“Culture And Self- Deception: A Theoretical Perspective .”

Triandis, Harry C. “Culture And Self- Deception: A Theoretical Perspective .” Social Behavior & Personality: An International Journal 39.1 (2012): 3-13. Print.

My topic is “How does religion and culture affect the way one interprets the world?”

In “culture and self-deception: a theoretical perspective”, Traindis talks a lot about self-deception meaning the way people see themselves related to how they see others. He claims that humans use their hopes, needs, and desires to construct the way they see the world. He also argues that self-deception is different for people in different parts of the world, involved in different cultures, and believing in different religions.   This source is useful because it gives examples of self-deception that people may have known but not stopped to think about it enough. It shows that by being in a certain place all the time, one adjusts to the way their culture thinks as well and therefor runs with the crowd. This relates to my other source “What is a scientific worldview, and how does it bear on the interplay of science and religion” by Matthew Orr because they both talk about religion having an effect on how someone view themselves, and how they choose to live their lives. They are different from each other in the way that Orr also brings up science and how people either chooses to live by religion or science but they both come back to the main idea, and this is, that one lives their life on what society has to offer them and the way they choose to take in the information. Traindi’s information is reliable and his goal is to prove that where one is from has the effect on how they live their life and what they believe in. This also relates to D’agata’s “About A Mountain” because, I feel that D’agata’s whole goal of the book was to show us how much of the unknowable is out there and after reading Trandis’s article, he shows that there is more about different cultures and religions that people don’t know when really they are probably more alike than different but where they come from plays a role in how they think. This source will be useful in my research paper because I can use it to relate back to the idea of human interpretations and how people view themselves different depending on where they are from. People from different parts of the world have different values and beliefs and this also goes for people who believe in different religions. He gives small facts about people of different beliefs and how they view themselves compares to others and what they find important to them. This source is helpful because although it isn’t directly about my topic, I can turn around and relate it back in many ways. This has made me think about my topic in more of a way that the way people interpret the world has to do more with not the way they see themselves but more of the way they see others compared to themselves.