Study material for Rosa damascena

Summary

The Haddad family, Omar, Fatima, and their children Nour and Jamal, are rose cultivators and sweet makers in Damascus, Syria, whose lives are shattered by civil war when a bomb kills Jamal’s school friend Ahmad. They make the harrowing decision to flee Syria, enduring a dangerous journey through Turkey, across the Mediterranean in an overcrowded inflatable boat, and through Europe during which they informally adopt orphaned twins Layla and Samir whose parents drowned. After surviving refugee camps and bureaucratic challenges across multiple countries, they eventually settle in Munich, Germany, where each family member navigates integration differently, from Jamal’s full assimilation into German culture through engineering studies and football, to Nour’s maintenance of Syrian identity while engaging with German education, to the twins’ bicultural development. When Assad’s regime finally falls years later and return to Syria becomes possible, the family faces their most difficult conflict yet: Omar and Fatima yearn to resurrect their Damascus rose business, but their children, especially Jamal and the twins, reveal that Germany has become their only home, and Syria represents only trauma, death, and loss they cannot bear to revisit.

Chapter summaries

Chapter 1: Bombs and roses

The Haddad family cultivates Damascus roses and creates traditional Syrian sweets in their Damascus shop, a business representing five generations of family heritage and Syrian culture. When civil war erupts and bombs kill people in their neighborhood including Jamal’s friend Ahmad, Omar and Fatima make the agonizing decision to abandon everything and flee Syria. Omar carefully packs jars containing rose seeds and Damascus soil to carry their heritage forward, symbolizing their determination that leaving Syria doesn’t mean abandoning their cultural identity.

Chapter 2: Are we still Syrian?

The Haddads travel hidden under a tarpaulin in the back of a smuggler’s truck toward the Turkish border, squeezed in with other desperate refugee families including a young couple with a crying baby. They experience terrifying checkpoint encounters where a guard nearly discovers them, and Omar realizes he has lost his former defiance, now completely compliant with smugglers who control his family’s survival. The refugees form unexpected bonds during their shared ordeal, helping each other through the journey before separating at a Turkish bus station where they must pretend to be strangers while traveling onward to Izmir.

Chapter 3: Izmir

In Izmir, the Haddads stay in a cramped safehouse apartment with forty-two other refugees, learning unspoken rules about bathroom schedules, communal cooking, and quiet behavior to avoid police raids. They watch as experienced refugees demonstrate survival behaviors that newcomers like them must quickly absorb through observation rather than instruction. After several days of waiting and watching, they receive word that their boat will leave that night, and the temporary community they’ve formed prepares for the dangerous sea crossing to Greece.

Chapter 4: Lesbos

The family boards a dangerously overcrowded inflatable boat for the crossing from Turkey to Greece, immediately encountering cultural tensions between passengers from different backgrounds about seating, leadership, and cooperation. When a storm hits and the boat begins taking on water, some passengers focus on individual survival while Syrian families work collectively to bail water and help vulnerable passengers. During the crisis, Omar and Fatima bond with orphaned twins Layla and Samir whose parents drowned in an earlier crossing, beginning an attachment that will transform their family.

Chapter 5: Layla and Samir

On Lesbos, Fatima experiences powerful biological and emotional responses when she encounters the orphaned twins in the medical tent, her body flooding with protective hormones despite having no biological connection to the children. The Haddads informally adopt Layla and Samir, with the family expanding from four to six members through bonds formed by proximity, crisis, and genuine care rather than biology or legal process. When illness sweeps through the camp, the children begin calling each other siblings and demonstrating real family behaviors, with Dr. Mansouri providing fabricated guardianship documents that satisfy bureaucratic requirements while preserving the emotional reality of their new family structure.

Chapter 6: Overland

The expanded Haddad family travels through Europe encountering bureaucratic systems designed for traditional family structures that don’t account for refugee realities, with officials attempting to separate the twins as ‘unaccompanied minors’. Human rights workers like Sarah help by using both outsider (etic) and insider (emic) perspectives to bridge the gap between universal legal standards and the family’s unique circumstances. Through multiple processing stations and legal challenges, the Haddads learn to navigate systems that see documents and categories while they experience relationships and love, eventually reaching Munich with paperwork acknowledging their six-person family.

Chapter 7: Munich

In Munich’s refugee center, the Haddad family members each begin learning German cultural norms through observation and social feedback rather than formal instruction, with the children absorbing behavioral patterns like punctuality, personal space, and individual achievement. Cultural integration classes teach explicit differences between Syrian and German approaches to time, relationships, and social organization, creating internal conflicts as family members feel torn between honoring Syrian heritage and adopting German practices. During a cultural celebration where refugee families share food with German volunteers, both groups begin adapting to each other’s behavioral norms, demonstrating that successful integration involves mutual learning rather than one-way cultural replacement.

Chapter 8: I feel

The family moves into their own Munich apartment and each member develops different integration strategies: Jamal pursuing assimilation by fully embracing German culture, Nour choosing separation by maintaining Syrian identity, Fatima experiencing marginalizing feelings of belonging to neither culture, and the twins achieving integration by code-switching between cultural contexts. During family therapy sessions, counselor Ayşe teaches them communication strategies including I-statements and active listening to help them understand and respect each other’s different adaptation approaches. Omar plants the Damascus rose seeds he carried from Syria, mixing Syrian soil with German earth as a symbol of their hybrid identity, and the family learns that unity doesn’t require uniformity.

Chapter 9: Who am I?

Eighteen months after settling in Munich, the Haddad family members have each developed multiple social identities beyond just ‘Syrian’ or ‘refugee’, belonging to various communities based on school, work, sports, and neighborhood connections. These expanded social identities provide psychological resilience—when facing challenges in one group, they draw strength and self-esteem from their other group memberships. The Damascus roses Omar planted have grown strong, thriving in German soil while remaining genetically Syrian, symbolizing how the family has successfully rooted themselves in Germany while maintaining their heritage, with Omar’s fusion breads combining Syrian and German flavors becoming popular symbols of successful cultural integration.

Chapter 10: Emma

Jamal’s relationship with his German girlfriend Emma reveals how different cultures create different frameworks for interpreting relationship behaviors, with Syrians viewing relationship progression through family integration and Germans emphasizing individual stages and autonomy. Emma introduces Jamal to cognitive explanations for their misunderstandings, attribution theory showing how they explain behaviors differently, confirmation bias revealing how they selectively notice evidence supporting their cultural beliefs, and schemas demonstrating their different mental frameworks for relationships. By understanding these cognitive differences, they realize their conflicts aren’t about the relationship itself but about different cultural frameworks for thinking about commitment, and this metacognitive awareness actually strengthens their bond.

Chapter 11: Scholarship

The Haddad family members have become unconscious cultural guides for newer refugees and immigrants, with others learning German integration skills simply by observing and imitating their successful behaviors rather than through formal instruction. Ahmad, the twins, and other newcomers absorb bicultural competence by watching how the Haddads navigate German institutions while maintaining Syrian identity, demonstrating the power of social learning and role modeling. When Jamal receives a prestigious engineering scholarship to Berlin, the family faces conflict between Syrian values of family proximity and German values of individual achievement, ultimately finding compromise through open communication about their different cultural frameworks while acknowledging Jamal’s need to follow successful role models who had pursued higher education.

Chapter 12: Return to Damascus

News arrives that Assad has fled and Syria’s civil war has ended, forcing the Haddad family to confront whether to return to Damascus or remain in Germany, with Omar and Fatima feeling torn between rebuilding their rose business and maintaining their Munich life. Each family member experiences cognitive dissonance, wanting contradictory things simultaneously, with proposed solutions of splitting time between countries or making individual choices. During a family meeting, Jamal, Layla, and Samir finally reveal their truth: Syria represents only trauma, death, and nightmares for them, not home, and Germany is where they feel safe and where their futures exist. Omar and Fatima’s dream of family reunion in Damascus shatters against the reality that their children’s Syria was fundamentally different from their own; not a place of roses and family dinners, but of bombs, drownings, and loss they cannot bear to revisit.

Study material: Concepts

Bias

Definition/Explanation: Bias refers to systematic distortions in thinking, perception, decision-making, or behavior that lead to departures from rationality, accuracy, or fairness. Biases operate both consciously and unconsciously, influencing how information is processed, remembered, and acted upon. They can stem from cognitive shortcuts (heuristics), emotional influences, cultural conditioning, or self-serving motivations, and they affect researchers, participants, and observers alike. In psychological research, bias threatens validity by skewing data collection, interpretation, and conclusions, while in everyday life, biases shape social judgments, relationship dynamics, and cultural interactions.

Application in Rosa damascena: The story illustrates confirmation bias when Emma and Jamal each selectively notice evidence supporting their cultural beliefs about relationships: Emma observing successful German couples’ independence while Jamal notices Syrian families’ supportive happiness. Cultural bias appears throughout bureaucratic encounters where officials apply universal standards without recognizing refugee families’ unique circumstances, seeing ‘unaccompanied minors’ rather than traumatized adopted children. In-group bias manifests when Syrian community members criticize the Haddads for becoming ‘too German’, while some Germans view them as perpetual outsiders, demonstrating how both cultural groups favor their own norms and judge others through culturally biased frameworks.

Causality

Definition/Explanation: Causality concerns the relationship between causes and effects, examining how one event, variable, or condition produces or influences another. Understanding causality requires distinguishing between correlation (variables occurring together) and true causal relationships where one factor directly produces change in another. In psychology, establishing causality is complex because human behavior results from multiple interacting factors such as biological, cognitive, and sociocultural factors, operating simultaneously. Researchers must consider alternative explanations, confounding variables, and the direction of influence, while recognizing that psychological phenomena often involve bidirectional causality, feedback loops, and emergent properties where the whole exceeds the sum of its parts.

Application in Rosa damascena: The attachment between the Haddads and the twins illustrates how biological causality (oxytocin and cortisol responses to distressed children) interacts with social causality (proximity, shared crisis, caregiving behaviors) to produce genuine family bonds, showing causality operates through multiple simultaneous mechanisms. Omar’s compliance with smugglers reveals how situational factors (smugglers controlling survival) cause behavioral changes that personality alone cannot explain, demonstrating the power of external circumstances over internal dispositions in determining behavior.

Change

Definition/Explanation: Change refers to transformation, development, and adaptation occurring across time in individuals, groups, and cultures, encompassing both short-term alterations and long-term development. In psychology, change operates at multiple levels, for example, neurological (brain plasticity, neural pathway formation), cognitive (learning, schema development, belief modification), behavioral (habit formation, skill acquisition, social adaptation), and cultural (evolving norms, shifting values, technological transformation). Understanding change requires examining mechanisms (how change occurs), trajectories (patterns and stages), stability versus plasticity (what resists or enables change), and contextual factors (environmental conditions facilitating or hindering transformation). Change can be progressive or regressive, intentional or unintentional, gradual or sudden, and may involve tension between continuity and transformation.

Application in Rosa damascena: The Haddad family demonstrates profound multilevel change throughout their journey, from Omar and Fatima’s transformation from business owners to refugees to cultural mediators, to Jamal’s evolution from Syrian teenager to German engineering student with changed values about family proximity and individual achievement. Neuroplasticity appears explicitly when Fatima experiences stress-related brain changes from chronic teaching pressure, while the children’s rapid language acquisition and cultural adaptation show developmental change through critical periods and social learning. The Damascus roses themselves symbolize change and continuity simultaneously—genetically unchanged yet adapting to German soil and climate, thriving in foreign conditions while maintaining their essential Syrian identity, paralleling the family’s own transformation where core values persist through radical circumstantial change.

Measurement

Definition/Explanation: Measurement involves systematic observation, quantification, and assessment of psychological phenomena, transforming abstract concepts into concrete data through operational definitions and standardized procedures. Effective measurement requires validity (measuring what is intended), reliability (consistency across time and observers), and appropriate methodology for the phenomenon studied. In psychology, measurement challenges arise because many constructs (emotions, attitudes, cultural identity, attachment) are internal, subjective, or multidimensional, requiring indirect assessment through behavioral indicators, self-reports, physiological measures, or observational coding. Researchers must balance precision with ecological validity, recognizing that some phenomena resist quantification, measurement itself can alter what is measured, and cultural differences affect both what is measured and how measurement is interpreted.

Application in Rosa damascena: The story contrasts different measurement approaches. Bureaucratic systems throughout the refugees’ journey rely on rigid categorical measurements (family status, legal guardianship, nationality) that fail to measure the emotional reality of relationships, demonstrating how operational definitions can distort rather than clarify complex human experiences. The distinction between etic and emic approaches represents different measurement philosophies: etic approaches using universal standards for cross-cultural comparison versus emic approaches measuring phenomena from within cultural contexts, with Sarah and Anna demonstrating how both measurement strategies provide complementary rather than competing information.

Perspective

Definition/Explanation: Perspective refers to the particular viewpoint, framework, or lens through which psychological phenomena are understood, encompassing biological, cognitive, sociocultural, and individual levels of analysis. Different perspectives highlight different aspects of behavior and mental processes—biological perspectives emphasizing neural mechanisms and genetics, cognitive perspectives focusing on mental processes and information processing, and sociocultural perspectives examining cultural norms, social identity, and group dynamics. Understanding perspective requires recognizing that the same behavior can be explained differently depending on the level of analysis, no single perspective captures complete truth, and comprehensive understanding often requires integrating multiple perspectives. Perspective also includes participant versus researcher viewpoints, insider versus outsider understanding, and how cultural background, personal experience, and theoretical orientation shape interpretation.

Application in Rosa damascena: The etic versus emic distinction appears explicitly when Sarah explains how border guards use etic approaches (universal rules applied from outside) while she uses emic approaches (understanding from the family’s insider perspective), demonstrating how the same family structure appears completely different depending on analytical framework. Dr. Hassan’s medical assessment reveals perspective shifts when he abandons standardized forms to understand Layla’s complex family history, recognizing that his professional medical perspective initially missed crucial information visible only from the child’s experiential perspective. The family’s integration experiences show how behavior interpretation depends entirely on cultural perspective; Jamal’s university plans representing abandonment from Syrian perspective but normal development from German perspective, while Emma’s independence signifies healthy autonomy in German framework but troubling family disconnection in Syrian framework, illustrating how cultural perspective fundamentally shapes meaning attribution.

Responsibility

Definition/Explanation: Responsibility concerns accountability, ethical obligations, and moral agency in psychological research, practice, and everyday behavior, encompassing both individual responsibility for actions and collective responsibility within social systems. In research, responsibility includes ethical treatment of participants, accurate reporting, consideration of societal impact, and addressing power imbalances between researchers and researched populations. In applied contexts, responsibility involves professional competence, client welfare, informed consent, and avoiding harm, while recognizing how social structures, cultural contexts, and situational factors constrain individual agency. Understanding responsibility requires examining the tension between determinism (behavior caused by factors beyond individual control) and free will (autonomous choice), acknowledging both personal accountability and systemic influences, and considering how attributing responsibility affects intervention, treatment, and social justice.

Application in Rosa damascena: The story explores evolving family responsibility as the Haddads expand from four to six members through choosing to adopt Layla and Samir, demonstrating how responsibility extends beyond biological obligation to include moral commitments freely undertaken despite enormous practical challenges. Jamal’s scholarship dilemma reveals cultural differences in conceptualizing responsibility. Syrian framework emphasizes the duty to remain physically close to family versus German framework prioritizing responsibility to develop individual potential that could ultimately benefit family more effectively. The final chapter confronts responsibility’s limits when Jamal and the twins assert their right to refuse returning to Syria, challenging Omar and Fatima’s assumption that parental authority includes determining children’s relationship with homeland, and revealing how trauma, age, and individual experience create different responsibilities that may legitimately conflict with parents’ dreams of family reunion in Damascus.

Study material: Context – Human relationships

Acculturation: Different acculturation strategies and their effect on behaviour and mental health

Definition/Explanation: Acculturation refers to the psychological and cultural changes that occur when people from one culture come into continuous contact with a different culture. There are four main acculturation strategies: (i) integration (maintaining original culture while adopting new culture), (ii) assimilation (abandoning original culture for new culture), (iii) separation (maintaining original culture while rejecting new culture), and (iv) marginalization (rejecting both original and new cultures).

Application in the story: The Haddad family members demonstrate all four acculturation strategies with different mental health outcomes: Jamal pursues assimilation by fully embracing German culture and minimizing Syrian connections, reporting feeling ‘whole’ rather than ‘torn in half’; Nour chooses separation by maintaining Syrian values while limiting German cultural adoption, finding meaning in serving her Syrian community; Fatima experiences marginalization, feeling rejected by both cultures and suffering depression and isolation; while the twins achieve integration by code-switching between Syrian family contexts and German school contexts, demonstrating the most adaptive strategy with strong bicultural competence and psychological resilience.

Compliance techniques: The application of one or more compliance techniques to change group behaviour(s)

Definition/Explanation: Compliance techniques are strategies used to increase the likelihood that people will agree to requests or follow instructions, including foot-in-the-door (starting with small requests before larger ones), door-in-the-face (making large requests before smaller ones), scarcity (creating urgency through limited availability), and authority (establishing credibility and expertise before making requests).

Application in the story: The Hungarian border guard uses multiple compliance techniques: establishing authority (‘I’ve handled hundreds of cases’), creating scarcity (‘Processing closes in thirty minutes… another night sleeping outside’), and foot-in-the-door by starting with simple verification of Omar’s passport before building to larger requests for all family documents. Sarah, the Human Rights Watch volunteer, employs foot-in-the-door effectively by first asking the guard to ‘just verify the children’s names’ (small request he grants), then building to ‘review the family’s documents together’ (larger request), demonstrating how strategic sequencing of requests increases compliance with ultimately helping the family stay together.

Conformity: The role of conformity in understanding group behaviour(s)

Definition/Explanation: Conformity is the tendency to align attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors with group norms due to real or imagined social pressure, occurring through normative influence (conforming to gain acceptance or avoid rejection) and informational influence (conforming because others are assumed to have correct information).

Application in the story: In the Izmir safehouse, the Haddads rapidly conform to unspoken rules about bathroom schedules, quiet behavior, and communal cooking through both normative influence (wanting acceptance from other refugee families) and informational influence (assuming experienced refugees know correct survival behaviors). Layla demonstrates conformity through social learning when she automatically adopts German behavioral norms for example standing at appropriate distances, asking permission, waiting for invitations, not through conscious decision but through observing social feedback and wanting to fit in with German children. The twins’ linguistic conformity appears when Samir secretly resents speaking Arabic because ‘he thinks of himself as German now’, showing how powerful conformity pressure can create internal conflict between group norms and family expectations.

Cultural dimensions: The role of one or more cultural dimensions in understanding group behaviour(s)

Definition/Explanation: Cultural dimensions are frameworks for understanding how cultures differ systematically along key values and practices, including individualism-collectivism (emphasizing personal goals versus group harmony), power distance (acceptance of hierarchical inequality), uncertainty avoidance (tolerance for ambiguity), and long-term versus short-term orientation.

Application in the story: Syrian culture’s collectivism appears throughout the boat crossing when Syrian families work together to bail water and support vulnerable passengers, contrasting with the businessman’s individualistic focus on self-preservation, while German culture’s individualism emerges in expectations that young adults like Jamal should pursue university opportunities independently despite family preferences. Power distance differences manifest in parent-child relationships: German teenagers like Emma make autonomous decisions with parental input but not control, while Syrian cultural norms initially expect Omar and Fatima to determine major life choices for their children, creating conflict when Jamal asserts his right to choose Berlin. The relationship progression discussion reveals uncertainty avoidance differences; German culture tolerating ambiguous, extended dating periods before commitment decisions, while Syrian culture preferring clear relationship definitions and shorter courtship leading to formal engagement.

Definition/Explanation: Social identity theory proposes that people derive part of their self-concept from membership in social groups, leading to in-group favoritism, out-group discrimination, and behaviors that enhance positive group distinctiveness, with psychological well-being depending partly on positive social identities.

Application in the story: The Haddad family’s expansion of social identities provides psychological resilience. When Layla faces bullying about being a ‘refugee girl’, she draws self-esteem from her student identity and translator role, demonstrating how multiple group memberships buffer against threats to any single identity. Jamal’s football team membership transcends national categories, with teammates seeing him as ‘Jamal, the midfielder with exceptional field vision’ rather than ‘the Syrian refugee kid’, showing how shared superordinate identity (team membership) can reduce intergroup bias. The family’s transformation into ‘bridge family’ status represents strategic identity management where their Syrian-German dual identity becomes valued rather than marginalized, with community organizations seeking them specifically because their multiple group memberships enable cross-cultural communication, turning potential identity conflict into social capital.

Definition/Explanation: Social learning theory proposes that people learn behaviors, attitudes, and emotional responses through observing and imitating models, with learning influenced by attention to models, retention of observed behaviors, ability to reproduce behaviors, and motivation determined by observed or anticipated consequences (vicarious reinforcement).

Application in the story: Ahmad learns German bureaucratic navigation by observing Omar’s behavior across multiple office visits—initially wearing jeans with documents in a plastic bag, then progressing to borrowed formal suit, finally adopting neat casual clothes after watching which presentation styles succeeded, demonstrating learning through observation without explicit instruction. The twins unconsciously absorb German behavioral norms through observing and imitating successful peers, with Layla automatically adopting appropriate personal distance and permission-asking behaviors after seeing these patterns rewarded with peer acceptance, showing vicarious reinforcement. Newer Syrian refugees learn bicultural competence by watching the Haddad family as role models, with Abu Khalil noting ‘my son watches Jamal all the time’ to learn how to balance Syrian family obligations with German institutional expectations, illustrating how visible successful models facilitate cultural adaptation in entire communities.

Chemical messengers: The role of one or more chemical messengers in interpersonal relationships

Definition/Explanation: Chemical messengers including hormones (oxytocin, cortisol) and neurotransmitters (serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine) influence interpersonal relationships by affecting bonding, stress responses, emotional regulation, and attachment, with biological processes interacting with psychological and social factors to shape relationship formation and maintenance.

Application in the story: When Fatima encounters the crying orphaned twins, the doctor explains her physiological response: ‘our bodies release stress hormones like cortisol, which puts our bodies on high alert. And at the same time, we have a surge of oxytocin, that’s the bonding hormone. It makes us want to care for children, even if they aren’t biologically ours’, demonstrating how chemical messengers create genuine parental feelings toward non-biological children. Omar experiences similar neurochemical responses when Layla reaches for his hand and Samir seeks comfort, with ‘protective chemicals’ producing the same intensity of parental protection for adopted children as for biological offspring, showing how proximity and caregiving behaviors trigger bonding hormones regardless of genetic relationship. The attachment formation between the six family members occurs through repeated oxytocin release during caregiving interactions, shared crisis responses elevating cortisol that then bonds them through co-regulation, illustrating how chemical messengers provide biological mechanisms underlying psychologically and socially constructed family relationships.

Cognitive explanations: One or more cognitive explanations for interpersonal relationships

Definition/Explanation: Cognitive explanations for relationships examine how mental processes—attribution (explaining behavior causes), schemas (mental frameworks), confirmation bias (selective attention to confirming evidence), and fundamental attribution error (overemphasizing personality over situation)—shape how people interpret, evaluate, and respond to relationship partners and events.

Application in the story: Emma and Jamal demonstrate attribution differences when interpreting relationship behaviors: Jamal attributes Emma’s long-term planning to commitment (internal cause) while Emma sees it as organizing enjoyable activities (external cause), and Emma attributes his parents’ questions to controlling personality (dispositional attribution) while he recognizes normal Syrian cultural behavior (situational attribution). Confirmation bias appears when Emma notices German couples successfully balancing independence with partnership, confirming her belief in gradual relationship development, while Jamal notices Syrian families whose integration supports happiness, confirming his belief in family involvement’s benefits. The fundamental attribution error manifests when German officials see refugee family structures and attribute complexity to individuals’ problematic characteristics rather than recognizing situational factors (war, displacement, trauma) that created non-traditional family formations, demonstrating how cognitive biases in attribution affect cross-cultural understanding and relationship judgments.

Communication/language: The role of communication in interpersonal relationships

Definition/Explanation: Communication in relationships encompasses verbal and non-verbal information exchange, with effective communication requiring active listening, clear expression of thoughts and feelings, understanding cultural communication patterns, and using strategies like I-statements (expressing own feelings) and reflection (restating partner’s message to confirm understanding).

Application in the story: Family therapist Ayşe teaches the Haddads communication strategies to resolve conflicts about acculturation: using I-statements where Omar says ‘I feel scared that you won’t need us anymore’ instead of ‘your family doesn’t matter’, and active listening where Jamal reflects back ‘I heard that you’re scared that I won’t need the family anymore’, transforming defensive arguments into mutual understanding. The communication training enables productive discussion of different acculturation strategies: ‘Jamal feels torn between his family and his studies and career’ versus earlier accusations about abandonment, demonstrating how communication techniques can preserve relationships despite conflicting cultural values. Code-switching represents another communication dimension when family members adjust language and communication styles based on context, using Arabic with emotional, relationship-focused communication patterns in Syrian settings and German with efficient, information-focused patterns in institutional settings, showing how multilingual, multicultural families require sophisticated communication flexibility to maintain relationships across cultural contexts.

Strategies for improving relationships: One or more strategies for improving interpersonal relationships

Definition/Explanation: Relationship improvement strategies include communication skills training (I-statements, active listening, reflection), cognitive restructuring (challenging unhelpful attributions and interpretations), cultural competence development (understanding different cultural frameworks), and conflict resolution techniques (identifying underlying needs, finding integrative solutions).

Application in the story: Ayşe’s therapy sessions systematically improve family relationships through teaching I-statements, active listening, and reflection: when family members practice these, for example, ‘I feel confused because on one hand I want success for Jamal but on the other hand I’m anxious about family changes’, they move from defending positions to understanding feelings, demonstrating how communication training reduces conflict. Emma and Jamal improve their relationship through cognitive strategies when they learn to recognize how different cultural schemas shape behavior interpretation: understanding that her independence doesn’t mean lack of commitment and his family involvement doesn’t mean dependence helps them appreciate rather than judge cultural differences. The family’s adoption of ‘unity doesn’t mean uniformity’ philosophy represents acceptance and validation as relationship improvement strategy; supporting individual members’ different acculturation choices while maintaining emotional bonds through improved communication and mutual respect, showing how cognitive flexibility combined with communication skills enables relationships to survive profound cultural and identity transformations.

Higher Level Topics

The role of Technology in behaviour

Definition/Explanation: Technology profoundly influences behavior through mediating social interactions, shaping information access and cognitive processing, enabling surveillance and control, providing behavioral modification tools, and potentially altering cognitive processes through extended use. Modern technology affects behavior directly (features designed to shape actions like notifications or algorithms) and indirectly (creating new social norms and communication patterns). In research contexts, technology enables sophisticated measurement and manipulation through brain imaging, computerized experiments, digital tracking, and automated data collection. However, technology raises ethical concerns including privacy violations, manipulation exploiting psychological vulnerabilities (like variable ratio reinforcement in social media), widening inequality, and potential for authoritarian control. Technology isn’t neutral: tools embody creators’ values, shape behavior in non-obvious ways, and create power asymmetries between designers/controllers and users.

Application in the story: Technology appears as both essential tool and source of vulnerability throughout the refugee journey, with communication technology enabling family coordination yet creating dependence when unavailable—the Haddads cannot independently navigate borders or communicate with smugglers without phones, while Omar’s “phone buzzed with messages from relatives and friends in Syria and around Europe” announcing Assad’s fall demonstrates how digital communication collapses geographic distance and enables diaspora communities to maintain connections that would have been impossible in pre-digital migration eras. Technology mediates relationships when Jamal conducts video calls with Emma to discuss their relationship and uses his phone to stay connected with family while in Berlin, showing how digital communication tools reshape possibilities for maintaining relationships across distance. The absence of technology also shapes behavior, as the Haddads’ desperate compliance with smugglers partly stems from lacking technological tools (GPS navigation, independent communication methods, access to information) that might have reduced their dependence on intermediaries who controlled their survival through monopolizing knowledge and access to transportation networks.

The role of Culture in behaviour

The role of Culture in behaviourDefinition/Explanation: Culture profoundly shapes behavior through shared beliefs, values, norms, practices, symbols, and meanings providing frameworks for interpreting experience, guiding action, and evaluating appropriateness. Cultural influence operates through socialization (internalizing norms about what’s acceptable), provision of interpretive schemas (shaping how situations are understood), creation of structural conditions (institutions, laws, economic systems), and establishment of social identities. Culture affects behavior obviously (explicit rules, laws, taught practices) and subtly (implicit assumptions, values, cognitive patterns members rarely recognize as culturally specific). Cultural dimensions include individualism-collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, emotional display rules, and epistemological assumptions about knowledge and truth. Understanding culture requires recognizing behavior considered adaptive in one context may be viewed differently in another, cultures evolve, individuals within cultures vary, and culture shapes without determining behavior—people retain agency to accept, resist, or modify cultural prescriptions.

Application in the story: Syrian collectivist culture shapes the Haddads’ initial expectations about family unity and obligation, visible when Omar assumes Jamal should stay geographically close because ‘in Syria, family stays together. We support each other. That’s how we always survived’, while German individualist culture values independence, creating conflict when Jamal pursues Berlin scholarship following German cultural scripts about young adults leaving home for education and career development. Cultural norms around relationships appear when Jamal explains to Emma that ‘in Syrian culture, relationships aren’t just between two people. They’re between families’, requiring parental involvement and relatively quick progression to marriage, contrasting with German relationship development through distinct stages (friendship, casual dating, serious dating, possibly cohabitation, maybe engagement) that might take years, demonstrating how culture provides unconscious templates for interpreting identical behaviors as either commitment or casual enjoyment. The boat crossing reveals cultural differences in crisis response when Syrian families immediately cooperate to bail water collectively and care for vulnerable passengers, reflecting collectivist values of group survival and interdependence, while passengers from individualistic backgrounds focus on self-preservation, with the businessman arguing ‘I have to save myself’ and refusing to coordinate, showing how deeply internalized cultural values about individual versus collective responsibility shape behavior even in life-threatening situations where cooperation objectively improves everyone’s survival chances.

The role of Motivation in behaviour

Definition/Explanation: Motivation refers to internal and external forces that initiate, direct, sustain, and regulate goal-directed behavior, encompassing why people act, effort intensity, persistence despite obstacles, and choices among competing options. Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan) proposes that optimal motivation and psychological wellbeing require satisfying three basic psychological needs: autonomy (feeling in control of one’s choices and actions), competence (feeling capable and effective), and relatedness (feeling connected to others and belonging to communities). The theory distinguishes intrinsic motivation (engaging in behavior for inherent satisfaction, interest, or enjoyment) from extrinsic motivation (engaging for external rewards, approval, or to avoid punishment), with intrinsic motivation producing more sustained engagement, deeper processing, greater creativity, and better wellbeing. When these three needs are thwarted, when people feel controlled, incompetent, or isolated, motivation becomes externalized, fragile, and associated with poorer mental health, with individuals seeking maladaptive substitutes like substance use or status-seeking to fill unmet psychological needs.

Application in the story: The Haddad family’s refugee experience systematically threatens all three psychological needs from Self-Determination Theory: autonomy is devastated when Omar realizes “those thugs back in Damascus had threatened his business… but they hadn’t controlled his survival” while smugglers hold ‘the only key to his children’s future’, forcing absolute compliance; competence is undermined when highly skilled professionals like Omar (master rose cultivator and sweet maker) and Dr. Mansouri (physician) become dependent on strangers for basic navigation and survival; and relatedness is severed through separation from extended family, community networks, and familiar social structures. However, the story demonstrates how meeting these needs restores motivation and wellbeing: Fatima’s transformation from depression caused by marginalization (all three needs unmet: feeling controlled by both cultures, incompetent in both contexts, rejected by both communities) to purposeful engagement when she achieves autonomy through choosing integration on her own terms, competence through successful cultural mediation work, and relatedness through building ‘bridge family’ identity that connects multiple communities. Jamal’s scholarship dilemma explicitly references Self-Determination Theory when he explains feeling ‘torn between his family and his studies and career’, ultimately recognizing that pursuing engineering in Berlin satisfies his needs for autonomy (making independent life choices), competence (developing expertise in valued domain), and relatedness (maintaining family connection while building new communities), with his internal motivation to ‘honour both’ cultures replacing earlier extrinsic motivation of simply ‘trying to satisfy everyone’, demonstrating how intrinsic motivation emerges when all three psychological needs are met simultaneously rather than when behavior serves only external approval or compliance demands.

Study material: Content – The sociocultural approach

Cognitive dissonance: The role of cognitive dissonance in understanding human behaviour

Definition/Explanation: Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort we feel when we hold contradictory beliefs, values, or attitudes simultaneously, or when our behavior conflicts with our beliefs or opinions. Cognitive dissonance theory explains phenomena like post-decision justification (increasing satisfaction with choices after they’re made), effort justification (valuing outcomes more when they required greater sacrifice), and attitude change following behavior. The theory proposes that people are motivated to maintain internal psychological consistency, and the strategies used to reduce dissonance often operate unconsciously, leading to rationalization rather than genuine attitude or behavior change.

Application in Rosa damascena: Omar experiences profound cognitive dissonance when deciding whether to leave Syria, simultaneously holding the beliefs ‘I must protect my family’s safety’ and ‘abandoning our heritage and homeland is wrong,’ creating psychological tension that manifests as physical symptoms and prolonged indecision until the bombing proximity forces resolution by making safety paramount. When Assad’s regime falls years later, the entire family faces cognitive dissonance between contradictory desires: Omar and Fatima want both to return to Damascus to rebuild their heritage and to remain in Munich where they’ve built successful lives, leading them to propose compromise solutions like ‘splitting time’ between countries that reduce dissonance by allowing both cognitions to coexist. Fatima experiences dissonance between her behavior (working outside the home, allowing children independence, speaking German) and her identity (‘I don’t feel Syrian anymore, but I don’t feel German either’), leading to marginalization and depression until she reduces dissonance by reframing her identity as legitimately bicultural rather than failed Syrian or rejected German, demonstrating how cognitive dissonance resolution directly affects mental health outcomes.

Compliance techniques: The role of one or more compliance techniques in changing human behaviour

Definition/Explanation: Compliance techniques are strategies for increasing agreement to requests without changing underlying attitudes, including foot-in-the-door (securing agreement to small request before larger one), door-in-the-face (making large request before smaller target request), scarcity (creating urgency through limited availability), authority (establishing credibility before requesting), and reciprocity (giving something to create obligation). These techniques exploit psychological principles like consistency (wanting to appear consistent with previous behavior), social proof (following others’ behavior), commitment (honoring stated positions), and loss aversion (avoiding missing opportunities). Compliance differs from persuasion (which changes attitudes) and obedience (which involves direct orders from authority figures).

Application in Rosa damascena: The Hungarian border guard uses several compliance techniques systematically, such as establishing authority (‘I’ve handled hundreds of adoption cases’), creating scarcity (‘Processing closes in thirty minutes… another night sleeping outside’), then using foot-in-the-door by starting with simple passport verification (small request Omar grants) before escalating to demands for all family documents and separation of the twins (larger requests), demonstrating how sequential request escalation increases compliance through commitment and consistency principles. Sarah, the Human Rights Watch volunteer, counters with her own foot-in-the-door strategy by first asking the guard to ‘just verify the children’s names in your system’ (minor request he accepts), then building to ‘perhaps we can now review the family’s documents together’ (collaborative larger request), showing how compliance techniques can be used prosocially to help rather than exploit. The smuggler Mahmoud uses authority combined with scarcity when he instructs refugees to ‘get in’ the truck without negotiation, establishing that he controls the ‘only key to his children’s future’ while implying limited crossing opportunities, producing Omar’s complete compliance despite his previous defiance of armed militias in Damascus, illustrating how compliance techniques are most effective when they exploit genuine power asymmetries and urgent needs.

Conformity: The process of conformity and its role in understanding human behaviour

Definition/Explanation: Conformity is the tendency to align attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors with group norms because of social pressure, occurring through two main mechanisms: normative influence (conforming to gain acceptance or avoid rejection from the group) and informational influence (conforming because others are assumed to have correct information, especially in ambiguous situations). Conformity varies based on factors including group size, unanimity, task difficulty, public versus private responses, and cultural values around individualism versus collectivism. The process involves observing group behavior, experiencing pressure (real or imagined) to match it, and adjusting one’s own behavior accordingly, often without conscious awareness.

Application in Rosa damascena: In the Izmir safehouse, the Haddads quickly conform to elaborate rules about bathroom schedules (fifteen-minute maximum, cleaning after use), quiet behavior to avoid police attention, and communal cooking contributions through both normative influence (wanting acceptance from the refugee community and fearing rejection that could threaten their safety) and informational influence (assuming experienced refugees possess correct knowledge about survival strategies in this ambiguous, dangerous situation). Layla demonstrates conformity when she automatically adopts German behavioral norms within weeks, for example, standing at appropriate personal distances, asking permission before joining activities, waiting for explicit invitations, not through deliberate decision-making but through observing social feedback (positive responses when she matches German patterns, awkwardness when she doesn’t) and her strong motivation to fit in with German peers, showing how conformity operates powerfully in children experiencing new cultural contexts. The entire family’s emergency response during the late-night police raid in the Izmir safehouse reveals conformity’s adaptive function: without any explicit instructions, the Haddads immediately mirrored other families’ behaviors, such as grabbing documents, silencing children, preparing to hide valuables, because informational influence made them assume others knew correct crisis procedures, demonstrating how conformity enables rapid collective action in threatening situations where individual decision-making would be too slow.

Cultural dimensions: The role of one or more cultural dimensions in understanding cross cultural similarities and differences in behaviour

Definition/Explanation: Cultural dimensions are frameworks for understanding how cultures differ along values and practices, with Hofstede’s dimensions including individualism-collectivism (emphasis on personal autonomy versus group harmony and interdependence), power distance (degree of acceptance of hierarchical inequality and authority), uncertainty avoidance (tolerance for ambiguity and risk versus preference for rules and predictability), masculinity-femininity (valuing competition and achievement versus cooperation and quality of life), and long-term versus short-term orientation. These dimensions help explain cross-cultural differences in areas like decision-making, communication, family structures, workplace dynamics, and social relationships. Cultural dimensions are continuous, with most cultures showing mixed patterns, and they operate at national, organizational, and family levels, shaping behavior often unconsciously through socialization, institutional structures, and shared meaning systems.

Application in Rosa damascena: Syrian collectivism contrasts with individualist cultures throughout the story: during the boat crossing, Syrian families immediately coordinate collective water-bailing and care for vulnerable passengers, viewing group survival as including individual survival, while the businessman from an individualistic culture argues ‘I have to save myself’ and refuses coordination, believing each person’s primary responsibility is self-preservation, demonstrating how this dimension shapes life-or-death behavioral choices. Power distance differences create family conflict when Omar and Fatima initially expect to determine Jamal’s university choice following Syrian high power distance norms where parental authority over adult children’s major decisions is accepted and respected, while Jamal and Emma operate within German low power distance assumptions where young adults make autonomous educational decisions with parental input but not control, with Emma’s family demonstrating this by ‘supporting my dreams as part of their love for me.’ Uncertainty avoidance appears in relationship progression patterns: German culture’s lower uncertainty avoidance tolerates extended ambiguous dating periods without clear commitment definitions, with Emma comfortable planning summers together without discussing marriage, while Syrian culture’s higher uncertainty avoidance prefers clear relationship stages and shorter courtship with explicit progression toward formal engagement, leading Jamal to interpret identical behaviors (long-term planning) as commitment while Emma sees casual enjoyment, showing how cultural dimensions create fundamentally different meaning systems for interpreting the same actions.

Emic approach: The value of emic approaches in researching human behaviour

Definition/Explanation: The emic approach studies behavior from within a culture, using concepts and explanations meaningful to cultural insiders, and prioritizing participants’ own perspectives, meanings, and interpretations over researcher-imposed frameworks. This approach values cultural specificity over universality, seeks to understand how people within a culture make sense of their experiences, and recognizes that behavior often has culture-specific meanings that outsider categories might miss. Emic research typically uses qualitative methods like participant observation, in-depth interviews, and ethnography, with researchers spending extended time immersed in cultural contexts. The value of emic approaches includes: capturing nuanced, context-dependent meanings; avoiding ethnocentric bias from applying one culture’s categories to another; understanding behavior from participants’ frames of reference; and revealing culture-specific phenomena that cross-cultural comparisons might overlook. Emic approaches face challenges including being time demanding, difficulty generalizing findings, potential researcher bias from identify with participants too much, and limited cross-cultural comparison.

Application in Rosa damascena: Sarah from Human Rights Watch demonstrates the emic approach when she spends time with refugee families to understand their insider perspective on family structures, recognizing that the Haddads function as genuine family unit despite lacking formal documentation, contrasting with border guards who apply universal legal categories (‘unaccompanied minors’) that distort the relationship’s actual nature and meaning to participants. Dr. Hassan, the Hungarian physician, initially uses standardized medical assessment questions designed for stable families, but when Layla asks ‘Which family? My old parents or my new ones?’ he abandons his etic questions and forms to understand her unique history from her perspective, leading him to recognize PTSD symptoms he had missed when using etic diagnostic categories without cultural context, demonstrating how emic flexibility improves diagnostic accuracy. Anna and other experienced aid workers become effective by moving between emic understanding (spending time in refugee communities, learning how families form during displacement, understanding survival strategies from refugees’ perspectives) and etic institutional knowledge (legal requirements, bureaucratic procedures), with Anna explaining ‘the system assumes normal immigration… but refugees create new normal on the move,’ showing how emic approaches reveal that official categories fundamentally misunderstand refugee experiences, leading to better support when helpers comprehend insider meanings rather than imposing outsider frameworks.

Enculturation: One or more theories of enculturation for one or more behaviours

Definition/Explanation: Enculturation is the process by which individuals learn and internalize their culture’s values, norms, and behaviors, mostly through childhood socialization but continuing throughout life. Social learning theory explains enculturation through observation and imitation of role models, with learning influenced by attention (noticing culturally important behaviors), retention (remembering observed patterns), reproduction (ability to perform behaviors), and motivation (observing that behaviors are rewarded or valued). Enculturation occurs through several mechanisms: explicit instruction (parents teaching rules), implicit modeling (children observing and copying others’ behaviors), participation in cultural practices (learning by doing), and social feedback (rewards for culturally appropriate behavior, correction of violations). The process is largely unconscious, with cultural members often unaware they possess culture-specific rather than universal patterns.

Application in Rosa damascena: The twins demonstrate rapid enculturation into German culture through social learning. Layla unconsciously absorbs behavioral norms by observing German children and experiencing social feedback. She automatically adopts appropriate personal distance, permission-asking patterns, and quiet public behavior not through explicit instruction but through watching which behaviors receive positive peer responses (attention and retention), practicing these patterns (reproduction), and being motivated by her strong desire for acceptance and the rewards of successful peer integration. Samir’s enculturation shows sophisticated code-switching development as he learns to display quiet German politeness and individual responsibility in school contexts while maintaining expressive, relationship-focused Syrian patterns at home, demonstrating how children can internalize multiple cultural systems simultaneously when they observe different models in different contexts and receive feedback in each setting. The contrast between the twins’ rapid enculturation (learning German patterns within weeks through immersion, observation, and social reinforcement) and their parents’ slower, more effortful adaptation (requiring explicit instruction in integration classes) illustrates enculturation theory’s prediction that children acquire culture more easily during sensitive developmental periods through implicit observation and social learning, while adults rely more on conscious effort and explicit instruction, making childhood the critical period for deep cultural internalization that feels natural rather than learned.

Etic approach: The limitations of etic approaches to researching human behaviour

Definition/Explanation: The etic approach studies behavior from an outsider’s perspective using universal categories, standardized measures, and cross-culturally comparable frameworks, prioritizing generalization and comparison over cultural specificity. This approach assumes certain psychological constructs exist universally, uses researcher-defined rather than participant-defined concepts, and employs standardized protocols enabling systematic comparison across cultures. While etic approaches offer valuable benefits such as enabling cross-cultural comparison, identifying universal patterns, providing objective assessment, facilitating replication, they face significant limitations such as imposing categories that may not match how cultures organize experience, missing culture-specific phenomena that don’t fit universal frameworks, applying measurement tools developed in one culture to contexts where they lack validity, and potentially misinterpreting behaviors by ignoring culture-specific meanings. The fundamental limitation is that etic approaches risk ethnocentrism (assuming researcher’s cultural categories are universal) and reductionism (forcing complex, culture-specific phenomena into simplified universal categories), potentially distorting rather than clarifying cross-cultural understanding.

Application in Rosa damascena: Border officials apply etic approaches with problematic results: the Hungarian guard uses universal legal categories (‘unaccompanied minors requiring separate processing’) that completely miss the emotional reality of Layla and Samir’s attachment to the Haddads, demonstrating how standardized classification systems developed for typical immigration situations fail to capture refugee family formation during displacement. The lawyer in Vienna initially applies standard adoption procedures requiring ‘police records, social worker evaluations, psychological assessments’ from Syria, not recognizing that these etic requirements make no sense in because of Syria’s civil war where such institutions do not function, showing how universal protocols developed for stable Western contexts lack validity when applied to refugee situations, creating bureaucratic barriers that etic frameworks classify as ‘proper procedure’ but refugees experience as absurd obstacles. Dr. Hassan’s initial medical assessment demonstrates etic limitations when his standardized family history questions (designed assuming stable nuclear families with consistent membership) confuse Layla, prompting her question ‘Which family? My old parents or my new ones?’ The universal diagnostic framework cannot accommodate her refugee experience, causing him to miss PTSD symptoms until he abandons etic protocols to understand her unique circumstances, illustrating how rigid adherence to universal measurement approaches sacrifices accuracy for false comparability.

Models of acculturation: The application of one or more acculturation models to explain the experience of immigrants, refugees or other people taking an extended stay in another culture

Definition/Explanation: Acculturation models describe psychological and cultural changes occurring when people from one culture maintain continuous contact with a different culture. Berry’s acculturation model identifies four strategies based on two dimensions: (i) maintaining own culture, and (ii) adopting new culture. Integration maintains heritage while adopting new culture, producing bicultural competence and typically best mental health outcomes. Assimilation abandons heritage for new culture, enabling functional success but potentially causing identity loss and family conflict. Separation maintains heritage while rejecting new culture, preserving identity but limiting opportunities and increasing marginalization risk. Marginalization rejects both cultures, correlating with poorest mental health through lacking belonging anywhere. Successful acculturation typically involves flexibility to switch strategies across contexts rather than rigid adherence to one approach, with integration generally most adaptive but requiring supportive multicultural environment.

Application in Rosa damascena: The Haddad family members each exemplify different acculturation strategies with varying psychological outcomes: Jamal pursues assimilation by fully embracing German culture, minimizing Syrian connections, and planning permanent life in Berlin, reporting feeling ‘whole’ rather than ‘torn’ but creating family tension through rejecting Syrian cultural obligations; Nour chooses separation by maintaining Syrian values, limiting German cultural adoption, and focusing career on serving Syrian community, finding meaning through heritage preservation but potentially limiting educational and professional opportunities. Fatima initially experiences marginalization, feeling rejected by Syrian women who criticize her for ‘being too German’ and by German women who treat her as perpetual outsider, suffering depression and isolation from lacking belonging in either culture until therapy helps her consciously choose integration by maintaining Syrian values while adopting beneficial German practices, resolving identity confusion through accepting bicultural legitimacy. The twins achieve integration most successfully through natural code-switching, for example displaying German punctuality and individual focus at school while being expressive and family-oriented at home, demonstrating how integration strategy produces best adaptation when supported by multicultural environment, with their bicultural competence providing psychological resilience (drawing self-esteem from multiple group memberships when one is threatened) and practical advantages (functioning effectively in both Syrian and German contexts without identity conflict or cultural marginalization).

Definition/Explanation: Social identity theory proposes that people derive significant portions of their self-concept from membership of social groups, such as national, ethnic, religious, workplace, school groups etc. leading to three key processes: social categorization (dividing ‘the world’ into in-groups and out-groups), social identification (adopting in-group characteristics as part of self-concept), and social comparison (evaluating one’s groups positively relative to out-groups to maintain self-esteem). The theory explains phenomena including in-group favoritism (preferring and helping group members), out-group discrimination (derogating or disadvantaging non-members), and group-based emotions (feeling pride or shame based on group achievements or failures). Multiple social identities can coexist, with salience shifting based on context, and identity strength predicts conformity to group norms. Social identity theory has applications in understanding prejudice, improving intergroup relations through creating superordinate identities, and explaining how threatened social identities motivate defensive or aggressive behaviors, while positive social identities contribute to psychological wellbeing through belonging, status, and meaning.

Application in Rosa damascena: The Haddads’ expansion from nuclear family to ‘bridge family’ status demonstrates how developing multiple valued social identities improves psychological wellbeing and reduces prejudice: initially holding only refugee/Syrian identities with associated stigma, they gradually add memberships (Omar as ‘master baker revolutionizing Munich’s bread market,’ Jamal as team footballer, Nour as international student council mediator, family as whole being cultural liaison), with each new identity providing alternative sources of self-esteem that buffer against discrimination, showing how multiple group memberships create resilience when any single identity faces threat. When Layla experiences bullying as ‘refugee girl,’ she doesn’t internalize shame about refugee status because she derives self-esteem from other salient identities (successful student, Arabic language star, translator for new immigrants), demonstrating how multiple positive social identities protect against stereotype threat and identity-based attacks. Jamal’s football team illustrates how superordinate identity reduces intergroup bias: teammates who might otherwise categorize each other by nationality instead share salient common identity as ‘FC Schwabing players,’ with Klaus noting they see Jamal as ‘the midfielder with exceptional field vision’ rather than ‘the Syrian refugee kid,’ showing how creating inclusive superordinate group identities (team, school, neighborhood) that encompass diverse members reduces prejudice by recategorizing former out-group members as in-group, changing behavior from discrimination to cooperation without requiring attitude change about national or ethnic groups themselves.

Definition/Explanation: Social learning theory (Bandura) proposes that people learn behaviors, attitudes, and emotional responses through observing and imitating models, with learning influenced by four processes: attention (noticing the model’s behavior, affected by model characteristics like status, attractiveness, similarity), retention (remembering observed behavior through mental rehearsal and symbolic coding), reproduction (possessing physical and cognitive capabilities to perform the behavior), and motivation (incentive to imitate, determined by observed consequences for model, i.e. vicarious reinforcement, and expected outcomes for self). Unlike operant conditioning requiring direct experience, social learning enables acquisition without personal trial-and-error through observational learning. The theory explains how complex behaviors spread through populations, how media influences behavior, and why modeling by high-status, similar, or successful individuals particularly affects observers. Social learning theory has applications in behavior change interventions: presenting successful role models demonstrating desired behaviors, ensuring models experience positive consequences, selecting models similar to target audience, and providing opportunities for observers to practice observed behaviors with feedback.

Application in Rosa damascena: Ahmad’s learning of German bureaucratic navigation exemplifies all four social learning processes: he attends to Omar as model (high-status successful refugee, similar background), retains observations across three visits (mentally coding progression from casual to professional presentation), reproduces behaviors by adjusting his own dress and document organization, and experiences motivation from vicarious reinforcement (watching Omar succeed with neat casual clothes and organized papers while formal suit approach seemed unsuccessful), demonstrating how observational learning enables complex social skill acquisition without explicit instruction or personal trial-and-error. The twins become unconscious cultural guides whose successful bicultural behavior serves as model for newer refugee children, with Layla and Samir demonstrating code-switching (German patterns at school, Syrian patterns at home) that other children observe and imitate, showing how social learning spreads adaptive behaviors through communities as successful models are noticed (attention), their patterns remembered (retention), and observers motivated by seeing models accepted and thriving (vicarious reinforcement). Jamal explicitly functions as role model when Abu Khalil reports ‘my son watches Jamal all the time’ to learn balancing German institutional demands with Syrian family obligations, with younger Syrian boys observing Jamal’s football success, academic achievement, and bicultural competence, demonstrating social learning theory’s application to planned behavior change interventions where communities deliberately make successful models visible and accessible to facilitate observational learning of desired adaptation strategies, with effectiveness enhanced because Jamal shares observers’ background (attention through similarity) and experiences clear positive outcomes (motivation through vicarious reinforcement).

Study material: Vocabulary

Culture

The shared system of beliefs, values, traditions, behaviors, and symbolic meanings that a group of people develop and transmit across generations, shaping how they interpret and interact with the world.

Identity

An individual’s or group’s sense of self that is constructed through personal characteristics, social roles, cultural affiliations, and lived experiences, defining who they are in relation to themselves and others.

Acculturation

The psychological and cultural changes occurring when people from one culture maintain continuous contact with another culture, involving adaptation strategies and identity negotiation.

Assimilation (acculturation strategy)

An acculturation approach where individuals abandon their original culture to fully adopt the new culture’s values, behaviors, and identity.

Integration (acculturation strategy)

An acculturation approach where individuals maintain their original culture while simultaneously adopting elements of the new culture, achieving bicultural competence.

Separation (acculturation strategy)

An acculturation approach where individuals maintain their original culture while minimizing engagement with and adoption of the new culture.

Marginalization

An acculturation outcome where individuals feel rejected by both their original and new cultures, experiencing isolation and lacking sense of belonging to either.

Cognitive dissonance

The mental discomfort felt when having contradictory beliefs, values, or attitudes simultaneously, motivating people to reduce this tension through various strategies.

Compliance techniques

Strategies for increasing agreement to requests without changing a person’s attitudes, including foot-in-the-door, door-in-the-face, scarcity, and authority establishment.

Conformity

The tendency to align attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors with group norms because of social pressure.

Cultural dimensions

Frameworks for understanding how cultures differ with respect to criteria/dimensions like individualism-collectivism, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance.

Individualism-collectivism

A cultural dimension contrasting emphasis on personal autonomy and individual goals versus group harmony, interdependence, and collective welfare.

Power distance

A cultural dimension measuring the degree to which less powerful members accept and expect hierarchical inequality and unequal power distribution.

Emic approach

A research perspective studying behavior from within a culture using concepts that are relevant and meaningful to cultural insiders.

Etic approach

A research perspective studying behavior from an outsider’s viewpoint using universal concepts and standardized measures for cross-cultural comparison.

Enculturation

The process through which people learn and adopt their culture’s values, norms, and behaviors, most often through childhood socialization.

Social learning theory

The theory that people learn behavior by observing and imitating role models, influenced by attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation.

Social identity theory

The theory that people derive their self-concept, i.e. their understanding of who they are, from group memberships, leading to in-group favoritism, out-group discrimination, and behaviors enhancing positive group distinctiveness.

Confirmation bias

The cognitive tendency to selectively notice, interpret, and remember information that confirms pre-existing beliefs and ignoring or undervaluing contradictory evidence.

Schema

Simplified mental representations that help people interpret and understand experiences or concepts based on prior knowledge.

Code-switching

The ability to alternate between different cultural behavioral patterns, communication styles, or languages depending on the social context and audience.

Bicultural competence

The ability to function effectively in two different cultural contexts, understanding and appropriately applying each culture’s norms, values, and behaviors.

Oxytocin

A hormone and neurotransmitter involved in social bonding, attachment formation, and caregiving behaviors, sometimes called the ‘bonding hormone.’

Cortisol

A stress hormone released during threatening or challenging situations, activating the body’s physiological stress (fight-or-flight) response usually having a negative effect on memory and emotion.

I-statement

A communication technique expressing one’s own feelings and experiences without blaming others, typically following the format ‘I feel [emotion] when…, because…’

Active listening

A communication strategy involving fully concentrating on, understanding, and reflecting back what another person says to develop and demonstrate comprehension and empathy.

Normative influence

Social pressure to conform arising from the motivation to experience acceptance or avoid rejection from a group, regardless of belief accuracy.

Informational influence

Social pressure to conform arising from assuming others possess correct information, especially in ambiguous or uncertain situations.

Vicarious reinforcement

Learning through observing consequences (reinforcements), i.e. rewards or punishments, experienced by others (vicarious) rather than through direct personal experience.

Multiple social identities

The simultaneous membership in various social groups (cultural, professional, recreational) that collectively contribute to a person’s self-concept and generate diverse sources of belonging and self-esteem.

Study material: Questions and activities

Chapter 1

Describe ‘culture’, using examples from the Haddad family’s rose cultivation and sweet-making business.
Describe the process of cultural practices being transmitted from one generation to the next, using Omar’s family business as an example.
Explain cognitive dissonance as experienced by Omar when deciding whether to leave Syria.
Discuss the role of culture in shaping the Haddad family’s identity and decision-making when faced with leaving Syria. Consider both the value they placed on preserving their family’s culture and the importance of family safety.
Discuss Measurement and Culture, for example, to what extent is it possible to quantify and measure a culture?

Chapter 2

Describe two compliance techniques used by Mahmoud (the smuggler).
Describe the role of Change regarding Omar’s behavior when dealing with the smugglers compared to his earlier defiance of armed militias in Damascus.
Explain conformity as demonstrated by the refugee families in the truck and at the bus station.
Describe the process through which the refugee families formed temporary bonds during their journey despite being strangers.
Evaluate the effectiveness of the compliance techniques used by the smugglers. Consider why these techniques were particularly powerful in the refugee context and what psychological factors made the refugees so compliant.

Chapter 3

Explain social norms, using examples from the unspoken rules in the Izmir safehouse.
Describe the learning strategies used by the Haddad family in the safehouse.
Contrast normative influence and informational influence, using examples from how refugees conformed to safehouse rules.
Describe the processes that the safehouse community used to maintain order despite having forty-two people in a small space with limited resources.
Compare and contrast how the Haddad family’s behavior and understanding evolved from their first day in the safehouse to when they left for the boat crossing. What does this suggest about the process of social learning in high-stress environments?

Chapter 4

Describe cultural dimensions, using examples of individualism versus collectivism and one other dimension from the chapter.
Explain that different cultural backgrounds led to different survival strategies during the storm on the boat.
Explain the concept of in-group and out-group behavior as demonstrated during the boat crisis.
To what extent did culture and cultural dimensions affect survival strategies during the boat crossing.

Chapter 5

Describe the role of oxytocin in Fatima’s response to the orphaned twins.
Explain attachment using Layla’s and Samir’s experiences of joining the Haddad family as an example.
Describe the process of the four siblings (Nour, Jamal, Layla, Samir) developing relationships despite initial competition and jealousy.
Evaluate the doctor’s explanation that Fatima’s protective feelings towards Layla and Samir were ‘just chemicals.’ Consider both biological and psychological perspectives on attachment formation and discuss whether reducing emotions to neurochemicals provides a complete explanation.

Chapter 6

Using examples from how border officials processed refugee families, describe the etic approach.
Using examples from how Sarah and Anna understood refugee family structure, describe the emic approach.
Explain the Hungarian border guard’s behavior of wanting to separate the twins from the Haddad family.
Describe the compliance techniques used by Anna to help the Haddad family stay together at the border.
Discuss the limitations of the etic approaches when applied to refugee situations. Use examples from the story to demonstrate why universal categories and standardized procedures fail to capture the reality of refugee family formations.

Chapter 7

Using examples of how the twins learned German cultural norms, explain enculturation.
Describe the process of social learning as demonstrated by the children in the refugee center and German schools.
Using Samir’s behavior in different contexts as an example, explain ‘code-switching’.
Describe two differences between German and Syrian cultural norms that the Haddad family had to understand.
Compare and contrast how children (the twins) and adults (Omar and Fatima) learned German cultural norms. What does this suggest about age-related differences in enculturation?

Chapter 8

Explain the four different acculturation strategies (integration, assimilation, separation, marginalization) using family members as examples.
Explain the value of I-statements.
Describe the concept of active listening, using examples from how Ayşe taught the family to communicate.
Describe Fatima’s experience of marginalization and how it affected her mental health.
Discuss acculturation strategies. Refer to factors such as age, life stage, goals, and psychological needs when discussing the strategies each of the Haddads adopted.

Chapter 9

Describe social identity theory and describe one example of it in the Haddad family’s story.
Describe the psychological benefits to Jamal of his multiple social identities (student, footballer, Syrian, German, Münchener).
Explain that Layla’s response to bullying (being called a ‘refugee girl’) demonstrated psychological resilience.
Explain the metaphor of the Damascus roses representing the family’s acculturation process.
Evaluate the psychological benefits of maintaining multiple social identities rather than having a single, unified identity. Use examples from the Haddad family’s experiences to support your answer.

Chapter 10

Using examples, explain the term, ‘cognition’.
Using examples from how Emma and Jamal selectively noticed evidence supporting their cultural belief, describe confirmation bias.
Using German and Syrian relationship behaviour as an example, describe schemas.
Discuss the role of cognitive explanations in understanding cross-cultural relationships. How did Jamal and Emma’s understanding of confirmation bias, and schemas help them improve their relationship?
Explain the concept of Perspective and the role it plays in cognitive explanations.

Chapter 11

Using Ahmad’s behavior at the Employment centre as an example, describe the four processes of social learning theory.
Explain that the twins became unconscious cultural guides for other immigrant children.
Using examples of the refugee children learning by watching successful role models, explain vicarious reinforcement.
Explain that Jamal’s football success and scholarship decision were influenced by observing role models.
Discuss the role of motivation in Jamal’s decision to pursue the Berlin scholarship. Apply Self-Determination Theory (autonomy, competence, relatedness) to analyze what motivated his choice and how it created family conflict.

Chapter 12

Describe the concept of identity.
Using Omar and Fatima’s conflicting desires about returning to Syria versus staying in Germany explain cognitive dissonance.
Describe the different ways each family member responded to the news that Assad had fallen and return to Syria was possible.
Consider the role of Perspective in understanding why different family members had fundamentally different experiences of ‘Syria’ despite sharing the same cultural background.
Discuss the role of culture in behaviour.

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