9/23/14-Wu & Keysar 2007

Sorry this is so incredibly late!  Cultural Genogram took wayy longer than I thought it would.  grr...

The Effect of Culture on Perspective Taking

Abstract:

Perspective taking: Considering the mental states of others to understand their actions.  

Basically, people in collectivist cultures do better at being tuned in with other people and perspective taking as they interact with them than in cultures like the US which are much more independent. 

 Article:

Since actions are ambiguous, we are constantly perspective taking to see if we can figure out what others are thinking or intending.  Only at age 4 do children start to realize that other people have different thoughts and beliefs from them.  

INDEPENDENCE AND INTERDEPENDENCE

Collectivist countries tend to be more interdependent.  Their identity is defined by relationships with others.  Individualistic countries define themselves by their own achievements.  

When remembering events, Chinese people told it from a 3rd party perspective, while Americans told it from a 1st person.  We project emotions onto other people, Chinese project reactions to emotions to other people.  (?)

CULTURE AND PERSPECTIVE TAKING

There were two hypotheses--one claimed Chinese would be worse perspective takers, and one claimed they would be better.  (The first one didn't make logical sense to me, but whatever)  So this study is going to figure out which is right.  

So this was the experiment^^.  The left is the view the "subject" has, and the right is the view the "director" has.  The director will say "Move the block one slot up", and because the subject knows that the director can't see all the blocks he can see (because of the black squares blocking it from view), he should move the one that can be seen by both sides.  This was the test for whether you were taking in the other perspective or not.  

Americans got hung up on the blocks that their director couldn't see, which dramatically slowed down their rate of response.  The Chinese did much better at ignoring the hidden blocks and moving the correct ones.  So it turns out that the Chinese did better at perspective taking because they have been raised in a culture to take in other people's perspectives.  

9/23/14- Talwar 2012

The abstract for this article was actually pretty good so I included it below. I also included some interesting points and observations from the article. 

ABSTRACT:

“Body dissatisfaction is a highly prevalent experience among women across the world; however, there is minimal research relating to this topic for the different ethnic groups in New Zealand. In this study, 45 New Zealand female university students who identified either as Tāngata Whenua1 Māori or New Zealand European completed questionnaires measuring body dissatisfaction and ethnic identity. Although there were many similarities between the groups, there were also interesting differences. Body mass was related to body concerns more so among European than Māori participants. Furthermore, strength of Māori ethnic identity was shown to be associated with lower levels of weight concern.”

The article talked about some things regarding body image and body dissatisfaction…

-Body dissatisfaction is so prevalent among females in western female populations that it’s even seen as normal.

-Body image standards seem to vary across different ethnic groups Here’s an example: Large bodies in pacific communities tend to represent wealth, status, and good health. In Westernized societies, it’s the opposite.

-Something interesting that research has found is that women tend to pick ideal figures that are thinner than what men tend to find attractive, and women seem to think that men prefer thin ideals. So basically, the perspective of most women is totally distorted.

-Research found that across different ethnic groups, body dissatisfaction immerged at different levels of body mass, telling us that a lot of body image is cultural.

-Cultures differ widely on the ideal body sizes

-Thinner ideals may be increasing in Pacifc female populations.

Pretty much what I got from this article is that body image can be heavily influenced by ethnicity and culture. Also, exposure to other cultures/ideals can shift a culture’s ideal. Overall, though, those who have a strong sense of ethnic identity and culture tended to have better body image and less dissatisfaction with weight.