Cultural identity and psychology : comparison of eastern and western

Abstract

The thesis aims to distinguish the differences of eastern and western that base on the psychological theories. The cognitive and learning theories conduct to cultural principle and phenomena--culture is learned, not innate--culture impact human's mind and action. Since people understand how the culture influences cognitive development and behavior model, it is useful and helpful to make better strategy on child-rearing and schooling. The methodology is case study about analysis of the current social and cultural common issues. Most case studies show that the capabilities of human learning rely on the interaction with different cultural factors and the influences begins with very early stage of human. The obvious and dynamic emerge happens on the childhood. Thus, the thesis is mainly focusing on the period of childhood to early stage of adolescence. Through the comparison of cultural value on individual and collective, western and eastern distinguish the pattern of behavior and cognitive. The whole thesis divides into three chapters. The first chapter is literature review about cultural identity through analysis of the elements of cultural circuit and psychological theories from Piaget, Skinner, Vygotsky. The second chapter concern on the explanations and representation of individualism and collectivism. The third chapter refers to moral development in different psychologists' perspective.