Question

Why cross-cultural psychology should be considered as a method of psychology and not a field within psychology?

Answer 1

Why cross-cultural psychology should be considered as a method of psychology and not a field within psychology?

Well, to really understand or ascertain the validity of this debatable statement, lets first briefly look at what is Cross-Cultural Psychology.

Cross-cultural psychology is actually considered a branch of psychology that looks at how cultural factors influence human behaviour. While many aspects of human thought and behaviour are universal, cultural differences can lead to often surprising differences in how people think, feel, and act. For e.g. Some cultures, might stress individualism whilst other cultures may place a higher value on collectivism.

Cross-cultural psychology primarily focusses on one of two approaches:

• The etic approach focuses on studying how different cultures are similar.
• The emic approach focuses on studying the differences between cultures.

So, in a nutshell, Cross-cultural psychology, is focused on studying human behaviour in a way that takes the effects of culture into account.

Now, having stated the above, let’s look at why Cross-Cultural Psychology can be considered a method and not a field in Psychology.

To support this statement, a great psychologist, Walter J. Lonner, also mentioned in his writing for Eye on Psi Chi, that cross-cultural psychology can be thought of as a type research methodology, rather than an entirely separate field within psychology.

The psychology field is very complex and it encompasses a variety of branches or methods, including cross-cultural psychology. This branch or method of psychology looks at the influences of diverse cultural aspects on how individuals, groups, and populations behave. It is very different from other branches and involves two research methods, emic and etic as stated before. It is also applied to various other types of subfields of psychology.

Many other branches of psychology center on how family members, friends, and other people influence the behaviour of a person, but the majority do not consider the powerful effect that culture may have on the actions of individuals. This type of psychology focuses on examining human behaviour in a way that considers the impact of many cultural factors. That’s one of the reasons why this discipline is often referred to as a form of research methodology, instead of a separate branch within psychology.

Additionally, this branch of psychology is applied in nearly all subfields of psychology, including general psychology, cognitive psychology, counselling and clinical psychology. That’s another thought to reason that it should be considered as a method.

Mostly cross-cultural psychology focuses on describing the psychology of different peoples without attempting to explain the cultural basis of these psychological differences. Culture is construed as a platform on which psychology rests, which is external to psychology, rather than as constituting psychology. We may say that this approach to cross-cultural psychology studies psychology in culture rather than culture in psychology. The platform model requires little understanding of culture (in general or in particular) because culture is not brought into contact with psychology. For e.g. when Chinese and Americans have different views of injustice, the difference is attributed to individualism-collectivism (IC) because China and the US score differently on IC. In other words, Chinese are from a collectivistic culture so collectivism explains their psychology. However, China and America differ in many ways besides individualism-collectivism.

Cross- Cultural Psychology largely is a subfield of Cultural Psychology, which explores the general relationship between thought processes, behaviours, and cultures. These psychologists investigate how cultural influences affect the mind, and how the mind helps create cultural influences. Whilst cross-cultural psychology also examines cultural influences that affect thought processes and behaviour; however, it explores patterns between various cultures.

So, it would not be wrong to say that it can actually be considered as a method instead of a field in Psychology.

Just to Summarise:

Cross-cultural psychology is the scientific study of human behaviour and mental processes, including both their variability and invariance, under diverse cultural conditions. Through expanding research methodologies to recognize cultural variance in behaviour, language, and meaning it seeks to extend and develop psychology.

Cross-cultural psychology is differentiated or can be considered as an extension of cultural psychology, which refers to the branch of psychology that holds that human behaviour is strongly influenced by cultural differences, meaning that psychological phenomena can only be compared with each other across cultures to a limited extent. In contrast, cross-cultural psychology includes a search for possible universals in behaviour and mental processes. Cross-cultural psychology "can be thought of as a type of research methodology, rather than an entirely separate field within psychology".

Nevertheless, cross-cultural psychology, cultural psychology, and international psychology are united by a common concern for expanding psychology into a universal discipline capable of understanding psychological phenomena across cultures and in a global context.

The rise of this type of psychology reveals a universal process in social sciences that strives to purify certain areas of research that are currently subject to bias. This branch of psychology, combined with other subfields, seeks to make psychology less complicated.

Hope the aforementioned is free of any ambiguity and is useful to you.

Thanks