A German American Anthropologist, By Franz Boas

“Being WEIRD: How Culture Shapes the Mind,” by Ethan Watters, is a compelling article that challenges the reader’s perception on culture and cognition. Instead of cognition affecting culture, our culture affects our cognition. It’s interesting to conceptualize, and it makes one have to introspect their culture, beliefs, attitudes, and actions. Why do we do behave the way that we do? Are our thoughts our own? How much of us is influenced by our environment? This effect of culture can be rooted in our childhoods. We are taught societal norms and how to view, categorize, and perceive the world through the lens of the environment surrounding us. A prime example of this comes from the games we played growing up.

Father Franz Boas--Father of American Anthropology Franz Boas is often referred to as the father of American anthropology because of the great influence he had in the lives and the careers of the next great generation of anthropologists in America. He came at a time when anthropology was not considered a true science or even a meaningful discipline and brought an air of respectability to the profession, giving those who followed a passion and an example of how to approach anthropology. Boas directed the field studies and trained such prominent anthropologists as Alfred Louis Kroeber, Robert Lowie, Margaret Mead, as well as others. Although he did not leave as his legacy any specific line of thought, he left a pattern that was

Anthropologist Margaret Mead addressed the differences in temperament found between men and women in her book Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935). In this study she concluded that sex has no bearing on social traits and the temperament of an individual. Her research looked at whether masculine or feminine traits are innate or learned. She also questioned whether men and women differ because of nature (heredity) or nurture (socialization). She concludes that cultural conditioning is more important than biology in shaping the behavior of women and men. The observed differences in temperament between men and women are not a function of their biological differences. Rather, they result from differences in the socialization

Culture is a strong determinant of people's views of the very nature and meaning of

Family, heritage, ethnicity, beliefs, values, knowledge, experiences, attitudes, religion, education, roles, language, and cuisine are all items encompassing culture. Culture is what influences your outlook on life itself as well as behaviors and rituals. Culture is the way different groups of people do things. While some cultures have overlapping cultural behaviors or aspects, most cultures vary significantly. Culture, for the most part, is something you are born into, your innate programming, however, it some aspects can be changed or evolved. "Only part of culture is conscious" (Spector, 2013).

A major part of one’s identity involves a system of morals and beliefs which are too influenced though one’s culture and experiences in life. The

Anthropologists have always had their discrepancies with the word culture and its background significance. There have been numerous definitions that have filtered through the field, yet not one that everyone can accept or agree with. Franz Boas, an anthropologist in the early 20th Century, and his students, had a difficult time figuring out the objective of what culture is. Culture is about learning and shared ideas about behaviour. Although Boas and his students had a slightly different idea in mind. They ultimately reached a conclusion, a definition of culture in their view that is a contradiction in terms. Boas sates that, “ culture was expressed through the medium of language but was not reducible to it;

In this paper I will begin by defining personal culture and national culture. After, I will then elaborate my own personal and national culture. I will continue to talk about the subject with the person that I have chosen for my cultural group, my mother, and I will identify her personal and national culture. Lastly, I will talk about my own personality and how it has a connection with my own natural culture; knowing this is important, it lets us know who we are, and how we act with people who are from different cultures.

Culture can be defined as the behaviours and belief characteristics of a particular social, ethnic,

The primary fascinating certainty I saw amid the investigation was the way rapidly we adjusted to another culture and began to feel a sense of generalization towards the other culture, marked by prejudices. When we began the test, I thought it would be harder for us to adapt to another culture. However, we started to act and act like we were relied upon to do in our way of life within a brief timeframe. Also when we went to visit Beta culture, we quickly began to generalization them. This experience gave me knowledge that generalization is regularly done in intuitive personality. Somebody may contemplate another culture is entirely right. In any case, likely that individual is simply stereotyping in a subliminal mind. While the Alpha culture

Several factors affect the formation of one’s culture, Palispis, E. (2007) quoted Sir Edward Tylor, “Culture… refers to that complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, arts, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as member of society.” (Palispis, E., 2007) In this context culture is something we acquire from the people we have lived with since we were born, it is not something a person can learn overnight nor can be disposed effortlessly.

It would be in order to first examine the connotation and exact meaning of culture. Sociologists differ wide in their perceptions in explanting culture and its inter-related concepts. The best definition from the military view point is given by Leslie A. White, who quotes famous sociologists Frank Boas and Melville J. Herskovits. He writes “culture may be defined (as per Boas), as the totality of the mental and physical reactions and activities that characterise the behaviour of individuals composing a social group….”. He further quotes Herskovits and says, “When culture is closely analysed, we find but a series of patterned reactions that characterise the behaviour of the individuals who constitute a given group. Another writer Sapir quoted by Leslie white classified culture as the mass of typical reactions.’ Culture is best summarised as a way of life of the people. It is manmade part of environment. Cultures includes beliefs, ideas, religion, art, customs and other habits which the people acquire while living in a society. Another very important aspect of culture is that it is ever changing by learning and transmitting from one generation to other through a

For the purposes of this piece, culture is defined as “the full range of human patterned experience” as described by Cole (1996) cited in Gla ̆veanu & Jovchelovitch (2017, p.113). This chapter also provides a description of the importance culture plays in psychological research.

Margaret Mead’s book “Coming of Age in Samoa” is an anthropological study of a “primitive” group of people under completely different cultural conditions than people of western society, namely America. She chose to study a group of adolescents in the South Sea Island of Samoa, a place where one might study a people: “Whose society has never attained the complexity of our own.” Mead attempts to determine whether or not the experience of turbulence and difficulty during the time of puberty and adolescence was universal, based mostly on biological changes, or were those experiences mostly influenced by environment and culture.

Culture is described as the symbols that individuals, groups and societies use to make decision of daily life and to assure their values. Culture is a model of basic assumptions invented, discovered or developed by a given organization as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaption and internal combination, which has worked well enough to think correctly and, so to instruct to new comers as the valid way to observe, consider and feel in relation to these problems. Culture consists of manner, mind-set, values, rituals, religious belief, law (written and unwritten), arts, ideas, custom, belief, ceremonies, social institutions, myths and legends, individual identity and behavior. Cultural pattern classifies are used to describe the dominant beliefs and values. Culture has been called the way of life for an entire society. It is a group or community living together and sharing a set of norms. Culture and society are coexistent. One does not or cannot exist without the other. Culture and society may have some common elements but the two are not the same; they are not identical.