Multicultural Psychology. Jennifer T. Pedrotti
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of 1 to 10” that we often use in US contexts. Some cultures are more risk averse and may not use the entirety of that scale. If one culture is using the full range to describe their experiences, while another is only comfortable using 2–9 and avoiding extremes, metric equivalence cannot be established. It is surprising to some that even when using pure numbers, we cannot guarantee equivalence culturally.
Lastly, functional equivalence refers to the use and function of the particular construct in daily life within the different cultural groups (Ho et al., 2014). Some constructs or traits may be viewed as positive by women, but not by men or transgender individuals, for example. As an example, the trait of gratitude has been found to be more beneficial to women as compared to men (Kashdan, Mishra, Breen, & Froh, 2009). Other cultural characteristics, such as belief in a certain religion, may be used differently in different cultural groups and may serve different functions in daily life. Forgiveness, for example, is a trait often assigned a high value in those groups who are religious, though this may not be the case in those who do not subscribe to a religion. These four different types of equivalence are summarized in Figure 1.3.
When we use our own cultural lens to make decisions about what is positive and what is negative, and how to best measure it, without considering the cultural context of others, we run the risk of setting up a deficit model. The term deficit model refers to the fact that when we use only our own cultural frame of reference to decide what is a positive outcome in a research study, we set all other cultural groups up to potentially perform at a deficit (Song & Pyon, 2008). An example might include a study to investigate the development of independence in children. Western cultures value strongly the constructs of independence and competition and believe them to be top strengths (Triandis, 1995). Across the world, however, there are many more cultures that believe that interdependence and cooperation should be valued over independence and competition. If a researcher from a Western cultural group asks the question, “Which cultural group has more successful parenting outcomes?” and decides to categorize independence as a marker of this successful parenting, it is likely that the parents from Western cultural groups will score the highest, with children who are most independent. Without attention to cultural values, this research might then declare that Western children are parented more successfully toward healthy development than those other children whose parents do not appear to impart independence to their children. In looking at this finding from a multicultural standpoint, however, one might note that parents of non-Western children do not promote independence in their children because they do not value this construct as strongly. In fact, they may purposefully promote interdependence instead, believing this to be a more successful parenting outcome. In ignoring culture, the researcher is setting up a deficit model: Those who act in ways that my culture thinks are beneficial are healthy, and those that do not are thought to have a deficit. This leads, then, to potential pathologicalization of cultures that do not fit within our own cultural framework. Though this type of pathologicalization can occur in any direction (i.e., any group can think that another is less healthy than their own), it matters most when a particular social group has power or privilege behind them.
Figure 1.3 Measurement and Equivalence
The White Standard
Within the United States, White Americans have been the main voice in the field of psychology until more recent decades, though even as late as 2013, only one fifth of those working in the field of psychology were non-White (APA, 2015). In addition, people of some races were kept out of educational experiences (some by segregation and other laws, and others by lack of resources). This means that throughout the history of psychology, many more theories and ideas have been put forward by White Americans and thus come from a Western, European American cultural framework. This is often called the White Standard, and we can see this in theory and in other tenets. This term comes from work done in the field of physiology and medical science, in which the physical characteristics of White individuals were used “as the standard of measurement and [scientists] judged all other race varieties as they approximated or diverged from it” (Blakeslee, 1915/2017, p. 301). As happened with the work of Goddard and Bean described earlier, reliance on White individuals as “the norm” gave many differences significance that did not actually exist. The White Standard affects the types of variables that are studied, the way they are measured, and the understanding of their functionality in daily life. For this reason, many theories and ideas put forward in the early part of the field of psychology may not be accurate depictions of psychological health for non-White individuals and groups. Thomas and Sillen (1972) called use of Whites as the standard for health scientific racism and listed many examples of how bias was directed at African Americans and other racial and ethnic minority groups in the form of psychological research. When we, as current or future researchers, do not attend to our own biases or the bias of our field in its origins, we run the risk of developing faulty conclusions to research. At best this can lead to mistakes, but at worst, as has been shown, this type of faulty research can portray entire populations as damaged or abnormal.
Impact in Everyday Life
We may also experience this lack of attention to cultural context in everyday life, when someone assumes that behaviors that align with various non-Western cultural norms are “wrong” when they differ from those that the majority culture believes is the “right way” of behaving. Leadership is one area in which the White Standard is often applied (Rosette, Leonardelli, & Phillips, 2008). Consider the following vignette:
I am very good at my job and I know that my efforts were a huge part of our team succeeding in our last project. My boss knows this too. At our last large group meeting he gave me some praise and said that I was “solely” responsible for the success. I deferred a little in the meeting because I wanted to give my team credit too and talked about this as a joint effort. I’m Chinese American and was taught from a young age to share the credit whenever I can. It seems like the right thing to do to as a leader. Later my boss called me into his office and said he’d like to offer me some advice. He said, “If you want to keep moving up in this business you have to take credit when it’s offered to you and not give it away. That’s not the style of a good leader. I’d like to promote you eventually, but you’ll need to work on that weakness.” I felt confused because I know he knows that I did the work, but to me it’s not weak to acknowledge the others and share the credit. Instead, I think of this as the right thing to do.
—Anna, age 30
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Here, Anna is using a tactic that is a strength and a marker of a good leader in her cultural background (sharing the wealth), but that same trait is viewed negatively by the mainstream White culture of which her boss is a part. As a result, Anna is seen as having a deficit. This is an example of the impacts of a deficit model in everyday life.
Shaking the Pillars: Moving Forward With Theory
Though the word theory is really just a posited idea at its beginning, it can come to be thought of as “truth” as time goes on. As humans we tend to look for confirming evidence of things we believe (Heppner, Wampold, Owen, Wang, & Thompson, 2008), and that can leave us vulnerable to ignoring information that goes against our personal theories of life. In a field such as psychology, this confirmation bias continued to occur as psychology found its foothold in the United States but was still primarily a field dominated by White and European men. As time has gone by, some of these posited ideas have hardened and crystallized, carrying with them the weight of multiple studies and tests, though culture was still not often attended to. Unfortunately this scientific racism led to a number of crystallized ideas that perpetuated the deficit models. These ideas, however subjective and culturally bound, have influenced the pillars of our understandings of a variety of human behavior. As David Matsumoto and Linda Juang (2017) state,
Understanding