Psihologia culturalã, o introducere
Cultural psychology: an introduction

Summary/Abstract: The present article aims to introduce the complex field of cultural psychology, a relatively new discipline following from Wundt's 'people's psychology' (Völkerpsychologie). After a brief historical overview, cultural psychology is presented as the study of the interdependence between person or group and their sociocultural context. In order to delineate its study area more precisely some distinctions are made between cultural psychology and other psychological branches, especially cross-cultural psychology. A special section is dedicated to the main theoretical directions within cultural psychology, where influential conceptions are described such as Lev Vygotsky's cultural-historical school and Richard Shweder's notion of an 'intentional world'. The article continues with a discussion of 'culture' presenting three distinctive approaches in this field: cultural-historical, epidemiological and social representational. Finally a few studies adopting a cultural psychological perspective are described and the current state of affairs in the discipline briefly evaluated.

• Details
• Contents