The challenge of cross-cultural psychology - The role of the indigenous psychologies

This article outlines the indigenous psychologies approach within the conte xt of three research traditions in cross-cultural psychology: the universal ist, contextualist, and integrationist approaches. The first section outlin es the limitations of the universalist and contextualist approaches. The se cond section overviews the two integrationist approaches: the derived etics approach and the indigenous psychologies approach. In comparison to the fo rmer approach, the indigenous psychologies approach advocates a bottom-up, model-building paradigm that examines generative capabilities of human bein gs. It investigates human actions that occur in meaningful context. In this transactional approach, human consciousness, intentions, and goals are cen tral aspects of the research design.