![]() However, cultural influences are not uniform ( 8, 9) variation exists both within and between individuals and groups of individuals in a given cultural context ( 10 – 13). Group characteristics (e.g., geography, race, gender) function as proxies for culture inasmuch as they suggest that people who share certain characteristics likely participate in similar cultural processes. Westerners), but a set of dynamic processes that both shape and change in response to cultural products ( 4 – 7). Culture therefore is not a static characteristic that differentiates people (e.g., Easterners vs. Such challenges to the status quo cause people within a given culture to question the prevailing cultural values and norms and change the patterns of behavior deemed acceptable in that context. ![]() For example, Saudi Arabian activists recently challenged and succeeded in overturning a longstanding law banning women from driving. For instance, laws both reflect cultural beliefs about how people should behave and reinforce these beliefs by punishing behavior that deviates from what is considered “good” or “acceptable.” When cultural products do not align with the prevailing cultural values and norms but are not dismissed as “bad” or “unacceptable,” they can challenge the legitimacy of these values and norms and elicit cultural change. When cultural products align with prevailing values and norms, they reinforce these values and norms and strengthen their legitimacy. The prevailing values and norms shape cultural products (e.g., societal institutions individual thoughts and behaviors). Second, culture encompasses both products of action and conditioning elements of further action. While some outcomes of this experience are visible (e.g., behaviors), others are not (e.g., ideas, assumptions, values). That is, culture is context laden and develops through time and experience. First, culture consists of explicit and implicit historically derived and selected patterns of behavior. While “culture” takes on many meanings in psychology, we draw upon Kroeber and Kluckholn’s ( 3) work to highlight two key features. Finally, we offer a vision for cultivating interpretive power in psychological science by instilling norms and practices that promote attention to culture at all phases of research.ĭefining Culture in Psychological Science * We then use existing research to demonstrate that accounting for the ways in which culture shapes individuals’ experiences and behaviors-and thus leveraging interpretive power-renders a more comprehensive understanding of human functioning. Then, we use the concept of interpretive power to illustrate how insufficient attention to culture obscures our understanding of psychological processes by ( i) normalizing and overgeneralizing Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic (WEIRD) ( 2) processes, ( ii) making non-WEIRD people and processes invisible, and ( iii) misapplying WEIRD findings in non-WEIRD contexts. To set the stage for our discussion, we first define culture in the context of psychology. We use the lens of interpretive power-the ability to understand individual experiences and behaviors in relation to cultural contexts-to illustrate how instilling culture-conscious scientific norms and practices will improve psychological science. ![]() This shift involves recognizing that people are cultural beings whose histories, values, and experiences shape their understanding of what constitutes good or normative behavior and how they make sense of the world. We build on this call by asking psychologists to intentionally observe and leverage an understanding of diverse people and experiences to improve psychological science. He is thus a self-incarcerated prisoner in a platonic cave, where he has placed himself with his back to the outside world, watching its shadows on the walls ( 1). All too often the scientific psychologist is observing not the mind or behavior but summed data and computer printout. In our holy determination to confront reality and put our theory to the test of nature, we have plunged through reality, like Alice through the mirror, into a never-never land in which we contemplate not life but data. In 1973, William McGuire called for psychologists to better understand human behavior by fully considering the people from whom psychological data derive:
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