Chapter 11 - Teaching Adolescent Development from an International and Cultural Perspective

Summary

Taking a cultural approach to understanding attributional processes provides new insights into how people make attributions within different cultural environments. First, it provides new insights by demonstrating cultural differences (i.e., the “what”). Second, it provides new insights by thoroughly examining when and why these cultural differences occur – which provides insight into the attributional process as it occurs in the East and West (i.e., the “why”). If instructors wish to emphasize culture even more strongly, they can include a discussion of the value of cross-cultural research not only to understanding others but also for understanding one’s own culture. Indeed, a cross-cultural approach helps students appreciate the subjectivity of attributions by emphasizing that attributions convey just as much about our own cultural orientation and ways of thinking about the world as they do other people’s behavior.