Cultural processes: An overview

Bickhard (2004) has made the following comments on the development of science:. Every science passes through a phase in which it considered its basic subject matter to be some sort of substance or structure. Fire was identified with phlogiston; heat with caloric; and life with vital fluid. Every science has passed beyond that phase, recognizing its subject matter as being some sort of process: combustion in the case of fire; random thermal motion in case of heat; and certain kinds of far from thermodynamic equilibrium in the case of life. (p. 122). In the case of cross-cultural and cultural psychology, decades of research have revealed many substantive differences among cultures (see Chiu. amp;amp; Hong, 2006, 2007; Lehman, Chiu, & Schaller, 2004). The field is now ready to transition into a new phase “that empirically establishes linkages between the active cultural ingredients hypothesized to cause between-country differences and the observed differences themselves” (Matsumoto & Yoo, 2006, p. 234).