Understanding Psychology (10th Ed)

determinism
The idea that people’s 
behavior is produced primarily by 
factors outside of their willful control.
24 Chapter 
1 
Introduction to Psychology
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 Module 
3 
Psychology’s Key Issues and Controversies 
25
The question of the degree to which psychologists can identify universal prin-
ciples that apply to all people has taken on new signifi cance in light of the tremen-
dous demographic changes now occurring in the United States and around the 
world. As we discuss next, these changes raise new and critical issues for the disci-
pline of psychology in the 21st century.
A mother in Burr Ridge, Illinois, helps her son with his math 
assignment. After he complains that he is “terrible at math,” 
she tries to cheer him up by saying, “Don’t feel bad; some 
people are born to do well in math, and others have a lot of 
trouble with it. It’s just the way things are.” At the same time, 
on the other side of the world in Taipei, Taiwan, a mother is 
helping her daughter with her math homework. When the 
daughter complains that she’s no good at math, the mother tells her to keep at it, 
because everyone has pretty much the same ability in math, and it is hard work that 
guarantees success.
These two apparently simple parent-child exchanges reveal a deep difference in 
perspectives on the world. People in Europe and North America are far more likely to 
attribute success to unchanging causes, such as intelligence, than are people in Asia, 
who are more likely to attribute school performance to temporary, situational factors, 
such as the amount of expended effort. 
These different perspectives may help explain the fact that Asian students often 
outperform U.S. students in international comparisons of student achievement. Asian 
students are taught that hard work and increased effort lead to academic success, and 
so they may be more willing to put in more effort to achieve success. In contrast, North 
American students tend to believe that their ability is fi xed at birth and largely 
determines their success, and so they may be less willing to work hard (Chen & 
Stevenson, 1995; Pearce & Lin, 2007). 
Our knowledge that people in different cultures can have very different views of the 
world underlines the importance of moving beyond North America and studying 
other cultural groups in order to identify universal principles of behavior. Furthermore, 
broad cultural differences are not the only ones taken into account by psychologists in 
their attempts to identify general principles of behavior. Subcultural, ethnic, racial, and 
Members of diff erent cultures attribute academic success to diff erent factors. How might 
diff ering cultural perspectives aff ect the performance of Asian students and American students?
Exploring