Cultural Psychology is the study of how culture influences human thought, feeling, and action, as well as how humans create culture and societies. Interest in Cultural Psychology has expanded dramatically in recent years, and has generated increasingly mature theories, methods, and empirical knowledge bases germane to most areas of Psychology. We propose to augment the specialized training that pre-doctoral students receive in the chosen fields of Psychology with broad exposure to Cultural Psychology. In this application for five years of support, we propose to select three pre-doctoral students per year to participate in a two-year training sequence. Trainees will participate in a year-long core seminar, a journal seminar devoted to contemporary topics in Cultural Psychology, an interdisciplinary course breadth requirement, interactions with leading figures in Cultural Psychology, specialized methodology workshops, and an annual workshop. These different activities will focus on the interplay between culture and basic psychological processes in five areas of research: Cognition and Cognitive Development; Emotion and Socio-emotional Development; Individual Differences, Self, and Personality; Language and Language Development; and Social Interactions, Social Behavior, and Relationships. Trainees will interact extensively with Berkeley faculty who have active, longstanding cross-national research programs, and affiliated faculty with substantial expertise in Cultural Psychology drawn from other Bay Area universities. Close mentoring and monitoring of trainee progress will be maintained throughout. We hope to foster an appreciation and understanding of the theories, methods, and data of the different areas of Cultural Psychology, thus laying the groundwork for better communication among sub-specialties and a more incremental science of culture. Training students in Cultural Psychology also has important social benefits, which derive in part from the implications research in Cultural Psychology has for diverse problems, including: (a) cognitive processes that underpin cultural understanding and misunderstanding; (b) cultural influences on the etiology and expression of physical and mental illness and health; (c) educational policy and practices that concern cultural issues (e.g., bilingualism, academic success, acculturation); (d) relationship discord and satisfaction within and across ethnic groups; and (e) developing a science of Psychology that is concerned with the psychology of individuals of different cultural backgrounds.
| Patel, Sita G; Kull, Melissa A (2011) Assessing psychological symptoms in recent immigrant adolescents. J Immigr Minor Health 13:616-9 |
| Goetz, Jennifer L; Keltner, Dacher; Simon-Thomas, Emiliana (2010) Compassion: an evolutionary analysis and empirical review. Psychol Bull 136:351-74 |
