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

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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_bound_syndromes