Acta Psychologica Sinica

Abstract

This thesis deals with the trend that more and more psychologists in western countries pay attention to social-historical and cultural factors in their psychological researches. It seems that western psychology increasingly turns to cultural considerations. In the past, western psychology was influenced by positivism, which asserts that science is value-neutral, therefore psychology should be free from any cultural influence. But positivism has already declined now, and new philosophy of science regards science as value-loaded and puts science in the social and cultural context. The new philosophy of science provides theoretical background for the cultural turn. Another important reason for the turn is the indigenous movement in the third world psychology. The psychologists in the third world are trying to reduce the dependence on western psychology and to establish an indigenous psychology in terms of their own cultural tradition. Western psychologists were influenced by the movement and began to take culture into account. The cultural turn shows in the following respects: (a) The natural science model of psychology has been criticized and some psychologists hold that psychological phenomenon is different from natural phenomenon, therefore it is inappropriate to take natural science as psychology’s ideal model. (b) Multicultural psychology comes into being. The psychologists that accept multiculturalism think that traditional psychology is a product of mainstream culture and gives little regard to minority group culture. These psychologist insist that all the cultures be included in psychological research in order to cure culture-blindness. (c) Mainstream cross-cultural psychology was criticized for its ethnocentrism and universalism, and transcultural psychology, a branch of human science instead of natural science like cross-cultural psychology has emerged. (d) Psychologists from cognitive psychology, developmental psychology and health psychology begin to recognize the importance of cultural factors. The author concludes that the cultural turn provides a “fourth dimension” to the psychological interpretation of human behavior which gives additional meaning to psychodynamic, humanistic, and behavioral interpretations. The cultural turn is, in the author’s option, conducive to the development of western psychology.

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