Geoffrey W. Sutton PhD, Psychology and Culture

  It is reasonable for citizens of any nation to be concerned about the people entering their territory. Often the boundaries with neighbors were established at a peace treaty following the death of people on both sides. When boundaries change, people with differing loyalties may be trapped and isolated from their relatives unless there is a friendly approach for people to visit back and forth. The citizens of nations with large borders like the US incur considerable costs in monitoring their borders. Presumably, successful nations like the US and those in Western Europe are attractive because of the opportunities for work, education, and a range of benefits. Identifying those who enter the country illegally is no small task. When they mate with citizens and have children, they have created a potentially distressful condition if they are discovered and deported. My concern in this post is the children who were brought to the US illegally. As an immigrant myself, I do not reca...

Testimonies used to be popular in conservative Christian churches several decades ago. People stood and retold the story of their conversion from sin to faith. Pentecostals told stories of healing. Some told of their conversion from a different faith to their current Christian faith. Stories of deconversion often involve conversion and follow a familiar narrative consisting of a person's struggle with their old faith, doubt and possible loss of faith, grief over the loss of faith and a faith family, and for some, joy at their new found faith. Deconversion is the term behavioral scientists use when studying how a person's conversion story unravels. That is, the process of leaving a faith group.  Some leave their faith and become a none —a person of no faith, or no particular faith. Others leave one faith for another faith. (Read more about deconversion, 2017 .) Rachel Held Evans has a deconversion-conversion story. She’s the girl from monkey town whose testimony re...

A disturbing story challenges thinking about diversity. When I read this story, I was appalled.What about you? AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images See link to the story below. Why not evaluate cultures? It has been fashionable of late to not merely study diverse cultures but to celebrate diversity and to encourage respect of people and their different ways of living. Differences are to be understood and respected—not evaluated. And certainly not condemned. The scientific study of diversity sometimes slips into a moral stance like the following: "It’s wrong to condemn a culture as immoral or inferior because they do things differently." Said another way, "all cultures are equally moral." I have no problem with emphasizing the importance of respect for people of other cultures. I enjoy learning about the different ways people celebrate the stages of life in dance, music, art, and religion. There’s a beauty in so many colorful ways people fro...