Desiderata: Towards Indigenous Models of Career Development and Vocational Psychology

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Desiderata Towards Indigenous Models of Career
Development and Vocational Psychology

• Frederick T.L. Leong, Ph.D.
• Professor of Psychology
• Director, Consortium for Multicultural
• Psychology Research
• Michigan State University, USA
• Keynote Address
• IAEVG Jiva Conference
• Bangalore, India
• October 8-10. 2010

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Desiderata Things needed

• Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and
  remember what peace there may be in silence.
• As far as possible, without surrender, be on good
  terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly
  and clearly and listen to others, even to the
  dull and the ignorant, they too have their story.
  Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are
  vexations to the spirit...
• Poem by Max Ehrmann

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Overview

• Desiderata for career development models
• Importance of culture
• Barriers to multiculturalism
• Culture and career theories
• Towards Indigenous models

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Human beings as cultural beings

• No man ever looks at the world with pristine
  eyes. He sees it edited by a definite set of
  customs and institutions and ways of thinking.
  Even in his philosophical probings, he cannot go
  behind these stereotypes his very concepts of
  the true and the false will still have reference
  to his particular traditional customs.. From the
  moment of his birth the customs into which he is
  born shape his experience and behavior. By the
  time he can talk, he is the little creature of
  his culture, and by the time he is grown and able
  to take part in its activities, its habits are
  his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its
  impossibilities his impossibilities. . There is
  no social problem it is more incumbent upon us to
  understand than this, the role of custom. Until
  we are intelligent at to its laws and varieties,
  the main complicating facts of human life must
  remain unintelligible."
• From Ruth Benedict, 1934, in
  Patterns of Culture

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Barriers to Multiculturalism

• In a keynote address at the 1999 National Career
  Development Association convention, I had used
  Lewins concept of a force-field analysis to
  present a model for examining the challenges of
  providing career counseling in Asia in terms of
  prevailing and countervailing forces (Leong,
  2002).
• The model also suggested a need to avoid a simple
  importation of Western models of career
  counseling which may not be an optimal fit for
  the Asian cultural context.
• Instead, the cultural accommodation approach was
  offered as a viable alternative.

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Kurt Lewins Model

• Borrowing from Lewins famous formulation that
  behavior is a function of the interaction between
  the person and his or her environment (i.e., Bf
  (P,E), (Lewin 1938, 1975), I proposed that some
  of his conceptualizations can be extended and
  applied to higher level phenomenon.
• Whereas Lewins model was primarily interested in
  an individuals personality and behavior, his
  concepts can be readily applied to social
  movements as well, such as our present topic, the
  movement towards multiculturalism in our society

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Adapting Lewins Model

• An Extension of Lewins Force Field Analysis to
  Social
• Movements Such as the Multicultural Movement
• Lewins Model of Personality Proposed Model of
  Social Movements
• Life-Space Social-Space
• B f(P, E) SM f(P, C)
• Personal typology Social typology
• Psychic energies Social energies
• Locomotion Expansion or constriction
• Personal equilibrium Social equilibrium
• Personality dynamics Social dynamics
• Forces and tensions Forces and tensions
• Driving forces Prevailing forces
• Restraining forces Countervailing forces
• Individual needs, valences, vectors Individual
  needs, valences, vectors Organizational level
  and institutional dynamics

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Prevailing and Countervailing Forces

• Climbing the Multiculturalism Summit
• Lewinian Force Field Analysis
• Prevailing and Countervailing Forces
• Prevailing Forces Globalization, Migration,
  Spread of the Internet, 9-11, etc
• But there are Countervailing Forces which serve
  as the mechanisms that fuel resistance to change.
• To successfully climb to the summit, I had
  proposed that we need to identify and understand
  these countervailing forces and how they serve as
  mechanisms underlying resistance to change.

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Countervailing Forces

• Ethnocentricismit is a natural human tendency
  and it consist of using our own culture as a
  standard for evaluating otherswhich leads to
  prejudice and racism.
• False consensus effect it is the tendency to see
  one's own behavior as typical, to assume that
  under the same circumstances others would have
  reacted the same way as one self.

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Countervailing Forces

• Psychological Reactance. is a motivational force
  to regain or restore lost freedoms or to counter
  threats or attempts at reducing our freedoms.
• To the extent that a change in how we think about
  our work requires giving up the established and
  familiar ways (i.e., monocultural versus
  multicultural), multiculturalism serves as a
  threat to this freedom of business as usual.
• Thus, the multiculturalism movement is likely to
  arouse this motivational force of psychological
  reactance.

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Countervailing Forces

• Attraction-Selection-Attrition (ASA) cycle.
  According to Schneider (1987) organizations
  develop a particular culture or climate because
  they undergo a process he labelled as the ASA
  cycle.
• Through the processes of Attraction (who chooses
  to join the organization), Selection (who is
  admitted into the orgnization), and Attrition
  (who chooses to leave the organization),
  organizations eventually develop a very
  distinctive character.

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Twin Problems of Career Theories and Research

• Lack of Cultural Validity (Etic) CV is concerned
  with the validity of theories and models across
  other cultures in terms of the construct,
  concurrent, and predictive validity of these
  models for culturally different individuals
• Lack of Cultural Specificity (Emic)CS is
  concerned with concepts, constructs, and models
  that are specific to certain cultural groups in
  terms of it's role in explaining and predicting
  behavior

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Cultural Gaps in Career Theories

• Lack of CV and CS has created major cultural gaps
  in our career theories research.
• Therefore our career interventions are being
  applied as pseudo etics or imposed etics.
• These interventions and their associated
  assessment tools are often culturally
  inappropriate and sometimes culturally
  insensitive

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Recommendation

• Towards more complete and inclusive theoretical
  models and formulations.
• Culture, race, ethnicity accepted as major
  moderator variables.
• Research BOTH cultural validity of western models
  and identify culture specific variables that
  would provide incremental validity
• Educate psychologists to differentiate between
  etic, emics, and imposed etics.

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Formulations for Career Counseling

• 1. Personality Models
• (e.g., Employee Selection Models)
• 2. Environmental Models
• (e.g., Sociological, Organizational Culture)
• 3. Person X Environment Model.
• Case example of Imposed Etic. Dominant model
  but insufficiently specified.

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Formulations for Career Counseling

• (a) Person X Environment Match
• High Job Satisfaction
• High Job Performance
• (b) Person X Environment Mismatch
• Low Job Satisfaction
• Low Job Performance
• Both the culture of the Person and the
  Environment are ignored in this model.

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Recommendation

• Creating more complete models for formulations in
  career counseling
• (a) Person X Environment Match
• High Job Satisfaction
• High Job Performance
• (b) Person X Environment Mismatch
• Low Job Satisfaction
• Low Job Performance
• (c) Person X Environment X P-Culture
• X E-Culture
• Match High JS High JP
• Mismatch Low JS Low JP

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Recommendation

• New Formulations of Determinants of Vocational
  Choice and Work Adjustment.
• Old Formula
• Vocational Choice Function (Individuals
  Interests Ability Values)
• New Formula
• Vocational Choice Function (Individuals
  Interests Ability Values) X (Family
  Influences) X (Cultural Constraints) X
  (Structural Inequalities)

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Leongs (1996) Integrative Model of
Cross-Cultural Psychotherapy

• Leongs (1996) multidimensional, integrative
  model of cross-cultural psychotherapy found its
  beginning in Kluckhohn and Murrays (1950)
  tripartite framework.
• In their classic chapter, Personality Formation
  The Determinants Kluckhohn and Murray (1950)
  introduced the tripartite framework Every man
  is in certain respects a) like all other men, b)
  like some other men, and c) like no other man
  (p.35).

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Leongs (1996) Integrative Modelof
Cross-Cultural Psychotherapy

• Leongs integrative model represented the 1950
  model as consisting of three major dimensions
  Universal, Group, and Individual.
• He proposed that cross-cultural psychologists and
  psychotherapists need to attend to all three
  major dimensions of human personality and
  identity to effectively assist culturally diverse
  clients.

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Leongs (1996) Integrative Model of
Cross-Cultural Psychotherapy

• Given the limitations of the three
  single-dimensional models discussed above,
  Leongs (1996) integrative model of
  cross-cultural psychotherapy proposed that
  individuals exist at all three levels, the
  Universal, the Group, and the Individual.
• What is required then is a model that integrates
  all three dimensions and allows for dynamic and
  complex interactions between psychotherapist and
  client, as well as across dimensions.
• As we have observed, the problem with many
  psychotherapeutic models, especially current
  cross-cultural models, is that they focus solely
  on one of the three dimensions.

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Leongs (1996) Integrative Model of
Cross-Cultural Psychotherapy

• Using the Hindustan parable of the elephant and
  the ten blind men, Leong and Tang (2001)
  illustrated the point that just as the ten blind
  men had to piece together their individual
  knowledge to form the whole elephant, we too need
  to put different perspectives together.
• By ignoring the relevance and importance of other
  parts that exist, we limit ourselves from seeing
  the whole picture and from complete solutions.
• The Integrated Model can lead to better
  therapeutic outcomes by providing a more complete
  and complex and presumably more accurate picture
  of the client.

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Leongs (1996) Integrative Model of
Cross-Cultural Psychotherapy

• Leong (1996) further emphasized that effective
  cross-cultural psychotherapy would need to
  appropriately shift between dimensions as the
  psychotherapy relationship develops.
• The integrative model assumes that all three
  dimensions are present in both the client and the
  psychotherapist. Each dimension can serve as the
  most salient factor in the psychotherapy
  relationship at different times.

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Moving Forward The Cultural Accommodation Model

• The Cultural Accommodation Model (CAM) is an
  extension of Leongs (1996) Integrative Model of
  cross-cultural psychotherapy
• The goal of CAM is not to abandon current
  theories and models and make new ones instead,
  the aim here is to identify variables specific to
  cultural groups that can be incorporated into the
  assessment and formulations so that our
  psychotherapeutic interventions are more
  effective and culturally valid.

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Cultural Accommodation Model (CAM)

• As outlined earlier, Leong and Brown (1995)
  raised the concern that the cultural validity of
  every psychological construct or model must be
  examined before applying it to a cultural
  population different from the cultural population
  for it was originally developed.
• Cultural validity must be evaluated in order to
  increase the effectiveness of cross-cultural
  extensions and applications of such models
  without limitation.
• The many models being developed and based upon
  White middle-class persons are only culturally
  valid for that specific population and may be
  culturally invalid for cultural and racial/ethnic
  minorities in the United States and populations
  in other cultures.

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Cultural Accommodation Model (CAM)

• Major Western models of psychotherapy
• 1) are based upon a restricted range of persons
  (e.g. White middle-class population)
• 2) are based upon assumptions of limited scope
  (e.g. little room for variance in the Group
  dimension model)
• 3) they tend to ignore or address in a limited
  way the socio-political, economic, social
  psychological, and socio-cultural realities of
  minority individuals (e.g. tending to focus
  usually on one dimension).

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Cultural Accommodation Model (CAM)

• However, while we know that not all theories are
  culturally valid for populations culturally
  different from the dominant culture, we should
  not automatically conclude that all models are
  invalid.
• We must carefully evaluate each model to
  determine its cultural validity for other
  cultural groups first before making any such
  conclusions.
• Indeed, given the Universal dimension, most
  theories will be partially relevant to all
  clients if they tap into some universal elements.

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Cultural Accommodation Model (CAM)

• Through careful analysis, we find cultural gaps
  that are missing the necessary components for
  enhancing the theory to become applicable to
  ethnic and cultural diverse groups.
• The essence of the CAM is to provide a more
  relevant, valid and predictive paradigm on the
  personality and behavior of culturally diverse
  populations as compared to unaccommodating
  models.

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Cultural Accommodation Model (CAM)

• The cultural accommodation approach involves a
  three-part process
• (1) identifying the cultural gaps or cultural
  blind spots in an existing theory that restricts
  its cultural validity,
• (2) selecting current culturally specific
  concepts and models from cross-cultural and
  ethnic minority psychology to fill in these
  missing components and increase its effective
  application to the group in question, and
• (3) testing the culturally accommodated theory to
  determine if it has incremental validity above
  and beyond the culturally un-accommodated theory.

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The Cultural Accommodation Process

• Once Western models of psychotherapy have been
  reviewed with regards to their cross-cultural
  validity and degree of cultural loading, then
  culture-specific constructs need to be identified
  in order to fill the gaps.
• This constitutes the second step in the cultural
  accommodation model. It is essentially an
  incremental validity model whereby the universal
  or culture-general aspects of these Western
  models need to be supplemented with
  culture-specific information.
• It is proposed that adding the culture-specific
  elements to the Western models in order to
  accommodate for the cultural dynamics of racial
  and ethnic minority clients will produce a more
  effective and relevant approach to psychotherapy
  with these clients.

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The Cultural Accommodation Process

• The question then becomes what cultural variables
  should be used for this accommodation process.
  There are a myriad of cultural variables that may
  be implicated in the cross-cultural dyad that
  constitutes the cross-cultural psychotherapy
  encounter.
• Our proposal is to be guided by the
  Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) approach. As
  suggested by Cochrane (1979), we need to be
  guided by a critical summary of the best
  available scientific evidence for how we approach
  our practice.
• It should be no different in how we select
  cultural variables for accommodation in the
  current model. Namely, we need to go to the
  scientific literature to identify those
  culture-specific variables that have been
  systematically studied to use in modifying our
  approach to psychotherapy with racial and ethnic
  minority clients.

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Culture-specific variables to accommodate for
when working with Asian American clients

• Cultural Identity and Acculturation
• Self-Construal
• High context communication style
• Shame proneness and loss of face
• Interpersonal harmony and conflict avoidance
• Self-restraint, conformity, and subordination to
  authority

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Cultural Specificity from Indigenous Psychologies

• Berry, Poortinga, Segall, Dasen (2002) had
  articulated that the second important goal of
  cross-cultural psychology is to explore in
  cultures in order to discover psychological
  variations that are not present in ones own
  limited cultural experience (Berry et al., 2002,
  p. 3).
• This is the stage of the indigenous psychology
  studies that address culture-specific phenomena
  and emphasize that Western theories and models
  may not have a universal validity.
• Indigenous psychology seeks a bottom-up and
  culture-specific (typically non-western) approach
  to the study of culture.

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Cultural Specificity from Indigenous Psychologies

• A quote from Durganand Sinha (1993) in his
  chapter on indigenous psychology in India serves
  as an excellent example of this motivational
  force behind the movement
• When modern scientific psychology, based on the
  empirical, mechanistic, and materialistic
  orientations of the West, was imported into India
  as part of the general transfer knowledge, it
  came in as a ready made intellectual package in
  the first decade of the century. It tended to
  sweep away the traditional psychology, at least
  among those who had been involved in modern
  Western education. In fact, this transfer in a
  way constituted an element of the political
  domination of the West over the third world
  countries in the general process of modernization
  and Westernization. The domination was so great
  that for almost three decades until about the
  time India achieved independence in 1947,
  psychology remained tied to the apron strings of
  the West and did not show any signs of
  maturing.

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Cultural Specificity from Indigenous Psychologies

• .Very little originality was displayed, Indian
  research added hardly anything to psychological
  theory or knowledge, and was seldom related to
  problems of the country. Research conducted was
  by and large repetitive and replicative in
  character, the object been to supplement studies
  done in the West by further experimentation or to
  examine some of their aspects from a new angle.
  Thus, the discipline remained at best a pale copy
  of Western psychology, rightly designated as a
  Euro-American product with very little concern
  with social reality as it prevailed in India.
  (p. 31).

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Indigenous Psychologies

• The movement to create local indigenous
  psychologies in non-Western countries is a
  reaction to Euro-American dominance, the most
  salient aspect of which is the limited attention
  in cross-cultural psychology to issues that are
  relevant to the majority world, like poverty,
  illiteracy, and so on.
• In a sense, indigenous psychology was developed
  in reaction to the increasing monopoly and
  dominance of western models.

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Indigenous Psychologies

• Another important argument, of concern, is
  theoretical namely that psychology by nature is
  culture-bound and that each cultural population
  needs to develop its own psychology (hence our
  preference for the plural indigenous
  psychologies).

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Three Approaches to Culture

• Three separate culture-related psychologies have
  arisen
• Cross-cultural psychology
• Cultural psychology, and
• Indigenous psychologies
• Each has its own intellectual ancestors and
  traditions and a unique history of development

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Indigenous Psychologies

• As pointed out by Enriquez (1989, 1990), Kim and
  Berry (1993b), Sinha (1993,1997), and Yang (1993,
  1999), indigenization of psychological research
  has become an academic movement among
  psychologists and scholars in related disciplines
  in several developing and developed societies
  (especially non-Western ones).
• This indigenization movement, which reflects a
  worldwide concern for making psychological
  knowledge culturally appropriate (Sinha, 1997),
  is a direct reaction to the domination of Western
  (especially American) mainstream psychology and
  of Western-oriented cross-cultural psychology as
  applied to non-Western societies.

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Indigenous Psychologies

• It represents non-Western psychologists
  self-reflective realization that they have been
  completely wrong in regarding North-American
  psychology, which Berry et al. (1992) and
  Triandis (1997) considered an indigenous
  psychology, as the universal human psychology.
• In this respect, Triandis (1997) is right when he
  says that the current (world) psychology is one
  of the indigenous psychologies the one from the
  West.

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Indigenous Psychologies

• Various theorists have defined indigenous
  psychology in different ways. Enriquez (1990)
  regarded indigenous psychology as a system of
  psychological thought and practice rooted in a
  particular cultural tradition.
• Kim and Berry (1993a) defined indigenous
  psychology as the scientific study of human
  behavior (or mind) that is native, that is not
  transported from other regions, and that is
  designed for its people (p. 2).
• For Berry et al. (1992), it is a behavioral
  science that matches the sociocultural realities
  of ones own society (p. 381).

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Indigenous Psychologies

• Ho (1998) viewed indigenous psychology as the
  study of human behavior and mental processes
  within a cultural context that relies on values,
  concepts, belief systems, methodologies, and
  other resources indigenous to the specific ethnic
  or cultural group under investigation (p. 93).

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Indigenous Psychologies

• Yang (1993, 1997b) defined it as an evolving
  system of psychological knowledge based on
  scientific research that is sufficiently
  compatible with the studied phenomena and their
  ecological, economic, social, cultural, and
  historical contexts.
• No matter how these psychologists define
  indigenous psychology, the definitions all
  express the same basic goal of developing a
  scientific knowledge system that effectively
  reflects, describes, explains, or understands the
  psychological and behavioral activities in their
  native contexts in terms of culturally relevant
  frames of reference and culturally derived
  categories and theories.

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Indigenous Psychologies

• The primary goal of indigenous approaches is to
  construct a specific indigenous psychology for
  each society with a given population or a
  distinctive culture.
• After that, the specific knowledge system and its
  various research findings may be used to develop
  the indigenous psychologies of progressively
  larger populations defined in terms of regional,
  national, ethnic, linguistic, religious, or
  geographical considerations.
• Finally, the highest indigenous psychology, a
  universal, or more properly a global, psychology
  for all human beings on the earth will be formed
  by integrating lower-level indigenous
  psychologies.

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Indigenous Psychologies

• Kim and Berry (1993a) have pointed out that the
  indigenous approach is not opposed to scientific
  (including experimental) methods and that it does
  not preclude the use of any particular method.
• They have also asserted that the indigenous
  approach does not assume the inherent superiority
  of one particular theoretical perspective over
  another on a priori grounds.

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Indigenous Psychologies

• Yang (1993, 1999) has recommended that the
  principle of multiple paradigms be adopted.
• Under the principle, different indigenous
  psychologists in the same society may be
  encouraged to apply different or even conflicting
  paradigms to their own research.
• This rule has been actually practiced among
  indigenous psychologists in Chinese societies
  (Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China) for some
  years.

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Some examples

• Hardin, E. E., Leong, F.T.L. Osipow, S.H.
  (2001). Cultural relativity in the
  conceptualization of career maturity. Journal of
  Vocational Behavior,58,1-17
• Pek, J.C.X. Leong, F.T.L. (2003). Sex-related
  Self-Concepts, Cognitive Styles, and Cultural
  Values of Traditionality-Modernity as Predictors
  of General and Domain-specific Sexism. Asian
  Journal of Social Psychology, 6, 31-49.
• Cheung, F.M., Cheung, S.F., Leung, K., Ward, C.,
  Leong, F.T.L. (2003). The English version of
  the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory.
  Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology,34, 433-452.
• Chang, L.C., Arkin, R.M., Leong, F.T.L., Chan,
  D., Leung, K. (2004).Subjective Overachievement
  in American and Chinese College Students. Journal
  of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 35, 152-173.

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Towards Indigenous Models

• Desiderata To question and challenge the
  cultural validity and cultural specificity of the
  Western models of career development and
  vocational psychology which are currently using.
• To use the Cultural Accommodation Model (CAM) of
  career counseling and accommodate for culture
  specific elements.
• To join in the Indigenous Psychologies movement
  and begin investigating indigenous constructs to
  enrich our models and make them more culturally
  appropriate and culturally relevant for our
  clients.
• Therefore, I come to you today not with these
  Indigenous models already developed but instead
  with an invitation and call to join me in the
  journey.

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Ways forward. Speak your truth quietly and
clearly Listen to others...

• Fanny Cheung, Fons van deVijver, and I have a
  paper on a combined etic-emic approach to
  personality assessment across cultures. Our paper
  ends with the following recommendation which is
  relevant here
• Given the complexity of the undertaking, it
  would be most helpful use a team approach and to
  ensure that both the etic and emic perspectives
  are represented on that team. If possible, it
  would also be desirable to have team members from
  multiple cultures or at least a member of the
  target culture who is familiar with indigenous
  psychology constructs and approaches to ensure
  that the indigenous perspective is represented.

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Ways forward. Speak your truth quietly and
clearly Listen to others...

• To avoid imposing an etic, the research team
  should invest time in evaluating measurement
  equivalence of the measure at different stages as
  outlined above. Members of this research team
  should have knowledge of target cultures and of
  methods to acquire this knowledge. At the same
  time, researchers with knowledge of qualitative,
  ethnographic methods, such as interviewing and
  content analysis, as well as quantitative
  analyses and cross-cultural methodology, should
  be sought out for the team (Byrne et al., 2009).

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Conclusion Many Ways to be Human

• For many years, Lawrence Kohlbergs theory of
  moral development dominated the field.
• Then in 1982, Carol Gilligan published In a
  Different Voice as a more accurate description
  of the moral and psychological development of
  women and a critique of Kohlbergs theory.
• Kohlbergs theory, like many other theories of
  that time was both androcentric and eurocentric.
• Like Gilligan, those of us at the forefront of
  cross-cultural psychology need to challenge the
  existing theories and the status quo.

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Conclusion Many Ways to be Human

• Forrest Tyler, one of my professors at the
  University of Maryland, put it succinctly when he
  observed that..there are many ways to be human.
• As cross-cultural psychologists, I believe that
  we need to explore and research these many and
  different ways of being human to counter our
  natural tendency to view one way as superior and
  those of others as inferior.
• In recognition that there are many cultures in
  this world and that each culture is inherently
  worthwhile, we need to study these cultural
  ways in the myriad forms and functions around
  the world.

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Closing Thought On the need to infuse cultural
diversity into our theories and our practices

• What sets the world in motion is the interplay
  of differences, their attractions and repulsions.
  Life is plurality, death is uniformity. By
  suppressing differences and pecularities, by
  eliminating different civilizations and cultures,
  progress weakens life and favors death. The ideal
  of a single civilization for everyone, implicit
  in the cult of progress and technique,
  impoverishes and mutilates us. Every view of the
  world that becomes extinct, every culture that
  disappears, diminishes the possibility of life
• From Otavio Paz,1967, in The Labyrinth of
  Solitude