Keith E Rice - Glossary

Cr-Cz

Criminological Psychology: the branch of Applied Psychology which seeks to explain antisocial and criminal behaviour.

Critical Period: a period of time after birth during which the health of an animal’s or person’s development is dependent on certain experiences. It is more common today, when discussing humans and mammals to use the concept of a sensitive period, the optimum period for certain experiences to happen.

Critical Psychology: a branch of Psychology that is aimed at critiquing mainstream Psychology and attempts to apply Psychology in more progressive ways, often looking towards social change as a means of preventing and treating Psychopathology.

One of Critical Psychology's main criticisms of conventional Psychology is how it fails to consider or deliberately ignores the way power differences between social classes and groups can impact the mental and physical well-being of individuals or groups of people.

Critical Success Value: a value which determines the quality of a relationship with another (person or organisation) - eg: speed of delivery might be a CSV in a customer-supplier relationship.

Critical Values Mass: the concept of critical mass from a Spiral Dynamics perspective - ie: the assertion of a vMEME or vMEME harmonic in a group or societal situation sufficient for that way of thinking to dominate.

Cross-Cultural Studies: research studies that compare different cultures with regard to certain practices - eg: child-rearing practices - or behaviours - eg: aggression.

Different cultures use different methods of socialisation. If, in spite of these differences in socialisation, the same behaviours are found - eg: men are aggressive in most cultures, then that can be taken as evidence of universal and innate behaviours. The study of different cultures often also provides researchers with insight into their own cultural practices.

Cross-Sex Play: the term is usually used in the context of children of one gender playing with children of the other.

Crossed Transaction: see complementary transaction.

Cue-Dependent Forgetting: forgetting as a result of the absence of suitable retrieval cues.

Cult of Personality: usually applied in the context of political leaders, this terms refers to the use of mass media to create a larger-than-life super persona of the leader through unquestioning praise and flattery. The ‘leader’ - usually of totalitarian or neo-totalitarian regimes - is presented as the source of all wisdom and the architect of all worthwhile political and social outcomes. Recent examples include Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Kim Jong-il in North Korea.

Cultural Determinism: the belief that behaviour is determined more by culture than innate, biological factors.

Cultural Relativism: this approach takes the view that philosophies, ethics and behaviours of groups or individuals must be judged in the context of the culture and the times from which they originate. For example, hearing voices in your head is generally considered abnormal in the modern Western world; yet to not hear 'spirit voices' would be considered unfortunate in many traditional Amerindian tribes, and it is not uncommon to have conversations with your ancestors in parts of Central and Southern Africa.

Cultural Hegemony: the concept that a diverse culture can be ruled or dominated by one group or class, that everyday practices and shared beliefs provide the foundation for complex systems of domination.

The analysis of hegemony (or ‘rule’) was formulated by Antonio Gramsci (1971) to explain why predicted communist revolutions had not occurred where they were most expected - ie: in industrialised Europe. Gramsci argued that the failure of the workers to make anti-capitalist revolution was due to the successful capture of the workers' ideology, self-understanding and organisations by the hegemonic (ruling) culture.

Cultural Imperialism: where one culture dominates and overrides other cultures.

American culture is often accused of cultural imperialism.

Culture: the shared understandings - histories, rules, morals, ethics and other ways of thinking - and the common behaviours (including methods of interaction) that bind a group of people and give them a sense of unified identity. We learn the memes of our host culture through its media and interactions with other members of the culture. See also sub-culture.

Culture Bias: the tendency to judge other cultures in terms of your own cultural norms.

Culture-Bound Syndrome: a mental illness that appears to be specific to a particular culture.

Are Culture-Bound Syndromes simply culturally-different manifestations of universal mental illnesses - eg: Depression - or are there mental illnesses which are unique to particular cultures? This is a question which vexes Psychiatry. If the latter point is valid, then it undermines the validity of claims by the authors of classification systems such as DSM that their classifications are universally applicable.