Cultures Are Compatible With Many

¶ … cultures are compatible with many of the findings of modern psychology. The American Psychological Association (APA) is currently widening their approach to understanding individuals and groups by considering how the impact of culture, race, and ethnicity may influence human behavior. There are now some guidelines to guide practitioners to treat individuals from diverse backgrounds and address any multicultural issues that might arise. Psychological service providers need a sociocultural framework to consider diversity of values, interactional styles, and cultural expectations in a systematic fashion; they need knowledge and skills for multicultural assessment and intervention, including abilities to (APA, N.d.):

recognize cultural diversity;

understand the role that culture and ethnicity/race play in the sociopsychological and economic development of ethnic and culturally diverse populations;

understand that socioeconomic and political factors significantly impact the psychosocial, political and economic development of ethnic and culturally diverse groups;

4. help clients to understand/maintain/resolve their own sociocultural identification; and understand the interaction of culture, gender, and sexual orientation on behavior and needs.

Psychologists, like all people, are shaped and influenced by many factors. These include, but are not limited to, their cultural heritage(s), various dimensions of identity including ethnic and racial identity development, gender socialization, and socioeconomic experiences, and other dimensions of identity that predispose individual psychologists to certain biases and assumptions about themselves and others (APA, 2002). However these factors are not commonly applied to correctional psychology. One study conducted from 1977 to 1988 show that ten out of twelve textbooks did not include topics that were concerned with multi-cultural counseling (Treatment of Multicultural Counseling in Correctional Psychology Textbooks, 1989).