Cross-Cultural Psychology

Culture is an observable, powerful force in any organization. “Made up of its members’ shared values, beliefs, symbols, and behaviors, culture guides individual decisions and actions at the unconscious level. As a result, it can have a potent effect on a company’s well-being and success” (One Page, n.d.).

In my personal opinion and experience, I find that the field of psychology is lacking in diverse cultural competencies as much as the society is diverse in its population. I believe that as with using any theoretical model, the therapists’ cultural knowledge needs to include understanding of the many cultural considerations influencing the effectiveness of treatment when dealing with clients from diverse backgrounds. When servicing the individuals in the family, care and attention needs to be directed towards family and community norms and values around help seeking, secrecy and confidentiality, family roles, child rearing and spiritual practices.

“Being WEIRD: How Culture Shapes the Mind,” by Ethan Watters, is a compelling article that challenges the reader’s perception on culture and cognition. Instead of cognition affecting culture, our culture affects our cognition. It’s interesting to conceptualize, and it makes one have to introspect their culture, beliefs, attitudes, and actions. Why do we do behave the way that we do? Are our thoughts our own? How much of us is influenced by our environment? This effect of culture can be rooted in our childhoods. We are taught societal norms and how to view, categorize, and perceive the world through the lens of the environment surrounding us. A prime example of this comes from the games we played growing up.

Cultural competency is critical in psychology practice. In the United States, the groups, which considered as cultural and ethnic minorities, are growing in the population (APA, 2003). Culture often influences the content and quality of people’s experience, perception, and response. Thus, it is important for psychologists to be aware of cultural influences on client’s presenting experience(s) (Gardiner & Kosmitzki, 2010). Without a regard for cultural influence, there is a significant risk for the psychologist to misunderstand, misinterpret, and misguide his or her client. Such misunderstanding, misinterpretation, and misguidance are not only unhelpful but can be detrimental for the client (Corey, Corey, & Callanan, 2011; Pope, & Vasquez, 2011).

Therefore, the need to be culturally competent is paramount to fostering understanding. Cultural competency is about understanding another’s artifacts, beliefs, values and basic assumptions (Schein, 2010). Schein describes artifacts as the observable elements of a culture, such as ceremonies, non verbal cues, and language. He further describes, belief structures serve as guide posts and are useful in understanding a reason for a behavior. Finally, he states, assumptions are based on previous experience of what was and was not successful in the past for the individual or group. Recognizing and identifying these elements improves an outsider’s cultural

The culture in which we were raised in has a big impact on who we are and how we behave. Our culture effects things such as how we dress, the way we interact with others, and our manners such as what we may or may not find funny or what we may find offensive or weird. In the Ethan Watters Article “Being WEIRD: How Culture Shapes the Mind” we see examples of how being raised in different cultures affects our decisions and the way we perceive things. For example, in the ultimatum game (which is played by giving the first player $100 dollars, he can then offer player 2 any amount of the $100 but if the second player rejects the money they both end up with nothing) we can see how differently Machiguengans and Americans were likely to play. We

Globalization and technological advancement have dictated the need for managers to deal with multiple ethnic groups with different culture in their day to day interactions. According to Kulkarni (2012), cultures play critical roles in individuals, including values, beliefs, humor, worries, fears, hopes, opinions, attachments, and anxieties.

An attitude are the long lasting beliefs, feelings, and behavioral responses towards social objects such as other people or issues (Attitudes and Behavior, n.d.). Attitudes can either be positive or negative.

The cultural limitation of the behavioral-electric approach is narrow, because it may not be suitable for non-national client groups and consultees with different time locations and a collateral social value such as several American Indian tribes and several Hispanics (Brown, Pryzwansky, and Schulte, 2011). According to Brown, Pryzwansky, and Schulte (2011), individuals who lives in in a culture where their lives is not based on the current time may feel alienated to individuals who do live by the current time. Some advantages of cognitive behavior approach are the importance of freedom, hope and past-time

Culture is fundamental to understanding human experience. It makes the world inspiring, entertaining, enables effective communication, and influences most factors of modern life, so it’s no surprise that psychologists are interested in the impact it has. Sociocultural psychology and cross- cultural psychology are two different approaches that explore cultural experience. The two disciplines, though different in their definitions of cultural impact, share many of the same goals and ideas, and can arguably offer great insight to the other approach. The potential for collaboration between the two disciplines to garner a rich insight into personal and social cultural influence means that the two approaches are by no means incompatible, and their compatibility can offer a wealth of positive contribution to psychological research.

Triandis (2000b) supports that cross-cultural and indigenous psychologists do not use the same personality tests instead the psychologist constructs an equivalent measure taking into consideration the sensitivity of the culture.

Cultural psychology is a field in psychology that assumes that the idea that culture and mind are inseparable and that psychological theories in one culture are likely to be limited in applicability when applied to different cultures.

Cross-cultural psychology and cultural psychology both study the effects of cultural norms on human psychology, as well as patterns of thinking, feelings, and actions that they display whereas cross-cultural psychology identifies the similarities and dissimilarities

Being aware of culture in the field has many benefits. The main benefit would be that it would help in providing better therapy for the client in question. Understanding how culture affects a client’s life can help explain the clients various roles and identities in life. Apart from that, understanding socio cultural settings will help the psychologist be more aware of the needs of their clients. For example, Indians are less comfortable in seeing a psychologist and are less liable to tell their family and friends that they are in currently undergoing therapy (Zhang, Snowden, & Sue, 1998). The psychologist should use information about the clients’ culture to personalise the therapy in order to enhance the effectiveness of it as well as to not discourage the client as well as to understand how culture affects the client and the disorder. The involvement of culture would also make the psychologist more aware of their own personal biases and mind-sets that maybe prevent the therapy from being effective. Creation of guidelines to help psychologists in the assessment of clients from varied cultures are important.

Opportunities to thrive have being one of the reason why people migrate to different countries. With such migration come culture, diversity, teaching and learning that allow individuals to interact and exchange different ideas. When there is an increase in population certain organizations emerge in order to comply the needs of certain groups. That is why in the psychological field, psychologists need to be part of organizations in order to learn and inform themselves of emerging changes regarding a group of people. The American Psychological Association of Multicultural Psychology created a guideline that will allow psychologist to learn how to behave with certain ethnic groups and will prevent them to have any cultural bias against them. In this paper I will be analyzing the importance of being an informed psychologists and the issues that being part of an organization might bring. It is important for psychologist to learned about changes within the cultural norms of certain groups that will allowed them to access valuable information in order to support organizational policy.