KEY CONCEPT
of data for descriptive purposes by using fieldwork techniques, focusing on a single cultural setting. Benedict herself, a student of the anthropologist Franz Boas, did field- work among North American Zuni Indians (Benedict, 1934). Ethnographies centre the attention of the researcher on a detailed description of a single cultural group. The accent is on uncovering diversity in cultural practices, with relatively little energy chan- nelled into generalising findings to those gathered in other settings. Psychological anthropology also used more traditionally psychological projective techniques. These are tests designed to provide insight about personality traits. These can be pen-and- paper or interview-based, and provide data that, when set alongside qualitative ethno- graphic findings, can shed light on the typical characteristics of a population. An example from the archives of psychological anthropology illustrates the use of project- ive techniques.
The people of Alor
In 1944 Cora DuBois studied an Indonesian island population, the Alorese, using the
‘inkblot’ or Rorschach test. This, ‘the grandfather of all projective tests’ (Reber, 1997, p.
675), is a clinical technique by which an analyst uncovers aspects of a client’s personality from their perception of a series of ambiguous black and coloured shapes (inkblots).
DuBois had 50 Alorese tested and from her data claimed to derive the essential personal- ity configurations of the population. They included ‘fearlessness’, ‘suspiciousness’,
‘greed’ and ‘shallowness’. Yet they were said to be burdened with few neuroses.
The influence of psychological anthropology owed much of its appeal to a fascination with the idea of national character. This is the notion that people from the same nation share certain personality traits. More recently, as the importance of nationality has itself been questioned as a primary source of identity, the appeal and distinctiveness of psy- chological anthropology has waned.
Evaluating psychological anthropology
Psychological anthropology helped bridge the ‘no-man’s land’ between psychology and cultural anthropology. By opening up channels of communication between the two disciplines the approach highlighted the value, to psychologists, of anthropological enquiry. In particular, it stressed the contribution of ethnography as a research method.
Problematically though, culture and personality theory habitually homogenised whole populations of individuals by characterising them as being in possession of the same personality traits (Berry et al., 2002). This approach emphasises variations between cul- tures while ignoring what may well be equally diverse personality variations within cultures. Methods favoured by culture and personality researchers are problematic too.
Many of these projective techniques (such as the Rorschach test) were originally designed for clinical use. Therefore when they are applied outside the consulting room they tend to yield data that are couched in the language of pathology. Resulting per- sonality profiles sound like syndromes or illnesses. This is a problem with transferring clinical techniques, unadapted, to non-clinical settings.
that were of both psychological and anthropological interest. Rivers and colleagues revealed something about human perception at the individual level, and about how Torres Islanders organised themselves at a group level. It is these differences in levels of explanation that are the crux of the differing orientations of global psychology and cultural anthropology (Berry et al., 2002).
Cultural anthropology (also known as social anthropology) is the study of the complex social structures that make up communities, societies and nations (Reber, 1997). True, psychologists regularly col- lect this kind of social or community-based data about the people they study, but their main interest focuses on the investigation of certain prescribed behaviours or cognitive abilities that reveal them- selves in individuals from different backgrounds. A psychologist is more likely to study perception, problem-solving or conformity among the individuals who make up groups. A cultural anthropologist is likely to dwell on the complex relationships and beliefs or norms of the group as a whole. Put another way, a typical psychologist’s question might be:
How does visual perception manifest itself differently in individuals from different cultural backgrounds?
A cultural anthropologist might ask:
What are the characteristic norms, beliefs and customs of the cultural group I am studying?
There is a second, methodological difference between the work of psy- chologists and cultural anthropologists. In general, psychologists are more interventionist and anthropologists more naturalistic in the way they conduct research (Edgerton, 1974). So while a psychological approach might involve setting up replicable experiments under con- trolled conditions across different cultural settings, an anthropologist would prefer a more ‘hands-off’ method. This would involve observing conduct as it happens in the natural course of things, without tasks or experimental procedures being imposed by the researcher. The anthropological method is typified by the use of ethnographies (see key concept), which tend to yield data of a qualitative nature. The repli- cation research method (see Chapter 1) that psychologists commonly use tends to yield quantitative data.
Differences in approach between the practitioners in these two neighbouring fields are subtle rather than stark. Separating ‘typically
KEY TERM
Ethnographies.
The collection of data for descriptive purposes by using fieldwork techniques, focusing on a single cultural setting.
psychological’ approaches from ‘typic- ally anthropological’ approaches is a delicate operation requiring a steady hand, because what we’re talking about here is differences of emphasis, not opposing approaches. Indeed, as the achievements of the pioneers who fea- ture in Figure 2.5 bear out, the early twentieth century spawned several examples of psychologists who were happy to combine experimental approaches with more naturalistic, anthropological ones.
Later trends: Cross-cultural psychology or cultural psychology?
The end of the twentieth century saw psychology and anthropology go their separate ways and psychological anthropology fall out of favour.
The study of psychology across cultures expanded and developed in several directions and along numerous pathways. The most well-worn of these paths led to the emergence of cross-cultural psychology (see Chapter 1). The publication of books and articles written from a cross- cultural viewpoint snowballed during the 1960s and 1970s. These included a manual discussing the problems of cross-cultural testing (Biesheuvel, 1969). Many of what are now regarded as ‘classic’ cross- cultural studies in the areas of cognitive (Segall et al., 1966) and devel- opmental (Dasen, 1972) psychology were conducted during this period and will be revisited in subsequent chapters. That this was a period of growing institutional acceptance for cross-cultural psychology was confirmed by the formation of several cross-cultural journals and associations, and by the invention of several accompanying acronyms:
• 1966 – IJC: International Journal of Psychology
• 1970 – JCCP: Journal of Cross-cultural Psychology
• 1972 – IACCP: International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology
• 1984 – ARIC: Association pour la recherché interculturelle.
Yet to be fully accepted into the mainstream of psychology, the cross- cultural approach still had (and has) work to do. Arguably, the reason for its continued peripheral position in most psychology undergraduate