PSY352 Cultural Evolution And Persistence in a Changing World, ECA, Singapore

Question 1 (95 marks)

Cultural Evolution

Cultures are highly fluid and are always evolving. Due to technological innovations and reduced costs of transportation, cultures are becoming increasingly interconnected. Many cultures are also becoming more individualistic. At the same time, people in many cultures are becoming more intelligent. Yet, many aspects of cultures have persisted across time in the face of changes. Once cultural habits and traditions get established, many of them remain entrenched across generations despite great amount of change within those generations.

Demonstrate your understanding of cultural evolution by conducting an open-ended interview with ONE participant. Your interview should assess the participant’s view that cultures are highly fluid and continue to evolve, yet at the same time, cultures have an enduring tendency to persist over time. Thereafter, develop a 10-minute video to present your findings from the interview. Your video should include past research findings, empirical evidence, and information from your interview.

Your ECA submission consists of two files. File 1 constitutes 20 marks and File 2 constitutes 75 marks. In this ECA, students should:

• Propose how cultures are highly fluid and are always evolving.
• Examine the tendency for culture to persist over time in the face of changes.
• Analyse the participant’s view that increasing interconnectedness, individualism, and intelligence have contributed to this cultural evolution.

Additional notes and instructions:

• About the 10-minute-limit video:
  • The video can be in any format, such as narrated PowerPoint presentation, skit, role-play or other creative presentation format.
• About the 10-page-limit Supporting Documentation word file:
  • Supporting Documentation can contain any material that documents and supports the participant’s experience.
  • Some examples of such materials are text paragraphs or bullet points describing the participant’s experience, flowchart of the cultural evolution process, short transcript of the interview, diagrams showing cultural persistence in the face of changes, tables listing the participant’s experience, or word clouds to illustrate the prevalence of certain issues or concepts.
• To do well, you need to:
  • Plan your video well. The 10 minutes should focus on pertinent points.
  • Provide specific and useful details in the supporting documentation to support your answer.
  • While you are NOT required to go beyond the textbook and study guide, reading widely and beyond the textbook will add depth to your answer, and references to relevant research studies and examples will earn you more marks. There is an abundance of credible resources that you can access from the library and Library eResources. Do note that internet references such as Wikipedia, SimplyPsychology.org, and online student papers are not counted as credible resources.
• Demonstrate an in-depth understanding:
  • In this ECA, you need to demonstrate an in-depth understanding of the subject of cultural evolution.
  • This ECA requires you to go beyond the descriptive by applying the relevant theories/concepts to the participant’s experience. In addition, you should compare the results of your interview with relevant research literature.
    

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  • This ECA requires careful planning and execution and should not be left to the last minute. When working on the ECA, please consider the following steps:
    • Identify your participant early. Obtain and record verbal informed consent from the participant prior to beginning the intake interview.
    • A potential interviewee must be at least 21 years of age and is comfortable to be interviewed.
    • Observe the code of ethics outlined by the Singapore Psychological Society (https://singaporepsychologicalsociety.org/sps-code-of-ethics/).
    • The interview should be around 15 minutes in length. After getting consent from the participant, record your interview via a smartphone or digital voice recorder. This is to allow you to play back the interview and use it as a source of information when developing the video for the ECA. You do not need to submit the recording of your interview.
    • Plan your interview questions carefully (e.g., structured, semi-structured or unstructured interview). The questions that you ask should give you enough information to develop your video.
    • Conduct research on the relevant theories/concepts.
    • Analyse and integrate the information into themes and present them in a systematic and organised manner.

Marks allocation at a glance