Cultural Psychology

Statement

In this day and age when nations are becoming more and more multicultural and the world as a whole is becoming more economically as well as socially interdependent, it is of paramount importance that social scientists in a non-Western, multicultural, or international setting avoid making assumptions about people that are not justified but rather examine certain assumptions even though they may seem self-evident. I believe that psychology still has a long way to go before it claims to be a universal science. Although literature on cultural relevance in psychology can certainly be expanded, it is nevertheless unavoidable for a practicing social scientist to consider the fact that culture is always a background factor in every individual or group, whether an appropriate paradigm - that takes into account this factor - exists or not. Thus psychologists need to be aware of the fact that what looks similar between cultures can mean very different things for each culture and that discrepant findings across cultures may not simply be a problem of methods or sociocultural evolution but of cross-culturally divergent psychological realities.

Only when psychologists begin to avoid marginalizing culture will psychology become at all relevant to non-Western societies, as well as to issues of ethnicity, migration, and social change.

About Cultural Psychology

Cultural Psychology is an interdisciplinary field primarily between anthropology and psychology. It explores human nature through a deep understanding of the relevant cultural context (including history) and the cultural imperatives embedded within it that shape human cognition, emotion, motivation, behavior, and psychopathologies in cross-culturally divergent ways. Cultural psychology avoids viewing culture as background noise to be filtered out in order to pinpoint universal psychological mechanisms. Instead, cultural psychology views culture and mind as constitutive parts of each other. This view endorses the idea that humans are biologically programmed to become cultural beings by virtue of the fact that we have the capacity to make meaning of ourselves and the world we live in, both individually and collectively, to live within those systems of meanings, and to organize our psyches in and around them. The product of this universal capacity is psychological diversity. Furthermore, cultural psychologists believe that culture’s influence is particularly strong for automatic mental processes, including basic mental processes (attention and perception) and higher level mental processes (social cognition, emotion, self-structure, etc.), rather than for explicit attitudes and values. Thus, culture itself is regarded as a psychological topic that informs psychological theories.

My Research

My research critically examines basic assumptions of general psychology -- many of which are derived from the Western notion of the self as an independent, autonomous entity. My previous work entailed working with Shinobu Kitayama on the cultural construction of self-enhancement in the United States and self-criticism in Japan. More importantly, we were interested in why self-enhancement in North America is more meaningful than it is in Japan and why self-criticism is more meaningful in Japan than it is in North America. My Master's research revealed statistical evidence that standardized measures of emotional distress tend to equate the moderately self-enhancing goals of a Western self-construal with mental health, while detecting distress when responses reflect culturally prescribed goals of an Eastern self-construal. My dissertation 1) experimentally confirmed that the concepts of well-being and emotional disress embedded in conventional measures of emotional distress are culturally biased in favor of psychological norms mandated by the Western self-structure, and 2) discussed cultural variations in emotional and motivational norms associated with well-being.  Specifically, correlational results of my dissertation research confirmed recent suggestions in the cultural psychology literature that self-esteem is the most salient factor in predicting and maintaining well-being for Americans, whereas self-esteem was not nearly as salient for Japanese well-being.  Instead, for Japanese, emotions associated with positive interpersonal relationships were more salient in predicting and maintaining well-being. Furthermore, Japanese gave equal weight to negative emotions as they did to positive emotions in allowing for how much emotional well-being is experienced. Thus Japanese experience positive and negative emotions in dialectical harmony. In contrast, Americans demonstrate a distinct and robust positivity bias (giving little weight to negative emotions and emphasizing the importance of positive emotions) and spontaneously resort to psychological mechanisms that vehemently serve to protect self-esteem, or else become emotionally distressed. 

        My lab is currently running a number of projects that examine how culture affords divergent processes and concepts in cognition, emotion, motivation, attention, emotional distress and well-being.  I generally engage in "basic research" (i.e., theory building) rather than applied research.  Most of my studies involve collecting data cross-nationally between U.S. and Japan.  Students who have joined my cultural psychology lab are typically bright and enthusiastic students (primarily Japanese and American students) who show a deep curiosity about cultural influences on the processes of the human mind and also participate in readings and discussions that generate new ideas.  These students generally perform at the top 10% of their classes.  I also expect students in my lab to be interested in writing theses and/or presenting at conferences when opportunity permits.

Teaching

Cultural Psychology (Fall, 2007)

Personality Psychology (Spring, 2006)

Statistics (Fall, 2007)

Introduction to Psychology (Fall, 2003; Spring, 2004)

History of Psychology (Fall & Spring, 2004-05)

Social Psychology (Summer, 2005)

Experimental Psychology (Spring, 2007)

 

Publications

image Norasakkunkit, V. (under review). Culture and positivity bias in emotional experience: Detecting self-enhancing biases in the structure of emotional experience among Americans and Japanese.

image Grover, R., & Norasakkunkit, V. (under review). Implicit nationalism. An examination of an inverse predictor of cross-cultural training performance.

image Choi, Y., & Norasakkunkit, V. (under review). The role of cognitive dissonance theory in adjusting to unpleasant work environments in Korea and the United States.

imageNorasakkunkit, V., & Kalick, M.S. (in press).  Experimentally detecting how cultural differences in social anxiety measures misrepresent cultural differences in emotional well-being. Journal of Happiness Studies.

imageLee, Y-T., Norasakkunkit, V, Liu, Li, Zhang, J, & M. Zhou (in press).   Taoist altruism and wateristic personality: East and West. In Vakoch, D. (Ed)’s   Altruism in Cross-Cultural Perspective. .


imageUchida, Y., Norasakkunkit, V., & Kitayama, S. (2004).  Cultural constructions of happiness: Theory and empirical evidence.  Journal of Happiness Studies, 5, 223-239.

imagePenney, S., Norasakkunkit, V., Leigh, J. (2002).  New leaders for a new century.  Building Leadership Bridges.

imageNorasakkunkit, V., & Kalick, M.S. (2002). Culture, ethnicity, and emotional distress measures: The role of self-construal and self-enhancement. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 33 (1), 56-70.

imageKitayama, S., Markus, H.R., Matsumoto, H., & Norasakkunkit, V. (1997). Individual and collective processes in the construction of self: self-enhancement in the United States and self-criticism in Japan. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72 (6), 1245-1267.

This paper has been identified by Susan Fiske (2003, Psychological Inquiry, 3&4, 196-202) as a modern classic in social psychology.  Click here to read a review of the above study and of related studies in Science News Online

imageNorasakkunkit, V.  (2003). Self-construal priming and emotional distress: Testing for cultural biases in the concept of distress.  Unpublished Dissertation.

imageNorasakkunkit, V. (2000). Culture, ethnicity, and measures of emotional distress: The role of self-construal and self-enhancement. Unpublished Master's Thesis.

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