Human development: culture and biology

A central concern in cross-cultural and cultural psychology is how people acquire behaviors that we identify as culturally unique. While we are interested in what is different between cultures of the world, there is also the potentially larger area of research into what we have in common. Acquiring culture is partly the outcome of parenting styles employed in the process of socialization. However, broader social institutions including the educational system and dominant religious or political organizations are considered important factors in producing cultural ideologies. Children also grow up with siblings and peers that have an influence on socialization. Since culture emerged out of the struggle to survive, the particular environmental contexts have produced some of the cultural variability we can observe in the world today. Survival requires competencies that in turn vary with the ecological context (Kagitcibasi, 1996). To a large extent cultural learning is implicit perhaps governed by social learning and imitation, but by the time we are adults most of us have learned the cultural rules and customs and they are so integrated in our lives that few people even notice or pass judgment on habitual rituals or behaviors. Other forms of learning have also played a role in the acquisition of cultural values through the reinforcement in the educational system based on operant conditioning or by the association of cultural and unconditioned stimuli that occurs in classical conditioning.

4.1 Socialization or enculturation?

Psychologists investigating comparative cultures make a distinction between socialization and enculturation in how cultures are transmitted from one generation to the next. Socialization as a concept has a long history in both social psychology and sociology. In particular socialization refers to the process of individual development that is shaped by cultural values through the deliberate teaching by culture bearers and enforcers especially the child’s parents. Cultural values are learned when someone deliberately shapes the behavior of children in society. On the other hand, Herskovitz (1948) used the concept of enculturation to define the end product of socialization. Enculturation refers to the assimilation of the components of culture considered essential in order to function adequately in a society. Enculturation describe the influence of the cultural context and the possibilities offered by that environment. In other words enculturation describe to the subjective end products manifested in behavior and represent the psychological internalization of cultural values throughout the process of development. Socialization refers more to the actual means of how children learn the rules of their societies, whereas enculturation are the end products manifested in subjective psychology. We can think of culture as the subjective psychological experience resulting from socialization, and enculturation as the resulting society that surrounds members of the culture with an inescapable context.

The processes of socialization and enculturation are not the only determinants of individual behavior. Members of a culture must also respond to the ecological environment and develop behaviors that support survival and successful adaptation. The transmission of culture is aimed at creating skills in children that support successful living. Still culture must also adapt to changing circumstances. The transmission of culture is not fixed, but is a more fluid process that prevents chaos and promotes social stability (Boyd & Richerson, 1995).

The study of child rearing practices in various cultures has a long history. For example, Whiting and Child (1953) examined child training study archives and concluded that in some ways child training is identical all over the world since parents everywhere confront similar problems. However, there are also some salient cultural differences in how child training differs between cultures. These observations are consistent with a biological perspective of all that we have in common as a species, but also a cultural comparative view based on enculturation and socialization. According to Barry, Bacon and Child (1957), and Barry, Child and Bacon (1959) six dimensions of child rearing were similar in all societies studied. These included training for obedience, responsibility, nurturance, achievement, self-reliance, and independence. Gender differences were also universally similar across cultures with girls being socialized to take on more responsibility and nurturance, and boys being encouraged to be assertive through achievement and self-reliance. However, later investigators found that comparative cultural variations in socialization described as either narrow or broad (Arnett, 1995). Obedience was emphasized in the narrow transmission of a culture that required conformity as a cultural product, whereas broad transmission emphasized personal independence.