Friday, August 7, 10:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Concert Hall, Performing Arts Center
Convenors: Çitdem Kagitçibasi, TURKEY and Ype H. Poortinga,
THE NETHERLANDS
Conceptions of Culture and the Person for Psychology
Yoshihisa Kashima, AUSTRALIA
Cross-Cultural Analysis of Social Behavior
Theodore M. Singelis, USA, Uichol Kim, SOUTH KOREA
The History and Future of Development in Cross-Cultural Psychology
Heidi Keller, GERMANY, Patricia M. Greenfield, USA
Methodological Issues in Psychological Research on Culture
Fons J.R. van de Vijver, THE NETHERLANDS, Kwok Leung, Hong Kong, PRC
Applied Cross-Cultural Psychology: Perspectives on Interventions in Health
and Education
Sara Harkness, USA
Can Industrial and Organizational Psychology Offer Solutions to Developing
Country Problems?
Zeynep Aycan, TURKEY
Abstracts and Authors
The present state and future of cross-cultural psychology
Kagitçibasi, Ç., Koc University, TURKEY, Poortinga,Y.H., Tilburg
University, THE NETHERLANDS
This symposium aims to accomplish two main goals-a critical evaluation of
the current state of affairs in cross-cultural psychology, and an assessment
of how and where cross-cultural psychology can make a contribution in the
next 25 years. The critical evaluation, focusing on cross-cultural research
spanning different fields of study, will provide views about the present
scope of the discipline, as well as its status, realized and unrealized
potential, accomplishments and shortcomings. The assessment for the future
will provide visions of where cross-cultural psychology seems to be going
and where it should be going to optimize its affect on psychology as a science
and in terms of its applied significance. Thus, this symposium takes a good
look at cross-cultural psychology at the Silver Jubilee of IACCP and envisions
its future, toward the golden jubilee.
Some of the basic issues to be addressed include what theoretical and metatheoretical
perspectives shape current cross-cultural psychology today; which ones of
these promise to sustain into the first quarter of the 21st century; whether
these perspectives promise to open up cross-cultural psychology towards
broader directions of growth and progress or conversely to narrow the outlook
of researchers; what are the research and methodology implications of the
current debates in the field; what research directions can be envisaged
for the coming decades; what may be the future balance of pure and applied
research emphasis; how is cross-cultural psychology expected to relate to
the other social and behavioral sciences; how will it relate to applications
and whether it will inform human policies and contribute to human well being
particularly with increasing globalization.
Conceptions of Culture and the Person for Psychology
Kashima, Y., La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria, AUSTRALIA
As the Enlightenment conception of the person began to crumble, culture
(re)emerged as a major theme in the 1980s. Nevertheless, a metatheoretical
tension between Naturwissenschaften and Geisteswissenschaften (roughly translated
as natural and cultural sciences) also surfaced in psychology with an undesirable
connotation of the materialism-idealism dispute. It is suggested that a
materialist (or physicalist) ontology is a common assumption shared among
contemporary psychologists interested in the culture-mind relation. Other
shared assumptions include a Darwinian evolutionism and cultural-historical
embeddedness of psychological processes and their development in social
context. In this emerging consensus, culture is conceptualized as a species-specific
property of Homo sapiens, which transmits information not only genetically
across generations, but also symbolically between and within generations.
Culture is thus integral to the on-going process of tool use and symbol
manipulation. Contemporary issues in the culture-mind relation such as evolution
and culture (modularity), and cultural and cross-cultural psychology are
discussed against this common background.
Cross-Cultural Analysis of Social Behavior
Singelis, T.M., California State University, Chico, California, USA , Kim,
U., Seoul, SOUTH KOREA
The present state and viable directions for cross-cultural research in social
psychology from two points of view are discussed. While both are critical
of current research, the first viewpoint builds on and refines current theory
and methodology. It suggests increased complexity, the inclusion of situation
variables, and the need to use multiple levels of analysis. This view recommends
self-presentation as a future area of cross-cultural research. The second
point of view challenges the bases of current psychological knowledge asserting
it is the accumulation of "psychologists' psychology" and not
the psychology of the people; that while current experimental results tell
us differences exist between groups they cannot explain how those differences
arose; and that meaning and context have been eliminated from research stimuli
and re-constituted by the researcher. Both views propose that all research
becomes cultural, making explicit what is implicit and assumed to be "natural."
The second view suggests investigations of indigenous or psychological concepts
(e.g., self, stress, achievement) using indigenous methodologies. Empirical
results affirming the scientific validity of the indigenous method are presented.
The History and Future of Development in Cross-Cultural Psychology
Keller, H., University of Osnabrück, GERMANY, Greenfield, P.M., University
of California, Los Angeles, USA
We will begin with a paradox: the important role of cultural and cross-cultural
psychology in developmental psychology, along with the relative lack of
influence of developmental issues in cross-cultural psychology. We will
then discuss why cross-cultural psychology needs developmental concepts
and methodology in order to advance the field. The final part of our presentation
will discuss our perspective on where the field needs to go: towards development
as the synthesis of culture and biology. We will then provide an empirical
example of such a synthesis. This example will focus on the integration
of culture and biology from birth to maturity in a Mayan community in Chiapas,
Mexico.
Methodological Issues in Psychological Research on Culture
van de Vijver, F.J.R., Tilburg University, THE NETHERLANDS, Leung, K., Chinese
University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, PRC
Trends in methodological issues in psychological research on culture will
be reviewed. Various questions will be addressed. First, have the methodological
procedures and statistical techniques that are commonly applied by cross-cultural
psychologists changed in the last 25 years? Second, most cross- cultural
research that is published is not carried out by researchers with a career
in cross- cultural psychology but by researchers who collected cross-cultural
data in their specialty. The question will be considered which methodological
and statistical procedures belong to the basic toolkit of the cross-cultural
researcher. Third, particular statistical techniques are eminently suitable
for cross-cultural research, such as Item Response Theory. The question
will be considered why these techniques are so infrequently applied. Fourth,
cross-cultural psychologists often compare nations in terms of psychological
characteristics. Problems associated with the meaning of a construct at
this aggregated level, as opposed to the individual level, will be discussed.
Applied Cross-Cultural Psychology: Perspectives on Interventions in Health
and Education
Harkness, S., University of Connecticut, USA
Current trends in cross-cultural research as they inform interventions in
health and education, particularly maternal and child health and nutrition,
early childhood development, literacy, and home-school relations will be
considered. Two shifts in the populations studied have had a major impact
on work in this field. First, growing awareness of cultural traditions (particularly
Asian) that foster superior school achievement has necessitated a shift
away from deficit models in applied comparative studies. Second, the presence
of significant immigrant populations within countries of the "developed"
world has blurred the previously clear distinction between cross-cultural
and intra-cultural studies. There is also a growing diversity in the cultural
and disciplinary backgrounds of the researchers themselves, resulting in
increasingly sophisticated consideration of basic psychological constructs
such as the nature of the self and self-other relationships. It is suggested
that future research and interventions in health and education should build
on these trends from cross-cultural psychology toward global psychology,
while avoiding the pitfalls of extreme relativistic contextualism.
Can Industrial and Organizational Psychology Offer Solutions to Developing
Country Problems?
Aycan, Z., Koc University, TURKEY
Industrial and organizational (I/O) psychology is one of the most popular
fields of applied psychology. However, I/O attracts little attention from
cross-cultural psychologists. This may be due to a belief that research
in this field does not offer solutions to developing country problems to
the same extent as research in other fields of applied psychology (e.g.,
health, education, developmental). This viewpoint will be challenged by
demonstrating that I/O contributes substantially to individual, organizational
and societal development, and it can be expected to do so more in the future
as cross-cultural research in I/O increases in volume. The main research
areas in I/O will be reviewed first, followed by a demonstration of how
each can meaningfully contribute to individual and societal welfare. Specifically,
issues pertaining to unemployment and underemployment, training, work force
integration of women, child labor, employment of disabled, occupational
health and safety, and quality of work life will be discussed.