Cross Cultural Psychology - Relationship Between Cultural and Cross-Cultural Psychology

Cross-Cultural psychology

Psy/450

May,04,2011

Cross-Cultural psychology

Cultural psychology can be defined as the study of a set of attitudes, behaviors, and symbols shared by a large group of people that are normally passed down from one generation to the next ( Shiraev & Levy, 2010). Cross-Cultural(CC) psychology is the study of critical and comparative effects on human psychology across diverse cultures ( Shiraev & Levy, 2010). Cross-Cultural psychology looks at cultures in diverse settings and meticulously analyze interactions within one culture to the next to establish psychological universals that may be common to all cultures ( Shiraev & Levy, 2010).

Relationship between cultural and cross-cultural psychology

The relationship that cultural and cross-cultural psychology share, is that they both are interested in culture. They both seek to understand the attitudes, behaviors, and symbols that psychologically effect a particular culture ( Shiraev & Levy, 2010). While both of these studies posses a common goal, they are indeed different studies. Cultural psychology employs the majority of its time and study towards finding a link between people, populations, within a particular culture ( Shiraev & Levy, 2010). Cross-Cultural psychology focus is not just on one particular culture within a region, but it focuses on neighboring cultures to understand what type of universalities both cultures may share that uniquely shape and indirectly connect their cultures ( Shiraev & Levy, 2010). Cross-Cultural psychology also focuses on the types of knowledge that it incorporates into its study. The type of knowledge that cross-cultural psychology incorporates into its studies are the scientific knowledge, popular (folk), ideological (value-based), and legal. These four types of knowledge allows a researcher to gather data in a professional manner, but it also allows a researcher to be sensitive to other cultures needs, desires, and beliefs.

Role of critical thinking in cross-cultural psychology

The role that critical thinking plays in cross-cultural psychology begins with words that describe and evaluate; not only do words describe but, they prescribe what is desirable and undesirable to a researcher ( Shiraev & Levy, 2010). Therefore, meta-thinking which incorporates meta-thoughts ("thoughts about thoughts") is a way that eliminates the evaluative bias of language when conducting research or describing a person ( Shiraev & Levy, 2010). Critical thinking is also a prevention for other bias phenomena, such as differentiating dichotomous variables, continuous variables, The similarity-uniqueness paradox, The Barnum effect, The Assimilation bias, The representativeness bias, and The availability bias ( Shiraev & Levy, 2010). While there are many more biasing factors this form of critical thinking can serve as a foundation for identifying other as -yet- unidentified cognitive errors, as well as their antidotes ( Shiraev & Levy, 2010). Critical thinking will also help eliminate other biasing effects and allow a cross-cultural psychologists to improve the clarity of thinking and accuracy to problems while opening pathways to new perspectives and alternative points of view ( Shiraev & Levy, 2010).

Methodology associated with cross-cultural psychology

The methodologies that have been associated with cross-cultural psychology is based on four basic goals of