| BNET Log In Join Search Apr 06, 2001 Studies in this discipline attempt to expand the compass of psychological research beyond the few highly industrialized nations on which it has traditionally focused. While definitions of what constitutes a culture vary widely, most experts concur that "culture" involves patterns of behavior, symbols, and values. The prominent anthropologist Clifford Geertz has described culture as ". . . a historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life." While cross-cultural psychology and anthropology often overlap, both disciplines tend to focus on different aspects of a culture. For example, many issues of interest to psychologists are not addressed by anthropologists, who have their own concerns traditionally, including such topics as kinship, land distribution, and ritual. When anthropologists do concentrate on areas of psychology, they focus on activities whereby data can be collected through direct observation, such as the age of children at weaning or child rearing practices. However, there is no significant body of anthropological data on many of the more abstract questions commonly addressed by psychologists, such as cultural conceptions of intelligence. | |
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