News: Professor Diaz-Loving Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)
Professor Dr. Diaz Loving, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) will give several sessions on "A bio-psycho-socio-cultural look at human relationships" and a Conference about "during his visit at the University of Valencia.
First session. 26th March (15 -19 h.) Sala de Juntas, Faculty of Psychology. University of Valencia
Second session. 2th April (10 -14 h.). Sala de Juntas, Faculty of Psychology. University of Valencia
Abstract
Early in psychological thought, Wundt (1916) vigorously pioneered both behavioral and cultural psychology. In retrospect, his principal objective of integrating them into an objective, generalizable, yet culturally sensitive science has yet to be fulfilled. On one front, a bio-psychological legacy grew within a strict behavioral methodological approach, imposing universal categories on decontextualized observations. This tradition has overstressed internal validity, and taken excessive liberties in regards to external validity, producing broad generalizations of results obtained from small culturally homogenous samples. The expressed goal of this behavioral ethnocentric psychology has been to discover universal laws of behavior that transcend individual, social, cultural and historical boundaries (Sampson, 1978). On the other hand, Wundt´s “folk psychology” is apparent in the empirical and theoretical contributions offered by sociologists, anthropologists and cross-cultural psychologists. According to this position, any comparison of behaviors which emanates from different behavior settings is essentially a false enterprise which entails comparing incompatibles (Malinowski, 1922). The focus of this tradition has been to discover and describe behavior based on its ecological context.
An overview of Social Psychology Across Cultures (Smith & Bond, 1998) reaffirms the unquestionable fact that human beings from different geographical and cultural backgrounds show differences in certain behaviors. At the same time, recent research on the human genome indicates that we share over 99% of our chromosomal composition. As a synthesis, more than ever, the fact is that the combination and interaction of general behavioral tendencies, guided by species universal parameters of what are possible human behaviors, with idiosyncratic probable behaviors prevalent in each socio-cultural system, determine the behavioral outcomes which emerge or permeate everyday life in a specific environment.
As indicated, social behavior evolves and develops in interplay of sameness and differences of genetic character, ecological niche, socio-cultural heritage and individual differences centered on three basic topics: a) the processes and products related to the creation and establishment, within each socio-cultural group, of a human made environment; b) the very idiosyncratic form in which humans processes information via perceiving, decoding, interpreting, storing, combining, and retrieving verbal, physical and contextual stimuli, and finally; the study of the forms and sources of social influence, in which subjective and objective culture is transmitted and learned through the processes of socialization enculturation and acculturation.
It seems the only possible path is to recognize the extent to which behavior is dependent on the interaction between biological, socio-cultural and psychological variables. For this workshop, we will set the stage by discussing a bio-psycho-socio-cultural perspective of behavior, to later explore this vision in the areas of social facilitation, locus of control, achievement motivation, self-concept and gender.
Apply here (students) 
