Social Psychology through a Cross-Cultural Lens

Your assignment asks you to identify a topic in social psychology to research through a cross-cultural lens.

Strategies:

• Find scholarly research articles that conduct cross-cultural analysis. (You are required to find a minimum of three for the annotated bibliography.)
• Conduct your own cross-cultural analysis by finding articles on a shared topic but from different cultural perspectives.
• Look for studies conducted in other countries.

Sample search terms for cross-cultural perspectives:

• cultur*
• cross cultural OR intercultural OR cultural differences OR multicultural
• cultur* OR sociocultural
• racial OR ethnic* OR minorit*
• latin* OR Hispanic
• western OR non-western OR eastern
• gay OR lesbian
• cross-cultural research
• cultural differences
• individualistic cultures
• collectivistic cultures
• collective interdependence
• East Asian cultures

The following journals are equally important in the field of social psychology.

• The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
• Journal of Applied Social Psychology

Search their contents in WorldCat.

Then request relevant articles through InterLibrary Loan. 
 

Search for Scholarship in Social Psychology in Holman Library Databases

The tool that will help you find scholarly articles on your topic is a database. The library subscribes to many databases; I recommend using these for scholarly articles in social psychology:

• ProQuest Combined Databases searches most of the social psychology journals included in its more specialized database: Nursing and Allied Health Source.

• To focus your results, you might start with the specialized database, but that may exclude some journals.

• Many journals place a hold on their most recent publications. ASP and ProQuest may be a year or eighteen months behind. 

• You may use InterLibrary Loan to borrow articles for free from other libraries. You may be able to find the most recent articles that way.

• Follow the citations in a references list to other articles on that topic. 

Images of searches in Holman Library Databases in Social Psychology

Using the Advanced Search feature in a database allows you to use more than one keyword or phrase (search terms) in order to get more relevant search results.

Here's a screenshot from Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection:

Here's a screenshot from the ProQuest database:

Be a Power Researcher!

ProQuest, Academic Search Complete, and other research databases include article abstracts and citation information without full text. This is useful to you as a researcher!

If you are not in a rush and choose not to limit your results to what is available now, in full-text, you can see even more results - articles that you can often track down (in full text) from another source, either in another GRC database or in the WorldCat catalog.
 

To track down the full text of an abstract only article: 

• If you do not limit to full-text, you should see your results list. In those results, as shown in the image below, click on Check for Full Text in other sources.

• Doing this will either:

  • Link directly to the article in another Holman Library database, OR
  • Provide a link to InterLibrary Loan. Click on the InterLibrary Loan link to borrow the article from another library. Articles are usually available electronically and will be emailed to you fairly quickly.

(click on image to enlarge)

To  track down a reference in a works cited list use: 

• Holman Library One Search: 
  • Type the title and author of the article you're looking for into the advanced search boxes of the library's Primo One Search Tool.
  • Put the title in "quotes" to keep all the words together.
  • Primo One Search searches across library databases and our book collection.

• If you know the title of an article you can search for that title in the main search box on the library's website as shown in the image below.

(Click on image to enlarge)

• In this case we had the article in Holman Library, and my search returned this result: 

(click on image to enlarge)

Using the Interlibrary Loan Service

InterLibrary Loan: No library has it all! But the InterLibrary Loan (or ILL) is a service offered by Holman Library for borrowing books and articles from other libraries. InterLibrary Loan requests are free to current GRC students, faculty and staff.

For your research, it is important to search many places.

• First, start with the books and articles available through the Holman Library.

• Then, If you find books and articles that the Library does NOT have access to, just request them through Interlibrary Loan.

• Using Interlibrary Loan increases the amount of resources available to you and helps you become a more thorough researcher.

Note:

• Books and other items that require mailing may take 1-2 weeks.

• Articles and other digital items may arrive within 2-5 days. Use your email as your contact info and the article will be sent directly to you.

If you need help filling out this form, call the library reference desk at (253) 931-6480.

Other places you can search...

Use the links below to look for books, articles and more beyond our collection:

Find previews of books through GOOGLE BOOKS

1. Search Google Books to find full text or partial text of books online

2. Choose books that indicate "Preview" You may not see entire text of the book, but many of the chapters may be included. You can often find great information in these chapters.

Topics & Keywords in Social Psychology:

Social Thinking:

• Self-Concept
• Self-Concept AND Culture
• Self-Esteem
• "Self-Fulfilling Prophecy"
• Self-Handicapping
• "Hindsight Bias"
• "Social Comparison"
• "Memory Construction"
• "Locus of Control"
• "Self-Serving Bias"
• "Learned Helplessness"
• "Impression Management"
• "Fundamental Attribution Error"
• "Cognitive Dissonance"
• "Self-Perception Theory"
• "Attitude Formation"
• Opinion AND Actions
• "Foot-in-the-Door-Phenomenon"

Social Influence

• Culture AND Behavior
• "Social Time"
• ("Social Distance" OR proxemics)
• "Gender Roles"
• "Gender Differences"
• Conformity
• Obedience
• "Central Route Persuasion"
• "Peripheral Route Persuasion"
• "Cult Indoctrination"
• "Attitude Inoculation"
• "Group Behavior"
• "Social Facilitation"
• "Evaluation Apprehension"
• "Social Loafing"
• Anonymity AND Behavior
• Deindividuation
• "Group Polarization"
• Groupthink
• Leadership

Social Relations