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2: Why Culture is Important

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  • Page ID
    132102

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    Learning Objectives

    At the end of the chapter, you should be able to:

    • Explore values and beliefs of culture
    • Explore norms, symbols, language in culture
    • Understand attitudes in culture
    • Describe examples of how culture influences behavior.
    • Define ethnocentric bias and cultural relativism.

    The Importance of Culture

    Culture is a large part of our Bronfenbrenner's macrosystem that describes the attitudes, values and beliefs we encompass throughout life. It is the nonbiological aspect to life that describes the idea of learned behaviors. There is a cultural nature to how humans develop. Many researchers would argue that much of our identity, our sense of self, perspectives and how we perceive the world comes from our culture. Many of our skills and abilities may come from our cultural practices as well. Culture explains the question "why do we behave the way we do?" Cultures have norms, rules, and expectations that comes with its punishments and rewards. The many different aspects of culture are driving forces to our behaviors. Attitudes may influence how we treat or receive others. Traditions, values and beliefs may stem from other aspects of our macrosystem such as political ideation, or religion. Each aspect has influences over our behavior.

    This page titled 2: Why Culture is Important is shared under a CC BY license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Rebecca Laff and Wendy Ruiz via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.