Authors
Igor de Almeida, Yukiko Uchida, Kongmeng Liew, Lean Franzl Lim Yao, Eiji Aramaki
Published in
International journal of psychology : Journal international de psychologie. Volume 61. Issue 6. Pages e70275.
Abstract
Culture significantly influences human psychology, making it essential for psychological research, particularly in social psychology, to acknowledge its importance. However, the majority of psychological research ignores or marginalises culture and context. This is problematic because, despite representing a small portion of humanity (specifically Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) populations) mainstream psychology is published as if it represented the whole humanity. Among the subfields of psychology, social psychology is arguably the one in which this issue should be least prevalent. To investigate this, we conducted a study on titles and abstracts of articles from 69 social psychology journals published between 1990 and 2020, examining how cultural diversity and awareness of its importance changed over time. The results indicate that cultural awareness is more prominent in journals focused on culture, international or local issues; while remaining almost entirely absent in journals focused on theory, reviews and business. Furthermore, cultural awareness displays an imbalance regarding culture: while WEIRD mentions remain most common, mentions of other regions appear to be disproportionately represented or 'inflated' in specific contexts. The generalizability of psychological theories will remain impossible if culture is not integrated as a central factor in research.
PMID:
42825664
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 02 Oct 2026.
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