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2 - The continuing quest for psychological universals in categories, dimensions, taxonomies, and patterns of human behavior

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2010

By
Walter J. Lonner
Edited by
Sevda Bekman  and
Ayhan Aksu-Koç
Foreword by
M. Brewster Smith
Sevda Bekman
Affiliation:
Bogaziçi University, Istanbul
Ayhan Aksu-Koç
Affiliation:
Bogaziçi University, Istanbul
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Summary

Cross-cultural psychological research has become increasingly influential. Çiğdem Kağıtçıbaşı's numerous contributions examining the human families and the explananda that can be used in that key area of understanding the rhythms and tempo of everyday life throughout the world has been exemplary. This is but one example of a multi-faceted career that we celebrate. Just as important is her friendship that we covet.

The International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology held its inaugural conference in 1972, at the University of Hong Kong. Jerome Bruner was chosen, honorifically and by acclamation, as its first president. He immediately yielded the position to Gustav Jahoda, who thus became the Association's first full-term president. Invited to discuss the presentations and reports he heard during the conference, Bruner characteristically made a number of pithy observations. Of the several comments he made – about thirty-five years ago, when many believe that “organized” cross-cultural psychology was born (see Segall et al. 1998) – one is particularly relevant for this chapter:

There has been one magnificent failure in cross-cultural studies and that is in the area of personality and culture. This is a splendid failure and good men and true have tried it. It is all premised on the idea that one can develop a cross-cultural index, pick out traits of the society and obtain some good chi squares that will tell about the kind of relationship between personality and culture. This has failed for the reason that if you were asked to quote the main finding from a period of twenty-five years of research that has studied the relationship between culture and personality, you would not only be tongue-tied but what you would say would eventually not be the same.

(Bruner 1974: 395–96)
Type
Chapter
Information
Perspectives on Human Development, Family, and Culture , pp. 17 - 30
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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