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Cultural Psychology
Cultural psychology is the study of how culture reflects
and shapes the psychological processes of a given culture's
members. The main idea in cultural psychology is that the
human mind and culture are inseparable. People are shaped by
their culture, and culture is shaped by their
psyche. Cultural psychology is therefore the study of the
way cultural traditions and social practices regulate,
express and transform the human psyche. Cultural psychology
has a strong focus on mankind's group differences in
thinking, self-perception and emotions, as well as interest
in their unity.
Cultural psychology is often confused with cross-cultural
psychology that seeks to use culture as a benchmark to test
the universality of psychological processes. Cultural
psychology, on the other hand, aims to see the connections
between local cultural forms and psychological
processes. Thus, cultural psychology is a separate branch of
psychology with links to other branches, such as social
psychology, developmental psychology and cognitive
psychology. Based on a relativistic perspective, cultural
psychology seeks to compare thought patterns, emotional
expressions and behaviors within and across cultures. This
goes from time to time across the universal perspectives
that seek psychological truths that are assumed to be
constant for all humanity.
Cultural psychology has long cues in psychology, but its
significance has varied greatly. Both Wilhelm Wundt and Lev
Vygotsky considered culture indispensable for a good
understanding of the central aspects of human psychological
functioning. Vygotsky presented views and arguments that all
human higher psychological functions had to be cultural.
Cultural variation
Cultural psychology has emphasized the need for expanded
cultural research within the established fields of
psychology, often due to repeated failure to replicate
Western psychological laboratory findings in non-Western
environments. Psychological data with great cultural
variation contribute as a corrective to the assumed
universal, established theories.
Cultural psychology research has focused on a number of
issues and has documented significant cultural differences
within, among others, these psychological areas:
- even Perception
- Cognitive processes and ability for logical
reasoning
- Emotional expression and mood
- Meaning of emotions, including aggression
- Motivation
- Psychopathological conditions
Cultural psychology studies have shown how basic
cognitive processes vary between members of different
cultures. For example, studies have shown that US, Canadian
and Western European subjects use different analytical
strategies from Chinese and Korean when conducting problem
solving. This leads to significant differences in the result
and in the actual perception of what the problem consists
of. These different cognitive processes lead to significant
differences in behavior and understanding of the situation
of the groups. In the same way, the fundamental attribution
error seems to be more prominent in Western cultures than in
non-Western, which is probably due to differences in
cognitive processes.
Research
Cultural psychology uses a variety of methods in its
research. Parts of the studies that are central to the
subject do not differ significantly from scientific studies
based on observation, experiment, data analysis and so on,
which are common in the rest of psychology. The use of
laboratory experiments has proved fruitful in revealing a
number of systematic psychological differences between
members of different cultures.
Cultural psychologists have also made extensive use of
more qualitatively constructed methods, typically inspired
by social anthropological fieldwork and from studies of
historical changes in psychological expressions. In
addition, cultural psychology has attracted interest in
discoveries from other areas of psychology and
neuroscience. An example is neuro-imaging studies that help
to strengthen the reliability of conclusions from cultural
psychological research.
Key professionals in the field of cultural psychology are
Lev Vygotsky, Richard Shweder, Steven J. Heine, Richard
Nisbett and Hazel Rose Markus. In Norway, Arnulf Kolstad has
been prominent. |
