Indigenous Psychology, Westernized Psychology, and Indigenized Psychology: A Non-Western Psychologist's View

Abstract

Three kinds of coexisting contemporary scientific psychologies, namely, indigenous psychology (IP), Westernized psychology (WP), and indigenized psychology (IZP), can be meaningfully distinguished and defined. Historically speaking, IP, the first of the three, was directly and spontaneously generated under the sole influence of Euro-American sociocultural factors. This Western psychology was then imported to and implanted in many non-Western countries to form various kinds of WP. The WPs in some of the major non-Western nations have been gradually transformed into IZPs by local psychologists under the academic movement of indigenization. This article systematically describes the dynamic process of the successive formation of the three psychologies. These psychologies represent not only three disciplines but also three methodologies which, in turn, produce three distinctive kinds of psychological knowledge. The three knowledge systems are then compared in terms of such epistemological aspects as cultural basis, production method, indigenous autonomy, indigenous contextualization, indigenous compatibility, and indigenous applicability.