Psychology

Cultural Psychology

Our approach to culture and psychology explores the reciprocal relations between "culture in mind" and "mind in culture" in the context of social practices and relations.

cultural psychology photo

Including research on: The experience of older people coping with reduced resources, places of meaning, social network and health, narratives of retractions, contested claims of childhood sexual abuse (James Ost), the experience of fathers of disabled children and discourse analysis of referral documents about CB and Intellectual Disability (Karl Nunkoosing); Vygotskyan approaches to intersubjectivity and communication and indigenous theories of development and life-span; communicative interactions and analogical cognition in great apes (Daniel Haun), cognitive similarities and differences across cultures; directing and complying in Infancy and deception and its socio-cultural supports (Vasu Reddy).

Research example:

Recently, Daniel Haun and his collaborators compared the spatial cognition of children and adults of different cultures (Dutch and Akhoe Haikom) and across all non-human great ape genera (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans). They found that both child and adult spatial cognition systematically varies across human cultures. However, they found no variation across the great ape species. All non-human great apes used identical strategies, indicating a clear inherited bias for one particular spatial strategy in the great apes. They conclude, that language and culture can override the native tendencies in our species.

Selected Publications:

  • Nunkoosing, K. (2005). The Problems with Interviews. Qualitative Health Research 15(5), 698-706.
  • Zinken, J., & Doering, M. (2005). The Cultural Crafting of Embryonic Stem Cells: The Metaphorical Schematisation of Stem Cell Research in the Polish and French Press. metaphorik.de 8, 6-33.
  • Haun, D.B.M., Rapold, C.J., Call, J., Janzen, G., & Levinson, S.C. (2006). Cognitive cladistics and cultural override in Hominid spatial cognition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103, ISSN 0027-8424.
  • Reddy, V. (2007). Getting back to the rough ground: Deception and social living. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, B, 362 (1480), 621-637, ISSN 1471 2970.
  • Sinha, C. Blending out of the Background: Play, props and staging in the material world. Journal of Pragmatics 37: 1537-1554 doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2004.09.011.
  • Sinha, C. (2007) Self, symbol and subject. A commentary on Lyra On abbreviation: dialogue in early life. International Journal of Dialogical Science. 2: 45-50.