Concepedia

CROSS-CULTURAL SOCIAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

Annual Review of Psychology · 1996 · 309 citations · 170 references

TL;DR

The review surveys recent theoretical and empirical advances in cross‑cultural social and organizational psychology, highlighting challenges in universalizing psychology and examining how internal and external constraints shape cultural influences on cognition, group dynamics, and work behavior. The authors call for future studies to broaden cultural representation, refine analytical levels, and deconstruct cultural samples into psychologically meaningful components. The review finds that recent cross‑cultural research has shown substantial progress.

Abstract

This review considers recent theoretical and empirical developments in cross-cultural studies within social and organizational psychology. It begins with a description of the importance and the difficulties of universalizing psychological science. It then continues with an examination of theoretical work on both the internal-proximal and the external-distal constraints that mediate culture's influence on behavior. Influences on social cognition are documented by describing research on self-concept, self-esteem, emotions, attribution processes, person perception, interpersonal attraction, and justice. Group processes are addressed in the areas of leadership, decision-making, and negotiation, and research in organizational psychology is examined with respect to work motivation and work behavior. The review concludes that considerable improvement is evident in recent cross-cultural research. However, future research must include a broader range of cultures and attend more closely to the levels at which cultural effects should be analyzed, and cultural samples must be unpackaged in more psychologically useful ways.