Culture is the distinctive spiritual, intellectual and emotional aspects of a group or society that are transmitted from one generation to the next. It is manifested in the physical elements of a society such as cuisines, music and dance, architecture and art, but also in non-physical aspects including customs, traditions, beliefs and values. Individuals’ enculturation into a culture affects their functioning in any given situation and it is these cultural influences that psychologists try to understand by incorporating them into models of individual behavior.
A large number of theories have been proposed about how to define culture. Some have suggested that there are separate cultural and personal attributes, while others have emphasized that culture consists of specific practices that allow individuals to function in society. Some have argued that there are distinct cultural characteristics associated with different ethnic groups, while others have pointed out the existence of subcultures within any culture such as regional or age-related cultures.
The definitions of what constitutes a culture vary between the fields of psychology and sociology. Psychologists tend to think of culture in terms of beliefs, values, behaviors and symbols that are learned or inherited from parents or other important adults, and that are transmitted through communication from one generation to the next. Sociologists have a more complicated view of culture, as they see it as an aspect of social life, and that it is based on the complex interaction between people and the environment in which they live.
As such, it is difficult to make generalizations about what a culture is and how it influences behavior or development. The contributions in this spotlight series take the concept of culture a step further and examine how facets of a culture interact to influence development.
Marie Suizzo explains that the etymology of the word culture, rooted in the act of tilling the soil, suggests that it is something that grows and changes in response to environmental conditions. She argues that there are multiple ways in which an individual may interact with their environment to shape the culture that they experience, and that these interactions have a significant impact on their functioning. She then examines the importance of understanding this interplay in the context of applied developmental research with diverse populations. Allison DiBianca Fasoli takes a similar approach to defining culture, as she defines it as historically-based beliefs, values and practices that are actively constructed by members of a community. She argues that these culturally specific meanings about the sociomoral order inform children’s moral development through the processes of aligning, countering and scaffolding in mother-child conversations about learning. This is a very important contribution to the conceptualization of culture and a way to link it to developmental processes. These and the other contributions in this spotlight series will help to move the field of developmental psychology a step further in its understanding and investigation of culture. This will be of benefit to many communities worldwide.