Culture, psychology, and social justice: Toward a more critical psychology of Asians and Asian Americans

Asian Americans and Asians, particularly from East Asian nations, have been central subjects of various cultural psychology and cross-cultural psychology research. Theoretical and empirical work with Asians and Asian Americans have made significant contributions toward moderating the cultural ethnocentrism of American psychology and legitimizing culture as an important consideration in psychology. However, persistent efforts to identify “cultural differences” that rely heavily on the theory of Individualism-Collectivism as an explanatory variable and equating ethnicity and nationality with “culture” have had an inadvertent effect of homogenizing Asians and Asian Americans to the exclusion of important within-group variations and contextual and situational variables. I propose a research agenda for cultural psychological research that would promote goals of social justice for diverse populations.