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The Psychology of Globalization
Jeffrey Jensen Arnett
University Park, Maryland
The influence of globalization on psychological functioning
is examined. First, descriptions of how globalization is
occurring in various world regions are presented. Then the
psychological consequences of globalization are described,
with a focus on identity issues. Specifically, it is argued that
most people worldwide now develop a bicultural identity
that combines their local identity with an identity linked to
the global culture; that identity confusion may be increas-
ing among young people in non-Western cultures as a
result of globalization; that some people join self-selected
cultures to maintain an identity that is separate from the
global culture; and that a period of emerging adulthood
increasingly extends identity explorations beyond adoles-
cence, through the mid- to late twenties.
Globalization has existed for many centuries as a
process by which cultures influence one another
and become more alike through trade, immigra-
tion, and the exchange of information and ideas. However,
in recent decades, the degree and intensity of the connec-
tions among different cultures and different world regions
have accelerated dramatically because of advances in tele-
communications and a rapid increase in economic and
financial interdependence worldwide. For example, exports
as a proportion of world gross domestic product grew from
8% in 1950 to 26% by 1998 (“The Battle in Seattle,” 1999),
and international travel has increased by 700% since 1960
(Held, 1998). Consequently, in recent years, globalization
has become one of the most widely used terms to describe
the current state of the world.
Globalization encompasses a wide range of issues and
phenomena. In the proliferation of recent books on the
topic, the focus has been mainly on economics (e.g., Fried-
man, 2000; Gray, 1998), but books on globalization have
also addressed issues such as the influence of globalization
on urban life (e.g., Sassen, 1998) and on cultural practices
(e.g., Appadurai, 2000; Giddens, 2000; Tomlinson, 1999).
However, psychology’s contribution to an understanding
of globalization has been mostly indirect. Psychological
theory and research on acculturation, identity, and other
topics have implications for the effects of globalization, but
thus far these implications have not been thoroughly
described.
In this article, I discuss how globalization influences
psychological functioning. I argue that globalization has its
primary psychological influence on issues of identity.
However, my goal is not only to support this thesis but to
provoke thought and investigation among psychologists on
the topic of the psychology of globalization. Because psy-
chologists have rarely addressed globalization directly,
there are at least as many questions as answers. For this
reason, I end each section of the article by proposing some
research questions.
My focus is on issues related to adolescence, because
adolescents have a pivotal role in the process of globaliza-
tion (Dasen, 2000; Schlegel, 2001). Unlike children, ado-
lescents have enough maturity and autonomy to pursue
information and experiences outside the confines of their
families. Unlike adults, they are not yet committed to a
definite way of life and have not yet developed ingrained
habits of belief and behavior; they are more open to what
is new and unusual. They tend to have more interest than
either children or adults in global media—recorded music,
movies, television, the Internet—and, to a considerable
extent, global media are the leading edge of globalization
(Schlegel, 2001), the foot in the door that opens the way for
other changes in beliefs and behavior. According to a 1998
United Nations Human Development Report (United Na-
tions Development Programme, 1998), market researchers
now try to sell to “global teens” (p. 6) because urban
adolescents worldwide follow similar consumption pat-
terns and have similar preferences for “global brands” (p.
6) of music, videos, T-shirts, soft drinks, and so on. Ado-
lescents are also viewed by adults in some cultures as being
especially vulnerable to the allurements of the global cul-
ture, and adolescent problems such as substance use and
premarital pregnancy are sometimes blamed by adults on
the intrusion of Western values through globalization (Nsa-
menang, 2002; Stevenson & Zusho, 2002; Welti, 2002).
The focus on adolescence highlights the identity is-
sues that are of key importance in the psychology of
globalization, given that identity issues have long been
regarded as central to adolescent development. However, I
also include information on people of other ages, and even
the material on adolescents has implications for other ages.
Before proceeding, it is important to specify both the
extent and the limitations of globalization. Although glob-
alization has intensified dramatically in recent years, the
world is a long way from being one homogeneous global
culture. In many ways, the gaps in technology and lifestyle
between rich and poor countries and between rural and
urban areas within countries have persisted or even grown
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jeffrey
Jensen Arnett, 4409 Van Buren Street, University Park, MD 20782.
E-mail: arnett@wam.umd.edu
774 October 2002 ●American Psychologist
Copyright 2002 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0003-066X/02/$5.00
Vol. 57, No. 10, 774–783 DOI: 10.1037//0003-066X.57.10.774
in recent years, even as poor countries have moved in the
direction of rich countries.
Table 1 provides an illustration of this pattern. It
shows that enrollment in secondary school has increased all
over the world during the past 20 years but remains con-
siderably lower in developing countries than in industrial-
ized countries. Overall, the proportion of adolescents in
secondary school in developing countries rose from 23% in
1970 to 52% in 1997 (United Nations Educational, Scien-
tific, and Cultural Organization, 1999), but the proportion
is now above 90% in industrialized countries. Table 2
provides some information on technology, which is often
portrayed as the driving force behind globalization. Again,
an increase in access to technology has taken place all over
the world in recent decades, but far more in some parts of
the world than in others. There is also considerable varia-
tion within regions and within countries, especially be-
tween rural and urban areas (United Nations Development
Programme, 2001). Thus, globalization is influencing every
part of the world, but cultures differ greatly in how much
they have been affected by it. This article is based on the
premise that globalization is influencing many of the
world’s people and is likely to influence an increasing
number of them in the years to come.
Questions for future research include the following:
First, how should globalization be defined for empirical
purposes? How should the effects of globalization be mea-
sured for a given population, and how should exposure to
globalization be measured on the level of the individual?
Second, what age differences exist in exposure to global-
ization and in responses to it?
The Process of Globalization:
Regional Snapshots
Let us proceed with illustrations of how globalization is
taking place in various regions of the world. In Latin
America (Welti, 2002), most of the population has access
to global information through radio and television, which
now reach into even the small towns. People are aware
of distant wars and the intimate details of the lives and
deaths of global celebrities. Young people copy the cloth-
ing and hairstyles of popular singers from the United
States, as well as Latin America, and learn the lyrics of
songs in English even if they do not understand them.
E-mail is the preferred form of communication among urban
middle-class adolescents.
However, it remains true that in rural areas, education
ends early and the marriage age is young (Economic Com-
mission for Latin America and the Caribbean, 2000). In
these areas, many groups still celebrate a girl’squincinera
when she turns 15, thus signifying that she has reached
marriageable age. In urban areas, globalization is more
evident but is not always welcome. There have been wide-
spread protests—led by university students in Buenos
Aires, Mexico City, and Santiago, among other cities—
against the economic disruptions caused by shifts in global
financial markets and against the cutbacks in government
services demanded by global lending institutions, with
globalization specified as the enemy (Welti, 2002).
In Arab countries (Booth, 2002), young people in the
middle and upper classes in urban areas are similar in many
ways to young people in the West, with access to extended
education and a variety of leisure opportunities, including
dating, playing electronic games, and surfing the Internet.
Cafe´s are popular meeting places for playing board games
Table 1
Changes in Secondary School Enrollment
in Selected Countries
Country
1980
(% enrolled)
Latest year
(% enrolled)
Boys Girls Boys Girls
United States 91 92 98 97
Germany 93 87 99 99
Italy 73 70 94 95
Poland 75 80 98 97
Argentina 53 62 73 81
Egypt 66 41 83 73
China 54 37 74 67
Turkey 44 24 68 48
Mexico 51 46 64 64
India 39 20 59 39
Nigeria 25 13 36 30
Note. The data are from the Population Reference Bureau (2000). Percent-
ages reflect the proportion of students enrolled in secondary school in the
applicable age group in each country.
Jeffrey
Jensen Arnett
775October 2002 ●American Psychologist
and watching satellite television with friends. In contrast,
young people in rural areas typically leave school early to
help with the family land or herds. Among some of the
urban people who are experiencing the influence of glob-
alization directly, a backlash against globalization has be-
gun, with Western influences blamed for a decline in moral
standards (Esposito, 1997). Calls have grown for a reasser-
tion of Islamic identity and for resistance to what is be-
lieved to be the corrupting influence of the Western-
dominated global culture.
In sub-Saharan Africa (Nsamenang, 2002), indige-
nous cultures are increasingly linked to the global culture,
and “the global political economy is in sight even from the
food gardens of the most peripheral settlements”(Moore,
1993, p. 4). Rates of premarital sex and pregnancy are
rising as traditional systems of sexual control through ini-
tiation rites, chaperones, and folklore lose their relevance in
the eyes of the young. This problem is sometimes blamed
on the introduction of Western media, with their relentless
sexual stimulation (Songue, 1998).
The size of rural African households is shrinking as
young people migrate to urban areas in search of work.
Many urban families resemble their counterparts in other
regions, as groups of individuals pursuing personal goals in
work, school, and social life, in contrast to the family
cohesion of African tradition. Schooling lasts longer for
many young people than it did in the past, reducing the
extent to which they can participate in family economic
enterprises. But schooling has also opened up many new
work opportunities, especially for women, who make up an
increasing proportion of the work force (Nsamenang,
2002). Altogether, the people of Africa are facing the
challenge of maintaining their traditions while adopting
many of the ways of the global culture. As Nsamenang
(2002) observed,
The process of acculturation and globalization has bestowed on
contemporary Africa a dual politico-economic and cultural sys-
tem of old indigenous traditions and imported legacies....This
has produced a marginal population whose adults, teenagers and
children are groping desperately to reconcile within individual
and collective psyches the ambivalences and contradictions of a
confusing cultural braid. (p. 63)
In Southeast Asia (Santa Maria, 2002), the average
ages of people entering marriage and parenthood are rising
in urban areas, although they remain low in rural areas.
Gender roles are undergoing dramatic changes, as young
women seek jobs outside the home and even outside their
native country. An increasing number of young people seek
employment abroad, as domestic helpers or construction
workers, or with international agencies (United Nations,
1997). This emigration is usually temporary and is viewed
as a promising opportunity to make a substantial amount of
money and raise the economic well-being of the family.
Although this aspect of globalization is viewed positively,
globalization is also seen as the source of problems. Com-
panies seeking to compete in the global marketplace exploit
labor, especially the labor of the young, through low-
paying “subcontracting”arrangements that offer little in the
way of benefits or job security. Western values are seen as
invading through the media and are blamed for increases in
premarital pregnancies. Juvenile delinquency is also rising,
especially in urban areas, and the increase is attributed to
the erosion of traditional social norms and institutions by
global forces.
Japan and China have a tradition of collectivistic
values (Naito & Gielen, in press; White, 1993). Filial piety
has long been ranked among the highest virtues. Parents
traditionally have expected deference, even reverence,
from their children, and children (especially eldest sons)
have been taught that they would have the responsibility for
caring for their parents in old age. A similarly strict hier-
archy of authority has existed in the workplace and in
schools. Even now, Japanese secondary schools regulate
students’behavior closely within the school—some even
specifying acceptable colors for girls’underpants (White,
1993)—as well as outside of school, prohibiting dating and
part-time work (Stevenson & Zusho, 2002).
However, in the past two decades, Chinese and Japa-
nese societies have changed rapidly. The tradition of inter-
dependence has been shaken by economic changes and by
increasing contact with the West, and values have become
notably more individualistic (Naito & Gielen, in press;
Stevenson & Zusho, 2002). Relatively few young people in
Japan are interested in continuing the tradition of lifelong
employment with a single company, entailing great job
security but very long hours and few holidays (White,
1993). They would prefer to have more time for leisure and
family life. In China, young people who are able to obtain
an education have widening opportunities in the country’s
rapidly expanding economy, whereas unskilled workers
find themselves in dire conditions as unprofitable state-run
companies collapse or are privatized. In both societies, the
increasing individualism of the young is viewed with con-
cern by their elders, who decry their materialism, hedo-
nism, and selfishness (Stevenson & Zusho, 2002; White,
1993). Japanese adults refer to young people who postpone
or forgo marriage in order to pursue self-development with
Table 2
Changes in Technology in World Regions
Region
Televisions (per
1,000 persons)
Telephones (per
1,000 persons)
1970 1995 1975 1995
Industrialized countries 280 525 178 414
East Asia 5 255 4 49
Latin America and the Caribbean 70 220 34 86
Southeast Asia and the Pacific 5 155 3 29
Arab States 28 127 8 49
South Asia 1 60 2 16
Sub-Saharan Africa 1 33 6 12
Note. The data are from the United Nations Development Programme (1998).
776 October 2002 ●American Psychologist
the derisive term parasite singles (Naito & Gielen, in
press).
Across regions, several common features can be dis-
cerned. First, there has been a notable increase in recent
years in the frequency and intensity of the contacts that
people in various cultures have with the global culture led
by the West and defined by free markets, consumerism, and
individualism. Second, globalization reaches virtually
everywhere, but people in urban areas experience it with
much greater intensity than people in rural areas do. Third,
the values of the global culture often collide with tradi-
tional cultural values, causing people to face the challenge
of adapting to both the global culture and their local cul-
ture, even as their local culture may be changing rapidly.
Finally, globalization is seen in most places as a source of
opportunities but also as a source of problems, and orga-
nized resistance has developed to the economic and cultural
disruptions it causes. But how does all this influence psy-
chological functioning?
The Psychological Consequences
of Globalization
The central psychological consequence of globalization is
that it results in transformations in identity, that is, in how
people think about themselves in relation to the social
environment. Four aspects of identity stand out as issues
related to globalization. First, as a consequence of global-
ization, most people in the world now develop a bicultural
identity, in which part of their identity is rooted in their
local culture while another part stems from an awareness of
their relation to the global culture. Second, the pervasive-
ness of identity confusion may be increasing among young
people in non-Western cultures. As local cultures change in
response to globalization, some young people find them-
selves at home in neither the local culture nor the global
culture. Third, in every society there are people who choose
to form self-selected cultures with like-minded persons
who wish to have an identity that is untainted by the global
culture and its values. Fourth, identity explorations in love
and work are increasingly stretching beyond the adolescent
years (roughly from ages 10 to 18 years) into a postado-
lescent period of emerging adulthood (roughly from ages
18 to 25 years).
Bicultural Identities
Several of the most prominent writers on globalization
have argued that many children and adolescents now grow
up with a global consciousness. According to Giddens
(1991), children and adolescents have “phenomenal worlds
[that are] for the most part truly global”(p. 187). Robertson
(1992) argued that children today gradually develop “the
intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole”
(p. 8). Tomlinson (1999) wrote that the world as a whole
“increasingly exists as a cultural horizon within which we
(to varying degrees) frame our existence”(p. 30).
From a psychological perspective, this consequence of
globalization can be usefully conceptualized in terms of
bicultural identities. The concept of bicultural identities has
so far been discussed only in relation to the identities
developed by immigrants and members of ethnic minority
groups (e.g., Berry, 1993, 1997; Phinney, 1990; Phinney &
Devich-Navarro, 1997), but it can also be applied to glob-
alization. What it means in this context is that in addition to
their local identity, young people develop a global identity
that gives them a sense of belonging to a worldwide culture
and includes an awareness of the events, practices, styles,
and information that are part of the global culture. Their
global identity allows them to communicate with people
from diverse places when they travel from home, when
others travel to where they live, and when they communi-
cate with people in other places through media technology
(such as e-mail). Television is crucial in the process of
developing a global identity, because it provides exposure
to people, events, and information from all over the world.
However, for future generations of children and adoles-
cents, the Internet is likely to be even more important,
because it allows direct communication with other people
worldwide (e.g., in e-mail chat rooms or through interac-
tive computer games) and because it provides direct access
to information about every part of the world.
Alongside their global identity, people continue to
develop a local identity as well, one based on the local
circumstances, local environment, and local traditions of
the place where they grew up. This is the identity they are
likely to use most in their daily interactions with family,
friends, and community members. For example, among the
Inuit in northern Canada (Condon, 1988), adolescents
watch TV daily and learn about what is happening in
Canada and the rest of the world, and they are avid fans of
televised pro hockey games. Some leave their hometowns
for a while to pursue educational and occupational training
in larger cities. However, they also maintain a local identity
that is distinctively Inuit. Their local identity is defined
partly by their environment—they go ice fishing and race
snowmobiles; they stay outside until all hours during the
long summer days when it stays light well past midnight
and spend more time indoors during the winter days when
it is light for only a few hours. Their local identity is also
defined by their traditional values of reticence, modesty,
and family obligations. Thus, they retain an Inuit identity
even as they also develop an identity as members of the
global culture.
Another example of retaining a local identity even as
a global identity is developed can be found among young
people in India. India has a growing, vigorous high-tech
economic sector, led largely by young people. However,
even the better educated young people, who have become
full-fledged members of the global economy, still mostly
prefer to have an arranged marriage, in accordance with
Indian tradition (Verma & Saraswathi, 2002). They also
generally expect to care for their parents in old age, again
in accordance with Indian tradition. Thus, they have one
identity for participating in the global economy and suc-
ceeding in the fast-paced world of high technology, and
another identity, rooted in Indian tradition, that they main-
tain with respect to their families and their personal lives.
777October 2002 ●American Psychologist
Although developing a bicultural identity means that a
local identity is retained alongside a global identity, there is
no doubt that local cultures are being modified by global-
ization, specifically by the introduction of global media,
free market economics, democratic institutions, increased
length of formal schooling, and delayed entry into marriage
and parenthood. As the regional descriptions earlier in this
article show, these changes greatly alter traditional cultural
practices and beliefs. Such changes may lead less to a
bicultural identity than to a hybrid identity, combining local
culture and elements of the global culture (see Hermans &
Kempen, 1998; for an example, see Ivory, 1999).
Increasing immigration has been specified as one of
the forces promoting globalization (Hermans & Kempen,
1998), and identities become even more complicated for
immigrants. They may develop identities that combine
their native culture, the local culture to which they have
immigrated, and the global culture, thus leading to a mul-
ticultural identity or a complex hybrid identity. (A similar
situation may be experienced by people who are members
of cultural minorities but are not immigrants.) Furthermore,
people living in a culture to which immigrants have come
may incorporate aspects of the immigrants’culture into
their own identities. Thus, for an increasing number of the
world’s people, as Hermans and Kempen (1998) observed,
“different and contrasting cultures can be part of a reper-
toire of collective voices playing their part in a multivoiced
self”(p. 1118).
Questions for future research include the following:
First, to what extent do people in various cultures develop
a bicultural identity, with one rooted in the local culture
and one based in the global culture? Does the tendency to
develop such a bicultural identity vary with age? Second,
under what circumstances do people develop a hybrid
identity rather than a bicultural identity? Third, for immi-
grants and members of cultural minorities, what is the
range of multicultural and hybrid identities they may de-
velop? Fourth, in studies of immigrants, Berry (1997) has
found that those who adapt a bicultural identity (who
achieve integration, in his terms) generally show better
psychological adaptation than those who assimilate to the
new culture, separate themselves from the new culture, or
identify with neither the new culture nor their former
culture. Is this also true with respect to globalization, when
the new culture is the global culture?
Identity Confusion
As local cultures change in response to globalization, most
people manage to adapt to the changes and develop a
bicultural or hybrid identity that provides the basis for
living in their local culture and also participating in the
global culture. However, for some people, adapting to the
rapid changes taking place in their cultures is more diffi-
cult. The images, values, and opportunities they perceive as
being part of the global culture undermine their belief in the
value of local cultural practices. At the same time, the ways
of the global culture seem out of reach to them, too foreign
to everything they know from their direct experience.
Rather than becoming bicultural, they may experience
themselves as excluded from both their local culture and
the global culture, truly belonging to neither.
In terms of Erikson’s (1950, 1968) theory of identity
formation, it could be said that in facing the issue of
identity versus identity confusion in adolescence, global-
ization increases the proportion of young people in non-
Western cultures who experience a state of identity confu-
sion rather than successfully forming an identity. Erikson’s
idea of identity confusion has been mostly ignored in
identity research in favor of Marcia’s (1994) identity status
paradigm, but it is worth reviving for application to the
psychology of globalization.
A number of observers of globalization have dis-
cussed this issue using the term delocalization (Thompson,
1995), also called dis-placement (Giddens, 1990) or deter-
ritorialization (Tomlinson, 1999). What this means is that
as the young increasingly grow up with a global conscious-
ness, they are likely to have diminished ties to the specific
place they live in. Where a child grows up now matters less
than in the past in determining what the child knows and
experiences. Again, electronic media such as television and
computers are at the heart of this transformation, because
of the way they penetrate local experience and allow access
to information and persons in many other places. For most
young people, because they will grow up this way, it is
likely that they will simply experience this sense of delo-
calization as the way life is, rather than having a sense of
loss or deprivation (Tomlinson, 1999). For some young
people, however, delocalization may result in an acute
sense of alienation and impermanence as they grow up with
a lack of cultural certainty, a lack of clear guidelines for
how life is to be lived and how to interpret their experience.
In rapidly changing cultures, young people may con-
clude that the worldview that was part of their cultural
tradition is irrelevant to the new global culture they are
entering. Worldviews are based on ways of life; as tradi-
tional ways of life change in response to globalization,
traditional worldviews may lack compelling emotional and
ideological power for young people. The decline in the
power of collectivism for young people in Japan and China
is a good example of this (Naito & Gielen, in press;
Stevenson & Zusho, 2002). At the same time, some young
people may have trouble finding meaning in the worldview
that is the basis of the global culture, with its values of
individualism and consumerism. This new worldview is
not indigenous to their culture and, in fact, may directly
contradict their cultural traditions.
The cross-cultural psychologist John Berry (1993,
1997, 1998; Segall, Lonner, & Berry, 1998) has a number
of ideas, based on decades of research on immigration and
acculturation, that can be applied to globalization, espe-
cially to this issue of identity confusion. Marginalization is
Berry’s term for the acculturation pattern in which a person
has little interest in maintaining the original culture but also
rejects or is rejected by the new culture. Applied to glob-
alization, marginalization is also the condition of the per-
son who experiences identity confusion as a consequence
of losing faith in the local culture in the course of exposure
778 October 2002 ●American Psychologist
to globalization but also feeling excluded from the global
culture.
Culture shedding is Berry’s (1997) term for “the un-
learning of aspects of one’s previous repertoire that are no
longer appropriate”(p. 13, italics in original). Globaliza-
tion could be said to require some degree of culture shed-
ding, as the global culture alters local cultures. For exam-
ple, cultures that have a tradition of patriarchal family
authority are becoming more egalitarian as a consequence
of globalization, in places as diverse as Africa (Nsa-
menang, 2002) and Japan (Naito & Gielen, in press). It may
be that for some people, the culture shedding that results
from globalization contributes to identity confusion, espe-
cially if it is involuntary. This seems to be suggested in
Nsamenang’s (2002) observation about the changes in Af-
rican families, in which he called the father “the net loser.
His once undisputed authority is declining as teenagers and
their mothers find their ways around the world without
depending on his guidance or intervention”(p. 73).
Acculturative stress is Berry’s (1998) term for expe-
riencing conflict between one’s original culture and a new
culture. Globalization could be said to result in such con-
flict when the norms and practices of the local culture are
incompatible with the norms and practices introduced by
the global culture. Acculturative stress may in turn contrib-
ute to identity confusion.
Finally, cultural distance is Berry’s (1997) term for
the degree of dissimilarity between cultures in their beliefs
and practices. The greater the cultural distance, the more
difficult the adaptation process. Applied to globalization, it
could be predicted that the people most likely to suffer
identity confusion as a result of globalization are those in
cultures with the greatest cultural distance from the global
culture.
Identity confusion among young people may be re-
flected in problems such as depression, suicide, and sub-
stance use. A variety of cultures have experienced a sharp
increase in suicide and substance use among their young
people since their rapid move toward joining the global
culture (e.g., Burbank, 1988; Condon, 1988; Liechty, 1995;
Rubinstein, 1995). For example, three investigators in
Ivory Coast studied changes in problems among young
people ages 16 to 20 years during the period from 1980 to
1991 (Delafosse, Fouraste, & Gbobouo, 1993). Using clin-
ical interviews and data from police and social workers,
they reported an increase over this period in suicide, drug
abuse, armed aggression, and male and female prostitution.
The authors of the study attributed the increase in problems
to the conflict young people experienced between the val-
ues of their traditional cultures and the values of the West.
Several questions remain for future research: First,
how should identity confusion be measured? How is it
distinct from Marcia’s (1994) idea of identity diffusion
(measured as low exploration and low commitment)? Sec-
ond, is identity confusion more pervasive in cultures where
globalization is contributing to rapid social change than in
the industrialized societies that are the major forces behind
globalization? Or do industrialized societies still have more
identity confusion because they are the most globalized?
Third, to what extent are people in various cultures expe-
riencing acculturative stress as a consequence of globaliza-
tion? Fourth, is identity confusion related to cultural dis-
tance from the global culture? Specifically, is identity
confusion more pervasive and more intense in cultures that
have the greatest cultural distance from the global culture
but are being influenced by globalization?
Self-Selected Cultures
The values of the global culture are based on individualism,
free market economics, and democracy and include free-
dom of choice, individual rights, openness to change, and
tolerance of differences (Friedman, 2000; Giddens, 2000).
These values dominate the global culture in part because
they are the values that prevail in the countries that provide
the driving energy behind globalization (i.e., the West,
especially the United States). Also, because the global
culture crosses so many cultural and national boundaries, in
order to unify people across these boundaries the values of
the global culture necessarily emphasize tolerating and
even celebrating differences. This means that the values of
the global culture are defined in part by what they are not:
They are not dogmatic; they are not exclusionary; they do
not condone suppression of people or groups who have a
point of view or a way of life that is different from that of
the majority.
For most people worldwide, what the global culture
has to offer is appealing. Except where nondemocratic
governments have assiduously attempted to prevent their
citizens from adopting the practices of the global culture—
countries such as Saudi Arabia, North Korea, and Cuba—
people all over the world have demonstrated that they will
embrace the global culture if given the chance (Friedman,
2000). Indeed, one of the most vehement criticisms of
globalization is that it threatens to create one homogeneous
worldwide culture in which all children grow up wanting to
be like the latest pop music star, eat Big Macs, vacation at
Disney World, and wear blue jeans, baseball caps, and
Nikes.
However, this dire forecast is unlikely to come com-
pletely to pass, and not just because most people are likely
to develop a bicultural identity that includes a local identity
alongside their global identity, as described above. The
other way that cultural diversity will continue to exist is
that some people will choose to become part of a self-
selected culture that provides more meaning and structure
than the global culture. Most young people jump with
enthusiasm onto the global bandwagon, but there will al-
ways be those who will seek deliberately to mark them-
selves off as different, as people who refuse to join the
crowd. Some do this by joining a self-selected culture of
fellow dissenters.
Often these self-selected cultures have a religious
basis. The global culture is relentlessly secular. Mostly,
religious issues are ignored in favor of consumerism, en-
tertainment, and the pursuit of individual enjoyment. To the
extent that religious issues exist at all in the global culture,
they do so only in the form of the value of tolerance, the
idea that religious beliefs should not be a source of dis-
779October 2002 ●American Psychologist
crimination or conflict. But for some people, such not-
values fail to provide the structure and meaning they need.
They turn instead to religious systems that reject secular
values and promise eternal, transcendent truths.
One example of a religiously based self-selected cul-
ture is found in the work of Debra Kaufman (1991), who
described “newly-Orthodox Jewish women.”These are
women who grew up in secular Jewish homes in the United
States, but as they arrived at womanhood they concluded
that the secular values they were raised with provided an
inadequate foundation for living. They turned instead to
Orthodox Judaism, converting in their teens or early twen-
ties. Despite the strict sex roles of Orthodox Judaism and
the limitations it places on women, they embraced it be-
cause it offered them the structure of a definite place in the
world, the meaning conferred by Orthodox Jewish theol-
ogy, and the roots of a long, durable tradition.
Orthodox Jews are a relatively small group, but fun-
damentalist movements of various stripes have been ob-
served worldwide, in both Western and non-Western soci-
eties (Marty & Appleby, 1993). Many of these movements
arose in the late 20th century as a direct response to the
changes caused by globalization (Giddens, 2000; Marty &
Appleby, 1993). Usually, fundamentalists are a minority
culture within their society composed of persons who have
chosen to reject social changes in search of unchanging,
eternal truths. Although fundamentalist movements differ
in many ways, they have in common an adherence to a
rigorous code of conduct, a belief in a sacred past superior
to the present, a sense of being besieged by the rest of the
world, and a belief in a hierarchy of authority, with men
over women, adults over children, and God over all (Marty
& Appleby, 1993).
The values espoused by fundamentalists are directly
opposed to the values of the global culture (Appadurai,
2000; Giddens, 2000; Marty & Appleby, 1993). Against
the secularism of global culture, fundamentalists assert
their desire to ground all of their actions in their religious
beliefs. Against the consumerism of the global culture,
fundamentalists discourage greed and conspicuous con-
sumption. Against the tolerance and inclusiveness of the
global culture, fundamentalists assert their belief that there
is one true faith and that all who fail to accept it place their
lives and souls at risk.
Self-selected cultures may also be nonreligious. For
example, a youth culture grew up around heavy metal
music in the 1980s and 1990s (Arnett, 1996). The young
metalheads who were part of this culture set themselves off
from the rest of society not only by their enthusiasm for
heavy metal music but by wearing black concert T-shirts
displaying the logos of heavy metal bands. Although heavy
metal songs sometimes addressed topics of global concern,
such as environmental destruction and the power of mul-
tinational corporations, the values of the heavy metal cul-
ture were not explicitly opposed to the values of globaliza-
tion. Rather, the worldview expressed in heavy metal songs
was cynical and pessimistic, asserting opposition to all
institutions, global or not (Arnett, 1996). Nevertheless,
participation in the heavy metal culture by millions of
young people worldwide can be seen as an attempt to carve
out an identity in a self-selected culture separate from the
global culture that now defines what is mainstream, safe,
and conventional. Ironically, the worldwide popularity of
heavy metal music also reflects the economic and merchan-
dising reach of globalization, with young people in all parts
of the world obtaining access to the same media products.
Another type of self-selected culture defines itself
explicitly against globalization. Vigorous organized pro-
tests, mostly by young people, against the perceived glob-
alization efforts of the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund have taken place in recent years (e.g., the
university students in Latin America described earlier;
Welti, 2002). Although the number of people involved in
such protests thus far has been small, the number may grow
if the perception grows that globalization leads to cultural
disenfranchisement, political and economic instability, and
an increasing gap between rich and poor (Larson, 2002;
Saraswathi & Larson, 2002).
In a related development, ethnic, religious, and na-
tional identities have become more salient and explicit in
many places in recent years—in places as diverse as Russia
(Stetsenko, 2002), Latin America (Welti, 2002), and the
Arab world (Booth, 2002)—as a direct and conscious coun-
terresponse to the homogenizing force of globalization
(Guille´n, 2001; Larson, 2002). For example, Samoans have
recently revived the traditional rite of passage of decorating
the bodies of adolescent males with tattoos in elaborate
geometric patterns from the midsection to the knees (Ar-
nett, 2001). Previously, this ritual was considered essential
to sexual attractiveness and was necessary for being ac-
cepted as a legitimate candidate for adult status, but now it
is seen as part of an explicit attempt to resist the total
absorption of their indigenous culture into the global cul-
ture (Cote´, 1994). Thus, aspects of identity that may have
been assimilated without reflection in previous generations
have become consciously self-selected as the pressure of
globalization has grown.
Questions for future research include the following:
First, what proportion of people in various societies can be
said to have joined a self-selected culture that is marked off
both from their local culture and from the global culture?
Does this proportion vary with age? Second, what kinds of
characteristics lead some people to join a self-selected
culture when others do not? Do self-selected cultures ap-
peal especially to people who have suffered from identity
confusion as a consequence of globalization?
The Spread of Emerging Adulthood
Another worldwide change promoted by globalization is
evident in the timing of transitions to adult roles, such as
work, marriage, and parenthood. These transitions are oc-
curring at later ages in every part of the world. The global
economy is highly technological and information based,
which means that the amount of education required for
young people to prepare for the best jobs is stretching
steadily longer. As they pursue education for longer peri-
ods, they postpone transitions into adult roles. Also, as
traditional hierarchies of authority weaken under the pres-
780 October 2002 ●American Psychologist
sure of globalization and young people increasingly gain
control over their own lives, they generally choose to wait
longer to enter marriage and parenthood. Now the median
ages for these transitions are in the late twenties in every
industrialized society and rising rapidly in developing
countries (Arnett, 2000).
The fact that transitions into adult roles have become
so delayed and stretched out in many societies has led to
the spread of a new period of life, emerging adulthood, that
extends from the late teens to the midtwenties and is
characterized by self-focused exploration of possibilities in
love, work, and worldviews (Arnett, 2000). Instability is
also a characteristic of emerging adulthood, because of the
many changes that take place during these years in resi-
dence, love partners, and jobs. This period now exists for
most young people in industrialized societies and is grow-
ing in prevalence for young people in developing countries.
It is possible that as a result of globalization, emerging
adulthood will eventually become a normative period of
life for young people worldwide.
The spread of emerging adulthood is related to issues
of identity. Where a period of emerging adulthood is
present, young people have a longer period for identity
explorations in love and work before they commit them-
selves to long-term choices. By experiencing different love
relationships, different educational possibilities, and differ-
ent jobs, they learn more about themselves and they clarify
their preferences and abilities.
Globalization spreads emerging adulthood because
globalization promotes economic development (if un-
evenly and sometimes with abrupt reversals), and a high
level of economic development is necessary for the exis-
tence of a period of emerging adulthood. Emerging adult-
hood is possible only in societies where economic devel-
opment is high enough that the labor of young people is not
urgently needed. They are allowed to spend their late teens
and early to midtwenties exploring possibilities for self-
development because there is no pressing need for them to
contribute to the economic well-being of their families.
Economic development also expands the range of occupa-
tions that exist in a society. This provides emerging adults
with enhanced opportunities to find a job they believe fits
well with their developing identity. However, in some
regions, the number of university graduates is increasing
more rapidly than the available jobs, so that many find
themselves unemployed after graduation (e.g., Booth,
2002; Nsamenang, 2002). Even in countries where jobs are
plentiful, as the number of possible jobs expands emerging
adults face the challenge of sorting through a sometimes
daunting range of options in the search for one that matches
their interests and abilities. This prolonged search may be
a source of identity confusion for some young people in
industrialized societies.
For young people in developing countries, emerging
adulthood exists only for the wealthier segment of society,
mainly in urban areas, whereas the rural poor have no
emerging adulthood and may even have no adolescence
because they begin adultlike work at an early age and also
begin marriage and parenthood relatively early. Young
people who are poor and/or live in rural areas are more
likely to suffer from what Amartya Sen (1999) has called
the “unfreedoms”of poverty, lack of education, and re-
stricted economic opportunities. As Saraswathi and Larson
(2002) observed, “In many ways, the lives of middle-
class youth in India, South East Asia, and Europe have
more in common with each other than they do with those of
poor youth in their own countries”(p. 344). However, as
globalization proceeds and economic development pro-
ceeds along with it, the proportion of young people who
experience the emerging adulthood now normative in the
middle class is likely to increase as the middle class
expands.
Questions for future research include the following:
First, how should the existence or prevalence of emerging
adulthood in a given society be defined for empirical pur-
poses? To what extent is the existence or prevalence of
emerging adulthood in various societies related to exposure
to globalization? Second, to what extent does the existence
of emerging adulthood differ within countries because of
urban–rural differences, wealth differences, and exposure
to globalization?
Conclusion
Globalization is likely to be one of the dominant forces in
the psychological development of the people of the 21st
century. In some ways, it is has been going on for centuries:
Cultures have long influenced each other through trade,
migration, and war. In other ways, it is just beginning: In
many cultures today, people who are middle-aged or older
can remember a time when their culture was firmly
grounded in enduring traditions, barely touched by any-
thing global, Western, or American. However, few young
people growing up today will have such memories in the
decades to come. Young people in every part of the world
are affected by globalization; nearly all of them are aware,
although to varying degrees, of a global culture that exists
beyond their local culture. Those who are growing up in
traditional cultures know that the future that awaits them is
certain to be very different from the life their grandparents
knew.
As a consequence of globalization, the challenges of
creating a viable identity are perhaps greater than they have
been in the past. When globalization alters and erodes
traditional ways, as Giddens (2000) observed, identity “has
to be created and recreated on a more active basis than
before”(p. 65). Identity becomes based less on prescribed
social roles and more on individual choices, on decisions
that each person makes about what values to embrace and
what paths to pursue in love and work. Some people react
to this responsibility with identity confusion or seek refuge
in a self-selected culture that offers more structure and
takes over some decisions.
Nevertheless, most people embrace the opportunity to
make such decisions for themselves. When people are
allowed to make their own choices about values, love, and
work, the likelihood may be enhanced that they will find a
psychologically rewarding match between these choices
and their individual desires and abilities. Globalization will
781October 2002 ●American Psychologist
gradually expand the proportion of the world’s population
that has a wide range of identity choices. At the same time,
cultural diversity will continue to exist as local cultures
adapt global influences to local circumstances (Hermans &
Kempen, 1998) and as people continue to create self-
selected cultures distinct from and sometimes in opposition
to the global culture. For individuals, diversity of identity
will only grow as globalization results in increasingly com-
plex bicultural, multicultural, and hybrid identities. For
psychologists, the psychology of globalization presents it-
self as a challenging, complex, and important area for
theory and research.
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