Cross-Cultural Psychology is a leading textbook offering senior undergraduate and graduate students a thorough and balanced overview of the whole field of cross-cultural psychology. The team of internationally acclaimed authors present the latest empirical research, theory, methodology and applications from around the world. They discuss all domains of behavior (including development, social behavior, personality, cognition, psycholinguistics, emotion and perception), and present the three main approaches in cross-cultural psychology (cultural, culture-comparative, and indigenous traditions) as well as applications to a number of domains (including acculturation, intercultural relations and communication, work and health). With new additions to the writing team, the third edition benefits from an even broader range of cross-cultural perspectives. Now in 2-colour, the format is even more reader-friendly and the features include chapter outlines, chapter summaries, further reading and an updated glossary of key terms. This edition also offers an accompanying website containing additional material and weblinks.

A central methodological aspect of cross-cultural assessment is the interpretability of intergroup differences: Do scores obtained by subjects from different cultural groups have the same psychological meaning? Equivalence (or the absence of bias) is required in making valid cross-cultural comparisons. As cross-cultural comparisons are becoming increasingly popular and important, the problem of bias and its detection is receiving increased attention from researchers. Three kinds of bias are discussed and illustrated, namely construct bias, method bias, and item bias (or differential item functioning). Methods to identify bias are reviewed. An overview is given of common sources of each kind of bias. It is argued that an integrated treatment of all forms of bias is needed to enhance the validity of cross-cultural comparisons. The predominant focus on item bias techniques has the unfortunate implication that construct and method bias are examined insufficiently.

In cross-cultural research, there is an increasing interest in the comparison of constructs at different levels of aggregation, such as the use of individualism—collectivism at the individual and country levels. A procedure is described for establishing structural equivalence (i.e., similarity of psychological meaning) at various levels of aggregation based on exploratory factor analysis. A construct shows structural equivalence across aggregation levels if its factor structure is invariant across levels. The procedure was applied to the Postmaterialism scale of the World Values Survey. The similarity of postmaterialism at the individual and country levels could not be unambiguously demonstrated; a likely reason is that the concept does not have an identical meaning in countries with low and high gross national products.

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The logic of comparison is taken as a starting point. It is argued that any cross-cultural comparison presupposes a comparison scale, i.e. a scale that is identical across the populations included in a study. Scale identity can be Specified for various levels of measurement. In the second section a simple classification is presented for inferences about cross-cultural differences derived from psychological measurements. Two questions are asked for various categories of inferences, viz., whether they are logically feasible and whether they can be validated empirically. In the third section the statistical analysis of psychometric conditions for equivalence is discussed. The fourth section deals with the problem what alternatives for meaningful interpretation a researcher has if data turn out to be lacking in equivalence. In the fifth section a conceptual problem is raised. namely whether the basic assumption of this article is realistic that psychological concepts are identical across cultures.

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This study investigated the relationship between culture, structural aspects of the nuclear and extended family, and functional aspects of the family, that is, emotional distance, social interaction, and communication, as well as geographical proximity. The focus was on the functional aspects of family, defined as members of the nuclear family (mother, father, and their children) and the extended family (grandmother/grandfather, aunt/uncle, cousins). Sixteen cultures participated in this study, with a total number of 2587 participants. The first hypothesis, that the pattern of scores on the psychological measures and the behavioral outcomes are similar across cultures, an indication of cultural universality, was supported. The second hypothesis, that functional relations between members of the nuclear family and their kin are maintained in high‐affluent and low‐affluent cultures, and that differences in functional relationships in high‐ and low‐affluent cultures are a matter of degree, was also supported by the findings. The results suggest that it is less meaningful in cross‐cultural family studies to ask questions about the structure of the family, than to ask about the functional relationships between members of the nuclear family and their kin. In looking only at the nuclear family, one focuses only on those residing in the household, but ignores those important members of the extended family who may reside nearby and their significant relationships with the members of the nuclear family.