Cultural psychology draws upon major psychological topics, theories, and principles to illustrate the importance of culture in psychological inquiry. It explores how culture broadly connects to psychological processing across diverse cultural communities and settings, highlighting its application to everyday life events and situations, and presenting culture as a complex medium in which individuals acquire skills, values, and abilities. One central theme is the view of culture as a mental and physical construct that individuals live, experience, share, perform, and learn; a second core theme is how culture shapes growth and development. Culture-specific and cross-cultural examples reveal connections between culture and psychological phenomena. The text is multidisciplinary and presents different perspectives on how culture shapes human phenomena. It provides an introduction to this field; covers the history of cultural psychology, cultural evolution, and cultural ecology; explains methods; and examines language and nonverbal communication, and cognition and perception. Topics investigating social behavior include the self, identity, and personality; social relationships, social attitudes, and intergroup contact in a global world; and social influence, aggression, violence, and war. Topics addressing growth and development include human development and its processes, transitions, and rituals across the life span; and socializing agents, socialization practices, and child activities. Additional topics explore emotion and motivation, mental health and psychopathology, and future directions for cultural psychology. Chapters contain teaching and learning tools, including case studies, multidisciplinary contributions, thought-provoking questions, class and experiential activities, a chapter summary, and additional print and media resources.
