"In the article titled, “Study of Culture, Ethnicity, and Race in American Psychology,” authors Hector Betancourt and Steven Lopez go in to great detail defining exactly what culture, race and ethnicity really mean as it pertains to psychology. It is explained in the first page how these three major factors of psychology are to explain the psychological differences between certain groups. I believe that the authors used American Psychology specifically in their study because this country is so diverse that we are able to see psychological differences between different groups when they are all generally living in the same environment with the same opportunities.

I believe that it is common practice for people to think that culture, ethnicity, and race are closely related. However in this article, the authors go to great lengths to try and explain how each of these different factors in psychology are quite different. First, they take each term (culture, race, and ethnicity) and defines them the best way that they can as it relates to psychology. This task is easier said than done; after reading their explanation for each of the definitions we see that some of the words are quite ambiguous and have numerous connotations. Culture is a perfect example of a difficult definition. On page five, the authors say that “A number of psychologists interested in the study of culture agree that the confusion concerning its definition has been an obstacle for progress.” How can psychologists really make strides studying culture when they have a difficult time defining it?"

"Researches need to give greater attention to cultural elements. For example, they do not take into account biological variables. For example, hypertension is known to be more prevalent in African Americans than Anglo’s, why?(REMOVE)
In order to conceptualize culture we must consider it as highly variable system of meanings which are learned and shared by people or an identifiable segment of the population. It represents designs and ways of life that are normally transmitted from one generation to another. This definition is psychologically relevant and includes elements such as roles and values which can be measured. (used twice, keeping in beginning of summary )

1. Begin with a phenomenon observed in the study of culture and apply it cross culturally to test theories of human behavior and
2. Begin with a theory, typically one that ignores culture and incorporate cultural elements to broaden its theoretical domain. Develop a measure, assess along this dimension(removing , not all details are relvant, do you agree??)
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