Insights and Challenges of Cultural Psychology 49cultural meanings as individual-difference attitudinal or per-
sonality variables—a stance that fails to recognize the multi-
ple motives and personality factors that may be satisfied by
given cultural practices, resulting in the lack of a one-to-one
relationship between personality and culture.
In future research, it is important to recognize the com-
plexity of cultural meanings. This means acknowledging cul-
ture not merely as knowledge about experience or as norms
but also as constitutive propositions that serve to define and
create social realities. It is equally critical to view cultural
meanings as embodied in material artifacts, social institu-
tions, and cultural tools, as well as expressed and communi-
cated in everyday activities and practices. It is important that
this type of stance is being recognized in the recent emphasis
on the construct of cultural “selfways” or “custom com-
plexes” that treat culture as including ideational and process-
oriented elements that are mutually supportive (Greenfield,
1997; Markus, Mullally, & Kitayama, 1997; Shweder et al.,
1998). It is important that the present type of concern also ex-
pands current understandings of culture in highlighting the
frequently implicit and covert nature of cultural meanings,
with many cultural commitments experienced by agents as
facets of nature rather than of culture per se—a stance that
contributes to their motivational force for individuals.
Finally, in future research, there is a need to integrate both
symbolic and ecological views of culture. Symbolic views
call attention to the arbitrary nature of cultural meanings and
the extent to which they rest on nonrational commitments,
rather than purely on functional considerations of utility. In
turn, ecological approaches call attention to the material as-
pects of sociocultural systems, pointing to the need to take
into account material constraints, resources, and issues of
power and control in understanding sociocultural processes.
In this regard, it is important to understand respects in which
cultural and ecological effects are mutually influential. Thus,
for example, research has shown not only that Puerto Rican
mothers differ qualitatively in their views of attachment from
European-American mothers, but also that both common and
culturally specific effects of social class are observed in each
case (Harwood et al., 1995).
Culturally Nuanced Models of Cultural Influences
One of the limitations of existing views of cultural influences
on psychological processes has been the tendency to treat cul-
tural differences as mapping onto personality differences.
Ironically, this was one of the problematic aspects of early
work in the tradition of culture and personality. As noted ear-
lier, theorists criticized this work as presenting an overly so-
cialized conception of the person as merely conforming to
existing social norms and requirements. It also was criticized
for positing an isomorphism between personality and individ-
ual motivation, and for failing to recognize the open-ended
relationship between them. Notably, another problematic as-
pect of contemporary treatment of cultural influences has
been the tendency to view cultural influences on psychologi-
cal processes as highly generalized rather than as context-
ually dependent. This also appears related to a tendency to
adopt a dispositional view of cultural effects as giving rise to
global orientations that generalize across contexts or as uni-
form and noncontextually mediated forms of perceptual
biases.
To develop more nuanced views of cultural influences on
psychological functioning, it is critical, then, to attend both to
individual differences and to cultural influences rather than to
assume that individual differences map directly onto cultural
differences. This involves recognizing the variation in indi-
vidual attitudinal and personality measures within culture. It
also involves taking into account that culture frequently has
its impact on psychological processes through affecting indi-
viduals’ participation in normative contexts—with their var-
ied normative requirements—rather than through affecting
enduring psychological individual-difference variables.
Notably, to develop contextually sensitive views of cul-
tural influences on psychological functioning requires taking
into account the variation observed across contexts. Thus, for
example, it cannot be assumed that because a concern with
social relations and with a more interdependent view of self
has been seen in collectivist cultures, individuals from col-
lectivist cultures always give more weight to contextual ef-
fects than do individuals from individualist cultures. Rather,
it must be recognized that culture influences the meanings
given to contexts, and—depending on these meanings—there
will be occasions in which individuals from collectivist cul-
tures may show less variation in their judgments across con-
texts than do individuals from individualist cultures; or in
some situations, observed cultural differences may even
reverse (e.g., Cousins, 1989).International and Interdisciplinary Approaches
to ScholarshipIn order to formulate approaches to culture that are dynamic
and nuanced, it is essential for researchers to gain an under-
standing of the meanings and practices emphasized in the
particular cultural communities in which they work. Such an
understanding can be promoted through a range of processes,
including collaboration with individuals from the culture,
spending time in residence in the culture, learning the local
language, or any combination of these. It is also likely that