Assignment: Thinking Critically About Your Own Culture

Please do the paper on the American Culture.

Recall that your text defines cross-cultural psychology as the critical and comparative study of cultural effects on human psychology (Shiraev & Levy, 2017, p. 2). Throughout the course, you will be asked to think critically about your own culture so that you can understand how it differs from other cultures. To make those comparisons, you need to recognize defining qualities of your own culture. As you begin this examination process, keep in mind the definition of culture: a set of attitudes, behaviors, and symbols shared by a large group of people (Shiraev & Levy, 2017, p. 4).

For this Assignment, you will identify and analyze your own culture based on concepts covered in Week 1 of the course.

Important Note: Although you may view your family as having a particular “culture,” focus on a larger culture of which you are a part, such as one connected to your national, regional, racial, ethnic, or religious heritage. If you are multicultural or have no strong connection to a single culture, you may use a broad category, such as “American” or “Caribbean.”

How to prepare (Assignment instructions are in the next section):

• Review the Week 1 Learning Resources. Pay particular attention to Chapter 1 in your course text.
• Use guidance from the text reading, and any other sources you choose, to identify the culture that you view as “your own.” Consider what attitudes, behaviors, and symbols would define your culture.
• Research your culture using resources in the Walden Library and other scholarly resources you find.  As you work through your class materials, apply each concept to your own culture.  Remember, many concepts represent a spectrum, so think about where your culture fallsclearly on one end, clearly on the other, or somewhere in between.  Consider how traditional or nontraditional your culture is, the level of the power distance, the approach to handling uncertainty, where it falls on the individualism-collectivism continuum, and what cultural syndromes characterize your culture (please note this is not the same thing as culture-bound syndromes, which we will study during Week 6).
• Use the Walden Writing Center for guidance on scholarly writing in preparing your Assignment.

What to submit:

Submit a 2- to 3-page paper that includes the following components. Be sure to reference the Learning Resources, including the media, in your Assignment. When providing examples, describe people and situations from outside of your own family.

• Describe the attitudes, behaviors, and symbols that define your culture. (Be sure you address your larger cultural setting and not your family.)
• Explain whether your culture is more traditional or nontraditional and provide examples to illustrate your thinking.
• Diagnose the power distance level in your culture and provide examples to explain your thinking.
• Explain your culture’s uncertainty orientation and provide examples to illustrate your thinking.
• Assess where your culture falls on the individualism-to-collectivism spectrum and provide examples to illustrate your thinking.
• Identify one or more cultural syndromes that are characteristic of your culture and provide an example for each cultural syndrome to support your thinking.

Note: Support your responses within your Assignment with evidence from the assigned Learning Resources. Provide a reference list for resources you used for this Assignment.