Etics and Emics Awry: Contesting Matsumoto and Juang's Interpretation
7 Pages Posted: 12 Dec 2017
Date Written: October 14, 2017
Abstract
David Matsumoto and Linda Juang’s depiction of the concepts is awry, as in, the authors identify etics as the universal aspects of psychological processes and emics as the means peoples of differing cultures implement these processes. The contention of this paper there is there has been limited success in obtaining empirical evidence to advance the idea of a universal psychology. Therefore, in considering cross-cultural comparisons, a more valuable approach is to consider the indigenous psychology of a people, as an emic approach from “bottom up” perspective to minimize an observer’s cultural bias or ethnocentricity. Whereas etics is a means to engender a universal psychology derived from cross-cultural comparisons of indigenous psychologies in an attempt to reveal psychological universals.
Keywords: etics, emics, cross-cultural comparison, indigenous psychology, universal psychology
JEL Classification: Z10, Z19
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation