This course is designed to present a general overview to the field of cultural and cross-cultural psychology and introduce you to the idea of cultural variation in human behavior. In doing this it examines only a small selection of the theoretical, empirical and applied issues of human behavior across cultures.
The rationale behind this course is that what may hold true in many contemporary, Western European and North American societies is not necessarily the norm in other societies. In order to better understand these differences, we will examine psychological constructs and theories through relativist and universalist perspectives, sometimes referred to as cultural psychology and cross-cultural psychology, respectively. This examination will seek to compare and contrast what is universal in human behavior and what is shaped and interpreted by cultural variations.