PSY 451 Week 1 Culture, Worldview and Multicultural Psychology Example

Who Decides, Who Comes to Session: Culture and Worldview at a Phoenix Community Clinic

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

PSY/451: Multicultural Psychology

Week 1 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The practicum student, clinic and clients are composites written for a model paper; research findings come from the sources listed.

Psychology aims to understand people, but much of what it knows comes from a narrow slice of humanity. Multicultural psychology asks how culture shapes thought, emotion and behavior and how psychology can serve people from all backgrounds. This paper introduces these ideas through a practicum student's first weeks at a community mental health clinic.

The Setting

Daniela Morales is a senior psychology student completing a practicum at a community mental health clinic in Phoenix, Arizona. Clients include Mexican American families, Diné and other Native American clients, refugees from Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Black and white residents of the surrounding neighborhoods and many people of mixed backgrounds. In her first week, she notices that the intake packet asks clients to list "your personal goals," describe "your independent living skills" and sign a consent form alone. Many clients arrive with a parent, spouse, grandparent or adult child who expects to join the conversation.

Key Terms

Culture refers to the shared values, beliefs, practices and meanings that a group passes from one generation to the next. Ethnicity refers to group identity based on shared heritage, ancestry, language or customs. Race is a way societies have sorted people by appearance, especially skin color; it carries little biological meaning but enormous social weight. Worldview is a person's overall way of understanding the world, including beliefs about relationships, time, nature and the self. These terms overlap but are not interchangeable; two clients of the same ethnicity may hold quite different worldviews.

Individualism and Collectivism

Cultures differ in how much they emphasize individual goals and independence versus group goals and interdependence. Oyserman et al. (2002) reviewed and meta-analyzed studies comparing individualism and collectivism across cultures. European Americans scored higher on individualism and lower on collectivism than many other groups, but differences were often smaller than assumed and inconsistent: some groups expected to be collectivist were not, and patterns depended heavily on how the concepts were measured. The authors cautioned against using the dimensions to sort entire nations or ethnic groups.

For Daniela, the review supports two lessons. Some clients may prefer decisions made with family, but she should not assume this from ethnicity alone. A Mexican American college student may want to attend alone; a white rural client may want his wife present.

The Self Across Cultures

Triandis (1989) described three aspects of the self: the private self, a person's own thoughts about traits and states; the public self, how others see one; and the collective self, one's identity as a member of groups. Cultures differ in which aspects they emphasize, and people sample from them differently depending on context. In more collectivist settings, the collective self is more often brought to mind and group goals take priority when they conflict with personal ones.

The clinic's intake packet assumes a private self: goals are personal, and decisions belong to the individual. A client who sees her well-being as tied to her family's may find the question "What are your personal goals?" hard to answer.

The intake form asked one person to sign; four people had come to be seen.

Why Research Needs Widening

Hall et al. (2016) argued that psychological research has largely been conducted with European American participants and that findings are often assumed to apply universally. They proposed studying ethnocultural diversity directly, through approaches that test whether processes differ across groups and that examine cultural variables such as acculturation and discrimination, rather than treating diversity as an afterthought. Without such work, interventions may be less effective for many clients.

The clinic's treatments come largely from research with European American samples. Daniela begins to ask which of them have been tested with the groups the clinic serves.

Beyond Two Dimensions

Individualism and collectivism are only one way cultures differ. Groups also vary in how they view time, such as whether appointments are fixed commitments or flexible plans; in how directly people express disagreement; in how they understand the causes of illness, whether biological, spiritual, social or a mix; and in whom they turn to first for help, such as clergy, elders, traditional healers or doctors. Several of the clinic's Diné clients, for example, see their own healers alongside clinic staff, and a refugee family from the Congo first sought help from their church. A clinic that knows only one dimension will miss much of what matters.

Culture Is Not Only Ethnicity

Clients also belong to cultures of religion, region, social class, generation, disability, sexual orientation and occupation. A Black veteran, a white farmworker and an Afghan engineer each carry several cultural identities at once. Seeing clients only through ethnicity flattens them.

Daniela's Own Lens

Daniela grew up in Glendale in a Mexican American family where major decisions were discussed with her grandmother. She assumed she would understand Latino clients easily. In her second week, a Mexican American client in his twenties asked that his mother not be told anything about his sessions. Daniela realized she had expected him to want family involvement. Her own background had become a lens through which she saw others who share her ethnicity but not her worldview.

Three Changes to Intake

Daniela proposes three changes to her supervisor. First, add a question: "Who would you like to be involved in your care?" Second, revise goal questions to include "goals for yourself and for your family." Third, offer the option of a family meeting at intake while protecting each client's right to privacy. Each change makes room for different worldviews without assuming one, and none adds more than a minute to the intake visit.

Conclusion

Culture shapes how clients understand themselves, their problems and help. Research on individualism and collectivism shows real but complex differences, a classic account of the self explains how cultures emphasize different aspects of identity and calls for widening psychological research explain why the clinic's tools may not fit everyone. Daniela's reflection shows that cultural humility begins with recognizing one's own lens.

References

Hall, G. C. N., Yip, T., & Zárate, M. A. (2016). On becoming multicultural in a monocultural research world: A conceptual approach to studying ethnocultural diversity. American Psychologist, 71(1), 40-51. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0039734

Oyserman, D., Coon, H. M., & Kemmelmeier, M. (2002). Rethinking individualism and collectivism: Evaluation of theoretical assumptions and meta-analyses. Psychological Bulletin, 128(1), 3-72. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.128.1.3

Triandis, H. C. (1989). The self and social behavior in differing cultural contexts. Psychological Review, 96(3), 506-520. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.96.3.506