Identity Formation across Cultures: The Interaction of Personal, Societal, and Historical Change

NarrativesWestern psychology has traditionally had considerable difficulty in dealing withculture and with history. In the search for universal principles of human behavior, cul-tural and historical considerations have most often been ignored or treated as epiphe-nomena. Even though developmental psychology has been more attentive to the role ofhistory and culture than some other branches of psychology, the emphasis in the fieldremains on processes of growth and change that are assumed to be common across allpeople. The fact that most American developmental research has been carried out withmiddle class European American samples is frequently not taken into consideration.This situation is changing gradually, as the increasing cultural diversity in the USdraws attention to the need to understand the role of culture and ethnicity in develop-ment. Yet even those who acknowledge the importance of the broader context wrestlewith questions about how to study the complex interactions among changing cultural,historical, and developmental factors. The study of developmental changes itselfpresents difficult challenges; when cultural and historical changes are considered aswell, the level of complexity is vastly increased.Researchers who are particularly interested in cultural factors in development facethe challenge of conceptualizing culture in a way that can be studied empirically. Mosteither focus on comparisons between discrete cultural groups or explore the interplay ofcultural practices and development within a single society. These approaches are yield-ing valuable information about processes related to cultural differences, but they do notaddress the ways in which cultures are themselves changing and becoming intermixed[Hermans and Kempen, 1998].