On Dynamic Contexts and Unstable Categories

This chapter discusses the lead author’s research program at the intersection of cultural psychology and clinical psychology from 1997 to 2017, emphasizing work conducted with one or more of the co-authors—former graduate students who are now independent researchers. After a brief consideration of formative research experiences, the chapter begins with research on the dynamic contexts of migrants undergoing acculturation. Much of this work challenges essentialized cultural groups, although it also tends to rely on standard measures of psychosocial adjustment. In contrast, the next part of the chapter covers research on the unstable categories of psychopathology observed when cultural variation is taken seriously. Much of this work challenges essentialized diagnostic categories, although it also tends to rely on standard group comparisons. The chapter’s final major section describes the development of cultural-clinical psychology, proposing a research agenda that would combine dynamic views of culture and psychopathology with implications for clinical practice.

What Has Culture Got to Do with Emotions?

Emotions are relationship engagements that are dynamically and socioculturally constructed. Starting from the historic context in which the current research program originated, this chapter develops a theory in which cultural differences in emotion can be understood from the cultural context’s valued model of self and relating. It presents evidence for a “cultural logic” to emotion in the prevalence and content of emotion as well as to which experiences are associated with positive outcomes and well-being. Furthermore, it shows how a myriad of processes co-constitute the alignment of culture and emotion—processes that can be situated at the personal, interpersonal, and collective levels and that are highlighted when emotions are studied in acculturating individuals or biculturals. In concluding, this chapter presents a dynamic and sociocultural model of emotion in which people collectively construct their experiences in line with the prevalent meanings and practices of their sociocultural context.

Tower of Babel?

This chapter discusses approaches to literacy development and impairment across cultures. Much of the work has contrasted Chinese and English literacy learning. The chapter reviews the connection between speech and reading; the importance of alphabet knowledge for reading; the nature and significance of morphological awareness for several aspects of literacy; aspects of writing such as maternal mediation, copying, and writing composition; and reading comprehension. Work in different cultural contexts has highlighted the fact that there are universals common to the literacy acquisition process but also aspects that are more important for reading and writing in some languages and scripts than in others.

Bicultural Identity Integration

In this chapter, the authors examine the social-personality processes underlying multiculturalism and multicultural identity and the cultural and societal factors that influence these phenomena. They focus the discussion on bicultural identity integration (BII), an individual difference construct describing the extent to which a bicultural individual experiences her two cultural identities as compatible and integrated versus oppositional and compartmentalized. Drawing from the literatures of acculturation, social-personality and cultural psychologies, and interculturalism studies, the authors review research on the antecedents and outcomes associated with BII. While there is extensive evidence showing that BII is psychologically consequential, and also an important moderator of how multicultural individuals respond to different kinds of cultural information and demands, there remains pressing needs to understand the developmental trajectories that influence BII, the role of macro societal and historical factors in how BII changes, and how BII can be used to understand multiculturalism in social collectives.

The Psychological Foundations of Ritual Learning

ritual is a universal feature of human culture. A decade of psychological research provides new insight into the early emerging propensity for ritual learning. Children learn the ritual practices and instrumental skills of their communities by observing and imitating trusted group members such as adults and peers. They use social and contextual cues to determine when an action is an instrumental skill versus a ritual, and they modify their behavior accordingly. When behavior is interpreted as a ritual, children imitate with higher fidelity, engage in less innovation, are more accurate when detecting differences, and display more functional fixedness than when behavior is interpreted as instrumental. Children and adults also transmit ritual behavior to others with higher fidelity than they do instrumental behavior. The authors propose that affiliation with social groups motivates imitative fidelity of ritual. Species-specific social learning mechanisms facilitate the transmission of instrumental skills as well as rituals intergenerationally and enable cumulative cultural learning.

Culture and Memory

This chapter explores memory as a constructive process occurring at the intersection of a person and their social-cultural world. To do this, it moves away from the traditional metaphor of memory as storage and develops the alternative metaphor of construction. The foundations for this approach are found in Lev Vygotsky’s theory of mediation and microgenesis, together with Frederic Bartlett’s notion of reconstructive remembering and methods of repeated and serial reproduction. Their ideas are combined to develop an approach that analyzes remembering as part of an evolving cultural process, one that is also often conflictual and transformative. This approach is illustrated with studies of the emergence of memories in conversation, the narrative mediation of memory, the role of social positioning, and the dynamics of urban memory during periods of radical social change.