Deck 1: Conceptual Tools

Question 1

A swimsuit is part of objective culture, but a group's attitude toward swimsuits is part of its subjective culture.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

Culture, nationality, and race are three terms that basically describe the same thing.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

Which of the following has NOT been proposed as a definition of culture?

A) Culture is a unique meaning and information system.
B) Culture is a society's sacred text, a collection of written rules concerning morality.
C) Culture is the man-made part of the environment.
D) Culture is society's memory, a storehouse of information that we use to navigate and make sense of the world.

Answer 3

B

Question 4

A study that seeks to explain observed differences between cultural groups by measuring specific features or "ingredients" of culture is called ___________________.

A) an ethnographic study
B) a cross-cultural validation study
C) an unpackaging study
D) none of the above

Question 5

As described in Briefing 1, what is the difference between objective culture and subjective culture?

Question 6

What is an unpackaging study? Why is an unpackaging study superior to a study that simply documents a behavioral difference between two cultural groups?

Question 7

A stereotype is an overgeneralized belief about a group of people.

Question 8

The differences within cultural groups are almost always smaller than the differences between cultural groups.

Question 9

Which of these distributions will have the most variability?

A) The measured heights of all living persons.
B) The measured heights of all boys and girls between the ages of 2 and 3.
C) The measured heights of all male professional basketball players.
D) It is not possible to answer the question from the information given.

Question 10

When two distributions of scores overlap each other partly but not completely, we can infer that ___________________.

A) the means (averages) of the two groups are identical
B) the variability in one group is larger than the variability in the other group
C) the distributions have different heights
D) none of the above

Question 11

Why do group labels such as "Asian American" reveal little about individual members of the group?

Question 12

Suppose Democrats and Republicans report their trust of government on a 100-point scale. Further suppose that the average score of Democrats is 70 and the average score of Republicans is 65. Why do we need information about the variability within both groups to determine if the 5-point difference is meaningful?

Question 13

Collectivism emphasizes values such as loyalty, being concerned for the well-being of the group, and considering the implications for others of one's decisions.

Question 14

Researchers have found that about half the countries in the world are becoming more individualistic, whereas the other half are not changing or becoming less individualistic.

Question 15

In studies of different nations, which of the following is statistically associated with having individualistic values?

A) A low divorce rate.
B) A high percentage of people living in rural areas.
C) A high percentage of jobs that are white-collar jobs.
D) More frequent use of personal pronouns such as we, us, and them.

Question 16

Which country is either becoming more individualistic or less individualistic, depending on the study?

A) Canada
B) China
C) India
D) Russia

Question 17

Compare and contrast individualism and collectivism. How are they similar? How are they different?

Question 18

In Briefing 3, two studies came to opposite conclusions about whether a certain country was becoming more individualistic or less individualistic. The author said he trusted the findings of one study more than the other. Why?

Question 19

In a study of 33 nations, tight nations were more likely to have autocratic governments and loose nations were more likely to have higher crime rates.

Question 20

According to one study, the loosest states in the U.S. are more rural and have more deaths each year due to heat, lightning, and floods.

Question 21

In a study of 33 nations, researchers discovered that a strong predictor of a nation's tightness is ___________________.

A) a history of ecological threats such as food scarcity and natural disasters
B) high population density in the year 1500
C) both a and b
D) neither a nor b

Question 22

According to one study, the tightest region in the United States is ___________.

A) the West Coast
B) New England
C) the Midwest
D) the South

Question 23

What are the characteristics of a tight society? A loose society?

Question 24

According to Michele Gelfand and her colleagues, why are some nations tighter than others?

Question 25

Cognitive style is a cultural dimension that describes a society's habitual way of thinking.

Question 26

In one study, American and Chinese students observed a ball in a container of liquid. The Americans were more likely than the Chinese to say the ball's movements were caused by something about the ball itself, such as its density or shape.

Question 27

As a group, persons with an interdependent social orientation ______________ than persons with an independent social orientation.

A) think more analytically
B) think more intuitively
C) think more rationally
D) none of the above

Question 28

Which of the following is NOT typical of holistic thinking?

A) stability is expected; change is not expected
B) attention is focused equally on foreground and background
C) objects are categorized thematically in terms of functional relationships
D) actions are explained in terms of contextual factors that are external to the actor

Question 29

"Different social orientations are associated with different cognitive styles." Fully explain the meaning of this statement.

Question 30

Correspondence bias is the tendency to ignore the setting and believe that what people do reflects who they are. Generally speaking, who is more likely to show a correspondence bias, Americans or East Asians? More importantly, why?