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Overview of Cross-Cultural Research Overview of Cross-Cultural Research

Thanh V. Tran

in Developing Cross Cultural Measurement

Chapter 1 provides the readers an overview of the definitions of culture, a brief discussion of cross-cultural research backgrounds in anthropology, psychology, sociology, and political science, and ... More

Chapter 1 provides the readers an overview of the definitions of culture, a brief discussion of cross-cultural research backgrounds in anthropology, psychology, sociology, and political science, and the influences of these fields on social work. These cross-cultural research fields offer social work both theoretical and methodological resources. The chapter shows that all cross-cultural research fields share the same concern—that is, the equivalence of research instruments. One cannot draw meaningful comparisons of behavioral problems, social values, or psychological status between or across different cultural groups in the absence of cross-culturally equivalent research instruments.Less

Culture and Personality

A. Timothy Church and Marcia S. Katigbak

in Advances in Culture and Psychology: Volume Two

The authors’ indigenous, cross-cultural, and cultural psychology studies in the area of culture and personality are reviewed. Indigenous studies include the authors’ efforts to identify and measure ... More

The authors’ indigenous, cross-cultural, and cultural psychology studies in the area of culture and personality are reviewed. Indigenous studies include the authors’ efforts to identify and measure Filipino personality dimensions, drawing on both cultural informant and lexical approaches, and to relate these dimensions to hypothesized universal dimensions such as the Five-Factor Model. The authors’ cross-cultural studies address the generalizability of personality structure as measured by the NEO personality inventories and the measurement invariance of these inventories, with implications for the validity of mean profile comparisons across cultures. The authors then describe their studies testing an integrated trait and cultural psychology perspective. Finally, theoretical and applied implications and directions for future research are noted. The authors conclude that indigenous, cross-cultural, and cultural psychology perspectives provide complementary approaches and that integrating them will lead to a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between culture and personality.Less

History of Cultural Psychology

Robyn M. Holmes

in Cultural Psychology: Exploring Culture and Mind in Diverse Communities

Chapter 2 explores the individuals, disciplines, and historical forces that contributed to the emergence of cultural psychology. It discusses central themes and types of historical approaches, ... More

Chapter 2 explores the individuals, disciplines, and historical forces that contributed to the emergence of cultural psychology. It discusses central themes and types of historical approaches, ancient Greek contributions, late 19th and early 20th century thinkers, Wilhelm Wundt, sociology and anthropology’s early contributions, the psychologists Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, and the anthropologists Franz Boas and D. Price-Williams. It explores cross-cultural psychology and the contributions of Marshall Segall, Geert Hofstede, and Harry Triandis. Finally, it discusses cultural psychology and the contributions of Richard Shweder, Jerome Bruner, Michael Cole, and indigenous psychologies. This chapter includes a case study, Culture Across Disciplines box, chapter summary, key terms, a What Do Other Disciplines Do? section, thought-provoking questions, and class and experiential activities.Less

Psychology and the Neoliberal Self: Global Culture and the “New Colonial” Subjects

Sunil Bhatia

in Decolonizing Psychology: Globalization, Social Justice, and Indian Youth Identities

This chapter investigates how neoliberal globalization is not just an economic concept or an economic condition; rather, it brings with it shifts in the spheres of culture psychology and identity. It ... More

This chapter investigates how neoliberal globalization is not just an economic concept or an economic condition; rather, it brings with it shifts in the spheres of culture psychology and identity. It specifically analyzes how personality and assessment tests and cross-cultural workshops on identity and difference that are primarily developed from Euro-American psychology are utilized in the Indian information technology and call center industry. The cross-cultural framework developed primarily by Western psychologists provided the most important tools, concepts, and vocabularies to understand “culture” in cultural sensitivity workshops and extended training seminars held for offshore companies, such as in India. These workshops promoted highly reified ideas about culture in which Indian work culture was viewed as inefficient, hierarchical, feudal, and indirect, whereas European culture was framed as egalitarian, professional, assertive, and non-hierarchical. This chapter reveals how neoliberal psychological discourses of self, identity, and happiness are becoming a mainstay of Indian culture and society.Less

Beyond Universal Taxonomic Frameworks in Cultural Social Psychology

Joan G. Miller

in Universalism without Uniformity: Explorations in Mind and Culture

This chapter provides a critical evaluation of work in the social psychological tradition of cultural psychology. An overview is first presented of the general theoretical assumptions and goals of ... More

This chapter provides a critical evaluation of work in the social psychological tradition of cultural psychology. An overview is first presented of the general theoretical assumptions and goals of cultural psychology, a methodologically heterogeneous and interdisciplinary research tradition that is distinguished by its assumptions that culture and self are mutually constitutive. To illustrate the goals of cultural social psychology, an overview is then provided of cross-cultural work that we have conducted that embodies sensitivity to context while challenging the universality of psychological theories of interpersonal morality and social support. Appraisal next centers on contemporary research in cultural social psychology that seeks to culturally broaden social psychological theory through its programs of quantitative and comparative cross-cultural research. It is argued that such work has achieved only mixed success in achieving its goals due to its limited attention to context and embrace of individual difference models of culture. The argument is made that to fully achieve the agenda of cultural social psychology future research in this tradition needs to go beyond essentializing taxonomic frameworks and work to gain more indepth understandings of the cultural meanings and practices of the cultural communities under consideration.Less

Introduction to Cultural Psychology

Robyn M. Holmes

in Cultural Psychology: Exploring Culture and Mind in Diverse Communities

Chapter 1 explores the field of cultural psychology, the concept of culture, why we should study culture, and other disciplines that study culture. It provides definitions and distinguishing features ... More

Chapter 1 explores the field of cultural psychology, the concept of culture, why we should study culture, and other disciplines that study culture. It provides definitions and distinguishing features for the terms culture, nationality, and ethnicity. It discusses the fields that study culture including cross-cultural psychology, cultural psychology, indigenous psychology, anthropology, cultural studies, and sociology. It explains ways to think about culture and constructs such as cultural universal and culture-specific, emics and etics, ethnocentrism and cultural relativism, and individualism and collectivism. It examines why we should study culture and the applied value of cultural psychology in real-life settings such as school, the workplace, and clinical contexts. This chapter includes a case study, Culture Across Disciplines box, chapter summary, key terms, a What Do Other Disciplines Do? section, thought-provoking questions, and class and experiential activities.Less

What Is Culture For?

Yoshihisa Kashima

in The Handbook of Culture and Psychology

What is culture for? What functions does culture serve? This chapter traces a historical background to these functionalist questions and examine their contemporary relevance. Although functionalist ... More

What is culture for? What functions does culture serve? This chapter traces a historical background to these functionalist questions and examine their contemporary relevance. Although functionalist perspectives arose from Darwin’s evolutionism in social science and psychology of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, their theoretical implications were thoroughly criticized and gave way to the emergence of a newer, neo-functionalist thinking in the late twentieth century. A neo-functionalist perspective is discernible in a variety of theoretical approaches in culture and psychology. Its basic tenet suggests that culture is often, though not always, helpful for its adopters to adapt to their local environmental niche, meeting different types of environmental challenges, both natural and human made (built, economic, intergroup, intragroup, psychological). The chapter concludes by advocating that research on culture and psychology can play a critical role in helping humanity meet the twenty-first-century challenges of climate change and intergroup conflicts.Less

Unsettling Basic States: New Directions in the Cross-Cultural Study of Emotion

Julia L. Cassaniti

in Universalism without Uniformity: Explorations in Mind and Culture

There may not be basic emotional states uniformly experienced across time and space. Nevertheless, we can systematically make sense of a universal human capacity for feelings, and a potential to ... More

There may not be basic emotional states uniformly experienced across time and space. Nevertheless, we can systematically make sense of a universal human capacity for feelings, and a potential to recognize them in each other, through an interdisciplinary perspective on componential qualities of emotional experience. In this essay Julia Cassaniti draws out such a cultural psychology approach to the study of emotional universality, highlighting a Thai Buddhist theory of emotionality based on an interpretive scheme of cultural meanings tied to a local moral causal ontology, and showing how this scheme makes sense of emotionality not at the level of discrete emotions but through locally elaborated dimensions, or components. Using a case example of the affective response to a flooded house in Northern Thailand, she argues that such a perspective allows for the study of similarity without claiming cross-cultural uniformity of emotions as natural kinds.Less

Psychological Realism and “Creatures Like Us”

Olivia Newman

in Liberalism in Practice: The Psychology and Pedagogy of Public Reason

This chapter surveys research in social, cognitive, moral, and developmental psychology that suggests character is not constituted by global character traits that inform behavior over a wide variety ... More

This chapter surveys research in social, cognitive, moral, and developmental psychology that suggests character is not constituted by global character traits that inform behavior over a wide variety of situations. Instead, traits are much more local and specific, and situations shape behavior at least as much as traits do. Human character appears to be situated and social, resulting in differentiation by sphere; domain-differentiation may be a fundamental feature of moral character. This is the psychology of public reason. As this chapter suggests, domain-differentiation challenges common views of the self as unified around a single set of goals, beliefs, attitudes, and aptitudes. A brief examination of cross-cultural psychology bolsters this view of the self as differentiated by domain.Less

Cross-Cultural, Multi-Cultural, and Intercultural Issues

Thierry R. F. Middleton, Robert J. Schinke, Brennan Petersen, and Cole E. Giffin

in Sport, Exercise and Performance Psychology: Research Directions To Advance the Field

Our aim in this chapter is to demonstrate how, and why, researchers and practitioners may benefit through embracing and learning from the diverse approaches taken to studying cross-cultural, ... More

Our aim in this chapter is to demonstrate how, and why, researchers and practitioners may benefit through embracing and learning from the diverse approaches taken to studying cross-cultural, multicultural, and intercultural issues. We do so by examining the study of integration, a process in which individuals maintain their cultural heritage while also engaging in a shared process of learning the dominant cultural norms of their community. Integration has been widely promoted as the most conducive form of acculturation for newcomers to a community. The chapter begins with a brief overview of how researchers have used cross-cultural and cultural sport psychology (CSP) approaches to examine how sport and physical activity contexts may foster integration and what their findings have revealed. The unknown is then explored through five major questions that can guide future researchers in their work alongside those with whom they wish to learn from.Less

Positive Exemplar Exposure: A Method for Early Implicit Racial Bias Change

Antonya Marie Gonzalez

Kate C. McLean (ed.)

in Cultural Methods in Psychology: Describing and Transforming Cultures

In adults, implicit racial bias has been linked to prejudiced and discriminatory behavior. However, implicit racial biases emerge well before adulthood; as young as age six, children have already ... More

In adults, implicit racial bias has been linked to prejudiced and discriminatory behavior. However, implicit racial biases emerge well before adulthood; as young as age six, children have already internalized the racial attitudes of their culture. Thus, it is critical for researchers to understand how to change implicit racial bias early in development, before its negative effects compound across the lifespan. The following chapter highlights one potential method of bias reduction in childhood: exposure to positive exemplars. As this method is both scalable and child-friendly, it has the potential to be used with young children on a broader cultural level. This chapter details child-friendly methods for measuring bias change and provides two examples of studies that have successfully employed positive exemplar exposure to reduce children’s implicit racial bias. I conclude the chapter with recommendations for future use of this intervention cross-culturally, as well as broader cultural applications.Less

Intergenerational conflict: the case of adult children and their parents

Beate Schwarz

in Intergenerational relations: European perspectives in family and society

The chapter summarises research on intergenerational conflict with a focus on European studies. The results are integrated in the theoretical approaches of intergenerational solidarity and ... More

The chapter summarises research on intergenerational conflict with a focus on European studies. The results are integrated in the theoretical approaches of intergenerational solidarity and intergenerational ambivalence. The author discusses the meaning of intergenerational conflict against the background of individuals’ life-long striving for a balance between autonomy and relatedness. Therefore, the role of developmental tasks and transitions which are specific for adult children and their parents in different phases of adulthood are outlined.Less

How Cultural Psychology Can Help Us See “Divinity” in a Secular World

Jonathan Haidt and Paul Rozin

in Universalism without Uniformity: Explorations in Mind and Culture

This essay describes the ways that our thinking about morality changed in response to Richard Shweder’s writings about morality, and in particular his description of the “ethics of divinity.” It ... More

This essay describes the ways that our thinking about morality changed in response to Richard Shweder’s writings about morality, and in particular his description of the “ethics of divinity.” It first describes Shweder’s theory of the “three ethics” of moral discourse and explain why the theory was so important for moral psychology. It then shows how useful the ethics of divinity has been for understanding some puzzles about sexual morality, bioethical controversies, and the American culture war more generally, and closes with an endorsement of moral pluralism. It uses the story of Flatland, a short novel by the English mathematician Edwin Abbot, published in 1884, as an analogy to describe the move from psychology to cultural psychology that such a perspective enables.Less