FIFTY YEARS OF PSYCHOLOGY IN AFRICA.

FIFTY YEARS IN AFRICA (PLUS OR MINUS TWO), REFLECTIONS OF A CROSS-CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGIST

Guest lecture presented at the ‘Mundyfest’ held in the Senate Building, University of Lagos, to celebrate Professor Alastair Mundy-Castle’s eightieth birthday on Friday, 28^th March, 2003

Trying to cover fifty years of psychology in an hour or so reminds me of those Nigerian air travellers who try to fit oversized, bulging hand-luggage into the limited overhead space in an aircraft.

 In 1946, I found myself being de-briefed from the Royal Air Force and confronting an early form of psychological interview panel.   An intimidating member of the panel asked me what type of job I wanted to take up now that the war was over.    Not having any idea of what I wanted to do, I replied nervously "Well…I had thought of psychology as a possibility".    There seemed to be an implicit, silent applause from the panel as their leader said "Good.   That's about the only thing you're suited for."  

Here I might add that just before the war one of Freud's followers, Wilhelm Stekel, had lived in our house in England for some months, along with his wife.   My mother was very interested in psychoanalysis and had heard that they needed somewhere to live, so she invited them in.  Stekel was very distressed at the time, having escaped from Germany, and shortly afterwards committed suicide in London.   His presence and his relationship with my mother fanned my growing interest in the relatively new science of psychoanalysis and the works of Adler, Jung and Freud.   But my two strongest memories of him had little to do with psychology, One was the lingering smell of his pipe, which he used to smoke in the outdoor lavatory, a place preferred by men and boys.   The other was a pair of natty crocodile skin shoes he left me that I liked to wear, despite being rather tight for my growing feet.

It was very difficult to get into university at that time.   Few universities offered psychology and everywhere seemed to be full..   However, my former headmaster, who had frequently beaten me for schoolboy misdemeanours, now welcomed me as one of the school's 'war heroes' and used his influence to get me into Magdalen College at Cambridge.   There I met the famous Frederick Bartlett, (of "Remembering" fame) who exerted a great influence on my psychological thinking.   I was particularly impressed by his distinction between what he called "schematic" versus "programmatic" behaviour.   The first of these works on an ad hoc basis, that is, acting according to ongoing events and adapting one's activities whenever necessary.   The second one operates according to plans.    Bartlett felt that the danger in the latter lies in the plans still being followed even when the line of action is obviously failing, which happens so often when  political motives are at work.   At that time five years was the usual figure for a political plan or programme.   Bartlett always emphasised the potential dangers for international development inherent in both politics and economics, particularly their link with power.

In order to read psychology at Cambridge, I had to do the moral sciences tripos, which meant I studied philosophy as well as psychology.   I rapidly fell under the influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein and his successor, John Wisdom, and was thereby primed for the subsequent development of social constructionism and the so-called post-modern movement.

Upon my graduation in 1948, two jobs were open to me.   One was to remain at Cambridge, under Bartlett, the other was to join Simon Biesheuvel, Director of the National Institute for Personnel Research (NIPR) in Johannesburg, South Africa.   All my childhood dreams focused on Africa, the unknown continent, and this was the one I chose.   My position at the NIPR involved the ‘new’ science of electroencephalography, so I had to remain in England for a while to learn how to use an EEG machine and to find out about contemporary developments in the study of brain and behaviour.   Key figures in this process were cybernetic pioneer, Grey-Walter, at the Burden Neurological Institute (BNI), Bristol, and neurologist, Sir Dennis Hill, at the Maudsley Hospital in London.  An interesting and somewhat horrifying experience was viewing  a prefrontal lobotomy at the BNI.      I recently related it to a former Burden colleague, Ray Cooper, who had in his possession the tool used for this operation, an old-fashioned letter opener engraved with the Scottish quote, “Dinna forget”.  And I have never forgotten it!

There were about ten of us, learning about EEGs and how to record and analyse them.  Four young women fainted as we watched the gruesome operation, which entailed inserting this instrument beneath the eyelid and up into the frontal areas of the brain in order to isolate those cortical masses associated with conscience.   At the time it was believed that this operation helped to alleviate chronic and acute depression.  Ray thought I was possibly the only person still alive who had witnessed this bizarre event.

But back to Africa and the start of my 50 years there as a psychologist.   I arrived in Johannesburg early in 1949 and immediately started setting up the EEG laboratory and recruiting a team at the NIPR.   We conducted many interesting studies among which were work on the clinical significance of photic stimulation (1953), electrical responses of the brain in relation to behaviour (1953), the psychophysiological significance of the galvanic skin response (1953), intelligence, personality and brain rhythms (with G.R. Nelson, 1960), spatial and temporal characteristics of the alpha rhythm: a toposcopic analysis (with R Cooper, 1960) and changes in the EEG associated with senile psychoses (1954).   This last reference takes me back to research I conducted at a Jewish Old Age Home in Johannesburg.   There were two groups of people in this home; one rich enough to pay for their keep, the other, being relatively poor, had to pay their way by cleaning, cooking and doing maintenance work.  We asked the staff to rate everybody in terms of their liveliness, activities, etc. and we found that those who had to work for their keep got significantly higher ratings than those who didn’t.  What was interesting was that these staff ratings correlated with higher frequencies of alpha rhythms among the workers compared with the wealthier, less active residents.  This suggests that it is wiser not to retire, but to maintain occupational activities as one matures with age.

Our EEG studies of certain clinical conditions such as alcoholism, senile psychosis and manic-depressive insanity eventually led to laboratory research on the psychological effects of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide-25 (LSD), which had only recently been discovered.   We obtained free samples from Sandoz in Switzerland, together with several other psycho-active concoctions, namely Mescaline, Psilocin and Psilocybin, which in those days (the fifties) were quite legal.   Being the instigator of these studies, I chose to be the first subject.   For me it was an eye-opener on the beyond, perceiving the entire universe within a total cosmos – an amazing and unforgettable experience.

We continued for about a year conducting this research for about a year, including ingestions under non-laboratory conditions,  thereby creating more favourable, non anxiety-evoking conditions. This, to me, showed the fallacy of laboratory research for studying the human psyche and associated phenomena. Many people were interested in participating in it.   At one time a photograph appeared in a daily newspaper showing me flanked by two attractive women research assistants from my department, with the caption, "They'll go mad for him"!

This research changed my conception of reality from the determinist philosophy being exerted on me by the international neuropsychology fraternity.   My new philosophy helped me to understand many aspects of my encounters not only with English people of social background different from mine4, but also with people from other countries, especially Africa.  I developed a mode of interpersonal openness with both adults and children and seemed readily able to understand and appreciate them.  I found this ability to be very helpful throughout my years in Africa. It yielded many wonderful relationships, both transitory and long-lasting.

My EEG research in normal and abnormal contexts elicited a great deal of international interest and I was receiving about 25 reprint requests every few days, as well as being invited to conferences overseas.   It was an exciting but demanding time.

However, life in South Africa in the fifties could be very difficult.  I held scant regard for the divisive apartheid laws of the time. Many of my friends were African, Asian and so-called 'Coloured' people and I often held 'illegal' parties at my house, closely observed and no doubt reported on by my various racist neighbours.  Often I was transported to parties in the African township, Alexandria, hidden in the boot of a car, because it was illegal for a white person to venture into those townships.    Things became pretty tricky, especially as my girlfriend at this time, was classified 'coloured'.   Thus, when I was invited to become the principal research officer at the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Ghana, I accepted with alacrity.   

Such was my relief at leaving behind the disarray and complexities of my life in South Africa, I welcomed the constant flow of champagne-filled glasses that were offered to me as I flew first-class for the first time.     And so it happened that I was in a somewhat inebriated state on arrival at Accra airport.   There, before a line-up of welcoming co-members of the Institute, I exited from the aircraft to fall flat on my face.   Not an auspicious start for somebody who had been hired to set up a laboratory for clinical EEG studies and to conduct appropriate psychological research for national development.  There was, of course, no problem. Everyone appeared to be delighted to meet me. Perhaps not quite the same reception I would have received had I been flying from Ghana to South Africa.

 Ghana is a beautiful place and it was not difficult to establish warm relationships with people there.   Everything was so different from South Africa.   They seemed quite accustomed to making strangers feel at home.

In addition to setting up an EEG laboratory and training its workers, I chose to study children's development in towns and villages throughout Ghana. I recruited as research assistants and senior students from the education department of the university of Ghana, Legon.   Given careful instructions, they made observational studies over time of the lives of children aged from 1 - 5 years in their home towns and villages.   The students recorded everything they saw and heard that was going on around the particular child they were studying, resulting in a fascinating set of reports.   The whole operation took about four months. My trusty Volkswagen was jolted along bumpy roads and ferried across rivers to visit each field site for several days to sensitise myself to the ambience of the setting and meet the families and friends of our research students.   I usually stayed in their houses and was able to evaluate the in-context conduct of their research.

It was these observational experiences that led me to propose intelligence as a complementarity of two major components - social and technological (Mundy-Castle 1968, 1974).   Subsequently, this cultural bipolarity has been referred to as collectivistic/individualistic, notably by Segall, Dasen, Berry  & Poortinga (1990, 1999) and as interdependence/independence by Greenfield and Cocking  (1994).  I was happy to read that contributors to both of these books recognised my pioneering role in this kind of research.

Other work in Ghana included studies of pictorial depth perception (Mundy-Castle 1966) revealing it as an acquired skill.  If you don’t look at pictures as a child, you won’t be able to interpret them in terms of depth when you grow up.  We did many EEG studies of both normal and clinical subjects (Mundy-Castle 1967). One point of some interest is how often people fell asleep as the recordings were going on.

The high hopes we had for the institute during its early years were dashed by the coup that ousted Nkrumah in 1965.  Thereafter there was a rapid economic decline and the institute was closed, although the EEG department persisted for a few years before running out of paper and spares. With joblessness imminent, I was delighted to receive an invitation from Jerome Bruner to join the Center for Cognitive Studies at Harvard University.   It seemed like manna from heaven, and I immediately accepted.    Leaving Africa was a wrench and there were many friends, some in tears, who saw me off as I flew away to Cambridge Mass via Dakar, where I landed up in a dreadful hospital following a car accident. I managed to escape and flew on, with both arms in slings, to Tangiers for medical treatment, and eventually to London where I was able to recuperate before departing for the USA.

It was wonderful to be able to work with Jerry Bruner and fellow researchers at the Center. My research theme focused on early development of perception and anticipation in infants, in collaboration with Jeremy Anglin.   For this I devised an Infant Visual Anticipation Box - a simple structure, made of cardboard.   It worked very well and enabled us to make a more sophisticated electronically based model. This not only served us in Cambridge, but again later on in Lagos, Nigeria. (Mundy-Castle and Anglin 1974;  Mundy-Castle and Bundy, 1984), to which I shall shortly refer.

Apart from our baby research in Cambridge, Mass, I participated in an interesting project on art as a medium for educating children, with Donald Brigham at a school in Attleboro.  The work proved very stimulating as I am an artist as well as a psychologist and I was very sympathetic to his ideas.

In 1969 I was invited to serve as Professor and Head of the new psychology department at the University of Lagos, but declined owing to the Biafran war which was raging at that time.     The following year I was again invited to take up this position and this time I accepted despite the fact that I had, in fact, spent one night in Lagos in 1962, vowing I would never visit that city again.  I am very happy that I changed my mind and I spent the next 16 years in Lagos, living through many strange encounters of a different kind.  

Although I had been appointed as Professor and Head of Department, it is worth noting that I had never taught psychology in any University before.   The administration aspect was no problem as I had plenty of experience from my previous appointments with the NIPR in Johannesburg and the NIHMR in Ghana.

My first research programme in Lagos involved a replication of our Harvard study on the development of looking in infancy (op.cit).   We found that both Nigerian and American babies showed the same development patterns of looking strategies and acquired them in the same order during the first eighty or so days of life.   Of cross-cultural interest, however, was the finding that Cambridge babies aged about 5 months or over were more visually active in the context of our experiment than the Lagos babies.   This seemed to be due to the exposure of American babies to mobiles, televisions and other decorative things around the nursery, whereas this was not the case in Nigerian homes.   I should add here, however, that although the Lagos babies might not have experience of mobiles, televisions and suchlike toys, they do experience a profusion of movement and colour when carried on the backs of their mothers, aunts or sisters.   They also experience the bright patterns of the cloth in which they are wrapped and the colourful, dynamic environment in which they live.     When being cared for and awake, the absence of toys does not preclude familiarity with household objects and of course people.  

Perhaps in this statement lies another social/technological asymmetry: the African babies are always in close social contact to older people, both children and adults.  The American and European babies (for we did similar research in collaboration with Colwyn Trevarthen in Scotland) were much more on their own, surrounded by visually enhancing toys and devices.   Indeed a major complementarity in babies' minds is that of socially interacting with other human beings on one hand, and doing things, e.g. playing with toys, on the other.  Communicating is social, doing is technological, and the nature and extent to which each of these occurs differs among traditional "third" world cultures compared with modern "first" world cultures. 

Whilst in Nigeria I was invited to present a paper entitled Social and technological intelligence in western and non-western cultures  (1974) at a conference called Cultures in Collision in Australia, reprinted in Ghana in the same year.   This paper aroused considerable interest.   It also engendered significant criticism from a delegate who had been evicted from Uganda during the Idi Amin regime along with many others who were not Black Ugandans.  He asked me how I could say there is social intelligence among Africans when you have people like Amin.   My reply was that I wasn't referring to one country or one man.   But at the same time, I started thinking very deeply about this question and quickly realised that the fate of many an African country was not in the hands of the majority of people living in it, but of the minority who are ruling it through some kind of selfish desire for total power.   And obviously this still applies, not only in Africa, but much of the world today.

Another  paper relevant to cross-cultural psychology, written in Lagos, was entitled Perception and communication in infancy:  a cross-cultural study,  (Mundy-Castle 1980), which covered three areas.  The first considers cultural influences on infant and child rearing and the question of 'African Personality'.  According to my friend and colleague, the late Ogbulu Okonji M (1969) (The African Personality, unpublished manuscript, Department of Psychology, University of Lagos) this term was introduced into the vocabulary of black movements at the close of the last century.   The second area is concerned with the development of perception in infancy, already discussed.   The third was the perception of people, exemplified in mother-infant and stranger-infant interaction sequences.    

On the question of African personality, it was argued that an important source of this concept lies in the African approach to infant rearing shown in the following table.  

AFRICAN APPROACH TO INFANT REARING

1.         protracted breast feeding

2.         demand feeding

3.         demand sleeping

4.         extensive and frequent communion with significant others, especially    mothers, aunts, grandmothers and siblings.

5.         frequent body contact, especially by backing, caressing and fondling

6.         instant caretaking in response to distress

7.         frequent involvement in rhythm, dance, music and singing

8.         early participation in household duties

9.         encouragement of motor development, particularly sitting, standing and           walking

10.       emphasis on obedience and respect for elders.

Of relevance to the question of an African personality is the attitude toward having children, epitomised in the statement: 'the most serious misfortune that can befall a woman is to be childless (cf Kaye, 1962), also, in Okonji's assertion that the African woman is traditionally happy and eager to be pregnant, and during the first year of life at least, the African baby is given total security, emotional warmth and nurturance to a point that can be described as indulgent.

This 1980 paper (Mundy-Castle, ibid)  covered many other aspects of African personality, including attitudes towards motherhood, the extended family, animism and belief in reincarnation and immortality of the soul, together with widespread acceptance of witchcraft.   Unfortunately we won't be able to delve into these here except to add that where western culture pays great attention to second order, out-of-context technical communication, e.g. the media, print, pictures, radio, television, newspapers, web sites etc.,  traditional African culture pays much more attention to first order, in-context  social communication, through drama, music, dance, singing, drumming and ritual. 

Another interesting cross-cultural study discussed in the 1980 paper concerns mother-infant interactions in Scotland, compared with Nigeria.     In both cases we asked the mothers to enact the instructions presented in the following table:

1.         Make your baby smile

2.         Talk with your baby

3.         Make your baby put out his tongue

4.         Make your baby clap his hands

5.         Make your baby track with his eyes a ball suspended from a thread held in     your hand while you move it from one side of your head to the other.

6.         Make your baby look at a person seated on your right

7.         Sing for your baby.

8.         Make your baby put an object (toy person) in one of the three holes in this toy             car.

9.         Make your baby smile again

10.       Immobilise your face (for about 1 minute) then resume normal face.

11.       Leave your chair and go out of sight of the baby (mothers were replaced by a             stranger for 1 - 2 minutes, then requested to return).

The patterns of development revealed through these interactions were generally similar in both samples, although there were some rather interesting differences.  For example when mothers were asked to make baby to put out his or her tongue, whereas the Scottish mothers all tried to do this verbally, most Nigerian mothers simply grasped their baby's tongue and pulled it out!

Morality was another important area of study, nicely illustrated in an example from a paper by Mundy-Castle and Bundy (see Curran, 1984) entitled Moral values in Nigeria.   I was walking in a very crowded street in Lagos, when I realised that a hand was in my hip pocket pulling money out.   As soon as I detected this, being younger and stronger than I am today, I instantly gripped the man's wrist and twisted him over the bonnet of an adjacent motor car.   I had him completely under my control.   The crowd was everywhere and several people were watching with interest.   My dilemma …should I shout, "Ole! Ole!" meaning "Thief! Thief!" as I had been advised always to do in this kind of situation, knowing for certain that the result would be instantaneous stoning and a "necklace" death?   Three such cases had occurred during the past week in the area.   (When carrying out a necklace death, the crowd puts a "Necklace" of rubber tyres over the victim's head and shoulders, pours petrol over him and sets him alight.)

When I  told this story in England to a university group, everybody reacted in horror to the idea of shouting Ole Ole.   None of them would have done it.   But when I repeated the question to white and black delegates at an advertising conference in Zimbabwe, about 50% said they would have shouted Ole Ole, and at a previous seminar with white Zimbabwean tobacco farmers nearly all replied in this manner.   I must add that three well-educated Nigerians to whom I recounted the episode all said they would have shouted “Ole! Ole!” and let the culprit suffer the consequences of his actions.  I, however, could not shout it.  I let the culprit go, but not before he had the temerity to ask me for some of the money he was trying to steal!

This brings me to Zimbabwe, where I worked with Bob Bundy again, at the University of Zimbabwe in Harare.  We launched ourselves into a variety of socially relevant research projects, including moral development.

Our studies of the development of moral values, which we consider to be an aspect of social intelligence, involved cross-cultural comparisons among Zimbabwean, Nigerian, Swiss and American children aged 5 - 10 years. (Mundy-Castle & Bundy, 1988)  Whereas the overall pattern of development, using the Piagetian model for testing, was similar in all groups, there were significant subtest differences between the African and EuroAmerican children, supporting the notion of heightened social intelligence development among the Africans.   For example, whereas the American child would say it was wrong for her to do the chores of her sister when her sister had failed to do them, the African child would say that it was her duty to do them, even though it was wrong for her sister not to have done them, otherwise her mother would have to do them.  It is this consideration for others which is central to social intelligence.

Whilst in Zimbabwe I gave a paper at an international conference, called Advertising Meets Academia, (1997) that I organised with my wife, Bee.     The paper was entitled “Implications of Cross Cultural Psychology for Advertising” and in it I pointed out that even within cultures there are differences which can cause communication breakdown.      Avisiting friend, Solveig Freudenthal, a Swedish anthropologist who had spent a short time in Zambia, had mentioned an example of this to me.   Solveig’s work centres on the AIDS problem.    Because of the high incidence of sexually transmitted diseases in the region, she was trying to persuade a group of Zambian villagers to attend their local clinic more regularly than they had been doing.   The villagers insisted that they did not like to go to the clinic because the nurses there were “no good”.  They had difficulty in explaining to her why they felt the nurses were ‘no good’.

Having discovered the natural acting ability of people from most parts of Africa, Solveig asked the villagers to act out the problems they had with the nurses.    This they could easily do, and although she could not speak their language, Solveig could understand what it was that they were communicating.    She decided to make a video of the drama and showed it to the nurses, who learnt something about their behaviour, which resulted in changed attitudes towards patients.  This was a revealing cross-cultural exercise that had an important impact in overcoming the villagers’ resistance to clinic visits, which are vital in their fight against HIV/AIDS.

In is interesting to note that prior to Solveig mentioning this incident, my wife, Bee, had been instrumental in setting up a Travelling Road Show that used live drama to take messages to rural communities in Zimbabwe.   In many parts of Africa the only news medium available to rural people is radio, which is usually used for propaganda purposes, and even then batteries to power them are often unavailable, so you can well imagine the popularity of this travelling theatre.   Like Solveig, Bee, was not conversant with the indigenous languages.  However she believed this was a blessing in disguise, as she was not able to impose written scripts or scenarios on the actors.   They would simply be given a problem and they would then create a drama incorporating the language and culture of their audience.

These road shows proved to be powerful social enlightenment vehicles witnessed by the vast crowds – sometimes up to 6000 people - that came to enjoy the show but in the process understood everything that was said.   Perhaps the most important feature of this medium was the audience interaction with the actors, who carried messages not only about AIDS, but also child abuse, women’s rights, environmental issues and much more.

Whilst in Zimbabwe I began to explore the idea of painting a portrait of a person’s mind, and referred to it as a Myndscape (I spell it with a ‘y’ to differentiate it from other uses of the word mindscape that you will discover if you explore the internet).  I have presented several papers on the subject (1996, 1997, 1998, 2000) Bee and I are now based in South Africa, where I have continued with the idea for about 8 years. I am an artist, but I was probably influenced by the fact that I am a psychologist and was able to devise a method for obtaining the information needed from a person in order to paint her/his mind.   I drew up a set of questions that are based as much upon my psychological experience as upon my artistic experience. More probably, because I have learned how to ask questions in such a way that people do not feel threatened or ill at ease.

As an artist, the interesting thing about Myndscapes is that I am not simply directing the nature of the art I paint; it is also being directed by what the person is saying to me. How that person answers questions and other aspects of what goes on during the interview in terms of non-verbal behaviour are all relevant and will probably come into the Myndscape.  The other important thing is that each Myndscape raises thoughts and ideas that are new to me because it’s not me…not the kind of thing I normally paint.  In all the Myndscapes I have painted to date this has had a progressive effect from person to person, because each person is, by the Myndscape definition, an individual.  It raises discussion about the nature of the individual. I obviously come into it because I am asking questions and painting a picture of that person’s mind, but what I am aiming to paint is the part that is not me. Hence a Myndscape is a jointly-created picture. My friend, Jerry Bruner, put it succinctly when he said “self is other too”.

For me the most remarkable phenomenon of all, is translating the meanings of the spoken words into pictorial forms.  I always do a lot of sketching as I go along through the process. One point that Bruner made, which is of crucial importance for a kind of socio-linguistic philosophy, is that linguistics is concerned with language as it is spoken and not with more broad forms of communication that would include things like writing, dancing, drumming, music and also Myndscaping.  Bruner’s approach recognises that most of knowledge is a function of interaction among people through language. Therefore the question that arises is, at whaat point do you differentiate spoken words from other modes of communication? If you can paint a picture of a person’s mind, based upon interaction with that person via the medium primarily of talking, the fact that you use these spoken words to then produce a picture opens up the possibility of visual art being a mode of communication coming under the same umbrella as sociolinguistics does.   In other words, all forms of communication are inter-related. Like not saying anything at all!

Responses to the Myndscape process by the people who have had their mind portraits painted has been very interesting. Everyone really seemed to enjoy it and several commented on what they called its ‘therapeutic’ quality. The type of questions asked seemed to give them a revelation of themselves and aspects of their life that hitherto they were only vaguely aware of. They found themselves talking about things they may have never spoken of before. One said it was like an ‘exorcism’. However, I will not use the term ‘therapy’ to describe the process, since it was not designed with this in mind. I believe it is, however, a means by which people can improve their knowledge and understanding of one another, a way to break down prejudice and spread empathy.  Could it be a way to enhance social intelligence? I like to think so and hope to train others to paint portraits of minds.

Concluding Statement

When I first went to Ghana my eyes were opened on a new world, as I wrote in a 1968 paper entitled …---… (S.O.S) which was nicknamed by Jerry Bruner as my "Mayday" paper).   It was not unlike the place I had dreamt of as a frustrated middle class schoolboy in England of the twenties and thirties.   It took some time for me to formulate what I was experiencing and to call it social intelligence.   I talked of acting in the light of others views, of work as pleasure rather than drudgery, of tact, interpersonal ease, unselfconsciousness and a ready acceptance of others' values. Such social harmony is what the world at large would seem desperately to need.   I still believe in this statement but recognise now only too well the destructive influence of technologically dominated politics and economics.  

I think this harmony can only be achieved through a combination of social and technological intelligence into a total, or global intelligence, going far beyond either, a process that might lead us into a more unified, ecologically and socially sensitised world.   The question is, how are we to do this, given the barriers created by greed for power, along with the growing divide between the first, second and third worlds?

I believe the solution lies in the manner in which new generations are raised.   The pattern of contemporary education in western cultures which is now being transferred to third world cultures, launches children into the primacy of greed, power, selfishness, individualism and living without thought for others.   Open-cast mining, the ravaging of forests, the desecration of nature, road rage, the growing waves of aggressive delinquency of children living in poverty-stricken housing estates in first world countries, social aggression -  these are all signs of a society lacking in social intelligence;  a society powered primarily by technological greed. I believe that the new wave of children and the world they live in can only survive given the empowerment of social intelligence as basic to technological know-how.   To achieve this empowerment would appear to be one of the major requirements of all societies in the war-torn world of today.

REFERENCES

Agiobu-Kemmer, I (1984) In Nigerian Children: Developmental Perspectives Ed, H.V. Curran, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Curran, H.V. (Ed.) (1984)  Nigerian Children: Developmental Perspectives. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Greenfield, P.M. & Cocking, R.R. (Eds) (1994) Cross-Cultural Roots of Minority Child Development.  Hillsdale, New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum.

Mundy-Castle, A.C. (1968) The development of nations: some psychological considerations. Journal of Social Issues, 24, 45 – 54

Mundy-Castle, A.C. (1968) (December) …---… Paper presented at a workshop in social psychology, the Makerere Institute of social Research and Syracuse University, New York.

Mundy-Castle, A.C. (1974) Social and technological intelligence in western and nonwestern cultures. In S. Pilowsky (ed) Cultures in Collision, Adelaide, Australian National Association of Mental Health.   Reprinted in Universitas, 1974, 4, 40 – 52.

Mundy-Castle, A.C. (1980) Perception and communication in infancy: a cross-cultural study. In D.R. Olson (Ed) The Social Origins of Language and Thought, Essays in Honour of Jerome S. Bruner, New York, Norton.

Mundy-Castle A.C. and Bundy, R (1988) Moral Values in Nigeria Journal of African Psychology, 1, 25 – 40

Mundy-Castle, A.C. (1991) Commentary and discussion. In P.M. Greenfield and R.R. Cocking (Chairs) Continuities and discontinuities in the cognitive socialization of minority children.  Proceedings of a workshop, Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Administration, Washington, D.C.

Mundy-Castle, A.C. (1993) Human behaviour and national development: conceptual and theoretical perspectives.  Ife Psychologia, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1 – 16.

Segall, M.H., Dasen, P.R., Berry, J.W. & Poortinga. Y.H. (1999) Human Behaviour in Global Perspective: an Introduction to Cross-Cultural Psychology, 2^nd Edition, Boston, Allyn & Bacon.

Trevarthen, C (1980) Neurological development and the growth of psychological functions,  in J. Sants (ed) Developmental Psychology and Society, Macmillan, London.

Mundy-Castle, AC (2003) Implications of Cross-Cultural psychology for advertising, Ife Psychologia, Vol 11 No. 2.