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Cultural Psychology (General)

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Encyclopedia of the History of Psychological Theories

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Definition

Cultural psychology emerged on the contemporary academicscene in the 1980s as atransdisciplinary field that studies the relation between culture and psychology. Itarose as acorrective to mainstream psychology – which minimizes the cultural organization of human psychology – and also to cross-cultural psychology – which employs positivistic methodology to reduce culture and psychology to abstract, fragmented variables.

Cultural psychology itself contains several strands that derive from different intellectual traditions (Ratner 1999; Ratner 2011a, b, c). In the space here, it is impossible to survey all of them. Instead, Ishall articulate certain select principles that have proven useful for understanding culture, psychology, and their relation.

These may be summarized as follows: Culture and psychology are internally integrated and continuous. They are on the same plane; two sides of the same coin; they are interdependent. Psychology is part of culture, it is acultural...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Cultural Research and Education, P.O. Box 1294, Trinidad, CA, 95570, USA

    Dr. Carl Ratner

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  1. Dr. Carl Ratner
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  1. Department of Psychology, Fordham University, New York, NY, USA

    Robert W. Rieber

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Ratner, C. (2012). Cultural Psychology (General). In: Rieber, R.W. (eds) Encyclopedia of the History of Psychological Theories. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0463-8_28

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0463-8_28

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