The reader will have realized that this book offers a selective presentation of a diverse field. Necessarily many important points of view, empirical research studies and programs of application have not been mentioned, never mind given substantive treatment. Our attention, however, has not been random, but was guided by major themes and debates on the relationship between behavior and culture.

We have also taken the position that psychological processes are shared, species-wide characteristics. These common psychological qualities are nurtured, and shaped by enculturation and socialization, sometimes further affected by acculturation, and ultimately expressed as overt human behaviors. While set on course by these transmission processes relatively early in life, behaviors continue to be guided in later life by direct influence from ecological, cultural and sociopolitical factors. In short, we have considered culture, in its broadest sense, to be a major source of human behavioral diversity producing variations on underlying themes. It is the common qualities that make comparisons possible, and the variations that make comparisons interesting.

Our enterprise has some clearly articulated goals, and it is reasonable to ask whether the field of cross-cultural psychology generally, and this book in particular, has met them. In our view, one of the goals, as expressed in Chapter 1, has not been achieved: we are nowhere close to producing a universal psychology through the comprehensive integration of results of comparative psychological studies.

In this chapter we examine the relationship between the science and practice of psychology as it has developed in the western world, and the need for a culturally informed, relevant and appropriate psychology for all the world's peoples. Psychological knowledge in the west (hereafter referred to as western psychology) is often of little relevance to the majority world (a term used, for example, by Kağitçibaşi, 2007, in preference to “developing” or “Third” World). We accept and applaud the goal of advancing the development of a global psychology, one that is both valid and useful for all cultural populations. There are a number of possible paths toward this goal, including: an examination of the impact of the presence of western psychology on the psychology done in other societies; the development of indigenous psychologies in many distinct societies; and the pulling together of all of these psychologies into a universal psychology that is global in scope.

This move toward an international perspective has been increasingly important in recent years, including for the history of psychology (Brock, 2006), for the teaching of psychology (Karandashev and McCarthy, 2006) and for the practice of psychology (Stevens and Gielen, 2007).

In this chapter we focus on various lines of research that have been developed in order to answer the question to what extent emotions are similar or different across cultures. First, we focus on dimensional approaches. Similar to what has been done in cross-cultural research on personality (Chapter 5) and cognition (Chapter 6), some emotion researchers have tried to reveal common dimensions underlying the many emotions that we experience in daily life and to see whether these dimensions are the same (equivalent) across cultures. The second section addresses research on emotion words. In the absence of a clear definition of emotion terms, the words that people use in daily language have become important tools for cross-cultural researchers. The central question here is whether linguistic differences (differences in words) can be used to infer psychological differences (differences in experience; see also Chapter 8). The third section focusses on studies of specific aspects of emotions. Many contemporary researchers no longer try to define emotion in terms of a single criterion. Rather they use a componential approach, which assumes that emotions can be defined in many different emotion components (e.g., thoughts, feelings, action tendencies, psychophysiological experiences). An important feature of this approach is that cross-cultural differences are assumed to be independent for each component (Mesquita, Frijda and Scherer, 1997).

Preface to book 2

Epistolary prose prefaces were a Hellenistic development, beginning possibly with the letters that Archimedes attached to most of his scientific works (Janson 1964: 19–21). Parthenius' prose Ἐρωτικὰ παθήματα provides the first extant epistolary preface attached to a non-scientific work; by honouring the poet Gallus as dedicatee, it thus promotes the value of the book (Lightfoot 222–4). The practice of putting an epistolary prose preface at the start of a Roman poetry book seems however to have been a Flavian innovation (Janson 1964: 107–12). Martial does this selectively (books 1, 2, 8, 9, 12), St. with all four books of the Siluae published in his lifetime; the posthumous book 5 has a prefatory letter for 5.1 only. The preface to book 2 is in the conventional form of a letter to the dedicatee (cf. 4 epistula), with a salutary phrase at the start (Statius Meliori suo salutem); the prefaces for books 3 and 4 have both opening salutation and concluding uale.

This preface dedicates the book to Atedius Melior, who receives the presentation copy. The preface has many functions beyond summarising the book's contents (thus Van Dam 55): it honours Melior and publicly affirms his friendship with St.; it also honours the addressees of the individual poems and, in keeping with the book's generally domestic character, it emphasises their emotional ties with St. (Johannsen 2006: 268–71).

With growing migration, globalization and internationalization comes an increased need for an understanding of intercultural communication, as well as the use of this information for training people in order to make them more competent in dealing with intercultural issues. The field is very diverse, with publications from a wide variety of scientific and applied disciplines. For example, there is research in linguistics (especially sociolinguistics), sociology, cultural anthropology and cross-cultural psychology. Much of this variety can be surveyed in a handbook edited by Landis, Bennett and Bennett (2004). In this chapter, we mainly focus on the psychological aspects of intercultural communication and training, and point out important issues and studies from a psychological perspective.

This chapter contains three main sections, each representing a distinct area of intercultural communication and training. The first, on intercultural communication, describes the attempts of researchers to delineate which elements of communication are the sources of communication problems during intercultural encounters. This section is somewhat more theoretical than later sections because the main questions focus on the nature of intercultural communication rather than on the application of this knowledge. The second section concerns sojourners, those people who stay in another culture mostly for purposes of work or study (e.g., international exchange students). This is a special group of acculturating people that has already been discussed in Chapter 13.

In Section A.9 of Appendix A we review the algebra of vectors, and in Chapter 1 we considered how to transform one vector into another using a linear operator. In this chapter and the next we discuss the calculus of vectors, i.e. the differentiation and integration both of vectors describing particular bodies, such as the velocity of a particle, and of vector fields, in which a vector is defined as a function of the coordinates throughout some volume (one-, two- or three-dimensional). Since the aim of this chapter is to develop methods for handling multi-dimensional physical situations, we will assume throughout that the functions with which we have to deal have sufficiently amenable mathematical properties, in particular that they are continuous and differentiable.

Differentiation of vectors

Let us consider a vector a that is a function of a scalar variable u. By this we mean that with each value of u we associate a vector a(u). For example, in Cartesian coordinates a(u) = ax(u)i + ay(u)j + az(u)k, where ax(u), ay(u) and az(u) are scalar functions of u and are the components of the vector a(u) in the x-, y- and z-directions respectively. We note that if a(u) is continuous at some point u = u0 then this implies that each of the Cartesian components ax(u), ay(u) and az(u) is also continuous there.

As noted in Chapter 1, there is much more to a cross-cultural study than collecting data in two countries and comparing the results. Long ago Campbell (1970) warned that two-group comparisons usually are not interpretable: there are too many factors to which an observed difference can be attributed, including a lack of equivalence (cultural bias). In various chapters in Part I we have seen examples of competing interpretations of differences in behaviors across cultures. In the present chapter the scope for interpretation of cross-cultural data will be explored further. Both “culture” and “behavior” are somewhat abstract and diffuse concepts that are not accessible to scientific analysis without further specification. The process of specification is guided by the methods and research questions that are selected by researchers as well as by their theoretical and metatheoretical orientations. Usually method and theory are linked and this is the reason why we have combined them in the present chapter.

The first three sections refer back to the three themes and associated theoretical positions that we outlined in Chapter 1. In the first section we elaborate on the distinction between culture as external context and culture as internal to the person (internal context).

This appendix contains short answers to those footnotes that are in the form of a question. They have been deliberately placed away from the questions so as to encourage the reader to formulate their own response, as they would be expected to do in a supervision or tutorial, before seeking confirmation. It should be remembered that the questions, typically requiring only brief answers, are normally designed to test whether a particular point in the main text, which may in itself be a relatively small one, has been correctly grasped. Thus some answers may seem trivial to the reader – if they do, so much the better!

Within cross-cultural psychology it is important to understand the biological, as well as the cultural, bases of behavior. The focus is usually on the sociocultural environment and how it interacts with behavior; this may lead to an unbalanced view. Despite this joint importance, biological aspects are still emphasized rather rarely. Often, biology and culture are seen as opposites; what is labeled as cultural is not biological and what is labeled as biological is not cultural. As we mentioned in Chapter 1, and will describe in more detail here, the two are intricately related in a non-dichotomous way. In the ecocultural framework presented in Figure 1.1 we have included biological adaptation and genetic transmission among the concepts that have to be taken into consideration in cross-cultural psychology. For the understanding of behavior, its similarities as well as its cultural variations, the study of the biological basis is as essential as the analysis of sociocultural context.

In the first and second sections of this chapter we give a brief overview of some core concepts of the Darwinian theory of natural and sexual selection. The third section deals with evolutionary-based theories and methods to study animal and human behavior.

The field of anthropology is extremely varied, ranging from cultural and social anthropology, to biological and physical anthropology, and to linguistic and psychological anthropology. In this chapter, we emphasize cultural and social anthropology because it has provided a substantial foundation for cross-cultural psychology. However, some of the other fields of the discipline are considered in Chapters 8 and 11.

The core concept of culture has been part of psychology for over a century. The work of Rivers (1901) on perception in New Guinea and of Wundt (1913) on Völkerpsychologie were in essence examinations of how culture and behavior are related. More recently the concept of culture was identified as one of the core ideas in the history of international psychology (Pawlik and d'Ydewalle, 2006), and was portrayed there by Berry and Triandis (2006).

The term “culture” has appeared frequently in earlier chapters, with the general meaning provided in Chapter 1: “the shared way of life of a group of people.” Also in Chapter 1, we outlined three themes which are intimately rooted in the concept of culture: culture as internal or external to the person (where culture can be found and studied); relativism–universalism (whether people from different cultures can be validly compared); and the psychological organization of cultural differences (whether culture can serve as a way of drawing behavior together into general patterns).

A longstanding and fundamental interest of cross-cultural psychology has been the application of the findings of the field to the improvement of both the life circumstances and the quality of life of people everywhere. While the chapters in Part III introduce several new topics of human behavior, they also build upon and apply the findings that were outlined in the first two parts of the book. In a world of increasing interconnections among cultural populations, the three related phenomena of acculturation, intercultural relations and intercultural communication have become substantial parts of the field. The application of research from these domains aims to improve the personal and collective outcomes of such global contact, and to avoid the conflicts that can so often result. Psychology has long been a contributor to the two basic institutions of work and health within cultures. The cross-cultural contribution has been to establish both cultural variations and some basic commonalities that allow international organizations to better understand and serve people in their areas of activity. In a final chapter, we examine ways to promote psychology as a culturally appropriate discipline, where all concepts, methods, findings and applications take the various cultural contexts and meanings into account. Our goal is to encourage psychology to draw upon all the materials that are now available from cross-cultural psychology (and that are sampled in this book), and to promote their inclusion in the scientific and professional training of psychologists and in the daily work that they carry out.

When seeking to understand and explain human behavior across differing populations, there is a need to be informed by concepts and findings from two disciplines beyond psychology that have influenced the development of cross-cultural psychology. First, cultural anthropology has contributed the concept of culture and the ethnographic methods used to study cultural phenomena. It has also examined relationships between culture and behavior, developing its own subdisciplines of psychological anthropology and cognitive anthropology. Second, human biology has also provided important concepts and methods for examining the development and display of behavior in varying contexts. This contribution has been especially important with the rise of the field of evolutionary biology in recent years. Taken together, these two disciplines provide a basis for our claim to be both a cultural science and a natural science. In addition to the conceptual and methodological contributions from these two cognate disciplines, cross-cultural psychology has developed a range of theoretical and practical ways to examine the relationships between context and behavior. The three perspectives presented in the first chapter of the book (culture comparative, cultural and indigenous) are further examined and elaborated. Some basic methodological requirements for making valid comparisons of data from different cultural populations are also explained. These theoretical and methodological principles are necessary in order to take into account both individual and group differences, and to provide the basis for the comparative search for psychological universals.

The earlier editions of this text (Berry, Poortinga, Segall and Dasen, 1992, 2002 were accompanied by another textbook written by the same four authors: Human behavior in global perspective: An introduction to cross-cultural psychology (Segall, Dasen, Berry and Poortinga, 1990, 1999). That text was intended to meet the needs of students who had little prior exposure to psychology or anthropology. However, for the third edition of the present text, there is no longer a parallel book to present these complementary materials. As a result, some of the issues and findings from this other text have been reflected into this edition.

Since the publication of the first edition of this textbook in 1992 (and of the second edition in 2002), there has been massive growth and diversification in the examination of the relationships between cultural and behavioral phenomena. There has been substantial growth in the comparative examination of culture–behavior relationships, which has been traditionally known as cross-cultural psychology. Some other developments have focussed on these relationships within cultures, where the concept of cultural psychology has been resurrected and redefined. Another development has been the rise of interest in indigenous psychology, where local, culturally important perspectives on the study of behavior have been advanced. A third development has been the concern with issues of cultural diversity in many culturally plural societies.