Cross-Cultural Psychology as a Solution to Global Inequality: Optimism, Overconfidence, or Naiveté?: A commentary on “The Positive Role of Culture: What Cross-Cultural Psychology Has to Offer to Developmental Aid Effectiveness Research” by Symen A. Brouwers

Abstract

This article presents an accurate assessment of international aid and its failure to reach declared objectives. The reason for this widespread miscarriage is attributed to the inability to understand cultural differences. People’s opposition, resistance, or apathy toward interventions are credited to social-psychological predispositions. To save the “saviors,” Brouwers suggests that welfare initiatives should collaborate with cultural sciences, more specifically cross-cultural psychology. I agree with the author about interventions being rather blind to cultural differences resulting in frequent failure to achieve ecological validity. The potential contributions of cultural and social scientists in this field are also undeniable. However, I have some reservations about the confidence placed in cross-cultural psychology for several reasons. Cross-cultural psychology works with individual-psychological and social-collective phenomena, addressing only a fragment of the story of inequality among and between the people of the world. There is little or no attention to history, geography, economics, or politics, all of which have profound impact on poverty and disadvantage. It is as if the world’s problems of poverty can be fixed by reframing how people (both agents and beneficiaries) think about “culture-behavior relationships.” This optimism appears to emerge from overconfidence or naiveté, or both.