ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a definition of culture, the complexity of understanding individual behavior, and teaching goals. It stimulates thinking about culture and its relationship to mental processes and behaviors to help improve teaching efforts in psychology concerning culture. Human cultures enable groups to meet basic needs of survival, such as meeting others to procreate and produce offspring, putting food on the table, providing shelter from the elements, and caring for daily biological essentials. Human culture also allows for complex social networks and relationships, the enhancement of the meaning of normal, daily activities, and the pursuit of happiness. One of the goals of understanding the relationship between culture and psychology is to understand the complexity of the sources of human motivation, and to learn how to apply that complexity when interpreting the behavior of others as well as oneself. Emotion regulation and other psychological skills are probably best taught in experiential-based learning.
