Cultural Orientation and Self Esteem Survey Essay

            Cultural Awareness and Self Esteem as Predictors of Helping Attitudes was the name of the online study that I participated in on November 11th at noontime. For the experiment I was asked to answer a series of questions in regards to some of my cultural background, how I seemed to view how I was in certain aspects, what I would do in certain situations as well as specify instances where I would exercise such instances. The study seemed to heavily relate with social psychology, more specifically the cultural influences in my life and whether or not it affected or influenced my decisions in given situations, as in my generosity or my willingness to help certain kinds of people and whether or not it was a race issue, or a social class issue. The quality of the research was somewhat decent although, some other questions could have been asked to make a few things more thorough, I felt it was a fairly well laid out survey and should have gathered a satisfactory amount of information.

            How the survey made me feel about my knowledge about the particular subject based on my experiences. I felt very confident I knew enough of my culture and how I was in terms of generosity that enabled me the ability to answer all of the following questions with relative ease, I did however, find myself hesitant at certain questions and unwilling to answer a couple at the end especially in regards to my family household income. There were also times and instances where I had to take a while on some of the short answer questions to recall a time where I had been generous or had not been generous or willing and not willing to help another person. It was somewhat shocking to discover within myself that despite how aware of the subject I was, I was not exempt for the rules that my culture set up that in specific situations give or take my culture would prevent me from helping a specific kind of person and that when it was in regards to the elderly that I would favor helping them rather than someone of a younger age range. When it came to my knowledge of social psychology in relation with the study, I was not so confident of my knowledge on that particular subject. There was some confidence in what I knew about how cultural influences and standards, whether or not it was patriarchal or matriarchal in the household, certain traditions and possible standings did affect a person’s willingness to help another person, but I had no idea which one influenced which and in what manner. Doing this study however, did help me understand a little better which influenced what. That families who followed closely with traditional means within the household made someone less willing to help those outside of the household and culture, that if you were born a specific ethnicity, you were partial to your ethnicity in regards to helping and giving. I’ve also realized that it is also based on social standing that also affects a person’s willingness to help others, if you are of higher social standing, you are somewhat more willing to give someone something as an act of generosity but less willing to lend them a hand when you can whereas for those of lower social standing are not as willing to be as generous but if they can help then they will try.