The Past, Present, and Future of Cross-Cultural Psychology.

Cross-cultural psychology had its beginnings at the turn of the century when W. H. R. Rivers made his famous investigations on perception and other processes. In the mid 1960's and early 1970's cross-cultural research as a method in psychology gained a momentum that led to an almost unchecked acceleration. The author details the recent growth in popularity of the field and points to the energies that can be called "hard-core" cross-cultural psychological efforts. Attention is given to the historical controversy between cross-cultural psychology and psychological anthropology. The author points to the fact that the two disciplines do not share the same data base, that is, ethnographers rely for the most part on naturally occurring mundane events while psychologists rely on experiments (experimentation versus naturalism). In the future, cross-cultural researchers in psychology will depend increasingly on cross-cultural "models." This will be done so as to integrate strategies and findings which may lead to more complete and valid generalizations about human behavior. The author closes his discussion with a brief summary of four cross-cultural models. (Author/PC)