1. Cultural dimensions of behaviour
Cultural NORms
Cultural dimensions of behaviour

2. Explain emic and etic concepts using examples
CULTURE
Explain emic and etic concepts using examples

3. What is culture?
“surface culture”
“deep culture”

4. Hoefstede (2002) Culture is a “mental software” Culture Thinking
Emotions
Behaviour

5. Emic and Etic Concepts Etic Emic
Emphasizes similarities between cultures
Assumes behavior patterns are universal
Outsider perspective
‘Objective’
Example: Etoro boys are sexually abused when they are taught to fellate elders
Using etic concept of sexual abuse
Emphasizes differences between cultures
Behavior patterns unique to a culture
Insider perspective
‘Subjective’
Example: Etoro boys participate in rituals that turn them into men and give them the life force they need to be successful
Using emic concept that their ritual is unique

6. Etic and Emic Food and Beverage Services
Starbucks - Etic
McDonalds - Emic
Menu doesn’t adapt to other countries
Menu changes depending on country
Considers the native’s perspective (tastes)

7. McDonald’s Considers the Natives
EBI filet-o shrimp burger in Japan

8. Emic and Etic Concepts
Cross-cultural research can be used to test if theories are universal
Do theories apply to all cultures?
Researchers can take an emic or etic approach when studying other cultures
Emic approaches challenge traditional (Western) views of behavior (especially norms)
Etic approaches tend to impose Western views onto other cultures’ behavior

9. Emic and Etic Concepts Munugumor – masculine characteristics
Gender development in tribes (Mead, 1935) in New Guinea
Munugumor – masculine characteristics
Both men and women were aggressive
Arapesh – feminine characteristics
Both Men and women were sensitive and not aggressive
Tchambuli – gender reversal
Men ran the household
Women ran the village

10. Emic and Etic Concepts
Gender development in different tribes (Mead, 1935)
Gender roles can be culturally determined
Etic because she imposed her etic
Imposed etic – theory/idea embedded in culture of the researcher which is used to study other cultures
Mead had idea of masculinity and femininity embedded in her
She used Western ideas of masculine and feminine (her etic) to characterize gender roles in the new cultures
Emic would have emphasized why the gender roles differed according to the natives
Native perspective

11. Emic and Etic Concepts
Other areas of psychology where etics are imposed
Western idea of intelligence
IQ tests are usually culturally biased
Intelligence can be interpreted differently by other cultures (patterns don’t matter as much etc)
They can emphasize different types of intelligence
Social, emotional
Normal and abnormal behavior based on Western norms
Clinical diagnosis based on APA DSM-V and European ICD-10
Assessment tools based on symptoms
If you have enough symptoms you have the disorder
Remember Etoro boys who perform oral sex

12. Exam question
Examine the role of two cultural dimensions on behavior

13. Role of Cultural Dimensions on Behavior
Hoefstede gave questionnaires to IBM employees in 50 countries about morale in their workplace
Discovered cultural dimensions
Understanding cultural dimensions will help facilitate communication between cultures!!!
Important for the diplomacy and international business.

14. Role of Cultural Dimensions on Behavior
Power Distance
Long Term Orientation
Masculinity
Uncertainty Avoidance
Individualism/Collectivism
Individualists are more independent (expected to take care of yourself and your immediate family)
Collectivist cultures rely more on support from extended family

15. Role of Cultural Dimensions on Behavior: Individualism/Collectivism
Individuals in collective societies that do not live up to the cultural norms can be ostracized/punished
Markus & Kitayama (1991)
‘In America the squeaky wheel gets the grease’
‘In Japan the nail that stands out gets pounded down’
Individualist societies allow a boundary between the individual and society
People can do what they want as long as they don’t hurt others
Collectivist societies emphasize connectedness – no boundaries

16. Individualism/Collectivism

17. Role of Cultural Dimensions on Behavior: Power Distance Index
Higher PDI means more inequality
People in high PDI cultures are more likely to accept their inequality
I accept inequality
I used to be powerful…
Saudi Arabia (80)
I reject inequality
Austria (11)

18. Power Distance Index (PDI)

19. Role of Cultural Dimensions on Behavior: Power Distance Index – Plane Crashes
PDI has several effects
Attitude towards authority
Respect for authority
High PDI respect authority a lot and fear it
High PDI individuals less likely to confront authority
High PDI individuals use mitigating language and indirectly express concerns to authority figures
Do you think it rains more in this area? (Korea – High PDI)
I think we should decrease speed to combat the rain conditions (Low PDI)

20. Role of Cultural Dimensions on Behavior: Power Distance Index – Plane Crashes
Korean Air
Attitude towards authority
High respect for authority
Flight 801 – Landing the plane in rain
First Officer – Do you think it rains more in this area? (hinting rain might affect our landing)
Captain – Silence
Flight Engineer – Captain, the weather radar has helped us a lot (hinting we should use it to land the plane)
Captain – Yes. They are very useful.

21. Role of Cultural Dimensions on Behavior: Power Distance Index – Plane Crashes
Korean Air Flight 801
Captain resorted to a
visual landing
The First Officer and Flight Engineer did not say ‘don’t do a visual landing, the weather is too harsh’
First Officer and Flight Engineer feared the authority of the captain
Didn’t want to upset the captain who is higher up in the hierarchy
Plane crashed 

22. Role of Cultural Dimensions on Behavior: Power Distance Index – Plane Crashes
South Korea – PDI 60
Korean Air – 7 crashes 1977–1994
Korea – hierarchy very important
Korea uses ex-military pilots
respond to authority
Interventions taken to improve
communication despite their PDI and
cultural background
No crashes since 1999

23. Role of Cultural Dimensions on Behavior: Power Distance Index – Plane Crashes
US – PDI 40
Columbia – PDI 67
Avianca Flight 052
From Columbia to US
How is communication (behavior) affected by the cultural dimension of PDI?

24. Role of Cultural Dimensions on Behavior: Power Distance Index – Plane Crashes
Captain: Advise ATC we don’t have fuel
Not interpreted as we have actually run out of fuel
Planes normally are low on fuel during landing
First officer: Climb and maintain 3 thousand and, ah, we’re running out of fuel sir
Did not say it’s an emergency!
Air Traffic Control: I’m gonna bring you about fifteen miles northeast and then turn you back onto the approach. Is that OK with you and your fuel?
New Yorker snappy attitude intimidates Colombian pilots
First officer: I guess so. Thank you very much
Columbian respects ATC’s authority, doesn’t express concern about low fuel because low PDI doesn’t want to upset high PDI US controller

25. Role of Cultural Dimensions on Behavior: Power Distance Index – Plane Crashes
Columbia – PDI 67
US – PDI 40
Avianca flight crashed
Flight crew ran into trouble
Intimidated by low PDI US flight controllers communication
Flight crew implies suggestions about what to do – not said directly and explicitly
Low PDI (US) cultures do not take hints well
Prefer to be told explicitly what the flight crew’s wants

26. Role of Cultural Dimensions on Behavior: Power Distance Index – Plane Crashes
Mitigated speech from subordinates plays a role in plane crashes
Reducing mitigated speech
Call superiors by first name
Communicate clearly – be assertive and explicit
Train pilots to act as facilitators and negotiators instead of commanders
Subordinates can then feel more at ease correcting pilot’s mistakes
Aim to remove hierarchy so communication lines are clear

27. Power Distance and Terrorism
Muslims in Arab World
Overall PDI – 91
Pakistan PDI – 97
Explains obedience of
followers to extremist leaders?
Followers less likely to dissent
(disagree) against the leader?

28. Role of Cultural Dimensions on Behavior: Uncertainty Avoidance
Refers to a society’s tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity
Some cultures (via media, politicians) program their people to feel (un)comfortable when faced with uncertainty
Unstructured situations can cause this uncertainty
They are novel (new), unknown and surprising
9/11
Uncertainty avoiding cultures try to reduce the possibility of unstructured situations through laws
They also tend to focus on absolute truth through religion

29. Role of Cultural Dimensions on Behavior: Uncertainty Avoidance

30. Role of Cultural Dimensions on Behavior: Uncertainty Avoidance
China has replaced uncertainty-avoidance with Confucian dynamism (Bond, 1988)
Confucian Dynasty related to virtue
Instead of absolute truth they focus on virtue and honor like other Asian countries
Samurai Code – Bushido
Seppuku

33. Role of Cultural Dimensions on Behavior: Long Term Orientation
Long-Term Orientation is the fifth dimension of Hofstede which was added after the original four to try to distinguish the difference in thinking between the East and West. From the original IBM studies, this difference was something that could not be deduced. Therefore, Hofstede created a Chinese value survey which was distributed across 23 countries. From these results, and with an understanding of the influence of the teaching of Confucius on the East, long term vs. short term orientation became the fifth cultural dimension.

34. Confucian work dynamism
Bond (1988) Some cultures focus on virtue.
Asian countries tend to have a long-term orientation
Value persistence, loyalty and trustworthiness
Relationships are based on social status
Need to protect collective identity and respect tradition “saving face”
Instead of bringing disgrace to the family, perform seppuku :-/

35. Role of Cultural Dimensions on Behavior: Long Term Orientation
US, Finland, France and Germany have a short-term orientation
Value personal steadiness and stability
Focus on the future instead of the past
Innovation is highly valued
Efficiency!

36. Role of Cultural Dimensions on Behavior: Proxemic Theory (Hall, 1966)
Intimate
For whispering, embracing, hugging, kissing
15-46cm
Personal Space
Family and friends can interact with you
46-120cm
Social Space
Acquaintances should stay out here m
Public Space
Rest of public can be here
Upwards of 3.7m

37. Role of Cultural Dimensions on Behavior: Proxemic Theory (Hall, 1966)
The amount of personal space we are comfortable with differs across cultures
Only let people we are close to into our personal space
US conversations
10-45cm away from each other
European conversation distance
Roughly half of US
Americans feel uncomfortable when they go to Europe and try to back away from our comfort zone

38. Hall’s Time consciousness
Monochronic cultures
Polychronic cultures
Focus on one thing at a time
Schedules
Deadlines
Frustration is high when deadlines are not met
Many things happen at once
Relationships and interactions are valued
No frustration when things are late

39. Hall’s Proxemic Theory
How Halls two cultural norms would affect doing business cross-culturally?
With regard to time consciousness, is one of these cultures HEALTHIER than the other?

40. What’s learned?
Define culture and be able to identify the important components of the definition.
Explain what is meant by ethnocentrism.
Distinguish between an emic and an etic approach to studying culture.
Be able to describe two cultural dimensions.  We have looked at the following: individualism/collectivism; power distance; long-term orientation (Confucius dynamism); masculinity/femininity; uncertainty avoidance

41. Examine the role of two cultural dimensions on behavior [8 marks]
SPEC/3/PSYCH/BP1/ENG/TZ0/XX
PSYCHOLOGY
HIGHER LEVEL AND STANDARD LEVEL
PAPER 1
SECTION A
Examine the role of two cultural dimensions on behavior [8 marks]
Explain emic and etic concepts using examples [8 marks]