Perspectives on Psychological Science

Doing Psychology With a Cultural Lens: A Half-Century Journey

Abstract

My first international publication started out with the following sentences: “Some findings of social psychology may refer to general panhuman relationships, others to relationships that hold only within specific socio-cultural settings. Only systematic cross-cultural comparison can separate these or identify the limits within which particular generalizations hold” (Kagitcibasi, 1970, p. 444). These words still reflect my orientation to psychology and have shaped my work over half a century.