My first extended stay in Southeast Asia in Singapore nearly five years ago served as a true eye opener. Yes, I was fully aware that I was about to enter a country that was different from what I had known so far. I was eager and curious to learn and broaden my horizons to whatever might come. However, the first days were rather disappointing: nothing much different from what I knew. Sometimes it was hard to comprehend 'Singlish' (as Singaporean English is being referred to) and, at least for European standards, to get used to the extreme heat and humidity. It was only slowly that I discovered many on at first sight hidden differences.

For example, my Dutch reference code for behavior at the University in student-lecturer interaction seemed no longer meaningful. Liberal traditions being upheld at most Universities in the Netherlands did not provide any useful frame for behavior in Singapore. Relations between students and professors were incomparably different. Not only did all the professors want to be addressed with their titles, but it was also by no means acceptable to challenge their ways of argumentation.

Even though I admit that these might seem rather easy-to-tackle differences which can be mastered by re-learning behavior, other far more fundamental questions are related to these differences. Why do these differences exist? Where do these differences come from? What, other than behavioral, differences can be encountered? Is it because I was on a different continent or is life in every country no matter where so different? And far more important, what does that mean for psychological behavioral theories that claim universal validity?

After a very short period of intensive psychological research in Europe after the rise of psychology as an independent discipline, the centre of psychological research shifted to North America and remains there today. About 85 % of all psychologists worldwide live in North America. Nowadays, North American psychologists contribute to most of the influential research findings. They conduct their studies in a North American setting with primarily North American research subjects (Gilbert, Fiske & Lindzey, 1998).
During the last decades doubts have come up as to whether research findings discovered within one cultural setting are applicable to other cultural settings, especially Asian and African settings. As a consequence of these doubts the field of cross-cultural psychology developed. This discipline investigates whether theories that came about as a result of particular social psychological research are valid for different cultures across continents. Cross-cultural psychology reaches even further and attempts to explain possible deviances across different cultural settings. Findings that are achieved within cross-cultural psychological settings and supposedly valid for populations across continents are referred to as universal findings while those findings true for a certain cultural population only are called culture-specific findings (Matsumoto, 2000).

However, how do we understand the term culture? Matsumoto (2000) defines culture as ”a dynamic system of rules, explicit and implicit, established by groups in order to ensure their survival, involving attitudes, values, beliefs, norms, and behaviors, shared by a group but harbored differently by each specific unit within the group, communicated across generations, relatively stable but with potential to change across time”. In this article I will illustrate the practices of cross-cultural psychology by examining moral development in populations across different continents.

One of the important developmental stages a child goes trough is learning how to behave and interact with other people in a socially acceptable way. This stage in cognitive development can be marked as the development of moral reasoning. Moral reasoning refers to “the cognitive process by which individuals make decisions about moral issues and justify these decisions, regardless of the content of the issue” (Gardiner et al., 1998). Morality is in more simplistic terms, whatever we consider as being righteous, correct or good. Honesty or truthfulness are good or right behaviour, thus are considered morally responsible. Theft or murder are considered wrong or bad, thus immoral behavior. One of the most influential theories on development of moral reasoning was developed by Kohlberg (1981).

Kohlberg postulates that the development of morality occurs in stages. The levels and stages he defined are: the Preconventional level (stage one and two), the Conventional level (stage three and four) and the Postconventional/Autonomous/Principled level (stage five and six, see table 1).

Kohlberg (1981) explains the meaning of the single stages as follows: 

- In the Preconventional Level development of moral behaviour develops purely out of the necessity to satisfy one's needs: “Obey to rules to avoid punishment” and “Conform to obtain rewards, have favours returned, and so on”.
- In the Conventional Level satisfying one’s need is not of such an importance any more, but rather wanting to be praised (“Conform to avoid disapproval and dislike by others”) and purely obeying to authority (“Conform to avoid censure by legitimate authorities and resultant guilt”).
- In the Postconventional/Autonomous/Principled level the concept of morality is redefined in the sense that the idea of moral standard is formed independently from the given moral code from authorities. A personal understanding of morality is formed. This finally results in the “universal principles of justice, of the reciprocity and equality of human rights, and of respect for the dignity of human beings as individuals” (Kohlberg, 1981).

One of the major aspects of this approach is the assumption that society develops to serve the needs of the individual. However, is this assumption true for all the different cultures and ethnic groups around different continents? Kohlberg himself studied the cultural generalization of his theory in different societies and concluded that the development of moral stages is the same across the world, at least concerning the order of the development of moral reasoning. The time of transition from one stage to the next stage differs from culture to culture. Nevertheless, his claim is highly controversial and has been contested in several follow-up studies.

One famous follow-up study was conducted among a sample of Nepalese Buddhist monks, who grew up and were educated in a framework distinctive from most North American students. Heubner and Garrod (1993) replicated Kohlbergs study and found that the so-called postconventional, autonomous, principled level was not reached by any of the Nepalese monks.

These results suggest that Kohlberg’s stage theory is able to provide an explanation for general moral development in the sample of Nepalese Buddhist Monks. However, it seems that his theory cannot explain the fact that only the first four stages were found, and that none of the Monks reasoned similar to moral development in stage five or six (Heubner & Garrod, 1993). How did the researchers explain these findings?
Heubner and Garrod argued that the absence of the stage five and six was due to the difference in reference framework between the Nepalese monks and Kohlberg's samples. The law and order perspective was simply not included in their reference framework. Though this explanation might be able to account for the fact that the last level was absent, it cannot provide an answer to the important question 'why' this level is absent. A number of explanations tried to shed light on the 'why' aspect, but didn't provide much more than mere speculation.

As the discipline of cross-cultural psychology is still young compared to other disciplines within psychology more research is needed to provide a better understanding of 'why' persons across continents differ. It remains to be said that cross-cultural psychology rightly deserves to be referred to as a separate discipline within psychology. Future research will show whether many so far uncontested 'universalistic' psychological theories can live up to the standards set by themselves.

Meanwhile, five years later and just back in Singapore I once again struggle to blend into this different University life, waiting for the research outcomes that will finally shed light onto my daily struggle.

References

Gardiner, H. W., Mutter, J. D. & Kosmitzki, C. (1998). Lives across Cultures: Cross-Cultural Human Development. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Gilbert, D. T., Fiske, S. T. & Lindzey, G. (1998). The Handbook of Social Psychology. Boston: McGraw.

Heubner, A. & Garrod, A. C. (1993). Moral reasoning among Tibetian Monks: A Study of Buddhist Adolescents and Young Adults in Nepal. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 24, 167-185.

Kohlberg, L. (1981). The Philosophy of Moral Development: Moral Stages and the Idea of Justice, Volume I. San Francisco: Harper & Row.

Matsumoto, D. (2000). Culture and Psychology: People around the World. Australia, Delmar, Calif.: Wadsworth Thomas Learning.