What is “enculturation?”

Travis DixonSocial and Cultural Psychology

One of the changes in the new IB Psychology course is the addition of two new concepts in the socio-cultural approach to understanding human behaviour: Enculturation And… Acculturation In this short post I’ll briefly outline the concept of enculturation and provide some general guidance as to how it can be taught in the course. What is enculturation? To quote the …

Tip for Cutting Content #3: Identities, Attitudes and Behaviours

Travis DixonCurriculum, General Interest, Social and Cultural Psychology

Seeing as my last post about dealing with the cognitive extensions seemed to help, I thought I’d share this one. For some reason that I’m not too sure of, the new guide has got a trifecta of effects of cultural influences in the third topic: identities, attitudes and behaviours. On the surface this appears to be somewhat of a problem. …

Tajfel and Turner’s Social Identity Theory

Travis DixonKey Studies, Social and Cultural Psychology, Studies and Theories

Why does my blog have three different posts explaining social identity theory? Because for the first few years teaching this theory I had to write it out for myself to fully comprehend it. It’s difficult to understand at first. My best advice is to always remember that its’ a theory of intergroup conflict (e.g. prejudice and discrimination), so think of real …

Key Studies: Minimal Group Paradigm (SIT – Tajfel et al)

Travis DixonSocial and Cultural Psychology

Background Information Social Identity Theory (read more here) is a theory that attempts to explain inter-group behaviour, and in particular inter-group conflict, discrimination and prejudice. The theory basically explains how four key processes (social comparison, social identity, social categorization and positive distinctiveness) can influence inter-group behaviour. The theory can be used to explain how group conflict may occur, even when there …

Emic and Etic Concepts: An Introduction

Travis DixonSocial and Cultural Psychology

GLT: Using one or more examples, explain “emic” and “etic” concepts.  Emic Concepts: Accounts, descriptions and explanations used to understand culturally specific behaviours. READ MORE: Key studies and emic concepts in THIS BLOG POST Etic Concepts: An explanation used to understand a culture in scientific terms by comparing the culture to others and addressing the universals of human behaviour. Levine’s …

Compliance: An Introduction

Travis DixonSocial and Cultural Psychology

Compliance is the act of obeying a request. It’s different to conformity, which involves changing your behaviour to fit in with a group. Compliance occurs when one person makes a direct request on another and they comply with that request. There are a number of techniques people use to get compliance from others. Here are a few. The five compliance …

What is Social Identity Theory?

Travis DixonSocial and Cultural Psychology

The following is a brief description of Tajfel and Turner’s SIT. Updated March, 2021 What is Social Identity Theory? Social Identity Theory (SIT) is a theory proposed by Tajfel and Turner that attempts to explain intergroup behaviour, and in particular, conflict, prejudice and discrimination. The theory was an elaboration on Sherif’s Realistic Conflict Theory (RCT). RCT’s major claim was that …

Key Study: Piliavin (1969) – Field Experiment

Travis DixonSocial and Cultural Psychology

In this video you might see some factors that influence bystanderism. But as these aren’t published studies, we can’t use these as evidence so following the video is a study that we can use as evidence. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4S1LLrSzVE]   What factors can you see influencing bystanderism the following field experiment by Piliavin’s? Background Information Much of Darley and Latane’s research into …

Key Study: Conformity rates across cultures (Bond and Smith, 1996)

Travis DixonSocial and Cultural Psychology

There has been a lot of research into the role that culture might play in conformity. In Bond and Smith’s article  they review many different studies that have investigated this idea. However, they found methodological flaws with these studies when trying to use them to make conclusions about social and cultural influences on conformity. So they decided to conduct a meta-analysis of …