Cross-Cultural Psychology

Contemporary Themes and Perspectives

Kenneth D. Keith

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781119438441
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Social Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Explains and explores the important areas of psychology through a cultural perspective

This book addresses key areas of psychology, placing them in cultural perspective via a comprehensive overview of current work integrating culture across the major subfields of psychological science. Chapters explore the relation of culture to psychological phenomena, starting with introductory and research foundations, and moving to clinical and social principles and applications. It covers the subfields that are of most importance to undergraduates and beginning graduates, such as consciousness, development, cognition, intelligence, personality, research methods, statistics, gender, personality, health, and well-being.

Cross-Cultural Psychology: Contemporary Themes and Perspectives, 2nd Edition is richly documented with research findings and examples from many cultures, illuminating the strengths and limitations of North American psychology, while also highlighting the diversity and vitality of this fascinating field. The book offers many new chapters, in addition to fully updated ones from the previous edition. Starting with basic concepts in the subject, the book offers chapters covering ethnocentrism, diversity, evolutionary psychology, and development across cultures. It also examines education, dreams, language and communication issues, sex roles, happiness, attractiveness, and more.

• Provides a comprehensive overview of current work integrating culture across major subfields of psychological science
• Offers introductory chapters on topics such as cultural psychology and ethnocentrism, which provide a foundation for more specialized chapters in development, education, cognition, and beyond
• Features new chapters in areas such as cultural competence, culture and dreams, education across cultures, abnormality across cultures, and evolutionary psychology
• Presents chapters by some of the leading contributors to the fields of cultural and cross- cultural psychology

Cross-Cultural Psychology: Contemporary Themes and Perspectives, 2nd Edition is an ideal book for undergraduate and graduate courses in cultural or cross-cultural psychology.

Part I
Basic Concepts

The study of psychology and culture necessarily begins with some fundamental questions: What is culture? Why is culture important to an understanding of psychological science? How have researchers chosen to investigate the relation between psychology and culture? Thus, Part I deals with the construct of culture—what it is and some of the key characteristics that define it. As we will see, cross‐cultural interest in psychological phenomena is by no means new, but the nature of that interest has evolved in fascinating ways, from the ancient Greeks to the early twentieth century, and now to the twenty‐first century.

As psychologists around the world have undertaken the systematic study of culture, the field of cross‐cultural psychology has emerged, but not without some disagreements about how psychological scientists should understand and use cultural constructs. Among the perspectives arising from these differing viewpoints are cultural psychology, indigenous psychology, and cross‐cultural psychology. Psychologists with a focus on culture are interested in how culture influences behavior, and in how researchers integrate key cultural variables into their work. These variables include a number of critical dimensions of culture. Best known among these is the individualism–collectivism (IC) dimension, but as we will see, other dimensions may well be more important than past research has suggested.

Individuals of course become enculturated in the environments into which they are born and in which they develop. This process results, perhaps inevitably, in a predictable tendency to view other cultures from the perspective of our own. Such ethnocentric tendencies often result in psychological barriers between cultures; we are likely to view cultures different from our own as less desirable and perhaps even threatening. Researchers have undertaken a number of approaches, not only to understanding ethnocentrism, but also to attempt to reduce it; we will review some of these efforts in this section of the book. Psychologists have also examined ways to improve intercultural understanding via the social and communication skills and knowledge that constitute cultural competence.

Early work in cross‐cultural psychology emphasized identifying and measuring differences between cultures. This was perhaps understandable in the early days of the science. In fact, we could make the argument that every science began with description before moving to efforts to explain its subject matter. It seems clear now that the time for obsession with difference is behind us. The study of psychology and culture is moving toward not only a more sophisticated understanding of our differences, but also recognition that, despite cultural differences, human beings across cultures share many more commonalities than differences. Furthermore, researchers are increasingly sensitive to the value of a broad understanding of the relation between culture and behavior, and the importance of the particular psychological perspectives arising from unique cultural contexts. Part I will prepare us for the many approaches that follow as the authors of the remaining chapters explore the methods and findings of a myriad of psychologists who have examined the relation between psychology and culture.

1
Psychology and Culture: An Introduction

Kenneth D. Keith

In this book we attempt to provide the reader with a wide‐ranging introduction to the relation between culture and a number of core subjects in the field of psychology. This aim requires that we begin by defining culture and the intersection between culture and psychology—the discipline we know today as cross‐cultural psychology. Although all psychological research takes place in a cultural context, psychological scientists have not always taken account of the influence of culture on psychological processes, or the generalizability of those processes across cultures. This chapter provides a brief overview of these ideas as an introduction to the varied topics that follow in the remainder of the book.

Culture

Many writers, including anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists, have written about culture, providing a variety of definitions and descriptions. Heine (2012) described a two‐part definition of culture: (a) information (e.g., beliefs, habits, ideas), learned from others, that is, capable of influencing behavior; and (b) a group of people who share context and experience. Matsumoto and Juang (2013) offered a comprehensive definition, calling culture

a unique meaning and information system, shared by a group and transmitted across generations, that allows the group to meet basic needs of survival, by coordinating social behavior to achieve a viable existence, to transmit successful social behaviors, to pursue happiness and well‐being, and to derive meaning from life.

(p. 5)

Matsumoto and Juang's (2013) definition shares key characteristics with that of Triandis, Kurowski, Tecktiel, and Chan (1993), who defined culture in terms of objective and subjective characteristics that increase the odds of survival, provide satisfaction for people sharing an environmental context, and are shared via language. Objective elements of culture, as identified by Triandis et al., are the tangible objects of culture (architecture, food, manufactured products), whereas subjective culture comprises such human elements as social, economic, political, and religious practices. It is of course the subjective human elements that are of most interest to psychological scientists. Cohen (2009) advocated extension of the notion of culture to a variety of constellations of human groups, including religion, socioeconomic status, and region (within a country). Finally, Berry, Poortinga, Segall, and Dasen (2002) perhaps put it most succinctly, when they called culture simply “the shared way of life of a group of people” (p. 2). Common features of virtually all definitions of culture include the notion of a group with shared behaviors, values, and beliefs that are passed from generation to generation. Cultures may vary in their complexity (Triandis, 1980), and some embody significant diversity (i.e., are multicultural), with many subcultures (Miller, 2008), while other cultures are much more homogeneous or “tight” (Triandis, 1977). And Cheung (2012) suggested that a culture might be any group (not just national or ethnic) whose members share beliefs, values, norms, and heritage.

It is also important to note what culture is not. Perhaps most importantly, culture is not synonymous with nationality or race. We need look only at such diverse nations as the United States or the United Kingdom to see that a nation may include many cultural and subcultural groups—thus making virtually pointless a discussion of, for example, “the” American culture. And genetic research has suggested that the biological differences among races are relatively superficial, leading to the conclusion that race is largely psychosocially constructed (Mio, Barker‐Hackett, & Tumambing, 2006; Smedley & Smedley, 2005) and, in the words of Segall, Dasen, Berry, and Poortinga (1999) an “illusion” (p. 20). This does not mean, of course, that biology has no role to play. Behavior is a product of the complex interplay among heredity, environment, and individual skills and knowledge; and the field of evolutionary psychology has sought to explain how evolution has led to development of the human brain and the capacity to learn, giving rise to the knowledge and values that constitute culture (Pinker, 1994, 2018). Culture evolved because it contributed to human survival and reproduction (Baumeister, 2005).

Finally, culture can be construed as a characteristic residing within the person, and thus related to all the p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part I: Basic Concepts
• Part II: Culture, Psychological Science, and Research Methods
• Part III: Development
• Part IV: Cognition
• Part V: Consciousness
• Part VI: Language and Communication
• Part VII: Gender and Sex Roles
• Part VIII: Health, Disorders, and Treatment
• Part IX: Emotion and Well-Being
• Part X: Social Psychology
• Part XI: Personality
• Part XII: Concluding Thoughts
• Index
• End User License Agreement