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Most citizens of the world have not been exposed to many of the conditions and situations and formats that Western psychologists incorporate into our experiments (Berry, Poortinga, Segall, & Dasen, 2002; Heine, 2010a). For instance, Americans are very familiar with surveys, being asked personal and occasionally intimate questions, people in lab coats (as may be seen in an experiment), and with computers and other forms of technology that may be used to conduct a study. However, much of the rest of the world has had little or no exposure to these and other features of psychological studies, and their lack of familiarity may have significant consequences for how participants interpret the wishes of the researcher and the demands of the experiment (J. G. Miller, 2004). Consequently, key elements of psychological studies may not be construed in the same way across cultures, and this can potentially undermine the validity of their findings (Berry et al., 2002; Cohen, 2007). In other words, members of different cultures may understand the instructions in divergent ways, and determining whether discrepancies in responses to the experimental manipulations are caused by true cultural differences or a result of poor translations or misconstruals can be tricky. Two options for addressing this problem are ensuring that researchers have a good understanding of the cultures being studied and/or involving representatives from each of the cultures being studied in research design and implementation (Heine, 2010a; J. G. Miller, 2004).

Table 5.1