8 Some Implications for Research and Practice [C]ultural meanings, practices, norms, and social institutions … constitute the matrix in which are embedded the intentions, rules, practices, and activities through which people live their lives (Fiske, Kitayama, Markus & Nisbett, 1998, p. 917). What goals or objectives must our profession and society adopt to become truly multicultural in vision, values, and practice? (Sue, Bingham, Porche-Burke & Vasquez, 1999, p. 1067). This final chapter is the most difficult one to write. The quotations above suggest the complexity of understanding individual behavior within a cultural matrix. With the broad definition of culture proposed in this book, applicable to all significant groups that meet the criteria, complexity increases. To take seriously the multicultural nature of persons is to raise theoretical and empirical questions that are very difficult to answer. As a science and profession, we are not accustomed to thinking routinely and easily of individuals in this way. Our discipline will be enriched, however, if we can design creative new research strategies to address these questions. The implications for practice may be least problematic because, whether in counseling, therapy, or education, theoretical emphasis has long been on taking into account “the whole person.” And in these areas, there is typically one-on-one interaction between persons – between client and mental health worker, or between student and teacher. An individual’s unique social identities or cultural memberships will be evident in behavior – overt or subtle. Whether they are recognized, acknowledged, respected and used positively in the actual practice of counseling, therapy, or education (beyond statements of theory) is a central concern. In research, a multicultural perspective presents a different set of interrelated problems pertaining to sampling, study design, methods, data analysis and interpretation.Research Each participant or respondent in an investigation brings to it unique experiences and beliefs, perceptions, and response potentials that reflect far greater individual complexity and far more cultural memberships than most researchers are prepared to identify. We agree with Shields (2008, p. 304) that “[t]he facts of our lives reveal that there is no single identity category that satisfactorily describes how we respond to our social environment or are responded to by others.” We also agree with Mann and Kelley (1997, p. 392) that “knowledge is and should be situated in people’s diverse social locations.… [and] grounded in the social biography of … the observed.” Such agreement, however, does not lead easily or directly to researchable empirical questions that can be investigated in a practical way. Multiple issues and problems face the researcher who is accustomed to obtaining demographic descriptions of participants that are usually limited to age, ethnicity, and gender, or to the single-identity or group-members.

1. 8
Some Implications for Research and Practice
[C]ultural meanings, practices, norms, and social institutions …
constitute the matrix in which are embedded the intentions,
rules, practices, and activities through which people live their
lives (Fiske, Kitayama, Markus & Nisbett, 1998, p. 917).
What goals or objectives must our profession and society adopt
to become truly multicultural in vision, values, and
practice? (Sue, Bingham, Porche-Burke & Vasquez, 1999, p.
1067).
This final chapter is the most difficult one to write. The
quotations above suggest the complexity of understanding
individual behavior within a cultural matrix. With the broad
definition of culture proposed in this book, applicable to all
significant groups that meet the criteria, complexity increases.
To take seriously the multicultural nature of persons is to raise
theoretical and empirical questions that are very difficult to
answer. As a science and profession, we are not accustomed to
thinking routinely and easily of individuals in this way. Our
discipline will be enriched, however, if we can design creative
new research strategies to address these questions.
The implications for practice may be least problematic because,
whether in counseling, therapy, or education, theoretical
emphasis has long been on taking into account “the whole
person.” And in these areas, there is typically one-on-one
interaction between persons – between client and mental health
worker, or between student and teacher. An individual’s unique
social identities or cultural memberships will be evident in
behavior – overt or subtle. Whether they are recognized,
acknowledged, respected and used positively in the
actual practice of counseling, therapy, or education (beyond
statements of theory) is a central concern. In research, a
multicultural perspective presents a different set of interrelated
problems pertaining to sampling, study design, methods, data
analysis and interpretation.Research

2. Each participant or respondent in an investigation brings to it
unique experiences and beliefs, perceptions, and response
potentials that reflect far greater individual complexity and far
more cultural memberships than most researchers are prepared
to identify. We agree with Shields (2008, p. 304) that “[t]he
facts of our lives reveal that there is no single identity category
that satisfactorily describes how we respond to our social
environment or are responded to by others.” We also agree with
Mann and Kelley (1997, p. 392) that “knowledge is and should
be situated in people’s diverse social locations.… [and]
grounded in the social biography of … the observed.” Such
agreement, however, does not lead easily or directly to
researchable empirical questions that can be investigated in a
practical way. Multiple issues and problems face the researcher
who is accustomed to obtaining demographic descriptions of
participants that are usually limited to age, ethnicity, and
gender, or to the single-identity or group-membership category
viewed as an independent variable.
A viable strategy is to begin, first, with a stringent analysis of
the dependent variable(s) under investigation. Suppose, for
example, we are investigating the voting choice made in the
2008 presidential election. As West and Fenstermaker (1996)
caution, gender, ethnicity, and social class are only three ways
of exploring difference in social life. Beyond these are the
possible influences of respondents’ age, political culture,
geography, family status, and other social identities found to be
important in prior research on voting behavior. Instead of
treating each of these as separable independent variables, a
bundling approach may be more revealing and thus yield more
accurate and reliable information. As noted by Frable (1997, p.
154) most research “focuses on the personal meanings of these
social categories one at a time.” But a politically conservative
middle-aged middle-class gay Latino man living in Florida, for
example, may behave in a way that reflects more than the sum
of his individual identities.
I have no easy answer to the question posed by Shields (2008,

3. p. 310) about how to “formulate research questions that allow
for and can reveal the responses of individuals as a reflection of
the identities that form them.” I am, convinced, however, that
we must collectively make the effort to devise and propose
various possibilities. We will have to construct strategies for
empirical research that will reveal the salience and influence of
diverse cultural memberships and how they operate
simultaneously in intersection (West & Fenstermaker, 1996).
This will probably mean giving more careful attention to the
design and analysis of qualitative studies.
In everyday interactions we are often surprised when persons do
not behave as we assume or expect prototypical members of
their cultures to act. One study by Mendes and colleagues found
more than just surprise, but anxiety and defensive behavior,
when participants were introduced to partners who were Asian
American and spoke with southern drawls (cf. Munsey, 2007).
Similarly, we may know that African American culture is not
monolithic (Asumah & Perkins, 2000) but Black Republicans
are disorienting. So are gay (“log cabin”) Republicans, and so
are women who choose not to bear or rear children, or American
Indians who are not environmentalists. Researchers must move
well beyond accepted assumptions in the investigations we
design and the information we hope to obtain. For example,
Akom (2000) describes a subset of urban inner-city African
Americans for whom identity is ghettocentric and tied to the
‘hood, not just to skin color. What matters most to them is
experience, social class, and neighborhood. To organize
research data around ethnicity without understanding such
within-group variations and taking them into account will yield
faulty or incomplete or inadequate information of little
predictive value.
Warner (2008) cautions that explicit care be taken in choosing
those categories of identity on which the research questions are
best focused and also in choosing which are to be collapsed or
ignored. These decisions will be influenced by theoretical
concerns, by new hypotheses, and prior research. The new

4. formulations which can guide research may well come from
critical theory which posits that we all are embedded in a
system of power relations. Thus, the politically conservative
middle-aged middle-class gay Latino voter mentioned earlier is
both advantaged (by gender and social class) and disadvantaged
(by minority ethnicity and sexual identity) in comparison with
others in his immediate and distant environment. Questions
posed to study participants about their perceptions of such
power considerations in relation to the realities of their daily
lives may add considerably to the predictive utility of an
investigation’s findings.
Qualitative research and case studies may be more amenable to
capturing the influence of multiple cultural memberships on
behavior than the traditional quantitative research of
experiments and surveys. But while the former are more likely
to encourage respondents to reveal more of their complex and
unique wholeness, the qualitative researcher, too, may not tap
into the cultural communities that are most important to the
research participant, or most relevant to the research question,
by not asking the right questions. For example, a heterosexual
African American woman who is part of a study about religion
and spirituality may not ever be asked about the importance to
her life of her single, never-married status. Bowleg (2008) has
written convincingly about the difficulties facing qualitative
researchers in attempting to capture the nuances of
intersectionality, “the interdependence and mutuality of
identities” (p. 316).Practice
The avowed aim of counseling or psychotherapy is to assist
individuals in coping constructively with the problems of living
that are specific to their situations. This must surely necessitate
recognizing an individual’s multicultural uniqueness and
understanding how particular social identities intersect in the
past and present contexts that are relevant to the person. An
explicitly multicultural training program (Dana, Gamst & Der-
Karabetian, 2008) goes beyond attention to ethnicity. It calls for
“recognition of the full array of possible identity components”

5. (p. 293) and suggests that they and their interrelations function
as positive sources of strength and power.
A “cultural context” model in clinical psychology, described by
Hernandez (2008) suggests, further, that it is important to take
into account the structural issues in society, to identify “the
current and historical impact of oppressive social forces” (p.
10) that have impacted a client’s experiences. An attempt to
link interpersonal processes to larger societal institutions is
seen as a goal of the therapeutic practice.
Similarly, Reid and Comas-Diaz (1990) call attention to the role
of social status in mediating information and providing
expectations to individuals and to those with whom they
interact. “High status individuals are accepted as leaders and
models; low status people are devalued and ignored” (p. 398).
The personal and social consequences of status need to be
recognized and taken into account in therapeutic practice. But
status is not fixed. It can change with time, changed life
circumstances, and situation. As Hurtado (1996, p. xii) has
noted, “within certain contexts we can be victims of
subordination, and within others we can be oppressors.”
Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2001), in responding to
criticism of work on “positive psychology” that has ignored
people of color, maintain that positive psychological goals “cut
across social and cultural divides” (p. 90). But such a
hypothesis requires considerable testing before it can be
accepted as a valid generalization. While it is likely that most
cultures contain ideas and prescriptions about what is good and
what is moral and acceptable behavior (Fiske, Kitayama,
Markus & Nisbett, 1998), the content of these ideas and the
direction of the prescriptions are known to vary. Individual
striving for material success may well be considered a positive
goal to strive for within some cultural communities, while
cooperative efforts toward mutual benefits are positive goals
within others. Similarly, developing one’s physical strength to
the maximum may not be a goal shared by those who prefer
focusing on the development of their social or intellectual

6. skills.
Assumptions about positive goals cannot be made within a
counseling or clinical setting without considering social status
and all the cultural memberships or identities that are most
relevant and most salient. An emphasis on personal change may
raise questions about maintaining or abandoning old goals and
perhaps adopting others. But these goals are embedded in
intersecting multicultural positions and cannot be easily
understood without taking them into account.What Now?
Pedersen (1999, p. 13) recognized the “profound consequences”
for our discipline that arise from a “culture centered
perspective.” Others, cited throughout the pages of this book,
have shared this recognition. We will need to ask new research
questions, formulate different hypotheses from those tested in
the past, perhaps sample smaller populations, be much more
sensitive to environments and to time and place and context. In
assessment, formulation of generalizations, and proposing
solutions to social and individual problems, we will need to
consider as much as possible the multicultural nature of
persons. Flannery, Reise, and Yu (2001), for example, make the
case for emerging ethnicities and point to the uniqueness of
Italian Americans living in New York City or Chinese
Americans in San Francisco, Irish Americans in Boston, or
Chicanos in Los Angeles.
Questions focused on ethnicity or gender or social class need to
be reformulated so that these identities in combination are seen
as more reliable predictors of different forms and different
levels of social or political action. Under what conditions, if
any, for example, will low-income heterosexual White urban
men behave or react like middle-income African American
women? The majority of both groups voted for Obama for
president. What research would have led to this prediction?
What strategies to increase union membership will be most
effective with middle-aged Latinas, older Southern White men,
young Midwestern white collar workers? How will the strategies
differ or be much the same?

7. The newest mission statement for the American Psychological
Association, adopted by the Council of Representatives
(Farberman, 2008), speaks of advancing “the creation,
communication, and application of psychological knowledge to
benefit society and improve people’s lives” (p. 70). To realize
these objectives, we will need to do the best we can in searching
for generalizations across persons and across cultures.
Generality across settings, times, and populations, however,
cannot be assumed (Tebes, 2000). We may well find an
“essential sameness” among human beings” (Guyll & Madon,
2000, p. 1510) in capacities and needs. But when we study
attitudes, beliefs, skills, values, social perceptions, and
expectations, we will inevitably be compelled to respect and
understand diversity and the multicultural uniqueness of
individual persons.
29
Cross-Cultural Psychology in Perspective: What Does the
Future Hold?
Kenneth D. Keith
The field of cross-cultural psychology, as embodied in research
and teaching, has come a long way since its modern era
inception early in the twentieth century. From an early
fascination with so-called primitive cultures, and how they
differed from those researchers considered more advanced,
investigators have moved toward a much more nuanced
approach to the study not only of differences and similarities,
but of the complex interplay between culture and behavior as
well.
As the authors of the chapters in this volume have illustrated,
cross-cultural researchers have explored a wide range of
psychological processes, principles, and phenomena
representing the spectrum of interests and subject matters of the
discipline. From basic research methods to complex social

8. interactions and organizations, cross-cultural researchers
continue to advance our understanding. Yet there remain major
issues for cross-cultural psychologists of the future. A host of
serious challenges faces the world’s cultures, and many of these
challenges are candidates for psychological and behavioral
understanding and solutions. Among these are the cultural
conflicts engendered by political and governmental differences;
major ecological and environmental problems; distribution of
resources necessary for sustaining human communities; and the
implications of technological change.
World Conflict—Can Psychology Help?
Political/governmental conflict
Violent conflict between cultural groups has existed throughout
human history (Hofstede & Hofstede, 2005), and researchers
have conducted studies aimed toward illuminating psychological
principles that could aid understanding of international events
and the kinds of decisions that lead to conflict. Bourne, Healy,
and Beer (2003), for example, used various priming strategies to
establish cross-cultural conflict scenarios, including the
existence of hypothetical peace treaties, and tested the level of
conflict responses of young American adults. Although these
researchers found that dominant individuals were more
aggressive than others in the face of the conflict scenarios, and
that there are differences in response for men and women, they
acknowledged the need to take such research beyond the
laboratory, to the international context in the real world.
Despite its limitations, their work illustrates the potential
contributions of psychology to cross-cultural relations in a
world that is too often threatening and violent.
One form of violence that seems to cry out for cross-cultural
understanding is the behavior of those individuals whom
members of Western and Asian cultures have labeled terrorists.
Several countries, including Bali, Israel, Japan, Saudi Arabia,
Spain, Sri Lanka, and the U.S. have seen violent attacks in
which the attacker deliberately dies (Locicero & Sinclair,
2008). Social scientists have offered explanations for such

9. violent behavior, ranging from the individual level to the
community or cultural level. However, psychological analyses
are sometimes contradictory, prompting Locicero and Sinclair to
develop a psychological model including recognition not only of
politics, but also the religious and ideological backdrop of
terrorism. In the context of such developmental and ecological
approaches, cross-cultural knowledge of development,
cognition, altruism, personality, and social processes will surely
have a role to play.
Psychologists have long understood the importance of tolerance
for differences, but acceptance of cultural difference is too
often overcome by anger, hate, fear, ethnocentrism, and
nationalism (Hatfield & Rapson, 2005). A key to effective
relations and communication across cultures is the ability of
individuals to control negative feelings and judgments about
others—the ability researchers call emotional regulation
(Matsumoto & Juang, 2008). In a related vein, Smith (2004)
proposed that one of psychology’s greatest contributions to
international relations could be empathy—an understanding of
the thoughts and feelings of others. Despite the fact that
progress toward intercultural understanding sometimes may
seem unattainable, well over a half century ago psychologists
banded together to make a statement about peaceful relations
among cultures (Smith, 1999). Signed by some of the most
prominent psychologists of the time, The psychologists’
manifesto: Human nature and the peace: A statement by
psychologists (Allport et al., 1945) identified a number of
tenets that remain timely today. They included:
· War can be avoided: War is not born in men; it is built into
men.
· Racial, national, and group hatreds can, to a considerable
degree, be controlled.
· Condescension toward “inferior” groups destroys our chances
for a lasting peace.
· Liberated and enemy peoples must participate in planning
their own destiny.

10. · The root desires of the common people of all lands are the
safest guide to framing a peace.
· The trend of human relationships is toward ever wider units of
collective security (Smith, 1999, p. 5).
World events of the six decades since they issued
the Manifesto might seem to suggest these psychologists had
little influence on cultural relations. Yet the possibility that
psychology could contribute to understanding and reduction of
conflict still might seem self-evident. However, Ratner (2006)
observed that cultural psychologists have seemed disinclined to
include political issues as a part of their studies of culture. And
historically, out-group enemies have often served to preserve
in-group cohesion (Hofstede & Hofstede, 2005). Nevertheless,
psychologists have persisted, studying the psychosocial
consequences of violence, terrorism, and disasters for children
(Williams, 2007), the relation between international conflict and
social identity (Kolbe, Boos, & Gurtner, 2005), and moral
characteristics of rescuers, bystanders, and Nazis during the
Holocaust (Monroe, 2008), among many other correlates of
intercultural conflict. The need for continuing cross-cultural
research and teaching seems clear.
Environment/resource distribution
Further prospects for cultural conflict may be found in the
connection between cultures and the environmental limits of the
earth, and in the vast global inequalities that exist among the
countries of the world—inequalities in, for example, income,
nutrition, education, and healthcare. For instance, billions of
people, about two thirds of the earth’s population, have no safe
sanitation facilities, more than a billion lack access to safe
drinking water, and nearly two million children die each year as
a result of these conditions (George, 2008). To those living in
the industrial world, these resources are necessities, taken for
granted by many—yet modern culture would not exist without
them (see Johnson, 2006), and increasing world population will
only bring the likelihood of more cultural competition for
limited supplies of such natural resources as water. Life in the

11. least affluent countries is especially difficult for people with
disabilities, where no more than 10% of such individuals may
receive any kind of human services (McConkey & O’Toole,
2000).
Similarly, while obesity has become a significant problem in
some industrialized countries, at least a quarter of the world’s
population lacks adequate daily nutrition (Bryjak & Soroka,
1997). The increasing human population and the efforts of that
population to develop the resources necessary to sustain it have
resulted not only in conflict between cultures, but also in
degradation of the natural environment. Thus, in developing
countries, increasing population has produced massive
deforestation, including destruction of millions of acres of rain
forests each year (Bryjak & Soroka, 1997).
Cross-cultural researchers have begun to investigate behaviors
and attitudes in the realm of environmental and ecological
concerns. This work has included, for example, studies of
motives concerning environmental issues (Milfont, Duckitt, &
Cameron, 2006), water conservation (Corral-Verdugo, Carrus,
Bonnes, Moser, & Sinha, 2008), and environmental values
(Reser & Bentrupperbumer, 2005). Lest we assume that such
environmental problems and conflicts exist only in developing
countries, we need look only as far as heavily populated and
industrialized regions of the U.S. to see major cultural conflicts
over issues like availability of water and use of land (Walters,
2009). The time has surely come for a psychology that not only
describes cultural differences, but also grapples in a serious
way with the underlying causes of such differences as we move
toward improved understanding of cultural and societal
relations (Heine & Norenzayan, 2006).
Technological change
I remember a fascinating conversation with my grandfather. He
told me about his earliest recollections of the first locomotive
when it arrived in his small town; the barnstorming airplanes
that came to local fairs and festivals; driving to his wedding in
a horse-drawn wagon; and the wonder he felt when, later in his

12. life, he watched on television as the first humans landed on the
surface of the moon. My grandfather’s story reflects enormous
cultural and technological change occurring within the lifetime
of a single person. The lives of billions of people have changed
in important ways as a result of changes in technology,
transforming how we do business, how we educate our young,
and even how we interact interpersonally.
For many of the world’s people, technology, particularly as
embodied in the computerized, digital realm of modern
industrialized societies, has brought convenience, access to
information, and greater affluence. On the other hand, according
to Argyle (1999), heavy television watching is actually
associated with reduced levels of happiness, perhaps suggesting
that not all technology produces good outcomes for people, even
in rich societies.
Many of the world’s people, of course, lack access to
technology. According to a report published by the International
Monetary Fund (Jaumotte, Lall, & Papageorgiou, 2008), wider
access to education is one key to a broader ability to take
advantage of the opportunities associated with technology. But
technology may be a double-edged sword; although income
inequality (between “haves” and “have nots”) has decreased
somewhat in sub-Saharan Africa, in many other places around
the world, including most industrialized nations, it has
increased in the past two decades (Chen & Ravallion, 2004,
2007). This increasing inequality in income, Jaumotte et al.
(2008) reported, has come as a result of the impact of
technological change. And, although inequality of resources
may not lead inevitably to cultural conflict, there is a need,
especially in developing countries, for reliable, high-quality
data from researchers studying the issue (Cramer, 2005).
Summary
The issues I have mentioned in this section represent only a few
of the pressing challenges facing the people of planet Earth in
the twenty-first century. As long as we continue to exhibit the
universal tendency to elevate in-groups and denigrate out-

13. groups, humans will experience cultural conflict. Although
today we would see many of his views as outmoded, Sumner
(1906), writing more than a century ago, discussed these issues,
and others—war, land, inequality, racial divides, women’s
roles, economy, and more—that continue to trouble us today. It
is no doubt true, as Cole (2006) concluded, that psychologists
cannot solve all the world’s problems, but, Cole pointed out, if
they work with others—from different cultures and different
disciplines—psychologists can certainly be contributors to
solutions for the common problems of humanity. There is no
lack of opportunity, no dearth of challenges, for the budding
psychologist with an interest in culture.
Where Have We Been?
The authors of the earlier chapters in this book have provided a
variety of cultural perspectives from which to view many of the
subject matters of twenty-first- century psychology. These have
included such broad concepts as universal ethnocentric
tendencies, basic research methods underlying cross-cultural
research, the wide scope of human development, the culture–
cognition connection, the roles of women across cultures,
culture and emotion, and human health and well-being. Some
other chapters have a more specific or focused emphasis:
educational assessment, the teaching of mathematics, historical
aspects of research in perception, sexual minorities,
psychotherapy, disabilities, conceptions of self, attribution
theory, attractiveness, and African organizational styles. The
authors of chapters on these topics, and more, have
demonstrated that cross-cultural psychology spans a fascinating
range of theoretical, empirical, and applied interests.
Although we have used the term cross-cultural psychology as an
inclusive label, these chapters contain ideas consistent with the
perspectives identified by previous writers as cross-cultural
(Segall, Dasen, Berry, & Poortinga, 1999), cultural (Heine,
2008), and indigenous (Shams, 2002). And they touch upon
aspects of all the domains that Kagitçibas¸i and Berry (1989)
suggested cross-cultural psychology should encompass: theory

14. and method, biology and evolution, perception and cognition,
social psychology, values and attitudes, personality, gender,
human development, mental health and therapy, ethnic
psychology and acculturation, and work and organizational
psychology. Further, the authors of this volume share at least
three core values:
1. 1 They couch their work in research-based findings arising
from empirical investigation.
2. 2 They assign culture a central role in their research and their
interpretations.
3. 3 They are committed to broadening cultural understanding,
and to strengthening cross-cultural psychology, through
teaching.
The last of these, teaching, holds promise not only for
development and communication of the content of cross-cultural
psychology, but also for cultivation of the next generation of
psychologists who will place culture at the fore in their own
future work. What can we learn from psychologists who have
made the teaching of cross-cultural psychology their central
emphasis?
Teaching Cross-Cultural Psychology
As you have seen in Chapter 1 of this volume, teaching in
American psychology has too often been limited in its scope,
with its focus placed largely on white European Americans.
Western psychologists have too often assumed that their
findings were universally valid (e.g., Arnett, 2009), leading
critics to argue that mainstream psychology has been
mechanistic, individualistic, and acultural (Misra & Gergen,
1993). The cultural limitations of Western psychology are not
new; Albee (1988), for example, pointed out the ethnocentrism
and prejudice present in the work of early leaders in the field,
including Francis Galton, G. Stanley Hall, and Robert Yerkes,
among others. Despite longstanding neglect of culture in the
teaching of undergraduate psychology, Segall, Lonner, and
Berry (1998) argued that cross- cultural psychology is a
scholarly field that should find its place in the curriculum.

15. A number of teachers of psychology have worked to develop
pedagogical approaches to effectively teach cross-cultural
psychology. As early as 1975, Brislin wrote about teaching the
subject, and Cushner (1987) characterized cross-cultural
psychology as the “missing link” in teaching, suggesting that
students’ understanding of culture may be impaired by their
lack of experience, and that, conversely students who have
traveled abroad may lack the conceptual foundation to properly
appreciate the experience. At about the same time, Cole (1984)
observed that cross-cultural psychology was “often treated as a
slightly miscreant stepchild, or perhaps as just a specialized
method” (p. 1000). Cushner described the use of scenarios
presenting students with depictions of incidents involving
people from different cultures. This is a technique that Brislin,
Cushner, Cherrie, and Yong (1986) called culture-assimilator
training. Participants chose from among possible alternative
responses to the incidents, and received feedback about their
choices— resulting in improved knowledge and empathy.
Goldstein (1995) offered guidelines to psychology teachers for
integration of culture and diversity into the curriculum.
Specifically, she recommended:
1. 1 avoiding the marginalization of cross-cultural materials and
perspectives
2. 2 raising awareness about bias within the cross-cultural
literature
3. 3 avoiding the creation or reinforcement of stereotypes
4. 4 using accurate terminology to make cross-cultural
comparisons
5. 5 distinguishing between etics and emics
6. 6 creating a classroom environment in which diversity is
valued. (pp. 228–231)
Cross-cultural teachers, Goldstein argued, could be
transformative agents in moving the field of psychology toward
recognition of human diversity and preparing students to more
effectively combat bias and stereotyping in research and
practice.

16. Hill (2002) further emphasized the importance of integration of
cross-cultural perspectives in the teaching of psychology, not
only noting the limitations of an ethnocentric American
psychology, but also suggesting that the field would suffer the
loss of multicultural and international students who might
choose not to enter a field they perceived lacking in ethnic and
cultural diversity. Hill’s message echoed that of Albert (1988),
who described the neglect of the concept of culture, and Romero
(1988), who advocated for teaching emphasizing ethnic
psychology.
More recently, Abrahamson (2009) described a variety of
assignments designed to increase student awareness of culture
and to bring students into contact with people of other cultures
in meaningful ways. Abrahamson concluded that students
gained heightened awareness and that faculty members reported
improvement in students’ ability to interpret research across
cultures. Goldstein (2008) presented a large collection of
teaching activities, demonstrations, and assignments similarly
intended to aid student understanding and application of
cultural concepts in psychology courses, and Phan (2009)
reported the use of a variety of games and simulations to engage
students with cultural issues.
Clearly, teachers of psychology are increasingly making culture
an integral part of their courses, and courses in cross-cultural
psychology seem to be increasing in number in curricula (Hill,
2002). And, in addition to the aforementioned teaching
activities and resources, such groups as the Society for the
Teaching of Psychology (http://teachpsych.org) and the Center
for Cross-Cultural Research (http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~culture/)
offer a variety of materials to support the teaching of culture
and diversity. Cross-cultural psychology has indeed become a
field meriting a place in the curriculum of the discipline (Segall
et al., 1998).
Summing Up
In an article prepared for an undergraduate student audience,
Lonner (2000), a pioneering figure in cross-cultural psychology,

17. emphasized the availability of resources, and the exciting
promise yet to come in twenty-first-century psychology. He
highlighted the vibrancy of the field, and the opportunities that
lie ahead for students contemplating careers in psychology.
Increasingly, we live in a world made smaller by electronic
communications, international travel, and multinational
business. As I write this chapter, people have serious concerns
about the H1N1 influenza virus—a pathogen that can spread
easily from country to country as air travel facilitates rapid
movement of people around the world. The people of Africa
have more than 280 million mobile phones—vastly changing
access of poor people to medical care, market information, and
distant relatives (McPhee, 2008). The availability of
information has, of course, become mind-boggling; for example,
a recent Google® search using “culture” as a search term
returned 187 million entries! And the interconnected
components of the multinational financial system nearly
collapsed in the financial crisis of 2008. These examples, as
well as the ease with which international commerce has both
created and displaced industrial and commercial interests,
illustrate the importance of cross-cultural communication,
negotiation, and understanding in the twenty-first century.
In addition to the potential for conflict at the level of
governments, religions, or economies, individuals increasingly
face the need to communicate and interact in their work and
their travel (Brislin, 2000), with all the possibilities for
misunderstanding and uncertainty inherent in such exchanges.
Cross-cultural psychology is a discipline that will be important
to the future of today’s students, and researchers will continue
to refine and develop more useful and effective methodologies
(Heine & Norenzayan, 2006; Matsumoto & Yoo, 2006).
For the near term, advocates for the teaching and development
of cross-cultural psychology (e.g., Hill, 2002) are likely to
continue to seek more cross-cultural courses in the curricula of
psychology programs. This seems destined to be both useful and
necessary. But, as we come to the conclusion of this volume, we

18. might imagine a future in which culture would be an integral
part of all teaching and research in psychology. In such a future,
we would not need specialized courses to ensure consideration
of cultural variables, and our psychology would be a psychology
of all people, not an ethnocentric European American
discipline. This is the future Segall et al. (1998) dreamed of
when they wrote that
cross-cultural psychology will be shown to have succeeded
when it disappears. For, when the whole field of psychology
becomes truly international and genuinely intercultural—in
other words, when it becomes truly a science of human
behavior— cross-cultural psychology will have achieved its
aims and become redundant. (p. 1108)
I hope that you, the student reader, will be a contributor to this
goal.
References
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the classroom. In R. A. R. Gurung & L. R. Prieto
(Eds.), Getting culture: Incorporating diversity across the
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Albee, G. W. (1988). Foreword. In P. Bronstein & K. Quina
(Eds.), Teaching a psychology of people: Resources for gender
and sociocultural awareness (pp. vii–x). Washington, DC:
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Albert, R. D. (1988). The place of culture in modern
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Argyle, M. (1999). Causes and correlates of happiness. In D.
Kahneman, E. Diener, & N. Schwarz (Eds.), Well-being: The

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