Title: Why psychologists need to study cultural diversity
Headings: 
Why psychologists need to study cultural diversity
Content: Researchers from five universities presented studies that suggest the field's understandings of the structure and functioning of the mind may be rooted in a set of centuries-old Western philosophical assumptions about what it means to be a person or a group member in an individualist-oriented society. Psychological research may have mistaken specific cultural twists for universal principles because most of the research subjects, as well as the researchers over the past 50 years, have been Americans or Europeans. "This wasn't a problem until we began to take very seriously the old idea that individual minds are always social minds," said Hazel Markus, a Stanford professor of psychology who organized the session. " You don't have minds without cultural participation. We are moving away from the idea that the mind is like a computer that is the same wherever it goes and no matter what it processes." Minds are created and maintained, she said, by individuals' participation in various social worlds - worlds "based on our country of origin, region of the country, ethnicity, religion, gender, profession." "These worlds don't just tell us what to think and feel and do," Markus said, "they structure how we think, feel and behave. Our social worlds are organized by some culture-specific meanings and practices, and very often these are so much a part of everyday life that they are invisible to us." In addition to Markus, the researchers who presented some of their work in this area were: Phoebe Ellsworth, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, whose recent work explores Chinese and American interpretations of basic social interactions;