Toward a New Generation of Cross-Cultural Research

In this article, we describe how cross-cultural research methodologies have evolved, with each phase of research addressing limitations of a previous one. We describe briefly the three previous phases and argue for embarking on a fourth phase that empirically establishes linkages between the active cultural ingredients hypothesized to cause between-country differences and the observed differences themselves. We discuss theoretical considerations and possible empirical methods to establish such linkages, and urge researchers to seriously consider incorporating these kinds of linkage studies in their programs of research.