PSY450 Cross-Cultural Psychology

PSY450 Cross-Cultural Psychology

Cross-Cultural Psychology

Check before you submit. Get Turnitin Score Report in 15 Minutes.

Don't risk the 'Red' score. Get the exact same Turnitin report your professor uses. Join 50,000+ students who submitted their essays with confidence this semester.

Get Turnitin Score Report Request Human Rewrite

The field and branch of cross-cultural psychology is considered the “critical and comparative study of cultural effects on human psychology” (Shiraev & Levy, 2010, p. 2). This study is comparative because it uses more than one example to represent more than one cultural group and then draws conclusions from the multiple examples. Culture itself is referred to as the group characteristics a group of people exhibit and pass down through generations, such as attitudes, behaviors, customs, beliefs, and values. Critical skills are necessary in this study because one must use critical thinking to make those comparisons.

Relationship between Cultural and Cross-Cultural Psychology

Cross-cultural psychology seeks to understand and look at psychological diversity and the reasons for diversity among people and cultures. It also looks to study cross-cultural interactions, differences among cultural groups, and the universal similarities among people in cultures (Shiraev & Levy, 2010). Cultural psychology actually looks to find the links between the psychology of a person living within a culture and the culture itself. Instead of trying to critically evaluate the different cultures, cultural psychology tries to explain the psychological interaction between the people and the groups in cultures. Both cross-cultural and cultural psychology overlap in their disciplines because there is an interaction between the person and the culture, however they have major differences which causes for them to be two separate fields in psychology.

Critical Thinking in Cross-Cultural Psychology

Critical thinking is an important part of everyday life for individuals in general, not just for psychology. Critical thinking is a method of thinking that allows the person to be reflective and reason with and about their actions and beliefs. Critical thinking helps to regulate judgement, evaluations, reflections, interpretations, and decision making processes. It is an important factor in cross-cultural psychology because there has to be understanding about the different cultures and people in those cultures. Metathinking is considered “thoughts about thought” and are the tools used for problem solving and inquiries in cross-cultural psychology (Shiraev & Levy, 2010, p. 54). This helps people to think past bias and laziness. Even language is something that critical thinking can play a part in, because people typically speak their own beliefs and personal likes or dislikes. When it comes to another culture, a persons language can be biased even if the person is not truly biased. There are limits to language and it is hard to concoct the correct wording to describe the unknown when it comes to culture without being and sounding biased. In order for a person to use their critical thinking when it comes to language, they must understand how their personal values influence their language and recognize that all people in all cultures have this same issue.

Methodology Associated with Cross-Cultural Psychology

Understanding diversity among individuals and cultures requires reliable evidence and consistent data that has been interpreted in an unbiased way. There are two specific methods used in this field of psychology to ensure there are critical suggestions in gathering and interpreting data. Quantitative approaches use measures of central tendency when describing human behavior. Qualitative approaches seek to understand unobservable cognitions and behaviors. Quantitative research measures comparable data that has been retrieved through observation. Psychologists will study intuitions and beliefs and establish differences and similarities between the different variables. Human activities can be measured by scales, similar to that of weight and volume, such as ordinal, interval, and ratio scales. Qualitative research is done in a natural setting so that the subjects being studied and compared are unaware of the research. This looks to find hidden aspects of a person and culture that could be modified if in a research setting. A form of this is psychobiographical research, which seeks to gain an in-depth analysis of an individual within a specific culture. Every method of research is used in specific ways based on each situation whether it is through observation, surveys, experimentation, content analysis, focus groups, or meta-analysis.

Conclusion
In conclusion, cross-cultural psychology uses a way compare human behavior and human cognitions throughout cultures. Cross-cultural psychology is always seeking to understand differences among cultures and the people within them, while cultural psychology is always seeking to understand how culture itself affects psychology. Critical thinking, always a necessary skill to have, helps to close the gap on objective description and subjective evaluation through metathinking. Culture is an interesting and complicated phenomenon that is not just based on genetics, but is based on the social, psychological, and cognitive interactions.