Psychology and Culture

Abstract

It has long been known that human behavior is a function of characteristics of both the physical and the psychological environments. Koffka (108), for instance, distinguished between the geographical and the behavioral environ­ ment. The behavioral depends on the geographical; behavior depends on both. The geographical environment consists of both physical and man-made parts. Culture has been defined by some anthropologists (e.g. 88) as the man-made part of the human environment.2 Thus, if we are to understand the determinants of behavior, we need to understand how culture influences it. In spite of the obvious importance of cultural variables in the determination of human behavior, this is the first time that the Annual Review of Psychology has examined the literature which connects psychology and culture. Aspects of this area have been reviewed elsewhere (36, 50, 51, 62, 92, 97, 160, 163, 181). Several books of readings (2, 21, 113, 140) have sampled the field.