Cross-Cultural Psychology

Cross-cultural issues are becoming more prominent in psychology as the discipline expands in countries other than the U.S.A. Matsumoto (1994) has argued that American psychology has been much more concerned with studying its own residents than with studying others. He goes on to state that, until recently, most of the data in psychology were derived from predominantly middle-class, white, introductory psychology students. Further, many of us teach in environments that are not culturally diverse, so getting students to understand cross-cultural concepts is difficult in those settings.

Levine (1988) summarizes research concerning the pace of time in different cultures. As a visiting professor in Brazil, he discovered that college students there had a very different conception of class time compared to American students. When the time came to meet his first class, Levine arrived twenty minutes late to an empty classroom (Levine & Wolff, 1985). But, unlike in the U.S.A., that did not mean that the class had already been there and left. Rather, it meant that none of the class had even arrived! Then, when class was over, only a few students left. The rest hung around for an additional half hour. That comparison alone should wake up your students.

Levine went on to conduct additional cross-cultural studies relating to time. One study (Levine and Bartlett, 1984) examined the accuracy of bank clocks, pedestrian walking speed, and work pace in six countries. The data were quite clear, and the three measures correlated highly with each other. The Japanese samples were the highest in all three measures. The Indonesian sample had the slowest walking speed and least accurate clocks. The Italian sample had the slowest business transaction time. Coronary heart disease was correlated with a fast pace of life, except in the fastest sample, the Japanese. Those last data probably indicate that coronary heart disease incidence is affected by other factors as well.

These data illustrate how a concept, time, can vary widely across cultures. Levine (1988) argues that simple explanations for cross-cultural differences are not sufficient. For example, in Brazil, being late is perceived as a privilege of the rich and powerful. Stereotypical explanations that rely on simple notions of cross cultural differences (e.g., laziness) will not serve to explain those differences.

References

Levine, R. V. (1988). The pace of life across cultures. In J. E. McGrath (Ed.). The social psychology of time: New Perspectives (pp. 39-62). Newbury Park, CA: SAGE Publications.

Levine, R. V. & Bartlett, K. (1984). Pace of life, punctuality and coronary heart disease in six countries. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 38, 541-550.

Levine, R. V. & Wolff, E. (1985). Social time: The heartbeat of culture. Psychology Today.19(3), 28-35.

Matsumoto, D. (1994). People: Psychology from a cultural perspective. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks-Cole.

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