Monocultural and cross‐cultural indigenous approaches: The royal road to the development of a balanced global psychology

Comprehensive comparison and conceptual analysis of cross‐cultural, cultural, and indigenous psychologies in terms of their aims and theoretical and methodological perspectives lead to the conclusion that the first two are special cases of the third. Two basic types of indigenous psychology are distinguished on the basis of conceptual analysis: monocultural indigenous psychologies (including monocultural cultural psychologies) and cross‐cultural indigenous psychologies (including both cross‐cultural psychology and cross‐cultural cultural psychology). Corresponding to these two types of indigenous psychology are two basic ways to conduct indigenous research, namely, the monocultural indigenous approach and the cross‐cultural indigenous approach. Both approaches require achievement of the condition of indigenous compatibility, which stresses the sufficient congruity of the researcher's theory, methods, and results with the studied psychological or behavioral phenomenon and/or its sociocultural context. Finally, several ways to integrate research findings obtained by the monocultural and cross‐cultural indigenous approaches are delineated and discussed with respect to their function in creating an indigenously derived global psychology.