3

Cultural Ecology and

Individual Behavior
JOHN W. BERRY

INTRODUCTION

Traditionally, much of the discipline of ps ychology has attempted to

comprehend behavior as a fun ction of stimuli impinging upon an indi-
vid ual. In recent years, the approach of ecological psychology has noted
that the stimuli usually employed in ps ychology really represent only a
very narrow range of all pos sible stim uli, and that the y are excessively
artificial in character; as a result, ecological ps ychology ha s emphasized
the need to study behavior in more molar and naturalistic contexts.
Similarly, an emerging cross-cultural psychology has argued that we
should be attending to broad ranges of situations drawn from a cross sec-
tion of cultures. It soon became clear, though, that sampling from new
cultures also meant sampling from the new environmental contexts in
which the cultures were situated. Thus, it became essential that the
movement cross-culturally be accompanied by increased attention to the
environmental settings of the cultures studied, a position similar to that
espoused by ecological psychology.
Fortuitously, a similar movement within anthropology was de-
veloping the point of view that the forms which a culture evolves can
and must be understood as adaptations to its habitat. This movement,
often termed cultural ecology, has provided a valuable link and body of

JOHN W. BERRY· Department of Psychology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario,

Canad a K7L 3N6.

83
I. Altman et al. (eds.), Environment and Culture
© Springer Science+Business Media New York 1980
84 John W. Berry

knowledge for psychologists wishing to trace individual behavior to its

cultural and environmental bases.
This chapter will begin in the next section by briefly outlining these
three developments, (ecological psychology, cross-cultural psychology,
and cultural ecology), and by integrating them into a framework for
understanding individual behavior in its ecological and cultural con-
texts . Then it will selectively review studies in the areas of cognitive style
and social behavior which have been guided from this point of view. A
further section will review studies of individual adaptation to environ-
mental and cultural change, and a final section will point up some appli-
cations and future directions for work in this area.

SYSTEMATIC APPROACHES

In general psychology, an ecological approach has been promoted

by Brunswik (see Hammond, 1966; Postman & Tolman, 1959, for re-
views) , Barker (1969), and most recently by Bronfenbrenner, (1977).
Brunswik considered that behavior should be examined in its "natural-
cultural habitat", and that the task of psychology is "the analysis of the
interrelation between two systems, the environment and the behaving
subject" (Hammond, 1966, p . 23). These interrelations are viewed as
adaptations; individual behavior is a "coming to terms" with the envi-
ronment (Brunswik, 1957, p. 5). Similar goals were adopted by Barker,
who argued that "psychology knows how people behave under condi-
tions of experiments and clinical procedures, but it knows little about the
distribution of these and other conditions, and of their behavior resul-
tants, outside of laboratories and clinics" (1968, p. 2). Essentially, the
"psychologist-free environment of behavior" remains little known.
Most recently, Bronfenbrenner (1977) has advocated an "experimental
ecology," arguing that "much of contemporary developmental psychol-
ogy is the science of the strange behavior of children in strange situa-
tions with strange adults for the briefest possible periods of time" (1977,
p. 513).
All three writers have espoused a naturalistic approach to the study
of individual behavior: the environmental context must be understood if
the behavior is to be accounted for. A similar movement, that known as
cross-cultural psychology, has asserted that the cultural context must
also be incorporated into our psychological research: human behavior
can be understood only when its cultural underpinnings are incorpo-
rated into the explanatory system. A further similarity is also evident:
just as ecological psychology has urged the movement of psychologists