The aim of the course is to identify the key theoretical categories in making sense of culture - and its effects on basic psychological processes (i.e., cognition, emotion, communication). Overcoming the traditional nature-nurture dichotomy, the current co-evolutionary perspective between biology (“nature”) and environment (“culture”) will first be outlined. A number of diverse theoretical perspectives on the conceptualization of culture and its possible effects will then be sketched out, keeping in focus the ongoing transition from structure to process models in the modeling of culture dynamics (that is, from a view on culture as consensual, enduring, and context-general to perspectives that take culture to be more fragmented, fluctuating, and context-specific). Specific attention will be devoted to cultural learning, biculturalism and intercultural processes.

Bicultural individuals are those who, through enduring exposure to at least two cultures, have come to possess systems of meaning and practices of both cultures, and can therefore alternate and switch between them depending on the cultural cues available in the immediate context. Besides deepening how biculturals (individuals with a bicultural mind) show a better psychological adjustment to a variety of situations than monoculturals, the multi-bicultural mind approach, within the expert-novice dynamics of cultural transmission and appropriation, will supply an articulated milieu apt to address the “why” and “how” (besides only “what”) questions and answers in the managing of educational challenges within and across cultures.
The course will be structured as follow:

Culture as a perspective on reality.

Culture as a distinctive feature of the human species (from an evolutionary and ontogenetic standpoint).

The pathways through which culture operates: culture as mediation, culture as meaning participation, cultural transmission and cultural appropriation (the expert-novice dynamics).

At the root of cultural diversities: why are there different cultures. Cultural diversities and their dynamic, relationship-featured configuration.

How cultures shape cognitive processes (categorization processes, forms of reasoning), emotional processes (in generating emotional experiences, in expressing emotions through facial expressions, voice, and words, in action tendencies), pragmatic processes (from greetings to conversation management, to expressing and detecting lies), social processes (in how negotiation is conducted, how cooperation takes place, and their impact on the quality of interpersonal relationships).

How cultures can be “translated” one into in the other: requirements, unpackaging processes, and educational opportunities.

Multiculturalisms, multicultural individuals and multicultural mind.

Fostering the education of a bicultural mind, bicultural mind in face-to-face contexts.