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How knowledge about different cultures is shaking the foundations of psychology
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Different Psychologies
Psychology, which was largely developed in North American and Europe, has largely been able to understand human behavior and mental processes.
As our knowledge of different cultures and thought patterns opens up, we find that this understanding isn't as universal as previously thought.
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The Right Representation
Normally, studies conducted to understand human behavior have participants representing the wider human population, which may be true in a certain geography but isn't accurate when we take into account other cultures and demographics.
More than 90% of the participants in psychological studies originate from countries that are Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (W.E.I.R.D) which is neither a random sample nor a real representation of the human population.
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Different Ways Of Being
People across the world have different ways of describing themselves, different mental associations and thinking styles, possessing radically diverse motivations, upbringing, and social relationships.
What may be categorized as a mental illness in a certain part of the world may be normal behavior in another. Cultural differences pervade in a wider array of human behavior and there is a need to increase the circumference and scope of these studies.
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Free Shipping: Shopper Psychology
A study done on online shopping behaviour showed that 70 percent of the shoppers abandon their shopping basket, leaving the app/website. The main reason for this behaviour is the unexpected...
The Framing Effect Of Costs
Framing is a bias-inducing technique that seems to tilt buyer preferences by providing the same information in different ways. It makes people see the same data in such a way that it affects their choices.
Example: A $10 watch with $5 shipping charges may be a turn-off for buyers, but the same watch costing $15 with zero shipping charges, and FREE SHIPPING clearly labelled in bold, makes more people buy it, even though they are paying the same amount of money for the same watch.
The Decoy Effect
Often an extra choice is given to the buyer (looking at a set of options) to tilt the purchase in favour of a particular option. The decoy option is only there to shift the mindset, and is also called the asymmetrically dominated option.
The decoy effect changes the perception of the offer in the eyes of the buyer.
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The beginning of positive psychology
The story of positive psychology started just 20 years ago with Martin Seligman, head of the American Psychological Association. The idea he considered was: What if every perso...
Personal transformation
The term “positive psychology" was coined by Abraham Maslow in 1954. Martin Seligman used this term to promote personal change through the redemptive power of devotional practices like counting your blessings, gratitude, forgiveness, and meditation.
It is expressly designed to build moral character by cultivating the six virtues of wisdom, courage, justice, humanity, temperance, and transcendence.
Not a science
Martin Seligman insists on the value-neutral purity of the research on positive psychology. Yet even its fans say it seems to have some of the characteristics of a religion.
Philosophers such as Mike W. Martin say positive psychology has left the field of science and entered the realm of ethics. Science is a factual enterprise, not promoting particular values.
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"Being spiritual" nowadays signals:
- People that believe there is more to the world than meets the eye, more than the mere material.
- People that attend to their inner life (their mental and emotio...
Understanding the world
Spirituality is a framework for understanding the world. It enables people to make sense of that which, for them, science and religion fail to address: religion because it's outdated and out of touch with scientific progress, science because it's incapable to answer some of life's most crucial questions (of purpose, meaning and value).
Outer Space vs. Inner Space
The Dalai Lama once joked: "While the West was busy exploring outer space, the East was busy exploring inner space".
Regardless of the veracity of this, it does seem that for contemporary western societies, silence and stillness are an exception, not the rule.