A roundtrip – Inspired by Gustav Jahoda: Observations of a mature student

Introduction

In 1997, Jaan Valsiner edited a Special Issue in this journal on The Saarbrücken Tradition in Cultural Psychology, and Its Legacy. Founder of the Saarbrücken Tradition is of course Prof. Dr. Ernst E. Boesch who developed the symbolic action theory. He came to the newly founded Saarland University in 1951 and set up the Institute for Psychology. He was appointed Director of the UNESCO International Institute for Child Study in Bangkok and thus lived in Thailand from 1955 to 1958. On his return to Saarbrücken he set up and became Director of the now-defunct Research Institute Sozialpsychologische Forschungsstelle für Entwicklungsplanung (SFE). And, it was there, where, as a young psychology student in the early 1980s I had the privilege of meeting Prof. Dr. Jahoda. I was beginning my academic career and he was approaching retirement. He visited the Research Institute and offered a seminar to interested psychology students. We were given the task to develop a hypothesis involving different cultural groups and to test this hypothesis using the human relations area files (HRAF). This was in the pre-digital age, but I thought we were extremely advanced as we pulled up microfiche files and read the material on an overhead projector. The first lesson I learned was about formulating a good hypothesis. The second lesson I learned was that my hypothesis based on Western thought was wrong. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the exact cultural groups I did compare, but my basic hypothesis was that suicide rates would be lower in more tribally organized communities, assuming that these communities are closer knit and loneliness would be lower. What I had overlooked is the fact that within these tight communities, deviance from the norm is less tolerated. Therefore, for those who do not fit in, suicide might be the last option. The HRAF I pulled out clearly showed this point. At the time, this was a revelation to me and Jahoda guided us through this process – smiling and knowing. At the time, I did have an appreciation that Jahoda was an eminent figure, and not unlike Boesch in his reflections on his early university experiences (see Lonner & Hayes, 2007, p. 28) I must acknowledge how little I knew about Jahoda’s achievements throughout his lifetime at the time. Yet, his seminar and the refuted hypothesis sparked my interest in (cross-) cultural psychology. Unbeknown to him, he sent me off onto my journey of discovery of culture.

The first leg: the outward journey

Gustav Jahoda was not the only visitor to Saarbrücken at the time. The co-founder of the Center for Cross-Cultural Research at Western Washington University (WWU) in Bellingham, Washington, Prof. Walter J. Lonner, spent the 1984–1985 academic year at the Saarland University, aided by a sabbatical leave and Fulbright award. I also had a chance to meet him during his stay in Saarbrücken. What better place, I thought, to learn more about cross-cultural psychology than at Western Washington University? My mind was made up and I applied for and received a Fulbright scholarship to study there. For my Master’s Thesis, I carried out a content analysis of introductory psychology textbooks (IPTs) under the supervision of Lonner. I analysed the (cross-) cultural content of 35 introductory texts widely used in the US. The objective was to document if, to what extent and how cultural or cross-cultural topics were included in IPTs. The results formed the basis of Lonner’s Presidential Address given at the 1988 International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP) Conference in Newcastle, Australia and can be summarized as follows: There was a paucity of references to any material related to culture in textbooks available in 1988. Only three topics were mentioned by all texts and these include (1) the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and linguistic relativity, (2) the universality of facial expression – the research inspired by Ekman and Friesen and (3) the ongoing discussion about cultural or ‘racial’ bias in IQ-Tests. As Lonner noted ‘… when one considers that approximately 1.5 million university students in the United States alone take introductory courses each year …, a golden educational opportunity seems to have been missed for many years’ (Lonner & Hayes, 2007, p. xxii). The full results of this analysis can be found in Rumpel (1988), overviews in Lonner (1989, 2018) and a brief summary is provided in Lonner & Hayes (2007).To determine whether subsequent efforts by many hundreds of culture-oriented psychologists had come into fruition, we undertook a replication study after 20 years to document the cultural content in IPTs. So, armed with a set of 40 introductory textbooks each, including revised editions of texts in the original study as well as new texts on the market, we began our analysis on separate sides of the world – Lonner in the State of Washington and I in Luxembourg. It is painstaking work, as each text has to be leaved through by hand according to a well-developed system of keywords and coordinated search strategies. Had I known at the outset to what extent the situation has changed in 20 years – I would not have embarked on the exercise. Culture had greatly enriched the texts, which meant endless hours of documentation. However, it was of course pleasing to see, that with a few exceptions, the question was no longer whether cultural material was included but how it was presented. Some texts included extensive discussion of culture-related material and frequently added such material in detached textboxes. Other IPTs mentioned shorter culture-related references throughout the coverage of topics in psychology. In short, there was an impressive increase in mentioning culture-oriented findings. Only a further replication study will show, if this trend of inclusion of culture is sustained, or whether (cross-) cultural research topics had to give way for other pertinent subjects. The results of the 2007/2008 review are summarized in Lonner (2018) and Lonner & Murdock (2012). We also presented our findings at conferences including the Cross Border IACCP 2008 conference in Bremen, where I met Gustav Jahoda again and could tell him in person how he had inspired me.

The second leg: The first return journey

Saarbrücken was of course a good place to start the journey of discovery and to return to. Two of Boesch’s former pupils taught there – Prof. Lutz H. Eckensberger was Professor for Developmental Psychology and Culture and Dr. Bernd Krewer was a senior researcher on cultural and regional identity (Krewer, 1992). However, there were forebodings of change. On my return in 1988, cultural psychology was part of a new Center with the grand title Zentrum für Umweltforschung, Umwelt- und Kulturpsychologie (Center for environmental sciences, environment and cultural psychology) located off campus. One cross-cultural lesson for me was also that my BA and M.Sc. degrees acquired in the US would not count in Germany. Thus I was strongly encouraged to finish my German Psychology degree – which I did. I even managed to squeeze in a short Erasmus exchange to the University of Aberdeen – under the tutelage of J. B. Deregowski. Dr. Bernd Krewer was the supervisor of my German Diploma thesis on cultural identity (Rumpel, 1990), but more importantly, he co-authored several publications with Gustav Jahoda. In his introduction to the Special Issue on the Saarbrücken Tradition, Valsiner (1997) expressed his hope that the Issue should provide ‘further input for constructive efforts to make psychology in its substance – rather than have “cultural psychologies” of various persuasive presentations fight with one another for the (temporary) attention that contemporary social scientists seem to be giving presently to the use of the notion of culture in psychology’ (p. 244–245). In this tradition, the collaboration between Krewer and Jahoda can be seen. In Psychologie et culture: vers une solution du ‘Babel’?, they attempt to bring some order to the scientific debate on the relationship between psychological development and culture. The authors unpack the divergent methodological approaches, research interests and understanding of the term ‘culture’ of Psychologie transculturelle (cross-cultural psychology), Psychologie culturelle (cultural psychology) and Psychologie interculturelle (psychology of acculturation or ethnic psychology). The authors compare these three approaches and summarize their respective goals, research foci, methodology and treatment of the term ‘culture’ in a table (p. 373). By clarifying the traditions behind each label, the authors aim to reduce the confusion in the scientific discussions without being ‘dictateurs sémantiques’. Consequently, they closed their contribution by inviting colleagues to comment on their proposals (p. 375).

Roundtrip completed

Fate will have it, that my next station will be Luxembourg – a mere 100 km away from Saarbrücken. Luxembourg is a unique small country. Luxembourg is multilingual and multicultural with a foreign population percentage of nearly 48% (Murdock, 2017). Moving to Luxembourg rekindled my interest in (cross-) cultural psychology. The Luxembourg Government had decided to set up its own university in 2003 and after a break of over 20 years I managed to reenter the world of academia in 2010 and earned a PhD at the University of Luxembourg in 2014 (Murdock, 2014). Of course there is a gap of knowledge, but on the other hand, the long absence also offers the opportunity of looking on developments in the field from an ‘insider – outsider’ perspective. And from this ‘insider-outsider’ perspective, I would like to offer some observations on the legacy of Gustav Jahoda – who had sent me off on this journey.

Unfortunately, the roundtrip is also completed in another way. When I met Gustav Jahoda in Saarbrücken in the early 1980s, the Saarland University and Boesch’s Institute were at the forefront of research on cultural psychology. On my return from the US in the late 1980s, a change had already incurred by bundling in cultural psychology with environmental sciences and moving the department off campus. I have no insider information on the rationale behind these developments. I can only observe that today, ‘culture’ has completely disappeared from the Psychology Website at the Saarland University and the Research Institute is long closed. The Saarbrücken story is not unique. Strategic goals change at institutional levels and well-established research traditions are discontinued. During my time in business I have also seen projects going through entire life cycles – a joint venture is established, nurtured, developed – then the external conditions change and the venture closes. Since re-entering the world of academia and seeing the ever larger competition for project funding – it is probably one of the challenges to make culture more visible again within mainstream psychology and also to demonstrate its relevance at societal level. In the age of migration (Castles & Miller, 2009) and an ever more global world, (cross-) cultural psychology can make a valuable contribution to increasingly diverse societies. One of the challenges we face is to conceptualize relevant societal research questions. Here again we can learn from Gustav Jahoda and look, for example, how he has structured and built up his research on attitudes of Africans to Europeans in Ghana before Independence (1961). I am trying to make my own small contribution to this effect with a project on identity construal among adolescents growing up in the multicultural context of Luxembourg (Subjective Well-being and Identity Construal in a Changing World, SWITCH).

Observations on the legacy of Gustav Jahoda

Michael Bond (1997) remarked on his preparation for working at the interface of cultures that his training had prepared him well for experimental design, behavioural measurement and statistical analysis. Thus, he was well trained for the ‘context of evaluation’ in psychological research, but untrained for the ‘context of discovery’ (p. viii). He described how contact with a different culture, how living in a different culture had forced him into cultural mindfulness and challenged his taken for granted assumptions about how to be human. In his account of his wandering/wondering years, Triandis (2002) recounts the story as he came from Greece to Canada in 1948. He noted that the differences in temperature were as great as those in terms of social relationships. He came to Canada to study engineering – the same choice of subject as Gustav Jahoda when he fled to France. The contrast between Canada and Greece made Triandis start thinking about cultural comparisons and after discovering psychology he abandoned engineering. Gustav Jahoda of course made a similar choice after ending up in Great Britain following the war. Jahoda’s journey had taken him from Austria via France to Great Britain. In both cases, the personal experience, the experiential learning (Epstein, 1994, 2003) strongly fuelled the interest in psychology and culture.

As Jahoda (2012) noted when the field of cross-cultural psychology first developed, ‘cross-cultural psychologists worked as a rule directly with people in the cultures in face-to-face situations’ (p. 290), just as he did when he worked in West Africa. With today’s focus on (exact) measurement and statistical analysis, researchers in cross-cultural psychology often only have contact with participants through the group administration of questionnaires and scales. Yet psychometrically clean research may bear little relevance with phenomena occurring in the real world.

So, in conclusion, what do we learn from Gustav Jahoda?

Deregowski (2017) concluded his memorial piece on the incredible life and legacy of Gustav Jahoda with a quote by him ‘I have a keen eye’ (p. 458). There is more to this little quote than meets the eye. Gustav Jahoda closely looked at constructs and phenomena – and this includes a thorough account of the historical background in the evolution and etymology of concepts and constructs. He originally trained as an engineer, then studied anthropology and sociology before becoming a cross-cultural psychologist. He was steeped in other research traditions, before entering the field of psychology and thus was able to look at phenomena from different perspectives. He conducted empirical research and insisted on being involved hands-on – so that he did not overlook essential facets. He wanted to avoid potential blind spots. With laser sharp eyes, he dissected definitions on culture. But a keen eye can also stand for interest, curiosity or a quest for discovery. I will be forever grateful, that he sent me on my journey of discovery.