Sociocultural Perspective

• Lev Vygotsky believed that parents, caregivers, peers, and the culture at large were responsible for the development of higher order function
• "Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals."
• Reaction to Cognitive Development(Piaget’s)
• More emphasis on social factors influence development (Vygotsky)
• More culture to culture instead of universal (Vygotsky)

• Sociocultural psychologists believe that our knowledge and ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving are dependent on the culture to which we belong ( psychology 22).
• This approach is concerned with issues such as gender and socioeconomic status and is based on the idea that these factors impact human behavior and mental processes (psychology 22).
• It says that the environment that one interacts in, the societal that one is pressured by, and the people that one may converse with make an impact in the development of the individual.
• Ethnicity, gender, culture, and socioeconomic status influence our behavior.
• How we act is determined by the aforementioned things.
• "seeks to understand human behavior and personality development by examining the rules of the social groups and subgroups in which the individual is a member."

• How might you be different if you had been born female instead of male, or male instead of female?
• Would you be different if you had been born in poverty, or into an extremely wealthy family?
• Do religious beliefs play a role in a teen's decision to delay premarital sex?
• Do families that eat dinner together every night have more successful children than families who don't eat together?

Famous Psychologists:

• Leonard Doob- Born March 3rd,1909 Died March 29th, 2000
• Sterling Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University
• One of the pioneering figure in sociocultural psychology
• “Will the person who senses the urge to sneeze try to inhibit this reflex action ? What will he say, what will bystanders say, when he does sneeze? What will they think of him if he fails to turn away and sneezes in their faces? (Kasschau 22) [excerpt from textbook]
• Lev Vygotsky - Born November 17, 1896 Died June 11, 1934
• The founder of sociocultural psychology
• Suggested that human development results from individuals and society
• Attended Moscow State University and earned a degree in law.
• Published six psychology books within ten years.
• Alexander Luria- Born July 16th,1902 Died August 14,1977
• Helped Vygotsky create a new approach to psychology that would enable him to discover the way natural processes tie to culturally determined processes.
• A leader of the Vygotsky circle, a network of scholars associated with Vygotsky in creating sociocultural psychology.

• Influenced areas like child development, cognitive psychology, and education heavily
• According to Vygotsky, children are born with basic biological constraints on their minds
• “Each culture, however, provides what he referred to as 'tools of intellectual adaptation.' These tools allow children to use their basic mental abilities in a way that is adaptive to the culture in which they live. While one culture might emphasize memorization strategies like note-taking, other cultures might utilize tools like reminders or memorization, for example.”
• Concept of “The Zone of Proximal Development”
• “This is the distance between the actual development level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers.”
• It says that all the skills and knowledge that a person cannot yet understand, they capable of learning.
• "Vygotsky claimed that human cognition, even when carried out in isolation, is inherently sociocultural because it is affected by the beliefs, values, and tools of intellectual adaptation passed to individuals by their culture. And because these values and intellectual tools may vary dramatically from culture to culture, Vygotsky believed that neither the course nor the content of intellectual growth was as "universal" as Piaget had assumed." (Shaffer, 2009)
• Studying the influence of cultural and ethnic similarities and differences on behavior and social functioning.

Why did this perspective begin?

What does this perspective believe about human behavior?

Example Questions

Sociocultural Perspective

By: Emma Halcomb, Rebekah Kirby, Nik Benskin, and Alex Lanigan

What famous theories have come from this perspective?

Who are some famous psychologists within this perspective?

How does this perspective impact psychology today?

• It adds more to the discussion of Nature vs. Nurture
• This puts incredible importance on one's environment.
• It makes psychologists look deeper into the "why" by research the individual's past, where they live, who they live with, etc.

Leonard Doob