Living in a Changing World

Over recent decades, massive socioeconomic development and accelerated globalization have led to substantial changes in human culture and psychology. In this chapter, the authors identify a general trend of human cultural change around the globe: individualism has been increasing whereas collectivism has been decreasing. This trend is manifested in diverse social indicators, cultural products, daily practices, and various domains of psychology including cognition, personality, attitudes and values, and human development. Cultural change, however, is not linear. Economic depression as well as other external forces such as disaster and pandemic may interfere with it; some aspects of cultural heritage may also endure over the course of modernization, and multicultural societies are burgeoning around the world. Our review highlights that culture is not a static construct but a dynamic process. Future studies may extend the content and scope of our current research, explore processes and mechanisms underlying cultural change, and examine how individuals, organizations, and governments cope with this change.

Control Orientations in the East and West

Individuals exercise control over themselves, others, and environment. According to a seminal work by Weisz, Rothbaum, and Blackburn, which represents a Western view, people in the West prefer to control others or environment to make their life more comfortable (primary control), whereas people in the East prefer to control themselves to fit into environment (secondary control). This chapter critically examines the Western conceptualization of control. Then an alternative view based on Asian value system is presented. According to this view, East–West differences exist not in the target of control (oneself vs. others or environment) but in how people attempt to control others and their environment. The authors present empirical evidence to support the alternative view and propose a framework to understand individuals’ seeking for psychological well-being in the East and West. Westerners (especially North Americans) prefer to control the environment so that they can feel autonomous, whereas Easterners (especially Japanese) care more about consequences of control in terms of interpersonal harmony.

Culture and Emotion

In this chapter, the authors integrate a seemingly disparate literature on culture and emotion by providing a biocultural model of emotion that integrates a biologically based core emotion system that is calibrated, regulated, and elaborated by culture. They describe three premises underlying the model that help to organize and understand disparate findings in emotion research. Given these premises, the authors believe that the seemingly contradictory literature on culture and emotion can be understood in a cohesive manner and somewhat neatly integrated into a coherent whole and that future research questions should focus on the relative contributions of biology and culture. Their position is that the relative contributions of biology and culture—and thus findings of universality or cultural specificity—differ depending on the type of emotion examined and the specific domain of emotion assessed.

The Role of Emotions in Socialization Processes Across Cultures

This chapter is based on an inextricable interrelationship between biology and culture that implies that there are universal and specific dimensions of psychological phenomena, including emotions. It is assumed that biological predispositions interact with environmental/cultural influences to shape human behavior and representational systems. After discussing the conceptions of emotions, culture, and cultural environment that underlie the discussion in this chapter, emotion socialization in different environments is presented. First, the Western middle-class child’s learning environment is portrayed before alternative developmental pathways are presented, in particular the rural farming context and some examples from non-Western urban middle-class families. Emotions are especially discussed with respect to their prevalence and centrality in socialization processes and cultural conventions of emotion expression. The author concludes that the evaluation of behaviors and behavioral representations developed in one culture with the standards of another culture is unscientific and unethical.

Culture, Context, and Development

Cross-cultural psychology and human development are currently experiencing an exciting period of growth. Segall, Lonner, and Berry have noted that when all psychology finally takes into account the effects of culture on human behavior (and vice versa), terms like cross-cultural and cultural psychology will become unnecessary. At that point, all psychology will be truly cultural. In this chapter, the author defines cross-cultural human development; theoretical perspectives and models; emerging themes, such as contextual influences; applications to social issues; and future directions. As the author has earlier stated, tremendous challenges and opportunities lie ahead and speculating about the future path of cross-cultural psychology is difficult.

Dimensions of Cultural Variation

To understand cultural differences, we need to find ways to characterize the variations in the social contexts in which people are located. To do so, we must focus on differences between contexts rather than differences between individuals. Most research of this type has examined differences between nations in terms of dimensions. Treating each nation as a unit, contrasts have been identified in terms of values, beliefs, self-descriptions, and social norms. The most influential difference identified concerned the dimension of individualism–collectivism, which has provided the theoretical framework for numerous studies. The validity of this type of investigation rests on close attention to aspects of measurement to ensure that respondents are able to make the necessary judgments and to respond in ways that are not affected by measurement bias. Where many nations are sampled, multilevel modeling can be used to show the ways in which dimensions of culture affect social behaviors.

Cultural Neuroscience

Cultural neuroscience is a research field that investigates the mutual influences of cultural and biological sciences on human behavior. Research in cultural neuroscience demonstrates cultural influences on the neurobiological mechanisms of processes of the mind and behavior. Culture tunes the structure and functional organization of the mind and the nervous system, including processes of emotion, cognition, and social behavior. Environmental and developmental approaches play an important role in the emergence and maintenance of culture. Culture serves as an evolutionary adaptation, protecting organisms from environmental conditions across geography. Cultural variation in the human mind, brain, and behavior serves to build and reinforce culture throughout the life course. This chapter examines the theoretical, methodological, and empirical foundations of cultural neuroscience and its implications for research in population health disparities and global mental health.

Research Methods

The authors present an overview of methodological issues in comparative studies, which have their intellectual roots in experimental psychology. This is followed by an introduction of the key concepts of bias (unintended sources of score differences, such as differential social desirability) and equivalence (implications of bias for the comparability of scores across cultures). Crucial to the chapter, a taxonomy of bias (constructs, methods, and items as sources of bias) and equivalence (construct/configural, metric, and scalar equivalence) is described. The most frequently employed statistical procedures to address bias and equivalence are presented. In the past few decades, the focus in the preparation of instruments for cross-cultural studies has shifted from translations (with an emphasis on linguistic considerations) to adaptations (which set out to integrate linguistic and psychological considerations). Types of adaptations are described. Finally, possible future developments are presented, such as the integration of emic and etic procedures.

Affect, Behavior, Cognition, and Development

The chapter reviews the major theoretical perspectives on acculturation and adaptation with their varying emphases on affect, behavior, cognition and development. Frameworks for elucidating Stress and Coping; Culture Learning; Cultural Orientations and Intercultural Relations; and Developmental Processes are discussed. Key conceptual and measurement issues are identified, empirical research is summarized and critically analyzed, and recommendations for advancing acculturation theory and research are presented for each approach. Finally, the chapter concludes that each of these approaches offers unique insights and that taken together, they provide a comprehensive perspective on acculturation processes and outcomes.

The Culturally Situated Self

The impact of culture on the self, the most fundamental unit of psychological inquiry, has captivated scholarly interest for decades. In this chapter, the authors review strands from this prolific body of cross-cultural research, sampled along several lines. They plot a rough trajectory from the early discussions of cultural forms of self-construal to emergent research in online presentation and consumer selfhood. They then illustrate culture’s profound effects on the cognitive, affective, and behavioral facets of the self by reviewing cultural variations in individuals’ self-concept, self-regard, and self-presentation. This cultural divergence notwithstanding, they argue for the universality of basic self-processes. Specifically, the authors claim that the need for positive self-regard and the motivation for self-enhancement exist in all cultural contexts, even as their cultural manifestations radically differ. The chapter concludes with an exploration of self-psychology in the current globalizing age, where cultures around the world are reformatted as consumer cultures.