- Justify why the cultural practice of eating seal blubber among many indigenous populations in the Arctic is both an evoked culture and a transmitted culture.
- Your professor wants to upload a video of talking horses, and he wants it to go “viral” (i.e., spread very quickly to many people). Based on the different factors that cause ideas to spread, give examples of what the video would need to include for it to have the highest likelihood of spreading.
- Vancouver has many different neighbourhood areas, including Richmond and Strathcona. Richmond is politically more conservative, while Strathcona is politically more liberal. Create an account based on dynamic social impact theory to explain how these different neighbourhoods seem to have different forms of political culture.
- While chatting with your friend, she says that people nowadays have less intelligence than people used to. Evaluate whether this claim is true—be sure to use empirical data to address this issue.
- Canada and the United States are two countries that, in many ways, are very similar to each other, particularly in terms of the personality trait called extraversion. A researcher wants to study whether there is a cultural difference between Canada and the United States regarding how much people like to socialize with friends, which is related to extraversion. From the information provided, determine what the independent variable(s) and the dependent variable(s) are, write about whether you think this study is high or low in power, and justify why you would ascribe high or low power to this study.
- Create a six-item questionnaire about “happiness” such that it counters the acquiescence bias. Also, discuss how you would analyze the data to make it less susceptible to the extremity bias.
- You are hoping to study how people from Denmark and people from Russia differ on levels of happiness. You are concerned about your study being susceptible to the reference-group effect. What is one way of measuring happiness that lessens your study’s susceptibility?
- Vladimir, Vassily, and Valentina are three siblings who immigrated with their parents to Canada from Russia. At the time of immigration, Vladimir was four, Vassily was eighteen, and Valentina was twenty. Based on research by Cheung, Chudek, and Heine regarding sensitive periods, draw a graph predicting how each sibling’s identification with Canadian culture will change as he or she spends more years in Canada?
- Kosuke is a 3-year-old Japanese boy who scores a 3 out of 7 on a measure of interdependence. Jeremy is a 3-year-old American boy who also scores a 3 out of 7 on a measure of interdependence. In general, the Japanese are more interdependent than Americans. Draw a graph to predict how each child’s score on the measure of interdependence will change (or not change) as he or she gets older (until age eighteen).
- The Randhawa family is an Indian family who just bought a new house with three bedrooms. There are two parents (a mother and a father), a 3-year-old daughter, a 17-year-old (postpubescent) daughter, and a 20-year-old (postpubescent) son. Based only on the values of female chastity anxiety and respect for hierarchy, design a floorplan for their arrangement of bedrooms that satisfies both values. Be sure to note who sleeps in each bedroom.
- Compare and contrast authoritarian parenting and authoritative parenting, making sure to include associated parental attributes.
- You overhear a mother talking about her adolescent son being rebellious, but she does not seem bothered by his rebelliousness. Instead, she says that it is a universal phenomenon that adolescents are rebellious. Do you agree or disagree? Please justify your response with empirical evidence.
- At the customs gate of your country’s busiest international airport, two people are arriving as landed immigrants. As an immigrant support worker, you are tasked with determining how best to allocate resources in helping different immigrants. To do that, you must first determine how successfully each person will be at acculturating. Looking at the files for the landed immigrants, you see that Grace is coming from the United States, a country that is very similar to your country. On the other hand, Cecilia is coming from Mongolia, a country that is very dissimilar to your Based on the concept of cultural distance, draw the expected acculturation pattern (feelings toward host culture over time) for each person, assuming that both people do acculturate. For the purpose of this question, the heterogeneity/homogeneity of the host culture is irrelevant.
- Mike and Steph are a married couple who will soon be moving to a new country. This new country has a culture in which the population is generally pretty low on extraversion. Mike is very high on extraversion; Steph is very low in extraversion. Based on the concept of cultural fit, draw the expected acculturation pattern (feelings toward host culture over time) associated with each person, assuming that both people do acculturate. For the purpose of this question, the heterogeneity/homogeneity of the host culture is irrelevant.
- Your new research project is studying cultural differences between European-Canadians and Japanese-Canadians in terms of self-awareness. Your research partner decides to give all your participants an English questionnaire, thinking that the language of the questionnaire does not affect how the Japanese-Canadians would think. According to research about frame-switching, do you agree with your research partner’s perspective? Why or why not?
- As a CEO of a multinational graphics design company, you are tasked with looking for the most creative applicant. Before you are three equally qualified applicants with one important difference regarding their travel history: Michael has lived for several years in each of two different countries; Stephanie has lived in one country and has only visited four others as a tourist (each visit was for one week); and Robert has only ever lived in one country. You give them a creative task by giving the following instructions: “Here is a brick. Write down as many uses for this brick as you can think of.” Higher numbers of responses mean greater creativity. Draw a graph to depict what results you would expect from each applicant.
- Your father wants to encourage you to travel to as many places as possible and stay in each place as long as possible. It does not matter what cultures you live in—it will all benefit your Based on research on culture and creativity, do you agree with his assertions? Why or why not?
- Ariana and Misha looked at the music charts. Ariana compared herself to Adelle (Ariana thinks she is worse than Adelle), while Misha compared herself to Mariah (Misha thinks she is better than Mariah). Name and define the processes in which Ariana and Misha engaged, respectively. Then, draw a graph that shows Ariana’s and Misha’s self-esteem before and after they make their comparisons. Assume that Ariana and Misha start with the same level of self-esteem.
- In a political pamphlet being handed out to students on campus, the writer is suggesting that capitalism is a product of the trades and activities of Islamic merchants. According to Weber’s thesis that capitalism grew out of a belief system rooted in cultural ideas of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, do you agree or disagree with the pamphlet? Why or why not?
- Jessica and Jonathan are best friends. Jessica is very individualistic, while Jonathan is very collectivistic. Based on research regarding primary and secondary control, draw a graph for each person that shows the relationship between the amount of anxiety they would feel based on how much personal control they have in any given situation.
- Your school’s counseling department emphasizes the importance of convincing people to gain control by asserting themselves in their environment. Regardless of one’s cultural background, everyone feels a greater sense of power when changing the environment to suit himself or herself. Based on empirical research, do you agree with your counseling department’s perspective? Why or why not?
- Xiao Mao is an interdependent Chinese-American child in elementary school, and Kitty is an independent Canadian child. They are in the mall with their fathers picking out board games as presents. How would their motivations to play the board games compare if they chose the games themselves versus if their fathers chose the games for them? Draw a graph to demonstrate the pattern of results that you would expect.
- Given the widely different standards of attractiveness around the world, one cannot say that universal standards of attractiveness exist. True or false, and why?
- Miranda is trying to examine what attributes are perceived to be attractive by different cultures around the world. She has a list of four attributes: having facial symmetry, having a thin body, having blemish-free skin, and having a face with extreme facial features. She travels around the world to ask people from different cultures whether they think each attribute is attractive. Based on empirical evidence about culture-perceived attractiveness, draw a graph that shows a pattern of results that portrays the proportion of cultures that would find each attribute attractive.
- Given what is discussed in the textbook, draw a line graph to show what the relationship would look like for the following pairs of variables: 1) relational mobility and independent/interdependent self-construal; and 2) relational mobility and residential mobility.
- Differentiate between how someone with high relational mobility views his or her social relationships versus someone with low relational mobility.
- “It is valid to suggest that some cultures are morally superior to others.” Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Explain your conclusion by basing it on evidence from one of the moral, psychological models discussed in your
- Create a diagram that shows how the different levels of Kohlberg’s model of moral reasoning, Shweder’s different codes of ethics, and the five different moral intuitions are related to each other.
- An orthodox religious adherent is debating with a progressive religious adherent about abortion. They each provide a certain number of justifications for their perspectives. In the space below, for each religious adherent, graph out how many statements one would expect to correspond to each moral intuition based on the relationship between codes of ethics and moral intuitions.
- In trying to summarize research on punishment and cooperation for your supervisor, you decide to draw a line graph that separately predicts cooperation within a culture based on a culture’s willingness to engage in (a) antisocial punishment and (b) altruistic punishment. Draw such a line graph.
- You are surveying computer stores in individualistic and collectivistic cultures to determine what system they use to pay their sales employees. System 1 is to pay based on a meritocracy. System 2 is to pay everyone the same amount of money each month. Draw a bar graph that portrays the proportion of individualistic companies and collectivistic companies that use each salary system.
