Unit 2 Theoretical and Methodological Issues Article 14 Subunit 1 Conceptual Issues in Psychology and Culture 9-1-2015 Is “Culture” a Workable Concept for (Cross- )Cultural Psychology? Ype Poortinga Tilburg University,
[email protected] I would like to thank for comments and debate on a previous draft of this paper: Ron Fischer, Joop de Jong, and cross-cultural psychologists at Tilburg University in the Netherlands and at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. For readers not convinced by the argument in this paper, I may note that several of these, mainly young, cross-cultural researchers insisted that culture should be seen as something real, like the three blind men who are touching parts of one and the same elephant (see footnote 5). This should bode well for the future of the concept of culture and for one prediction of this paper: that “culture” is unlikely to suffer any time soon the fate of ether or generatio spontanea. Recommended Citation Poortinga, Y. (2015). Is “Culture” a Workable Concept for (Cross-)Cultural Psychology?. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1139 This Online Readings in Psychology and Culture Article is brought to you for free and open access (provided uses are educational in nature)by IACCP and ScholarWorks@GVSU. Copyright © 2015 International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology. All Rights Reserved. ISBN 978-0-9845627-0-1 Is “Culture” a Workable Concept for (Cross-)Cultural Psychology? Abstract In this essay three points are addressed: First, despite repeated findings of limited cross-cultural variation for core areas of study, research in cross-cultural psychology continues to be directed mainly at finding differences in psychological functioning.