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Bernadette N. Setiadi: Promoting cross-cultural psychology
Rampant social ailments plaguing the country have caught the attention of social psychologist Bernadette N
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Rampant social ailments plaguing the country have caught the attention of social psychologist Bernadette N. Setiadi.
JP/Setiono Sugiharto
The professor said she was afraid that pornography and the inexorable rise of corruption among state officials will harm young people and lead to “learned helplessness” — a psychological condition where people behave helplessly, even if there is an opportunity to avoid destruction.
“If social diseases such as corruption linger and remain unresolved, I fear that young people
will be absorbed into the worst of what we’re facing now, abandoning their lofty ideals and becoming apathetic,” Bernadette told The Jakarta Post.
Bernadette said what is desperately need to arm young people to fight corruption is an ideal role model for emulation. She lamented the lack of such a model in contemporary society.
She criticized inconsistent state officials who say one thing and do another.
“In a collective culture, national leaders and state officials should be consistent in translating what they say into real action. They serve as models whose conduct will be emulated by the public. Collective culture has a tendency to orientate people towards power holders and hierarchical relationships.”
Despite the paucity of ideal role models, Bernadette said she was optimistic. She believes that Indonesia can counter the trend by instilling lofty ideals into our young generations.
She added we should be proud of our young people who voice their idealism aggressively because that indicates they are still concerned with the nation’s problems.
“We should not shackle young people’s idealism. Our founding fathers struggled for independence due to their lofty idealism. The place which is still relatively conducive to nurturing idealism is school.”
According to Bernadette, idealistic attitudes can only be nurtured and maintained through teaching critical thinking and encouraging questioning minds.
Although admitting that this no easy feat given cultural constraints, Bernadette sees it as a great challenge for schools.
“In non-traditional classrooms, students no longer hesitate to express ideas and question teachers.
This progress needs to be acknowledged and appreciated. To what degree they can maintain this attitude needs to be rigorously researched,” she said.
Born in Bukittinggi, West Sumatra, in 1948, Bernadette was initially interested in general psychology and enrolled as an undergraduate student in the University of Indonesia (UI)’s Faculty of Psychology in 1976.
Her constant passion for psychology won her a scholarship sponsored by the Indonesian Directorate General of Higher Education (DIKTI) to pursue postgraduate study in Social Psychology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in the US.
After earning her doctorate in 1984, Bernadette was assigned to lecture at UI. Thanks to her academic credentials, she was appointed the university’s Head of Research and Consultation Division, Institute of Applied Psychology in 1996.
The former rector of Atma Jaya University, Bernadette has published extensively both nationally and internationally, and has collaborated with Dutch scholars.
Bernadette’s interest is also piqued by gender relations, management, women’s health and leadership, to name just a few. The amalgamation of these disciplines can be approached from the perspective cross-cultural psychology.
Though offering some caveats for its application in Indonesia, Bernadette emphasizes the relevance
of cross-cultural psychology in understanding global and national leadership.
Born from dissatisfaction with Western psychological theory, which cannot be applied in countries with different cultures, cross-cultural psychology emerged as a discipline on its own and has become a compelling topic of investigation.
In the context of global leadership, Bernadette said that cross-cultural psychology can help discover universal concepts and unique variables, so it is the right choice in efforts to gain an understanding of global leadership.
“The sensitivity toward cross-cultures and local culture is needed to prepare future leaders in a country with a collective culture and a high power distance like ours”, she said.
Collective culture, Bernadette said, has limitations, but shouldn’t always be construed as a negative or inferior.
“In general, collective culture is stable, and is characterized by few changes in social relations. Children are nurtured to remain loyal to their social groups. However, the emphasis on loyalty rather than independence often causes a child’s self-esteem to be less developed.”
Bernadette doesn’t suggest that Indonesia completely adhere to individualism, which tends to distance a person from social groups at the expense harmonious relationships with others.
“We need to understand that in both cultures we encounter individuals having a tendency to be individualist or collectivist to a varying degree. As in the case of our situation, the most important thing to remember is we embrace the positive facets of both cultures and resist the damaging ones.”
