Multicultural psychology is the study of the behavior of human beings which occurs when individuals from various cultural groups meet one another with similar concepts. Multicultural psychology focuses on the importance of understanding how recurrent interaction between individuals from varying cultures influences behavior, affect and cognition. Psychologists studying multicultural psychology emphasize on the interplay between culture and the mind where they assume psychological processes are learned and occur in cultural contexts which are characterized by nationality, race, and ethnicity (Hall et al., 2016). The characterization of cultural backgrounds includes status, ethnographic, affiliation identities and demographics. This characterization of cultural context indicates that individuals belong to various and overlapping cultures. The cultural characteristics, behaviors, value, and contacts are related to the cultures which control human behavior such as individual self-perception, things, and other individuals, and the perception is known as a worldview. Multicultural psychology aims at strengthening understanding of cultural interactions to produce various worldviews and the ways and reasons through which groups influence one another as power and status function.
Cross-cultural psychology has developed two perspectives on psychological culture and disorders which vary in various individuals. The two aspects include relativism and universalism perspectives. The relative perspective of psychopathy refers to the act in which psychological phenomena is put in a relative perspective (Mihailides et al., 2017). This indicates that people create ideas, develop behavioral norms, and learn about responses to emotions based on various cultural prescriptions. Therefore, individuals from multiple cultural contexts should understand psychological illnesses in different ways and the differences they have should be significant. The psychopathy relative perspective is different and unique for every cultural context and is known to be specific to a particular culture, and people cannot understand it outside its cultural context. Examples of relative psychopathy perspective are religious, social norms and political for which each nation should have a different cultural context of these norms. A psychologist is considered to be useless if he is studying various mood disorders in China while using South America diagnostic methods. This is because individuals in these two countries can view feelings, symptoms, and reactions of the mood disorder in a different manner.
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Universalist psychopathy perspective indicates that the existence of invariable and absolute symptoms of psychopathology in all cultures (Mihailides et al., 2017). It shows a social and developmental context that differentiates disordered behavior from normal behavior. Deciding on the correct response and what is incorrect development and dysfunction is a social judgment under the Universalist perspective which vary within various cultures. Ethnic and cultural groups differ regarding their activities and practices which are related to Eco cultural survival and adaptation. The Universalist perspective indicates that psychological syndromes and disorders are universal and are characterized by core symptoms which cluster in the patterns of the widespread syndrome. The perspective shows that variations across subgroups and cultures within a culture usually represent the manifestation symptoms of the illness or the threshold of pathological and healthy behavior. Therefore, a similar psychological disorder can be manifested in various ways in various cultures, but the basis psychopathology is identical in all religions.
For me, I use the Universalist perspective in handling problems as it is much easier said than being done. I employ specific strategies and resources to help me become free thinking for myself and solving my issues instead of pretending and live with them or evade the problems through excessive and addictive activities. I prefer using a Universalist perspective in solving my problems as it is a systematic, creative and objective strategy of resolving psychological issues. It helps in enhancing its way of handling problems as the only manner regardless of the results to be acquired. This perspective is useful in solving puzzles as it accepts ideas where they come from and truly helps me solve my problems. Universalist perspective takes ideas and views from world cultures and religions, psychology, science history and philosophy which help in handling psychological issues.
Psychological bias refers to the tendency of making decisions or taking a specific action illogically. Psychological bias is the opposite of using common sense, measured and a clear judgment and usually leads to poor decision making and loss of opportunities. There are various types of psychological biases including self-centered bias, unassuming bias, and group-serving bias. Self-centered bias is the habit of an individual to take credit of positive things or results but blaming external factors for adverse outcomes (Proto & Sgroi, 2017). This type of bias occurs mostly in populations and is influenced by clinical diagnosis, age, and culture. This type of bias is attributed to individuals with low self-esteem or depression as they attribute adverse events to something that happened and positive things to their luck. For example, when a student acquires good grades in his exams, he congratulates himself saying that he studied hard for the exam. When he gets a bad grade in his exam and say, the teacher disliked him and discriminated him hence the poor grades.
Unassuming bias refers to the tendency of explaining personal success resulting from outside factors such as help or luck and failure being caused by an individual’s mistakes (Coble, 2017). Example of unassuming bias is Asian culture which frequently attributes themselves more with failures than success stating that their success is through other cultures, but they blame themselves for their failures. On the other hand, group-serving bias refers to the tendency of a group to attribute their success to their efforts and failures to external interference. Group-serving bias is the same as the self-centered bias they only differ in that it involves a group instead of an individual. Example of a group-serving bias is political tension is a country where when a particular political party wins in the elections they attribute their win to their campaigning efforts but when they lose they may blame some external factors.
Conformity refers to behavior change triggered by another individual or group, and the person acts in a particular manner because of the influence of other people. It usually involves obedience and compliance as it refers to one’s behavior due to impact from other people and does not affect individual’s internal concepts such as beliefs and attitudes (Nook et al., 2016). There are various reasons why people conform to individual behavior. There is the informational influence where a person can change his behavior to be correct by looking for individuals who are better informed and knowledgeable and use their guidelines to improve their practices. There is normative influence where individuals change their behavior to evade punishment and acquire rewards.
In some instances, conformity can be an effective behavioral response as it helps avoid social problems and help people acquire knowledge. For example, a lady reads a book for her home library and finds the book interesting and worthy to be shared among her colleagues. When she attends their book club meeting, her colleagues dislike the book, and the lady decides to accept their decision of the colleagues rather than going against the group opinions to evade conflicts in the meeting. In another instance, a student doubts an answer to a specific question posed in class; another student answer the question accurately and clearly explains his response. The student is forced to comply with the explanation given rather than arguing as the answer is well defined and the correct one.
References
Coble, R. (2017). Performing in a Veil: Sia Furler, Embodied Resistance, and the Cognitive Therapeutic Bias of Pastoral Theology. Journal of Spirituality in Mental Health, 19(3), 169-188.
Hall, G. C. N., Yip, T., & Zárate, M. A. (2016). On becoming multicultural in a monocultural research world: A conceptual approach to studying ethnocultural diversity. American Psychologist, 71(1), 40.
Mihailides, S., Galligan, R., & Bates, G. (2017). Adaptive Psychopathy: The Quarantine Vector and Psychopathy Induction. J Foren Psy, 2(127), 1821-1829.
Nook, E. C., Ong, D. C., Morelli, S. A., Mitchell, J. P., & Zaki, J. (2016). Prosocial conformity: Prosocial norms generalize across behavior and empathy. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42(8), 1045-1062.
Proto, E., & Sgroi, D. (2017). Biased beliefs and imperfect information. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 136, 186-202.
