Culture and behaviour practice questions.

Which pairing correctly matches a Hofstede cultural dimension with its meaning?

• Power distance — how far less powerful members accept unequal power
• Individualism — the tendency to plan for the distant future
• Uncertainty avoidance — the preference for group harmony over individual achievement
• Masculinity — the acceptance of hierarchical authority

Answer: Power distance — how far less powerful members accept unequal power

Power distance is the extent to which less powerful members of a society accept that power is distributed unequally. The distractors attach the descriptions of long-term orientation, collectivism and power distance to the wrong dimensions.

An immigrant maintains their heritage culture while also adopting the practices of the dominant host culture. In Berry's model of acculturation, this strategy is called:

• Assimilation
• Separation
• Marginalisation
• Integration

Answer: Integration

Integration means valuing both the heritage and host cultures; assimilation abandons the heritage culture, separation rejects the host culture, and marginalisation rejects both.

Cole and Scribner (1974) found that Kpelle participants who had not attended school recalled few items in a standard free-recall task, but recalled the same items well when they were embedded in a familiar folk story. In the culture lens, this finding is best used to argue that:

• cognitive performance depends on how familiar the task materials are within a culture
• unschooled participants have a smaller short-term memory capacity than schooled participants
• memory strategies are biologically fixed and therefore identical across all human cultures
• storytelling improves recall to the same degree in every culture that has been tested

Answer: cognitive performance depends on how familiar the task materials are within a culture

The same participants recalled well once the material fitted a culturally familiar format, so the deficit lay in the task, not in memory capacity — the classic imposed-etic trap in cross-cultural cognitive research.

Buss (1989) surveyed over 10,000 participants in 37 cultures about what they valued in a long-term partner. Which pattern did he report?

• Men rated youth and physical attractiveness higher, women rated financial prospects higher
• Women rated youth and physical attractiveness higher, men rated financial prospects higher
• Both sexes ranked kindness and intelligence lowest of all the qualities they were offered
• Preferences varied so widely between cultures that no shared sex difference was found

Answer: Men rated youth and physical attractiveness higher, women rated financial prospects higher

The sex difference appeared in almost every sample, which is why the study is cited as evidence of a cross-cultural universal; what varied between cultures was mainly how much chastity was valued, and kindness and intelligence were rated highly everywhere.

State the term for the process by which a person learns the norms, values and behaviours of their own culture, typically during childhood. (one word)

Answer: enculturation

Enculturation is learning one's own culture; it contrasts with acculturation, which is adapting to a new or second culture.

Complete the term: studying a behaviour from within a single culture, using concepts meaningful to that culture, is known as an ____ approach. (one word)

Answer: emic

An emic approach explores behaviour from within one culture; an etic approach compares behaviour across cultures using external, supposedly universal, categories.