Our View of the World: Culture, Thought & Language (AQA GCSE Psychology)

• This topic is directly related to the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (SWH) which is covered here
• The SWH suggests that the language someone speaks has a direct effect on the way that they recall information
• English speakers can identify the perpetrator of accidental actions more than Spanish speakers can (based on the linguistic differences between “She broke the vase” compared to, “The vase broke” (Fausey & Boroditsky, 2011)
• Native American culture (specifically the Hopi tribe) was studied by Whorf to investigate variation in recall of events
  • Hopi language differs from languages such as English or French because it does not distinguish between time scales i.e. they have no way of expressing past, present and future as different and separate entities
  • The Hopi language has no words for hours, minutes, or days of the week and there is no concept of being ‘on time’ or ‘late’ for an event
    • Time in the Hopi world is linked to the phases of the moon and the movements of the sun
  • The Hopi refer to one full day as a ‘sleep’ and a year is known as a ‘winter’

The Hopi. The concept of time is not part of their language. 

• Research by Carmichael (1932) involved two groups of participants shown the same pictures with different descriptions
  • When participants were asked to draw them, the pictures reflected the labels they had heard which suggests that language influences recall of events (e.g. those who heard ‘eyeglasses’ drew eyeglasses)

• Humans are able to see millions of colours (as variations of the colour wheel) but colour is not necessarily universal in how it is perceived across cultures
• Colour is perceived rather than seen (i.e. it is a subjective rather than a wholly objective process) and will largely depend upon environmental factors such as experience (and therefore culture)
• Brown & Lenneberg (1954) found, via their research into the Zuni tribe of New Mexico that the absence of a colour word in a specific language affects how well that colour is recognised (the Zuni had one word only to cover the various shades of yellow and orange and struggled to recall any yellow/orange shades when compared to English speakers)
• Robertson et al. (2000) studied the Berinmo people of New Guinea and found that they had difficulty recalling and distinguishing between a variety of colours as they only have five words for different colours in their own language (e.g. one name only for any yellow, orange or brown shades; one name only for white/light colours)
• The above two research findings offer support for the idea that language influences cognitive processes such as memory (as suggested by the SWH)

The Colour Wheel.

Evaluation of our view of the world: culture, thought & language

Strengths

• Culture affects many aspects of human experience (via ritual, beliefs, religion, habits) so it is highly likely to have an impact on language and thought, therefore the theory has good face validity
• Research into variation in recall and recognition has good application as the findings could be used to foster better understanding across cultures

Weaknesses

• Just because the Hopi had different ways of thinking about time does not mean that they were unable to mark time (they had four time periods - sunrise, noon, sunset, and midnight) which means that the theory lacks validity 
• Heider & Olivier (1972) reported contradictory results to those cited above: there was no difference in a colour recognition task between the Dani tribe from New Guinea (who only have two colour words) compared to English speakers