Department of Humanities

Positive Psychology
Assignment 1
Semester 8
Submitted to:
Miss Zunaira Tariq
Submitted by:
Tasneem Rutaba
Reg. no: FA18-BPY-011

COMSATS University Islamabad,Lahore Campus.

Introduction

Cross cultural psychology is defined as a branch of psychology a branch of psychology that

looks at how cultural factors influence human behavior. Different people live across different
regions of world. Several people live together in groups which shares same beliefs, norms,
values, traditions, activities, celebrations, festivals etc. all these things combine to make a
specific culture. There is a different culture of each country, of different regions within a country
and of different groups within a region.

Cross cultural psychology is important because it helps to develop a sense of

cultural relativism in people when they move to different cultures and across different regions. It
helps to understand people of other regions, respect their traditions, and accept the individual
differences in them. it also helps to gain a perspective from other point of video and
understanding of different things with respect to others.

Different phenomenon w.r.t cross-cultural psychology

Child development

Child development means the growth and progress span of a child both mentally
physically and socially afterwards he or she is born. Culture influences everything in one’s life
including birth in form of norms cultures values beliefs a children could develop and learn.

For instance.

Children learn their religious values from their parents from very start, in our Asian culture
people introduce to children about God, teach them recitations and introduce them to religious
places like mosques, temples etc.

But on the contrary in the western culture, parents do focus on natural development of child in
terms of how he/she reacts to the environment and natural things like they like to have pets for
their children and teaches them to be nice with them in order them to teach social values and
bring them close to nature.

Another example can be of schooling people here in Pakistani culture start schooling at very
early age like three and half and eventually the burden increases for the children with number of
subjects increased every year.

Comparatively in American or European culture parents focus on home schooling in very initial
years of development i.e., 5 to 6 years after that they are subject to school in which the focus is
to make them learn different languages and have general knowledge with perspective of if they
learn certain language, they can learn rest of the knowledge easily.

Another contrasting point is that people in our culture like to spoon-feed and pamper their
children a lot but in western culture they like their kids to be self-dependent at a vey young age.

Social perception and social cognition

Social perception refers to identifying and utilizing social cues to make judgments about social
roles, rules, relationships, context, or the characteristics (e.g., trustworthiness) of others.

It helps us analyze how we form perception about other by focusing on their social clues. For
example, if a person is talking with high tone, loud voice and furious expressions to another
person means he is showing anger at another person.

Social cognition

Social cognition is the way in which people process, remember, and use information in social
contexts to explain and predict their own behavior and that of others. Social cognition gets
influenced by external and internal factors.
Intergroup behavior

Intergroup behavior is any perception, cognition, or behavior that is influenced by people's

recognition that they and others are members of distinct social groups.

The example of intergroup behavior is as follow

Intergroup conflicts are one example where member of groups disagree on a certain poin and that
causes conflict between them it can be in a workplace or a social group regarding any social
decision e.g. performing any religious ritual.

Political confrontations is also an example of intergroup behavior where two group of people
confront each other on the basis of a political ideology. e.g. PTI and PPP.

Ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism means judging and evaluation of others cultural values and norms on the basis of
one’s own cultures. For instance

The behavior of white people with black people is ethnocentric.

The perception of hijab and biasness towards hijabis in the western culture is another example of
ethnocentrism.

Emotions

Culture also influences the ways emotions are experienced depending upon which emotions are
valued in that specific culture. For example, happiness is generally considered a desirable
emotion across cultures, but is viewed in subtly different ways.

An example of emotions can be that people here in Asian culture have sympathetic approach,
they tend to show sorrow for other loss and go for condolence. In western Culture people give
emotional support by making other practical about their loss.

Language

Language is the tool with which we communicate to each other. Different regions have different
languages.
For example Pakistan has National language of Urdu. India has Hindi, but within the countries
we share and speak different languages based on our region and local ethnicity.

English has become a international culture as a languages. Many countries of the world made
English their national language based on how much it is used across the globe.

Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism is the way in which a society deals with cultural diversity, both at the national
and at the community level. Sociologically, multiculturalism assumes that society benefits from
increased diversity through the harmonious coexistence of different cultures.

 Holi and Diwali being celebrated in Pakistan by Hindu community and Eid being
celebrated in India by Muslim Community is an Example of Multiculturalism.
 Understanding and respecting Hijab students in some universities of England is also an
example of Multiculturalism.

Communication.

Communication means interacting to one another and sharing of ideas in a proper way. It is one
of the most important tools between inter groups and community. Communications has different
patterns across the globe. For example.

 Asian people show facial gestures, try to communicate things with body language and
expressions. While n western culture they prefer to communicate directly and with clear
verbal Expression.
 When a Pakistani person says ‘no’ it can have several meanings. But in Europe If a
person said No , then no means no.