Multicultural and Cross-Cultural Psychology
A major concern through the 20th-century study of psychology is that no matter the perspective, most psychologists were White men who worked with populations that were predominately from western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) populations.
In 2010, researchers Joseph Henrich, Steven Heine, and Ara Norenzayan highlighted this problem, showing that people from WEIRD societies differ significantly from those in less industrialized or non-Western cultures in areas such as perception, cooperation, and moral reasoning.[1]
To address this gap, psychologists began developing approaches that explicitly study the role of culture in shaping human thought and behavior.
- Multicultural psychology: Focuses on understanding diverse populations within a single country.
- Cross-cultural psychology: Compares psychological processes across different countries and cultures (e.g., the U.S. vs. China).
The Doll Test Experiment
While Skinner investigated how behaviors are learned in the 1930s and 40s, researcher Mamie Phipps Clark (1917–1983), the first Black woman to earn her Ph.D. in experimental psychology, wanted to understand what Black children thought about their own racial consciousness. She wondered, “In what ways did conditioning influence how Black children perceived themselves?”
In what became known as the doll test, Clark, conducted a study with her husband, psychologist Kenneth Clark (1914–2005), to learn about the negative impacts that segregation had on the psyche of developing children. They asked children their feelings about either Black or White dolls and found that the Black children preferred the White dolls to the others; when asked to label them as good or bad, the Black children labeled the Black dolls as “bad.”
This research was also instrumental to the Brown v. Board case that made school segregation illegal. The Clarks later applied their research to social services and opened the first child guidance center in Harlem (American Psychological Association, 2019).
George I. Sánchez
Another psychologist working to fight against social injustices during his lifetime was George I. Sánchez (1906–1972). He challenged traditional forms of intelligence testing and promoted innovative educational methods for children. As a psychologist of Mexican heritage, Sánchez pointed out that the language and cultural barriers in testing were keeping children from equal opportunities (Guthrie, 1998). By 1940, he was teaching with his doctoral degree at the University of Texas at Austin and challenging segregated educational practices (Romo, 1986).
Looking Forward
Given demographic shifts occurring in the United States and increased access to higher educational opportunities among historically underrepresented populations, there is reason to hope that the diversity of the field of psychology will increasingly match the larger population, and that the research contributions made by the psychologists of the future will better serve people of all backgrounds (Women and Minorities in Psychology, n.d.).
The American Psychological Association has several ethnically based organizations for professional psychologists that facilitate interactions among members. Since psychologists belonging to specific ethnic groups or cultures have the most interest in studying the psychology of their communities, these organizations provide an opportunity for the growth of research on the interplay between culture and psychology.
Feminist Psychology
The Development of Feminist Psychology
Until the 1960s, the science of psychology was largely a “womanless” psychology (Crawford & Marecek, 1989), meaning that few women were able to practice psychology, so they had little influence on what was studied. In addition, the experimental subjects of psychology were mostly men, which resulted from underlying assumptions that gender had no influence on psychology and that women were not of sufficient interest to study.
A turning point came with Naomi Weisstein’s 1968 article, which criticized psychology for:
- Ignoring women as subjects of study.
- Allowing male cultural biases to define women’s psychology.
- Failing to test assumptions with scientific evidence.
Weisstein used, as examples, statements by prominent psychologists in the 1960s, such as this quote by Bruno Bettleheim: “We must start with the realization that, as much as women want to be good scientists or engineers, they want first and foremost to be womanly companions of men and to be mothers.”Weisstein’s critique formed the foundation for the subsequent development of a feminist psychology that attempted to be free of the influence of male cultural biases on our knowledge of the psychology of women.
Weisstein’s critique sparked the development of feminist psychology, which seeks to challenge bias and center women’s experiences.
Feminist Psychology Approaches
Crawford & Marecek (1989) identified several feminist approaches to psychology that can be described as feminist psychology. These include:
- Re-evaluating and highlighting the contributions of women in psychology.
- Studying gender differences with careful, evidence-based methods.
- Challenging the male bias embedded in traditional science.
- Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33(2-3), 61-83. Retrieved from https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/WeirdPeople.pdf ↵