John Chambers Christopher
To post-modern thinkers of a variety of stripes, ontological and moral commitments are increasingly recognized to be inescapable in the social
sciences. This poses problems for positive psychology if it is pursued as if it were a “descriptive” or objective science that can “transcend particular cultures and politics and approach universality” (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000, p.
5). Prior initiatives in the field of psychology that claimed to be objective, value free, culture free, ahistorical, and universal were shown by critical psychologists to presuppose individualistic cultural values and assumptions. Preliminary
inquiry suggests that theory and research in positive psychology is likewise influenced by Western cultural outlooks (Christopher, 1999, 2003; Guignon, 2002; Woolfolk, 2002). One implication is that positive psychology requires a philosophy of social science that is robust enough to handle ontological,
epistemological, and ethical/moral issues and move beyond both objectivism and relativism.
I believe conceptual resources for positive psychology can be found in the
philosophical hermeneutics of Charles Taylor and Martin Heidegger and in Mark Bickhard’s interactivism. These metatheories provide (a) conceptual tools for critiquing how cultural values and assumptions shape psychological theory, research, and practice, (b) an alternative non-individualistic and non-dualistic metatheory regarding the nature of the self and how the self is related to culture, and (c) ways of thinking interpretively about cultural meanings and discerning their specific manifestations (Campbell, Christopher, & Bickhard, 2002;
Christopher, 2001; Christopher, 2004). A useful way of thinking about culture comes from considering how human beings always and necessarily exist within moral visions. Moral visions entail a set of ontological presuppositions about the nature of the person or self and a set of moral or ethical assumptions about what the person should be or become. I believe that any positive psychology, whether in the current movement or in the indigenous psychologies of other cultures, is based on moral visions.
From this moral visions framework, positive psychology will need to be able to address how the self varies across culture. To promote subjective well-being, psychological well-being, or character, we need to have a clear understanding of the self that is at stake. Failing to do this can potentially pathologize individuals whose sense of self is not the “bounded, masterful self” of Western psychology (Cushman, 1990). In addition, positive psychology will need to address what role the various configurations of the self have for positive psychology. For example, positive psychology encourages the development and enhancement of the self. Yet for many non-Western indigenous psychologies such as Buddhism and classical yoga, identification with this notion of the self is the source of
suffering and the true stumbling block to growth. Or as Alfred Adler suggested, mental health and well-being may in part require a sense of identification with the larger communities of which one is a part. Dialogue and debate regarding these types of underlying assumptions will be essential to help positive
psychology not become culture-bound.
The second aspect of moral visions that positive psychology will need to contend with are those assumptions regarding how we should be or become (or what the good person and the good life are). Psychology tends to define its virtues, like autonomy, relatedness, and personal growth, in abstract and decontextualized ways that tend to obscure the local and specific interpretations with which these virtues are actually lived out (Campbell & Christopher, 1996b; Christopher, 1999; Christopher, Nelson, & Nelson, 2004). This is a point that applies to various aspects of positive psychology, including Peterson and Seligman’s (2004) VIA project, character education, and well-being (Christopher et al., 2004). I contend that positive psychology will need to more fully consider how interpretation plays a central role in understanding those characteristics and qualities that define the good person and the good life. To the extent that certain virtues can be found to be present across most cultures, there are huge and generally unexplored ways that the meaning of these virtues can be radically different for those who hold them. The virtue of caring, for instance, is generally interpreted within Western cultures to mean caring about other people—yet there are traditions for whom caring about the environment and about the self are also moral imperatives (Campbell & Christopher, 1996b). Moreover, even when there is consensus about the object or domain of caring, there are frequently considerable differences across and within cultures around what it means to care in a particular situation, such as with the elderly. A hasty attempt to declare that certain virtues are universally endorsed can obscure how these common virtues are often prioritized in very different ways. Respect, for example, is an important virtue in most cultures. Yet, while Turkish and Micronesian college students consider respect the most important attribute of the good person, American students ranked it 35th (Smith, Türk-Smith, & Christopher, 1998).
Comprehending how culture shapes peoples’ understanding of virtues, values, and well-being will indeed complicate research endeavors. Our commitment to cultural pluralism demands more of us than the inclusion of other countries in standard research relying on self-report measures. One implication of the moral visions perspective is that people already live out positive folk psychologies:
The structure of their lives provides an answer to the question of the good person
and good life. These implicit and embodied outlooks need to be juxtaposed with notions of the good that are consciously accessible and espoused by lay persons, as well as with indigenous professional theories of well-being. To fully address how positive psychologies exist at a variety of levels of awareness requires the addition of interpretive methods. This will initially result in a kind of messiness, as some moral development theorists now acknowledge is necessary (Campbell
& Christopher, 1996a; Walker & Hennig, 2004; Walker & Pitts, 1998), but this is offset by the potential to capture more of the richness and diversity of human experience.
Positive psychology is critical to the well-being of 21st-century psychology. It will require vigilance to ensure that positive psychology does not become yet another form of a disguised individualistic ideology that perpetuates the sociopolitical status quo and fails to do justice to the moral visions of those outside the reigning outlook. I believe that by paying attention to our underlying moral visions, learning about the moral visions of those across cultures and across time, and learning to think culturally, we can avoid prematurely rushing to ethnocentric conclusions that fail to take full measure of the wisdom of non- Western cultural traditions.
Source: Christopher (2005). Reprinted with permission of the author.
Note: Citations for Dr. Christopher’s article are presented in the References section at the back of this book.