cultural

Meaning: Culture is the shared way of life of a group. Material culture is the physical objects it makes and uses, such as tools, clothing, and buildings. Symbolic (nonmaterial) culture is the ideas it holds, such as language, values, beliefs, rituals, and norms. People acquire culture through socialization, and it spreads or changes through cultural diffusion (traits moving between groups) and assimilation (adopting the dominant group's culture). Cultural lag describes material culture changing faster than the symbolic culture that has to adapt to it.

On the MCAT: A passage describes a behavior that differs between groups, such as emotional display rules, personal-space norms, or attitudes toward illness. You decide whether a cultural explanation (learned norms and values) fits better than a biological one. Questions also use related terms: cultural capital (non-financial assets like education, tastes, and manners that help people move up in status), cultural relativism (judging a practice by its own culture's standards), and ethnocentrism (judging other cultures by your own).

Common confusion: Culture and society are different things. A society is the group of people, and culture is the shared content they hold. Cultural relativism is also not the same as ethnocentrism, because relativism avoids judging by outside standards and ethnocentrism applies them.