A scholarly community dedicated to advancing the understanding of culture and psychology as mutually constitutive dimensions of human experience
Cultural psychology is an interdisciplinary field that studies the construction of meaning and significance by humans within their specific cultural contexts, as well as the associated experiences and actions. Following Jerome Bruner framework, cultural psychology can be understood as an interpretative science in which meaning stands at the center.
Various approaches in cultural psychology are grounded in a concept of culture that can be characterized as a system of signs, knowledge, rules, and symbols. This system structures the realm of experience and action as a culture-specific foundation and contributes through its enactment to the construction and transformation of practical life. Culture and psyche mutually condition each other. Therefore, understanding a person without considering their specific embedding in a cultural and historical context is not the goal of cultural psychology.
In contrast to mainstream psychology (nomological, natural science-oriented) and its subdiscipline of cross-cultural psychology, cultural psychology emphasizes that human behavior cannot be exclusively described objectively and explained through simplified causal relationships. Cultural psychology understands itself as an alternative to, or supplement of, nomothetic psychology.
Humans act based on intentions, meanings, and emotional dispositions that they experience in their biography and sociocultural life practice, which depending on context stimulate experiences and actions and thereby enable them. Experiences and actions exhibit aspects of sense and meaning. Cultural psychology has substantive connections to indigenous psychologies, ethnopsychology and ethnopsychoanalysis, as well as various hermeneutic-semiotic approaches in psychology, philosophy, sociology, and ethnology.
Culture is not simply a collection of behaviors or artifacts, but rather the intricate web of meanings, symbols, and practices through which human beings make sense of their world. It encompasses the shared assumptions, values, and norms that guide how we interpret experiences, express emotions, and understand our place in society.
Culture is dynamic and generative. It is continuously created, negotiated, and transformed through human interaction and practice. It exists not as a static entity that individuals passively absorb, but as an active process of meaning construction that shapes and is shaped by psychological processes.
Cultural psychology views culture not as an external variable that influences psychology, but as constitutive of human mental functioning itself. Our cognitive processes, emotional experiences, and sense of self are fundamentally shaped by the cultural contexts in which we develop and live.
This perspective challenges the notion of universal psychological mechanisms operating independently of culture. Instead, it proposes that what we take to be human nature is always culturally situated. Our ways of thinking, feeling, and being are inseparable from the cultural worlds we inhabit.
In increasingly diverse European societies, understanding culture has become essential for addressing challenges of integration, identity, and social cohesion. Cultural psychology provides frameworks for understanding how individuals navigate multiple cultural contexts, maintain cultural identities while adapting to new environments, and construct meaning across cultural boundaries.
The field offers insights into how cultural differences manifest in therapeutic contexts, educational settings, organizational environments, and everyday social interactions. By recognizing the profound ways culture shapes psychological experience, we can develop more culturally responsive approaches to research and practice.
As cultural psychology developed in various European countries and the United States, it drew from diverse intellectual traditions. In Germany, the Völkerpsychologie (folk psychology) of Moritz Lazarus, Hajm Steinthal, and Wilhelm Wundt played important foundational roles. The term Kulturpsychologie itself was introduced early on by Erich Stern and Willi Hellpach, though with significantly different theoretical, methodological, and normative orientations than contemporary approaches.
In the United States, cultural psychology emerged from cultural anthropology and psychological anthropology. Robert LeVine continued this tradition into the 1970s and, along with his student Richard Shweder, introduced the term cultural psychology into contemporary discourse. The cognitive revolution in psychology also provided crucial impetus.
The Soviet cultural-historical school and activity theory (Lev Vygotsky, Alexander Luria, Alexei Leontiev) profoundly influenced many contemporary cultural psychologists including Jerome Bruner, Michael Cole, Sylvia Scribner, Barbara Rogoff, Jaan Valsiner, and Carl Ratner.
In Germany, Ernst Boesch developed since the 1950s a symbolic action-theoretical cultural psychology that remains influential today. Wilhelm Salber psychological morphology sought connections between Gestalt psychology and depth psychology to study cultural phenomena.
Psychoanalytic cultural theory made essential contributions. Sigmund Freud described culture as both formative and repressive for unconscious experience. Neo-psychoanalytic work from the Frankfurt School and Carl Jung analytical psychology explored cultural dimensions of psychological experience.
Contemporary cultural psychology reflects heterogeneous approaches that, based on shared methodological principles and a unifying conceptual understanding, seek to understand humans in their cultural-historical contexts. The field is also increasingly engaging with postcolonial and indigenous psychological perspectives.
Since constructions of meaning and significance in psychological phenomena can only be accessed reconstructively and interpretatively, cultural psychology primarily employs methods of qualitative social research and cultural analysis, which it largely shares with other social sciences.
Central units of analysis in cultural psychology include experiences, actions, and narratives, through which complex histories of experience and action as well as interwoven psychosocial developments can be examined. Therefore, there are close connections between cultural psychology and narrative psychology.
The European Community of Cultural Psychologists brings together researchers, practitioners, and students interested in cultural psychology. We are an international network committed to advancing understanding at the intersection of culture and psychology through scholarly exchange, research collaboration, and the dissemination of knowledge.
Regular scholarly events featuring researchers in cultural psychology
Facilitating collaboration across institutions and national boundaries
Publishing essays and supporting the dissemination of research findings
We welcome psychological professionals, researchers, students, and anyone interested in deepening their understanding of cultural psychology. Our community operates as an invite-only network to facilitate meaningful scholarly exchange.
For inquiries regarding our community, research collaborations, or upcoming events, please contact us.
Whether you are a researcher, practitioner, student, or simply interested in cultural psychology, we welcome your correspondence.