Acknowledgements

Thanks to the Maricopa Millions Grant at the Maricopa County Community College District, for providing the funds and support to develop this textbook. It was originally produced for the course PSY 132 Psychology and Culture, an introductory-level, general education course at Glendale Community College. Many colleagues, fellow faculty, staff, teaching assistants and students have developed the course and generously given their time to improving the teaching materials. We are very grateful for their support. We are also very grateful for the editing and reviewing of our colleagues and students who contributions have improved the text and content.

Like many faculty, we were concerned about the cost of textbooks for our students who experienced financial hardship in purchasing required texts. In addition, we could not find an introductory undergraduate textbook that used an informal and engaging style. This situation prompted us to begin drafting this textbook and other open source course materials.

This textbook reflects the disciplinary expertise of the three main authors, who are all counselors and psychologists. We recognize this as both a strength and weakness of the text, as it provides a strong psychological approach but does not cover the entire range of work in the field. The guiding perspective of this work is an awareness that social and cultural factors influence our thinking and behavior but individual differences often direct our decision making and choices.

We hope this resource will be useful to anyone who is interested in the role that culture plays in shaping who we are and how we as individuals in turn shape our culture.

Senior Contributing Authors

Lisa Worthy

Trisha Lavigne

Fernando Romero