Question

How does a person's cultural background give insight into how he or she might respond to social influence? Explain how a person from an individualist culture may respond to social influence in contrast to a person from a collectivist society. Incorporate ingroups and outgroups in your response.

Answer 1

A person's cultural background gives an insight into how she may respond to a social influence. For instance if the family culture in which your upbringing happened teaches you to be independent and mature, not care about he others and focus on your life, then it will be an easy bet to play. But if you are from a family that has taught you to depend on them for all the minute things in life, then the situation can be risky. As in such a case, you never grow mature and old. You have to learn to let go and worry about your self and not about the notions that others have about you.Individualistic culture teaches you to be  self-assured and very independent and you care about your life and take complete ownership of it. Where as the Collectivist culture emphasize family and work group goals above individual needs or desires . They teach us to be dependent on them and take actions based on what they expect us to do. They teach us to be so much involved in teh family and keep them above all things in life. Here in group is the family to which the person relates to , and works hard to achieve goals. The outgroup is the ones we cannot relate to. Here it is all the people apart from our loved ones, friends and family.