Week 6 – Methodological Issues

To start with, I really enjoyed reading this chapter even though it had less theories and more methodological stuff that I usually don’t like. It took me back to research methods courses but then this is completely different because it focuses on four main issues and within those issues, there are very specific issues to cultural psychology (of course that is really interesting).

I was really interested to read about top-down route and bottom-up route in this chapter as I had covered this concept in other courses. What’s really important is that bottom up route mainly takes place when there are failures to replicate research or at times when cultural psychologists go through a research and think ‘oh this would never work in my culture’. (thought experiment) As a result, cultural psychologists decide to adjust the sampling and operationalisation according to another culture and test it.

Additionally, an important point I would like to note is the use of different approaches – social-cognitive, individual-differences, situational and how interactions of these approaches contribute to cultural logics (CuPS – culture, person, situation) I think studying these interactions are crucial because the effect of mere culture might be too reductionist in this perspective.

Overall, I liked the chapter but it has some issues I would like to mention. For example, it focused mainly on two examples: collectivism/individualism in West/East or North/Latin America and honor culture in South America. I think the author could mention other examples but maybe it would get lengthy. However it is ironic how the author himself said that these two issues (individualism/collectivism and independence/interdependence) are too salient but himself did not consider other factors. I can say that maybe there was not enough research to quote here.

When reading macro questions, I was wondering the link of other fields in cultural psychology – anthropology, economics, archeology, language. In my opinion, the interaction of these field areas are essential in creating a balanced view of the research questions or macro research questions we deal with in cultural psychology.