Psychology and the Study of Differences in Human Functioning Some Reflections
Author(s)
Sharma, Sagar
Abstract
Mainstream psychology continues to be an ethnocentric (Western) enterprise with a research tradition that is mainly directed at finding differences in psychological domains pitched at individual, group and cultural levels. The why? (the ideology of individualism); what? (Individualistic/micro concepts); and how? (Quantitative methodology), of the dominant study of differences are examined from the indigenous and cross-cultural perspectives. In order to maximize the culture-specific, the indigenous researchers tend to capitalize too much on cross-cultural differences and negate commonalities in human psychological functioning. The search for assumed universality, on the other hand, creates a mindset in cross-cultural researchers to highlight commonalities and ignore differences across cultures. It is suggested that the researchers need to study both the differences as well as commonalities in psychological domains (i) by using research designs in which both variation and invariance are explicitly taken into account; and (ii) the observed differences can be better explained within a broader frame of commonness or invariance, rather than the other way around.
