2/17/22; Week 7: Response to "Culture and Psychology".

 

“Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid”. —Attributed to Albert Einstein

The video mentions the relationship between the “ought-self” which can be what people are expected to be within their society and the “real-self” which is who they are based on their attributes, skills, talents and passions affects their self-esteem and how they view themselves. And that is exactly what the above quotation is trying to teach because many times social culture affects the individual’s psychology.

Professor Ivers, in the video, invites students to think and talk about examples where they have seen how people have irrational cultural “ought-self” beliefs that makes people feel miserable for not meeting those standards. And thought about what happens back home, from a young age we are taught that we need to go to college and get a degree in order to be someone in life. Basically, our worth is based on our academic achievements and people, who didn’t have the chance to further their education due to who knows circumstances, end up feeling they’re not good enough or that they can’t be successful in life. Another example, I can think of, is the case of Japanese and Korean students who are socially judged by their academic performance which affects their mental health to the point of getting some of them to choose suicide because of the intensity of the social pressure they experience from a young age.

The above mentioned are just some examples of the magnitude in which cultural beliefs affect individuals psychologically and it’s important to know how their cultural beliefs affect students in the classroom and outside the classroom to adapt lessons and activities to meet their needs not only academically but also socially. In previous weeks, we have discussed the role of the affective filter in foreign language acquisition which means how emotional security enables students to progress faster in their learning. A question that comes to mind when reviewing this topic is how can we help a student that struggles to acknowledge his or her “real-self” traits in regards of his or her language learning performance which in turn is affecting their learning progress negatively?