Cross-Cultural Counseling Psychology

Cross-cultural psychology is the study of similarities and differences in individual psychological functioning in various cultural and ethnic groups, as well as the relationships between psychological variables and sociocultural, ecological, and biological variables. Cross-cultural psychology regards culture as essential to psychological functioning, as an integral context for psychological development and behavior.

Cross-cultural psychology consists mainly of diverse forms of comparative research so as to discern various distinct cultural factors—many of which are related to ethnicity—that are relevant to forms of development and behavior. Cross-cultural research typically seeks evidence of how culture can be taken as a set of variables, independent or contextual, that affect various aspects of individual behavior.

Cross-Cultural Psychology versus Ethnic Minority Psychology

Differences in interpretation of “culture” account for the differences between cross-cultural psychology and ethnic-minority psychology. They differ in two ways, although they sometimes overlap and are taken as synonymous by some psychologists.

Ethnic minority psychology focuses on various ethnic groups such as African Americans. Cross-cultural psychology, in contrast, emphasizes differences between two or more cultures. Besides, ethnic minority psychology rooted in the United States has a briefer history than cross-cultural psychology does. Only after the civil rights movement of the 1960s was the Association of Black Psychologists founded, in 1968. The Journal of Black Psychology was first published in 1974 and the Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences in 1979.

Historical Background

Traditional research in psychology has understandably been carried out mostly by thinkers of Western (ultimately Hellenic) cultures. The concepts and tools of psychological research came into being in an era of industrial systems of ideas, while consideration of culture has been relegated to a secondary role in psychology, appearing, at most, as moderating or qualifying footnotes to the major theoretical propositions assumed to be universally applicable.

In the meantime, however, there slowly emerged an awareness that such psychological theories in the traditional thinking mode, being Anglo-European, may well be of quite limited relevance to non-Western communities. It was thought that consideration of cultural aspects in psychological research would render psychology more widely relevant.

The era of cross-cultural psychology commenced soon after World War II ended. Its rapid expansion can be attributed to a shared motivation to understand the attendant horrors of war and to expand the intellectual horizons of psychology beyond parochial, nationalistic boundaries. With an emerging international perspective accompanying the cold war, the study of human behavior in cultural context evolved quite rapidly. The half decade of 1966 to 1970 saw the start of the quarterly Cross-Cultural Psychology Bulletin (originally called Cross-Cultural Social Psychology Newsletter, published periodically) and the International Journal of Psychology, as well as an initial Directory of Cross-Cultural Psychological Research.

Those years were marked also by the publication of a multisocietal study of cultural influences on cognitive conflict, a paperback volume titled Cross-Cultural Studies, and the flagship publication in cross-cultural psychology, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, launched in 1970. By the late 1970 and early 1980s, enough research had been done to justify several major handbooks in cross-cultural psychology in general and in human development in particular. From the 1990s until the beginning of the 21st century, there appeared several new and updated handbooks on cross-cultural psychology. In 1998, Marshall H. Segall, Walter J. Lonner, and John W. Berry published an article, “Cross-Cultural Psychology as a Scholarly Discipline,” on the critical role of culture in psychology. Several books through the 1990s into the 21st century (e.g., Cross-Cultural Psychology: Research and Applications) highlight many emerging themes in cross-cultural psychology.

In addition to the literature that emerged, scholarly and professional organizations on cross-cultural psychology were founded and have continued to flourish. Since its inauguration in Hong Kong in 1972, the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology has been holding biennial international congresses, and it continues to play a central role in the further development of cross-cultural psychology. Other important organizations include the International Union of Psychological Sciences and the International Association of Applied Psychology, among many others. By attracting diverse participants to their conventions and disseminating the most recent research and programs, these organizations facilitate dialogues on cross-cultural psychology across the world.

In the meantime, Berry and Pierre R. Dasen proposed three goals in cross-cultural psychology: to transport and test the current psychological knowledge and perspectives by examining them in other cultures, to explore and discover new aspects of the phenomena being studied in local cultural terms, and to integrate what has been learned from the first two points in order to generate psychology capable of addressing human basic processes and cultural variations worldwide.

Perspectives of Cross-Cultural Psychology

Various approaches in cross-cultural psychology can be classified in four ways: (1) etic versus emic; (2) dichotomous versus integrative; (3) absolutistic versus relativistic versus universalistic; and (4) individualistic versus collectivistic.

Etic Versus Emic

Following linguist Kenneth L. Pike, many cross-cultural psychologists used the contrasting terms etic and emic, to refer to etic comparative studies across cultures and emic intensive internal exploration of psychological phenomena in local cultural terms.

On the etic approach in early days, some Western psychologists used psychological notions and instruments that are designed, produced, and validated in the European American setting alone, to research psychological phenomena in other settings, cultural and national. This approach was recently criticized by Paul B. Pedersen because of its limited interpretation of the relationship between culture and psychological functioning. Emic research, on its part, focuses on culture-specific psychological phenomena and is expected to provide indigenous culture-based meanings probably missed in an overall etic approach.

After extensive use of emic approaches in cultures has produced instruments that satisfy etic criteria, comparative examination, with these instruments, of behaviors in various cultures would produce valuable information on cultural differences or similarities in psychological functioning. If superficial differences in behavior thus obtained reflect underlying shared psychological functioning, then they would support the notions of psychological universals. This possibility leads psychologists to consider another way of envisioning cross-cultural psychology today, namely, the integrative approach.

Dichotomous Versus Integrative

An alternative to the dichotomous approach, such as emic versus etic, is integration of psychological research. The integrative approach aids in revising and refining a theoretical understanding of human behavior, especially when theories are needed to apply to the widest audience possible. For example, cross-cultural research has helped refine understanding of child-rearing practices and attachment, and has helped modify what was considered as optimal attachment in child-rearing (based on research solely in the United States) to accommodate important child-rearing differences around the world.

Furthermore, uncovering cross-cultural differences helps render counseling more effective. Appreciation of similarities and differences in the relations between clients and mental health professionals depends much on information about people’s cultural backgrounds. Cross-cultural research has helped in the development of culturally sensitive psychological assessments and treatments that have critically rendered psychotherapy effective.

Finally, cross-cultural research provides important connections among people and psychologists around the world, helping produce new modes of international intercultural cooperation among scholars, practitioners, and clients. New organizations that cut across many sorts of borders—social, economic, racial, national, as well as cultural—involve psychologists and health professionals from around the world, creating unions that would have been impossible otherwise.

Absolutism versus Relativism versus Universalism

The absolutist approach assumes that human phenomena are basically and qualitatively identical throughout all cultures. Sincerity is sincere, sadness is sad, no matter how or where one observes them, and so culture has practically no meaning or displays no specific characteristics.

Assessments of such ubiquitous characteristics are likely to be made through the use of standard instruments (perhaps via linguistic translation) and simplistic interpretations, taking into account no alternative, culturally based views. This orientation resembles the imposed etic perspective that was characteristic of some early cross-cultural research.

Cultural relativism, a term coined by anthropologist F. Boas and expanded and disseminated by Melville J. Herskovits, was initially a warning against invalid cross-cultural comparisons with an ethnocentric perspective. Later, Berry and his colleagues took up the term relativism to mean the opposite of absolutism. Thus, the relativists have no interest in intergroup similarities, in stark contrast to the absolutists, who assume and explore broad species-wide similarities.

The absolutists are prone to attempt context-free measurements with standardized psychological instruments, frequently making universal evaluative comparisons. As a result, they open themselves to errors of imposing “etics” when working in societies other than their own. In contrast, the relativists tend to lean toward emic research, considering context-free concepts and measurements as impossible, and so would try to avoid all cross-cultural comparisons; if they ever made the comparison, it would be as nonevaluative as at all feasible.

Psychologists with a universalistic perspective search for features of psychological functioning that appear common across all peoples. Berry proposed a rule of two steps: Culture comes first, comparison second. The framework begins with research in one cultural group A, firmly rooted in an indigenous tradition. Such research commences in examinations, both anthropological and psychological, of various cultural and individual behaviors and their plausible links and then draws cross-indigenous or cross-cultural research out of cultural groups B, C, D, and so forth. Thus emerges a universal psychology, rooted in both cultural-indigenous research and comparative cross-cultural analysis, achieved by gathering all indigenous psychologies and comparing them.

Individualism versus Collectivism

Individualistic versus collectivistic approaches have been variously characterized. The approaches were said to be idiocentric-allocentric at the individual level versus idiocentric-sociocentric at the collective-cultural level; or individual and group loyalties versus culture of relatedness and separateness. In any case, the subjects in individualistic cultures have individualistic values and behaviors, and those in collectivistic cultures have collective values.

Such value dichotomy is reflected in other psychological processes and behaviors as well. Harry C. Triandis reported that even the meaning of culture differs in the kinds of information sampled from the culturally different environment. Such complex features in individualism versus collectivism can be conceptualized as “polythetic constructs” with the following aspects of self, goals, and the conflict between norms and attitudes.

The collectivists view the self as interdependent with others, sharing resources in a family manner. The individualists view the self as autonomously independent of groups, and whether or not to share resources is decided by individuals separately. Individuals are the units of analysis of social behavior. In contrast, the collectivists use groups. Individualists are concerned with individuals’ own successes; collectivists are concerned with group success.

Goals are envisioned differently as perspectives differ. For collectivists, individual goals are ingroup compatible; for individualists individual goals are irrelevant to the group’s goals. When individual goals and group goals collide, collectivists give priority to group goals, and individualists give priority to individual goals.

The conflict of norms versus attitudes is stressed differently. The collectivist determinants of social behavior are equally (a) norms, duties, and obligations, and (b) attitudes and personal needs. In contrast, individualist determinants are primarily attitudes, personal needs, perceived rights, and contracts. Whereas collectivists emphasize unconditional relatedness, individualists emphasize rationality in decision.

Areas of Research

Cross-cultural psychology involves many areas in psychology, including cognition, values, and mental health. The major research harvested by cross-cultural psychology can be categorized into six areas: (1) values, (2) personality, (3) gender issues, (4) development, (5) mental illness and well-being, and (6) counseling.

Values

Implicit in cross-cultural studies of values are guidelines on improvements in group relations, international negotiation, and globalization. Many different worldviews, conceptualizations of the world, affect what people in which society think is fair or what matters. These differences are their different views of the world to result in different manners of relating one to another.

Naturally, then, any two groups with different values (say, American students and international students) can form a community cross-culturally related, where interactions are prone to erroneous interpretations and judgments. Therefore, training in intercultural understanding is incumbent on all those in the counseling field, deserving close attention by scholars and professionals alike.

Personality

Cultural and cross-cultural analyses have thrown doubt over the existence of monolithic meanings of the key notions in psychology (e.g., personality, the self, etc.). Personality, as any other concept, is socially constructed, particularly based on Western assumptions. A high level of correspondence between higher-order personality models and everyday conceptions of personality has been found, indicating that personality is a cultural product. Some researchers (e.g., Kenneth J. Gergen) question any meaning in “personality” that exists identically in all contexts, seeing that some personality traits are meaningful solely in their respective specific contexts.

Despite such reports, many personality assessments (e.g., the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory or the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory) were developed in Western psychology and then applied to culturally diverse populations to obtain cross-cultural validity. High degrees of cross-cultural validity, reported by some researchers such as James N. Butcher, who conducted the MMPI-2, may have prompted a proposal of the universality of personality.

Gender Issues

Cross-cultural research on gender has also yielded crucial findings. The core finding is that gender-related phenomena are embedded in cultures, whether the phenomena are sex-related differences in behavior or relations between sexes. Sex-role socialization has been studied in children and adolescents. On the role gender plays in later stages of life, women in traditional societies may well gain status with age advancement, which is a situation different from that in Western societies. Such variations call for renewed explanations based on different cultural definitions of women.

A related issue is sex-role differences and their underlying dimensions as cross-cultural. The expressive-instrumental dimension assumed to underlie differential sex-role socialization has been questioned. Some scholars reported greater expressiveness of males and more androgyny in general, in traditional cultures, than in Western cultures. Thus, some societies may routinely socialize children into androgynous patterns. Socialization of both females and males for great relatedness, sensitivity to others, and expressiveness may exist in highly collective societies, more so than in less collective communities.

Attitudes and stereotypes about gender roles have been continually popular among researchers. John E. Williams and Deborah L. Best reported that the ideals of both men and women in 14 countries were more masculine than self-ideals; in most countries, men traditionally carry an ideal image, not women. It appears universally valid to claim that breaking the stranglehold of outmoded stereotypes on sexual differences would facilitate equality between the sexes.

Development

Cultural attributes seem to remain important and serve as crucial contexts for psychological development. Cross-cultural research on human development has presented a challenging corrective to knowledge and theory based on Western experience. In fact, despite increasing cross-cultural research on development, developmental psychology has remained parochial. Gustav Jahoda noticed that researchers in development commonly accept a convergence of Piagetian and Vygotskian approaches. Following Charles M. Super and Sara Harkness’s developmental niche (by analogy of “ecological niche” in biology), Dasen proposed a new diagram in studying human development, to show how, in Africa, parental psychology affects social and cognitive development. Barbara Rogoff proposed a similar orientation to cognitive development to show that such development has two features: (1) Culture and behavior (or thought) are not separate variables but are mutually embedded, so culture is not an independent variable; and (2) child socialization is jointly managed by children and adults.

Fred Rothbaum and his colleagues, with an interaction model, compared Japanese and American infant-mother interactions to test whether maternal behaviors shape infant behavior or whether they mutually shape each other. The interaction model was deemed valid by significant differences between newborns in motor activity level and later changes in infant and mother behavior. Such work has brought conceptual and methodological refinements in cross-cultural research on infant-mother attachment and early stages of development.

Interest in cross-cultural studies of life-span development is emerging. Studies have been made on life satisfaction in later years and on attitudes to the elderly. Research findings on life-span development focused on later life experiences show cross-cultural variations. For example, students in Turkey, but not in India, showed favorable attitudes to the elderly.

Mental Illness and Well Being

Applications of cross-cultural psychology to problems of daily life are particularly evident in counseling psychology. At the same time, academic studies continue in such topics as the relationship between culture and psychopathology and between culture and diagnosis. Most psychologists now agree that the sociocultural context is a critical origin of psychological problems and that it is important to understand this cultural context. Among the issues to be researched are relationships between health and various cultural factors such as socialization, education, disability, and organizational structures of health institutions.

Depression is an example among many to this claim of culture as relevant to psychological problems. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders indicates that culture can influence symptoms and experiences of depression. To reduce misdiagnosis, ethnic and cultural specificity need to be considered in diagnosis.

This raises a fundamental question, however, on how universal the notion of “depression” is. Sushrut Jadhav claims that it is questionable to indiscriminately apply depression or other such terms to non-Western clients, for there is insufficient evidence to detect depression as an objective entity transportable from one cultural setting to another.

From the perspective of relativist cross-cultural psychology, it is questionable that diagnostic systems and structured interviews developed in the West can ever serve as a universal framework for all cultures. These critics say the same syndromes hardly exist in the same form in other cultures, nor do individual symptoms necessarily exist in the same way across diverse cultures. For example, “fear” manifests quite differently from culture to culture; for example, among Hispanics, ataques de nervios are characterized by, among others, a feeling of rising heat. Counselors without such awareness will have difficulty understanding the Hispanic client’s fear, particularly if the psychologist relies on a standard interview without questions related to such a way of experiencing fear.

Counseling

It is becoming increasingly common, all over the world, for counselors to come from cultures that differ from those of their clients, thus rendering cross-cultural counseling a challenging task. When other cultures and worldviews enter the picture, the situation can turn dauntingly complex.

Two aspects of cross-cultural research that are highly relevant to counseling are cross-cultural emphasis and intercultural focus. Pedersen specifies that cross-cultural counseling pays attention to qualitative differences across cultures and interculturally focused counseling work with ethnic and racial groups within a culture-pluralistic society. Despite different emphases, however, both aspects share many similar principles, including the necessity of cultural knowledge and sensitivity and understanding the crucial role culture plays in an individual’s life.

In cross-cultural counseling, culturally sensitive diagnosis and treatment in counseling are essential, as based on the following factors. The counselor must be aware both of what is usually done in the clients’ culture to resolve their presenting problems and of usual treatment in the counselor’s own culture. In addition, the counselor must also be aware of how well the clients are acculturated to their host culture. If the clients are fairly well acculturated, counselors can feel more comfortable in designing a treatment plan similar to their usual design for native clients. If the clients have recently arrived from other cultures, counselors may want to consider how to temper the treatment plan with supplements familiar to the clients. The clients must be willing to accommodate the proposed supplements.

References:

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