Asian Psychology

Asian psychology is a branch of cultural psychology that studies psychological concepts as they relate to Asian culture, with its researchers typically aligning themselves with cross-cultural psychology. The field examines how people across the nations of Asia behave, communicate and maintain their belief systems, and it investigates the differences between native Asian cultures and the experience of Asian Americans. A central concern is how culture shapes cognition and perception; the University of Michigan psychologist Shinobu Kitayama has argued that culture can have a profound impact on how people think about and perceive the world, and researchers in the field have found that East Asian thought patterns often diverge from Western approaches, particularly around interdependence versus independence in the sense of self. The field emerged partly as a response to the dominance of Western theory and research in psychology, as Asian psychologists sought greater influence within a discipline they felt was constrained by European and American perspectives, a movement that included figures such as Qicheng Jing in China, Hiroshi Azuma in Japan and Durganand Sinha in India.