An Ecological and Social Cross-Cultural Model: The Case of Greece

Abstract

A critical problem faced by psychologists from cultures outside the mainstream of European and North American psychology is the lack of a model of culture which would permit the tying together of the functional relationships between psychological phenomena and cultural factors. The usual practice was to observe emic and etic phenomena, and to attempt to interpret the meaning of the emic phenomena in terms of what we arbitrarily assume to be the determining factors in that culture. The most common social factors employed are frequently the rural-urban dimension, socioeconomic status, and educational level. However, the explanation of etic behaviour is usually more difficult since cross-cultural studies usually attempt to equate subjects across these three social factors.