Module II: Multicultural

Theories and research

Worldview Model
• Developed by Derald W. Sue.

• Framework to understand how individuals perceive and

interact with the world based on cultural background,
personal experiences, and sociopolitical influences.

• Helps in understanding how cultural identity influences

mental health, interpersonal relationships, and
therapeutic outcomes.
 Key components: Locus of Control
• A person's belief about the degree of control they have
over their life and experiences.

• Internal Locus of Control (IC): People believe that their

actions and decisions directly impact their outcomes.
They see themselves as in control of their destiny.

• External Locus of Control (EC): People believe that their

lives are shaped by external forces such as fate, luck,
societal structures, or higher powers.
 Key components: Locus of
Responsibility
• Refers to whether individuals hold themselves or external
forces accountable for their circumstances.

• Internal Locus of Responsibility (IR): People believe they

are responsible for their success or failure. They attribute
outcomes to personal effort and decisions.

• External Locus of Responsibility (ER): People believe that

societal factors, systemic inequalities, or environmental
conditions are responsible for their life circumstances.
 The four worldview perspectives

Internal Locus of External Locus of

Responsibility (IR) Responsibility (ER)

Internal Locus of
IC-IR IC-ER
Control (IC)

External Locus of
EC-IR EC-ER
Control (EC)
• IC-IR: (Internal Control, Internal Responsibility): Common in
Western cultures, where personal effort and independence are
emphasized.

• EC-IR (External Control, Internal Responsibility): May lead to

frustration because they feel controlled by external systems but
still blame themselves.

• IC-ER (Internal Control, External Responsibility): Often seen

in activists and social justice advocates who believe change is
possible through action.

• EC-ER (External Control, External Responsibility): Can lead to

learned helplessness, resentment, or disengagement.
Scope of the worldview model in
multicultural psychology

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Individualism-Collectivism
• In individualist cultures people view themselves
as having an independent concept of self,
whereas in collectivist cultures people view
themselves as having an interdependent concept
of self.

• Individualism and collectivism are not the

opposite of each other, they are complementary
constructs, and understanding one helps
understand the other.
• Individualists have an independent concept of self,
they have their goals independent from their in-
groups, their social behaviours are attitude,
values, and belief driven, and they emphasize
rationality in evaluating and choosing their social
relationships.

• Collectivists have an interdependent concept of

self, their goals are compatible with in-groups,
their social behaviours are norm driven, and they
are relational in their social exchange with other
people.
 Socie
ty

SELF

Other
Group peopl
e
 Multicultural
Personality
The MP is characterized by an individual who is
emotionally stable; is secure in her/his racial/ethnic (and
other) identities; embraces diversity in her/his personal
life and makes active attempts to learn about other
cultures and interact with culturally different people
 Personality traits
• The MP factors map onto broad models of personality traits
such as the Big Three or the Big Five.

• Proximal variables: refers to the situational, proximate, and

contextual elements that have an impact on a person's
multicultural competences and behaviors.

• Distal variables: refer to outside influences or elements that

have a substantial impact on a person's personality
development but are not immediately related to their local
environment or personal traits.
Attitudes
 Attitude

• Evaluation of different aspects of social world.

• Positive/negative; stable/unstable.

• Impact how we see and navigate our social worlds

 Attitude

• Attitudes are influenced by different values related to

them. For instance, attitudes about scientific issues are
may be influenced by long term religious values.

• Rapid v/s thoughtful attitudes.

Formation of attitudes
 Classical conditioning
• A basic form of learning in which one stimulus, initially
neutral, acquires the capacity to evoke reactions through
repeated pairing with another stimulus. In a sense, one
stimulus becomes a signal for the presentation or
occurrence of the other.

• Direct route: positive stimuli is repeatedly paired with the

product. Example: body spray ads.

• Indirect route: pairing a well-liked celebrity endorser with the

product. Example: Slice ads.
• Mere exposure: attitude formation resulting from having
seen an object before, but too rapidly to remember.

• Subliminal conditioning:

• Classical conditioning that occurs in the absence of

conscious awareness of the stimuli involved.

• Study by Krosnick et al, (1992): Participants who were

non-consciously exposed to photos that induced
positive feelings liked the stranger better than
participants who had been exposed to photos that
non-consciously induce negative feelings.
• Illusion of truth effect:
• The mere repetition of information creates a sense of
familiarity and more positive attitudes.

• Moons, Mackie, and Garcia-Marques (2009): more

positive attitudes developed as a result of repeated
exposure of both weak and strong arguments. However,
positive attitudes towards weak arguments faded as a
result of detailed processing of the content of the
argument.

• Attitudes can influence behavior even when those

attitudes are inconsistent with how we are explicitly
expected to behave. The Swedish study.
 Instrumental conditioning

• Instrumental conditioning: when responses that

lead to positive outcomes or which permit
avoidance of negative outcomes are
strengthened.

• Social networks: sets of individuals with whom

we interact on a regular basis.
 Instrumental conditioning

Levitan and Visser (2009):

• Students who entered networks with more diverse
attitudes exhibited greater change in their attitudes
over the 2-month period.

• These results suggest that new social networks can be

quite influential, particularly when they introduce new
strong arguments not previously encountered.
 Instrumental conditioning

• The impact of audience/presence of others on reported

attitudes: our expression of attitudes depends on
whether our attitudes stay private or not.

• In conclusion: the attitudes we form and our attitude

expression can depend on the rewards we have
received in the past and those we expect to receive in
the future for expressing particular attitudes.
 Observational learning

• Observational learning: when individuals acquire

new forms of behavior as a result of observing
others.

• Social comparison: The process through which

we compare ourselves to others to determine
whether our view of social reality is, or is not,
correct.
 Observational learning
• We adopt attitudes of members of reference group.
Reference group comprises people that we value and
identify with.

• Terry and Hogg (1996) found that the adoption of favorable

attitudes toward wearing sunscreen depended on the extent
to which the respondents identified with the group
advocating this change.

• Attitudes are also shaped by our desire to be similar to the

people we like.
 Observational learning
Identity and attitude formation:
• Duck, Hogg and Terry (1999): When a message
concerning safe sex and AIDS prevention was created for
university students, those who identified with their
university’s student group believed that they would be
personally influenced by the position advocated in the
message

• Fleming and Perry (2000): those who highly identified with

their gender group reported a more favorable attitude
towards the product when the message was framed in
terms of their own group liking that food.
Link between attitude and behavior
When and why do attitudes
influence behavior?
 The role of social context

• Depending on the degree to which the action has social

consequences or not, attitudes may be differentially
related to behavior.

• Miller and Morrison (2009): students expressed greater

comfort discussing campus drinking and chose that
topic for discussion more often when they thought other
students’ attitudes were more pro-alcohol than their
own, but they were less willing to do so when they
learned other students’ attitudes were more negative
than their own.
 The role of social context

• Pluralistic ignorance - When we collectively

misunderstand what attitudes others hold and
believe erroneously that others have different
attitudes than us.
 Strength of attitudes

• Strength of attitudes have three components:

• Extremity: the extent to which an individual feels

strongly, in one direction or the other, about an issue.

• Certainity: the sense that you know what your attitude

is and the feeling that it is the correct position to hold.
 Strength of attitudes

• Personal experience.

• Accessibility: how easily the attitude comes to mind in

various situations.

• These three factors -> accessibility -> extent to which

attitudes drive behavior.
 Attitude extremity

• Vested interest: the extent to which an attitude

is relevant to the concerns of the individual who
holds it.

• The greater the vested interest, the stronger the

impact of the attitude on behavior.
 Attitude extremity
• When university students were telephoned and asked if
they’d campaign against upcoming policy of increasing
drinking age, their responses depended on whether they
would be affected by the policy change or not.
• People with vested interest are likely to elaborate on
arguments that favor their position. Study by Haugtvedt
and Wegener (1994).
• Vested interests are particularly likely to affect judgments
and behavior in the immediate context, whereas abstract
values do so when the judgment or behavior is in the
distant future.
 Attitude extremity
• Study:
• White American students were given a proposal that
would be enacted at their university either
immediately or in the distant future. It would involve
raising tuition by 10 percent in order to restore funds
used for recruiting minority students that had been
cut.

• Findings: immediate conditions - opposed; distant

condition - favored.
 Attitude certainty: clarity and
correctness
• Correctness:
• Determined that their participants felt negatively about a
specific attitude issue: requiring students to carry
identification cards all the time.

• Half of the participants were given feedback that 89% of

students agreed with their attitude and the other half were
told that 11% of students agreed with them.

• Results: perceived correctness was greater when consensus

was high (the 89% condition) rather than low (11%)
 Attitude certainty: clarity and
correctness
• Clarity:
• Reflects a lack of ambivalence about an attitude issue.

• The more often you are asked to report on your attitude,

the more it will facilitate clarity and thereby certainty.

• Petrocelli et al (2007): asked students to express their

attitudes toward gun control either several times or only
once, attitude certainty was found to differ. “More
expressions” condition had greater certainty.
 Attitude certainty: clarity and
correctness
• Interaction of the two factors:
• The students were then given a persuasive message with
strong arguments in favor of the policy but against their
initial attitudes—why the policy would enhance student
safety.

• More attitude change resulted in the low-clarity case than

the high-clarity condition (single vs. repeated
expression), and more attitude change occurred in the
low-correctness versus the high-correctness condition
(low vs. high consensus).
 Role of personal experience
• Attitudes formed on the basis of direct experience can
exert stronger effects on behavior than ones formed
indirectly.

• Attitudes based on personal relevance are more likely to

be elaborated on in terms of supporting arguments
making them resistant to change.

• Personal involvement and relevance.

 Role of personal experience
• Study:
• European students were asked if a new fictitious country
should be allowed to join EU, either on the basis of a
value of importance to them (e.g., freedom) or on the
basis of a value of little importance (e.g., unity).

• Students spent more time thinking about and elaborating

on the message when it involved important values
compared to when it did not.
Stereotypes and Prejudice
 Stereotypes
• Beliefs and expectations that we have concerning what
members of those groups are like.

• Can include more than just traits; physical appearance,

abilities, and behaviors.

• Can be either positive or negative, they can be accurate

or inaccurate, and may be either agreed with or
rejected by members of the stereotyped group.
 Stereotypes

• Gender stereotypes: beliefs concerning the characteristics

of women and men. These contain both positive and
negative traits.

• ‘Women are wonderful’ effect.

• Glass ceiling: Barriers based on attitudinal or

organizational bias that prevent qualified females from
advancing to top-level positions.
 Stereotypes

• Glass cliff effect: Choosing women for leadership

positions that are risky, precarious, or when the
outcome is more likely to result in failure

• Consequences of tokenism
 Prejudice
• The feeling component of attitudes toward social groups.
It reflects a negative response to another person based
solely on that person’s membership in a particular group.

• A person who is prejudiced toward some social group is

predisposed to evaluate its members negatively because
they belong to that group.

• Essences: Typically some biologically based feature that

is used to distinguish one group and another.
 Prejudice

• Depending on what emotion underlies prejudice toward

a particular group, the discriminatory actions that might
be expected could be rather different.

• The minimal groups experiment.

• Incidental feelings and implicit associations

 Origins of
prejudice

Competition
Threats to Us v/s
for
self esteem Them
resources