The goals of cross-cultural psychology include the development of general laws of human thought and behaviour as well as the explanation of specific variations of characteristics measured by standardized testing. Integration of knowledge on these cultural similarities and differences into a grand explanatory theory of psychology is also sought.

What is culture?
The nature of culture is a matter of debate. 

Definitions range from genetics and "race" to behaviour,
 the creation of artifacts and tools, to values, symbolic action (language)
 and "ways of life" or "living traditions"                

Matsumoto & Juang (2004) indicate that definitions may involve:
descriptive - activities or behaviours
historical - heritage & traditions 
Normative - rules & norms 
Psychological - thinking, feeling, acting 
Structural - organizational structures
Genetic - origins and sources 

Berry et al. (2011) indicate that definitions often vary on whether or not culture is "internal" or "external" to the person, universal or relative specific to a particular group and organized around various themes.

Culture can be defined objectively, usually by outsiders, through the identification of particular values, practices, beliefs, icons and symbols.  This is the type of approach that often leads to static definitions suggesting that culture is a homogenous entity that can be measured and recorded with ease. 

Can also be defined subjectively, usually from the inside where one's identification with those practices, beliefs and symbols are considered.  This approach often makes use of the fact that cultures are varied in terms of what they are and how they are constituted. 

Either way, like many other psychological traits it is difficult to determine where to draw the boundaries around a given culture that is defined in one way or another.  At the heart of the issue of defining culture is the seminal debate of universal or particular.  

Is it in our genetic structure, waiting to unfold? or
in our "semiotic" psychosocial interactions and rituals?

"Race" and biology have often been confused with
culture. One can even discuss the "illusion of race"
family resemblance and "blood typing"

Enculturation involves the indirect learning of
a culture revealing one's "engagement" in that culture

Socialization involves the planned or deliberate
control of one's behaviour and learning (narrow)

Institutions and artifacts are said to be the warehouses of culture
 where the meaning of the these objects in best understood as they
interacted with by cultured beings.

 Getting to Understand Culture
 Meaning and action in a given culture varies tremendously.  For example "What is a dog good for?"

Culture for a society is similar to personality for an individual: it directs behaviour, thoughts, feelings and experiences. It is really about making meaning of the world.  

Functions of Culture - various interpretations of the function of culture exist, from adaptation to their ecological contexts to "deal with problems or matters that concern them." (Haviland, in Samovar & Porter, 2004, p.30)

Culture  is transmitted from one generation to another for purposes of promoting individuals and social survival, adaptation, and growth and development.

Culture has external representations (e.g. artifacts, roles, institutions).

Culture has internal representations (e.g. values, beliefs, attitudes, consciousness patterns).

History -  Cultures are grounded in a social history.  Some can be traced back to specific beginnings, others seem to fade into antiquity.  None-the-less temporality and traditions or "ways of life" are fundamentally historical.

Religion - Cultures are usually, or at least mostly, grounded in some form of spiritual or religious ideology. These usually have something to say about the mind, self, soul or spirit as well as one's relationship to the physical world around us.

Values - are also fundamental to a culture as "culturally defined standards of desirability, goodness, and beauty that serve as guidelines for social living" (Macionis, in S&P, p.31)

Social Organization - is inherent to culture with various units or social organisations like family, community, governance, or education

Language - enables cultures to exist and be maintained through time.  The glue that hold them together. 

Culture is:

•  learned through enculturation, proverbs, folktales and mythology, art, and mass communication.Transmitted from generation to generation; cumulative and historical.
  It is both conscious and unconscious

• symbolic where objects, words, icons represent tools of the culture that carry meaning with them 

• dynamic and subject to change and reinvention through innovation, diffusion, and acculturation.

• an integrated process where these various elements come together as a whole

• an adaptive process  helping people to adapt to their environment and local conditions

Deep Structure of a Culture

Samovar & Porter (2004) indicate that the roots of culture lie in the relationship the divine (god) and human kind,...  

Culture provides the institutions and conditions that give rise to the notions of self and personhood. Through these sources we see that culture:

carries the messages that matter most to people through the significant teachers one has in parents,community and religious leaders.

Transmit values and morals of what it means to be a self, what roles are important to being a person. 

endures over time,  providing an historical tradition that maintains certain core values or structures of culture. 

arouses emotional feelings As part of the core of self and culture they are built around our emotional and intellectual base where we find comfort and stability. Thus loss or threat to  the core of culture raises strong feelings. 

 supplies the individual with his/her sense of identity. Personal / experiential identity is often called self, while the social  roles and relations we engage in are often called personhood. 

Culture influences Personhood in defining "the individual and the group, the citizen and the state, parents and children, husband and wife, as well as [cultures] differing views of the relative importance of rights and responsibilities, liberty and authority, and hierarchy." (Samovar & Porter, 2004, p.82) 

 Family Structure

Importance of family - early socialization and nurturance of culture and self.  Basic emotions, sense of security, attachment, social relations, ....

Functions of family - regulation of behaviour and shaping of experience

  Transmitting culture - primary enculturation occurs here, most narrow radius of socialization 

   Transmitting identity - Relationships to parents (family & clan), who am ? test of identity. 

Types of families - birth family (family of orientation), marriage family (family of procession) or casual kinship groups that feel like a family.  Can be nuclear or extended in size.

Communication, culture and family - define the family type and the critical turning points of the development of stages of the life cycle. 

Gender Roles - for males and females are culturally set but vary in families.  Specific forms of interaction with mothers and fathers, and other family members of one gender or the other. 

 Eg., In Asia, males responsible for task functions with females for cultural functions. 

In Mediterranean cultures mothers are regarded as saints or sacred while fathers are the undisputed authority (even though the mother may influence him). 

Many cultures prefer to have male children for prestige or power or money (dowry), for example women may be burned on their husband's funeral pyre or expected to marry their dead husband's brother.       

 Individualism and collectivism - seen as a central dimension by many from the SS perspective. 

Individualism and the family - is the individual valued or the family?  

Collectivism and the family - what is the notion of familial  self ?

 Age - grading and different rights and responsibilities arise through the family.  What are expected of children, youth, adults and elders in the family?

Social skills -  what is expected of the children in terms of shaping their behaviour and experience? 

Culture and Worldviews

 ... a culture's orientation towards such things as God, humanity, nature, human existence, the universe, death, life, suffering, sickness, and other philosophical issues that penetrate all phases of human existence.

Science also makes use of worldviews that are often called paradigms, or perspectives that show how to experience the world. 

Worldviews are holistic perspectives on the world, like humanism, behaviourism, or  psychoanalysis.

As indicated by Tonks (1997; 2004), a parallel  is made between what Kuhn (1970) suggests forms  the basis of all scientific activity (socially-driven paradigms),

throughout everyday life we are also driven by tacit (unconscious) views that offer structure and meaning to our experience, these are the paradigms of life that we take for granted, our worldviews