Fundamental questions of cross-cultural psychology

Abstract

The source of a river is often difficult to find. More often than not, rivers originate from multiple small-water sources and creeks that trickle down, often underground, until they merge in larger streams and eventually become a river. The situation is not much different for scientific disciplines. Cross-cultural psychology started about forty years ago as a separate discipline, but its intellectual parental disciplines are much older. Since its inception, the field has grown considerably. Indeed, it may even be fair to argue that, as a scientific discipline, cross-cultural psychology has come of age. There are a few journals (such as the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology , the Journal of Cross Cultural Management and the International Journal of Intercultural Relations ) that are entirely devoted to the field, and there are many more journals that publish cross-cultural studies on a regular basis. All mainstream psychology journals have published cross-cultural studies. In addition, there is a professional organisation that is exclusively devoted to cross-cultural psychology (the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology). Both the association and the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology were launched at about the same time forty years ago, which seems to provide sufficient institutional reasons for defining this as the beginning of the discipline.