The reflexive etic approach: Using the insights from indigenous psychologies to build a more comprehensive understanding of culture's role in shaping individual behaviour

Cross-cultural psychology (C-CP) and Indigenous psychology (IP) represent two distinct yet complementary approaches for bringing cultural issues into psychology. These methodological orientations diverge primarily in their focus: C-CP emphasises measurement equivalence of concepts, identifying universal truths across cultures as these truths are revealed in different cultural contexts. In its search for generalisability, however, C-CP may overlook key details that can more fully capture the psychological realities operating in the specific cultures being examined. In contrast, IP emphasises the importance of cultural and social contexts in understanding psychological phenomena operative in a given society. However, the concepts and theories developed in IP are often viewed as over-particularistic by outsiders. While C-CP often adopts a dis-embedded and externally imposed framework, IP may struggle with maintaining objectivity and faces challenges in conducting meaningful cross-cultural comparisons. By introducing culturally grounded and contextually embedded concepts and methods, this paper seeks to highlight how future research can address key shortcomings found in both C-CP and IP approaches. In our search for developing a more equitable global psychology, this paper describes the ‘reflexive etic approach’ of combining the concepts from both established and emerging indigenous psychologies to promote and develop more contextually sensitive research and theories about how an individual's culture matters in shaping that individual's behaviour.