Cultural psychology

Cultural psychology is the study of how cultures reflect and shape their members' psychological processes.

It is based on the premise that the mind and culture are inseparable and mutually constitutive. The concept involves two propositions;

a) people are shaped by their culture, and

b) culture is shaped by its people.

Cultural psychology aims to define culture, its nature, and its function concerning psychological phenomena. Gerd Baumann argues: "Culture is not a real thing, but an abstract analytical notion. In itself, it does not cause behavior but abstracts from it. It is thus neither normative nor predictive but a heuristic means towards explaining how people understand and act upon the world."

As Richard Shweder, one of the major proponents of the field, writes, "Cultural psychology is the study of how cultural traditions and social practices regulate, express, and transform the human psyche. This results less in psychic unity for humankind than in ethnic divergences in mind, self, and emotion."