Cross-Cultural Psychology
Modified: 2023-08-14 (3:19 PM CDST)
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Cross-cultural issues are becoming more prominent in psychology as
the discipline expands in countries other than the U.S.A.
- Matsumoto
(1994) has argued that American psychology has been much more
concerned with studying its own residents than with studying others.
- He goes on to state that, until recently, most of the data in
psychology were derived from predominantly middle-class, white,
introductory psychology students.
- Further, many of us teach in
environments that are not culturally diverse, so getting students to
understand cross-cultural concepts is difficult in those settings.
- Levine (1988) summarized research concerning the pace of time in
different cultures.
- As a visiting professor in Brazil, he discovered
that college students there had a very different conception of class
time compared to American students.
- When the time came to meet his
first class, Levine arrived twenty minutes late to an empty classroom
(Levine & Wolff, 1985).
- But, unlike in the U.S.A., that did not
mean that the class had already been there and left.
- Rather, it meant
that none of the class had even arrived!
- Then, when class was over,
only a few students left.
- The rest hung around for an additional half
hour.
- How does that compare to how you view classtime and when your instructors begin and end class?
- Levine went on to conduct additional cross-cultural studies
relating to time.
- One study (Levine and Bartlett, 1984) examined the
accuracy of bank clocks, pedestrian walking speed, and work pace in
six countries.
- The data were quite clear, and the three measures
correlated highly with each other.
- The Japanese samples were the
highest in all three measures.
- The Indonesian sample had the slowest
walking speed and least accurate clocks.
- The Italian sample had the
slowest business transaction time.
- Coronary heart disease was
correlated with a fast pace of life, except in the fastest sample,
the Japanese.
- Those last data probably indicate that coronary heart
disease incidence is affected by other factors as well.
- These data illustrate how a concept, time, can vary widely across
cultures.
- Levine (1988) argued that simple explanations for
cross-cultural differences are not sufficient.
- For example, in
Brazil, being late is perceived as a privilege of the rich and
powerful.
- Stereotypical explanations that rely on simple notions of
cross cultural differences (e.g., laziness) will not serve to explain
those differences.
References
Levine, R. V. (1988). The pace of life across cultures. In J. E.
McGrath (Ed.). The social psychology of time: New
Perspectives (pp. 39-62). Newbury Park, CA: SAGE Publications.
Levine, R. V. & Bartlett, K. (1984). Pace of life,
punctuality and coronary heart disease in six countries. Journal
of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 38, 541-550.
Levine, R. V. & Wolff, E. (1985). Social time: The heartbeat
of culture. Psychology Today.19(3), 28-35.
Matsumoto, D. (1994). People: Psychology from a cultural
perspective. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks-Cole.
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