The Trials and Tribulations of Cross - Cultural Research

In press Trials and Tribulations, 2 The Trials and Tribulations of Cross-Cultural Research Those of us who do cross-cultural research usually have a story of precisely when we began our journey into the global territory of research. For some, the interest might have developed at a very young age; for others it might have been happenstance, having stumbled into the field after doing work within one culture for many years. The litany of reasons why we venture into the world of cross-cultural research is also very diverse—for some it might be to discover general universal principles; for others it is to uncover the " thick description " of a particular culture (Geertz, 1973); and still for others it might be to simply understand the complex elephant of what culture is, addressing fundamental issues of human nature. Although our beginnings and passions for doing cross-cultural research are varied, we ultimately share many common experiences along the bumpy road of cross-cultural research— experiencing many of the joys and delights on the one hand, and many of the trials, the frustrations, and disappointments on the other. Unfortunately, the restrictions of journal space and norms that focus us on reporting hypotheses, procedures, and results make it difficult to collectively realize that many of the issues that we encounter along the way are, in fact, common. was a great success in helping us to share our research stories and to collectively make explicit what is often not discussed or implicit across many individuals. Whether you call it an academic conference detailing complex research programs or a collective therapy session, sharing these stories is critical for building institutional knowledge in cultural science, for giving a realistic preview to newcomers entering the field, and for empowering all of us with information that can help facilitate doing high quality cross-cultural research. Trials and Tribulations, 3 In this chapter, I detail some of my own experiences with conducting cross-cultural research. At the conference I discussed the details of several large-scale projects that I conducted, including a quantitative study of tightness-looseness across 33 nations (Gelfand et al., 2011) and a qualitative study of subjective culture in the Middle East that I embarked upon across 8 nations (Gelfand, 2008). In this chapter I draw on my experiences doing these projects and I broaden the discussion to include other studies I conducted as well. In what follows, I begin with my own …