10 - Data Analytic Approaches for Investigating Isomorphism Between the Individual-Level and the Cultural-Level Internal Structure

Summary

It is standard practice in cross-cultural psychological research to apply a psychological instrument in different cultural groups and quantitatively compare them on the scale(s) of that instrument. Such cross-cultural comparisons can be misleading for three reasons: because of the cultural specificity of the construct, the distorting effects of methodological biases, and the lack of generalizability of individual-level constructs to the cultural level.

According to cultural relativists, psychological characteristics and processes are constructed by and derive their meaning from the cultural system in which they emerge (e.g., Miller, 1997). This implies that it is meaningless to compare cultural groups quantitatively, because it would amount to comparing apples and oranges. For instance, it has been claimed that amae is not only an untranslatable Japanese emotion term but also refers to a typical Japanese emotion process (e.g., Doi, 1971). Because the process is intimately tied to the Japanese culture, it makes no sense to compare cultural groups with respect to their salience of amae.