscientiousness which are estimated with respect to larger cultural norms. In the event that everyone is expected to be hardworking, timely as well as reliable, the scenario created may make many people value themselves short of the perfectionist standards set by the cultural norms. Therefore, such a perspective makes some surveys report on their low determination as well as disorganization contrary to the expected societal standards, providing a cultural response bias. The majority of the elements of human behavior alongside experiences seem universal for both social as well as cultural groups. Despite all these, some psychological phenomena appear unique for particular social and cultural scenarios. Therefore, it is important that psychological understanding is defined and understood by the use of culturally meaningful terms with careful interpretations of findings (Shiraev & Levy, 2017).
2 Evidence on ethnic differences on pain and pain management indicates substantial ethnic disparities as pertains to treatment, prevalence as well as results of the pain-related conditions. The socio-cultural patient-related factors relate to these differences. These encompass factors such as differences in family traditions, religious beliefs, life experiences as well as patient preferences that influence disparities in pain. This is also attributable to neurobiological processes, neurophysiological factors, and structural elements within the healthcare system that could possibly contribute towards shaping individual responses to pain. For instance, traditions may appear to be one of the contributing factors, the African-American exhibit stronger relations between emotions as well as pain behaviors as compared to non-Hispanic Whites, therefore, also reports increased levels of depression linked to chronic pain conditions. At the same time, the socio-economic situation plays a crucial role since it also influences participation in health-promoting activities and behaviors. In most cases, the cultural worldview alongside spirituality and family historical experiences influences the level of pain expression from an individual. The difference in understanding of the various coping mechanisms on response to pain present such a challenge and are key in providing valuable medical intervention services to any race. The pain experienced differentially activates stress-related responses across the various cultural groups, in this case, members of different ethnic groups respond through different coping strategies in pain management. Moreover, treatment from health care providers also varies depending on patient ethnicity (Levy, 2009).
3 Multicultural experiences indeed could possibly lead to an increase in the level of creativity of an individual. For instance, multicultural experiences contribute to the liberation of people’s mental sets whereby they continually learn from their experiences that eventually program their mental sets. In the event that people are required to offer a creative solution to a problem through a certain mental domain, they tend to be constrained by their cultural experiences within that specific domain. Therefore, it limits their level of creativity in solving such particular issues. There is the tendency of breaking out of mental sets whenever there is the expansion of the conceptual boundary of a well-articulated concept. This shows that multicultural experiences can easily increase the level of creativity since it provides intellectual materials as well as opportunities that lead to creative conceptual expansion. For example, furniture is perceived through familiar cultural exemplars that refer to tables and chairs. However, such a mental set could easily be breakable in the event that people are exposed to think more creatively within the furniture concept especially after knowledge on the fact that a piece of furniture can also reflect a kind of fruit. This aspect usually referred to as novel conceptual combination by scientists requires the identification of an exemplar that points to two seemingly non-overlapping concepts. Such a multicultural perspective ensures that there is an expansion of concept’s boundaries. The most fascinating thing about creative effects as a result of multicultural experiences is that it can be transferred to the subsequent unrelated task. This is made possible since the combination of experiences promotes a habitual tendency that enables the performance of extensive memory through unconventional solutions in providing solutions. This eventually makes individuals be more fluent in their means of generating creative ideas within a subsequent task that does not relate to the conceptual combination of a task. The increased level of globalization has improved the level of connectivity within contemporary societies; therefore, presenting new opportunities through which individuals could acquire multicultural experiences. The aspect of close-mindedness is seen as a great obstacle towards creativity as compared to open-mindedness since close-minded individuals are less motivated towards searching their memory for culturally unfamiliar ideas, therefore, they are known to be less creative (Shiraev & Levy, 2017).
4 The proponents of the universality of human emotions assert that cultures exhibit almost similar emotions. This shows that individuals irrespective of their cultural background react to external events through bodily signals that reveal almost similar psychological changes, facial expressions as well as subjective experiences that show pleasure or displeasure. Across cultures, individuals are found to be emotionally sensitive towards losses, gain as well as criticism from others. For instance, sadness can lead to crying across cultures in the same manner anger could possibly provoke aggression and joy leading to forgiveness. In the case of the findings, there is a revelation of the fact that cultural individualism generally relates to the endorsement of positive emotions. However, negative emotions are always perceived as disruptive towards various social relationships and are considered stronger especially in collectivist cultures. Further, the findings show that sadness is usually a signal of distress and clearly interpreted as an indication of individual weakness. However, there is no clear indication from these findings on the fact that individuals from predominantly collectivist cultures express a lot of reservation in their emotional expressions while those from mainly individualist cultures do not show the same. It is important to consider different factors such as people’s character traits while judging their emotional expressions. These may include but not limited to unique personality features, prevailing circumstances and other people’s roles within the situation. Such finding shows that individualism possibly positively correlates with the condition on a higher emotional expression which shows that positive emotions are a function of cultural individualism (Shiraev & Levy, 2017).
5 Homosexuality is no longer considered a mental disorder and I do not support the idea that relates homosexuality to mental illness. In this case, there is no concrete research that has revealed an inherent relationship between homosexuality as a sexual orientation and psychopathology. The findings show that both homosexual, as well as heterosexual behavior, presents normal aspects of human sexuality. However, there has been historical persistence of stereotypes that basically portray people with such sexual orientations as mentally disturbed. The various clinical experiences and other researchers concluded that such orientations are a representation of normal human experiences and forms of human bonding. The modern expressions of homosexuality orientation can be defined from religious, legal as well as medical underpinnings. However, such results should not be considered as an argument that clears the sexual minority individuals from mental illness as well as psychological distress. The prevailing level of stress that results from sexual stigma, as well as prejudice, would possibly make some of them manifest psychological problems. Despite the fact that the individuals referred to as the sexual minority appear to be well adjusted, the non-heterosexuals may suffer the risk for negative emotions such as anxiety, depression alongside related problems as compared to exclusive heterosexuals. According to Sigmund Freud, homosexuality could be considered as a variation of sexual function that is possibly a result of certain conditioning of sexual development. Therefore, it is a great injustice to consider homosexuality a crime. The evolution that the status of homosexuality has undergone over the years in its classification as a mental disorder proves that concepts of mental disorder have rapidly evolved through different changes within social constructs and society at large. Currently, the standard of psychotherapy in the United States reflects gay affirmative psychotherapy that encourages acceptance of an individual’s sexual orientation (Goldstein, 2019).
6 Motivation can be referred to as the general ability of an individual to stay at a task for the purposes of achieving the desired result. From the Buddhist and Western society’s perspective, maximizing motivation represents that aspect of an individual’s desire to always search for the best while satisfying...