Abstract

This chapter reviews the empirical literature on generativity in various cultural contexts. It first defines culture and its relevance for research on developmental processes. Second, it describes methodological problems (e.g., measurement bias) that potentially challenge the meaningfulness of findings gained by research across cultures. Third, it presents some findings on generativity that were produced outside of Western cultural contexts. Fourth, it describes in detail a series of cross-cultural studies that focus on cross-culturally equivalent relationships of generativity with other variables, thus tentatively suggesting universality of these relationships. The fifth and final part of the chapter presents some conclusions and open questions for future culture-informed generativity research.