Cross Cultural Psychology in the 21st Century - Essay Example

113207 Cross-cultural psychology, present most exotic branch of general Psychology, with worldwide dimensions is becoming known as a grand endeavourof future psychological research. It recognises the perception of colour, language, learning, cognition, thoughts, gender stereotypes, and expressions mirroring emotions. Cross cultural research has recognised significant cultural diversities as reflected in temperament, attachment, childrearing, morality, community life, socio-emotional structure, language, various emotions and its role in shaping human experience and world view.

Cultural similarities and differences have to be studied on priority for understanding human behaviour. Travelling is an integral part of cross-cultural psychological research. Unlimited friendship with people from diverse backgrounds and theoretical and practical life experiences that should enable the researcher to think critically, rationally and logically are compulsory for the said research. It is imperative to think less about cultural differences and more about assimilating the cross-cultural psychology into mainstream psychology.

Research should focus on adjusting the ideologies and theories to the mainstream psychology, Matsumoto's saying that bilinguals automatically work from two cultural frames depending on the language they speak at any given moment. Knowing more languages enables them to get into multiple personalities and intercultural sensitivity. Most westerners are monolingual and are unaccustomed to cross cultural comparisons. Future developments in research should focus on cultural comparisons. Culture is too magnificent to be captured by one dimension alone and should be understood in its many splendours, also with reference to power and status that affect the culture.

Integration of cross-cultural theories into mainstream psychology should be the target. Two research regions should be the intercultural and interpersonal communications and their importance. Culture and the social significance of emotion is an important research aspect. Identical emotional display is non-existent across cultures. Emotions are controlled, displayed, altered, overplayed or underplayed according to the inherent cultures usually. Smiling American faces and the non-smiling faces of Japanese create an immediate contrast.

Westerners are unfamiliar to intensity of expressions that is seen very often among Asians. Compared to Asians, reaction intensity and emotion interpretation are much milder amongst westerners. British are famous for their unemotional reactions. Films and media project cultural differences very effectively, though some of them try to show Western passivity on Eastern faces. If Asians are guided by their ethnicity driven culture, Westerners are governed by their acute individualism. Asians display a range of emotions while Westerners are very conscious of any expressional display.

Contexts too rule the expressions as interpreted by the culture. Sometimes, distress, fear, anger, disgust are felt due to intercultural misunderstandings joining and breaking bonds between people. Research focussing entirely on emotions and its analysis is necessary for cross-cultural psychology. Cultural display in the brain according to the pattern set early in the childhood would be of great interest for this research, as it rules the emotional capability of the person. Dissimilarity between cultures shows prominently in the behaviour, language, attachments and facial expressions that are ruled by the individual's emotional capacity and this again, is the reflection of the inherent culture.

It is a circle and it can be understood only by dealing with people from diverse cultural backgrounds. Research depends upon the degree of familiarity the researcher can attain of these cultures.