Culture Studies and Psychology

As Ross (2004) notes, one should never “underestimate the importance of qualitative/subjective information in understanding a process and/or result” (p. 4). Grossmann, Karasawa, Kan and Kitayama (2014) essentially embrace this same idea when they conduct their examination of how adults experience emotions in unpleasant situations across cultures. The aim of Grossmann et al. (2014) was to assess the power of the situation on social psychology from a cultural perspective. This aim is important because, as Heine and Norenzayan (2006) point out, “cultural psychological research is as important in documenting robust similarities across cultures as it is in documenting variability” (p. 254). It is especially important because it enables psychologists in the field “to identify the extent to which psychological phenomena are culture-specific or are psychological universals” (Heine & Norenzayan, 2006, p. 254). This paper will critique the study by Grossman et al. (2014) and assess it by applying one lesson from Ross (2004) regarding the value of subjective information in understanding the impact of culture on social psychology.
The study by Grossman et al. (2014) the psychological phenomenon that is studied from a cultural perspective is the emotional experiences of older adults vs. younger people in two different cultures—Western and Eastern (American and Japanese specifically). The study found that Western culture promotes a linear approach to positive emotional experiences while Japanese culture promotes more of a dialectical approach to positive emotional experiences. Americans were found to distance themselves from negative emotions over time, recalling fewer and fewer negative instances in their lives as they become older and experiencing fewer negative emotions in unpleasant circumstances than young Americans, whose emotions are more heavily impacted by situation and who tend to dwell more negative emotions (Grossman et al., 2014). In comparison, Japanese adults showed little difference from Japanese youths in terms of their emotional reaction to unpleasant situations. There was less of a linear development of their emotional life over time, indicating that they did not distance themselves from negative emotions over time as much as Americans did.
The study provided a good deal of background on the information and clearly explained the method used to obtain data. The method was appropriate for the research question and the hypothesis constructed by the researchers. The data was effectively analyzed and the study overall appeared to have both validity and reliability. The conclusions provided were significant for the field of social psychology and show how important it is to consider culture in understanding the life of the emotions for both younger and older persons.
In terms of social thinking, the study provided insights into how culture plays a part in impacting the way that certain groups perceive themselves and their surroundings, and whether or not they are likely to be impacted negatively by unpleasant situations. The role of culture in our psychological understanding of this phenomenon is that it shapes the way in which individuals hold onto or let go of negative experiences over time. Some cultures will promote remembering things and not forgetting, while others will be okay with letting the past go and finding an inner peace with the world that can be accessed anywhere at any time. This is why Ross’s (2004) lesson about obtaining an understanding of the subjective experience of people is important: it shows that culture will impact the idea of universal psychology.
References
Grossmann, I., Karasawa, M., Kan, C., & Kitayama, S. (2014). A cultural perspective on
emotional experiences across the life span. Emotion, 14(4), 679.
Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2006). Toward a psychological science for a cultural
species. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1(3), 251-269.
Ross, A. S. (2004). Lessons Learned from a Lifetime of Applied Social Psychology
Research. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie canadienne, 45(1), 1.