Proximal causes: When cultural diversity arises: these types of causes have a direct and immediate relationship with the effects.
Distal causes: In the emergence of cultural diversity: these types of causes are the small differences that lead to longer-term effects, often through indirect relationships.
Evoked culture: All people have biologically coded behavioral repertoires that are potentially accessible, that are only addressed if the right situational conditions are present.
Transmitted culture: People learn certain cultural habits through social learning or by taking an example from people who live close to them.
Natural selection: A process in which individuals with favorable traits with a hereditary basis are more likely to survive than peers without these traits.
Sexual selection: Refers to the idea that the individuals who can best lure a healthy partner have the greatest chance of surviving offspring.
Replicators: Genes are the replicators in biological evolution; in cultural evolution these are ideas. Replicators must have a long lifespan, be fertile and replication must take place quickly.
Memes: The smallest units of cultural information that can be faithfully transmitted.
Epidemiology of ideas: Followers of this view assume that there is no direct replication of ideas, but that the impersonator creates a mental representation in his own brain of the original idea of the inventor.
Dynamic social impact theory: This theory assumes that individuals influence each other, and that they do so primarily with people they often meet.
Contemporary legends: Anxious stories that have an informative value, but are often not true. Temporary legends are found in many cultures.
Minimally counter-intuitive ideas: Claims that are surprising and unusual in the sense that they exceed our expectations, but are not too bizarre. Stories with these claims are often well remembered by people.
Individualistic cultures: Cultures that include a variety of customs and habits that encourage individuals to set their personal goals above collective goals and to distinguish themselves from others.
Collectivist cultures: These cultures include all sorts of habits, customs and social rules that encourage individuals to put more emphasis on collective goals.
Flynn effect: The finding that people of current generations on average have a higher IQ than people of previous generations.
Raven's Matrices: The intelligence test that is seen as the purest IQ test, because this test does not require specific knowledge of culture or language.
Subjective well-being: The feeling of satisfaction with one's own life; this is an example of culture that often endures over generations, even in the case of major changes.
Plural ignorance: The tendency of people to collectively misinterpret the thoughts that explain the behavior of others. People are more influenced by what they believe other people think than by what others actually think.
Ethnographies: Rich descriptions of cultures, often colored by the eyes of the anthropologist who wrote the ethnography.
Methodological equivalence: This means that a research method is observed in an identical way by different cultures.
Generalizability: The extent to which findings from a study apply to the entire target population.
Power: The ability of the study to observe an effect that is actually present.
Independent variable: The variable in a survey that is being manipulated.
Dependent variable: The non-manipulated variable that is measured during an investigation.
Moderacy bias: The tendency of test subjects to choose the middle answer option on a 7-point scale.
Extremity bias: The tendency of test subjects to choose the more extreme answers on a 7-point scale.
Standardization: First the average of the scores of a test subject is measured, and then the individual items are compared with the average score of the test subject concerned.
Satisfaction bias: The tendency of test subjects to agree with almost all statements on a questionnaire.
Reference group effects: The tendency of people to answer questions based on a comparison with others who resemble them.
Deprivation effects: The tendency of people to appreciate something more when it is less present
Experimental method: The manipulation of an independent variable and measurement of the influence that this manipulation has on the dependent variable.
Between-groups manipulation: In this form of manipulation, different groups of subjects receive different levels of the independent variable.
Within-groups manipulation: With this form of manipulation, each subject receives more than one level of the independent variable.
Situation sampling: This method assumes that culture does not affect us in an abstract way, but in a specific, concrete way. In this method, test subjects are asked how they would respond to typical situations.
Culture-level measures: Measuring culture by focusing on an identifiable and a measurable number of cultural messages, after which a hypothesis is established and tested.
Unpacking: Explaining cultural differences in steps by identifying the underlying variables.
Occam's Razor: This principle indicates that every theory must make as few assumptions as possible and that all irrelevant assumptions must be eliminated. Moreover, it states that the simplest theory is the most likely.
Independent view of the self: In this view, 'the self' is derived from a unique combination of inner and stable qualities. These characteristics are independent of others or situations.
Interdependent view of the self: In this view, 'the self' is seen as a relational unit that is fundamentally connected with, and confirmed by, a number of significant relationships. Behavior in this way depends on the thoughts, feelings and actions of others.
Self-consistency: The extent to which someone behaves the same or differently in different situations with different people.
Cognitive dissonance: The unpleasant feeling we have when we observe inconsistent actions in ourselves; so if we do something inconsistent with the attitude we have towards that action.
Rationalizing: This is accounting for your decisions afterwards; if you have chosen one option over another, you will find the other option less attractive and the chosen option more attractive, while this was the same before the decision.
Subjective self-awareness: A state of mind in which individuals consider themselves from the perspective of the subject and demonstrate little awareness of themselves as individuals.
Objective self-awareness: A state of mind in which individuals think about how they come across to others and themselves.
Theory of the incremental self: The belief that we can easily change; we can change and adjust our self-concepts by making an effort. There is always room for improvement.
Theory of entity of the self: The belief that aspects of the self are largely resistant to change, traits are innate, and remain the same as you age.
Five personality factor model: According to this model, there are five underlying personality traits: openness to experiences, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.
Acculturation: The process by which people migrate to a culture that is different from the culture of origin and get used to the new culture.
Migration cultue: The culture of origin of migrants.
Host culture: The new culture that migrants end up in.
Cultural distance: The extent to which the heritage culture and the host culture differ from each other.
Cultural fit: The extent to which an individual personality is equal to the dominant cultural values in the host culture.
Integration strategy: Acculturation strategy whereby people adapt to and participate fully in the new culture, while at the same time striving to preserve the traditions of original culture.
Marginalization strategy: Acculturation strategy whereby people do not adapt to and participate as little as possible in the new culture and make no effort to preserve the traditions of the original culture.
Assimilation strategy: Acculturation strategy whereby people adapt to and fully participate in the new culture, but make no effort to preserve the traditions of the original culture.
Separation strategy: Acculturation strategy whereby people do not adapt to and participate as little as possible in the new culture, while at the same time striving to preserve the traditions of original culture.
Need for cognitive closure: The extent to which someone needs a clear answer to a question. Every answer that is clear is better than uncertainty.
Stereotype threat: The fear that someone feels about doing something that would confirm the negative stereotype about their group.
Blending: The tendency of bicultural people to show psychological tendencies that are a mix of their two cultures.
Frame switching: The tendency of bicultural people to switch between their two cultural frameworks in different situations.
Self-enhancement: The motivation to view yourself positively. People often have this motivation very strongly.
Self-serving bias: The unrealistic positive ratings of our own skills and characteristics.
Downward social comparison: Strategy to gain or maintain a positive self-image: comparing your own performance with someone who has done worse than yourself.
Upward social comparison: You compare your own performance with someone who has done better than you. This strategy is better to be avoided if we want to maintain a positive self-image.
Compensatory self-reinforcement: Strategy to gain or maintain a positive self-image: you acknowledge the poor performance that you have delivered, but immediately start thinking of something in which you do perform well.
Discounting setbacks: Strategy to gain or maintain a positive self-image: reducing the perceived importance of the domain on which you have performed poorly.
External attributions: Strategy to gain or maintain a positive self-image: we attribute the cause of our poor performance outside of ourselves.
Keeping face: Face is defined as the amount of social value that others attribute to you if you live by the standard that applies to your position. By maintaining this you ensure that you get as much social value as possible.
Prevention orientation: Keeping face by being careful and trying to lose as little as possible.
Promotion orientation: Maintain sight by striving for growth and progress.
Self-improvement focus: A desire to seek out and correct potential weaknesses, so that failure in the future is less likely.
Primary control: The aim to fit existing realities to their own perceptions, goals or wishes. Also referred to as the internal locus of control.
Secondary control: Trying to connect with existing realities, leaving reality unchanged while you exercise control over its psychological impact. Also called external control locus.
Taxonomic categorization: Items are arranged according to similarities (a dog and a rabbit are both animals; a carrot is a vegetable and therefore does not belong to the list of a dog, a rabbit and a carrot).
Analytic thinking: Way of thinking that is characterized by a focus on objects and their properties.
Holistic thinking: Associative way of thinking that is characterized by looking at the context as a whole.
Field independence: This is often seen in analytical thinkers; they can see objects separately from the background.
Field dependence: This is often seen with holistic thinkers; they see objects as connected to the background.
Character attributes: Describe the behavior of others based on their character.
Situational attributions: Describe the behavior of others on the basis of contextual variables.
Fundamental attribution error: The tendency to ignore situational information, while focusing on dispositional (characteristic) information.
Naive dialectic: Acceptance of contradictions that is more common in people from East Asia.
High context culture: In this type of culture, people are strongly involved with each other. This involvement leads to people sharing a lot of information, which influences behavior.
Low context culture: In this type of culture there is relatively little involvement between individuals and therefore less shared information that influences behavior.
Liget: Emotion found in the Filipino tribe Ilongot; it is a combination of anger, passion and energy.
James-Lange Theory of Emotions: This theory assumes that emotions are the changes in our body that give us directions for how to behave. Different emotions are associated with each emotion.
Two-Factor theory of Emotions: According to this theory, people assess a situation to interpret their physical feelings and thus attribute an emotion to it.
Basic emotions: Set of emotions that would be universally experienced and recognized; joy, sadness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust.
Cultural display rules: These rules determine which emotional expressions are appropriate in a certain situation and how intensively one must try to suppress the expression.
Ritualized expressions: Expressions of a certain emotion that are voluntarily produced in a certain culture.
Facial feedback hypothesis: This hypothesis states that our facial expressions are a source of information that determine our emotions.
Linguistic relativity hypothesis: Theory that states that our language largely determines how we look at the world. Also called the Whorfian hypothesis.
Proximity effect: The phenomenon that people are more likely to become friends with people they often meet.
Mere exposure effect: The phenomenon that we find things more attractive when we are often exposed to them.
Similarity-attraction effect: The phenomenon that people see someone as attractive if they have the same attitudes, economic background, personality, religion, social background and activities.
High relational mobility: For people in an independent culture: people only connect with others if they both benefit, and therefore have fewer enemies.
Low relational mobility: With people in an interdependent culture: people are born into an existing network, where not all ties are positive. So they often have enemies.
Communal sharing: Basic structure of a relationship: here the members of a group view themselves by emphasizing the shared identity.
Authority ranking: Basic structure of a relationship: here, members of a group are linearly ordered according to a hierarchical social dimension.
Equality matches: Basic structure of a relationship: here people keep track of what has been exchanged and are motivated to pay back in an equal way for what they have received.
Market prices: Basic structure of a relationship: Here all forms of help that are exchanged can be reduced to an underlying dimension (often money).
Social facilitation: Universal phenomenon where the presence of others causes arousal. This arousal ensures that we perform tasks that are competent in better and that tasks that we are not (yet) competent to perform worse.
Social lazing (social loafing): Phenomenon whereby people work less hard in situations where the performance of the entire group is assessed, and the individual performance is less visible. Occurs more often in independent cultures.
Social striving: Phenomenon whereby people work harder in situations where the performance of the entire group is assessed. Occurs more frequently in interdependent cultures.
Universalism: The perspective that people from different cultures are largely the same and that every cultural difference found only exists on a superficial level.
Relativism: The perspective that cultural differences in the way of thinking are not superficial, but really reflect different psychological processes.
Evolutionism: The perspective that cultural differences in the way of thinking reflect different levels of development.
The Preconventional level: Level 1 from Kohlberg's theory of moral development: morality at this level mainly means that people calculate how much better or worse they get out of it if they behave in a certain way.
The Conventional level: Level 2 from Kohlberg's theory of moral development: here morality means following rules and laws established by the social order.
The Postconventional level: Level 3 from Kohlberg's theory of moral development: morality is defined here by universal and abstract ethical laws, and is independent of other people or ruling rules.
Ethic of Autonomy: This form of ethics sees morality in terms of individual freedom and violations of rights.
Ethic of Community: With this form of ethics, the emphasis is on the fact that individuals have duties according to their roles in a society or social hierarchy.
Ethic of Divinity: With this form of ethics, the emphasis is on sanctuary and the perceived "natural order" of things.
Community groups: Small people's organizations in which interpersonal relationships play an important role. Relationships are seen as real and non-instrumental.
Gesellschaft groups: Groups where relationships are treated as imaginary, instrumental and ending. Groups have their own rules, norms and laws that individuals must adhere to.
Principle of need: Principle of distributive justice: resources must be distributed according to who needs them most.
Principle of equality: Principle of distributive justice: resources must be distributed equally among all members of a group.
Principle of fairness: Principle of distributive justice: resources must be distributed based on the contributions people have made.
Meritocracy (performance society): A social system that rewards individuals based on the principle of justice
Seniority system: For example at companies: people who are older or work longer receive more paid or more rewards.
Epidemiological paradox: Although Americans of Latin American descent have a low SES, they have the same health level as that of Americans of European descent. They even have lower mortality rates than Americans of European descent.
Culture-related syndromes: Syndromes that are largely influenced by cultural factors and that occur much less frequently in other cultures or manifest themselves in a completely different way.
Anorexia Nervosa: Culture-related syndrome in which someone refuses to maintain normal body weight, is extremely anxious to gain weight and denies the seriousness of the low body weight.
Bulimia Nervosa: Culture-related syndrome in which someone experiences recurring binge eating periods, together with recurring inappropriate behavior to prevent weight gain.
Koro: A culture-related syndrome in the south and east of Asia. It occurs among men and manifests itself as an enormous fear that the penis will shrink and withdraw into the body.
Amok: Culture-related syndrome in a number of cultures in southeast Asia and can be defined as "an acute outburst of uncontrolled violence, associated with murderous attacks, preceded by a period of worry and ending with exhaustion and amnesia"
Hysteria: Culture-related syndrome that occurred in women in the mid-nineteenth century. The symptoms included fainting, insomnia, temporary blindness, loss of appetite and libido, and a general tendency to cause trouble.
Depression: One of the most identified psychological disorders in the West, in which symptoms such as depressive mood, weight loss, sleeping problems and loss of interest play a role.
Somatisation or Psychologization: Experiencing complaints in a physical or in a mental way.
Social Anxiety Disorder: One of the most common anxiety disorders, where the fear plays to behave in an absurd and unacceptable way and that this will result in disastrous social consequences.
Taijin kyoufushou: A phobia that is about the fear of making others feel uncomfortable. This phenomenon often occurs in Japan. The phobia manifests itself in physical symptoms such as excessive sweating. It is similar to social anxiety disorder.
Schizophrenia: One of the most debilitating mental disorders, with symptoms such as hallucinations, disorganized speech, disorganized behavior, catatonic behavior and negative symptoms.
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