Cross-cultural, developmental psychology: integrating approaches and key insights

Like psychology more broadly, developmental psychology has long suffered from a narrow focus on children from WEIRD societies—or those that are Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. In this review, we discuss how developmental scientists have sought to correct this bias through two complementary approaches: one centered on detailed, ethnographic investigations of child development within populations (increasing the depth of our understanding) and one focused on larger, multi-site studies that test children on standardized tasks across populations (increasing breadth). We review key papers from each of these approaches, describe how they are currently practiced, and discuss their strengths and weaknesses. Next, we highlight exemplary papers from the adult literature that offer useful insights, namely the importance of formal modeling and a greater focus on studying variation at multiple levels of analysis. We end by outlining best practices for future waves of cross-cultural, developmental science. Overall, we argue that a more integrated perspective, combining the strengths of the breadth & depth approaches, can help better elucidate the developmental origins of human behavioral diversity.

Duke Scholars

Author Dorsa Amir Psychology & Neuroscience