Psych525
Psychological Theory
This paper examines how a person’s cultural ethnocentric perspective causes them to react to a person from another culture based on the behavior/social cognitive theory. For the purposes of description, this presentation will explore both Irish and Japanese ethnocentric perspectives and how they relate to one another using the behavior/social cognitive theory.
Ethnocentricity
Before continuing on to describe Irish and Japanese cultural interaction, there needs to be clear understanding of what is meant by ethnocentric perspectives. According to Segall, Dasen, Berry, & Poortinga (1999) an ethnocentric perspective is the belief that a person’s culture is the center of all. The other part of an ethnocentric perspective is that it promotes postive feelings of self while creating negative thought patterns about others (Segall et al, 1999).
Behavior/Social Cognitive Theory
This theory was built upon the theory that behavior is a learned response primarily learned through social environment (Cervone & Pervin, 2010). Social-cognitive theorists also believe that a person’s cognitive functions allow for growth beyond the initial environmental contributors (Cervone & Pervin, 2010). A person’s culture represents their primary social environment and therefore is the predominant contributor to their personality development. This cultural awareness, or ethnocentric perspective, provides a framework of thought that affects a person’s future development.
Behavior Cognitive theory presents points such as; avoiding conflicting stimuli and attempting to meet equilibrium state by means of using their cognitive elements. Cognitive elements are elements such as; values, beliefs, knowledge, and attitudes (Awa & Nwuche, 2010).
The social aspect of this theory delineates the thoughts that evaluation of such experiences occur in context with uses past experiences. In addition, the social aspect of the
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