Psychological Perspectives of Social and Cultural Differences

Dear Colleagues,

The classical definition of culture includes explicit and implicit patterns of historically derived and transmitted values and ideas that manifest in institutions, practices, and artifacts, which themselves are produced through behavior. Cultural issues matter for understanding human psychology; this is widely accepted within the field of psychology. Culture is seen as a network of imperfectly shared knowledge representations for coordinating social transactions, serving individuals' goal pursuits. There is a link between cultural tightness and comparison proclivity across individuals, being that perceptions of ambient tightness and interdependence are uniquely associated with stronger social-comparison tendencies. Cultural differences are found in various psychological processes, including self-concepts, motivation, emotion, and cognition; processes underlying cultural differences in those psychological processes are also identified. Also, new perspectives on the conceptualization of psychopathology and on the definition of culture and how these are intertwined arise. Moreover, culturally sensitive assessment practices in psychopathology are identified, including multiple cultural identities of the patient, explanatory models of the psychopathology, psychosocial stressors and strengths, and the cultural features of the practitioner–patient relationship in the clinical encounter, being that clinical interaction is a cultural one. Concerning cultural differences, psychological research is usually based on WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) participants. However, this group does not represent the majority of the world's population. Therefore, the challenge is to study populations from non-WEIRD countries, compare them with those from WEIRD countries, and theoretically justify the differences found.

Dr. Ângela Maria T. Leite
Guest Editor

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