Comparison Between Psychodynamic And Emic Approach

There are two types of approaches in qualitative research that falls within the realm of multicultural psychology. The first method is the etic approach, which studies a particular study subject from an external or outside point of view (Hall, 2010). An etic approach is a type of research method that evaluates a topic or subject of study from an external or outsider’s perspective (Hall, 2010). The emic approach, on the other hand, researches a subject on the premise that the topic of study is unique or special to a specific individual culture and, therefore, the concept or theory does not easily apply in cross-cultural populations (Hall, 2010). Most of the research in multicultural psychology chooses to take an emic approach since the goal
One of the main reasons for this is that the researcher or researchers could never truly understand or appreciate the findings of their research when using an etic approach because they always have – at least to some degree – an outsider’s perspective of the situation or behavior of study (Olive, 2014). As they say in the chronic illness community, “you don’t get it until you get it,” and the same rings true in research as well. Human behavior, in general, is difficult enough to study but it becomes increasingly more challenging when studying behaviors that are specific only in a single culture. Nevertheless, it’s important to remember that just because there may be similarities between subjects in various cultures does not necessarily mean that every participant or every culture of a study behaves in the same way as there can be significant differences that are not apparent to the researcher(s) between the in-group and out-group of a study (Olive, 2014). Therefore, both the emic and etic approach may be useful in studying the nature or context of aggression in various