Cultural Processes: A Social Psychological Perspective

by Edited by Angela K.-y. Leung , Chi-yue Chiu , Ying-yi Hong

• ISBN13: 9780521758413
• ISBN10: 0521758416
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-12-06
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

With the rapid growth of knowledge concerning ethnic and national group differences in human behaviors in the last two decades, researchers are increasingly curious as to why, how, and when such differences surface. The field is ready to leapfrog from a descriptive science of group differences to a science of cultural processes. The goal of this book is to lay the theoretical foundation for this exciting development by proposing an original process model of culture. This new perspective discusses and extends contemporary social psychological theories of social cognition and social motivation to explain why culture matters in human psychology. We view culture as a loose network of imperfectly shared knowledge representations for coordinating social transactions. As such, culture serves different adaptive functions important for individuals' goal pursuits. Furthermore, with the increasingly globalized and hyper-connected multicultural space, much can be revealed about how different cultural traditions come into contact. The authors discuss the psychological ramifications of these cultural interactions to illuminate the social and practical relevance of the proposed process model of culture.

Author Biography

Angela K.-y. Leung is Assistant Professor of Psychology in the School of Social Sciences at the Singapore Management University (SMU). Chi-yue Chiu is Professor of Management and Marketing at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Ying-yi Hong is currently Professor at the Business School of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables	p. ix
List of Contributors	p. xi
Preface	p. xiii
Introduction
Cultural Processes: An Overview	p. 3
Representational Theories of Culture
Culture as Lay Personal Beliefs	p. 25
Culture as Intersubjective Representations of Values	p. 40
Culture as Norm Representations: The Case of Collective Responsibility Attribution	p. 65
Psychological Functions of Culture
Epistemic Functions of Culture	p. 81
Existential Functions of Culture: The Monumental Immortality Project	p. 96
Self-Definitional Functions of Culture	p. 111
Manifestations of Cultural Processes
Culture and Self-Enhancement	p. 139
Cultural Processes Underlying Subjective Well-Being	p. 154
Cultural Processes in Teams: The Development of Team Mental Models in Heterogeneous Work Teams	p. 172
Harmony, Illusory Relationship Costs, and Conflict Resolution in Chinese Contexts	p. 188
Transcultural Processes
Bicultural Identity Negotiation	p. 213
Multicultural Experiences and Intercultural Communication	p. 242
Multicultural Experience Fosters Creative Conceptual Expansion	p. 263
Workforce Diversity and Creativity: A Multilevel Analysis	p. 286
Index	p. 313
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