hello everyone welcome back we are continuing the series of videos on great ideas in psychology based on a book with the same title by professor fatalim in this part we are turning to chapter 18 titled multicultural psychology this is our place in the general map of the series in the previous parts when i was writing this list i wrote for number 18 instead of multicultural i wrote cultural and that's something we should correct so maybe we can begin talking about that distinction that difference so our topic is not cultural psychology not in this chapter anyways i might talk about cultural psychology at some point in the future based on other sources other books um cultural psychology is a branch of psychology it's a sub-discipline it is you can say it's a way of thinking about psychology just like cognitive psychology or theories of personality it is a general way of getting into psychology so cultural psychology examines psychological topics through the lens of culture by looking at how cultural processes cultural material cultural objects signs artifacts enable psychological functions or psychological experiences in contrast to that so that's not our topic for this part in contrast multicultural psychology confronts situations or social environments in which there are multiple cultures that coexist and they enter into relationship with each other so they have a perception of one culture has a perception of another culture we're not talking about cultures we're talking about people individuals an individual belongs to a culture or a cultural background and this individual enters into a setting in which multiple cultures coexist if you are interested in cultural psychology let me know i am potentially i'm interested in discussing that topic too in the future and one place to go it's a little bit challenging it's a difficult book but um an invitation to cultural psychology by john valson there's a 2014 book it's a good place to start studying if you're interested in that topic it's not again not primarily multicultural psychology but cultural psychology okay now let's get to the multi-cultural psychology why are we interested in it why should we be interested in it well because we live in a world now for many different reasons we live in a world where the places we live the places we find ourselves are places in which more than one culture exists uh people belong to people who live very near each other in physical proximity geographical proximity the same city same social environment they belong sometimes to two different sides of a cultural boundary so you might have friends close friends or classmates or co-workers who have a different culture a different cultural background so the factors that motivate multicultural psychology include globalization immigration students in large numbers traveling to study as foreign students or exchange students in addition to travelers and tourists and these factors result in changes in demographic in various countries or cities especially larger cities and as a result these questions might arise questions related to multicultural social environments one question is about identity in that in a multicultural setting you might ask you might be more motivated to ask about the relationship between culture and identity how much of your identity is about being from your culture having that particular cultural background how much of who you are is about a culture another question is about the definition or categorization or identification once you have some ideas about your identity and its relationship to your culture ask what is it that makes a person a member of my cultural group if you're an american for example if you're canadian if you are uh british what is it that makes you an american what is it that makes a person any person not just you what would you like to know about a person to know that they are in your group and if they can't if they don't meet that criteria or if uh they don't have that feature category membership or family resemblance family resemblance in the sense of categories then they would be identified as out groups so in group out group so we are drawing we are thinking about cultural boundaries and people belonging to different sides of that boundary then another question that comes out of that is how should you deal with people who are who belong to the out group category what to do about you know roughly what to do about the art group especially the outgroup that is inside your territory so people who live in your city but they seem different because of their cultural backgrounds i'm not talking about racial differences but cultural differences what are the rights and duties towards people who are different in their culture what is their rights and their duties what is our rights and duties from both sides from both sides of that relationship and it is not just we individuals that decide about the these questions how to think about these questions how to respond to these types of questions policy makers make decisions and kind of respond to these questions about identity about group membership about dealing or treatment of people in across different sides of the multicultural divide and then psychologists get to ask questions after the fact after maybe some policies have been uh proposed or established so here's a passage from the book multicultural psychology addresses questions about the effectiveness of different policies for managing cultural diversity managing cultural diversity and the relationship between such policies and identity and whether such policies are based on based on assumptions that are psychologically viable safe to assume or or not so different policies what is the aim of those policies the aim is generally to eliminate eliminate or minimize the adverse effect of cultural differences through common educational experience and language training so one example is affirmative action which is uh in effect in many different countries several different countries not just in the us but also in places like malaysia let's read another passage this this passage is helpful because it introduces us to two different ways of assimilation across a multicultural multicultural divide so um let's say there are two groups two or more groups there's one majority group and then there are minorities for example the the muslim communities in west china for example so there are different ways of assimilating making peace or making harmony or connecting let's say connecting and making peace across a multicultural divide so there is minority assimilation and then there's melting pot assimilation minority assimilation is when the minority group is expected to do most of the work so the minority group is expected to learn the language learn the official language of the of the territory learn how to navigate through the culture so as minority assimilation involves the minority group members trying to take on a mainstream identity by copying the majority group but there is also the melting pot assimilation in which the the work is shared so both sides are expected to do some of the work and importantly both sides as a as a result of their interaction come with come up with their new identity so both the majority because of their interaction and the minority they develop and settle on new identity new ways of understanding themselves with the help of another culture who is now close living close to them so based on the contribution cultural contribution of all the different groups that is what we mean by the melting pot assimilation so the pressure the duty the work is shared in that second style there's of course intergroup conflict whenever we have different cultures there might be negative feelings towards people who are different so different groups might might identify each other as enemy based on some key characteristics something that usually it is an arbitrary feature like skin color or some physical feature or maybe some stereotype that they have um and usually the way people think is that we don't have those characteristics we don't have those characteristics of the other side they do that's why we can identify them and the other group is usually perceived to be simpler and we think when we have an enemy on the other side they all are kind of similar we think that they're all the same essentially but we are our group has um diversity inside it and is heterogeneous relatively so that's a simplistic prejudicial way of thinking about other people um other cultures if you fall into that trap there's a nice little book that begins with this with the with the essay titled inventing the enemy by umberto eco i would encourage you to read this collection the whole the whole essay is the whole essay collection the whole collection is quite good in the first essay echo uh reminds us that people who belong to very different cultures over time and and different times in history different points in in history they have all said very similar things strangely enough they have said very similar things about people they identify as enemy so for example a common characteristic that every everybody almost everybody and different places different times have said about their the other side of their culture the enemy of their culture is that they're immoral they don't have our sense of morality and they usually also describe the other side as having some repulsive features like bad smell or bad hygiene so this is these are inventions these are imagined features or maybe they in some cases they are based on existing features but they are exaggerated and over interpreted so for example example that is discussed one of the examples discussed in this chapter is the conflict between two communities the tutsis and the hotels who live in rwanda and they've had bloody conflicts during the 1990s and it's unfortunately ongoing there is one physical feature namely height that is different in these two on average on average one of the groups is slightly taller than the other but because of the animosity because these groups have identified each other as as the enemy this physical difference not only is it is exaggerated but it is also interpreted to mean something namely one group's superiority and another group's inferiority so when even when two groups might look similar to outsiders to third parties it's like okay you you're all from rwanda you have so much in common and your the geographies you live ecologies the way you organize your groups but the groups who have identified each other as enemy they exaggerate small differences in order to confirm the feeling or attitude of animosity and they interpret that those small differences as very fundamental uh very and major indications of who the other side is and their relationship to us back to um echo he writes in that essay quote having an enemy is important not only to define our identity but also to provide us with an obstacle against which to measure our system of value and to demonstrate our own worth so when there is no enemy we invent one end code there are psychological benefits in other words there are some psychological benefits of course these are easy solutions to heart problems we can say they are psychological cheats we cheat psychologically with respect to solving the meaning of life sub giving our lives a purpose and giving answers to the question who am i or who are we it's easier to answer those questions with respect to an enemy that we have invented and then we have described and identified all right back to multiculturalism obviously multiculturalism in our time wants to combat animosity wants to combat people identifying each other in prejudicial terms uh in terms of enemies in terms that are that that produce more and more conflict multiculturalism wants to provide us well or create peace while maintaining differences different cultural identities so we don't want complete assimilation we don't want minority groups to completely disown who they are but we also want peace and understanding so there are assumptions that multiculturalism makes two of them two major assumptions discussed in this chapter are first minorities are positively motivated towards retain retaining their ancestral culture and language so this is one i don't know how much you have experienced with um living with immigrants families near immigrant families you know that this is not this assumption is not always safe to make like there are sometimes families where the second generation third generation they don't care as much about knowing their ancestral culture and language they don't really know or want to know the language spoken by their grandparents i'm not talking about whether that's good or bad but this multicultural multiculturalism assumption um you can question you can't challenge it it is not universally true across all minorities but it is an assumption that some people make and this assumption also goes into policy making second when group members feel pride feel good confident in their own group heritage they will be more open and accepting toward outgroups this is called the multiculturalism hypothesis so i will be more inclined to accept people from other cultures if i already have a sense of confidence a sense of pride in my own cultural background is that a safe assumption no no you can also challenge this you can question this um this hypothesis multiculturalism there are many people you can imagine or maybe you can recall people who are very proud of their own cultural heritage but they don't feel that great about other people other cultures so just being just having a good feeling about your own culture doesn't guarantee that you're going to be open and accepting it has to be the right way of feeling pride and confidence um in a way that keeps you open and humble about what other people can contribute our author professor mohadam also talks about limitations of multiculturalism and he includes the focus maybe too much focus on what is happening to minority groups or what should be done by minority groups or should we die about minority groups and this focus might lead us to neglect that the main source of prejudice especially in bias tends to be in tends to come from the majority group because they are the the majority group is the group that is kind of getting out of their comfort zone getting challenged and they have their own status quo um anyways next it assumes multiculturalism assumes that pride in one's group necessarily leads to more peace and historically our author points out that is inaccurate and last but not least multiculturalism promotes tolerance and what does tolerance mean tolerance means not maybe it means not bothering each other letting other people have their lives but keeping them at a distance maybe it means accepting other people or trying not to have a bias against them but when it comes to choosing a neighborhood to live you actually you know you're tolerant of people but you don't want to live near them the question then arises is is this the best possible outcome is tolerance the best we can achieve maybe from the perspective of makers people who are thinking in terms of society maybe for them tolerance might be best possible outcome but from a psychological perspective from a personal perspective uh from the from the perspective of individual human beings who are making decisions who are experiencing multicultural um a multicultural world we can we might be able to do or aim at least or hope for something that is more than tolerance um something like mutual enrichment or kind of genuine relationship it doesn't have to be peaceful relationship doesn't have to always be a joyful celebration it could be like a peaceful conflict that informs us about who we are like being argumentative with your friend your friend but you're still friends but you're not just tolerating each other from a distance all right final thoughts um multicultural psychology i mean why is it useful why is it interesting to think about multicultural psychology when we have negative feelings about other cultures or when when we have positive feelings about other cultures or when we make decisions with respect to other cultures because of people and with respect to people because of their cultural background is this all of this topic are all of these things just about our relationship to people from other cultures and are we imagining relationship between two cultures and each culture being completely homogeneous so let's say western culture and eastern culture thinking about these two cultures in a very simplistic way as if all of the west is one thing and all of the east is one thing and they are homogeneous internally but then they have major differences from each other um multiculturalism is a way to me to get past these simplistic ways of thinking it is i think it is also about enriching our way of thinking about our own culture when we are introduced to people who have different cultural backgrounds we might become more reflective more self-aware about our own uh about the differences that are inside our our culture so is it about differences between cultures relationships between cultures or is this also something that can help us think better think more carefully think more critically about differences within a culture and maybe even more fundamentally more relevant to psychology is it about also differences within one person when a person is very unaccepting of people uh who are different from them is this also showing a kind of prejudice an inability to accept parts of oneself it's the kind of rigidity that is not just about other people but also is applied to the person himself herself themselves okay things to think about these are just final questions um at the end of this part next time we are turning to evolutionary psychology the uses and misuses of evolutionary psychology thank you very much for your attention and until next time