Question

Review the sections on Feminist Psychology and Multicultural Psychology. Why is it important to approach psychology from a sociocultural perspective? Give an example from something you have observed or experienced which demonstrates the huge impact that factors such as ethnicity, religion, occupation, or social class, have had on your or others' mental processes and behavior.

Answer 1

• Psychologists use many different approaches that work together to understand and explain human behavior. The sociocultural perspective is one approach to understanding why humans behave the way they do.
• The sociocultural perspective seeks to understand human behavior and personality development by examining the rules of the social groups and subgroups in which the individual is a member. These rules are often unwritten guidelines that direct a person's actions.
• Race and ethnicity, religion, gender, social class, family traditions, peer groups, and age are some of the subgroups that may influence someone's behavior. Do students from poverty-stricken areas learn differently than students in wealthy homes?
• Do religious beliefs play a role in a teen's decision to delay premarital sex? Do families that eat dinner together every night have more successful children than families who don't eat together? A psychologist could use the sociocultural perspective to help answer these questions.
• The sociocultural perspective can also help explain how a similar behavior can be interpreted differently in two cultures. Japan is a small island nation with a very large population. Those conditions have helped shape the behavior of the people in Japan.
• Workers who are hired on the public train system may have the job of pushing commuters onto the crowded train so the doors can close without the commuter getting trapped in the doors. Because there is little space on the trains, the Japanese people who are shoved onto the train often thank the employee who pushed them.
• They understand the train employee is helping them. If you believe a commuter in New York City would respond differently to being pushed onto a subway train, you are using the sociocultural perspective to understand behavior. It's easy to see how the lens of culture gives us a different view of similar behaviors.
• I think social class impacts our behaviour immensely,as much as we try to ignore it or not consider it to be of any value but it is ingrained in our society and it has greatly influenced my choice of univerisity or even occupation.Belonging to middle class family,I value the importance of working in a good job to financially support my family,which is why I took a great deal of time to select an appropriate college to study and find the right high earning job for myself.