tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298769255279734097.post3922899785225918552..comments2023-09-17T08:52:37.461-07:00Comments on Adventures In Culture, Mind & Space: Are cultural differences (in psychological processes) reducible to individual differences?Ronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16204324324254552609noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1298769255279734097.post-41975788667189249672012-03-15T13:24:15.991-07:002012-03-15T13:24:15.991-07:00Hi Ron,
I could really appreciate your rebuttal o...Hi Ron,<br /><br />I could really appreciate your rebuttal of the PNAS paper and would like to contribute to the discussion. <br /><br />In a manuscript that I am preparing with Ype Poortinga we address one problem in cross-cultural psychology that we think is the real culprit, namely the questionable way in which process and content are distinguished: Universalists tend to explain cross-cultural differences in terms of content only, with processes thought to be equivalent across cultures; while relativists tend to explain cross-cultural differences in terms of processes only, with content considered not to be very relevant. This opposition is nicely portrayed in the figure on page 773 of Norenzayan and Heine´s 2005 paper in Psychological Bulletin. They distinguish existential universals that show cross-cultural differences in function from functional universals that show cross-cultural differences in terms of accessibility. <br /><br />In our opinion the distinction between process and content is meaningless in so far differences in manifest behavior content between two cultural populations by necessity implies some corresponding physiological difference. What this means, according to us, is that both universalism and relativism are not sufficiently equipped to deal with cross-cultural differences satisfactory and lead to a stalemate that is not very productive. Of course, we are not the first to notice this. For example Mischel and Oyserman, have tried to go beyond broad universalism and relativism, respectively, by focusing on situations (Oyserman looks for something I would like to call ”micro-frames”, instead of the broad cultural frames of Hong et aL). However, they do not fully succeed in our opinion, because they do not theoretically identify a new behavioral pattern (that is neither process nor content) at which cross-cultural differences should then be sought. <br /><br />What may help is to start thinking about the basic unit of analysis in which we actually observe cross-cultural differences. Borrowing from ethology, we think that “behavioral episode” would be a very interesting point of departure. These episodes have clear beginnings and endings. Analysis could then proceed to answer questions as to the temporal order and causal structure within episodes and how culture affects these.<br /><br />What do you think,<br />Symen <br /><br />Internet: symenbrouwers.edicypages.com<br />LinkedIn: nl.linkedin.com/pub/symen-brouwers/46/b4/a27Symen Brouwershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13059794551471018066noreply@blogger.com