Cross-Cultural Psychology
The academic discipline of psychology was developed largely in North America and Europe. Some would argue that it has been remarkably successful in understanding what drives human behavior and mental processes, which have long been thought to be universal. But in recent decades some researchers have started questioning this approach, arguing that many psychological phenomena are shaped by the individual cultures in which we live.
Experimental psychologists typically study behavior in a small group of people, with the assumption that any findings can be generalized to the wider human population. However, for decades, psychologists have disproportionately relied on undergraduate students to serve as subjects for their studies, simply because they are readily available to researchers at universities. More dramatically still, a 2010 study by evolutionary psychologist Joseph Henrich and his colleagues found that more than 90 percent of participants in psychological studies come from a very particular portion of the human population: the inhabitants of countries that are WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic). Clearly, the people who live in these countries are not a random sample.
Here’s a thought experiment that suggests the extent to which our mental processes are shaped by the society in which we grow up: When asked to consider which two of the following objects go together – a panda, a monkey, and a banana – respondents from Western cultures routinely select the monkey and the panda, because both are animals. This is indicative of an analytic thinking style, in which objects are perceived, for the most part, independent of their context.
In contrast, participants from Asian countries will often select the monkey and the banana, because they belong in the same environment and share a relationship (monkeys eat bananas). This is a holistic thinking style, in which object and context are perceived to be interrelated.
In a classic demonstration of cultural differences in thinking styles, Takahiko Masuda and Richard E. Nisbett presented participants from Japan and the United States with a series of animated scenes. Each lasting about 20 seconds, the scenes showed various aquatic creatures, vegetation, and rocks in an underwater setting. In a subsequent recall task, both groups of participants were equally likely to remember salient objects, such as the larger fish. But the Japanese participants were better than the American participants at recalling background information, such as the color of the water. Thus, the holistic mode of thinking tends to focus on background and context just as much as foreground. This principle accounts, too, for Masuda and Nisbett’s observation that in a follow-up experiment, the Japanese participants “recognized previously seen objects more accurately when they saw them in their original settings rather than in novel settings, whereas this manipulation had relatively little effect on Americans.”
Numerous studies have shown that cultural differences in thinking styles are pervasive in cognition and that they affect memory, attention, perception, reasoning, and even how we talk and think. For example, if you were asked to describe yourself, what would you say? Would you list your personal characteristics, such as being intelligent or funny, or would you use preferences, such as “I love pizza”? Or perhaps you would instead mention social relationships, such as “I am a parent”? Social psychologists have long maintained that people are much more likely to describe themselves and others in terms of stable personal characteristics than they are to describe themselves in terms of their preferences or relationships.
However, in a landmark 1991 paper, social psychologists Hazel R. Markus and Shinobu Kitayama put forward the idea that self-construal is culturally variant. They noted that individuals in some cultures understand the self as independent, a view more prevalent in Europe and North America, whereas those in other cultures perceive it as interdependent, a view more prevalent in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.
Another domain that was originally dominated by studies of WEIRD samples is mental health. However, culture can affect our understanding of mental health in different ways. Because of the existence of cultural differences in behavior, the conceptual framework – based on detecting deviant or nonnormative behaviors – isn’t complete. What may be seen as normal in one culture (for example modesty) could be seen as deviating from the norm in another, and might be treated as a disorder or a social phobia.
Clearly, culture has a massive effect on how we view ourselves and how we are perceived by others. Only by knowing about these effects will we ever be able to identify the core foundations of the human mind that we all share.
Nicolas Geeraert, American Scientist