Gustav Jahoda

Critical reflections on some recent definitions of “culture”

At the outset the historical background of attempts to define “culture” is briefly sketched. Then the definitions found in cross-cultural texts published between 2009 and 2011 are roughly divided into three categories according to where they locate “culture”, and whether they present single or multiple definitions. Each definition is critically examined, as are the relationships between them, and it is shown that several of the definitions are logically and substantively incompatible. It is concluded (with Alfred Lang) that there can be no generally agreed definition of culture, and an alternative proposal is put forward.

Pictorial Depth Perception in Scottish and Ghanaian Children, A Critique of Some Findings with the Hudson Test

Abstract Published research employing the Hudson Test is critically examined, leading to the conclusion that differences in methods and procedures make direct comparisons of the outcome of different studies inappropriate. Some limitations of the test itself are pointed out, in particular the ignoring of chance expectations, failure to exclude the operation of response sets, and ambiguities about the scoring. Tentative generalizations emerging from previous research are summarized, and the object of the study is to verify them. A newly developed test of three-dimensional perception is described, which also consists of pictures but requires less reliance upon verbal instructions. Samples of 60 Scottish and 60 Ghanaian primary school children in classes 2, 4 and 6 were tested with both the Hudson and the new test. While results still indicated a significant cultural difference in the performance on both tests, Ghanaian children experienced much less difficulty with the new test and the gap between them and S...

Susceptibility to geometrical illusions according to culture and professional training

This paper reports a cross-cultural investigation of susceptibility to geometrical illusions based upon student samples in Ghana and Scotland. The results indicate that: (1)cultural differences in susceptibility to illusions can be found among Ss exposed to lengthy formal education of a similar type; (2) the perceptual consequences of professional training in art and architecture tend to be moderate within a culture; but (3) the combined outcome of training across cultures tends to reduce cultural differences in susceptibility to illusions. They also raise a problem concerning the supposed positive relationship between field dependence and susceptibility to illusions. Some implications of these results are considered.

Pictorial Depth Perception by Children in Scotland and Ghana

An experimental study of the development of pictorial depth perception, conducted in Scotland and Ghana, is reported. Subjects constructed three-dimensional models representing the size and spatial relationships between figures in pictorial scenes in which three depth cues-elevation, texture gradient, and linear perspective-were manipulated. For both samples size accuracy increased with the amount of depth information available; it also increased with age in the Scottish but not in the Ghanaian sample. Spatial accuracy increased with age in both samples, but was influenced by type of depth cue only in the Scottish sample. Scottish children were more accurate throughout than Ghanaian children. However, the evidence reported does not support the view that African children are grossly deficient in perceiving pictorial depth.

Efficacy of objects, pictures and words in a simple learning task

Abstract Adult subjects were required to memorise positions associated with twelve common objects, their pictures and their names. Both written and spoken names were used. It was found that learning was fastest with the objects and slowest with verbal symbols, and that pictures occupied an intermediate position. The data suggest that the errors observed are partly due to differential forgetting of various types of stimuli and partly perhaps to differential difficulty in making deductions from them.

A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Experimental Social Psychology

Theories of experimental social psychology and related research findings are usually presented in a manner suggesting that they apply to humans everywhere. It is argued that this is misleading, since it can be shown that many of the theories have built-in assumptions that are not met in a wide range of traditional cultures.

Belfast Children: Some Effects of a Conflict Environment

A sample of 60 boys aged 6 and 10, and divided equally into Catholics and Protestants, was drawn from two schools in ‘troubled’ Belfast areas; a comparable control sample was obtained in Edinburgh. The children were given a series of four game-like tasks, half of which were devised to tap social attitudes and the remainder more general cognitive functioning. The results clearly bring out some of the effects of a climate of hostility and violence on the development of Belfast children; their specific ethnocentrism was high from an early age, and it would seem that more remote cognitive processes were also affected. Some of the theoretical implications of the findings are discussed.

Utilization of Pictorial Information in Classroom Learning: A Cross Cultural Study.

There have been numerous investigations, reviewed by Deregowski (1973), indicating that people in developing countries may experience some difficulties in pictorial perception. It has frequently been suggested that this presents problems for education in general (Arnheim, 1970; Duncan, Gourlay, & Hudson, 1973; Stacey, 1969) and textbook design in particular (Chaplin, 1971). This problem does not seem to have been studied directly so far, research on the relative effects of texts and pictures being mainly confined to Europe and America. Classroom studies were pioneered by Vernon (1951, 1953, 1954) followed up by Klingberg (1957) and Dwyer (1971). The basic paradigm in this approach was to prepare two sets of

The Colour of a Chameleon: Perspectives on Concepts of Culture

The question being asked of the contributors to this symposium is how ’culture’ should be defined for the purposes of psychology. Let me admit at the outset that there was a time when I believed such a conceptual clarification to be possible and desirable. Since then I have come to the conclusion, implicit in my title, that such a quest would be illusory. The remainder of my paper will be devoted to an attempt at justifying such a view. Norbert Elias, in his brilliant study of The civilizing process, discussed the concepts of ’civilization’ in Britain and France juxtaposing it to Kultur in German; and he wrote that these concepts

On the rise and decline of ‘indigenous psychology’

The origins of ‘indigenous psychology’ go back mainly to Asia during the 1990s. Its declared objective is to arrive at psychologies which, unlike the American mainstream, are adapted to the needs of particular cultures/countries. The literature dealing with it, including both journals and books, is critically surveyed. Accounts are provided of the ways in which specific topics are treated, such as: definitions of ‘Indigenous psychology’; its relation to cross-cultural psychology, and how the former’s goals might be achieved. Most of the ideas discussed remain at a high level of abstraction, and a striking lack of consistency in the views of different authors is demonstrated. There are frequent suggestions that a universal psychology will eventually be created from indigenous psychologies across the globe, but no sensible ways in which that might happen are mentioned. It is the general lack of realism in the proposals, and the fact that it is questionable whether any indigenous psychologies actually exist, which help to explain the subsequent decline of the movement. Nonetheless, it did leave a legacy in so far as the term ‘indigenous psychology’ has become part of the vocabulary.