Conceptual & Applied Approaches

Human beings are inherently cultural beings -- growing up in an environment that is steeped in culture and developing our self-construal accordingly. The psychology book series "Self in Culture in Mind (SICIM)" gathers current research perspectives on this issue. This second volume in the series offers new theoretical and methodological frameworks for a deeper understanding of how self-construal is enabled, influenced and lived in culture. The book comprises four approaches to basic research, four applied perspectives, and a meta-theoretical integration. The basic research approaches highlight the roles of early memories, cultural artefacts, parents and peers in developing a cultured self, and examine the relationship between well-being and self-serving bias across culture; and the applications concern psychopathology's variation with culture, identity reconstruction after immigration and gendered violence, and family therapy across cultures. The integrative chapter identifies different kinds of self-knowledge captured by the preceding approaches and argues for a dynamic understanding of self-in-culture.