Learning Outcome: Explain, using
examples, emic and etic concepts
Where do the terms etic and emic come from?
• Pike(1954) was a linguist and was interested in
human language.
• He distinguished between Phonetics and
Phonemics.
• Phonetics-study of universal sounds
• Phonemics-study of sounds that are specific to
one language.
• Pike thougth the etic/emic distinction could be
generalised to different approaches to research in
the social sciences.
Etic and Emic Food and Beverage Services
Starbucks - Etic
• Menu doesn’t adapt to
other countries
McDonalds - Emic
• Menu changes depending
on country
• Considers the native’s
perspective (tastes)
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McDonald’s Considers the Natives
4
Emic and Etic Concepts
• Cross-cultural research can be used to test if
theories are universal
– Do theories apply to all cultures?
• Researchers can take an emic or etic approach
when studying other cultures
• Emic approaches challenge traditional (Western)
views of behavior (especially norms)
• Etic approaches tend to impose Western views
onto other cultures’ behavior
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Emic and Etic Concepts
• Gender development in tribes (Mead, 1935) in New Guinea
• Munugumor – masculine characteristics
– Both men and women were aggressive
• Arapesh – feminine characteristics
– Both Men and women were sensitive and not aggressive
• Tchambuli – gender reversal
– Men ran the household
– Women ran the village
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Emic and Etic Concepts
• Gender development in different tribes (Mead, 1935)
• Gender roles can be culturally determined
• Etic because she imposed her etic
– Imposed etic – theory/idea embedded in culture of the
researcher which is used to study other cultures
– Mead had idea of masculinity and femininity embedded in her
– She used Western ideas of masculine and feminine (her etic) to
characterize gender roles in the new cultures
• Emic would have emphasized why the gender roles differed
according to the natives
– Native perspective
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Etic concepts
• Etic (think of the t in etic as meaning together)
• Etic research compares psychological
phenomena across cultures to find out what
could be universal in human behaviour.
• The purpose of research is to test theories
developed in one particular culture (usually
western), across other cultures to investigate
whether phenomena are culture-specific or
universal. This is achieved by carrying out
cross cultural research.
Can you think of any cross cultural
research that we have learned?
• Kashima and Triandis (1986)-American (self
serving bias) and Japanese (modesty bias)
• Berry (1967)
• Bond and Smith (1996)
All of these studies found differences between
cultures.
• As researchers rely on theories and techniques
developed in their own culture to study some
other culture, such studies are often said to
use the imposed etic approach, (Berry 1969)
Are there any behaviours that are
universal?
• The face is such an extraordinarily efficient
instrument of communication that there
must be rules that govern the way we
interpret facial expressions. But what are
those rules? And are they the same for
everyone?
• In the 1960’s, a young San Francisco
psychologist named Paul Ekman began to
study facial expression, and he discovered
that no one knew the answers to those
questions. He had an idea. What if he
travelled around the world to find out
whether people from different cultures
agreed on the meaning of different facial
expressions?
• Ekman began travelling to places like
Japan, Brazil, and Argentina, carrying
photographs of men and women making a
variety of distinctive faces. Everywhere he
went, people agreed on what those
expressions meant.
• But what if people in the developed world
had all picked up the same cultural rules
from watching the same movies and
television shows?
• So Ekman set out again, this time making
his way through the jungles of Papua New
Guinea, to the most remote villages, and
he found that the tribesmen there had no
problem interpreting the expressions,
either. This may not sound like much of a
breakthrough. But in the scientific climate
of the time it was a revelation.
• Ekman had established that expressions
were the universal products of evolution.
There were fundamental lessons to be
learned from the face, if you knew where
to look.
What emotion is he showing?
Problems with the ‘Etic’ view
• Smith & Bond (1998) found that Psychology is
Ethnocentric- the assumption that one’s own
culture is the standard by which other cultures
are assessed. E.g. research carried out in the
USA can be applied in Japan.
• They reviewed textbooks and found that
only 10% of the world is sampled in
psychological research
Emic Concepts
• Emic research studies one culture alone to
understand culture specific behaviour.
• Researchers attempt to study behaviour
through the eyes of the people that live in
that culture.
• No interest in cross cultural comparisons.
• Emic studies do not import theoretical
frameworks from one culture to another.
Instead the way the phenomena is linked to
the culture (structure) and the meaning it has
to this particular culture is emphasized
(context).
• This approach is characterized by cultural
relativism-the assumption that all cultures are
equally worthy of study.
Bartlett 1932
• Mentioned the extraordinary ability of Swazi
herdsmen to recall individual characteristics of
their cattle. He explained that the Swazi
culture revolves around possession and care
of cattle and it is important for people to
recognize their animals because it is part of
their fortune.
Yap (1967) Culture bound syndromes
• CBS is a culturally specific psychological
disorder which can only be fully understood
within a specific cultural context.
• For example Koro
• http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Culture_bo
und_syndromes