Cross-Cultural Psychology Lecture 1. Brief History and Research

Cross-Cultural Psychology Lecture 1. Brief History and Research Methods for Cross-Cultural Psychology.

Every man is in certain respects like all other men, like some other men, like no other man. (Kluckholm Murray)

Cross-Cultural Psychology is the scientific study of human behavior and mental processes, including both their variability and invariance, under diverse cultural conditions. Primary aims: To investigate systematic relations between behavioral variables and ethnic cultural variables; To investigate generalizations of psychological principles. The Unit of analysis is individual in-a-cultural-context.

Cross-Cultural psychology has a long past but only a short history. It was a branch of Social Psychology. As an organized intellectual discipline it started with the establishment of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology in 1972, in Hong Kong.

Brief History I German Contribution. -1816- Herbart argued that the individual could be understood only in a social context. -1860-1890- a journal with articles about group behavior, psychology of culture, comparative studies, special emphasis on language. 1900-1920- W. Wundt- ten volumes about Folk Psychology: customs, myth, relationship between a language and its people.

French and British contribution 1897 – Durkheim believed that individual behavior was under the control of society. The psychology of group mind, abnormal aspects of social psychology. 1890 – Bronislaw Malinowski studied experimental psychology under Wundt  London  New Guinea: attack on the universality of S. Freud’s Oedipus complex.

American and Other countries contributions: Boas, Sapir, Whorf: how language affected thinking and perceptions within a culture. Other countries: natural laboratories for Cross-Cultural research Hong-Kong – where Eastern and Western cultures intersect + political uncertainty; Israel – mixture of immigrants from different regions and cultures; Canada – 2 distinct languages and customs Australia – contrast of white Australians and aborigines.

Experimentation Pivotal technique in cross-cultural comparison because of its precision. Our behavior can be viewed in 2 very different ways: A product of our internal dispositions (genes, personality traits) A result of our situational context (physical and social environment) Outgrowth of the interaction of these two (dispositions with situations) These factors can be experimentally separated. (Observation method, interview, surveys, testing method, case-study, attitude measurement)