The Inclusion of Culture in Canadian Social Psychology Textbooks: A Content Analysis of Introductory Texts

Cultural diversity features prominently in Canadian social and political life. Canadian social psychologists, for their part, have led a rich tradition of research on intercultural relations. We identified the undergraduate social psychology textbooks used to introduce students of psychology in Canada to the field and examined the extent that culture is incorporated into the teaching of introductory social psychology. Through a content analysis of Canadian-published introductory social psychology texts, we found that these textbooks are inclusive of cultural diversity, although not all textbooks covered culture with the same depth. Across textbooks, cultural coverage was broad, with many hits across textbooks, whereas discussion of cultural differences was not particularly deep, with most hits being elaborated under one page of text. Results are discussed alongside past research on the inclusion of culture in the teaching of generalized introductory psychology courses in the United States (Lonner & Murdock, 2012; Rumpel, 1988).