What is cultural psychology?
Cultural psychology, sometimes also referred to as ethnopsychology, is an interdisciplinary area of study that combines academic areas of psychology and anthropology. As a discipline of cultural psychology, it examines the relationship between mind and culture. It examines questions as how culture is influenced by the mind and how the mind is also shaped by culture. The wide themes studied in cultural psychology include emotions, identity, children's development, social behavior and family and other social relationships.
The discipline of cultural psychology represents a departure from a general academic study of human psychology. The field of psychology has traditionally somewhat marginalized the role of culture as a factor in psychological processes. Instead, he focused on defining and determining the universal psychological principles that would apply to all people in all societies. Generally speaking, psychological research has not been Able to duplicate results from studies conducted in Western cultural laboratories in non-west mediaíchi. As a result, one of the main purposes of research in cultural psychology is to have data from various cultures informing basic psychological theories so that they can improve in explaining all human behavior than those observed in Western cultures.
Mind and culture are considered inseparable in cultural psychology, while general psychology considers culture to be something similar to the background noise. Cultural psychologist assumes that psychological theories developed in one culture are most limited by the usability to other cultures. In principle, there are no universal laws to regulate how the mind works. Cultural psychology is a discipline that focuses on expanding psychological research beyond the industrial western culture and to make it relevant to non-Western society.
The area of cultural psychology can be divided into three main thought schoolsconcerning human psychology. One school is a school of symbolic theory and dominates the field. This approach considers human psychology to be made by collective concepts and symbols that individuals have cooperated in culture over time.
The second thought school is the theory of activity that considers psychology based on practical cultural activities. These everyday cultural activities are considered to be the main cultural influence on human psychology. Individualist theory is the third and latest thought school that appears in the discipline. This approach considers individuals to be creative and selective in what aspects of culture decide to assimilate or accept. Individuals therefore have a certain effect on their psychology.