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The title of this paper was partially stimulated by Gustav Jahoda’s recent work in which he asked if cross-cultural psychology’s pursuit of the emic-etic distinction will ever result in its capture (Jahoda, 1977). He noted that “when cross-cultural psychologists are wearing their theoretical-methodological hats they tend to make ritual emic-etic gestures; having discharged their duty in this manner they then turn to getting on with research and forget all about it” (p. 55). Jahoda ends his review of this distinction by finding it essentially to be a non-issue, and answers in the negative his question, “can we ever capture it?”
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Trimble, J.E., Lonner, W.J., Boucher, J.D. (1983). Stalking the Wily Emic: Alternatives to Cross-Cultural Measurement. In: Irvine, S.H., Berry, J.W. (eds) Human Assessment and Cultural Factors. NATO Conference Series, vol 21. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2151-2_18
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