Book Review: Valery Chirkov (2025). An Introduction to Culture and Psychology: A Sociocultural Perspective. Routledge (11 Chapters, 407 + xvii pages)

The field of social psychology has undergone numerous stages in its long history of investigations to both understand or predict human behavior, but since the late 19th century “the elusive concept of human culture” (Berry et al., 2022, p. 715) became an increasingly important focus of inquiry. This interest evolved from scattered consideration of cultural variations across nations to concerted examination of the parallel impact of both culture and personality on psychology and behavior, to increasingly nuanced research on the complexities of thinking, behavior, interactions, and interpretations in the context of sociocultural environments (Berry et al., 2022; Smith & Bond, 2022; Triandis, 2007). Most scholars acknowledge that the impact of cultural context on psychological phenomena is represented by three major approaches to studying this interrelationship: Cross-cultural, Cultural, and Indigenous Psychology (Greenfield, 2000; Ratner, 2008). The three approaches have generally contributed to a more holistic understanding of the human psychological processes and have examined many facets of the broad range of cultural differences across different communities with aims of helping people communicate effectively and appropriately (DiMaggio & Markus, 2010) or facilitate their mutual adaptation to each other or acculturation to cultural contexts.