Cultural Psychology Research Articles

Gender identity from a dialogical and semiotic cultural perspective

Contrary to common sense and the heteronormative thought that “man is born a man” and “woman is born a woman”, the construction of a gender/sexual identity can be seen as an intensely dynamic process involving the internalization and externalization of collective and individual meanings, enclosing a crucial importance for the development of subjects. The present article addresses the issue from a dialogical and Semiotic Cultural Psychology approaches, in their relationship with other theoretical discussions concerning the subject of gender/sexual identity processes. Numerous are the debates about gender/sexual identities in present-day sociocultural contexts, but the topic requires a systemic, all-inclusive analysis of sociocultural structures, practices, and the dynamics between micro, meso and macro cultural levels, in interaction with the active role of subjectivity. We then propose a new construct within the framework of a Dialogical Self Theoretical approach designated as Irradiating Self Positioning, to better explain the power of gender/sexual dimensions within the Dialogical Self. Knowledge so constructed may contribute to making sense of developmental issues concerning the subject, and this may support the full acceptance of sexual and gender diversities in our societies.

Systematic bibliometric analysis of the cultural landscape

ABSTRACT The cultural landscape is valuable for global ecological conservation, as it embodies human history and cultural heritage. Cultural landscapes, as treasures of human history and culture, have a place in the globalization process of ecological conservation. This paper uses Citespace based on the W.O.S. database for a bibliometric analysis to explore cultural landscape research. The history of the development of cultural landscapes is summarized and supported by theory and data. The study analyzes 2506 publicly available publications from various disciplines, including ecology, environmental sciences, multidisciplinary studies, social sciences, anthropology, and more. The research reveals that the discipline has a multi-layered nature, an uneven distribution of research institutions, and a single depth of analysis. The number of keywords in the literature has been increasing year-by-year, covering many hotspots and spanning a wide range of topics. To bridge the gap in the comprehensive study of cultural landscapes caused by psychological factors, we recommend starting with the historical context, cultural history, and human behavioral adaptations. Additionally, we suggest that the cultural ecosystem services provided by cultural landscapes should be explored in the context of human-driven ecotourism. The current phase of cultural ecosystem services aims to translate theory into practice by creating spiritual services and cultural psychology for humans in the post-popular era. Inter-institutional cooperation among scholars should be strengthened in research to respond to the trend of the globalization of ecological civilization-building. These efforts will provide suitable and feasible solutions for the globalization of ecological civilization and contribute to the development of the cultural landscape around cultural ecosystems.

Enlightenment on Career Education from Bruner’s Narrative View of Cultural Psychology

At present, China’s career education displays a lack of cultural awareness. From the perspective of Constructivism, narrative career counseling focuses on the process of individual construction, while Bruner’s narrative view of cultural psychology highlights the perspective of social culture. Learners can acquire the ability needed for career development from culture to cope with the complexity and changeability of society. Bruner’s narrative view of cultural psychology emphasizes the meanings, metaphors and mutations in culture. The enlightenment on career education will be discussed from two aspects in this paper: one is that career education should be developed from a cultural perspective because culture is a resource and tool of career education; the other is that the narrative method should be adopted in career education.

The theoretical study of voluntary beliefs

Beliefs reinforce people's perception of right and wrong to provide behavioral guidance. But is our faith voluntary? Therefore, it is necessary to understand whether these beliefs can be determined by our conscious choices. To shed light on this debate, this paper will explain why people's beliefs are involuntary mainly by examining the relevant literature in biological, social, and cultural psychology and exploring the importance of science and education in helping individuals develop new beliefs in line with modern ethics. By exploring and understanding the underlying mechanisms that influence our belief system, people's beliefs can become more rational and more in line with the modern world. This requires the guidance of the government to make people return to rationality. Therefore, I believe that the government should call for social projects that follow modern ethical guidelines. These programs can give people awareness of protecting the environment and raising equality. By doing so, humans can be more adapted to embrace the beliefs of diversity, inclusion and equity.

Understanding culture shock and its relationship to intercultural communicative competence

Culture shock has gained attention and been observed from multi-disciplinary perspectives in international education, such as from anthropology, psychology, cultural psychology, intercultural communication studies, linguistics, and many others. By synthesising the ABC’s theory and intercultural communicative competence with their savoirs, the present study offers a perspective to analyse three international students’ culture shock experiences. As an explorative case study, the data were collected through in-depth interviews to extract the sojourners’ narratives, which were then transcribed in the form of text or quotations. It was found that the affective, behavioural, and cognitive dimensions were identified and emerged in each respondent. In the affective, overwhelming emotions, language limitation, and feelings of isolation were felt in various intensities. From the data, the respondents claimed to have lacked intrapersonal skills to prepare themselves for the culture of the host country along with the socio-cultural aspects. In addition, they found social support by individuals or officials essential for reducing negative feelings. In the behavioural dimension, these respondents started to adapt to the situation though they still found it challenging to confirm and clarify any unfamiliar encounters. Finally, in the cognitive dimension, the respondents mingled and integrated into the locals, both in their academic and social lives. It is suggested that elements of intercultural communicative competence, namely intercultural attitude, knowledge of the host culture, skills of relating and discovery, and critical cultural awareness may have the potential to manage culture shock effectively. It should be incorporated into international higher education and EFL pedagogy.

Challenges and Concerns in Assisting Indigenous People with Suicide Attempts.

There has been an alarming rise in suicide attempts among Indigenous people in Brazil, leading to national concerns about the provision of psychosocial care and professional support. In this study, we make an attempt to understand the perspectives of professionals in assisting Indigenous people from a specific group, the Inỹ, and identify the specific challenges of addressing issues through the mental health care system related specifically to suicide prevention. Using a qualitative approach with participant observation and semi-structured interviews, the research included Indigenous and their families assisted by three public institutions and the professionals that work in public psychosocial assistance. For this paper, we examined the tensions, conflicts, and challenges of the healthcare professionals at one of these institutions, a Psychosocial Care Center in the state of Goiás/Brazil. For data analysis, a sociocultural protocol was built to identify dialogical tensions between the different thematic fields of mental health care. The findings reveal that the theme of suicide was an important concern in the daily work with the community. Still, there were significant issues related to the assumptions, methodology, and meaning of care between the professionals and the community, on account of which the objective of the programme to address suicide attempts had not been effective or successful. The discussion of the results raises several critical questions about the possible contributions of dialogical cultural psychology in the context of Indigenous health. Also, it has important implications for the global issue of the wellbeing of Indigenous people.

Development and vulnerability across the lifecourse.

What is it that develops in adult life? Development through work and family life have been documented and theorised in detail, but much less is known about what is learned beyond these domains, through people's engagements in hobbies or when out of work (e.g., unemployed, retired). We argue that adult development can be addressed in general terms, beyond domain specificity; drawing on our sociocultural psychology framework, and assuming an open-system perspective, we highlight the two processes of progressive differentiation and psychological distancing in diverse domains of activity. To address development over time, we explore 20years of people's lives through the longitudinal analysis of online diaries. A combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis enables us to identify people's experiences of rupture and transitions, the diversity of their domains of interests, and how these change over time. Based on a case-study, we show that, if the general direction of development does entail progressive differentiation and distanciation, these processes can also be hindered by the cumulation of vulnerabilising events. Finally, we show that some domains, such as the long-standing activity of diary writing, can itself be used as resource for adult development.

Politics and Psychology

This article presents a discussion inspired by the invitation formed by Kevin Carriere’s book: “Psychology in Policy – Redefining Politics Through The Individual”. From a theoretical standpoint in culture psychology Carriere challenges the idea of politics as a particular practice carried out by mainly politicians. Instead, he attempts to anchor processes of politics in the everyday lives of individuals, directed at changing their worlds. In this article, we discuss how this ambition could evolve even further by relating it to other theoretical approaches working with similar ambitions.

The Greek photographer Nelly’s: the interplay of personal and socio-cultural theme of ‘rebirth’

This article presents a psychobiography study of the famous Greek photographer Ellie Sougioultzoglou-Seraidari (Nelly’s) (1899–1998). Nelly’s was born in Aidini (Asia Minor), and in her early years she experienced the tragic events of the Greek-Turkish War (1919–1923). She studied photography in Dresden (Germany), and worked in Athens (Greece) and New York (U.S.A.). A narrative and cultural psychology framework was adopted to explore the way that Nelly’s constructed her life story. An adjusted version of the ‘Life-Story Interview’ (McAdams & Bowman, 2001) was used that distinguishes between redemption versus contamination narratives. The narrative analysis of autobiographical materials revealed turning points and a central life theme. The photographer appeared to construct her life story as a process of reinventing herself or managing ‘rebirth’. This construction matches the dominant narrative of Greek refugees of Asia Minor, following what is known in European history as the Asia Minor ‘Great Catastrophe’ (1922). Both narratives are surviving and thriving stories of ‘rebirth’. The importance of making meaning of life stories within a specific socio-cultural and historical context is emphasised. Practice and research suggestions are provided.

Cultural Unconscious: A Theory of Cultural Criticism

‘Cultural unconscious’ is a vague term in literary and cultural studies. It has not yet been systematically examined from the conceptual standpoint. As a concept, it is not a simple idea that combines ‘culture’ and ‘unconscious’, but refers to the mechanism of cultural psychology and epistemology structured on the interaction of history, psychology, discourse, ideology and other factors. By investigating how culture and the unconscious work together to form a concept from the integrated approach of psychoanalysis and semiotics, this article aims to turn a vague idea into a clearly defined theory of criticism with practical applicability for cultural studies. After a conception of its logic and mechanism in terms of Freud’s unconscious, Lacan’s renovation, Peirce’s semiosis, and Barthes’s semiology, the article applies the new theory to the analysis of a literary text to see how it may not only help reveal deep dimensions and mechanism of cultural consciousness but also has the potential of becoming a theory of cultural criticism.

Understanding the Software of the Mind, Self and Culture: The Scientific Foundation of Indigenous and Cultural Psychology

The understanding of the nature and the software of the mind has generated immense debate in religion, philosophy, sciences and psychology. Drucker notes that the basic assumption about the reality is the foundation for science, axiom and algorithm adopted for the theory, concept and method. The assumption differentiates what is important from what is noise. In the medieval Europe, the Catholic Church provided a unified theory of the world as a reflection of God’s grand design and purpose. They held the power to define and thus had the power to control people’s lives. Their power was challenged during the Renaissance with the emergence of humanism. The Cartesian duality of separating the mind from body allowed the separation of church and state and science to flourish. In East Asia, Confucius articulated a different set of assumptions. Humans are defined as ingan 人間 (‘human between’) and assume relationship and compassion as the basic foundation. This is the basis of the cultural difference and theory of the mind. The Darwinian Evolutionary Theory replaced the religious definition, Cartesian duality, and empathy with the biological traits, instincts and natural selection. Psychology adopted the biological model to explain human behaviour. Research in paleoanthropology, genetics, and neurobiology outline the limitations of the biological model in explaining the human mind and behaviour. Bandura has documented the importance of human agency, consciousness, and self-efficacy in explaining human behaviour and provided empirical results with greater predictive and explanatory power than the traditional psychological theories. Indigenous and cultural psychology represents the continuation of the assumptions, theory and concepts outlined by Wilhelm Wundt and Albert Bandura. Kim outlines the transactional model of science, where human agency (measured by self-efficacy) can explain a person’s performance and outcome. Empirically, the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the 85-year longitudinal study, found the unexpected results that challenge the previous held assumptions. Waldinger and Schulz have found that maintaining good relationship is the most important predictor of happiness, health and longevity and not high income, success, IQ and personality. Kim and Kim found that for Millennials and Gen Z, happiness is predicted by relational and social efficacy, positive outlook, and receiving social support from family, friends and online communities, replicating previous results found across three generations and for the past 25 years in Korea. These results point to the importance of examining the basic assumptions of the theories in psychology and the scientific foundation of indigenous and cultural psychology.

Acculturative stress while online dating: An exploration of the experiences of second generation Indian and Pakistani immigrants in the United Kingdom

AbstractThe aim of this qualitative study was to explore the acculturative stress experienced by second generation Indian and Pakistani young adults in the United Kingdom, who use online dating services—a practice common in Western cultures but unapproved in traditional South Asian cultures. Semi‐structured in‐depth interviews were conducted with six participants who were recruited through purposive sampling. Interview transcripts were analyzed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The findings indicate that while it is exposure to Western culture that influences participants to engage in online dating, it is their native cultural values that affect most of their online dating attitudes and behaviors such as preference for ethnically congruent partners, avoidance of casual sexual encounters, and expectations of slow‐paced and long‐term relationships. These findings are discussed as strategies used by participants to integrate different cultural orientations and manage their acculturative stress, based on Berry's (2003) Acculturation Model. This study contributes toward expanding literature in the field of cultural psychology and romantic relationships, by adding to an understanding of the pressures and challenges experienced by those navigating differing and often opposing sets of social and cultural norms, in the context of modern online dating.

Cultural Differences in People's Reactions and Applications of Robots, Algorithms, and Artificial Intelligence

AbstractAlthough research in cultural psychology has established that virtually all human behaviors and cognitions are in some ways shaped by culture, culture has been surprisingly absent from the emerging literature on the psychology of technology. In this perspective article, we first review recent findings on machine aversion versus appreciation. We then offer a cross-cultural perspective in understanding how people might react differently to machines. We propose three frameworks – historical, religious, and exposure – to explain how Asians might be more accepting of machines than their Western counterparts. We end the article by discussing three exciting human–machine applications found primarily in Asia and provide future research directions.

Cultural Psychology: Beyond East and West.

Research in cultural psychology over the last three decades has revealed the profound influence of culture on cognitive, emotional, and motivational processes shaping individuals into active agents. This article aims to show cultural psychology's promise in three key steps. First, we review four notable cultural dimensions believed to underlie cultural variations: independent versus interdependent self, individualism versus collectivism, tightness versus looseness of social norms, and relational mobility. Second, we examine how ecology and geography shape human activities and give rise to organized systems of cultural practices and meanings, called eco-cultural complexes. In turn, the eco-cultural complex of each zone is instrumental in shaping a wide range of psychological processes, revealing a psychological diversity that extends beyond the scope of the current East-West literature. Finally, we examine some of the non-Western cultural zones present today, including Arab, East Asian, Latin American, and South Asian zones, and discuss how they may have contributed, to varying degrees, to the formation of the contemporary Western cultural zone.

Chinese Elements in Film Mulan (2020) and Its Intercultural Transmission

This paper aims to analyze Chinese elements and their intercultural transmission in the film Mulan. Disney's live-action film Mulan set off a global craze after its release in 2020. A large quantity of Chinese elements appeared in the film have aroused foreign audiences’ interest, attention and heated discussion, thus spreading Chinese culture worldwide. Based on Stuart Hall's Encoding and Decoding theory, this paper finds that the film reflects both material and spiritual cultural elements of China, such as tulou architecture (the earthen buildings constructed in Fujian province in southern China), traditional clothing, kung fu. However, the results of the study reveal that the film encodes and decodes these elements at various levels so that it produces different cultural psychology for the target language audience. Therefore, in the process of intercultural transmission, appropriate methods, including in-depth exploration of Chinese elements and correct encoding and decoding, must be adopted.

Difficulties in Positioning as Veg*an: Two Distinctions to Examine Positioning

Positioning and position are notions that are quite often used currently in psychology, mostly with reference to Dialogical Self Theory and Positioning Theory. In this article, drawing on these two approaches as well as on socio-cultural psychology, I elaborate an integrative understanding of positioning. It includes a distinction between the socio-material, socio-discursive and moral dimensions of positioning, as well as a distinction between microgenetic, ontogenetic and sociogenetic scales of positioning. I illustrate the hermeneutical power of this theoretical proposition through the presentation of a study of positioning regarding the consumption of products of animal origin. I present an analysis of data collected in 2016 in a Swiss canton with qualitative semi-structured interviews with 10 participants. I focus on difficulties in positioning and show how the classical approach in terms of I-positions, and analyses based on the two distinctions presented above, allow differentiated insights on dynamics underlying the difficulties to position as a vegetarian or vegan.

The concept of hysteria as mirror of the relation between clinical and cultural psychology

This paper theoretically examines how the psycho-pathological concept of hysteria has evolved since its emergence in antiquity, what causes contributed to it and how nowadays meaning-making systems of clinical psychology are mirrored through it. As has been shown, the transformation of hysteria is more closely related to the cultural psychology of feminism than any other disease before it. The 20th century in particular marked a significant change in the conceptualization of hysteria. From a highly sexist and paternalistic it became a political diagnose and finally was used, after getting banished from the psychological dictionary as an everyday pejorative personality adjective. It underwent a transformation within its gender classification, which was initially limited exclusively to women. Later, it became a psychiatric diagnosis, which was no longer durable nowadays and has finally changed into the concept of histrionic today. The analysis shows how, on the one hand, medical and biopsychological findings and, on the other hand, especially political movements and their cultural psychological processes of change form the basis of psychopathological concepts. It will be shown to what extent hysteria is exceptionally exemplary for this change in psychological meaning-making. In this context, the close connection between hysteria and the emancipatory development of our society could be emphasized.

From Critical Psychology and Cultural-Historical Psychology to “Culturally-Turned” Psychology

Critical psychology and cultural-historical psychology are two approaches emerging as critiques to mainstream psychology that is often perceived to be hedonistic and individualistic. Adopting the spirit of critical psychology and cultural-historical psychology that strive to break the grips of mainstream psychology as well as absorbing the inspiration from Thomas Teo’s psychological humanities, Svend Brinkmann’s cultural psychology, Richard Johnson’s cultural circuit, and Stuart Hall’s cultural studies, as a critical review this article proposes an approach coined as psikologi berhampiran budaya (culturally-turned psychology) based on the socio-cultural realities of the present-day Indonesian society. Psikologi berhampiran budaya offers four models of psychological research in the production of knowledge on both the subject and the society of the present-day Indonesia. The application of the four models in such culturally turned production of knowledge is expected to simultaneously and serendipitously produce a specifically Indonesian psychology.

The deficit model in PISA assessments of competencies: counter-evidence from anthropology

ABSTRACT International organisations have pressed countries to prepare students for the knowledge economy by building real-life competencies into national curricula, and the OECD’s PISA has assessed competencies like collaboration and creative problem solving. But is there really a deficit in competencies that schools must address? This review of empirical studies in anthropology and cultural psychology documents that people learn and practice many key competencies in everyday life. However, the situation affects practice, and school-like assessments are situations ill-suited to eliciting everyday competencies. The inaccurate deficit model and questionable assessments paint a misleading picture of how to solve underemployment in the knowledge economy.

Vocational Choice: A Narrative Identity Approach Conceived from Cultural Psychology

Vocation has been studied from perspectives such as trait-factor, differential psychology, and psychometrics. These perspectives have assumed it to be the precursor of a unique and definitive career choice, resulting from matching personal characteristics with the requirements of a job. Vocation has also been conceptualized as the product of evolutionary stages, dependent on maturational processes. However, the changing conditions of the contemporary world of work make it necessary to reconsider vocationality from a dynamic perspective that transcends the exclusively psychometric view. This article proposes an alternative approach to vocation, based on the processes of identity construction propose by cultural psychology. Thus, vocation is assumed as a process of a narrative nature, in constant formation, based on the symbolic resources with which people interact. Vocationality emerges as a historical, situated, and distributed phenomenon, marked by occupational and educational experiences, as well as by interactive experiences with significant others.