Cross-cultural psychology - Issues and overarching themes

A selection of current and presumably future issues is addressed in four se ctions. The first section deals with the pervasive controversy between rela tivistic and universalistic orientations. In the second section, the author s discuss how the notion of culture is used in empirical studies, drawing a ttention to, among other things, the low emphasis on cross-cultural similar ities that emerge from many data sets. The third section addresses three th emes that may well become more important in the future, namely questions co ncerning the degree of coherence in cross-cultural data spanning larger ran ges of behavior, the integration of findings from non-Western societies, an d an increase in research on human development in cultural context. The fou rth section emphasizes the responsibility of cross-cultural psychologists t o apply their expertise, especially to problems of economic and social ineq uality, to contribute to human well-being.