Emergence and contributions of a Latin American indigenous social psychology

Abstract

Increasingly, understanding behaviour requires a multidimensional conceptual and methodological approach. A historical analysis of social psychology leads to the identification of separate and clear psychological, sociological, and cultural perspectives in the thinking and research of the field. In an overview of the highlights of each orientation, this paper identifies the way in which each subbranch of social psychology flourished and is closely tied to the psycho‐socio‐cultural ecosystem in which its theoreticians and researchers developed. Evident from this process is the inclination of psychological researchers to stress functional aspects of behaviour and utilize experimental methodologies; the sociological orientation stresses structural variables and is inclined toward observational and field descriptive studies; and cultural investigation tends to pull from both the psychological and sociological perspectives and places major interest on the ecosystem in which behaviour presents itself. Linked to individual researchers' interests and training, and congruent with the sociocultural parameters and ecosystem in which Latin American social psychologists have evolved, novel indigenous interpretations of each social psychology have emerged. Documentation of the research topics, preferred theoretical and methodological approaches, and idiosyncratic findings is presented for the emergence of social psychology in Latin America. Emphasis is placed on the process of creating and shaping an indigenous view of social psychological thought, in which phenomena derived from a combination of one of the three views, and the behavioural manifestations and ideas representative of autochthonous everyday life, are stressed. As a conclusion, true to its upbringing, and born out of a perennial antithesis between mainstream thought and mundane reality, both a series of replications and novel conceptualizations and findings have emerged that have a distinct psychological, sociological, and cultural flavour.