Cross-Cultural Psychology, Ch. 29

29 Cross-Cultural Psychology in Perspective: What Does the Future Hold?

Kenneth D. Keith

The field of cross-cultural psychology, as embodied in research and teaching, has come a long way since its modern era inception early in the twentieth century. From an early fascination with so-called primitive cultures, and how they differed from those researchers considered more advanced, investigators have moved toward a much more nuanced approach to the study not only of differences and similarities, but of the complex interplay between culture and behavior as well.

As the authors of the chapters in this volume have illustrated, cross-cultural researchers have explored a wide range of psychological processes, principles, and phenomena representing the spectrum of interests and subject matters of the discipline. From basic research methods to complex social interactions and organizations, cross-cultural researchers continue to advance our understanding. Yet there remain major issues for cross-cultural psychologists of the future. A host of serious challenges faces the world’s cultures, and many of these challenges are candidates for psychological and behavioral understanding and solutions. Among these are the cultural conflicts engendered by political and governmental differences; major ecological and environmental problems; distribution of resources necessary for sustaining human communities; and the implications of technological change.

World Conflict—Can Psychology Help?

Political/governmental conflict

Violent conflict between cultural groups has existed throughout human history (Hofstede & Hofstede, 2005), and researchers have conducted studies aimed toward illuminating psychological principles that could aid understanding of international events and the kinds of decisions that lead to conflict. Bourne, Healy, and Beer (2003), for example, used various priming strategies to establish cross-cultural conflict scenarios, including the existence of hypothetical peace treaties, and tested the level of conflict responses of young American adults. Although these researchers found that dominant individuals were more aggressive than others in the face of the conflict scenarios, and that there are differences in response for men and women, they acknowledged the need to take such research beyond the laboratory, to the international context in the real world. Despite its limitations, their work illustrates the potential contributions of psychology to cross-cultural relations in a world that is too often threatening and violent.

One form of violence that seems to cry out for cross-cultural understanding is the behavior of those individuals whom members of Western and Asian cultures have labeled terrorists. Several countries, including Bali, Israel, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sri Lanka, and the U.S. have seen violent attacks in which the attacker deliberately dies (Locicero & Sinclair, 2008). Social scientists have offered explanations for such violent behavior, ranging from the individual level to the community or cultural level. However, psychological analyses are sometimes contradictory, prompting Locicero and Sinclair to develop a psychological model including recognition not only of politics, but also the religious and ideological backdrop of terrorism. In the context of such developmental and ecological approaches, cross-cultural knowledge of development, cognition, altruism, personality, and social processes will surely have a role to play.

Psychologists have long understood the importance of tolerance for differences, but acceptance of cultural difference is too often overcome by anger, hate, fear, ethnocentrism, and nationalism (Hatfield & Rapson, 2005). A key to effective relations and communication across cultures is the ability of individuals to control negative feelings and judgments about others—the ability researchers call emotional regulation (Matsumoto & Juang, 2008). In a related vein, Smith (2004) proposed that one of psychology’s greatest contributions to international relations could be empathy—an understanding of the thoughts and feelings of others. Despite the fact that progress toward intercultural understanding sometimes may seem unattainable, well over a half century ago psychologists banded together to make a statement about peaceful relations among cultures (Smith, 1999). Signed by some of the most prominent psychologists of the time, The psychologists’ manifesto: Human nature and the peace: A statement by psychologists (Allport et al., 1945) identified a number of tenets that remain timely today. They included:

· War can be avoided: War is not born in men; it is built into men.

· Racial, national, and group hatreds can, to a considerable degree, be controlled.

· Condescension toward “inferior” groups destroys our chances for a lasting peace.

· Liberated and enemy peoples must participate in planning their own destiny.

· The root desires of the common people of all lands are the safest guide to framing a peace.

· The trend of human relationships is toward ever wider units of collective security (Smith, 1999, p. 5).

World events of the six decades since they issued the Manifesto might seem to suggest these psychologists had little influence on cultural relations. Yet the possibility that psychology could contribute to understanding and reduction of conflict still might seem self-evident. However, Ratner (2006) observed that cultural psychologists have seemed disinclined to include political issues as a part of their studies of culture. And historically, out-group enemies have often served to preserve in-group cohesion (Hofstede & Hofstede, 2005). Nevertheless, psychologists have persisted, studying the psychosocial consequences of violence, terrorism, and disasters for children (Williams, 2007), the relation between international conflict and social identity (Kolbe, Boos, & Gurtner, 2005), and moral characteristics of rescuers, bystanders, and Nazis during the Holocaust (Monroe, 2008), among many other correlates of intercultural conflict. The need for continuing cross-cultural research and teaching seems clear.

Environment/resource distribution

Further prospects for cultural conflict may be found in the connection between cultures and the environmental limits of the earth, and in the vast global inequalities that exist among the countries of the world—inequalities in, for example, income, nutrition, education, and healthcare. For instance, billions of people, about two thirds of the earth’s population, have no safe sanitation facilities, more than a billion lack access to safe drinking water, and nearly two million children die each year as a result of these conditions (George, 2008). To those living in the industrial world, these resources are necessities, taken for granted by many—yet modern culture would not exist without them (see Johnson, 2006), and increasing world population will only bring the likelihood of more cultural competition for limited supplies of such natural resources as water. Life in the least affluent countries is especially difficult for people with disabilities, where no more than 10% of such individuals may receive any kind of human services (McConkey & O’Toole, 2000).

Similarly, while obesity has become a significant problem in some industrialized countries, at least a quarter of the world’s population lacks adequate daily nutrition (Bryjak & Soroka, 1997). The increasing human population and the efforts of that population to develop the resources necessary to sustain it have resulted not only in conflict between cultures, but also in degradation of the natural environment. Thus, in developing countries, increasing population has produced massive deforestation, including destruction of millions of acres of rain forests each year (Bryjak & Soroka, 1997).

Cross-cultural researchers have begun to investigate behaviors and attitudes in the realm of environmental and ecological concerns. This work has included, for example, studies of motives concerning environmental issues (Milfont, Duckitt, & Cameron, 2006), water conservation (Corral-Verdugo, Carrus, Bonnes, Moser, & Sinha, 2008), and environmental values (Reser & Bentrupperbumer, 2005). Lest we assume that such environmental problems and conflicts exist only in developing countries, we need look only as far as heavily populated and industrialized regions of the U.S. to see major cultural conflicts over issues like availability of water and use of land (Walters, 2009). The time has surely come for a psychology that not only describes cultural differences, but also grapples in a serious way with the underlying causes of such differences as we move toward improved understanding of cultural and societal relations (Heine & Norenzayan, 2006).

Technological change

I remember a fascinating conversation with my grandfather. He told me about his earliest recollections of the first locomotive when it arrived in his small town; the barnstorming airplanes that came to local fairs and festivals; driving to his wedding in a horse-drawn wagon; and the wonder he felt when, later in his life, he watched on television as the first humans landed on the surface of the moon. My grandfather’s story reflects enormous cultural and technological change occurring within the lifetime of a single person. The lives of billions of people have changed in important ways as a result of changes in technology, transforming how we do business, how we educate our young, and even how we interact interpersonally.

For many of the world’s people, technology, particularly as embodied in the computerized, digital realm of modern industrialized societies, has brought convenience, access to information, and greater affluence. On the other hand, according to Argyle (1999), heavy television watching is actually associated with reduced levels of happiness, perhaps suggesting that not all technology produces good outcomes for people, even in rich societies.

Many of the world’s people, of course, lack access to technology. According to a report published by the International Monetary Fund (Jaumotte, Lall, & Papageorgiou, 2008), wider access to education is one key to a broader ability to take advantage of the opportunities associated with technology. But technology may be a double-edged sword; although income inequality (between “haves” and “have nots”) has decreased somewhat in sub-Saharan Africa, in many other places around the world, including most industrialized nations, it has increased in the past two decades (Chen & Ravallion, 2004, 2007). This increasing inequality in income, Jaumotte et al. (2008) reported, has come as a result of the impact of technological change. And, although inequality of resources may not lead inevitably to cultural conflict, there is a need, especially in developing countries, for reliable, high-quality data from researchers studying the issue (Cramer, 2005).

Summary

The issues I have mentioned in this section represent only a few of the pressing challenges facing the people of planet Earth in the twenty-first century. As long as we continue to exhibit the universal tendency to elevate in-groups and denigrate out-groups, humans will experience cultural conflict. Although today we would see many of his views as outmoded, Sumner (1906), writing more than a century ago, discussed these issues, and others—war, land, inequality, racial divides, women’s roles, economy, and more—that continue to trouble us today. It is no doubt true, as Cole (2006) concluded, that psychologists cannot solve all the world’s problems, but, Cole pointed out, if they work with others—from different cultures and different disciplines—psychologists can certainly be contributors to solutions for the common problems of humanity. There is no lack of opportunity, no dearth of challenges, for the budding psychologist with an interest in culture.

Where Have We Been?

The authors of the earlier chapters in this book have provided a variety of cultural perspectives from which to view many of the subject matters of twenty-first- century psychology. These have included such broad concepts as universal ethnocentric tendencies, basic research methods underlying cross-cultural research, the wide scope of human development, the culture–cognition connection, the roles of women across cultures, culture and emotion, and human health and well-being. Some other chapters have a more specific or focused emphasis: educational assessment, the teaching of mathematics, historical aspects of research in perception, sexual minorities, psychotherapy, disabilities, conceptions of self, attribution theory, attractiveness, and African organizational styles. The authors of chapters on these topics, and more, have demonstrated that cross-cultural psychology spans a fascinating range of theoretical, empirical, and applied interests.

Although we have used the term cross-cultural psychology as an inclusive label, these chapters contain ideas consistent with the perspectives identified by previous writers as cross-cultural (Segall, Dasen, Berry, & Poortinga, 1999), cultural (Heine, 2008), and indigenous (Shams, 2002). And they touch upon aspects of all the domains that Kagitçibas¸i and Berry (1989) suggested cross-cultural psychology should encompass: theory and method, biology and evolution, perception and cognition, social psychology, values and attitudes, personality, gender, human development, mental health and therapy, ethnic psychology and acculturation, and work and organizational psychology. Further, the authors of this volume share at least three core values:

1. 1 They couch their work in research-based findings arising from empirical investigation.

2. 2 They assign culture a central role in their research and their interpretations.

3. 3 They are committed to broadening cultural understanding, and to strengthening cross-cultural psychology, through teaching.

The last of these, teaching, holds promise not only for development and communication of the content of cross-cultural psychology, but also for cultivation of the next generation of psychologists who will place culture at the fore in their own future work. What can we learn from psychologists who have made the teaching of cross-cultural psychology their central emphasis?

Teaching Cross-Cultural Psychology

As you have seen in Chapter 1 of this volume, teaching in American psychology has too often been limited in its scope, with its focus placed largely on white European Americans. Western psychologists have too often assumed that their findings were universally valid (e.g., Arnett, 2009), leading critics to argue that mainstream psychology has been mechanistic, individualistic, and acultural (Misra & Gergen, 1993). The cultural limitations of Western psychology are not new; Albee (1988), for example, pointed out the ethnocentrism and prejudice present in the work of early leaders in the field, including Francis Galton, G. Stanley Hall, and Robert Yerkes, among others. Despite longstanding neglect of culture in the teaching of undergraduate psychology, Segall, Lonner, and Berry (1998) argued that cross- cultural psychology is a scholarly field that should find its place in the curriculum.

A number of teachers of psychology have worked to develop pedagogical approaches to effectively teach cross-cultural psychology. As early as 1975, Brislin wrote about teaching the subject, and Cushner (1987) characterized cross-cultural psychology as the “missing link” in teaching, suggesting that students’ understanding of culture may be impaired by their lack of experience, and that, conversely students who have traveled abroad may lack the conceptual foundation to properly appreciate the experience. At about the same time, Cole (1984) observed that cross-cultural psychology was “often treated as a slightly miscreant stepchild, or perhaps as just a specialized method” (p. 1000). Cushner described the use of scenarios presenting students with depictions of incidents involving people from different cultures. This is a technique that Brislin, Cushner, Cherrie, and Yong (1986) called culture-assimilator training. Participants chose from among possible alternative responses to the incidents, and received feedback about their choices— resulting in improved knowledge and empathy.

Goldstein (1995) offered guidelines to psychology teachers for integration of culture and diversity into the curriculum. Specifically, she recommended:

1. 1 avoiding the marginalization of cross-cultural materials and perspectives

2. 2 raising awareness about bias within the cross-cultural literature

3. 3 avoiding the creation or reinforcement of stereotypes

4. 4 using accurate terminology to make cross-cultural comparisons

5. 5 distinguishing between etics and emics

6. 6 creating a classroom environment in which diversity is valued. (pp. 228–231)

Cross-cultural teachers, Goldstein argued, could be transformative agents in moving the field of psychology toward recognition of human diversity and preparing students to more effectively combat bias and stereotyping in research and practice.

Hill (2002) further emphasized the importance of integration of cross-cultural perspectives in the teaching of psychology, not only noting the limitations of an ethnocentric American psychology, but also suggesting that the field would suffer the loss of multicultural and international students who might choose not to enter a field they perceived lacking in ethnic and cultural diversity. Hill’s message echoed that of Albert (1988), who described the neglect of the concept of culture, and Romero (1988), who advocated for teaching emphasizing ethnic psychology.

More recently, Abrahamson (2009) described a variety of assignments designed to increase student awareness of culture and to bring students into contact with people of other cultures in meaningful ways. Abrahamson concluded that students gained heightened awareness and that faculty members reported improvement in students’ ability to interpret research across cultures. Goldstein (2008) presented a large collection of teaching activities, demonstrations, and assignments similarly intended to aid student understanding and application of cultural concepts in psychology courses, and Phan (2009) reported the use of a variety of games and simulations to engage students with cultural issues.