Cultural Issues in Psychology

An Introduction to a Global Discipline

Andrew Stevenson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781351205139
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Psychiatry & Mental Health

This book offers an engaging introduction to cultural and cross-cultural psychology and offers an interdisciplinary approach to the key research theories and controversies that impact on human behaviour in a global context.

How is human behavior and experience intertwined with culture? From this starting point, this second edition of Cultural Issues in Psychology explores the role of culture in relation to mainstream and critical perspectives of our discipline. Beginning with an examination of culture itself, as well as related concepts such as ethnicity, race and nation, it goes on to trace historical developments in the role of culture in psychology. Including a new chapter on migration, and additional coverage of indigenous psychologies, ethnographic research methods, and cosmopolitanism, the new edition reflects the latest developments in this global discipline. Also featuring up-to-date research examples and revision exercises, the book reviews and explains classic and contemporary approaches to cultural issues relating to social, cognitive, developmental and health psychology.

Also including chapters on culture and lifespan, and culture and psychopathology, this is the essential entry-level text on cultural and cross-cultural psychology for students taking psychology and related courses.

1

How we got here

A short history of psychology across cultures

What this chapter will teach you

• What are the philosophical roots of psychology across cultures?
• How do cultural anthropology and psychology differ?
• Which were the first major cross-cultural research projects?
• What became of nineteenth-century racial theories of temperament?
• Who were the twentieth-century pioneers of research across cultures?
• What is psychological anthropology?

What this is (and isn’t) a history of

Psychologists have been doing research across cultures for generations. They have also been busy establishing research traditions within their own cultures for some time (Rus & Pecjak, 2004; Hwang, 2005; Stevens & Gielen, 2007; Kashima, 2016). Of course, these are two quite different things. The early history of psychology across cultures largely draws on the ideas and journeys of thinkers, explorers and ultimately social scientists from Europe who took it upon themselves to study people from other continents. Meanwhile the history of psychological traditions within cultures draws on what have become known as the indigenous psychologies. You’ll find an extended account of these in Chapter 5. The history of psychology across cultures is our focus in this chapter.

Key Term

Indigenous psychologies. Diverse regional traditions in psychological research, reflecting differing cultural concerns.

Philosophical origins of psychology across cultures

The philosophical foundations of psychology across cultures are sunk deep in the history of European thought. Distinct though merging phases are decipherable in European philosophical traditions, and an examination of these phases reveals an evolving fascination with people from diverse places. Some aspects of this fascination have distinctly ethnocentric roots. This is unsurprising, as they are grounded in a European view of the world. Many of these ideas emerged when contact across continents was minimal and when communication with those who did venture across the oceans was subject to hearsay, fear of strangers and a distinct lack of methodological sophistication. Sadly, echoes of this ethnocentrism in European and US writing lingered into the twentieth century (Howitt & Owusu-Bempah, 1995). For now, we’ll concentrate on the historic precursors of research across cultures.

Figure 1.1 outlines the philosophical origins of European psychology’s adventures abroad. It also hints at the early exchanges between the thinkers who argued for the universal constancy of the human mind (universalists) and those who stressed the unique manifestation of the mind in diverse cultures (relativists). First moves in the development of cultural anthropology (defined as the study of the complex social structures that make up communities, societies and nations) are also indicated in Figure 1.1. Such disciplines share with psychology an interest in the relationship between culture, experience and behaviour.

Figure 1.1 Philosophical roots of psychological research across cultures

Key Term

Cultural anthropology. The study of the complex social structures that make up communities, societies and nations.

Early expeditions

The philosophical roots of research across cultures yielded their first large-scale empirical investigation in 1799. The Observateurs de l’Homme was an early attempt to compare different ‘forms of collective life’ (a loose definition for what would later be known as culture) based on objective observations, rather than on unsubstantiated conjecture. It was the brainchild of the newly formed Société des Observateurs (Hulme, 2001), a loose affiliation of scientists from various disciplines who were united in wanting to bring empirical rigour to the study of human behaviour, culture, morals, anatomy and physiology.

A first ever empirical, interdisciplinary, cross-cultural field expedition was duly arranged. It would go to Australia in 1800, led by Nicolas Baudin (1754–1803), who sadly died of tuberculosis on the return journey. Although the priorities of this expedition were not to explore psychological concepts, customs and behaviour were observed along with other facets of life. This (for Baudin at least) ill-fated expedition was perhaps the first example of research across cultures to be conducted according to prescribed methodological guidelines, which had been set down for the purpose by the philosopher Joseph-Marie Dégérando. His document, extravagantly titled A Consideration of the Different Methods to be Followed in the Observation of Savage Peoples (1800), amounted to a series of eminently sensible methodological ‘dos and don’ts’ for pioneering researchers working in other cultures. Dégérando’s field manuals advised on which behaviours to observe and record (sensation, language, abnormal behaviour, problem-solving, opinions), and even alerted the potential fieldworker to the perils of ethnocentric observer bias and misinterpretation.

The Société itself turned out to be a short-lived affair, yielding few enduring data, though the work of two of its members deserves a mention. C.F. Volney (1804) travelled to North America essentially to study its soil, though he made some interesting observations of the language and lifestyles of North American Indians. Young anthropological pioneer François Péron survived Baudin’s Australian trip to present a set of rather superficial data about the ‘weak’ and ‘treacherous’ temperament of the Tasmanians he encountered there (Hulme, 2001). Dégérando’s field manuals are probably the most enduring outcome of the work of the Société des Observateurs. They can be justifiably regarded as the forerunners of contemporary ethical and methodological guidelines for those practising cross-cultural and anthropological research (Jahoda & Krewer, 1997).

Reflective Exercise 1

1. What’s the difference between psychology across cultures and indigenous psychology?
2. What was Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s quarrel with the social evolutionists?

The nineteenth century and the coming of race

After the Baudin expedition and the demise of the Société des Observateurs, cross-cultural research as a serious endeavour lost its way for a spell. During the nineteenth century, explanations of temperament, behaviour and human diversity became entangled with a new concept that was beginning to find its way into the popular discourse: race. Racial theories about mental abilities and character put differences between groups down to biological inheritance or ancestral lineage (Jahoda & Krewer, 1997). It was common at the time to regard racial difference as a greater influence on behaviour than differences in cultural background. This in part explains why expeditions to investigate lifestyles in diverse places – such as the earlier Baudin project – fell out of favour.

Figure 1.2 outlines some of the influential trains of thought that dominated arguments about race, temperament and behaviour in the early nineteenth century. Figure 1.3 reminds us of the unfortunate ways in which nineteenth-century racial explanations of difference and deficit in character and ability affected the work of some influential psychologists for decades to come.

Figure 1.2 Race-based theories in the nineteenth century

Figure 1.3 Sadly, ideas about race and mental ability outlasted the nineteenth century

Key Term

Race. How groups with distinct ancestries differ from each other in terms of appearance, including skin colour, blood group, hair texture.

Rivers across cultures in the twentieth century

Preoccupations with biological and racial difference temporarily arrested the development of psychological research across cultures. But as the twentieth century dawned, another milestone in the development of field research was laid. The 1889 Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Straits (between New Guinea and Australia) was seminal for the careers of several budding researchers and for the overall emergence of research across cultures (Hart, 1998). Cambridge anthropologist Alfred Cort Haddon, who led the expedition, found room on board for a select band of researchers who are still considered to be among modern fieldwork’s founders. They included the British psychologists William McDougall and Charles Myers, the anthropologist Charles Seligman, and W.H.R. Rivers, of whom we will soon learn more....