Contemporary Issues Presentation - Essay Example

psychologists are in a position to provide leadership as agents of prosocial change, advocacy, and social justice, thereby promoting societal understanding, affirmation, and appreciation of multiculturalism against the damaging effects of individual, institutional, and societal racism, prejudice, and all forms of oppression based on stereotyping and discrimination” (APA, 2002, pp. 15-16). Multicultural issues have various implications for psychology in general and for the personality and social psychology particularly because the issue of how people gain a sense of national, racial, community, ethnic, and cultural group membership is specially important in situations of cultural mixing, integration, and clashing.

The individual and social factors which influence the multicultural identity enable the psychologists to explore individual variations in the dynamics of self-concept. Research increasingly suggests that conflicts happen between different cultural expectations, attitudes, and values rather than between different groups (Phinney, 1999, p. 27). Two family processes that are particularly significant in the emotional development of children are “the quality of parent-child relationships and the quality of the parent’s relationship with each other” (Falci et al., 1997, p. 15).

“The decision of parents to live apart - whether a result of divorce or an initial decision not to marry- damages, and sometimes destroys, the social capital that might have been available to children had the parents lived together” (McLanahan and Sandefur, 1994, p. 3). All 4-year-old children living with biological fathers have been found to be linked with reductions in externalizing problem behaviors (EPB) when they become 4 to 6 years old and beyond that. For less-regulated children, stepfather residence at age 4 years was found to be linked with reductions in EPB from 4 to 6 years of age, and stepfather residence at 8 years of age was found to be linked with reductions in EPB from 8 to 10 years respectively (Cabrera, Hofferth, and Hancock, 2014).

References:American Psychological Association. (2002). Guidelines on Multicultural Education, Training, Research, Practice, and Organizational Change for Psychologists. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/policy/multicultural-guideline.pdf. Cabrera, N. J., Hofferth, S. L., and Hancock, G. (2014). Family structure, maternal employment, and change in children’s externalizing problem behaviour: Differences by age and self-regulation. European Journal of Developmental Psychology. doi: 10.1080/17405629.2013.873716.

Retrieved from http://www.popcenter.umd.edu/filab/publications/CabreraHofferthHancock2014EuropeanJofDevPsych.pdf. Falci, C. D. et al. (1997). The Effects of Family Structure and Family Process on the Psychological Well-Being of Children: From the Children’s Point of View. Retrieved from file:///C:/Users/dell/Downloads/00b4952b2413bb6439000000.pdf. McLanahan, S., and Sandefur, G. (1994). Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Phinney, J. S. (1999).

An intercultural approach in psychology: Cultural contact and identity. Cross-Cultural Psychology Bulletin, 33, 24–31.