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Cross-Cultural Psychology: How Culture Affects Human Development

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Culture has been defined by Hinde (1987,p3-4) as “better regarded as convenient label for many of the diverse ways in which human practices and beliefs differ between groups.” Human development is a cultural process as human beings across the world differs in numerous ways, by their beliefs, traditions values and norms. We all differ in the way we speak(language), the food we eat, the way we dress up and also our religion. The culture of a particular society defines who they are and differentiate them from the others. But what is culture? In the first part of the following essay, we will examine how culture affects human development, resulting …show more content…

As stated by Kagitcibasi and Poortinga (2000, p. 133), “Cross-cultural psychology as a field of research has come about as a reaction against the tendency in psychology to ignore cultural variations and to consider them nuisance variable.” Segall et al. (1999) identified two main goals of cross-cultural psychology as: (a) examines what we know to be the case in our own culture and examines the question in another culture. An example could be Is Anti-social behavior normal in adolescents in other cultures?, (b) explore other cultures in order to discover cultural variation which are not present in one’s cultural experience. Berry et al.(1992/2002) highlighted a third goal as an attempt to “assemble and integrate the results obtained from the 2 goals and then generate a more universal psychology”. However the cross-cultural approach has been criticized for oversimplifying the role of culture by viewing it as an independent …show more content…

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