D2.Psy.7.9-12: Multicultural and Global Perspectives on Human Behavior

Overview

Lesson Procedure

60-70 minutes of class time across 5 phases.

1. Warm-Up5-10 minutes
2. Direct Instruction20 minutes
3. Guided Practice15 minutes
4. Independent Practice15 minutes
5. Closure5-10 minutes

1. Warm-Up5-10 minutes

   Warm-Up Prompt

   "Write down one thing that is polite in your family or community and might seem odd, or even rude, somewhere else. Then write how an outsider might misread it."

   Collect a few examples without names. Common answers involve greetings, eye contact, how loudly people speak, whether to arrive exactly on time, and whether children speak up to adults. Ask: if a psychologist from outside watched this behavior and explained it, what could go wrong? Keep the answers: they lead straight into Boas's traveller in Source 3.

2. Direct Instruction20 minutes

   Psychology explains behavior with theories, and theories are only as general as the people they were tested on. The vocabulary below names the main ideas this indicator asks for.

   Diversity and explanation: the working vocabulary (examples written for this page)

   Term	What it means	Example
   Culture	The shared beliefs, practices, language, values and tools that a group passes on	How a family marks a birthday, or which foods count as breakfast
   Multicultural perspective	Attention to the many cultural groups within one society, by language, ethnicity, religion, region or generation	Studying how students from many language backgrounds in one city ask teachers for help
   Global perspective	Comparing and connecting people across countries and world regions	Comparing how adults greet strangers in Brazil, Egypt, India and Sweden
   Cross-cultural research	Studying the same question, with equivalent methods, in more than one culture	Translating a questionnaire and checking that each item means the same thing in each language
   Ethnocentrism	Judging another group's behavior by the standards of one's own culture	Calling a group "impatient" because its members value different things than the observer does
   Sampling bias	A sample that differs systematically from the people a finding is meant to describe	A theory of "teenagers" tested only on students at one suburban school
   Within-group variation	How much individuals in the same group differ from one another	Recall scores from 8 to 12 in one community
   Between-group difference	How much the averages of two groups differ	One community's mean is 3 points higher than another's
   Stereotype	A belief about a group that is applied to every individual in it	Assuming one person will act like a group average

   Who psychology has studied. The psychologist Jeffrey Arnett analyzed the articles in six leading journals of the American Psychological Association and found that their authors, samples and editors were predominantly American, although Americans make up less than 5% of the world's population (J. J. Arnett, "The Neglected 95%: Why American Psychology Needs to Become Less American," American Psychologist 63, 2008). Joseph Henrich, Steven Heine and Ara Norenzayan later used the label WEIRD for samples drawn from Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic societies, and argued that such samples are often unusual rather than typical of people worldwide (Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2010). Diagram 2 shows the gap. A finding from such samples may still hold elsewhere, but that has to be tested, not assumed.

   Two early voices. Wilhelm Wundt, whose laboratory and classrooms at Leipzig trained many early psychologists (as his translator notes in the 1916 preface), also spent years on what he called Völkerpsychologie, "folk psychology": the study of mental life as it appears in a community's language, myths and customs. In Source 1, "its problem" means the subject matter of folk psychology. Franz Boas, an anthropologist whose 1911 book discusses many peoples of the Americas, among them the Inuit and the Kwakiutl (today usually called Kwakwaka'wakw) of Vancouver Island, wrote Source 3.

   1[...] All phenomena with which mental sciences deal are, indeed, creations of the social community. Language, for example, is not the accidental discovery of an individual; it is the product of peoples, and, generally speaking, there are as many different languages as there are originally distinct peoples. The same is true of the beginnings of art, of mythology, and of custom. [...] Its problem relates to those mental products which are created by a community of human life and are, therefore, inexplicable in terms merely of individual consciousness, since they presuppose the reciprocal action of many. This will be for us the criterion of that which belongs to the consideration of folk psychology. A language can never be created by an individual. [...] Thus, then, in the analysis of the higher mental processes, folk psychology is an indispensable supplement to the psychology of individual consciousness. Indeed, in the case of some questions the latter already finds itself obliged to fall back on the principles of folk psychology. [...]

   1It is an impression obtained by many travellers, and also based upon experiences gained in our own country, that primitive man of all races, and the less educated of our own race, have in common a lack of control of emotions, that they give way more readily to an impulse than civilized man and the highly educated. I believe that this conception is based largely upon the neglect to consider the occasions on which a strong control of impulses is demanded in various forms of society.

   2Most of the proofs for this alleged peculiarity are based on the fickleness and uncertainty of the disposition of primitive man, and on the strength of his passions aroused by seemingly trifling causes. I will say right here that the traveller or student measures the fickleness of the people by the importance which he attributes to the actions or purposes in which they do not persevere, and he weighs the impulse for outbursts of passion by his standard. Let me give an example. A traveller desirous of reaching his goal as soon as possible engages men to start on a journey at a certain time. To him time is exceedingly valuable. But what is time to primitive man, who does not feel the compulsion of completing a definite work at a definite time? While the traveller is fuming and raging over the delay, his men keep up their merry chatter and laughter, and cannot be induced to exert themselves except to please their master. Would not they be right in stigmatizing many a traveller for his impulsiveness and lack of control when irritated by a trifling cause like loss of time? Instead of this, the traveller complains of the fickleness of the natives, who quickly lose interest in the objects which the traveller has at heart.

   3[...] More generally speaking, when we want to give a true estimate of the power of primitive man to control impulses, we must not compare the control required on certain occasions among ourselves with the control exerted by primitive man on the same occasions. If, for instance, our social etiquette forbids the expression of feelings of personal discomfort and of anxiety, we must remember that personal etiquette among primitive men may not require any inhibition of the same kind. We must rather look for those occasions on which inhibition is required by the customs of primitive man. [...]

   [...]

   4I think these considerations illustrate that the differences between civilized man and primitive man are in many cases more apparent than real; that the social conditions, on account of their peculiar characteristics, easily convey the impression that the mind of primitive man acts in a way quite different from ours, while in reality the fundamental traits of the mind are the same.

   • Multicultural or global?

     Classify two invented studies: (a) interviews with students whose families speak 14 different home languages, all at one high school; (b) the same memory task given to adults in Ghana, Peru and Vietnam.

     Result: (a) Multicultural: it looks at diversity within one society, here one school. (b) Global: it compares people across countries and world regions. Many questions need both, for example comparing groups within each of several countries.

   • Weighing the evidence: Source 3, paragraph 1

     What evidence does Boas say the "impression" about self-control rests on, and why is it weak?

     Result: It comes from what "many travellers" report and from "experiences gained in our own country": casual observations by outsiders, not systematic measurement. Boas adds that the impression ignores "the occasions on which a strong control of impulses is demanded in various forms of society," so the observers never looked where control actually matters to the people they judged.

   • Who was studied? (Arnett, 2008)

     Arnett reports that the samples in six leading APA journals were predominantly American, while Americans make up less than 5% of the world's population. If just over half of the participants were American, at least how over-represented were Americans?

     Result: More than 50 / 5 = 10: Americans supplied more than 10 times the share of participants that their share of the world's people would predict. The more than 95% of humanity outside the United States supplied less than half of the participants. Findings from such samples need testing in other places before they can be called general.

   • Within-group variation and between-group differences

     Two invented classes take a reaction-time test. Class X averages 310 milliseconds and Class Y 320, but scores in each class run from 250 to 390. Can you predict one student's score from the class he is in?

     Result: No. The between-group difference is 10 milliseconds, while each class spans 390 - 250 = 140 milliseconds, 14 times as wide. Many students in the slower class beat many in the faster one. Using a group average to judge an individual is how stereotypes form.

   • Same behavior, different meanings (invented scenario)

     A visiting teacher notices that a new student looks down while being corrected and decides the student is not paying attention. Suppose that in the student's family, looking down while an adult speaks is taught as a sign of respect. How should a researcher studying classroom attention handle this?

     Result: Ask what the behavior means within the student's own community before coding it. An observation code such as "eye contact = attention" would measure the observer's culture, not the student's attention: a validity problem caused by ignoring diversity.

   Close the segment by asking which of the other examples could be studied from a multicultural angle, a global angle, or both.

3. Guided Practice15 minutes

   Read Source 5 together. It is an invented study with invented data, and a small sample: 6 volunteers from each of two communities. The communities are left unnamed on purpose, so that the data are not read as a claim about any real place.

   1Invented study summary, written for this page. A team of researchers from two countries worked together on a memory study. They recruited 12 adult volunteers: 6 from Community A, a farming town in one country, and 6 from Community B, a large city in another country. Everyone gave written consent in their own language, and the materials were translated and then translated back by a second person to check the meaning.

   2Each volunteer read two short stories of the same length, in their own language. Story 1 described a harvest festival of the kind held every year in Community A. Story 2 described a city New Year celebration of the kind held every year in Community B. Half of the volunteers in each community read Story 1 first and half read Story 2 first. One day later, each volunteer wrote down everything they remembered, and two scorers who did not know which community a volunteer came from counted the correct details, out of 20 possible.

   3Details recalled, with each community's volunteers listed in the same order in both of its lists. Community A, Story 1: 15, 12, 14, 16, 11, 13. Community A, Story 2: 9, 11, 8, 12, 10, 10. Community B, Story 1: 10, 8, 11, 9, 12, 7. Community B, Story 2: 13, 15, 11, 14, 12, 12.

   4The scorers also counted "changes": details that a volunteer reported differently from the story, usually in a way that matched customs at home. Community A volunteers made 4 changes in total on Story 1 and 17 on Story 2. Community B volunteers made 15 changes on Story 1 and 5 on Story 2.

   5The team's note: "With 6 volunteers from each community, these results describe these 12 people. They do not show that everyone from either place remembers this way."

   1. Design. Every volunteer read both stories, so each person is compared with themselves. The order was counterbalanced, the materials were back-translated, and the scorers did not know each volunteer's community.
   2. Community A. Story 1: (15 + 12 + 14 + 16 + 11 + 13) / 6 = 81 / 6 = 13.5 details. Story 2: (9 + 11 + 8 + 12 + 10 + 10) / 6 = 60 / 6 = 10 details. Community A recalled 3.5 more details, on average, from the festival of its own kind.
   3. Your turn. Pairs compute Community B's two means and decide whether B shows the same pattern; the numbers return in the quiz and homework.
   4. Check each person. In Community A, every volunteer recalled more from Story 1, by 1 to 6 details. A group average can hide individuals who differ from it, so ask pairs to check Community B person by person.
4. Independent Practice15 minutes

   Students read Sources 2 and 4 on their own and use them, with Sources 1, 3 and 5, for the quiz and homework.

   Outdated source, read with care: in Source 2, Wundt arranges cultures in a single line of "stages," from what he calls "the lowest grade of culture" to more "advanced" ones, and compares the history of peoples to a person growing from childhood to adulthood. This ranking is outdated and rejected in psychology today. The page prints it so that students can identify the assumption and explain, in the quiz and homework, what is wrong with it; it is not a finding.

   Source 4 is a federal law, added by Public Law 103-43 in 1993 (the NIH Revitalization Act), that governs who is included in clinical research funded by the National Institutes of Health. It is printed here for what it shows about research samples.

   1But there is also a second path of investigation, and it is this which the present work adopts. It consists--to retain the image used above--in taking transverse instead of longitudinal sections, that is, in regarding the main stages of the development with which folk psychology is concerned in their sequence, and each in the total interconnection of its phenomena. Our first task, then, would be the investigation of primitive man. We must seek a psychological explanation of the thought, belief, and action of primitive man on the basis of the facts supplied by ethnology. As we proceed to more advanced stages, difficulties may, of course, arise with regard to the delimitation of the various periods; indeed, it will scarcely be possible to avoid a certain arbitrariness, inasmuch as the processes are continuous. The life of the individual person also does not fall into sharply distinct periods. Just as childhood, youth, and manhood are stages in a continuous growth, so also are the various eras in the development of peoples. Yet there are certain ideas, emotions, and springs of action about which the various phenomena group themselves. It is these that we must single out if the content of folk psychology is to be classified, with any measure of satisfaction, according to periods. Moreover, it should be particularly noticed that, in starting our discussion with primitive man, as we naturally must, the term 'primitive' is to be taken relatively, as representing the lowest grade of culture, particularly of mental culture. There is no specific ethnological characteristic that distinguishes this primitive stage from those that are more advanced; it is only by reference to a number of psychological traits, such as are indicative of the typically original, that we may determine that which is primitive. Bearing in mind this fact, we must first describe the external traits of primitive culture, and then consider the psychological factors of primitive life.

   1In conducting or supporting clinical research for purposes of this subchapter, the Director of NIH shall, subject to subsection (b), ensure that—

   2(A) women are included as subjects in each project of such research; and

   3(B) members of minority groups are included as subjects in such research.

   [...]

   4The Director of NIH, in consultation with the Director of the Office of Research on Women's Health and the Director of the Office of Research on Minority Health, shall conduct or support outreach programs for the recruitment of women and members of minority groups as subjects in projects of clinical research.

   [...]

   5The requirement established in subsection (a) regarding women and members of minority groups shall not apply to a project of clinical research if the inclusion, as subjects in the project, of women and members of minority groups, respectively—

   6(1) is inappropriate with respect to the health of the subjects;

   7(2) is inappropriate with respect to the purpose of the research; or

   8(3) is inappropriate under such other circumstances as the Director of NIH may designate.

   [...]

   9In the case of any clinical trial in which women or members of minority groups will under subsection (a) be included as subjects, the Director of NIH shall ensure that the trial is designed and carried out in a manner sufficient to provide for a valid analysis of whether the variables being studied in the trial affect women or members of minority groups, as the case may be, differently than other subjects in the trial.

   Task: in a short paragraph, explain what Source 2 assumes about how cultures should be compared, and what Source 3 would say about that assumption.

5. Closure5-10 minutes

   Exit ticket: "Name one way that studying only one kind of person could lead psychology to a wrong explanation of behavior."

   Teacher note on language: Sources 2 and 3 use terms such as "primitive man" and "civilized man," common in 1911-1921 and now outdated. Quote them only inside quotation marks, and use "community," "society" or the group's own name in discussion. Boas argued against ranking, yet his 1911 book also speculates, right after the last paragraph printed in Source 3, about brain differences between races; later research does not support that speculation, and it is not part of this lesson.

   Teacher note on discussion: keep examples about the class's own communities voluntary and anonymous, and steer away from claims about any real group's traits. The point of the lesson is that individuals vary widely within every group.

Differentiation Strategies

Assessment Guidance

1. Question 1 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Which invented study takes a global perspective rather than a multicultural one?

   AComparing how students of many language backgrounds in one city ask for help BComparing teenagers' sleep schedules in six countries on four continents CInterviewing families from several religious traditions in one county DSurveying first- and third-generation immigrant students at one school

2. Question 2 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In Source 1, why does Wundt say that "a language can never be created by an individual"?

   AIndividuals are not intelligent enough to invent a whole grammar BLanguages change too fast for one person to keep track of them CLanguage exists only through many people using it together DOnly trained scholars could ever write a complete dictionary

3. Question 3 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   What does Wundt mean in Source 1 by calling folk psychology "an indispensable supplement to the psychology of individual consciousness"?

   ALaboratory psychology is wrong and should be replaced BEach culture needs its own separate science of the mind CFolk psychology studies only the earliest human societies DStudying communities completes the study of single minds

4. Question 4 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   According to Source 3, paragraph 2, what is wrong with the traveller's judgment that his workers are fickle?

   AHe has known the workers for too short a time to judge them BHe judges them by the importance he gives to his own goals CHe forgot to record the time each worker arrived and left DHe compared them with workers in a different line of work

5. Question 5 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In Source 3, paragraph 2, the workers "keep up their merry chatter and laughter" while the traveller is "fuming and raging over the delay." Whom does Boas suggest could fairly be called impulsive?

   AThe workers, because they laugh while there is work to be done BNeither, because no one in the story loses control at all CThe traveller, irritated by a trifle such as a loss of time DBoth, because each group ignores the other's wishes

6. Question 6 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   What is Boas's conclusion in Source 3, paragraph 4?

   ASocial conditions make minds seem different when they are alike BTravellers are poor observers and their reports should be ignored entirely CEvery culture develops through the same stages in the same order DDifferences in behavior between groups are too small to measure

7. Question 7 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Wundt writes in Source 2 that "primitive" is to be taken "as representing the lowest grade of culture." Why is this way of comparing cultures rejected today?

   AIt relies on facts from ethnology instead of on laboratory tests BIt uses the word "culture," which did not exist until later CIt assumes that a single person's growth has no stages at all DIt ranks cultures on a scale set by the writer's own culture

8. Question 8 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Source 4, paragraph 4 requires outreach programs to recruit women and members of minority groups. What problem in research does outreach address?

   ASamples that include only people who are easy to reach BMeasures that give different results on two different days CResearchers who know which treatment each person received DStudies that are too short to show long-term effects

9. Question 9 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   What is the purpose of the "valid analysis" required in Source 4, paragraph 9?

   ATo make every trial include exactly equal numbers of each group BTo keep the names of the participants in a trial confidential CTo test whether the variables affect some groups differently DTo prove that a treatment works the same way for everyone

10. Question 10 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    According to Source 4, paragraphs 5-8, when does the inclusion requirement not apply?

    AWhen including the groups would raise the cost of a project BWhen the researchers prefer to study only one group CWhen inclusion is inappropriate for the subjects' health DWhen the study is run at a university outside the country

11. Question 11 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Use the invented data in Source 5, paragraph 3. What is Community B's mean number of details recalled on Story 2?

    A12.5 B77 C9.5 D12.8

12. Question 12 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    In Source 5, why did half of each community's volunteers read Story 1 first and half read Story 2 first?

    ASo order effects such as practice could not favor a story BSo that the scorers would know which story each person preferred CSo that each community would recall the same number of details DSo that the volunteers could choose the story they liked best

13. Question 13 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Source 5 says the materials were "translated and then translated back by a second person." Which problem does back-translation help prevent?

    AVolunteers who remember the story from an earlier study BStories that mean different things in each language CScorers who know which community a volunteer came from DToo few volunteers in each of the two communities

14. Question 14 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Which conclusion do the invented data in Source 5 support best?

    ACommunity A has better memory than Community B in every situation BPeople from farming towns remember less than people from cities CEveryone from Community B remembers city stories best DEach community recalled more from the familiar story

15. Question 15 of 20 · Short Answer

    Use Source 5, paragraph 4. Compute the mean number of "changes" per volunteer for each community on each story. Describe the pattern, and explain what it suggests about how culture affects memory.

    Show model answer

16. Question 16 of 20 · Short Answer

    An invented study of 200 university students in one country finds that people make faster choices when they are alone than in a group. Explain two reasons the finding might not hold everywhere, and describe a sample that would test it more widely.

    Show model answer

17. Question 17 of 20 · Short Answer

    A visiting teacher (invented scenario) says that the students in a new class "do not care about learning" because they rarely ask questions in front of the class. Use Boas's method in Source 3, paragraph 3 to explain how a researcher should test the teacher's claim.

    Show model answer

18. Question 18 of 20 · Short Answer

    Two invented groups of students take a puzzle test. Group 1 averages 52 points and Group 2 averages 55, but scores in each group run from 30 to 80. Explain what these numbers say about predicting one student's score from their group, and how this connects to stereotypes.

    Show model answer

19. Question 19 of 20 · Short Answer

    Explain how the federal rule in Source 4 connects to the idea that diversity is important to explaining human behavior. Cite one paragraph.

    Show model answer

20. Question 20 of 20 · Short Answer

    Using two different sources from this lesson, explain why diversity is important to explaining human behavior.

    Show model answer

These standards connect to D2.Psy.7.9-12: prerequisites to review first, parallel standards at the same level, and next steps that build on it.

Standard text: National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards: Guidance for Enhancing the Rigor of K-12 Civics, Economics, Geography, and History (Silver Spring, MD: NCSS, 2013). NCSS was not involved in the production of this lesson and does not endorse it.