The Handbook of Culture and Psychology

"The essays are very thoroughly researched and written in logical and comprehensive styles... An interesting, up-to-date examination of a very appropriate, current topic that concerns not only current conditions but their implications for the future." -- CHOICE

"The updated second edition of The Handbook of Culture and Psychology includes core and emerging topics in the field of cross-cultural psychology written by the field's leading scholars. In an era of seemingly endless contradictions and tensions between nationalism and globalization, this book is an invaluable collection of critical but balanced reviews of cultural differences and universal psychological attributes, including development, personality, cognition, emotion, gender, religion, interventions, intergroup relations, and multicultural identities. This book is both an accessible introduction to this growing and diverse science and a state-of-the-art compendium for scholars of cross-cultural psychology and related disciplines."

-- Antonio Terracciano, Professor, Department of Geriatrics, College of Medicine, Florida State University

"Perhaps the single most important but widely ignored contextual variable in psychology is culture. For many years, cultural psychologists have shown how little it is possible to understand about human behavior when that behavior is taken outside of its cultural context. Vast universal generalizations have been proposed about behavior that, because of limited sampling of participants, turns out to be culturally specific rather than universal. Matsumoto and Hwang's Handbook of Culture and Psychology (second edition) will go a long way toward addressing the importance and nature of cultural variables that influence human thoughts, feelings, and behavior. I recommend the book highly to anyone who wants to understand behavior in its cultural context, not just in the cultural vacuum that so often leads to misleading
and even false generalizations."

-- Robert J. Sternberg, Professor of Human Development, Cornell University

David Matsumoto is a renowned expert in the fields of emotion, nonverbal behavior, deception, and culture. He has been a Professor of Psychology at San Francisco State University (SFSU) since 1989 and is the Founder and Director of SFSU's Culture and Emotion Research Laboratory. He is the recipient of many awards and honors in the field of psychology and is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and the International Academy of Intercultural Research. He has been Director of Humintell (www.humintell.com) since its founding in 2009.

Hyisung C. Hwang is a senior research scientist, teacher, and lecturer in cross-cultural psychology. Her research interests are in emotion, nonverbal behavior, and culture. She has also co-authored numerous scientific articles and book chapters on nonverbal behavior and culture.