Culture and Behavior: An Approach Taken in Psychology and International Business

John Berry, one of the editors of the Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology (Berry, Poortinga, & Pandey, 1997), sometimes introduced presentations with this question: You are to have an important meeting in an hour with a person you have not met before. If you could learn only one fact about this person to help with the meeting, what would you want to learn? Whereas gender, age, and education come to mind, cross-cultural psychologists often argue that knowing the person’s culture would be the most helpful piece of information.