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Cross-cultural psychology

Cross-cultural psychology is the scientific study of human behavior across cultural or

national boundaries (Adler & Gielen, 2002). It is based on two premises: (1) That our culture
deeply impacts all aspects of our psyche—perception, cognition, development, personality,
abnormality, and social behavior. (2) For scientific psychology to be accurate, it must not study
these cultural variations rather than overlook them.

Definitions. As psychology has moved towards cultural diversity in the past half-
century, we should distinguish four emerging terms for four evolving specialties: (1)
"Multicultural" is the earliest of these four, focusing on cultural differences within a single
nation. This originated in the black civil rights movement of the 1950s, initially focused on
racial differences, and gradually expanded to incorporate ethnic, linguistic, and gender
differences in a single nation. (2) “Cross-cultural” psychology flowered quite separately since
the 1970s, leading up to the monumental five-volume Handbook of cross-cultural psychology
(Triandis & Berry, 1980), focusing on differences across national groups (Berry et al., 1997).
(3) “Cultural” (or indigenous) psychology emerged since the 1990s to study people in specific
groups in their own terms, believing that "not only cross-cultural psychology, but the entire
enterprise of scientific psychology is so flawed at its foundation that an entirely new discipline
for the study of culture in mind must be formulated" (Cole, 1996, p. 3). (4) Finally,
“international” psychology emerged in force since the 1990s, focusing on the field of
psychology across nations—its training, credentialing, associations.
Cross-cultural psychology is best seen as a mid-point between two extremes. One is
the “universal” extreme championed by Hans Eysenck (1995), for one--that a century of
scientific psychology has revealed universal truths about human perception, physiology, and
social behavior that vary little across national boundaries. The other is the “cultural” extreme,
which sees few if any truths independent of our cultural context. In the middle, cross-cultural
psychology seeks to compare cultures scientifically, to gauge the balance of behavior that is
culture-specific versus universal across cultures. While universal psychology minimizes
cultural variations, and cultural psychology emphasizes these variations, cross-cultural
psychology seeks to chart cultural variations through comparative research.

Importance. Since the 1980s in the USA, multicultural and cross-cultural psychology
are widely view as an overdue corrective for the field. For most of the century, experimental
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and psychometric psychologists collected data on white male college sophomores, and
published findings as if these were universal truths that applied to all, with no attempt to
replicate across gender, ethnic or national groups (Sears, 1986). As Robert Guthrie (1998)
crisply noted, “Even the rat was white.”
At the same time, psychology increasingly faces the unstated yet immense irony of
cross-species research. An estimated 20 million non-human animals of all sorts are studied by
U.S. researchers each year—cats, dogs, rabbits, mice, and other primates (Mukerjee, 1997).
This far outnumbers human participants, based on the premise that basic social as well as
physiological processes transcend species (Zajonc et al., 1969). How much can findings on
mice or dogs be generalized to humans? Psychology increasingly avers significant cultural
differences separating people within the human species, but not separating humans from other
species.

Development. In a way, cross-cultural psychology is as old as psychology itself.

While Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) is best known as the founder of the first psychology
laboratory in 1879 at the University of Leipzig, it was decades later that Wundt (1916)
authored his magnum opus, “Volkerpsychologie,” or folk psychology—a series of ten volumes
analyzing the nature of language, art, mythology, and religion. This comparative study of
cultural differences continued to flourish through the early 20 th century in the USA as well as
parts of Europe—Britain, France, Germany. One key example of this was the node of prolific
Columbia University psychologists and anthropologists who surrounded Franz Boas (1858-
1942) during his 40 years at Columbia from 1896 until 1936--like Ruth Benedict (1887-1949),
Margaret Mead (1901-1978), Otto Klineberg (1899-1992), Abraham Kardiner (1891-1981),
Anne Anastasi (1908-2001). In 1937, Anastasi debuted the first of her three editions of
Differential psychology, a brilliant 700-page tome in which culture was one group difference
among many--race, gender, age, income, language, schooling, family, anatomy, biology,
heredity.
In the 1940s, psychologists’ shock and disgust for the extreme “race science” of the
Nazi era led them to avoid for a few decades any discussion of group differences in behavior.
Differential psychology disappeared, only to resurface gradually with the civil rights
movement in the 1950s, then feminism in the 1960s, then ethnic pride in the 1970s.

Resources. A growing number of books, organizations, and resources are now

available for the also-growing number of students and professionals interested in cross-cultural
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psychology (Takooshian & Stambaugh, 2007). (1) The second edition of The handbook of
cross-cultural psychology (Berry et al., 1997) offers a comprehensive reference of 1,400 pages
in 32 chapters in three volumes. (2) The interdisciplinary Society for Cross-Cultural Research
(www.sccr.org) publishes its flagship journal, Cross-Cultural Research. (3) The International
Association of Cross Cultural Psychology (www.iaccp.org) publishes its Journal of Cross-
Cultural Psychology, and its website offers a compendium of dozens of course syllabi and
suggested DVDs. (4) The website of the International Union of Psychological Science
(www.iupsys.org) lists over 100 organizations, many of them focused on development,
assessment, or other specific aspects of cross-cultural psychology. (5) The American
Psychological Association offers an Office of International Affairs
(www.apa.org/international), as well as a division of international psychology
(www.internationalpsychology.net), each of which offers a web-based bulletin. (6) The
International Test Commission (www.intestcom.org) offers guidelines on the use of
assessments to study people across cultures.

References

Anastasi, A. (1937). Differential psychology. New York: Macmillan.

Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline. Cambridge MA: Harvard.
Berry, J.W., Poortinga, Y.H., Pandey, J., Dasen, P.R., Saraswathi, T.S., Segall, M.H., &
Cagitçibaci, C. (1997). (Eds.). Handbook of cross-cultural psychology (2 ed.). Needham
Heights MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Eysenck, H.J. (1995). Cross-cultural psychology and the unification of psychology. World
Psychology, 1, 11-30.
Guthrie, R.V. (1998). Even the rat was white: A historical view of psychology (2 ed.). Boston:
Allyn & Bacon.
Mukerjee, M. (1997, February). Trends in animal research. Scientific American, 86-93.
Sears, D.O. (1986). College sophomores in the laboratory: Influences of a narrow data base on
social psychology's view of human nature. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology,
51, 515-530.
Triandis, H.C., & Berry, J.W. (1980). Handbook of cross-cultural psychology. Boston MA:
Allyn & Bacon. [5 volumes]
Wundt, W. (1916). Elements of folk psychology: Outlines of a psychological history of the
development of mankind. (E.L. Schaub, Trans.). London: Allan and Unwin.
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Zajonc, R.B., Heingartner, A., & Herman, E.M. (1969). Social enhancement and impairment of
performance in the cockroach. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 13, 83-92.

Suggested readings

Adler, L.L., & Gielen, U.P. (2002). (Eds.). Cross-cultural topics in psychology. (2 ed.).
Westport CT: Praeger. [An introductory reader]
Eysenck, M. (2004). Psychology: An international perspective. London: Erlbaum. [A
comprehensive 984-page textbook, replete with cross-national examples and concepts]
Takooshian, H., & Stambaugh, L.F. (2007). Getting involved in international psychology.
Pages 365-389 in M.J. Stevens & U.P. Gielen (Eds.). Toward a global psychology:
Theory, research, intervention, and pedagogy. Mahwah NJ: Erlbaum. [A practical
overview.]

Related keywords: multi-cultural psychology, international psychology, cultural psychology,

indigenous psychology

Harold Takooshian, PhD

Fordham University