Globalizing Cultural Psychology

Cultural psychology has come of age over the last three decades by documenting systematic variations between Westerners (primarily North Americans of European descent) and East Asians (primarily those of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean descent) in cognition, emotion, and motivation. At present, however, little is known about the extent to which the variations in the implicit psychological tendencies might extend to other regions of the world. This is a major omission because many other regions on the globe, including those in Latin America (e.g., Brazil or Venezuela), Africa (e.g., Somalia or Nigeria), the Middle East (e.g., Saudi Arabia or UAE), Central Asia (e.g., Kazakhstan or Mongolia), and South Asia (e.g., India or Indonesia), have emerged as crucial strategic locales for geopolitical, economic, and military arenas. Cultural psychology has yet to fully globalize, as do all other subfields of psychology.

This project draws on our continuing effort to understand (i) the ecological basis of culture and (ii) varieties of interdependence that are thought to have developed in different non-Western regions as an adaptation to varying ecologies.

Ecological Basis of Culture

Over the years, we have investigated a number of ecological variables that motivate independent vs. interdependent modes of being, including frontier settlement, farming vs. herding, rice vs. wheat farming, among others.

If you are interested in learning more about this work, please see the following representative publications.

  • Kitayama, S., Ishii, K., Imada, T., Takemura, K., & Ramaswamy, J. (2006). Voluntary settlement and the spirit of independence: Evidence from Japan’s “Northern Frontier”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 369-384.
  • Uskul, A. K., Kitayama, S., & Nisbett, R. E. (2008). Eco-cultural basis of cognition: Farmers and fishermen are more holistic than herders. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 105, 8552-8556.
  • Kitayama, S., Park, H., Servincer, A. T., Karasawa, M., & Uskul, A. K. (2009). A cultural task analysis of implicit independence: Comparing North America, West Europe, and East Asia. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 236-255.
  • Kitayama, S., Conway, L. G., Pietromonaco, P., Park, H., & Plaut, V. (2010). Ethos of independence across regions of the U.S.: The production-adoption model of cultural change. American Psychologist, 65, 559-574.
  • Varnum, M. E. W., & Kitayama, S. (2011). What’s in a name? Popular names are less common in frontiers. Psychological Science, 22, 176-183.
  • Talhelm, T., Zhang, X., Oishi, S., Shimin, C., Duan, D., Lan, X., & Kitayama, S. (2014). Discovery of large-scale psychological differences within China explained by rice versus wheat agriculture. Science, 344, 603-608.
  • Varnum, M. E., & Kitayama, S. (2017). The neuroscience of social class. Current Opinion in Psychology, 18, 147–151. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.07.032
  • Miyamoto, Y., Yoo, J., Levine, C. S., Park, J., Boylan, J. M., Sims, T., et al. (2018). Culture and social hierarchy: Self- and other-oriented correlates of socioeconomic status across cultures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 115(3), 427–445. http://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000133

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Varieties of Interdependence

We have proposed that non-Western regions are generally more interdependent, but this does not mean that the regions are homogeneous. To the contrary, they are extremely diverse because they adopt very different strategies to attain the valued state of interdependent. Building on our recent work on Arabs (San Martin et al., 2018), we have recently organized a research team of 16 scholars from the seven regions on the globe (North America, Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America). We hope to move forward and engage in major data collection effort from these sites to test the predictions delineated above. More will come on this project in a few years. Stay tuned.

If you are interested in learning more about this work, please see the following representative publications.

  • Salvador, C. E., Idrovo Carlier, S., Ishii, K., Torres Castillo, C., Nanakdewa, K., Savani, K., San Martin, A., & Kitayama, S. (preprint, 2020). Expressive interdependence in Latin America: A Colombia, U.S., and Japan comparison. https://psyarxiv.com/pw4yk/
  • San Martin, A., Sinaceur, M., Madi, A., Tompson, S., Maddux, W. W., & Kitayama, S. (2018). Self-assertive interdependence in Arab culture. Nature Human Behaviour, 2, 830-837. http://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-018-0435-z

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