MASARYK UNIVERSITY
Faculty of Arts
Factors that Influence Cultural Diversity in Cultural-Comparative
Psychological Research
Habilitation Thesis
Brno, 2022 Mgr. et Mgr. Václav Linkov, Ph.D.
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Content
Commentary to habilitation thesis............................................................................................................3
Introduction ..........................................................................................................................................3
Psychology and cultural diversity ........................................................................................................5
Commentary for articles included in this collection...........................................................................10
Article 1..........................................................................................................................................10
Article 2..........................................................................................................................................11
Article 3..........................................................................................................................................13
Article 4..........................................................................................................................................14
Article 5..........................................................................................................................................15
Article 6..........................................................................................................................................16
Article 7..........................................................................................................................................17
Article 8..........................................................................................................................................18
Article 9..........................................................................................................................................19
Conclusion..........................................................................................................................................20
Author contributions to the included articles .....................................................................................21
References ..........................................................................................................................................23
Articles ...................................................................................................................................................28
Article 1..............................................................................................................................................29
Article 2..............................................................................................................................................34
Article 3..............................................................................................................................................52
Article 4..............................................................................................................................................58
Article 5..............................................................................................................................................76
Article 6..............................................................................................................................................85
Article 6 – English translation........................................................................................................... 93
Article 7............................................................................................................................................104
Article 7 – English translation..........................................................................................................112
Article 8............................................................................................................................................125
Article 8 – English translation ........................................................................................................139
Article 9............................................................................................................................................160
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Abstract
Psychology has long struggled with how to deal with the study of culturally specific
phenomena. This thesis consists of commentary and nine published journal articles, which,
from different points of view, describe various issues that influence how psychology studies
culture. The focus is on East Asian cultures. This introductory commentary contains a brief
description of the matter and the nine articles. The first six articles describe factors that
influence cultural diversity and the quality of cross-cultural comparative psychological
research, including the generalization of results for too large populations, the lack of
researcher’s experience with the specific culture, trust for researchers without proper
experience, the lack of introspection in research, research organization according to an
algorithm for the quantitative approach instead of experience with the phenomenon,
employment of researchers with primarily English-based cross-cultural experience, and the
omission of indigenous groups due to their ignorance by the majority society. The other two
articles describe Chinese and Korean indigenous psychologies as examples of research that is
based on the indigenous cultural phenomena. The last article introduces a method to use
information stored in the current scientometric databases to reward scholars who investigate
local cultures and, therefore, conduct research that investigates indigenous phenomena.
Commentary to habilitation thesis
Introduction
This habilitation thesis is a collection of journal articles connected by the reason, why
they were written: to show the lack of cultural diversity in cross-cultural psychological
research, the reasons that this lack of diversity might prevail, the societal practices that
support it, and provide the alternatives that support more cultural diversity.
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I started to write these articles during my studies in East Asia. After several years of
study in Seoul, Taipei, and Wuhan, I wanted to conduct cross-cultural research to compare
Taiwan and Korea. I realized that it was hard to find a basis for my research because the
theories that underlie the published research were usually of Western origin. Also, crosscultural
research nearly always examined the differences between an East Asian country and a
Western country, but rarely the differences between two East Asian countries. Finally, I
decided that, in the current state of affairs, it was more important to focus on theoretical
papers that showed these pitfalls within cross-cultural research. Some of the resulting papers
are included in this collection.
The first part of this commentary describes the characteristics of the investigated
matter: how psychology researches human cultures, how diverse its coverage of world
cultures is, what influences this cultural diversity, and what might help to increase it. The
second part of this commentary contains descriptions of the ideas and logic behind each of the
included articles and their brief content. Regarding the methodological approach, this thesis is
predominantly theoretical: one of the included articles employs interviews as its research
method; one employs journal content analysis and is partially theoretical; one introduces a
new algorithm; two are review articles; and four are theoretical. As is common in the
discipline of theoretical psychology (see journals Theory & Psychology or Integrative
Psychological and Behavioral Science for reference), their research method is to describe the
logic behind the functioning of some part of psychological science. The results of these
articles differ according to the approach. For articles that employed interviews, content
analysis, or a literature review the result is the description of the phenomenon, the description
of the journal content, or the description of current literature in the field. One article offers an
algorithm that can be programmed into scientometric databases. The results of the four
theoretical articles are the descriptions of various issues, including the usage of authority in
psychological science, the importance of introspection in research preparation, the
questionability of the legitimacy of the quantitative approach, the pitfalls associated with the
cross-cultural experimental method, and the general problems faced in cross-cultural research.
The articles included in this collection can be divided into three sections. The first,
which contains Articles Nos. 1-6, describes various factors and problems that influence
cultural diversity in psychological research that involves culture. The second section, which
contains Articles Nos. 7 and 8, reviews the examples of good practice in this research –
indigenous psychologies that anchor their terminology in local cultures. Finally, the third
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section includes Article No. 9 and offers a possible way to improve the position of culturallyrooted
scientific disciplines, including psychology, by adjusting bibliometric measures to
benefit researchers who base their research on culturally diverse sources. Three articles were
originally published in Czech. Original versions of these articles are followed by their English
translation.
Psychology and Cultural Diversity
Psychology in the first half of the 20th
Century developed as a science that did not
concern culture, despite the call of Wilhelm Wundt to study cultural processes (Ellis & Stam,
2015; Sinha, 2002). Psychologists conducted experiments that assumed that their results were
valid for the whole of humanity and did not differ across cultures. That changed in the second
half of the century with the establishments of scientific societies, like the International
Association of Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP), and specialized journals, like the Journal
of Cross-Cultural Psychology. Nevertheless, even if some contemporary research does not
assume that its results are culturally universal, the majority of psychological research still
does. This prevailing point of view prevents the better understanding of culturally specific
phenomena (Ellis & Stam, 2015).
Various authors have shown that psychological research is too culturally homogenous
in terms of both who is being researched and who is conducting the research. Arnett (2008)
analyzed major journals published by the American Psychological Association in 2003-07 and
found that only 2% of the first authors were based outside of English-speaking countries
(ESC) and Europe. He also reported that, if American samples were analyzed in these journals
in 2007, only 23% were other than European or American. In more recent research, Ningxi Li
(2022) has examined the current diversity of journal editors and authors in the first decile of
psychological journals, according to their impact factors in Web of Science. Of the total of 68
journals, 73% of the editors-in-chief in 2021 were affiliated with US-based institutions, 10%
with UK institutions, 5% with Canadian institutions, and the rest with institutions based in
Western and Southern Continental Europe. The affiliations of the authors who published in
these journals in 2017 show the same prevalence for Western and English-speaking countries.
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Authors based in the US contributed 44% of the articles and 10% were based in the UK.
Germany, Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands were strongly represented with more than
5%.
Cultural-comparative issues are not common topics for psychological research. Smith
and Bond (2022) assessed articles published by three mainstream journals in 2020 to see how
many could be considered good cross-cultural studies. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology had 2 out of 131 studies, Journal of Personality had 5 out of 84, and Journal of
International Business Studies had 3 out of 83. Hartmann et al. (2013) analyzed Englishwritten,
peer-reviewed publications in the PsycInfo database and found that only 2% of the
publications addressed cross-cultural diversity and 4% addressed ethnic minority issues. The
small amount of coverage for culture-related issues also applies to introductory psychological
textbooks – Walter Lonner (2016) stated that in the English-speaking environment “it is
surprising that no IPT (introductory psychological text) has ever been published that
contained a full-blown chapter that focused entirely on culture and its myriad influences” (p.
10, emphasis by the author).
Gabrenya and Glazer (2022) asked an interesting question about the groups of
researchers who were represented in the IACCP during its existence. They conducted a cocitation
network analysis of long-term IACCP members and found three clusters. The first
group, which included Geert Hofstede and Shalom Schwartz, studied cultural dimensions.
The second group, which included Steven Heine and Hazel Rose Markus, was interested in
cultural psychological themes. And the third group, which included John W. Berry and
Colleen Ward, researched themes that concerned acculturation and well-being.
A critique of the small cultural diversity of the samples used in psychological research
was most famously formulated by Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan (2010). They stated that
populations studied by psychologists are mostly WEIRD, an acronym for Western, Educated,
Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic countries. Researchers assume that findings found on
such a limited sample can be generalized to all cultural groups throughout the world – “one
adult sample is pretty much the same as the next” (p. 63). In the view of Heinrich et al., this
assumption might be justified if WEIRD samples “would be in the vicinity of the central
tendency of our species” (p. 64). However, this is not the case. Authors show numerous
examples where WEIRD samples do not represent the average of the human population and,
rather, the outliers. This means that the majority of psychological research conducted with
WEIRD samples might be wrong in the application to the whole human population (e.g.,
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Sundararajan & Raina, 2015). More importantly, relying on WEIRD samples may limit the
variability of the research questions studied by researchers. Current cross-cultural
psychologists (Smith & Bond, 2022) require 20 different cultural samples in order to be
considered good. They also recommend to study non-national cultural samples and use
methods translated to local languages with established measurement equivalences.
Yet, cultural diversity in psychological research samples is not enough. The usage of
Western measures in less wealthy countries is seen, by some authors, as a practice that is
similar to that of colonialism. As Dhar and Dixit formulate (2022): “Psychology and
capitalism have similar modes of operation since they both thrive respectively on new markets
and concepts to sustain themselves; without these they would falter” (p. 127). The usage of
Western methods do not allow local people to develop their own approaches and let their
voices be heard. Some indigenous psychologies went so far as to refuse classical research
epistemologies and state that each culture has the right to have its own epistemologies. In the
case of African psychology, this is summarized by Nwoye (2015, p. 107): “These
epistemologies include: the observationist, the narrativist, the proverbial, the sage, the
generational, the hermeneutic, the Kamukunji, the Revelationist, the Dialogical, the
Propositional, the Instrumentalist, the Dream-related, the Rationalist, and the
Mythical/Metaphorical epistemologies.”
The representation of various cultural groups in psychological research might change
if psychology, as a scientific field, changes its practices. Syed and Kathawalla (2022) think
that such a change would be the employment of the practices of open science. The open
science movement’s press to acquire many samples might make it easier for a researcher from
a less wealthy area to join a large collaborative team and conduct research that would
otherwise be too expensive. Pre-registration allows researchers to conduct and publish only
one study at a time. Without this, they would need to conduct more studies until they find
something. This makes research cheaper and more accessible for researchers from less
wealthy areas. Syed and Kathawalla also mention that the larger representation of
underrepresented cultural groups might be reached if grants for funding are selected randomly
in grant lotteries from pre-registered studies that fit the criteria.
The psychological study of culture developed into three disciplines – cross-cultural
psychology, cultural psychology, and indigenous psychology (IP). Cross-cultural psychology
maintains that universal psychological terminology exists and that it is possible to compare
how measures developed in order to capture how these universal terms differ across cultures.
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It employs mostly quantitative methods. Cultural psychology is based on the understanding
that phenomenon and cultural context cannot be separated, so it is not meaningful to compare
phenomena across cultures. Therefore, qualitative methods are the first choice for
psychologists who study culture. Indigenous psychologies aim to emancipate themselves from
the influence of Western psychology and study local cultures with their own terminologies
and measures. To reach this goal they employ both qualitative and quantitative approaches
(Cerha, 2013, 2015).
The most important aspect for acquiring knowledge about a phenomenon that is
specific to a local population might be within the purview of indigenous psychologies (IP).
The founders of IPs felt that it was necessary for psychological science to be conducted from
the cultural points of view of the local populations – and not from the North
American/Western population point of view that assumes that the results found in the west are
valid for all cultures. These people studied at universities in English-speaking countries and,
when they returned to their home countries, realized that their knowledge did not completely
apply to their local cultures. As a result, they developed psychologies related to their cultures
(for the story of Kuo-Shu Yang, see Yeh, 2020). The indigenization of psychology is seen as
one of the ways to conduct decolonization in Asian, African, and American societies (Adams
et al., 2015). Some IPs went so far that they “can be termed nationalistic indigenous
psychologies” (Allwood, 2019:95).
Indigenous psychologies face critiques about their ability to provide a coherent
description for the local psychological phenomena. Jahoda (2016) thinks that no actual IP
exists, and there are only IP approximations in Asian countries. Even the most developed IP –
Filipino psychology – lacks a theoretical system that might be necessary to be considered a
true scientific discipline. Hwang (in press) concludes the same for the Chinese IP that was
developed in Taiwan – even if the researchers within the Chinese IP movement seek to look
for indigenous theories, the majority of their research only “tends to confirm or disconfirm the
relevance of Western research paradigms” (p. 9). This lack of success might be caused by
ontological and epistemological relativism and the absence of attempts to build a coherent
discipline for the IP, as expressed by Long (2019). Contrary to Jahoda’s (2016) critique, Yeh
and Sundararajan (2019) think that the IP was successful, because its new terminology “opens
up a new horizon of meaning making” (p. 4) and it “plays an increasingly important role in
shaping the psychology of tomorrow” (p. 5). However, they do not provide sufficient
evidence for these claims.
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Indigenous psychologists often think of ways to improve the state of their discipline.
Sundararajan (2019) considers that it is crucial that IPs balance between the local and the
global, engage in social critique, be intellectually independent, and employ self-reflexivity in
their research. By employing local perspectives, IPs might help in the development of their
societies and allow psychologists from other societies to become more culturally competent
(Oppong, in press). The plan to develop IPs has faced several threats since the 2000s due to
the larger importance of citations in the evaluation of research in some countries (like Korea).
As Liu (2020) summarizes: “The emphasis on impact factor and English language
publications has turned the tide against Indigenized Psychology (which I will refer to as IP) in
Taiwan… if IP and citations are taken as the measure of success, then IP will be
marginalized” (p. 179). The survival of IPs, therefore, requires the development of new
measures to determine academic success.
Scholars involved with IPs also hesitate about how to resolve the conflicts that
sometimes arise between the three psychological disciplines that study the interplay between
human psyche and culture. Yang (2000) outlined a plan to unify the cross-cultural, cultural,
and indigenous approaches in psychology. First, monocultural IPs should be developed, then,
when local psychologists understand their cultures well enough, cross-cultural indigenous
studies could be conducted where appropriate, which will lead to the establishment of a global
IP. Yang’s plan remains only an outline (Pe Pua, 2020) and it has never been started: “in
today’s global economy, there is no motivation at all to inductively build up a global
psychology according to the inductive process Yang (2000) described” (Liu, 2020:185). If
such a plan would be set in action and several IPs would grow and include larger populations
in their region, there would be a problem when two or more of these IPs meet at some
population and each of them would have their own concepts and terminology. The
reconciliation of these conflicting terminologies might be difficult (Allwood, 2020).
Cultural, cross-cultural, and indigenous psychologies are considered to be distinct
disciplines. Nevertheless, all three of them have the same goal – to capture the interplay
between psychology and culture. It is, therefore, questionable as to whether it is meaningful to
have three distinct disciplines or whether they should be considered one discipline that
contains different methodological schools. Most of the articles that appear in this collection
keep this idea and do not explicitly distinguish between these disciplines. I often use the term
“cultural comparative psychology” instead of “cross-cultural” to avoid feeling that their
content is relevant only to issues studied by the narrowly defined cross-cultural psychology.
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Commentary for the Articles Included in this Collection
Article 1
Linkov, V. (2013). Comparative psychological research in East Asia: An
opportunity for East Asian studies scholars. Vienna Journal of East Asian Studies, 4 (1),
51-65. https://doi.org/10.2478/vjeas-2013-0003 1
Limiting cross-cultural comparisons to a small set of reference countries hinders the
development of the terminology used in international research. For example, for countries that
are compared according to relations between personality and political orientation, the
reference standards are from the US and the UK. However, both of those countries have party
systems with two dominant parties, with the US having just Republicans and Democrats (or
liberals and conservatives). Using terminology and research designs that come from such a
restricted party system leads to the ignorance of reality in countries with more complex party
systems. Researchers from such countries might accept this two-parties terminology, report
results from their country in terms of the liberal-conservative dimension, and ignore the
existence of green, regionalist, and communist parties – as did Gian Vittorio Caprara in the
case of Italy (Caprara et al., 2003; Caprara et al., 1999). If a researcher decides to do full-scale
research of the local party system (like Linkov, 2020), there is a problem to compare it to
something, because researchers from other countries with complex party systems follow the
one-dimensional liberal-conservative research designs. Such problems might be diminished if
the comparison would happen among different sets of countries and not predominantly with
ESC.
Article 1 contains an analysis of the countries and cultures where East Asian cultures
were compared within two psychological journals in 2007-11. Also analyzed was whether the
results of such research are generalized just to the East Asian cultures that are examined or to
the whole of East Asia. The results show that East Asian cultures were compared mostly with
1
Article 1 was part of a collection of five articles for which the author received the Early Career Award from the
International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology.
11
ESC and that there was no research that aimed to compare only East Asian cultures together.
Article 1 also mentions that East Asian countries are labelled as collectivistic, but when the
content of collectivist scales is examined, collectivism has different meanings in different East
Asian cultures. The absence of a direct comparison between East Asian cultures allowed for
generalized labels that denote them as “collectivist” or “dialectically thinking”. The increased
cultural diversity in the samples, which are compared without anchoring them in the ESCderived
terminology by comparison with ESC, might lead to the discovery of more accurate
terminology.
Article 2
Linkov, V. (2017). Psychology is not primarily empirical science: A comparison of
cultures in the lexical hypothesis tradition as a failure of introspection. Integrative
Psychological and Behavioral Science, 51(2), 285-302. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-016-
9375-12
Human behavior should be perceived as being embedded in a complex set of contexts
(Berry, 2022). Researchers might be expected to consider these contexts when developing
terminology and interpreting their results; however, that is often not the case. For example,
Lee et al. (2007) have found that openness to experience is connected to a higher number of
personal pronouns in an essay written by the subject. This has a clear interpretation, because it
is impolite to use personal pronouns when speaking about older people or people with higher
status – a title or occupation name should be used instead. Open people, therefore, follow the
rules of politeness to a lesser degree than less open people. However, such an interpretation is
missing in the Lee et al. article. That is not strange, because researchers who conduct crosscultural
studies sometimes interpret their results with terminology and information from
literature that comes from ESC and ignore interpretations that come from their cultural
environment. Results are interpreted according to what would be appropriate if the examined
2
Article 2 was part of a collection of five articles for which the author received the Early Career Award from the
International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology.
12
society was one of the societies of ESC, or according to how the examined society is
perceived in the ESC research environment. Researchers might not think thoroughly about
indigenous rules and conditions that are valid in the examined society and fail to interpret
their results this way.
A worse situation might arise if the difference is not only in the possible interpretation
of results, but if there is a structural difference in the phenomenon examined between the
compared cultures. This situation is illustrated in Article 2 with the case of lexical hypothesis
research. The original lexical research was conducted in English. Adjectives that describe
personality were selected from the dictionary. A factor analysis showed which of these
adjectives are used together when describing a person. It was found that there are five factors
that represent all of these adjectives. A similar result was found in other languages. However,
when taking this research procedure from English to another language, it was assumed that
the target language had the same structure for the description of personality. In English,
perhaps, it is only vocabulary (or more narrowly - adjectives) which serves to describe
personality. But other languages might have different structures and there might be other parts
of the specific language – like some grammatical rules – that allows the description of
personality. If it is assumed that such language works in a similar way as English and the
adjective-examination research design is reused in the new language environment without the
consideration or the examination of other parts of the language, some part of the phenomenon
might remain hidden.
Such ignorance of the structural differences of the phenomena between the cultures
might diminish the cultural diversity of the issues studied by cross-cultural psychological
research. The article argues that a researcher who aims to study phenomenon already studied
in a different culture should not copy the research design from that culture, but that they
should introspectively examine whether the structure of the phenomenon is the same in the
culture where they aim to conduct the research. The cultural diversity of the phenomena
researched might increase if such introspective examination would become the standard part
of empirical articles.
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Article 3
Linkov, V. (2021). Research based on scientific realism should not make
preliminary assumptions about mathematical structure representing human behavior:
Cronbach and Gleser’s measure as an example. Theory & Psychology, 31(3), 465-470.
https://doi.org/10.1177/09593543211016082
Low cultural diversity in psychological research is supported by the widespread use of
quantitative research. As Franz (2022) shows, the necessary condition for quantitative
research design is to have a meaningful interpretation of what the numbers used in this design
actually mean in psychological reality. A large part of psychological research does not have
such a meaningful interpretation. And its absence allows to ignore that the number given to
the psychological attribute measured in two cultures could actually have different meanings in
both cultures. Because this difference is ignored, it hinders the research ability to illustrate
cultural diversity. Additionally, we cannot ignore the possibility that reality might not fit with
the concepts used in psychology, including their logical relationships to the quantitative
structure (Michell, 2022). The study of psychological phenomena should be separated from
the means used for their exploration (Uher, 2021). Article 3 describes that the selection of a
mathematical structure suitable to the capture of the phenomenon in question should be made
after understanding the phenomenon well enough (Franz, 2023) – such a selection of structure
cannot be made properly if the phenomenon is not yet understood. Other numerical
mathematical structures might be more suitable for the capture of psychological phenomena
and such structures (or qualitative research) might be more able to mirror cultural diversity. If
researchers apply a reflective approach to the methods used and employ quantification only
when it is really suitable (Tafreshi et al., 2016), it might support cultural diversity in research.
It is, therefore, important to show the low legitimacy of the quantitative base of culture
classifications in order to support a better assessment of the cultural differences by
psychological science. This is partially done in this journal article.
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Article 4
Linkov, V. (2014). Tokenism in psychology: Standing on the shoulders of small
boys. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 48 (2), 143-160.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-014-9266-23
As mentioned for Article 3 (see above), the usage of the quantitative approach in
psychology is questionable. Article 4 describes that this usage is, to a large extent, caused by a
phenomenon called tokenism. Tokenism is when someone who has a distinctive characteristic
related to some field – like being expert in statistics/numerical mathematics – is erroneously
considered to be expert in a much broader field (i.e., general mathematics). Psychologists
traditionally cooperate with numerical mathematicians and many psychologists are trained in
statistics. The whole community might consider these people to be mathematics experts and
consider them to be able to decide whether numbers are the best mathematical structure to
represent psychological phenomena. This might not be true, because most of the
psychologists who are expert in statistics probably do not have experience with, and probably
do not consider, other mathematical structures (called qualitative mathematics by Rudolph,
2013) to represent psychological phenomena.
The same logic applies to a token possessed by someone who originates in a specific
culture. Such a person might be considered to be knowledgeable about much larger sets of
cultures, like the whole region to which this culture belongs. The person does not need to
have good knowledge about other countries and cultures in this region. If this person is
considered an expert on the region due to this token and they are asked to design crosscultural
comparative research for this region, it might lead to the creation of a design that
portrays the region as sharing common psychological/cultural characteristics. Consequently,
the research might fail to show the actual cultural diversity in the region.
3
Article 4 was part of the collection of five articles for which the author received the Early Career Award from
the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology.
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Article 5
Linkov, V., & Lu, W.-L. (2017). I won't speak our language with you: English
privilege, English-speaking foreigner stereotype, and language ostracism in Taiwan.
Human Affairs: Postdisciplinary Humanities & Social Sciences Quarterly, 27(1), 22-29.
https://doi.org/10.1515/humaff-2017-0003
Foreign-looking people in Taiwan are addressed in English by the locals even if they
speak Mandarin and not English. As illustrated by qualitative interviews and discussed in
Article 5, this behavior might be caused by the higher prestige of the English language.
Speaking English means higher status and a person who speaks English might receive a better
reception by society.
This same logic might cause lower cultural diversity in the cross-cultural knowledge
of researchers in psychology. Because of the higher status of English-speaking and Englisheducated
researchers, the logical choice for students is to go to study to an ESC. The research
community then contains people who predominantly spend part of their life in an ESC and
who possess cross-cultural experience from this country, but who lack the cross-cultural
experience from other countries. In 2012, I examined where professors who taught at Korean
universities were educated. I found only four departments that provided information about the
education of their employees, which altogether employed 38 professors. Thirty-three were
foreign educated. Of those, 31 were educated in the United States, one in Australia, and one in
Germany. Having such limited cultural diversity in the cross-cultural experience in the whole
research community might influence the ability of the researchers to realize cross-cultural
differences that are different from those mainly applicable to the US and some other culture.
Limited diversity in cross-cultural experience might be the main factor influencing the
cultural diversity in cultural-comparative psychological research.
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Article 6
Linkov, V. (2014). Několik poznámek k vytváření interkulturních
psychologických výzkumů [Few notes on conducting cross-cultural comparison in
psychological research]. Psychologie a její kontexty, 5(2), 101-108.
https://psychkont.osu.cz/fulltext/2014/Linkov_2014_2.pdf
Article 6 aims to review problems that might come during preparations for crosscultural
research. First, the scales used in the research might not be designed for the
comparison of the specific societies, because they were developed for some other group of
people or for some larger human group that included the society in question (but not
specifically for that culture). As a result, these scales might measure something that does not
distinguish between the compared societies, or that might distinguish between them, but the
measured behavior might not have an important role in these societies. Second, cross-cultural
research is highly influenced by the people who conduct it. The researcher needs to cooperate
with colleagues from other countries and these colleagues might have their own political
preferences. Some governments might want to ignore the cultural specificity of indigenous
people and label them as the being the same as the majority population in order to enforce
national unity. For example, the operationalization of China/Chinese-ness as a single entity is
at odds with the ethnical and cultural diversity of China (Gao, 2022). Other governments
might consider some cultural groups to be inferior to the country’s majority group and not
want to bother about their cultural specificity. A foreign colleague might include these views
in their research and omit the collection of samples in such populations. It is the responsibility
of the cross-cultural researcher to check that this does not happen when acquiring other
countries’ samples for their research.
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Article 7
Linkov, V. (2017). Korejská domorodá psychologie: Přehled některých pojmů
[Korean indigenous psychology: A review of some concepts]. Človek a Spoločnosť, 20(2),
72-79. https://individualandsociety.org/storage/uploads/casopis/2017/2/korejska-
domoroda-psychologie-prehled-nekterych-po/150227154306-linkov-po.pdf
When psychological textbooks are translated into the local language they were usually
written in English. These textbooks provide the local environment with the terminology and
conceptualization of psychological knowledge that is common in ESCs. Terminologies that
are used in other cultures are not introduced in this way. Students are primed into the
conceptualization used in the English environment, which might be less sensitive to other
concepts. This might bring lesser cultural diversity to the cross-cultural research that they
conduct in their career. It might be useful if local-language texts introduced the concepts used
by various IPs so that students might be introduced to them as early as they are introduced to
the global/English concepts. This is the role of Article 7 for Korean indigenous psychology.
Article 7 summarizes the history of indigenous psychology and how the Korean IP
was developed. It reviews the most important terms used by the Korean IP. The main goal is
to increase the cultural diversity of the psychological terminology that is available for the
Czech language.
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Article 8
Linkov, V. (2019). Základní témata čínské původní psychologie [Basic themes of
Chinese indigenous psychology], Psychologie a její kontexty, 10(1), 3-16.
https://doi.org/10.15452/PsyX.2019.10.00014
Article 8 reviews the concepts and terminology used by Chinese indigenous
psychology. There are long excerpts, especially from the works of Kwang-Kuo Hwang, that
introduce the phenomena that he described. The article also introduces how Chinese
indigenous psychology came into existence and discusses whether something similar exists
for the European/Czech environment.
An important characteristic of this article is the change of the Czech term to denote
indigenous psychology. The earlier used term “domorodá psychologie“, which was used in
previous Czech works that mentioned indigenous psychology (including the Article 7) has a
derogatory connotation in Czech, so I used term „původní psychologie“.
A common feature of both Article 7 and Article 8 is that they do not refer to crosscultural
studies that compare indigenous concepts among Korean, Chinese, and Japanese
cultures. Despite the call for the comparison of indigenous phenomena (Yang, 2000) and
despite the existence of comparable phenomena (e.g., face) in all three cultures, no
comparative studies were done in the 2000s nor the 2010s. The diversity of culturalcomparative
psychological studies in East Asia could not be significantly improved without
the comparison of the indigenous phenomena.
4
Article 8 was part of a collection of five articles for which the author received the Early Career Award from the
International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology.
19
Article 9
Linkov, V., O’Doherty, K., Choi, E., & Han, G. (2021). Linguistic Diversity Index:
A Scientometric Measure to Enhance the Relevance of Small and Minority Group
Languages. SAGE Open, 11(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440211009191
Cultural diversity in psychological research is endangered by current research
evaluation measures. As Liu (2020) describes, local perspectives developed by IPs are
marginalized when research quality is evaluated by citations because locally-relevant
phenomena cannot compete with globally-relevant phenomena for widespread relevance and
large numbers of citations. If research evaluation measures to benefit cultural diversity are
employed, it might help the indigenous approaches to survive. Article 9 is an attempt to offer
such a measure. The main premise lies beyond the logic of the Linguistic Diversity Index
(LDI), which is introduced in this text and which holds that companies that produce
scientometric databases would not develop a new database or add a new database field just
for cultural-oriented research. Such a new measure should, therefore, use that information that
is already contained in scientometric databases. The only field in these databases that contains
information relevant to a researcher’s understanding of the local culture is “language of
publication”. LDI is, therefore, an attempt to develop a measure to benefit the understanding
of the local language/culture based on the field/column “language of publication” in the
scientometric databases. It is probably not a good measure, but information contained in the
current databases does not allow the development of something significantly better without
actually changing the databases or adding more information about each publication.
20
Conclusion
The articles collected for this habilitation thesis describe various issues that influence
the way that cross-cultural research is conducted and how culturally diverse the views it offers
really are. The quality of cross-cultural psychology depends on how diverse the cross-cultural
comparisons are conducted and whether cultures are compared to more than just a small set of
reference cultures (e.g., the US). We might suggest the following to increase the quality of
cross-cultural research: Research design is better when the researcher introspectively
evaluates whether the terminology and conceptualization borrowed from another culture
matches with the culture of interest (and not just copies and pastes the original
conceptualization). If this quantification is used, it is better to check whether the phenomenon
under investigation really fits the quantitative structure in all of the involved cultures. The
quality of research increases if the researcher checks that the scholars from whom they
acquire information really have knowledge about the culture of interest and not just about
another culture in the same region. The conceptualization of the research might be better if
scholars with diverse cultural and educational backgrounds are involved in the preparations,
rather than just scholars who are connected to cultural environments with the highest status in
the academic environment. Researchers should check whether the people with whom they
collaborate do not ignore some indigenous groups in their countries because their
governments had decided to deny them recognition as an independent culture. Various
indigenous concepts should enter the researcher’s consideration as early as the mainstream
concepts in order to deliver a better conceptualization of the phenomenon of interest. And
research results should be generalized only to the cultural group for which it is appropriate
and not to any other larger cultural group that contains the first one.
In my view, the most important issue that influences cultural diversity in
psychological research is whether it allows cultural-specific concepts and terminologies into
the international research arena. IPs, which create culturally specific terminologies and
descriptions of local psychological phenomena, are endangered if the quality of their research
is evaluated by the number of citations from around the globe (Liu, 2020). The phenomena
they describe is interesting only for the local scientific community and, if someone from the
other side of the globe wants to use information they offer, they need to be at least a little bit
familiar with that local culture. That takes time and not many researchers might be willing to
21
study another culture. As a result, the number of citations that indigenous researchers receive
internationally cannot compete with researchers who study phenomena that are relevant
everywhere around the globe. If countries where IPs are developed stop to reward their
activities, it might lead to less culturally diverse concepts and terminologies that are available
to international researchers. Solving the problem of how to reward indigenous research in an
environment that increasingly relies on international fame is crucial for the support of cultural
diversity in cross-cultural psychological research.
Author contributions to the included articles
[1 ] Linkov, V. (2013). Comparative psychological research in East Asia: An opportunity
for East Asian studies scholars. Vienna Journal of East Asian Studies, 4 (1), 51-65.
https://doi.org/10.2478/vjeas-2013-0003
Experimental work (%) Supervision (%) Manuscript (%) Research direction (%)
100 100 100 100
[2] Linkov, V. (2017). Psychology is not primarily empirical science: A comparison of
cultures in the lexical hypothesis tradition as a failure of introspection. Integrative
Psychological and Behavioral Science, 51(2), 285-302. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-016-
9375-1
Experimental work (%) Supervision (%) Manuscript (%) Research direction (%)
100 100 100 100
[3] Linkov, V. (2021). Research based on scientific realism should not make preliminary
assumptions about mathematical structure representing human behavior: Cronbach and
Gleser’s measure as an example. Theory & Psychology, 31(3), 465-470.
https://doi.org/10.1177/09593543211016082
Experimental work (%) Supervision (%) Manuscript (%) Research direction (%)
100 100 100 100
22
[4] Linkov, V. (2014). Tokenism in psychology: Standing on the shoulders of small boys.
Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 48 (2), 143-160.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-014-9266-2
Experimental work (%) Supervision (%) Manuscript (%) Research direction (%)
100 100 100 100
[5] Linkov, V., & Lu, W.-L. (2017). I won't speak our language with you: English privilege,
English-speaking foreigner stereotype, and language ostracism in Taiwan. Human Affairs:
Postdisciplinary Humanities & Social Sciences Quarterly, 27(1), 22-29.
https://doi.org/10.1515/humaff-2017-0003
Experimental work (%) Supervision (%) Manuscript (%) Research direction (%)
100 100 85 100
The first author conducted the planning for the study, the data acquisition, and the analysis,
and wrote the main body of the article, with the exception of a small part of the Introduction.
The second author wrote the small part of the Introduction and proofread the entire text.
[6] Linkov, V. (2014). Několik poznámek k vytváření interkulturních psychologických
výzkumů [Few notes on conducting cross-cultural comparison in psychological
research]. Psychologie a její kontexty, 5(2), 101-108.
https://psychkont.osu.cz/fulltext/2014/Linkov_2014_2.pdf
Experimental work (%) Supervision (%) Manuscript (%) Research direction (%)
100 100 100 100
[7] Linkov, V. (2017). Korejská domorodá psychologie: Přehled některých pojmů
[Korean indigenous psychology: A review of some concepts]. Človek a Spoločnosť, 20(2),
72-79. https://individualandsociety.org/storage/uploads/casopis/2017/2/korejska-
domoroda-psychologie-prehled-nekterych-po/150227154306-linkov-po.pdf
Experimental work (%) Supervision (%) Manuscript (%) Research direction (%)
100 100 100 100
23
[8] Linkov, V. (2019). Základní témata čínské původní psychologie [Basic themes of
Chinese indigenous psychology], Psychologie a její kontexty, 10(1), 3-16.
https://doi.org/10.15452/PsyX.2019.10.0001
Experimental work (%) Supervision (%) Manuscript (%) Research direction (%)
100 100 100 100
[9] Linkov, V., O’Doherty, K., Choi, E., & Han, G. (2021). Linguistic Diversity Index: A
Scientometric Measure to Enhance the Relevance of Small and Minority Group
Languages. SAGE Open, 11(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440211009191
Experimental work (%) Supervision (%) Manuscript (%) Research direction (%)
100 100 90 100
The first author presented the idea, developed the algorithm for the computation of the LDI
and the example in the article, created the conceptualization of the text, wrote the first version
of the manuscript, and participated in the manuscript rewriting and revisions. The second,
third, and fourth authors proofread the text and participated in the manuscript rewriting and
revisions.
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28
Articles included in this collection
Articles 1-5 are not included in the publicly
accessible version of this habilitation thesis, because
the publication rights belong to the respective
publishing houses.
Psychologie a její kontexty 5 (2), 2014, 101–108
____________________
*Korespondenční autor: Václav Linkov, Zahradníkova 26, Brno 60200, ČR
e–mail: vaclav.linkov@hotmail.com
Několik poznámek k vytváření interkulturních
psychologických výzkumů
Few notes on conducting cultural comparisons
in psychological research
Václav Linkov1
*
1
College of Social Sciences, National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan
_________________________________________________________________________________
Abstrakt
Článek shrnuje některé problémy současného interkulturního psychologického výzkumu.
Za prvé, používané konstrukty a metody často nedokážou říci nic podstatného o rozdílech
mezi dotčenými kulturami. Za druhé, skupiny (často původní obyvatelstvo), které nejsou
reprezentovány na univerzitách v dotčených zemích bývají z výzkumu vynechány. Za
třetí, výzkumníci často generalizují vytvořené pojmy a konstrukty na širší populace, než
se kterými mají zkušenost a jejichž kulturám rozumí. Za čtvrté, mnoho psychologických
časopisů publikujících interkulturní výzkumy tyto problémy ignoruje. Proto je
výzkumníkům připravujícím interkulturní výzkum doporučeno, aby ověřovali relevanci
konstruktů a metod publikovaných v psychologických časopisech z jiných zdrojů,
zejména se snažili výzkum konzultovat s lidmi, kteří rozdíly mezi příslušnými kulturami
znají a dokážou vhodnost daného konstruktu či metody pro jejich porovnání posoudit.
Klíčová slova: interkulturní psychologie, měření, sociální dimenze výzkumu
Abstract
Some problems of conducting cultural comparisons in psychological research are
mentioned. First, the constructs and methods used often don’t tell anything meaningful
about cultures in question – as if we used temperature (construct) and thermomether
(method) to compare water and nitrogen. Often, method developed to measure construct
meaningful in culture A (or construct meaningful for comparison between culture A and
other cultures) is used to compare cultures B and C. As a result, the used method might
measure something, which is relevant only for some of the compared cultures, or is not
meaningful for such cultural comparison at all – cultures B and C might look similar
when construct meaningful for description of difference between cultures A and D is
used. Second, groups not being represented in academia in countries in question (often
102 V. Linkov / Psychologie a její kontexty 5 (2), 2014, 101–108
indigenous groups in these countries) are often omitted from research. Researchers from
some countries might be motivated to don’t mention such groups in the published
research. Third, researchers often generalize developed constructs and results to larger
groups than they have actually knowledge and understanding about. Chauvinist idea that
one’s own culture is representative for geographically close cultures might be behind this
behavior as well as pragmatic idea that the research stating its results to be valid for larger
group of people has larger chance to be published. Fourth, constructs and methods
developed by these types of research are published in psychological journals, which
ignore these issues.
Before preparing a cultural–comparative research it is recommended to get good
knowledge about cultures in question and use this knowledge to judge meaningfulness of
constructs used in psychological research. If there are no meaningful constructs for
description of differences between cultures in question, it is better to develop a new
construct.
Keywords: cultural comparison in psychology, measuring, social dimension of research
__________________________________________________________________________________
Úvod
V československé psychologii byla otištěna výzva, aby čeští psychologové začali
produkovat více výzkumů zabývajících se mezikulturním psychologickým porovnáváním
(Klicperová–Baker, 2012). S možnou zvyšující se produkcí interkulturních výzkumů v ČR je
tak dobré připomenout skutečnosti, na které je při vytváření srovnávacích psychologických
výzkumů potřeba dávat pozor a které české texty zabývající se interkulturní psychologií často
explicitně nezmiňují (jako např. Průcha, 2003). V následujících odstavcích proto shrnu dva
hlavní zdroje nízké kvality interkulturních psychologických výzkumů, kterými je (pro
psychologii typická – viz Machado & Silva, 2007) nedostatečná evaluace toho, co je
měřeno/zkoumáno a kdo a kým je měřen/zkoumán.
Co a čím je měřeno
V interkulturní psychologii se to s používanými pojmy a jejich měřením často má jako
bychom chtěli měřit rozdíl mezi dvěma substancemi, o nichž bychom nevěděli, čím se liší, a
k dispozici bychom měli teploměr – rozhodli bychom se tedy měřit teplotu jakožto konstrukt
pro porovnání těchto substancí. Po naměření rozdílu bychom prohlásili, že tyto substance se
skutečně liší teplotou a začali bychom používat teploměr pro měření rozdílů mezi
substancemi i nadále. Pokud by však jedna substance byla voda a druhá dusík (uvedený
předtím do tekutého stavu kvůli ekvivalenci mezi měřenými substancemi), ke zjištění, že se
tyto substance liší tím, z čeho se skládají, bychom nikdy nedošli. Tímto způsobem se
postupuje u mnoha kvantitativních interkulturních výzkumů, protože přeložit a použít nějakou
metodu je jednodušší než přemýšlet, čím by se srovnávané kultury mohly lišit. Kulturní
V. Linkov / Psychologie a její kontexty 5 (2), 2014, 101–108 103
rozdíly zjištěné takovými metodami pak sice odpovídají nějakým reálným rozdílům mezi
dotčenými kulturami, nemusí však zdaleka jít o rozdíly podstatné či smysluplné.
Často jde o to, že je pro porovnávání použita metoda, která byla vyvinuta pro kulturní
prostředí A (případně porovnávání tohoto prostředí s nějakým jiným), a tato metoda je
upravena (většinou přeložena) pro porovnávání prostředí B s prostředím C. Stejně jako
sebelepší teploměr pro měření teploty vzduchu není vhodným nástrojem pro popis
podstatných rozdílů mezi vodou a dusíkem, protože teplota není vhodným konstruktem pro
tento účel, není ani sebelepší psychometrická metoda vyvinutá v určitém kulturním prostředí
či prostředích vhodným nástrojem pro popis rozdílů mezi jinými kulturními prostředími (a
stejně tak nemusí být pro tento účel vhodný konstrukt, který tato metoda měří). Tento často
používaný přístup pak vede k tomu, že komparativní psychologické výzkumy nejsou schopny
zachytit rozdíly mezi kulturami B a C, respektive tvrdí, že se dané kultury liší něčím, co je i
pro laika majícího zkušenost s oběma kulturními prostředími irelevantní. Je tedy třeba
zdůraznit, že počátkem interkulturního psychologického výzkumu založeného na
psychometrických metodách by mělo být zkoumání určitého fenoménu vyskytujícího se
v porovnávaných kulturách, formulace konstruktu vzniklého na základě znalosti tohoto
fenoménu a vyvinutí metody pro jeho měření – nikoliv použití sebekvalitnější psychometrické
metody vyvinuté jinde či pro jiný účel a očekávání, že konstrukt měřený touto metodou bude
schopen o rozdílu mezi danými kulturami něco smysluplného vypovědět.
Pravděpodobně žádný konstrukt není vhodný pro smysluplné porovnávání všech kultur.
Porovnávání může dát smysluplnou informaci pouze tam, kde v daných kulturách (nebo
alespoň v některé z nich) je podstatný ten fenomén, na jehož základě byl konstrukt v kultuře
či kulturách svého původu vytvořen. Příkladem konstruktu, který při použití pro porovnávání
některých kultur nemusí dávat žádnou smysluplnou informaci o rozdílu mezi těmito
kulturami, je dichotomie individualismus–kolektivismus. Tento konstrukt vznikl na základě
dotazníků vyplňovaných zaměstnanci IBM ve 40 zemích (Hofstede, 1980), v nichž byli
dotazováni na věci týkající se svého pracovního života. Byl však vytvořen pouze z pohledu
jednoho určitého kulturního prostředí – prostředí americké firmy (A) – a pokud je použit
k porovnávání nějakých prostředí B a C, nemusí o nich nic smysluplného vypovědět. To
ukázal výzkum Oyserman, Coon a Kemmelmeiera (2002), kdy různé asijské kultury
vycházely nebo nevycházely v porovnávání se severoamerickými kulturami jako
kolektivistické podle toho, jaké položky se do škály měřící kolektivismus přidaly, přičemž pro
každou kulturu šlo o jiné položky (viz podrobnější diskuse v Linkov, 2013). Tento konstrukt
tedy není pro porovnávání těchto kultur smysluplný a místo něj by bylo smysluplnější
používat několik jiných konstruktů vytvořených z položek, které jsou v jednotlivých kulturách
zodpovídány různě a mají tedy potenciál zprostředkovat informaci o rozdílu mezi nimi
(dichotomie individualismus–kolektivismus je založena na odpozorovaném fenoménu, kdy se
lidé vztahují ke skupině obsahující jednoho nebo více lidí; stejně významná by ale mohla být
např. dichotomie založená na fenoménu, kdy se lidé vztahují k menšímu počtu a mnoha lidem
– a kdyby byly položky v dotaznících IBM sestavovány a analyzovány z pozice, že podstatný
je takovýto protiklad, výsledný konstrukt by byl pravděpodobně pojmenován jinak a dokázal
by něco smysluplného vypovědět o rozdílech mezi jinými kulturami než o jakých to dokáže
vypovědět konstrukt vytvořený na základě dotazníků IBM).
104 V. Linkov / Psychologie a její kontexty 5 (2), 2014, 101–108
Pro mezikulturní porovnávání je vhodné vyjít z konstruktu, který je vytvořen či převzat
odjinud na základě poznání, že je schopen vypovědět něco podstatného o některé
z porovnávaných kultur (tím ovšem není zaručeno, že konstrukt bude schopen poskytnout
podstatnou informaci o obou/všech porovnávaných kulturách). Je tedy potřeba vyjít
z nějakého fenoménu, který se v jedné nebo v obou/všech porovnávaných kulturách vyskytuje
a zkonstruovat metodu, která umožní porovnat jeho existenci v jiných kulturách. Příkladem
takového použití je například výzkum Tafarodi, Shaugnessy, Lee, Leung, Ozaki, Morio a
Yamaguchi (2009). Autoři vyšli z čínské tendence ignorovat lidi, s nimiž člověk není
v žádném sociálním vztahu. Autoři vymysleli metodu, kdy nechali zkoumanou osobu nejprve
seřadit deset univerzálních hodnot podle důležitosti. Poté dali zkoumané osobě dvě podobná
pořadí – jedno stejné jako vyplnila ona sama, druhé přesně opačné, řekli jí, že pochází od
dvou lidí, a vyzvali ji, ať si vybere, s kterým z nich by chtěla žít. Poté zkoumané osobě řekli,
že se má dozvědět více o vybraném člověku, a ukázali jí tři sady slov ze „slovně asociačního
testu“, z nichž jedna údajně pocházela od vybraného člověka, druhá od nevybraného člověka
a třetí od nějakého dalšího člověka. Nakonec testovali, kolik slov z těchto tří sad si zkoumaná
osoba zapamatovala. Tuto metodu použili v Číně, Japonsku a Kanadě. V zapamatování
informací o vybraném člověku nebyl mezi těmito třemi kulturami rozdíl. Rozdíl byl ale
v zapamatování informací o dalších dvou lidech: Japonci si pamatovali více než Kanaďané a
Kanaďané více než Číňané.
Je třeba podotknout, že problém, zda konstrukt popisuje a metoda měří něco podstatného
pro porovnání dvou kultur, nemusí souviset s tím, zda jsou metoda či konstrukt vhodné pro
použití v obou kulturách či v jiných kulturách, než kde byly vyvínuty (tj. emic–etic debatou
v psychologii). V uvedeném příkladě je teploměr jistě vhodným nástrojem pro zjištění něčeho
podstatného o vodě i o dusíku – protože teplota je konstruktem, který nám něco smysluplného
na vodě i dusíku popíše. Nicméně to neznamená, že teploměr je vhodný pro zjištění něčeho
podstatného o rozdílu mezi vodou a dusíkem (dusík a voda se liší něčím podstatnějším, než je
teplota). Měření za účelem srovnání dvou kultur je něco jiného než měření v každé z těchto
kultur. Pro zjištění smysluplnosti určité metody pro porovnávání je tak nutné zvážit její
vhodnost z hlediska tohoto porovnávání, nikoliv pouze z hlediska obou či všech dotčených
kultur. Problém, zda metoda měří něco podstatného nebo smysluplného proto nesouvisí
s požadavkem její invariance u jednotlivých kultur (aby v jednotlivých kulturách měřila ten
stejný konstrukt – viz Cheung, de Vijver, & Leong, 2011, s. 594). To, že metoda měří stejný
konstrukt ve všech kulturách, neznamená, že měřit v nich tento konstrukt za účelem
porovnávání je smysluplné. Požadavek na invarianci metody je na místě pouze tehdy, pokud
lze danou metodou zjistit nějaké smysluplné rozdíly mezi objekty zkoumání – tedy kulturami.
Sebekorektnější způsob použití statistických metod sám o sobě smysluplnost výstupu nijak
nezaručuje (tu zaručuje pouze porozumění objektu zkoumání, které výzkumníkovi umožní
nezůstat při analýze na povrchu): „Uvědomte si, že pokud provedete faktorovou analýzu na
základě povrchových vlastností objektů, nikdy nedostanete něco jako tabulku prvků. Vyjdou
vám faktory jako barva, hustota a vzor na povrchu, které mohou být někdy užitečné, ale
neposkytnou vám uspokojivý vědecký systém.“ (Epstein, 2010, s. 38)
V. Linkov / Psychologie a její kontexty 5 (2), 2014, 101–108 105
Kdo a kým je měřen
Kdo je ve výzkumu prezentován jako reprezentant určité kultury či země často závisí na
tom, kdo zde pracuje na univerzitách. Například v Malajsii se vláda snaží postupně
pomalajšťovat původní nemalajské obyvatelstvo v provincii Sabah. Výzkumník z malajské
univerzity tak může prezentovat obyvatelstvo Malajsie jako skládající se z Malajců a
v posledních stoletích přistěhovalých Číňanů a Indů, přičemž původní nemalajské
obyvatelstvo zůstane vynecháno. Podobná situace jako v Malajsii existuje v mnoha zemích,
přičemž nemusí nesouviset s mírou politické svobody v dané zemi, ani tím, jak pozitivně je
daná země prezentována v médiích. Určité skupiny obyvatel (mnohdy původní obyvatelstvo
předurčené vládou k asimilaci a zániku) nejsou mezi výzkumníky na univerzítách
reprezentovány a tito výzkumníci nemusí mít zájem je zkoumat.
Kvalitu výzkumu ovlivňuje to, kdo na výzkumu spolupracuje. V předchozím odstavci jsem
popsal situaci, kdy je jako kultura určená ke zkoumání prezentovaná kultura lidí, kteří drží
moc v daném univerzitním/výzkumném prostředí a spolupracují na mezikulturních
srovnávacích výzkumech. Dále může nastat (dle mého názoru poměrně častá) situace, kdy se
člověk pocházející z určité kultury snaží prezentovat jako osoba mající znalosti o jiných
kulturách, které jsou k jeho domácí kultuře geograficky blízko (případně jsou klasifikovány
podobně dle nějaké psychometrické metody), i když s těmito kulturami nemá žádnou větší
zkušenost. Např. čínský psycholog, který v jiných oblastech východní Asie nikdy nebyl ani se
tam nedomluví, tak může tvrdit, že rozumí asijskému prostředí, a navrhovat tak do výzkumu
hypotézy a metody týkající se údajných asijských charakteristik. Takový postoj odpovídá
šovinismu považujícímu Čínu za předobraz ostatních asijských kultur – „čínocentrismu“
(Kim, 2009) – občas se vyskytujícímu v čínském akademickém prostředí (mnohé příklady
např. v Zadrapa & Pejčochová, 2009). Důvod prezentace vlastní kultury jako reprezentující
širší celek však nemusí být pouze šovinistický či politický, ale čistě pragmatický – prezentací
širší generalizace lze získat větší publicitu.
Kdo na výzkumu spolupracuje může ovlivnit i to, zda jsou členové výzkumného týmu
schopni poznat vhodnost či nevhodnost určitého konstruktu pro mezikulturní porovnávání.
V některých zemích je zvykem zaměstnávat na katedrách psychologie pouze lidi s určitou
interkulturní zkušeností – např. téměř všichni vyučující na katedře psychologie na Soulské
národní univerzitě (Seoul National University) vystudovali v USA. Korejský výzkumník
navrátivší se do rodné země po dlouhé době strávené v USA může přijmout „Asian
American“ identitu a vnímat kultury mající stejné „asijské“ označení jako podobné aniž
s nimi má osobní zkušenost (Linkov, 2014). Pokud se pak na výzkumu, v rámci nějž se
porovnávají dvě asijské kultury, podílí výzkumníci sdílející americkou interkulturní zkušenost
a s ní získanou „home–field disadvantage“ (Medin, Bennis, & Chandler, 2010) náhledu na
svět z amerického pohledu, může dojít k tomu, že je pro mezikulturní porovnávání vybrán
konstrukt, který pro porovnávání asijských kultur není smysluplný, protože nikdo ve
výzkumném týmu nemá zkušenost z obou porovnávaných kultur, která by mu umožnila
poznat nevhodnost tohoto konstruktu pro popis rozdílu mezi těmito kulturami.
106 V. Linkov / Psychologie a její kontexty 5 (2), 2014, 101–108
Co by měl psycholog připravující interkulturní výzkum zvážit
Psycholog připravující interkulturní výzkum by si měl uvědomil následující věci: 1. Pojmy
a metody, na kterých zvažuje svůj výzkum postavit, mohly vzniknout bez analýzy jejich
schopnosti říci něco podstatného o rozdílech mezi populacemi, které budou v připravovaném
výzkumu porovnávány (a autoři předchozích publikací používajících příslušný konstrukt či
metodu se o tom nezmiňují). 2. Publikované studie mohou obsahovat eticky sporná místa
ohledně toho, o kom se článek zmiňuje (a jejich autoři nemusí mít zájem o tom
spolupracujícího českého výzkumníka informovat) . 3. Autoři publikovaných studií nemusí
mít znalosti ani zkušenosti umožňující jim posoudit vhodnost jimi použitých pojmů a
konstruktů, stanovených hypotéz a publikovaných závěrů pro populace, na něž svůj výzkum
generalizují (a opět nemusí mít zájem to připustit).
Při plánování interkulturního psychologického výzkumu je třeba si uvědomit, že většina
psychologických časopisů publikující tyto výzkumy (např. Journal of Cross–Cultural
Psychology) uveřejňuje pouze kvantitativní empirické články´a metaanalýzy a kritickou
evaluací prezentovaných konceptů se nezabývá (analýza některých zde publikovaných
konstruktů je např. v Linkov, 2013). V podstatě jediná možnost, jak výše popsané problémy
odhalit a být schopen připravit kvalitní výzkum, je dostatečně dotčeným kulturám rozumět.
Psycholog připravující interkulturní výzkum by tak měl věnovat dostatečný čas (nejlépe
v řádu let) na seznámení s kulturou země/zemí (případně skupiny/skupin), o níž/nichž chce ve
svém výzkumu pojednávat. Alternativou pak může být spolupráce s odborníky z kateder
zabývajících se dotčenými kulturami (navržená v Linkov, 2013). Informace umožňující
posoudit kvalitu publikovaných interkulturních psychologických článků je také možné hledat
v časopisech zabývajících se analýzou toho, co je zkoumáno (např. Culture & Psychology,
který se však nezabývá analýzou konceptů vyprodukovaných kvantitativními studiemi),
případně je možné informace vyhledat na internetu. Je třeba zdůraznit, že při plánování
interkulturního výzkumu mohou mít psychologové tendenci schovávat se za „kolektivní
odpovědnost“ a legitimizovat svoje nedostatečné porozumění tématu odkazem na
spolupracující zahraniční kolegy nebo „zaručené“ metody. Ani jedno však nemusí být
zárukou kvalitního výzkumu, za který pak v důsledku nenese odpovědnost nikdo. Toto by si
měl psycholog připravující interkulturní výzkum uvědomit. Eticky a metodologicky sporné
části vytvářeného výzkumu pak nebudou vznikat díky nevědomosti, ale vědomým
rozhodnutím výzkumníka.
Závěr
V tomto textu jsem zmínil hlavní překážky, které psychologům brání ve vytváření
kvalitních mezikulturních srovnávacích výzkumů. Společným jmenovatelem popsaných
nešvarů je, že výzkum dělají psychologové s nedostatečnou znalostí obou (všech)
porovnávaných kultur, kteří nekriticky používají určitou psychometrickou metodu aniž by
přemýšleli (nebo byli schopni přemýšlet) nad její vhodností pro daný výzkum. Při uvažování
o vhodnosti dané metody pro porovnání dotčených kultur se pak spoléhají na spolupracující
V. Linkov / Psychologie a její kontexty 5 (2), 2014, 101–108 107
zahraniční kolegy (kteří ovšem o ostatních zkoumaných kulturách kromě své vlastní rovněž
nemusí nic vědět, a tudíž také spoléhají na znalosti spolupracujícího kolegy). Bez (skutečné)
kritické analýzy jsou pak přejímány i pojmy a „výsledky“ takovým způsobem vzniklé.
Porozumění rozdílům mezi kulturami je tacitní znalost a tu nelze získat odečítáním rozdílů
výsledků získaných psychometrickými metodami (Hwang, 2003) – proto je třeba oběma/všem
kulturám, které chce výzkum porovnávat, nejprve porozumět (např. s pomocí lidí, kteří tacitní
znalost o příslušných rozdílech mají) a teprve potom vybrat či vytvořit smysluplnou metodu
pro výzkum. Kultury se mohou v psychologickém výzkumu jevit jako „blízké“ jenom díky
tomu, že metody pro jejich měření byly vytvořeny na základě zkušeností z jiných kultur či
rozdílů mezi jinými kulturami než jaké jsou v publikovaném článku zkoumány. Zejména by
tak mělo být při promýšlení výzkumu zváženo, zda existující konstrukty, metody použité pro
výzkum a publikované výsledky jsou skutečně smysluplné v daném kulturním kontextu,
případně zda rozdíly mezi kulturami, které jsou popisovány na základě existujících konstruktů
jako podobné, nemohou být lépe popsány pomocí nových konstruktů vytvořených na základě
znalosti daných kulturních prostředí.
Věřím, že tento text přispěje k tomu, aby čeští psychologově při plánování interkulturního
výzkumu a spolupráce více přemýšleli o tom, co bude zkoumáno a s kým budou
spolupracovat, a vyprodukovali spíše méně, ale o to kvalitnějších výzkumů.
Literatura
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of personality in culture. American Psychologist, 66, 593–603.
Epstein, S. (2010). The big five model: Grandiose ideas about surface traits as the foundation of a
general theory of personality. Psychological Inquiry, 21, 34–39.
Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s consequences: International differences in work–related values.
Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Hwang, K. K. (2003). In search of a new paradigm for cultural psychology. Asian Journal of Social
Psychology, 6, 287–291.
Kim, M.S. (2009). Cultural bias in communication science: challenges of overcoming ethnocentric
paradigms in Asia. Asian Journal of Communication, 19, 412–421.
Klicperová–Baker, M. (2012). 21. kongres mezinárodní asociace pro kroskulturní psychologii
(IACCP). Československá psychologie, 56, 608–609.
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Psychological and Behavioral Science, 48(2), 143–160.
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Medin, D., Bennis, W., & Chandler, M. (2010). Culture and the Home–Field Disadvantage.
Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5, 708–713.
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93
A few notes on conducting cultural comparisons in
psychological research1
Václav Linkov*
College of Social Sciences, National Chengchi University, Taipei,
Taiwan
*Corresponding author: Václav Linkov, Zahradníkova 26, Brno 60200, Czech Republic, e–
mail: vaclav.linkov@hotmail.com
Abstrakt
Článek shrnuje některé problémy současného interkulturního psychologického
výzkumu. Za prvé, používané konstrukty a metody často nedokážou říci nic podstatného o
rozdílech mezi dotčenými kulturami. Za druhé, skupiny (často původní obyvatelstvo), které
nejsou reprezentovány na univerzitách v dotčených zemích bývají z výzkumu vynechány. Za
třetí, výzkumníci často generalizují vytvořené pojmy a konstrukty na širší populace, než se
kterými mají zkušenost a jejichž kulturám rozumí. Za čtvrté, mnoho psychologických
časopisů publikujících interkulturní výzkumy tyto problémy ignoruje. Proto je výzkumníkům
připravujícím interkulturní výzkum doporučeno, aby ověřovali relevanci konstruktů a metod
publikovaných v psychologických časopisech z jiných zdrojů, zejména se snažili výzkum
konzultovat s lidmi, kteří rozdíly mezi příslušnými kulturami znají a dokážou vhodnost
daného konstruktu či metody pro jejich porovnání posoudit.
1
This is the translation of an article that was originally published in Czech as:
Linkov, V. (2014). Několik poznámek k vytváření interkulturních psychologických
výzkumů [A few notes on conducting cross-cultural comparisons in psychological research].
Psychologie a její kontexty, 5(2), 101-108.
https://psychkont.osu.cz/fulltext/2014/Linkov_2014_2.pdf
94
Klíčová slova:
interkulturní psychologie, měření, sociální dimenze výzkumu
Abstract2
Some of the problems with conducting cultural comparisons in psychological research
are mentioned. First, the constructs and methods used often do not provide anything
meaningful about the cultures in question. This is similar to using temperature (i.e., a
construct) and a thermomether (i.e., a method) to compare water and nitrogen. Often, the
method is developed to measure the construct that is meaningful in Culture A (or a construct
that is meaningful for comparison between Culture A and other cultures), then it is used to
compare Cultures B and C. As a result, the used method might measure something that is
relevant only for some of the compared cultures or that is not meaningful for such a cultural
comparison at all – Cultures B and C might look similar when the construct is meaningful for
the description of differences between Cultures A and D is used. Second, the groups that are
not represented in academia in the countries in question (often indigenous groups in these
countries) are often omitted from research. Researchers from some countries might be
motivated to not mention such groups in their published research. Third, researchers often
generalize the developed constructs and results to larger groups about which they actually
have knowledge and understanding about. The chauvinist idea that one’s own culture is
representative for geographically close cultures might be behind this behavior, just as the
pragmatic idea that research that states its results to be valid for a larger group of people has a
larger chance to be published. And, fourth, the constructs and methods developed by these
types of research are published in psychological journals, which ignore these issues.
Before preparing cultural–comparative research it is recommended to get good
knowledge about the cultures in question and use this knowledge to judge the meaningfulness
of the constructs used in the psychological research. If there are no meaningful constructs for
2
The English abstract is longer than the Czech version because it was a requirement of the
journal.
95
the description of the differences between the cultures in question, it is better to develop a
new construct.
Keywords:
cultural comparison in psychology, measuring, social dimension of research
Introduction
The journal Československá psychologie (Czechoslovak Psychology) printed a
suggestion that Czech psychologists should publish more research that contains cross-cultural
comparisons (Klicperová–Baker, 2012). Because the amount of cross-cultural research in the
Czech Republic might increase, it is good to review some issues that are important to consider
during the preparation of cross-cultural research and that are not explicitly covered in Czech
publications about cross-cultural psychology (for example Průcha, 2003). In order to fulfill
this goal, I will show two main sources for the low quality of cross-cultural psychological
research. First, an insufficient evaluation of what is measured/researched (this is typical for
psychology – see Machado & Silva, 2007). And, second, an insufficient evaluation of who is
measured/researched and who is conducting this measurement/research.
What is measured and how
The terminology and measurement of the terms used in cross-cultural psychology
could often be illustrated by searching for the difference between two substances, about which
we will not have any information on how they might differ. We could have thermometer, so
we would use the thermometer to look for a difference. Then, if we find the difference in
96
temperature, we would say these substances are distinguishable from each other by
temperature and we will start to you use a thermometer to compare different substances.
However, if one substance is water and the other is similar-looking liquid nitrogen (being
transferred to fluid state before the measurement so that substances look equivalent), we will
never find that these substances differ in ways other than their chemical element. Such an
approach is used in many cross-cultural research projects, because translating and using a
method is easier than considering what might differentiate the cultures. Cultural differences
found by such methods correspond to some real differences. However, these differences do
not necessarily need to be substantial or meaningful.
The problem is often that the method used for comparison was developed for Cultural
Environment A (or to compare this environment with another environment) and this method is
adapted (usually translated) to make a comparison between Environment B and Environment
C. Even the best thermometer developed for measuring the air temperature would not be a
good tool to measure the substantial differences between water and nitrogen, because
temperature is not good construct for this purpose. Similarly, even the best psychometric
method developed in one cultural environment or environments is not a good instrument for
the description of substantial differences between two other cultural environments (and the
construct measured by this method does not need to be good for this purpose). This often-used
approach leads to the situation where comparative psychological research is often not able to
catch the differences between Cultural Environments B and C, or it says that these cultures
differ by something that looks irrelevant, even for a layperson with experience in both cultural
environments. It should be stressed that cross-cultural psychological research based on
psychometric methods should begin with the evaluation of the phenomenon that is present in
both cultures, the formulation of the construct as created on the basis of the knowledge of this
phenomenon, and finally the development of a method for the measurement of this construct.
It would be folly to use this psychometric method, which might have perfect quality but was
developed for another culture and another purpose, and expect that the construct measured by
this method might reveal anything meaningful about differences between the involved
cultures.
There is probably no construct that would be suitable for the comparison of all
cultures. The comparison might give meaningful information only in cases where the
phenomenon on which the construct was created in the original culture is substantial in the
compared cultures (or at least one of them). The dichotomy of individualism-collectivism
97
might serve as an example of the construct, which might give no meaningful information
about cultural differences when comparing certain cultures. This construct was created based
on the questionnaires filled out by IBM employees in 40 countries (Hofstede, 1980). They
were asked about issues related to their work life. However, it was created from the point of
view of one concrete cultural environment – the environment of the American company (A).
When used for the comparison of Cultural Environments B and C, it might provide no
meaningful information about them. This was shown by Oyserman, Coon, and Kemmelmeier
(2002), who pointed out that various Asian cultures were found to be collectivistic in
comparison with North American cultures based on the items that were included in the
collectivism scale used in the research – and there were different items in each culture (see
more thorough discussion in Linkov, 2013). This construct is, therefore, not meaningful for a
comparison of Asian cultures. It would be more meaningful to use several different constructs
created from items that are answered differently in different cultures and, therefore, have the
potential to reveal information about the differences between these cultures (i.e., the
individualism-collectivism dichotomy is based on the observed phenomenon that people
relate themselves either to a group with one or a group with more people; of similar
importance might be the dichotomy based on the phenomenon that people relate themselves
either to a group with a small number of people or a group with a large number of people –
and if the items in the IBM questionnaires were created and analyzed from the point of view
that such a dichotomy was important, the resulting construct would have probably had a
different name and would be able to tell something meaningful about the differences between
the different cultures than about the cultures for which the construct was created based on the
IBM questionnaires).
When conducting cross-cultural comparisons, it is better to start from a construct that
is created or borrowed based on the understanding that it can tell something meaningful about
one of the compared cultures (however, this does not guarantee that it can provide meaningful
information about both/all compared cultures). It is necessary to start from some phenomenon
that exists in one or both/all of the compared cultures, and construct a method that would
allow for the comparison of its existence in other cultures. An example of such an approach is
the research conducted by Tafarodi et al. (2009). The authors started with the Chinese
tendency to ignore people with whom they have no social ties. The authors created a method
where they first allowed the investigated person to order 10 universal values according to
their importance. Then they showed the person two other orders – one was the same as this
98
person just had provided, and the other was exactly the opposite. They told the person that
these orders were created by two other people and asked them to choose with whom they
wanted to live. After that, the examined person was told that they should learn more about the
selected person. They showed the examined person three sets of answers from a verbal
“association test” – the first set was allegedly from the selected person, the second was from
the non-selected person, and the third was from someone different. Finally, they tested how
many words from these three sets the examined person was able to recall. This method was
used in China, Japan, and Canada. There was no difference in the information recall about the
selected person between these three cultures. However, there was difference in the recall of
information about the two other people: The Japanese recalled more than the Canadians and
the Canadians more than the Chinese.
It is necessary to note that the problem, whether a construct that describes or a method
the measures, has something substantial for comparison between the two cultures that does
not need to be connected to whether the method or construct is suitable for usage in both
cultures or cultures other than those for which it was developed (in other words, with the
emic-etic debate in psychology). In the thermometer example at the beginning of this section,
the thermometer is certainly a good tool for getting substantial information about water and
nitrogen, because temperature is a construct that is able to describe something meaningful
about both. However, that does not mean that the thermometer is suitable for realizing
something substantial about the difference between water and nitrogen (i.e., water and
nitrogen differ in more substantial ways). Measuring the difference between two cultures is
something different than measurements conducted in each of the cultures. When assessing the
meaningfulness of the method for comparison, it is necessary to consider whether it is suitable
for this comparison, not only whether it is suitable for measuring both or all of the considered
cultures. The problem about whether a method measures something important or meaningful,
therefore, is not related to the requirement of measurement invariance in the different cultures
(i.e., to measure the same construct in all cultures – see Cheung, de Vijver, & Leong, 2011, s.
594). The fact that the method measures the same construct in all cultures does not mean that
it is meaningful for comparison of these cultures. The method invariance requirement is
useful only in cases where the method is able to reveal some meaningful differences between
the objects of investigation, in this case, cultures. Even the most correct application of
statistical methods does not guarantee that the result will be meaningful (this is guaranteed
99
only by understanding the object of investigation, which allows the researcher to analyze
more than just the surface level):
“Note that if you factor analyzed the surface descriptions of objects, you would never
get anything like an atomic chart. You would get factors such as color, density, and
texture, which might be useful for some purposes but would hardly provide a
satisfactory scientific system.” (Epstein, 2010:38)
Who is measured and by whom
Who is presented as a representative for a culture in some research often depends on
who works at the universities in that country. For example, the Malaysian government tries to
make Malays from the non-Malay indigenous population in the Sabah province. A researcher
from a Malaysian university might present the population of Malaysia as composed from
Malays and descendants of Chinese and Indian immigrants, with indigenous non-Malay
people omitted. A similar situation exists in many countries and it is not necessarily connected
to the amount of political freedom in the country or its positive image in the media. Certain
groups of people (often indigenous tribes predestined by government to be assimilated and
cease to exist) are not represented in the population by researchers at universities. Researchers
of other ethnicities might be not motivated to study them.
Research quality is influenced by who cooperates. In the previous paragraph, I
described a situation where the culture of people who hold power at a university (or research
environment) and who collaborate in international research is the one that is selected as the
culture to be researched. Another situation might arise (in my opinion quite often) where a
person who is raised in some culture tries to be considered as a person with knowledge of
other cultures that are geographically close to their actual home culture (or which are
similarly classified according to some psychometric method) even if they do not have
experience with these other cultures. For example, a Chinese psychologist who has never been
to other areas of East Asia and who does not understand their languages, might claim that they
understand the Asian environment and suggest hypotheses and methods with regards to
alleged Asian characteristics. Such an approach is consistent with chauvinism that considers
China to be an archetype of other Asian cultures – “Chinacentrism” (Kim, 2009) – which is
100
sometimes present in the Chinese academic environment (many examples could be found in
Zadrapa & Pejčochová, 2009). The reason one’s own culture is presented as representative of
a larger group or community might not only be chauvinist or political, but also pragmatic in
order to present a larger generalizability to attract more publicity.
Who is represented in the research team might influence the team’s ability to
recognize whether some construct is or is not suitable for cross-cultural comparison. It is
common to employ people with only certain cross-cultural experiences at departments of
psychology in some countries (e.g., almost all of the professors at the Department of
Psychology of Seoul National University have degrees from the United States). A Korean
researcher who returns home after a long time spent in the US might accept the “Asian
American” identity and perceive cultures as having the same “Asian” label and being similar
to each other without actually having personal experience with those cultures (Linkov, 2014).
If researchers who share the American cross-cultural experience cooperate in research that
compares two Asian cultures, they might have acquired the same „home–field
disadvantage“ (Medin, Bennis, & Chandler, 2010) of perceiving the world from the American
point of view. This might lead to the selection of a construct that is not meaningful for the
comparison of Asian cultures, because no one on the research team has experience with both
compared cultures — such experience would allow them to realize that such a construct is not
suitable for the description of the differences between both cultures.
What a psychologist preparing cross-cultural research should
consider
Psychologists who prepare cross-cultural research should realize the following: 1. The
terms and methods that they consider to base their research on could originally have been
developed without analyzing whether they are able to say something substantial about the
differences between the populations, which would be compared in the prepared research (and
the authors of previous publications employing this construct would not have mentioned this).
2. Published studies might contain ethically challengeable parts with regards to whom (which
groups) they refer (and their authors might not be interested to share information with a Czech
101
researcher). 3. The authors of published studies might not have the knowledge and experience
to allow them to assess whether the terms, constructs, and hypotheses they use, or the results
they publish, are suitable for the populations for which they aim to generalize the results (and
they might not be interested to make this admission).
When planning cross-cultural psychological research, it is necessary to realize that the
majority of psychological journals that publish such research (e.g., Journal of Cross-Cultural
Psychology) publish only quantitative empirical articles and meta-analyses and they do not
bother about the critical evaluation of the used concepts (see Linkov, 2013). In principle, the
only option to realize the problems that are described above and to prepare good quality
research is a solid understanding of the cultures in question. A psychologist who is preparing
cross-cultural research should spend enough time (years, if possible) to familiarize themself
with the cultures of country/countries (or group/groups) in which they want to conduct their
research. An alternative might be cooperation with scholars from departments that specialize
in these cultures (recommended in Linkov, 2013). Information that allows the assessment of
the quality of published cross-cultural psychology articles might be found in journals that are
interested in the analyses of what is being researched (e.g., Culture & Psychology, although it
does not publish analyses of quantitative concepts) or it is possible to search the internet. It is
important to point out that psychologists who plan cross-cultural research might justify their
approach by “collective responsibility” and legitimize their insufficient understanding of the
themes in question by references to foreign colleagues or “guaranteed” methods.
Nevertheless, this might not guarantee good quality research. Psychologists preparing crosscultural
research should realize this. If they do this, the ethically and methodologically
controversial parts of research would not result from ignorance, but rather from the conscious
decision of the researcher.
Conclusion
I noted the main obstacles that prevent psychologists from the creation of good crosscultural
comparative research. The common denominator for all of the mentioned problems is
that the research is conducted by psychologists without sufficient knowledge of both (all) of
102
the compared cultures, who use a psychometric method without thoroughly contemplating its
suitability. When considering whether a method is suitable for the comparison of their
cultures of interest, they might rely on foreign colleagues with whom they cooperate (but who
might know nothing about cultures other than their own and rely on cooperating colleagues).
Subsequently, terms and “results” created in this way are accepted without (real) critical
analysis.
Understanding the differences between cultures is tacit knowledge that cannot be
gained by reading about the differences between the results obtained by different
psychometric methods (Hwang, 2003). It is necessary to first understand both/all of the
cultures which are compared (e.g., with the help of people who already have tacit knowledge
about these differences) – and, after that, select or create a meaningful method for the
research. Cultures might appear as “close” to each other in a psychological article only
because the methods for their measurement were created based on insufficient knowledge
about other cultures or about the differences of the cultures other than those which are
assessed in that specific article. When hesitating about the planned research, considerations
should be made that the existing constructs, the methods used in the research, and the
published results are really meaningful for that specific cultural context, or whether the
differences between the cultures described as similar are based on existing constructs that
might not be described better when using new constructs that were created using a more
thorough understanding of the cultural environments in question.
I hope this text might help Czech psychologists who plan cross-cultural research and
cooperation such that they will more often think about what will be researched and with
whom they will cooperate so that they will create work that may be less in quantity but higher
in quality.
References
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the study of personality in culture. American Psychologist, 66, 593–603.
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Epstein, S. (2010). The big five model: Grandiose ideas about surface traits as the foundation
of a general theory of personality. Psychological Inquiry, 21, 34–39.
Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s consequences: International differences in work–related
values. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Hwang, K. K. (2003). In search of a new paradigm for cultural psychology. Asian Journal of
Social Psychology, 6, 287–291.
Kim, M.S. (2009). Cultural bias in communication science: challenges of overcoming
ethnocentric paradigms in Asia. Asian Journal of Communication, 19, 412–421.
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(IACCP) [21st
congress of the International Association for Cross-Cultural
Psychology]. Československá psychologie, 56, 608–609.
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Asian studies scholars. Vienna Journal of East Asian Studies, 4(1), 51–65.
Linkov, V. (2014). Tokenism in psychology: Standing on the shoulders of small boys.
Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 48(2), 143–160.
Machado, A., & Silva, F. J. (2007). Toward a richer view of the scientific method. The role of
conceptual analysis. American Psychologist, 62, 671–681.
Medin, D., Bennis, W., & Chandler, M. (2010). Culture and the Home–Field Disadvantage.
Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5, 708–713.
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Collectivism: Evaluation of Theoretical Assumptions and Meta–Analyses.
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[Cross-Cultural Psychology: Relevant sources of information and themes of research].
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H., & Yamaguchi, S. (2009). Disregard for Outsiders: A Cultural Comparison. Journal
of Cross–Cultural Psychology, 40, 567–583.
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72
Korejská domorodá psychologie: Přehled některých pojmů
Václav Linkov, Centrum dopravního výzkumu, v.v.i., Brno, vaclav.linkov@hotmail.com
LINKOV, Václav. Korean Indigenous Psychology: Summary of Some Terms. Človek a
spoločnosť, 2017, roč. 20, č. 2, s. 72-79.
Abstract:
Article reviews some terms used in Korean indigenous psychology. First are described indigenous psychologies
and their goals. Then are described Korean terms jeong, woori, han,hwabyung,shimcheong, noonchia chemyon.
Indigenous psychology is psychology adapted into specific cultural environment. Such psychologies evolved as
reaction to American psychology since 1960s.Indigenous psychologies aimto create specific psychology forevery
society with specific population. It is assumed that after this is accomplished a more just global psychology will
be created. When indigenous psychology studies local environment, it may adapt two strategies. It might either
study local specifics of phenomena studied by global psychology, or it might study local phenomena only. In
Korea, the latter approach was employed by Sang-Chin Choi and his colleagues. They studied following
phenomena: Jeong is feeling of attachment to other people. Person feeling jeong to other person is emphatic to
him or her, interested in the other’s feelings and tries to support the other. It is independent of likeability of the
other person.Woori is feeling of we-ness,whose members do not distinguish between self and others. People in a
woori collective are connected by jeong.The strong jeong is the strong is feeling of we-ness.This feeling is created
by continuous showing of interest in other in form of giving favors to him or her. Han is feeling of accumulated
suppressed anger.Korean society doesn’t tolerate people to show their anger, because it might harm relationships
with others. So they accumulate this feeling in their heart and try to relieve it by various activities. If relief is not
successful,han might evolve into hwabyung.Hwabyung is indigenous Korean psychiatric syndrome. Person wit h
hwabyung is angry and feel that society is unjust.This feeling evolves when person is repeatedly exposed to unfair
situations, where he or she cannot get better treatment because of society restraints which don’t allow to show
anger explicitly. Person feels hatred, depression and guilt. Hwabyung syndrome involves insomnia, anorexia,
problems with breath, dry mouth and similar symptoms. Hwabyung is a way how person can justify being relieved
from social roles in Korean society. Shimcheong is affect which comes when other person in woori collective
shows jeong to insufficient (or over-sufficient) extent. If person does something, which harms the other, it shows
that he or she might not feel jeong towards this other person. The second person might have their shimcheong
activated. In the state of shimcheong person analyzes all previous interactions with person who have shown
insufficient jeong. He or she also analyzes future expectations from the relationship with the other person. The
analysis of the relationship finally results in its confirmation, change or termination. Noonchi is a state, when
person carefully watches other people. The person can assess appropriately real feelings and wishes of the other
person regardless ofwhat the other person actually says ordoes.Noonchihelps to maintain socialharmony. Person
might behave according to social conventions even if he or she wishes otherwise, but because ofthe otherpeople’s
noonchi he or she might receive the feedback he or she desires. Chemyon (social face) is how person presents
himself or herself towards other people. To save one’s face means to satisfy expectations of otherpeople in certain
situation.For Koreans it is important to actively maintain one’s face by showing signs connected with social status.
High social status is viewed as connected with high moral qualities, so people with high social status have to
maintain saving their faces to a greater extent. Korean indigenous psychology might be considered weaker in
comparison with otherindigenous psychologies,nevertheless it made very good job in conceptualization of some
aspects of Korean behaviour.
Key words:
Indigenous psychology. Korea. Face. Shimcheong.
Individual and Society, 2017, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 72-79.
Korejská domorodá psychologie: Přehled některých pojmů
73
V tomto článku budou popsány některé pojmy korejské domorodé psychologie (indigenous
psychology). České publikace o interkulturní psychologii (Průcha, 2010; Čeněk, Smolík a
Vykoukalová, 2016) pojmy a koncepty studované domorodými psychologiemi obsahují pouze
okrajově nebo vůbec. Tento článek si klade za cíl tento dluh částečně – co se týče korejské
domorodé psychologie – napravit. V textu se nejprve dotknu domorodé psychologie (DP)
obecně a poté se budu věnovat popisu vybraných pojmů korejské DP: jeong, woori, han,
hwabyung, shimcheong, noonchi a chemyon. Tyto pojmy uvádím v anglické transkripci
používané citovanými autory,1 při popisu daného pojmu uvádím v závorce původní korejské
slovo a českou transkripci, pokud se liší od anglické.
Domorodá psychologie
Domorodá psychologie je „psychologie, která byla částečně vypůjčena ze Západu a poté
transformována na psychologii přizpůsobenou potřebám určité kultury/země“ (Jahoda, 2016,
172). Domorodé psychologie začaly vznikat v sedmdesátých letech na Filipínách a na Taiwanu
odkud se pak šířily do dalších zemí (Jahoda, 2016). Východoasijské domorodé psychologie se
vyvíjely jako reakce na psychologii americkou. Jejich zakladatelé měli vzdělání a zahraniční
kulturní zkušenost především z USA a dalších anglicky mluvících zemí, zavádění západní
psychologie ve svých zemích ovšem považovali za akademický a kulturní kolonialismus
(Hwang, 2005). Proto je v jejich publikacích obsažen okcidentalistický pohled na „západní“
kultury. Zakladatel DP na Taiwanu Kuo-Shu Yang (2012) považuje za první DP evropskou
psychologii v 19. století, přičemž Evropu, případně euroamerickou civilizaci, chápe jako jednu
kulturní entitu. Tato DP byla spolu s psychologiemi anglicky mluvících zemí exportována do
nezápadních zemí, v nichž začala být praktikována psychology, kteří často vystudovali na
západě (v případě východoasijských zemí zejména v Americe). Tito psychologové jsou
limitováni tím, že svým výzkumem navazují na „západní“ psychologii, takže již nemohou
vytvořit nezávislou DP. Yang proto jimi vytvářené psychologie nazývá zdomorodněné
(indigenized). Tyto psychologie jsou postaveny na co největší nezávislosti svého poznání na
cizích psychologiích a jejich pojmech a kompatibilitě nově vytvářené psychologie s místním
prostředím. Podobně jako Jahoda (2016) nebudu dále rozlišovat mezi pojmy domorodá a
zdomorodněná psychologie.
Cílem domorodých psychologií je podle Yanga (2000) „vytvořit zvláštní domorodou
psychologii pro každou společnost s danou populací nebo odlišnou kulturou. Poté bude možné
vzít tento specifický systém znalostí a výsledky s ním spojeného výzkumu a použít je k vytvoření
domorodých psychologií čím dál větších populací definovaných s pomocí regionálních,
národních, etnických, lingvistických a zeměpisných souvislostí. Nakonec bude integrací
domorodých psychologií na nižších úrovních vytvořena nejvyšší domorodá psychologie,
univerzální, nebo přesněji řečeno globální, psychologie pro všechny lidské bytosti na zemi.“ (s.
246)
Jak konstatuje Jahoda (2016), tento cíl se domorodým psychologiím nedaří plnit. Z těch, které
analyzoval, nemůže být žádná „označena jako domorodá psychologie ve smyslu koherentního
systému znalostí“ (s. 172). Domorodé psychologie vytvořily pouze teorie pro specifické
fenomény existující v příslušných kulturách. Jednou z těchto psychologií je korejská DP, jíž
zkoumané některé fenomény budou popsány dále v textu.
1 Používané romanizace korejštiny se v průběhu posledních desetiletí měnily. Pokud je používáno více verzí,
uvádím tu, která je použita v článcích, ze kterých čerpám.
Individual and Society, 2017, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 72-79.
Korejská domorodá psychologie: Přehled některých pojmů
74
DP může být vytvářena dvěma způsoby: buďto jako empirické zkoumání domorodých
konceptů, které jsou specifické v dané kultuře, nebo jako zkoumání fenoménů a konceptů
vyskytujících se v globální psychologii a hledání jejich místních specifik (Kim, Park, Park,
1999). V tomto textu je zahrnut první typ korejské DP, která se snaží o popis domorodých
konceptů, DP zkoumající globálně se vyskytující fenomény zde zahrnuta není. Korejská DP je
oproti jiným asijským zemím slabší. „Kolonizace“ korejského akademického prostředí je
silnější, na prestižních korejských univerzitách učí a dělají výzkum téměř jenom lidé
vystudovaní v USA. To přispívá k tomu, že se zde výzkumníci více orientují na koncepty
vyskytující se v globální psychologii.
Korejskou DP založenou na místních konceptech se pokusil vytvořit Sang-Chin Choi (1940 –
2011), který ji kromě řady článků shrnul v posmrtně vydané knize Psychologie Korejců (Choi,
2011). Na něj navazují někteří jeho žáci. Svůj přístup k psychologickému výzkumu týkající se
kultur a jejich porovnávání – tzv. „komparativní kulturní psychologii“ – popisují Choi a Han
(2000). Odmítají přístup interkulturní psychologie (cross-cultural psychology), která
psychologické fenomény fragmentuje na z kontextu vytržené konstrukty, které pak porovnává
v navzájem obtížně porovnatelných kulturních prostředích. Takový přístup považují za
porovnávání jablek s pomeranči. Místo toho by se každý výzkumník měl nejprve snažit rozumět
vlastní kultuře a na základě zde se vyskytujících fenoménů vytvořit vlastní koncepty. Koncepty,
které jsou v korejské psychologii podobné konceptům v japonské a čínské psychologii, by měly
porovnány nejprve s nimi. Teprve na základě takového porovnání vzniklý širší koncept může
být porovnáván s případnými souvisejícími koncepty západní psychologie (Choi a Han, 2000).
V souladu s tímto programem se Choi se spoluautory snažil popisovat psychologické fenomény
vyskytující se v korejské kultuře. Některé koncepty, které popsal, jsou shrnuty v následujícím
přehledu.
Pojmy korejské domorodé psychologie
Jeong
Jeong (정, čong, rovněž používána romanizace cheong) je pocit připoutání k dalším lidem.
Tento pocit je tím, co vytváří woori. Ve stavu jeong je člověk vůči druhému empatický, zajímá
se o něj, podporuje ho a pomáhá mu (Choi, Han, 2008). Jeong se vyznačuje pocitem mizejících
hranic mezi já a dalšími lidmi. Člověk sám cítí emoce druhého člověka. Jeong existuje bez
ohledu na to, zda druhého má rád nebo ne a zda má ze vztahu prospěch (Yang, 2006).
Woori
Woori (우리, uri), doslovně „my“, je skupina, v níž jednotlivci neoddělují sebe a ostatní. Její
členové jsou navzájem spojeni pomocí pocitu jeong. Woori se vyznačuje bezpodmínečným
přátelstvím, altruismem, vzájemným připoutáním a upřednostňováním jeho členů oproti
ostatním. Čím silnější je jeong, tím silnější je pocit „my“ (Yang, 2006). Pocit woori a vzájemné
důvěry se vytváří vzájemnými opakovanými projevy zájmu a péče (마음, maum). Slova a dárky
zde nejsou důležité tím, že byly darovány, ale tím, že vyjadřují péči o druhého. Protože je těžké
odhadnout, jaký projev péče bude považován za dostatečný, Korejci často vybírají drahé dárky
nebo druhému věnují celý den, aby jej někam dovezli autem. Zájem pečovat o druhého je
nejvíce vidět, pokud péče vyžaduje hodně času, peněz a dalších zdrojů. Výměnou projevů péče
se po čase vytvoří citová vazba jeong (Han, Choi, 2011).
Individual and Society, 2017, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 72-79.
Korejská domorodá psychologie: Přehled některých pojmů
75
Han
Han (한) je stav potlačeného a nahromaděného vzteku – směs patosu, smutku a pocitů ztráty a
nespravedlnosti. První reakcí na událost je vztek a touha po odplatě. Tento vztek je ale vzhledem
ke korejské tendenci nenarušovat vztahy projevy emocí nutno potlačit. Nastupuje tedy fáze
smutku a bezmoci. Ta přejde v přemýšlení o tom, proč daná situace nastala. Nakonec člověk
han vstřebá a je schopen o něm mluvit. Nahromaděný vztek je třeba uvolnit, což se často děje
pomocí různých kreativních činností (Jeong, 2015:4). Pocit han je možno uvolnit také
mluvením, příjemnými aktivitami, případně dlouhodobě tím, že se dostaví nějaký úspěch. Např.
matka, která byla v manželově rodině trvale ponižována, uvolní han nashromážděný během
svého života tím, že její dítě má úspěšnou kariéru. Han je možno uvolnit také usilovnou prací.
Han pociťovaný Korejci kvůli historickému utlačování korejského národa je považován za
jednu z příčin tvrdé práce vedoucí ke korejskému ekonomickému úspěchu (Min, 2009). Pocit
potlačeného vzteku může přerůst v typicky korejský syndrom – hwabyung.
Hwabyung
Hwabyung (화병, hwabjong) je patologická forma pocitu han. Hwabyung znamená nemoc ze
vzteku (doslova „ohnivá nemoc“). Pacienti mají pocit vzteku a toho, že je nespravedlivá
společnost nenechá dělat, co by chtěli, a nejsou schopni tento problém překonat. Tento pocit
vzniká po opakujícím vystavení nespravedlivým sociálním situacím, jako např. při
dlouhodobých rodinných konfliktech. Jedinec si myslí, že je cílem trvalé agrese ze strany
společnosti a ostatních. Svůj vztek ale nesmí dát najevo a dlouhodobě jej potlačuje, takže se v
něm kumuluje. To v něm vyvolává nenávist a pocity viny, úzkosti a deprese. V chování se
hwabyung projevuje pláčem, vzdycháním, upovídaností a nucením otevírat dveře a utíkat z
uzavřených situací. Postižení mají pocit tepla a vyhýbají se teplým místům, pocit bušení srdce,
problémů s dýcháním, tlaku na hrudi a sucha v ústech. Trpí nespavostí a anorexií. Pacienti
neustále mluví o tom, jak trpí, přičemž slzí a vzdychají. Hwabyung je způsobem, jak lidé dávají
najevo, že trpí, a umožňuje jim získat důvod pro vyvázání se ze svých sociálních rolí. Jde o
chronickou nemoc. V roce 1990 mělo hwabyung přes 4% Korejců na venkově (Min, 2009).
Shimcheong
Shimcheong (심정, šimčong) je stav afektu, který nastane, pokud ostatní lidé projeví jeong
neadekvátně: buďto méně, než by měli, nebo naopak více. Pokud jej projeví méně a ukazují
tak, že jim na člověku nezáleží, je tím zpochybněna jejich důvěryhodnost a jedinec se musí
zamyslet nad tím, proč se tak stalo a zda člověku, který neprojevil jeong, dále důvěřovat (Choi,
Han, 2008). Choi a Kim (2006) ilustrují shimcheong následovně:
„Na olympiádě v Soulu 88 korejský závodník reagoval na neférové rozhodnutí tak, že po
vyhlášení výsledku odmítl odejít z ringu. To způsobilo zdržení ve zbývajícím programu dne.
Většina západních médií kritizovala jeho chování jako nesprávné. Korejci naopak vyjadřovali
soucit s boxerem. Titulky korejských novin byly následující: 'Nefér rozhodnutí donutilo
korejského boxera sedět na zemi', 'Boxerovo chování je pochopitelné' nebo 'Korejci sdílí
boxerův shimcheong'“ (s. 359)
Shimcheong se projevuje ve vztazích, kde alespoň jeden člověk daný vztah chápe jako woori.
Vztahy s neznámými lidmi jsou postaveny na racionalitě a jeong od ostatních se v nich
neočekává (Choi, Han, 2008). Ve vztahu, který je oběma (či více) účastníky chápán jako woori,
se očekává, že tito účastníci budou brát ohled na potřeby ostatních jakožto projev jeong. Pokud
tak neučiní a udělají něco, co člověka ve woori poškodí, aktivuje to u tohoto člověka
Individual and Society, 2017, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 72-79.
Korejská domorodá psychologie: Přehled některých pojmů
76
shimcheong. V tomto stavu afektu analyzuje všechny minulé a současné interakce a budoucí
očekávání od vztahu s druhým, který neprojevil jeong. Afekt shimcheong se po nějakém čase
uklidní a jeho výsledkem je potvrzení, přehodnocení nebo ukončení vztahu. Úroveň vztahu
variuje na škále mezi úplnou vzájemností woori a vztahem neznámých lidí, shimcheong může
vést ke změně této úrovně. Osoba, kvůli které shimcheong nastal, o tom vůbec nemusí vědět –
nemusí svoji (ne)aktivitu považovat za důležitou nebo daný vztah nemusí považovat za woori.
Shimcheong může být i pozitivní, pokud osoba ve vztahu woori udělá pro druhého více, než
očekával.
Při shimcheongu vyvolaném negativní událostí člověk místo pocitu bezpečí ve vztahu začne
cítit pocit odcizení a zrazenosti. Vyhodnocuje, zda je tento pocit oprávněný, k čemuž používá
kulturně dané vzorce toho, co je ve vztazích s danou úrovní vzájemnosti dovoleno a co ne.
Partner, který vidí, že u druhého vyvolal shimcheong, může situaci vylepšit tím, že se sám
zamyslí, čím shimcheong vyvolal. Shimcheong tak slouží k tzv. shimcheong dialogu –
sdělování svých úmyslů mezi partnery. V tomto dialogu může člověk, který u druhého vyvolal
shimcheong, udělat něco, co druhého uklidní. Tím mu zároveň sděluje, že daný vztah má pro
něj hodnotu (Choi, Han, Kim, 2007).
Shimcheong je náhlé uvědomění si já ve vzájemném vztahu a vyhodnocení hodnoty já v tomto
vztahu. Korejci ve vztahu woori nehodnotí chování samo o sobě, ale motivaci, která k tomuto
chování vedla. Hodnocení smýšlení a motivace druhého člověka ve vztahu je obtížné, takže se
člověk často zmýlí – shimcheong slouží k tomu, aby svůj omyl vyhodnotil a napravil (Choi,
Han, 2008). Od empatie se shimcheong liší tím, že je vyvolán nesplněním vlastního očekávání,
nikoliv potřebou druhého, a že je možný pouze v blízkém vztahu obsahujícím jeong (Han, Choi,
2008).
Negativní vyhodnocení vztahu v rámci shimcheongu vede často k sebelítosti. Korejci vyjadřují
lidem ve stavu shimcheong podporu a účast (Choi, Han, 2008). Při zničení vztahu na bázi woori
po skončení shimcheongu je pocit jeong nahrazen pocitem han, tedy pocitem lítosti, vzteku a
opuštěnosti. Lidi, kteří cítí han, může tato společná zkušenost sblížit, takže vzniká nové woori
obsahující jeong. Pocity jeong a han jsou takto svázány cyklickou kauzalitou (Choi, Kim,
1998).
Noonchi
Noonchi (눈치, nunčchi) je stav, kdy člověk pozorně sleduje ostatní lidi. Pokud má někdo
noonchi, znamená to být schopen číst mysl druhých lidí a správně reagovat. Dokáže odhadnout
jejich náladu, sociální situaci a nesoustředí se při tom na to, co je řečeno, ale „čte mezi řádky“.
To mu umožňuje uspokojit jejich nevyřčená přání. Noonchi slouží k udržení sociální harmonie
a pomáhá předcházet konfliktům. Korejci na noonchi druhých spoléhají. Někdo tak může říci
„ano“, znamená to ovšem „ne“ a záleží na noonchi druhé osoby, aby si situaci správně vyložila.
Osoba mající správnou úroveň noonchi dokáže rychle a správně řešit společenské situace,
pokud má ale noonchi moc, neustále se zabývá sledováním, co od ní očekávají ostatní lidé.
Neustálé sledování ostatních může přerůst v trvalou úzkost a obavy z nenaplnění jejich
očekávání. To pak u některých lidí vede k sociální fobii a paranoie. Pokud lidé naopak noonchi
nemají, jsou společností vnímáni jako nedospělí a necitliví (Jeong, 2015, 8). Noonchi pomáhá
řešit sociální situace tak, aby zůstala zachována tvář všech zúčastněných. Je možné žádost
druhého neodmítnout a přitom ji nesplnit.
Individual and Society, 2017, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 72-79.
Korejská domorodá psychologie: Přehled některých pojmů
77
Chemyon
Chemyon (체면, čchemjon) – sociální tvář – je to, jak se člověk prezentuje ostatním i sobě
samému. Zachovat si tvář znamená vyhovět očekáváním druhých lidí v dané situaci. Snaha o
zachování tváře vychází z konfuciánské doktríny přiměřeného chování, přičemž lidé by měli
cítit stud, pokud se přiměřeně nechovají. Stud vyvolaný ztrátou tváře může vzniknout dvěma
způsoby – buď to, že si člověk svou nedostatečnost sám uvědomí, nebo si ji uvědomí díky
nesouhlasné reakci jiných lidí. Chemyon tak vyjadřuje dvě lidské potřeby: potřebu pozitivního
sebehodnocení a potřebu být akceptován ostatními. V tradiční společnosti byla ztráta tváře
vzniklá uvědoměním si vlastního selhání považována za horší, v současnosti je ale za horší
považována ztráta tváře vzniklá díky reakci jiných lidí (Choi, Kim, 2004). Chování sloužící k
zachování tváře měří škála, kterou sestavili Choi a Lee (2002).
Pro Korejce je pro udržení tváře důležité aktivně ukazovat ostatním znaky toho, že mají
schopnosti a další znaky spojené s jejich místem ve společnosti a daným statusem (Choi, Kim,
2004). Kvůli tomu se mohou snažit získat stejné symboly statusu, jako značkové oblečení, auta
nebo plastické operace. Některé znaky statusu přitom mohou cizincům připadat podivné. Na
konci devatenáctého století se Evropané a Američané divili, proč korejská šlechta používá
dýmky, které byly tak dlouhé, že si je šlechtic nedokázal zapálit sám. Důvodem bylo, že takto
musel zaměstnat dalšího člověka na zapalování dýmky, což si každý nemohl dovolit a šlechtic
takto ukazoval svůj status: čím delší dýmka, tím vyšší postavení (Neff, Cheong, 2009, 231-
233).
Tvář hraje roli především v interakci s lidmi, s nimiž není člověk v blízkém vztahu. Ztráta tváře
může nastat například při neúspěchu u zkoušky, v soutěži nebo v zaměstnání, ukázáním vlastní
slabosti, porušením morálních pravidel nebo nesplněním povinnosti. Protože vysoký sociální
status je v korejské společnosti spojován s vysokými morálními kvalitami, musí vysoce
postavení lidé dbát o zachování své tváře více. Pokud by vysokým požadavkům nevyhověli,
byli by okolím považováni za nevhodné pro svou pozici. Proto jejich tvář brání i níže postavení
lidé. Korejci mohou o výše postaveném člověku mluvit pozitivně, aby zachovali jeho tvář, i
když jinak mají zcela opačný názor (Choi, Kim, 2004).
Koncept tváře existuje i v čínské a japonské kultuře. Choi a Kim (2004) poznamenávají, že
neexistuje komparativní výzkum, který by tyto koncepty porovnával. Domívají se ale, že
japonský koncept je orientovaný více defenzivně, kdežto korejský více na aktivní předvádění
svých schopností a statusu.
Závěr
V tomto textu jsem popsal pojmy korejské DP tak, jak byly prozkoumány Sang-Chin Choiem
a dalšími korejskými výzkumníky. Nesnažil jsem se přitom o úplnost a vycházel jsem hlavně
ze zdrojů dostupných v angličtině. Uvedené pojmy se vesměs týkají specifických fenoménů
v korejské společnosti. Stav psychologického výzkumu korejské společnosti se dá ilustrovat
následující anekdotou: První korejská výzkumnice, které jsem se zeptal na to, kdo se v Koreji
zabývá domorodými fenomény, mi odpověděla, že tím se zabýval Sang-Chin Choi, ale ten již
zemřel. Tak špatné to ovšem není – na Světovém psychologickém kongresu v Jokohamě se
korejské (a dalším asijským) DP věnovalo sympózium, kde vystoupili Taekyun Hur, Min Han
a Gyuseog Han. Dá se tedy očekávat, že se dočkáme dopracování dalších konceptů do takové
kvality, že budou popsány v publikacích orientovaných na mezinárodní veřejnost.
Individual and Society, 2017, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 72-79.
Korejská domorodá psychologie: Přehled některých pojmů
78
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Poděkování
Děkuji Gyuseog Hanovi a Hoon-Seok Choiovi za zaslání několika článků. Tento článek byl
vytvořen za finanční podpory Ministerstva školství, mládeže a tělovýchovy v rámci programu
Národní program udržitelnosti I, projektu Dopravní VaV centrum (LO1610) na výzkumné
infrastruktuře pořízené z Operačního programu Výzkum a vývoj pro inovace
(CZ.1.05/2.1.00/03.0064).
112
Korean Indigenous Psychology: A Review of Some
Concepts1
Václav Linkov,
Centrum dopravního výzkumu, v.v.i., Brno,
vaclav.linkov@hotmail.com
Abstract:2
This article reviews some terms used in Korean indigenous psychology. First,
indigenous psychologies and their goals are described. Then are described the Korean terms
jeong, woori, han, hwabyung, shimcheong, noonchi, and chemyon. Indigenous psychology is
psychology adapted for a specific cultural environment. Such psychologies have evolved in
reaction to American psychology since 1960s. Indigenous psychologies aim to create a
specific psychology for every society and its specific population. It is assumed that, after this
is accomplished, a more just global psychology will be created. When indigenous psychology
studies a local environment, it may adapt two strategies. It might either: study the local
specifics of phenomena studied by global psychology, or it might study local phenomena
only. In Korea, the latter approach was employed by Sang-Chin Choi and his colleagues.
They studied the following phenomena:
Jeong is the feeling of attachment to other people. A person feeling jeong to other
another person is emphatic to him or her, interested in the other’s feelings, and tries to support
them. It is independent of the likeability of the other person. Woori is a feeling of we-ness,
whose members do not distinguish between the self and others. People in a woori collective
are connected by jeong. A strong jeong is the strong feeling of we-ness. This feeling is created
1
This is the translation of an article which was originally published in Czech as:
Linkov, V. (2017). Korejská domorodá psychologie: Přehled některých pojmů
[Korean indigenous psychology: A review of some concepts]. Človek a Spoločnosť, 20(2), 72-
79. https://individualandsociety.org/storage/uploads/casopis/2017/2/korejska-domoroda-
psychologie-prehled-nekterych-po/150227154306-linkov-po.pdf
2
This article contains an unusually long abstract, because it was the journal requirement for
articles that were not published in English.
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by the continuous show of interest in another in the form of doing favors to him or her. Han is
the feeling of accumulated and suppressed anger. Korean society does not tolerate when
people show their anger, because it might harm relationships with others. So they accumulate
this feeling in their heart and try to relieve it through various activities. If relief is not
successful, han might evolve into hwabyung. Hwabyung is an indigenous Korean psychiatric
syndrome. A person with hwabyung is angry and feels that society is unjust. This feeling
evolves when the person is repeatedly exposed to unfair situations, where he or she cannot get
better treatment because of societal restraints that do not allow the explicit show of anger. The
person feels hatred, depression, and guilt. Hwabyung is a syndrome that involves insomnia,
anorexia, problems with breath, dry mouth, and similar symptoms. Hwabyung is a way a
person can justify being relieved from social roles in Korean society. Shimcheong is an affect
which comes when other person in a woori collective shows jeong to an insufficient (or oversufficient)
extent. If the person does something that harms another, it shows that he or she
might not feel jeong towards this other person. The second person might have their
shimcheong activated. In the state of shimcheong the person analyzes all of the previous
interactions with a person who has shown insufficient jeong. He or she also analyzes future
expectations from the relationship with the other person. The analysis of the relationship
finally results in its confirmation, change, or termination. Noonchi is a state where the person
carefully watches other people. The person can appropriately assess the real feelings and
wishes of the other person, regardless of what the other person actually says or does. Noonchi
helps to maintain social harmony. The person might behave according to social conventions
even if he or she wishes otherwise, but, because of the other people’s noonchi, he or she
might receive the feedback he or she desires. Chemyon (social face) is how a person presents
himself or herself towards other people. To save one’s face means to satisfy the expectations
of other people in certain situations. For Koreans, it is important to actively maintain one’s
face by showing signs connected with social status. High social status is viewed as connected
with high moral qualities, so people with high social status have to maintain saving their faces
to a greater extent. Korean indigenous psychology might be considered weaker in comparison
to other indigenous psychologies; nevertheless, it did a very good job in the conceptualization
of some aspects of Korean behavior.
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Key words:
Indigenous psychology. Korea. Face. Shimcheong.
This article describes some terms of Korean indigenous psychology. Czech
publications about cross-cultural psychology (Průcha, 2010; Čeněk, Smolík a Vykoukalová,
2016) rarely contain terms and concepts that are studied by indigenous psychologies, or they
do not contain them at all. This article aims to partially – regarding Korean indigenous
psychology – correct this debt. I will first cover indigenous psychologies (IP) in general and
then I will describe selected terms of Korean IP: jeong, woori, han, hwabyung, shimcheong,
noonchi, and chemyon. I use the English transcription for the Korean terms used by the cited
authors.3
When describing a term, I add the Korean word and the Czech transcription if it
differs from the English transcription.
Indigenous psychology
Indigenous psychology is “a psychology that has been partly borrowed from the West
and then transformed into a psychology adapted to the needs of a particular
culture/country“ (Jahoda, 2016, 172). Indigenous psychologies developed in the Philippines
and Taiwan, then spread to other countries (Jahoda, 2016). East Asian indigenous
psychologies developed as a reaction to American psychology. Their founders had education
and foreign cross-cultural experience, especially in the US and other English-speaking
countries. Despite this, they considered the implementation of Western psychology in their
countries to be academic and cultural colonialism (Hwang, 2005). As a result, their
publications contain an occidentalist view of “Western” cultures. The founder of IP in
Taiwan, Kuo-Shu Yang (2012), considers 19th
century European psychology to be the first IP.
He considers Europe, or Euro-American civilization, to be one cultural entity. This IP was,
3
The romanizations of the Korean language have changed trough the last decades. If there are multiple versions
in use, I use the version that was used in the articles I cite.
115
together with English-speaking-country psychologies, exported to non-Western countries,
where it started to be practiced by psychologists who were usually educated in the West (in
the case of East Asian countries, usually all in the US). Yang calls the psychologies they
create “indigenized” psychologies, because these psychologists are limited by basing their
research on “Western” psychology such that they are unable to create and independent IP.
Their psychologies are based on the maximum independence of their knowledge from foreign
psychologies. They are also based on the newly created psychological compatibility with the
local environment. Similar to Jahoda (2016), I will not distinguish between the terms
“indigenous” and “indigenized” psychology in this article.
According to Yang (2000), the goal of indigenous psychologies „is to construct a
specific indigenous psychology for each society with a given population or a distinctive
culture. After that, the specific knowledge system and its various research findings may be
used to develop the indigenous psychologies of progressively larger populations defined in
terms of regional, national, ethnic, linguistic, religious, or geographical considerations.
Finally, the highest indigenous psychology, a universal, or more properly a global,
psychology for all human beings on the earth will be formed by integrating lower-level
indigenous psychologies. “ (p. 246)
Indigenous psychologies are not successful in fulfilling this goal, as concluded by
Jahoda (2016). No IP from those that he analyzed could be „described as IP in the sense of
coherent systems of knowledge “ (p. 172). Indigenous psychologies only created theories for
specific phenomena that existed in their cultures. The Korean IP is one of these psychologies.
Some of the phenomena it investigates will be described below.
An IP might be created in two ways: Either as an empirical investigation of indigenous
phenomena, which are specific to a culture; or as the investigation of phenomena and
concepts that are present in global psychology and the search for their local specifics (Kim,
Park, & Park, 1999). This text covers the first type of Korean IP, which tries to describe
indigenous concepts. The IP that investigates globally emerging phenomena is not covered
here. The Korean IP is weaker than IPs in other Asian countries. The “colonization” of the
Korean academic environment is stronger. Mostly only US-educated people teach and
conduct research at prestigious Korean universities. This contributes to the situation where
researchers in Korea orient themselves towards concepts that are present in the global
psychology.
116
An attempt to create a Korean IP based on the local concepts was made by Sang-Chin
Choi (1940-2011). He described his findings – apart from many articles – in a posthumously
published book, Psychology of Koreans (Choi, 2011). Some of his students continue his
work. Choi and Han (2000) describe their approach regarding the psychological research of
culture and cultural comparison – so-called “comparative cultural psychology”. They refuse
the approach of cross-cultural psychology where psychological phenomena are fragmented to
constructs without context, and then later compared to hardly comparable cultural
environments. Such an approach is like comparing apples to oranges. Instead of such an
approach, every researcher should try to get an understanding of their own culture first, and
then create their own concepts based on the locally present phenomena. Korean psychological
concepts, which are similar to those in Japanese and Chinese psychologies, should be
compared to these psychologies first. Only after a broader concept is developed as a result of
this comparison should it be compared to similar concepts in Western psychology (Choi &
Han, 2000). Following this program, Choi and his co-authors tried to describe the
psychological phenomena present in Korean culture. Some of these concepts are described in
the review that follows.
Concepts of Korean indigenous psychology
Jeong
Jeong (정, čong, romanization cheong is also used) is the feeling of being attached to
other people. This feeling creates woori. In the state of jeong, the person is empathic towards
other people, interested in them, supports them, and helps them (Choi & Han, 2008). Jeong is
characterized by the vanishing borders between I and other people. A person feels the
emotions of another person. Jeong exists regardless of whether the person likes the other and
regardless whether the person profits from the relationship (Yang, 2006).
Woori
Woori (우리, uri) literally means “we”. It is a group in which individuals do not
separate themselves from others. Members of woori are connected by the jeong feeling. Woori
117
is characterized by unconditional friendship, altruism, mutual attachment, and a preference for
its members in comparison with other people. The stronger the jeong, the stronger the feeling
of “we” (Yang, 2006). The woori feeling and mutual trust are created through the repetition of
the mutual manifestations of interest and care (마음, maum). Words and gifts are not
important because they were given, but because they show care for the other. Koreans often
buy expensive gifts or spent a whole day to drive someone somewhere because it is hard to
estimate which sign of care will be considered sufficient. Interest in care about the other is the
most visible when caring takes a lot of time, money, and other resources. An exchange of
such manifestations of care will, in the end, create the jeong emotional tie (Han, Choi, 2011).
Han
Han (한) is the state of suppressed and aggregated anger. It is a mix of pathos,
sadness, and the feelings of loss and injustice. The first reaction after an event might be anger
and the desire to take revenge. However, such anger should be suppressed due to the Korean
tendency to not endanger relationships by showing emotions. Instead, a phase of sadness and
helplessness follows. This phase turns into thinking about why the situation happened.
Finally, people absorb han and they are able to speak about it. Suppressed anger should be
released, which often happens through creative activities (Jeong, 2015:4). A han feeling might
be released by talking and pleasant activities, and last for a long time through the experience
of some success. For example, a mother who was continuously humiliated by her husband’s
family might release the han she had accumulated when her child has a successful career. Han
might also be released through hard work. The han that Koreans feel due to the historical
oppression of the Korean nation is considered to be one of the causes that have led to Korean
economic success (Min, 2009). The suppressed anger might turn to a specifically Korean
syndrome known as hwabyung.
Hwabyung
Hwabyung (화병, hwabjong) is a pathological form of the feeling han. Hwabyung is
an illness that stems from anger (literally “fire illness”). Patients feel anger, they feel that the
unjust society does not allow them to do what they want, and they are unable to get over these
feelings. This feeling arises after being repeatedly involved in unjust social situations, like
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long-term conflicts in a family. The person thinks that they are the target of permanent
aggression from society and other people. But the person is not allowed to show their anger
and they have to suppress it, so the anger accumulates. Hatred, feelings of guilt, anxiety, and
depression grow inside. Hwabyung shows through crying, sighing, a talkative mood, and the
tendency to run out of closed rooms. People have feelings of being hot, so they avoid warm
places. They feel their heartbeat, pressure in their chest, and a dry mouth, and they have
difficulty to breathe. Insomnia and anorexia might follow. People talk all the time about how
they suffer and cry and sigh while talking. Hwabyung is a way that people might show they
suffer, so that they might have an argument for release from their social roles. It is a chronic
illness. Hwabyung was present in 4% of Koreans in the countryside in 1990 (Min, 2009).
Shimcheong
Shimcheong (심정, šimčong) is the state that arises when other people inadequately
show jeong: either less than they should or more than they should. If they show less jeong
than expected, they show that the other person is not important to them. This questions their
credibility and the person questions why and whether it is possible to still trust a person who
did not show jeong (Choi, Han, 2008). Choi and Kim (2006) illustrate shimcheong in
following way:
In the 88’ Seoul Olympics, a Korean athlete would not come down the ring as a
reaction against the unfair judgment when his loss was announced. This happening
ended up with delayed processes of the remaining agenda of the day. Most of Western
media criticized his behavior as illegitimate. However, Korean people expressed
sympathies with the boxer. Headlines of Korean newspapers read like this: ‚Unfair
judgment Kept a Korean boxer seated on the canvass‘, ‚The boxer’s behavior
understandable‘ or ‚The boxer’s shimjung shared by Koreans.‘ (s. 359)
Shimcheong appears in relationships where at least one person considers the
relationship to be woori. Relationships with strangers are based on rationality and signs of
jeong are not expected from others (Choi & Han, 2008). But if a relationship is considered to
be woori by one (or more) participants, it expected that the participants will care about the
others’ needs as a sign of the jeong they feel. If they do not care about the other’s needs and
do something that harms the other person in woori, that person’s shimcheong will be
activated. This leads the person to analyze all of the past and current interactions, and the
119
future expectations from the relationship with the one who did not show jeong. The
shimcheong feeling will calm down after some time and result in confirming, reconsidering,
or ending the relationship. The degree of the relationship varies on a scale between the total
mutuality of woori and a relationship between strangers. Shimcheong might lead to a change
of this degree. The person who initiated shimcheong does not need to know about it. They
might not consider their (in)activity to be important. Or they might not consider the
relationship to be woori. Shimcheong might be also positive if a person in a woori relationship
helps the other more than was expected.
A person starts to feel alienation and betrayal – instead of feeling safe in the
relationship – from shimcheong that is caused by a negative event. The person evaluates
whether these feelings are justified. The evaluation uses culturally specific patterns for what is
and is not allowed in relationships with a similar degree of mutuality. The partner who
willfully caused shimcheong might improve the situation by thinking about their actions that
initiated it. In this way shimcheong might start a so-called shimcheong dialogue, which means
that partners tell each other about their intentions. The person who initiated shimcheong might
do something to calm down the other as part of this dialogue. By doing this, they establish
that they value the relationship (Choi, Han, & Kim, 2007).
Shimcheong is the sudden realization of self in a mutual relationship and the
evaluation of the value of the self in this relationship. Koreans in a woori relationship do not
evaluate the behavior itself, but the motivation that leads to that behavior. The evaluation of
the other’s intentions and motivations in the relationship is difficult, so the person might often
be wrong – and shimcheong serves to judge and correct such mistakes (Choi & Han, 2008).
Shimcheong differs from empathy because it is caused by the failure to meet one’s own
expectations and not by the other’s needs. It is possible only in a close relationship that
contains a jeong feeling (Han & Choi, 2008).
The negative evaluation of a relationship in shimcheong leads to self-pity. Koreans
show their support and sympathy towards people who go through shimcheong (Choi & Han,
2008). When a woori relationship is destroyed after shimcheong ends, the jeong feeling is
replaced by the feeling of han (i.e., loneliness, anger, pity). People who both feel han might
become closer due to this mutual experience, which might create new woori with jeong
feelings present. Jeong and han feelings are tied to each other by cyclical causality (Choi &
Kim, 1998).
120
Noonchi
Noonchi (눈치, nunčchi) is the state when a person carefully watches other people. If
someone has noonchi, it means that they are able to read others’ minds and react
appropriately. The person is able to estimate their mood and social situation, and it does not
concentrate only on what was said but “reads between the lines”. In this way the person might
satisfy the unsaid wishes of others. Noonchi serves to maintain social harmony and prevent
conflicts. Koreans rely on others’ noonchi. Someone could say “yes”, but it actually means
“no”. Noonchi helps the other person to understand these words accurately. A person has a
good degree of noonchi if they can solve social situations quickly and correctly. However, if
person has too much noonchi, they would constantly watch others and think about what they
might expect. The constant observation of others might turn into anxiety and the fear of being
unable to fulfill others’ expectations. Some people might develop social phobia and paranoia.
If people lack noonchi, society considers them to be childish and insensitive towards others
(Jeong, 2015, 8). Noonchi helps to solve social dilemmas in a way that saves face for all of the
involved people. It is possible to simultaneously not refuse another’s request and not comply
to it.
Chemyon
Chemyon (체면, čchemjon) – social face – is how a person appears to others and
themself. Keeping face means to comply to others’ expectations in a given situation. The
effort to save one’s face comes from the Confucian doctrine of appropriate behavior – people
should feel shame if their behavior is inappropriate. Shame caused by the loss of face might
arise because the person realizes their insufficiency or they might realize it through the
discordant reactions of others. Chemyon reflects two human needs: the need for positive selfevaluation
and the need to be accepted by others. The loss of face due to one’s own
realization of fault was considered to be worse in traditional society. In modern society, the
loss of face due to the reaction of others is considered worse (Choi & Kim, 2004). Facesaving
behaviors are measured on a scale developed by Choi and Lee (2002).
Koreans consider actively showing signs of one’s abilities – or other things connected
to status – to be important for keeping one’s face (Choi & Kim, 2004). They might try to get
121
similar signs of status – like brands clothes and cars, or plastic surgeries – to achieve the facekeeping
goal. Some signs of status might look strange to foreigners. At the end of the 19th
Century, Europeans and Americans were surprised that Korean nobility used tobacco pipes
that were so long that it was impossible to light without help. The reason was that the noble
man had to employ another person for the task. The majority of people could not afford to
employ a person just to light a fire, so the noble man showed his status in this way. The longer
pipe, the higher position of the person (Neff & Cheong, 2009, 231- 233).
Face is especially involved in interactions with people with whom the person does not
have a close relationship. The loss of face might happen by failing an exam, losing a
competition, having trouble at one’s workplace, showing a weakness, breaking moral rules, or
failing to fulfill one’s duty. Higher-ranked people have to take more care about keeping their
face, because their high social status is believed to be connected with the high moral qualities
of Korean society. If these people do not meet high standards, they would be considered
ineligible for their position. This is why lower ranked people help them keep their face.
Koreans might speak positively about a highly ranked person even if they do not believe it
(Choi & Kim, 2004).
The concept of face also exists in Chinese and Japanese societies. Choi and Kim
(2004) note that there does not exist comparative research that compares these concepts with
each other. They think that the Japanese concept might be more defensively oriented, but the
Korean concept is oriented more on actively showing one’s abilities and status.
Conclusion
I described the concepts used by Korean IP as they were investigated by Sang-Chin
Choi and other Korean researchers. I did not aim for a complete and comprehensive
description of these concepts. I also used mostly only sources available in English. These
concepts are all related to specific phenomena in Korean society. The current state of
psychological research on Korean society might be illustrated by the following event: The
first Korean researcher whom I asked about who studied indigenous phenomena in Korea
replied that Sang-Chin Choi investigated this, but that he already passed away. Nevertheless,
122
it is not so bad – International Congress of Psychology in Yokohama included a symposium
devoted to Korean (and other Asian) IPs with presentations by Taekyun Hur, Min Han, and
Gyuseog Han. It might be expected that some other concepts will develop quality that will
allow its description in international publications.
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Acknowledgements
I thank Gyuseog Han and Hoon-Seok Choi for sending me several papers. This article was
produced with the financial support of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports within
National Sustainability Programme I, a project of the Transport R&D Centre (LO1610), on a
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Psychologie a její kontexty 10 (1), 2019, 3–16
DOI: 10.15452/PsyX.2019.10.0001
Základní témata čínské původní psychologie
Basic themes of Chinese indigenous psychology
Václav Linkov*
Centrum dopravního výzkumu, v.v.i
Abstrakt
Původní psychologie studují místní fenomény s pomocí konceptů a terminologie vycházejících
z dané kultury. Takovou psychologií je i čínská původní psychologie, která vznikla jako
hnutí za odzápadnění psychologie v čínsky mluvících zemích. Mezi témata, která zkoumá,
patří guanxi – vztah mezi dvěma lidmi udržovaný vzájemnou výměnou dárků či pomoci.
Dalšími v textu probranými tématy jsou tvář, renqing (laskavost), yuan (víra v osud určující
vývoj mezilidských vztahů), xiao (úcta k rodičům vycházející z konfuciánských tradic),
zhong yong (myšlení středu), suzhi (kvalita člověka) a bao (koncept reciprocity).
Klíčová slova: Původní psychologie, Čína, guanxi
Abstract
Indigenous psychologies study local phenomena through concepts and terminology native
to people in the given culture in order to provide a deeper understanding of the local culture.
Indigenous psychologies began to spread in 1970 s in various non­‑western countries.
Chinese indigenous psychology began as a movement for liberating psychology in Chinese
areas from western influences. In this text, we review the culturally specific themes studied
by Chinese indigenous psychologists.
One popular concept studied by many researchers is guanxi. Guanxi is a  relationship
between two people which is based on something that they have in common and which is
maintained by the mutual exchange of favors. The possibility of receiving help is the main
reason people seek to establish guanxi.
Another concept is that of the “face”. Face represents evaluation of person’s behavior in
a social situation. Chinese people are very concerned with saving face for themselves and
their acquaintances. Face could be lost through the incorrect behavior of a person, and also
through the misbehavior of a family member. It is better to lose face in the presence of
strangers than in the presence of people who are close.
Renqing is the will to help another person. If someone receives renqing, he or she should
return it. It is hard to measure the value of a favor, so it can never be fully returned. Chinese
people, therefore, do not like to receive renqing from someone.
Yuan is destiny, which is responsible for relationships. A romantic relationship is considered
to be based upon good or bad yuan. If the relationship does not go well, it is not
*
Korespondenční autor: Václav Linkov, Centrum dopravního výzkumu, v. v. i., Líšeňská 33a, Brno, 60200
Email: linkov@email.cz
4 V. Linkov / Psychologie a její kontexty 10 (1), 2019, 3–16
the responsibility of partners or people who persuaded couple to start relationship (i.e.,
parents), but it is because of yuan. In this way, yuan helps to maintain social harmony.
Filial piety (xiao) binds children to their parents. Children should respect their parents and
their parents can influence their children’s decisions, including romantic­‑partner selection.
Chinese parents enforce tight control of their children from early childhood.
Zhong yong is the tendency to maintain a middle­‑of­‑the­‑road style of thinking and behavior.
Everything should be perceived from many points of view and a decision should be not
made too quickly. Extremes should be avoided.
Suzhi is the quality of a person – moral characteristics, abilities, and education. People with
higher social status are expected to have more suzhi.
Bao is the concept of reciprocity. If someone does something good or bad, it should be
returned. The reciprocity concept helps to maintain harmony in society.
Chinese indigenous psychology might serve as inspiration for researchers from other
cultures. Nevertheless, researchers need to pay attention to the risk of the reification of
their own cultures. Chinese indigenous psychologists are criticized for overestimating the
role of culture on the behavior of Chinese people. Researchers who are developing indigenous
psychologies in their cultures should be aware of the political pressure to express the
uniqueness of their own culture. In the case of Czech psychology, it is an open question as
to whether it should develop its own indigenous psychology or work with researchers from
culturally similar nations, like other Slavic cultures.
Keywords: Indigenous psychology, China, guanxi
Úvod
Původní psychologie2
studují fenomény v konkrétní kultuře s pomocí konceptů a terminologie,
které používají sami lidé v dané kultuře. To umožňuje danou kulturu lépe pochopit a porozumět
jí. Původní psychologie začaly v nezápadních zemích vznikat v sedmdesátých letech 20. století
jako reakce na hegemonii západní (a zvláště americké) psychologie a postupně se rozšířily do
mnoha zemí (Jahoda, 2016). V tomto článku popíšeme základní témata, kterými se zabývá
čínská původní psychologie. Zaměříme se přitom na koncepty, které jsou pro Čínu specifické
a umožňují tak lépe pochopit její kulturu.
Cíle čínské původní psychologie shrnuje Yang (1999). Hegemonie západních vzdělávacích
systémů vedla k tomu, že sociální vědci z nezápadních společností přijali teorie, koncepty
a metody pocházející ze Západu. To vedlo k vytvoření pozápadněných sociálních věd, které
jsou nekompatibilní s místními kulturami a fenomény. Psychologie v čínských společnostech
prošla tímto procesem pozápadnění, čímž vznikla pozápadněná – v případě Taiwanu ameri-
kanizovaná – psychologie. Čínská původní psychologie vznikla jako hnutí za sinizaci (počínštění)
této psychologie (Yang, 1999, 2006). Nejvíce je rozvinuta na Taiwanu, kde k jejímu
rozkvětu došlo po konferenci o sinizaci sociálních věd konané v roce 1981 v Taipei. Její protagonisté
věří, že změnou teoretických a metodologických východisek je možno vytvořit psy-
2
Překlad anglického pojmu „indigenous psychology“ do češtiny není ustálený. Dříve jsem používal překlad
„domorodá psychologie“, který jsem přejal z publikovaných textů (např. Čeněk, Smolík & Vykoukalová, 2016).
Tento překlad však má v češtině negativní konotace. Nabízí se slovo „lokální“, které ale sugeruje, že jde o něco
méně důležitého než „globální“. Zároveň by činilo potíže při překladu v literatuře používaných pojmů (např. Yang
(2000) píše o „local indigenous psychology“). Proto jsem zvolil překlad „původní psychologie“.
5V. Linkov / Psychologie a její kontexty 10 (1), 2019, 3–16
chologii, která umožní lépe porozumět sociálním a psychologickým procesům v čínské kultuře
(Hwang, 2005).
Původní psychologie vyprodukovaly hodně manifestů, které popisují představu autorů
o tom, jak se má dělat psychologický výzkum tak, aby bral v úvahu kulturní specifika v zemích
výzkumníků a zároveň přispíval ke globálnímu rozvoji psychologie jako vědy (Hwang, 2019).
Stejně je to i s čínskou původní psychologií. Yang (1999) považuje západní psychologii za
psychologií individualistickou, která zkoumá izolovaného jednotlivce. Čínská původní psychologie
je oproti tomu podle Yanga psychologií kolektivistickou zkoumající jedince ve vztahu
jak k jeho sociálnímu okolí, tak k historickým okolnostem. Původní psychologie zkoumá jak
procesy a schémata chování u jednotlivců z místních kultur, tak jejich sociální kontext. Výzkum
podle Yanga začíná tím, že si místní výzkumník na základě vlastních zkušeností představí, jaké
by byly jeho vjemy, pocity, myšlenky, motivy a chování v dané situaci. Poté, co takto mobilizuje
své tacitní znalosti, může udělat pilotní výzkum jako nestrukturovanou kvalitativní studii. Na
základě toho pak navrhne design výzkumu. Výzkum v původní psychologii však není vyhrazen
pouze místním výzkumníkům – místní výzkumník může mít „vymytý mozek“ (Yang, 1999:187)
tréninkem v západní psychologii a podobně nepředpojatý výzkumník­‑cizinec tak může místní
fenomény zkoumat lépe než on.
Podle Yanga (1999) by původní psychologie měla začít studiem kulturně jedinečných fenoménů
a teprve poté, co se na nich naučí jak k výzkumu přistupovat z místní perspektivy, by měla
přejít k fenoménům existujícím ve více kulturách. Po vytvoření lokálních původních psychologií
tak vzniknou původní psychologie větších kulturních celků, a nakonec z nich odvozená
globální psychologie (Yang, 2000). Hwang (2013:11) považuje za cíl původních psychologií
vytvoření globální psychologie postavené na sérii teorií, které reflektují jak univerzální strukturu
lidské mysli, tak mentalitu lidí v dané kultuře.
Dalším příkladem představy o fungování původních psychologií je článek Liua (2017a),
podle něhož je mainstreamová psychologie postavena na západní filosofii vycházející z řeckých
kořenů. Proto je její hlavní metodou rozdělit problém na proměnné a tyto analyzovat zvlášť.
Asijské a zejména čínská psychologie mohou tento přístup změnit tím, že do psychologie přinesou
holistický přístup. Pro asijskou psychologii je irelevantní polemika, zda používat epistemologii
pocházející z přírodních věd nebo epistemologii vzniklou jako její protipól, protože
tento spor je plodem západní civilizace. Západní dualistická filosofie, která proti sobě staví
pozorovanou věc (phenomenon) a její skutečnou podobu (noumenon), je pro asijskou psychologii
méně vhodná než holistický přístup čínské filosofie, že člověk je schopen poznat noumenon
i phenomenon. Pro asijskou psychologii je vhodné vycházet z toho, že zákony lidského chování
nejsou univerzální, ale závisí na situaci a sociálním postavení aktérů. Ke dvěma dimenzím reality
a jejího zobrazení v teoriích také patří dimenze třetí – úmysly a touhy výzkumníka, který tyto
teorie tvoří. Výzkumník nemá být neutrální vůči věcem, které zkoumá, ale má se prostřednictvím
výzkumu snažit humanizovat společnost (Liu, 2017a). Společenské vědy mají sloužit jako
nástroj k zamezení možným špatným verzím budoucnosti (Liu, 2017 b).
Témata čínské původní psychologie
Guanxi
Termín guanxi (關係) označuje specifický typ vztahů v čínské společnosti. Základem je guanxi
dyáda – spojení či vztah mezi dvěma lidmi. Z těchto dyád se formují „guanxi sítě“ lidí, kteří
6
jsou navzájem propojeni pomocí guanxi. Po vytvoření guanxi tento vztah člověk může používat
k dosažení svých cílů. Guanxi je postaveno na guanxi bázi – něčem, co je společné lidem majícím
spolu guanxi: stejné místo narození, stejná škola, práce ve stejné organizaci, společní známí.
Guanxi se podle typu báze dělí na jia­‑ren guanxi mezi členy primární rodiny, shou­‑ren guanxi
na základě vzdálenějších příbuzenských vztahů, přátelství, vztahu mezi učitelem a studentem,
mezi spolužáky, sousedy nebo kolegy z pracoviště, a sheng­‑ren guanxi mezi obyvateli stejné
obce nebo zaměstnanci velké společnosti (Su & Littlefield, 2001). Dále může jako guanxi báze
sloužit tzv. předjímající báze – do budoucna orientovaná základna pro guanxi vztah, kdy oba
lidé ve vznikající guanxi dyádě v budoucnu chtějí dělat něco podobného a spolupracovat. Guanxi
je způsob, jak se Číňané vyrovnávají s životem v prostředí, kde neexistuje všeobecná důvěra
mezi lidmi. Guanxi je tím lepší, čím více si lidé mohou věřit. Důležité je proto vidět u partnera
jasné známky toho, že chce ve vztahu vytrvat a že se snaží dělat vše v nejlepším zájmu jedince.
Důležité je ovšem i to, aby partner mohl být člověku k něčemu užitečný. Guanxi vzniká tak, že
dva neznámí lidé hledají guanxi bázi, na níž by svůj vztah mohli založit. Jejich rozhovor se tak
točí kolem životních zážitků, zkušeností, známých, kolegů a spolužáků. Snaží se najít něco, co
mají společného. Pokud nenajdou společné místo, organizaci ani osobu, začnou hovořit o svých
životních plánech, aby mohli vytvořit předjímající bázi. Pokud není nalezena ani vytvořena
guanxi báze, nemůže guanxi vzniknout (Chen & Chen, 2004). Pro nastolení a udržení guanxi
u mužů v obchodních vztazích často slouží společná návštěva klubu s hosteskami, kde pijí
alkohol (Bedford & Hwang, 2013).
Guanxi se udržuje výměnou vzájemných laskavostí a protislužeb (Leung, Heung & Wong,
2006).Aby guanxi vydrželo, je třeba dodržovat několik pravidel. Za prvé, lidé musí pomoci těm,
kteří jim dříve také pomohli, a nesmí je ohrožovat, pokud tak neučiní, ztrácí tvář (Wong et al.,
2007). Za druhé, poskytnutí protislužby nemusí být okamžité. Může trvat velmi dlouho a ochota
vrátit laskavost i po dlouhé době signalizuje kvalitu guanxi. Za třetí, to, co je druhému oplaceno,
pro něj musí mít skutečnou hodnotu – proto je nutné druhého znát a zajímat se o něj (ovšem
pokud člověk nabízenou laskavost, jako například pozvání do klubu, odmítne, může to znamenat
konec guanxi vztahu, Bedford & Hwang, 2013). Za čtvrté, člověk se snaží druhého si zavázat,
a proto se mu snaží vrátit více, než kdysi sám dostal. Skutečnost, že poskytl více, ukazuje
jeho ochotu setrvat v guanxi a dále jej udržovat (Chen & Chen, 2004). Na druhou stranu všem
bývá tolerováno, že slabší partner poskytuje méně (Dunning & Kim, 2007).
Možnost požádat o  pomoc a  obdržet ji je důvodem, proč lidé guanxi budují a  udržují
(Hui & Graen, 1997). Pokud jejich požadavek není reflektován nebo dostanou méně, než očekávali,
mohou se cítit oklamáni a kvalita guanxi se zhorší (Chen & Peng, 2008). Pokud tak člověk
pomoc poskytnout odmítne a má zájem guanxi udržet, snaží se situaci vysvětlit tak, že pomoc
poskytnout nemohl kvůli nějaké jím nezměnitelné příčině a není za to tedy odpovědný. Druhé
straně pak odmítnutí musí nahradit jiným způsobem (Chen & Chen, 2004).
Guanxi ovlivňuje mnoho aspektů čínského života, například to, jak si Číňané rozdělují
odměny se svými kolegy či spolupracovníky. Při dělení se dávají Číňané konkrétnímu člověku
tím více, čím silnější je jejich guanxi s daným člověkem. Pokud s daným člověkem vztah na
bází guanxi nemají (např. jde o neznámého člověka), dělí se tak, jak je to výhodné pro ně samé
(Zhang, 2006). Zamezení poškození vztahů v rámci guanxi sítě je tak důležitější než princip
spravedlnosti (Wang & Pak, 2015).
V. Linkov / Psychologie a její kontexty 10 (1), 2019, 3–16
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Tvář
Tvář (mianzi, 面子) je kognitivní odpovědí na sociální hodnocení chování člověka v konkrétní
situaci (Hwang, 2006). Dělí se na dva typy. Sociální tvář je získaná pomocí statusu vznikajícímu
díky talentu a úsilí nebo díky kontaktům. Morální tvář je základem integrity osobnosti člověka.
Člověk se nemusí starat o svou sociální tvář, vždy se ale musí snažit zachovat si tvář morální
(Hwang, 2006).
Tématem výzkumů týkajících se tváře je především její zachování. Snaha zachovat si tvář
souvisí s nižší přívětivostí a vyšším neuroticismem (Fung & Ng, 2006). Člověk by se měl snažit
zachovat tvář svých představených. Když výše postavený člověk něco řekne nebo udělá,
neměl by ho podřízený veřejně kritizovat, i když v soukromí si může myslet, co chce. Pokud
odmítne tvář druhého člověka zachovat, ať už nadřízeného nebo kolegy, vztah to zničí a vytratí
se z něj pozitivní city (Hwang, 1998). Lidé spojují zachování své tváře se správným chováním
a pracovními výsledky. Pro staré lidi ovšem zachování tváře znamená zejména řádné chování
a úspěšnou kariéru jejich dětí, jejich vlastní chování je pro ně méně důležité. Kvůli zachování
tváře hodnotí Číňané špatné chování cizích lidí hůře než to stejné chování u svých příbuzných,
tím jim umožňují zachovat si tvář (Hwang, 2006).
Pocit ztráty tváře může být zapřičiněn např. spácháním krádeže, nedostatečnou výchovou
dětí, neúctou k rodičům, nedodržováním slibů, vlastizradou a špionáží pro cizí mocnosti, pliváním
a odhazováním odpadků na ulici nebo příliš hlasitým mluvením na veřejnosti. Tyto situace
mohou být rozděleny na nemorální chování, špatné návyky (např. nedodržování hygieny),
nekompetentní chování (neschopnost vykonat něco, co je ostatními očekáváno) a  odhalení
soukromých záležitostí (např. obnažení na veřejnosti nebo odhalení špatných úmyslů). Kromě
zachování tváře vlastní se člověk snaží zachovat i tvář svého „širšího já“ – skupiny, do které
patří, například rodiny (Hwang & Han, 2010).
Ztráta tváře závisí na tom, kde ji člověk ztratí a za jakých okolností. Zda je to před výše
nebo níže postavenou osobou, zda se to děje v kontextu emocionální podpory dalších lidí nebo
v kontextu nepřátelství a jak se lidé poté chovají. Pokud člověk má ztratit tvář, snaží se, aby
to nastalo takovým způsobem, který je pro něho nejméně zraňující. Nejlepší je tak ztratit tvář
před neznámými lidmi, s nimiž se už člověk nemusí znovu vidět. Rovněž je lepší ztratit tvář
před přáteli než před rodinou: Přátelé na rozdíl od rodiny nejsou ztrátou tváře zasaženi také.
Při výzkumu, zda by si lidé pro léčení pohlavně přenosné nemoci vybrali lékaře z rodiny nebo
neznámou osobu, si 91% účastníků vybralo neznámého lékaře, přičemž jako důvod uvedli, že
nechtějí ztratit tvář. Pokud by ovšem potřebovali léčit žlučníkové kameny, vybralo by si 92%
lékaře z rodiny, aby získali lepší péči. Podobné to bylo u studie, kdy si lidé měli vybrat, zda by si
v roli otce rodiny šli půjčit peníze na školné pro dítě do banky nebo od někoho z rodiny. Pokud
by důvodem, proč si jdou půjčit peníze, bylo, že byli okradeni, šli by za někým z rodiny. Pokud
by ale peníze neměli, protože je nedokázali vydělat, šli by raději do banky, protože to znamená,
že neobstáli v roli otce­‑živitele a před někým z rodiny by tak ztratili tvář (Han, 2016).
Renqing
Renqing (人情) je koncept uplatňující se ve vztazích, které mají citovou složku, nicméně nejsou
natolik blízké, aby se v nich lidé mohli otevřít (např. vztahy se sousedy, spolužáky a kolegy).
V. Linkov / Psychologie a její kontexty 10 (1), 2019, 3–16
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Prvním významem slova renqing je empatie a ochota pomoci. Člověk, který zná renqing, je člověk,
který je empatický a pomáhá druhým, když vidí, že to potřebují. Renqing je také sada společenských
norem o tom, jak se chovat v situaci, kdy se někdo dostane do potíží (Hwang, 1987).
V takovém případě má člověk soucítit a snažit se pomoci – dát renqing potřebnému, v tomto
smyslu má renqing význam poskytnuté služby či laskavosti a mezi čínskými tradičními hodnotami
je nejsilněji spjat s hodnotou darovaných věcí (Qian, Razzaque & Keng, 2007). Renqing je
spjat s ideou rovnosti a reciprocity. Pokud člověk dostane od druhého renqing, tak mu jej dluží
a měl by mu jej oplatit, přičemž se snaží vrátit více, než dostal (Khan, Zolkiewski & Murphy,
2016). Protože kdy a jestli vůbec někdy bude renqing splacen je nejisté, lidé pečlivě zvažují,
zda jej poskytnout (Hwang, 1987), ochota poskytnout renqing tak závisí na ochotě pokračovat
ve vztahu s danou osobou (Shi et al., 2011). Podle Khan, Zolkiewské a Murphyho (2016) lze
renqing v obchodních vztazích rozdělit na poskytnuté laskavosti, jako např. dřívější vyřízení
požadavku daného partnera před jeho konkurenty, a příležitosti, jako např. pozvání daného partnera,
aby přednesl řeč na obchodním jednání.
Má­‑li někdo dobrou tvář, zvyšuje to jeho status, a tedy i ochotu druhých věnovat mu renqing.
Vylepšení či zachování tváře druhého je rovněž způsobem, jak druhému poskytnout renqing.
Proto Číňané nekritizují jiné lidi, zejména nadřízené, případně při kritice druhých používají
nejednoznačné termíny a kritiku zamlžují. Tvář může člověk zlepšit tím, že poskytne renqing,
naopak ji může ztratit tím, že renqing neposkytne nebo nevrátí, pokud jej dluží. Pokud je člověk
vyzván, aby renqing poskytl nebo splatil, může tak uplatnit strategii odkladu – neodpovídat
a předstírat, že žádost neslyšel nebo nepochopil. Tím si zachová tvář a zároveň se vyhne poskytnutí
renqing (Hwang, 1987).
Protože se empatie a pomoc nedají přesně zkalkulovat, nelze dluh v renqing plně splatit
i když se o to člověk snaží. Zatímco dluh v penězích splatit jde, dluh v renqing nejde splatit
nikdy. Proto se Číňané snaží nedostat do situace, kdy by někomu renqing dlužili. To platí hlavně
pro bohaté lidi, kteří mají hodně zdrojů, a tedy hodně co ztratit (Hwang, 1987). Renqing také
nemusí být vhodnou strategií v obchodě – pro více zkušené a úspěšnější obchodníky je dodržování
pravidel renqingu méně důležité než pro ty méně zkušené (Tsai, Chi & Hu, 2009).
Yuan
Číňané tradičně věřili, že to, jak se který vztah mezi lidmi vyvíjí, je předurčeno osudem (Good-
win & Findlay, 1997). Yuan (緣) znamená osud nebo osudové předurčení v kontextu vztahu.
Yuan je zodpovědný za to, zda se lidé navzájem přitahují nebo odpuzují. Uplatňuje se zejména
v blízkých vztazích, ale ovlivňuje i další vztahy, třeba s přáteli nebo obchodními partnery. Dlouhodobé
vztahy ovlivňuje yuanfen (緣份), za náhodná setkání (např. cestování ve stejném voze
ve vlaku) odpovídá jiyuan (機緣) (Yang & Ho, 1988). V současné době významy slov yuan
a yuanfen splývají, slovo yuan se vyskytuje v deseti procentech čínských populárních písní
(Cheng & Yau, 2006).
Protože je vývoj vztahů předurčen yuanem, nedá se před ním nikam utéct a člověk jej musí
akceptovat. Díky tomu z nešťastného vývoje není možné obviňovat ty, kteří vztah pomohli
vytvořit, jako jsou rodiče, kteří v tradiční společnosti domlouvali manželství a rozhodovali,
koho si děti vezmou. Přisouzení vývoje yuanu tak v takovém případě jednak umožňuje udržet
V. Linkov / Psychologie a její kontexty 10 (1), 2019, 3–16
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dobré vztahy s rodiči a dalšími osobami, jednak umožňuje zachovat jejich tvář. Yuanu je možno
přisoudit i dobrý vývoj manželství. Tato atribuce pomáhá snížit závist druhých a rovněž chránit
jejich tvář – pokud za úspěch manželství jiného může osud, nemusí se člověk v neúspěšném
manželství za tento stav stydět (Yang & Ho, 1988). Yuan tak primárně slouží k udržení harmonie
a solidarity ke skupině (Goodwin & Findlay, 1997).
Pro člověka žijícího v nepovedeném vztahu slouží yuan také jako obrana jeho vlastního ega
a sebehodnocení. Když za vývoj vztahu může osud, znamená to, že člověk sám vinu nenese.
To posiluje rovněž harmonii ve vztahu, protože z potíží nelze vinit ani partnera. Podobně tato
atribuce slouží i k ospravedlnění stavu, kdy jedinec nemá partnera, a pomáhá lidem vyrovnat se
s rozchodem (Lee, Lee & Lee, 2012). Neprovdaná žena tak může říci, že ještě nepotkala muže,
s nímž by ji spojil osud. Případně, že jí osud určil zůstat neprovdána. To jí pomůže zachovat si
vlastní tvář i tvář její rodiny. V ranných fázích vztahu může yuan fungovat i jako katalyzátor
sloužící k jeho udržení. Protože dobrý prvotní dojem byl způsoben osudem, je dobré ve vztahu
zůstat i když tento dojem vyprchá (Yang & Ho, 1988).
Úcta k rodičům
Úcta k rodičům (filial piety, xiaodao, 孝道) vychází z konfuciánského pojetí, že rodina je jedno
tělo a dítě pochází z těl rodičů. Vztahy v rodině jsou hierarchické, děti se mají starat o rodiče
a o ně samé se budou starat jejich vlastní děti. Úcta k rodičům v minulosti zahrnovala i podřízení
se jejich vůli ohledně volby povolání nebo životního partnera (Hwang, 1999; Yeh & Bedford,
2004). Do určité míry se to projevuje i dnes. Zhang a Kline (2009) zkoumali, jak se čínští studenti
liší od amerických v tom, zda si nechají od rodičů mluvit do toho, s kým chodí. Zatímco
američtí studenti by chodili i s někým, koho jejich rodiče nesnáší a vztah jim rozmlouvají, čínští
studenti by se nechali rodiči přemluvit k rozchodu. Stejně tak se blízký vztah k rodičům projevuje
i tím, že taiwanští adolescenti častěji, než američtí vyhledávají při školní šikaně pomoc
dospělých (Ma & Bellmore, 2016).
Výzkumu xiaodao se věnovali Wu et al. (2016), kteří zkoumali ochotu Taiwanců a Američanů
pomoci matce a životnímu partnerovi v různých situacích – buďto život ohrožující nebo obyčejné.
Měli si představit situaci, kdy oba potřebují pomoc, ale je možné stihnout pomoci jenom
jednomu. Zatímco 72,7% Taiwanců by v život ohrožující situaci pomohlo matce, Američanů by
to udělalo pouze 25%. U běžné situace by matce pomohlo 82,5% Taiwanců, kdežto Američanů
pouze 37%. Když byli dotázáni, co je sociální normou v podobné volbě v jejich společnosti,
domnívalo se 77,2% Taiwanců (ale jen 23,9% Američanů), že je to v život ohrožující situaci
pomoci matce. Autoři udělali další experiment, kdy se ptali, jak moc si jsou lidé se svou matkou
a životním partnerem blízcí. Taiwanci se cítili bližší matce než partnerovi, u Američanů tomu
bylo naopak. Blízkost k dané osobě se ukázala jako důvod, proč se rozhodují ji zachránit. Pokud
se měli rozhodnout mezi matkou a sourozencem, vybírali si Taiwanci častěji matku. Při volbě
mezi matkou a dítětem vybírali oba stejně často. Američané přitom vybírali vždy mladšího
příbuzného.
Pro postoj rodičů k výchově čínských dětí je typický pojem guan, který znamená vedení
a trénování dětí skrze stálou kontrolu, jasné příkazy a vysoké nároky (Wang & Chang, 2010).
Děti jsou rodiči vedeny k prosociálnímu chování, přičemž hlavní motivací je stud – pokud dítě
V. Linkov / Psychologie a její kontexty 10 (1), 2019, 3–16
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udělá něco, co není v souladu s prosociálním chováním, dávají mu rodiče najevo, že by se mělo
stydět (Chen, 2010). Děti jsou rodiči trénovány k tomu, aby se styděly, již od velice raného
věku – sotva se naučí chodit a mluvit. Rodiče je kárají, vyhrožují tresty, dávají jim hanlivá
jména a svůj nesouhlas vyjadřují všemi dostupnými způsoby. Domnívají se, že striktní disciplína
je nezbytná pro vytvoření blízkého vztahu s dětmi (Fung, 2006).
Zhong yong
Číňané mají tendenci k myšlení střední cesty – zhong yong (中庸). Doktrína středu znamená
udržovat rovnováhu a harmonii směřováním mysli k vyváženému stavu, aniž člověk hledá kompromis
mezi protikladnými póly. Člověk má nahlížet na každou situaci z různých perspektiv
a vyhnout se extrémům. Tento způsob myšlení slouží k udržení harmonie s ostatními lidmi,
přičemž se uplatňuje především vůči blízkým lidem a lidem, se kterými má člověk vazby, méně
vůči lidem neznámým (Ji, Lee & Guo, 2010). Číňané tak častěji, než Američané souhlasí s tvrzeními
typu „když slyším dva rozdílné názory, často souhlasím s oběma“, „moje názory se
mění v různých situacích“ apod. (Boucher, Peng, Shi & Wang, 2009). Souvislost myšlení středu
s udržením harmonie ve skupině ukazuje výzkum Seo, Kim, Tam a Rozina (2016), kteří zjistili,
že hongkongští Číňané hodnotí svůj výkon hůře v přítomnosti velkého množství lidí, než
pokud je přítomno malé množství lidí, kdežto u Američanů množství přihlížejících nehraje roli.
Protože štěstí jednoho člověka může narušovat společenskou harmonii, je štěstí ve východoasijských
kulturách považováno za méně pozitivní věc, než je tomu v kulturách západních (Choi,
Kim & Uchida, 2016).
Protože lidé uplatňující myšlení střední cesty mají vyšší sebehodnocení a životní spokojenost
a skórují níže ve škálách úzkosti a deprese, zkusili Yang et al. (2016), jestli jeho trénink
zvýší účinnost klasické psychoterapie. Jednu skupinu studentů s depresivními potížemi nechali
podstoupit standardní podpůrnou skupinovou terapii. Druhou skupinu nechali podstoupit skupinovou
terapii o stejné délce se stejným psychoterapeutem, přičemž ten je navíc učil přemýšlet
podle doktríny středu. Tato terapie byla účinnější v zmírnění depresivních potíží než podpůrná
terapie u kontrolní skupiny.
Suzhi a bao
Termín suzhi (素质）označuje kvalitu člověka. Suzhi se týká osobnostních a charakterových
vlastností člověka, morálních vlastností, schopností a vzdělání. Dělí se na morální kvality (de,
德), „vnitřní suzhi“ týkající se např. etiky, sebekultivace a pomáhání druhým, a talent (cai, 才),
„vnější suzhi“ týkající se vzdělání, statusu, rodinného zázemí, schopností a životních zkušeností.
Číňané tradičně dělí lidi na lidi s malým a velkým suzhi. Protože suzhi je spojeno s třídní
příslušností, umožňuje takové označení vyhnout se pojmu třída. U lidí s lepším sociálním
postavením se očekává větší suzhi, tedy lepší morálka. Pojem suzhi také často používá vláda,
když mluví o loajalitě a morálce občanů (Wang, Lamond, Worm, Gao & Yang, 2014). Vysoké
suzhi u čínských adolescentů snižuje sociální úzkost, protože přispívá k vyššímu sebehodnocení,
které dále zvyšuje pocit bezpečí, což přispívá k nízké úzkosti (Pan, Zhang, Hu & Pan, 2018).
V. Linkov / Psychologie a její kontexty 10 (1), 2019, 3–16
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Číňané věří v koncept reciprocity – bao (報). Bao se týká jak pozitivní, tak negativní reciprocity.
Lidé nemají druhým dlužit žádnou laskavost a mají se snažit vše oplatit. Tento zvyk slouží
k tomu, aby se vztahy mezi lidmi nezhoršovaly a udržela se harmonie ve společnosti. Pokud
někdo provede něco špatného, není nutné oplácet mu to osobně – odplatu mohou zajistit nadpřirozené
síly např. ve formě nemoci (Leung, 2010:234).
Diskuse a závěr
Čínská původní psychologie může být inspirací pro výzkumníky z  jiných kultur, protože
těmto výzkumníkům umožňuje získat hlubší vhled do čínské kultury a inspirovat se zde (Xie,
Su & Zhong, 2017). Výše popsané koncepty tak mohou výzkumníky inspirovat ke studiu existence
podobných fenoménů v jejich vlastních kulturách a přispět tak vytvoření vyváženější globální
psychologie. Při vytváření původních psychologií je však přítomno několik rizik, zejména
tendence příliš zdůrazňovat jedinečnost vlastní kultury, přeceňovat její vliv, a s tím související
přílišná fragmentace psychologie.
Původní psychologie předpokládají, že existuje něco jako místní kultura, co lze psychologicky
zkoumat. Podle Allwooda (2011) výzkumníci v oblasti původních psychologií používají
koncept kultury přejatý z antropologických studií malých skupin z první poloviny dvacátého
století předpokládající, že v dané skupině existují nějaká univerzální pravidla chování. Protože
se příliš nesnaží definovat, co je to kultura, o níž mluví, neuvědomují si, že tento koncept
se nedá použít na společnost s miliony obyvatel, v níž různé skupiny sdílejí různé hodnoty
a vzorce chování. Původní psychologové mají tendenci reifikovat koncept kultury jako něco, co
existuje mimo lidi a ovlivňuje jejich chování, a ne jako něco, co tito lidé aktivně tvoří a mění
v procesu vzájemné interakce (Allwood, 2011; Sundararajan, 2019). Rovněž Hwangův přístup
je kritizován jako příliš redukcionistický ve smyslu přeceňování role kultury pro psychologii
jedince. Idea kultury jako něčeho homogenního, co určuje fungování jedinců v ní žijících,
je esencialistická a výzkumníkům v oblasti původních psychologií je doporučováno věnovat
větší pozornost jednotlivcům a rozdílům mezi lidmi považovanými za patřící do stejné kultury
(Kirschner, 2018).
Jednou z příčin sklonu původních psychologií reifikovat vlastní kulturu je jejich svázanost
s politikou, když určují, co může a nemůže být považováno za místní kulturu (Allwood, 2011),
případně na co všechno je možné poznatky získané v místní kultuře vztáhnout. V kontextu čínské
původní psychologie se tak může objevovat tendence považovat čínskou psychologii za
předobraz jiných východoasijských původních psychologií, a tedy za aplikovatelnou na jiné
východoasijské národy, a rovněž tendence považovat vlastní kulturní skupinu za reprezentující
celou společnost v dané zemi, např. v případě čínské psychologie konfucianismus za reprezentující
Čínu (Sundararajan, 2019). Hwang (2019) a Liu (2017a) považují svůj přístup za aplikovatelný
na všechny „nezápadní“ kultury. Proti tomu se ovšem ozývají výzkumníci z jiných
kultur. King a Hodgetts (2017) považují Liuovu „neokonfuciánskou“ epistemologii za přístup
možná vhodný pro studium čínské společnosti, který ovšem při použití v jiných kulturách může
být stejně problematický jako současný hegemonní západní přístup.
Je otázkou, jaký je optimální počet původních psychologií, zda má každá kultura vyvíjet
vlastní nebo kultury na určitém stupni příbuznosti mají vyvíjet společnou (Hwang, 2016).
V. Linkov / Psychologie a její kontexty 10 (1), 2019, 3–16
12
Zatímco asijské kultury jsou si navzájem poměrně vzdálené a čínská původní psychologie je tak
samostatná psychologická oblast smysluplná, kultury v okolí českých zemí jsou české kultuře
nejspíše bližší, než je tomu v případě vzájemné blízkosti východoasijských zemí. Je tedy i otázkou,
jestli by se čeští psychologové měli čínskou původní psychologií inspirovat a pokusit se
vytvořit českou původní psychologii, případně původní psychologii nějaké větší kulturní entity,
například evropskou nebo slovanskou.
Zdá se, že pod hlavičkou původní psychologie není vyvíjena žádná psychologie mající jako
objekt Evropu jako kulturní entitu odlišnou od neevropských kultur. Smith (2005) se domnívá,
že vzhledem k evropskému původu akademické psychologie nelze na Evropu aplikovat model
vývoje původní psychologie jako reakci na mainstream. Za původní (indigenous) evropskou
sociální psychologii považuje Smith Tajfelovu teorii sociální identity a Moscoviciho teorii soci-
álníchreprezentací,nicméněv oboupřípadechbysespíšehodiloslovooriginal,protožejdeo univerzální
teorie původně vzniklé v Evropě, nikoliv teorie vyvíjené jakožto aplikovatelné zejména
na osoby patřící do evropského kulturního okruhu ve smyslu původních (indigenous) psychologií,
tj. popisu místního chování lišícího se od chování na jiných místech (Poortinga, 2016).
Původní psychologie náboženství pro slovanskou oblast je navrhována Pankallou a Kośnikem
(2018), kteří se snaží popisovat prožívání slovanské pohanské spirituality, přičemž základem
je slovanské pojetí duše skládající se ze třech významů: místo, kde sídlí já; život dávající
objekt asociovaný s dechem; a způsob posmrtné existence člověka. Pojem duše by podle nich
měl být i základem pro organizaci teoretických kategorií původní slovanské psychologie náboženství
a její ontologie a epistemologie (Pankalla a Kośnik, 2018).
Smyslem původních psychologií ovšem není vyvinout původní psychologii pro každou jednotlivou
kulturu, spíše více akcentovat roli místní kultury v psychologii jednotlivce (Hwang,
2016). Není proto nutné mít původní psychologii v každém kulturním okruhu. Čínská kultura je
však kulturou značně specifickou a jako taková si svou původní psychologii zaslouží.
Grantová podpora
Tento článek byl vytvořen za finanční podpory Ministerstva školství, mládeže a tělovýchovy
v rámci programu Národní program udržitelnosti I, projektu Dopravní VaV centrum (LO1610)
na výzkumné infrastruktuře pořízené z  Operačního programu Výzkum a  vývoj pro inovace
(CZ.1.05/2. 1. 00/03.0064).
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doi.org./10.15452/PsyX.2019.10.0001
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Basic themes of Chinese indigenous psychology1
Václav Linkov2
CDV – Transport Research Centre
Abstrakt
Původní psychologie studují místní fenomény s pomocí konceptů a terminologie
vycházejících z dané kultury. Takovou psychologií je i čínská původní psychologie, která
vznikla jako hnutí za odzápadnění psychologie v čínsky mluvících zemích. Mezi témata, která
zkoumá, patří guanxi – vztah mezi dvěma lidmi udržovaný vzájemnou výměnou dárků či
pomoci. Dalšími v textu probranými tématy jsou tvář, renqing (laskavost), yuan (víra v osud
určující vývoj mezilidských vztahů), xiao (úcta k rodičům vycházející z konfuciánských
tradic), zhong yong (myšlení středu), suzhi (kvalita člověka) a bao (koncept reciprocity).
Klíčová slova:
Původní psychologie, Čína, guanxi
1
This is the translation of an article that was originally published in Czech as:
Linkov, V. (2019). Základní témata čínské původní psychologie [Basic themes of Chinese
indigenous psychology], Psychologie a její kontexty, 10(1), 3-16.
https://doi.org/10.15452/PsyX.2019.10.0001
2
Corresponding author: Václav Linkov, Centrum dopravního výzkumu, v.v.i., Líšeňská 33a,
Brno, 60200 Email: linkov@email.cz
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Abstract3
Indigenous psychologies study local phenomena through concepts and terminology
native to the people in that given culture in order to provide a deeper understanding of the
local culture. Indigenous psychologies began to spread in the 1970s in various non-Western
countries. Chinese indigenous psychology began as a movement for the liberation of
psychology in Chinese areas from Western influences. In this text, we review the culturally
specific themes that are studied by Chinese indigenous psychologists.
One popular concept studied by many researchers is guanxi. Guanxi is a relationship
between two people that is based on something that they have in common and that is
maintained by the mutual exchange of favors. The possibility of receiving help is the main
reason people seek to establish guanxi.
Another concept is that of “face”. Face represents the evaluation of a person’s
behavior in a social situation. Chinese people are very concerned with saving face for
themselves and their acquaintances. Face could be lost through incorrect behavior of a person
or through the misbehavior of a family member. It is better to lose face in the presence of
strangers than in the presence of people who are close.
Renqing is the will to help another person. If someone receives renqing, he or she
should return it. It is hard to measure the value of a favor, so it can never be fully returned.
Chinese people, therefore, do not like to receive renqing from someone.
Yuan is destiny that is focused on and responsible for relationships. A romantic
relationship is considered to be based upon good or bad yuan. If the relationship does not go
well, it is not the responsibility of the partners or the people who persuaded the couple to start
the relationship (i.e., parents), but it is because of yuan. In this way, yuan helps to maintain
social harmony.
Filial piety (xiao) binds children to their parents. Children should respect their parents
and their parents can influence their children’s decisions, including the selection of a romantic
partner. Chinese parents enforce tight control of their children from early childhood.
3
The English abstract is longer than Czech version because it was a requirement for Czech
articles.
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Zhong yong is the tendency to maintain a middle-of-the-road style of thinking and
behavior. Everything should be perceived from many points of view and a decision should not
be made too quickly. Extremes should be avoided.
Suzhi is the quality of a person – moral characteristics, abilities, and education. People
with higher social status are expected to have more suzhi.
Bao is the concept of reciprocity. If someone does something good or bad, it should be
returned. The reciprocity concept helps to maintain harmony in society.
Chinese indigenous psychology might serve as inspiration for researchers from other
cultures. Nevertheless, researchers need to pay attention to the risk of the reification of their
own cultures. Chinese indigenous psychologists are criticized for their overestimation of the
role of culture on the behavior of Chinese people. Researchers who develop indigenous
psychologies in their cultures should be aware of the political pressure to express the
uniqueness of their own culture. In the case of Czech psychology, it is an open question as to
whether it should develop its own indigenous psychology or work with researchers from
culturally similar nations, like other Slavic cultures.
Keywords:
Indigenous psychology, China, guanxi
Introduction
Indigenous psychologies4
study phenomena in specific cultures with the concepts and
terminology that are used by the people in that culture. This approach allows for the better
4
The translation of the term “indigenous psychology” into the Czech language is not yet
settled. I used term „domorodá psychologie“ in the past. It was borrowed from earlier
publications (like Čeněk, Smolík & Vykoukalová, 2016). However, this translation has a
negative connotation in Czech language. The term „lokální“ (“local”) might be suggested, but
it makes the impression that it is less than “global”. The usage of this word would also create
problems for translating terms used in published works (e.g., Yang (2000) writes about „local
indigenous psychology“). This is the reason why I chose the translation „původní
psychologie“.
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understanding of the culture and the ability to get deeper knowledge about it. Indigenous
psychologies started to gain prominence in non-Western countries in the 1970s as a reaction
to Western (especially American) hegemony (Jahoda, 2016). This text contains descriptions
of the most important themes that are researched by Chinese indigenous psychology. Focus
will be on the concepts that are specific to the Chinese environment and help to understand
Chinese culture.
The goals of Chinese indigenous psychology were summarized by Yang (1999). The
hegemony of Western educational systems led to the acceptance of Western theories,
concepts, and methods by social scientists from non-Western societies. This created
westernized social sciences, which are incompatible with many local cultures and phenomena.
Psychology in Chinese societies has gone through this process to create westernized
psychology. In Taiwan, it is considered Americanized psychology. The Chinese indigenous
psychology movement was developed as a movement for the Sinicization of this psychology
(Yang, 1999, 2006). Chinese indigenous psychology flourished especially in Taiwan, where it
began to develop after a conference about the Sinicization of social sciences in Tapei in 1981.
Its protagonists believed that a change to the theoretical and methodological roots might
create an approach to psychology that would allow for a better understanding of the social and
psychological processes in Chinese culture (Hwang, 2005).
Indigenous psychologies created many manifests to describe authors’ ideas about how
to produce psychological research. This takes seriously both local specific phenomena in the
researchers’ countries and helps with the development of psychology as a global science
(Hwang, 2019). Chinese indigenous psychology created such manifests as well. Yang (1999)
thinks that Western psychology is an individualist psychology that investigates an isolated
individual. Contrary to this, Chinese indigenous psychology should be collectivist psychology
that investigates the individual in relation to their social environs and historical surroundings.
Indigenous psychology researches individual behavioral schemes and processes in local
cultures and their social contexts. According to Yang, research should begin with the
researchers’ imagination of their own experience, including their perceptions, feelings,
thoughts, motives, and behaviors in a specific situation. Researchers might conduct
unstructured qualitative research as a pilot study after mobilizing their tacit knowledge in this
way. After such a qualitative investigation, they might design the subsequent research.
Research in indigenous psychologies is not reserved for local scholars – a local researcher
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might be “brainwashed” (Yang, 1999:187) by Western training such that a foreign researcher
might be more sensitive for the capture of locally specific phenomena.
According to Yang’s (1999) plan, indigenous psychology should begin with studying
locally unique phenomena. It should move to research that involves more cultures only after
learning how to conduct research from the local perspective. Local indigenous psychologies
should be created first, followed by the indigenous psychologies of larger cultural entities, and
finally global indigenous psychology should be derived based on them (Yang, 2000). Hwang
(2013:11) thinks that the goal of indigenous psychologies should be the creation of a global
psychology that is based on a series of theories that reflect both the universal structure of the
human mind and the mentality of people in their local culture.
The vision for how indigenous psychologies might work was presented by Liu
(2017a). Mainstream psychology is based on Western philosophy with Greek roots.
Consequently, its main method is to divide problems into variables and analyze them
separately. Asian psychologies and especially Chinese psychology might change this
approach and introduce a holistic approach into psychological science. The dispute whether to
use natural science epistemology is irrelevant for Asian psychology, despite its relevance in
Western civilization. Western dualist philosophy, which contradicts the observed thing (i.e.,
phenomenon) and its real appearance (i.e., noumenon), is not suitable for Asian psychology.
Chinese philosophy’s holistic approach states that humans are able to learn both phenomenon
and noumenon. Asian psychology should begin with the recognition that human behavioral
laws are not universal, but dependent on the situation and social status of the involved people.
The dimensions of reality in these theories should be enlarged by another dimension – the
intentions and wishes of the researcher who created these theories. Researchers should not be
neutral towards the things they research, but they should use research that is humanized to the
society (Liu, 2017a). Social sciences should serve as a tool to prevent bad versions in the
future (Liu, 2017b).
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Themes of Chinese indigenous psychology
Guanxi
The term guanxi (關係) denotes a specific type of human relationship in Chinese
society. It is based on a guanxi dyad, which is the relationship or connection between two
people. These dyads form “guanxi nets” of people who are interconnected by guanxi. A
person might use guanxi to reach their goals after establishing it. Guanxi is build on a base,
which is common for two people who are in guanxi together. It might be the same birthplace,
the same school both graduated from, the same (former) workplace, or common friends.
Different types of bases might classify guanxi into jia-ren guanxi among members of the
primary family; shou-ren guanxi among more distant relatives, friends, relationships between
student and teacher, relationships between schoolmates, neighbors, and colleagues from a
workplace; and sheng-ren guanxi between citizens of the same municipality or employees of a
large company (Su & Littlefield, 2001). The guanxi base might also be the so-called
anticipatory base, which is oriented to the future when both people in the emerging guanxi
dyad want to do similar things in future. Guanxi is a way for Chinese people to cope with
living in an environment where mutual trust does not exist between people. The more people
can trust each other, the better guanxi. It is important to see that the partner shows clear signs
of being devoted to the relationship and of doing everything in the best interests of the second
person. Being useful to the second person is also important in a guanxi relationship. Guanxi
emerges initially by two people who are strangers to each other searching for a guanxi base
into which to establish the roots of a relationship. Their conversation touches everything
related to life experience, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, and schoolmates. They want to
find something that both have in common. If they are not successful in finding a common
place, person, or organization, they start to talk about their future plans to create an
anticipatory base. If a guanxi base is not found, guanxi cannot be established (Chen & Chen,
2004). Visiting clubs and drinking alcohol together might serve to establish and preserve
guanxi between men in business relations (Bedford & Hwang, 2013).
Guanxi is preserved by exchanging favors (Leung, Heung, & Wong, 2006). If guanxi
is to last, a few rules have to be followed. First, people should help those who helped them in
the past and they should not endanger them. If they do not follow this, they lose face (Wong
et al., 2007). Second, paying back a favor does not need to be immediate. It might take a long
145
time. The readiness to return a favor after a long period of time signals a good quality guanxi.
Third, a favor that is returned should have real value for the person to whom it is returned. It
is necessary to know the second person and be interested in their needs (if the person refuses
the offered favor, like being invited to a club, it might lead to the end of the guanxi
relationship, Bedford & Hwang, 2013). Fourth, a person wants to make the other side feel the
obligation, so it is necessary to return more than had been received. The fact that the person
returned more shows their willingness to stay in and maintain the guanxi relationship (Chen &
Chen, 2004). On the other side, it is usually tolerated if the weaker partner returns less
(Dunning & Kim, 2007).
The possibility to ask for help and receive it is the reason why people build and
preserve guanxi (Hui & Graen, 1997). If their request is not heard or they receive less than
expected, they might feel betrayed and the quality of the guanxi will worsen (Chen & Peng,
2008). If a person refuses to provide help and if they want to keep the guanxi, they need to
explain that it was not possible due to some irrevocable reason such that the person is not
responsible. The person should compensate and return the favor in some other way (Chen &
Chen, 2004).
Guanxi influences many aspects of Chinese life, like how the Chinese split
remunerations with their colleagues. The stronger the guanxi with someone, the larger the part
of the reward would be given to that person. If two Chinese people do not have a guanxi
relationship (e.g., they are strangers), they separate the reward in a manner that is beneficial to
themselves (Zhang, 2006). Preventing the worsening of guanxi relationships is more
important than equality and justice (Wang & Pak, 2015).
Face
Face (mianzi, 面子) is a cognitive response to the social evaluation of a person’s
behavior in specific situations (Hwang, 2006). There are two types of face. Social face is
obtained through status that rises from talent and effort or through contacts. Moral face is a
base for the moral integrity of a person. People might ignore their social face, but it is
necessary to keep their moral face (Hwang, 2006).
Research about face focuses on saving and maintaining face. The effort to save face is
related to lower agreeableness and higher neuroticism (Fung & Ng, 2006). People should try
146
to save face for their superiors. If superiors say or do something, their subordinates should not
publicly criticize them, despite their opinion. If the person refuses to save face for another
person, be it a superior or a colleague, it might destroy the relationship and any positive
emotions between the two people might vanish (Hwang, 1998). People connect face-saving
with just behavior and good results at work. For elderly people, saving face is tied to the
behavior and successful career of their children; their own behavior is not as important.
Chinese people evaluate strangers’ behavior worse than if the same behavior were conducted
by their relatives because it allows them to save their relatives’ face (Hwang, 2006).
A loss of face might be caused by conducting a theft, the insufficient upbringing of
children, the lack of filial piety, not keeping one’s word, treason, espionage for foreign
powers, spitting and throwing trash on the street, or speaking too loudly. These might be
categorized as immoral behavior, bad habits (e.g., bad hygiene), incompetent behavior (e.g.,
failing to do something that is expected by others), and revealing personal issues (e.g.,
revealing bad intentions or spreading secrets in public). People may make an effort to save not
only their own face, but also the face of their “larger self” – in other words, the group to
which they belong, like their family (Hwang & Han, 2010).
Losing face is dependent on how the person loses it. This is influenced by whether
higher or lower ranked people are present, if there is emotional support from other people, if
the people are hostile, and how other people behave after the person loses their face. If people
should lose face, they try to make it happen in a way that is the least hurtful. The best is to
lose face in the presence of strangers whom the person need never meet again. Losing face in
front of friends is better than losing it in front of family – friends do not lose face with the
person, but the family does. When people were asked whether they would choose a doctor
who was a stranger to them or a doctor who was related to them to treat a venereal disease,
91% selected the stranger. If they should decide who would treat them for gallstones, 92%
would select a relative, because they might get better care. This was similar in a study where
people chose whether they would go to a bank to borrow money for their children’s tuition or
borrow it from their family. If the reason they needed money was because they were being
robbed, they would ask a relative. However, if the reason was that they were not able to earn
enough money, they would go to a bank, because asking a relative would mean that they were
unsuccessful in supporting their family and they would lose face in the presence of this
relative (Han, 2016).
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Renqing
Renqing (人情) is a concept employed in relationships that have an affective part, but
where the relationship is not so close (e.g., relationships with neighbors, schoolmates, or
colleagues).
The first meaning of the word renqing refers to empathy and willingness to help. A
person who knows renqing is an empathic person who helps others if they visibly need it.
Renqing is also a set of behavioral norms regarding how a person should behave when
someone is in trouble (Hwang, 1987). In such a case, the person should feel sympathy and try
to help – give renqing to someone in trouble. The meaning of such renqing is to do a favor or
help. It is strongly related to the value of given things (Qian, Razzaque & Keng, 2007).
Renqing is connected to the idea of equity and reciprocity. If a person receives renqing, then
they should return it to the one who gave and return more than was given (Khan, Zolkiewski.
& Murphy, 2016). Because it is not guaranteed that renqing will ever be reciprocated, people
thoroughly consider whether to give it (Hwang, 1987). The willingness to give renqing is
related to the will to maintain the relationship with the person in need (Shi et al., 2011). Khan,
Zolkiewski, and Murphy (2016) define renqing in business relations as giving favors – like
replying to a business partner’s requests faster than to the requests of his competitors, and
giving opportunities, like inviting a partner to speak at a business meeting.
If people have good face, it raises their status and the willingness of others to offer
renqing. Saving or enhancing the face of another person is also a way to give renqing. That is
another reason why the Chinese do not criticize others, especially superiors, or why they use
vague formulations when they start a critique. People could enhance their face if they give
renqing. They might lose face if they do not give renqing or not return it. If people are asked
to give renqing or return it, they might employ a postponement strategy – do not answer and
pretend to no to hear requests or not understand them. This gives an opportunity to save one’s
face and not give renqing simultaneously (Hwang, 1987).
It is impossible to pay back a debt in renqing, because empathy and help cannot be
exactly quantified. It is possible to pay back money, but renqing can never be reimbursed.
Because of this, the Chinese never want to owe renqing to anyone. This is especially true for
rich people, who have a lot of wealth to lose (Hwang, 1987). Renqing is also not a good
strategy in business. Experienced and successful businessmen consider the maintenance of the
renqing rules as less important than less experienced businessmen do (Tsai, Chi & Hu, 2009).
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Yuan
The Chinese traditionally believe that relationships between people are predetermined
by destiny (Goodwin & Findlay, 1997). Yuan (緣) means destiny or predetermination in the
context of a relationship. Yuan is responsible for the mutual attraction or dislike between
people. Yuan is especially important in close relationships, but it has influence over
relationships with friends and business partners. Long-term relationships are influenced by
yuanfen (緣份). Incidental encounters (like travelling in the same train car with someone) are
influenced by jiyuan (機緣) (Yang & Ho, 1988). The meanings of yuan and yuanfen have
been in the process of being unified in recent decades. The word yuan is present in 10% of
Chinese popular songs (Cheng & Yau, 2006).
Because the fate of relationships is predestined by yuan, it is impossible to escape it
and people have to accept it. This allows those who helped to create the relationship – like
parents who arrange marriages – to not be blamed for the bad fate of the relationship.
Attributing the case of a bad relationship to yuan helps to maintain good relations with parents
and other people, and it helps them to save face. Also, a good marriage can be attributed to
yuan. This helps to lower the envy of others and helps to save their faces. If a successful
marriage is caused by destiny, people in bad marriages do not need to be ashamed by their
marriage (Yang & Ho, 1988). Yuan primarily serves to keep harmony and solidarity between
people within a group (Goodwin & Findlay, 1997).
Yuan helps to protect the ego and maintain the self-esteem of people who live in
unsuccessful relationships. If a bad marriage is caused by destiny, the individuals are not
responsible. This helps to maintain harmony in the relationship, because the partner cannot be
blamed either. Attributing a situation to yuan also helps single people and those who are
coping with a break up (Lee, Lee, & Lee, 2012). An unmarried woman might say that she has
not met a man with whom she would be united by destiny. Or she might say that yuan decided
that she would stay unmarried. This helps to save her face and the face of her family. Yuan
might work as a catalyst to maintain the relationship in its early phases. Because a good first
impression is caused by destiny, it is good to stay in a relationship even if the good
impression vanishes (Yang & Ho, 1988).
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Filial piety
Filial piety (xiaodao, 孝道) is based on the Confucian belief that family is one body
and children came from the bodies of their parents. Relationships in a family are hierarchical.
Children should take care of their parents and they will be taken care of by their children
when the time comes. In the past, filial piety involved respecting the parents’ decision about
one’s occupation or marital partner (Hwang, 1999; Yeh & Bedford, 2004). This continues
today to a certain extent. Zhang and Kine (2009) researched whether Chinese and American
students differed in how they allow their parents to influence whom they date. American
students would date even someone whom their parents hated and were against the
relationship. Chinese students would respect their parents’ will in such case. Close
relationships to parents cause Taiwanese adolescents to seek parental help when being bullied
in school more often than American adolescents do (Ma & Bellmore, 2016).
Xiadao, which is operationalized as the willingness to help the mother and marital
partner, was researched by Wu et al. (2016). Taiwanese and Americans should decide which
they would help in two situations – one was life-threatening and one was an everyday
situation. They were asked to imagine that the lack of time allowed them to help only one:
their mother or their marital partner. While 72.7% Taiwanese would help their mother in the
life-threatening situation, only 25% Americans would do so. When they were asked about the
social norm in their society, 77.2% Taiwanese (but only 23.9% Americans) thought it was to
help the mother in the life-threatening situation. The authors asked also how close people feel
to their mother and their marital partner. The Taiwanese felt that they were closer to their
mother, while Americans felt closer to their partners. The feelings of closeness are the reason
that they decide who they would save. If the Taiwanese should choose between their mother
and a sibling, they choose the mother. If deciding between their mother and their own child,
they choose both with the same probability. Americans always choose the younger relative.
Guan is a typical term for the Chinese attitude towards raising children. It means to
lead and train children through continuous control, clear orders, and high expectations (Wang
& Chang, 2010). Parents lead children toward prosocial behavior. Their main motivation is
shame. If children do something that contradicts prosocial behavior, the parents show them
that they should feel shame (Chen, 2010). Parents train children to feel ashamed from a very
early age, often immediately after they start to walk and speak. Parents scold them, threaten
them with punishment, give them defamatory nicknames, and try to show disagreement with
150
any available means. They think that strict discipline is necessary to establish a close
relationship with their children (Fung, 2006).
Zhong yong
The Chinese tend to think that it is best to follow the doctrine of the mean – zhong
yong (中庸). This means that they maintain balance and harmony by leading one’s mind to a
balanced state where the person seeks a compromise between opposite poles. A person
should consider every situation from different perspectives and avoid extremes. This strategy
helps to maintain harmony with other people. It is used more often with family and friends
and people with whom the person has some ties rather than with complete strangers (Ji, Lee &
Guo, 2010). The Chinese, more often than Americans, agree with statements like “I often
agree with both contradicting opinions I hear” or “My opinions change in different situations”
(Boucher, Peng, Shi, & Wang, 2009). Seo, Kim, Tam, and Rozina (2016) have shown a
connection between the doctrine of the mean and the maintenance of harmony in a group.
They found that Chinese Hongkongers evaluate their performance as worse when a large
number of people is present. The number of people in the audience does not play role in one’s
performance evaluation for Americans. Luck is considered to be less positive in East Asian
cultures than in Western cultures, because one’s luck might erode the harmony in the society
(Choi, Kim, & Uchida, 2016).
People who follow the doctrine of the mean have higher self-esteem and life
satisfaction and they score lower on depression and anxiety scales. This led Yang et al. (2016)
to test whether the doctrine of the mean helps to enhance the success of classical
psychotherapy. One group of students with depression symptoms received standard group
psychotherapy. The other group received group therapy of the same length and with the same
psychotherapist, but they were additionally taught to think according to the doctrine of the
mean. The second therapy was more successful for the mitigation of depressive symptoms
mitigation.
Suzhi and bao
The term suzhi (素质）denotes the quality of a person. Suzhi relates to the personality
and moral characteristics of a person, their abilities, and their education. It might be separated
151
into moral qualities (de, 德) – „inner suzhi” relates to ethics, self-cultivation, and helping
others – and to talent (cai, 才) – „outer suzhi” relates to education, status, family background,
abilities, and life experience. The Chinese separate people into those with low suzhi and those
with high suzhi. Because suzhi is related to a social class, using the word “suzhi” avoids the
overt usage of the term for class. People with higher social status are expected to have higher
suzhi, which means that they are supposed to be more moral. The government uses the term
suzhi when speaking about loyalty and the moral qualities of citizens (Wang, Lamond, Worm,
Gao, & Yang, 2014).
The Chinese believe in the concept of reciprocity – bao (報). Bao denotes both
positive and negative reciprocity. People should not owe a favor to anyone and they should
return everything. This custom serves to avoid the worsening of relationships among people
and to keep harmony in society. If someone does something wrong, it is not necessary to
respond personally – the revenge might be conducted by supernatural powers, such as an
illness (Leung, 2010:234).
Discussion and conclusion
Chinese indigenous psychology might be an inspiration for researchers from other
cultures because it helps them obtain deeper knowledge into Chinese culture and get
inspiration (Xie, Su, & Zhong, 2017). The concepts described above might inspire researchers
to study similar phenomena in their own cultures and help in the creation of a more balanced
global psychology. The creation of indigenous psychologies also brings some risks –
particularly the tendency to over-emphasize the uniqueness of one’s own culture,
overestimate its influence, and, as a consequence, contribute to the excessive fragmentation of
psychology.
Indigenous psychologies assume the existence of the concept of a local culture that
might be psychologically examined. According to Allwood (2011), indigenous psychological
researchers use the concept of culture that is borrowed from the anthropological studies of
small groups from the first half of the 20th
Century. These studies assume that there are
152
universal behavioral rules in such groups. Because they do not make a large effort to define
“culture”, they do not realize that this concept could not be used for a society with millions of
people where different groups share different norms and patterns of behavior. Indigenous
psychologists tend to reify the concept of culture as something that influences people’s
behavior and exists outside of these people. It is not something that is actively being created
by people and changed continuously through interactions (Allwood, 2011; Sundararajan,
2019). Hwang’s approach is criticized as too reductionist because it overestimates the role of
cultures in the psychology of the individual. The image of culture as something homogenous
and an influence on the behavior of people who live in it is essentialist. Indigenous
psychological researchers suggest that we pay more attention to individuals and the
differences between the people who are considered to belong to the same culture (Kirschner,
2018).
The connection to politics is one of the reasons for the reification of one’s own
cultures by indigenous psychologies. They decide what might be considered as local culture
and what should be not considered as such (Allwood, 2011) and to what cultures local
indigenous findings might be generalized. Chinese indigenous psychologists might consider
Chinese psychology to be the source for other East Asian indigenous psychologies, and thus
applicable to other East Asian nations. Indigenous psychologists might also consider their
own culture to be representative for the whole society in their country, like how Chinese
psychology considers Confucianism as representative of all of China (Sundararajan, 2019).
Hwang (2019) and Liu (2017a) consider their approaches to be applicable to all “nonWestern”
cultures. Researchers from other cultures disagree. King and Hodgetts (2017)
consider Liu’s “Neoconfucian” epistemology to perhaps be applicable to Chinese society;
however, in other cultures it might prove to be as problematic as the current hegemonical
Western approach.
An unsolved dispute is the optimal number of indigenous psychologies: Should each
culture develop its own characteristics with a certain degree of kinship that would lead to a
common indigenous psychology (Hwang, 2016)? While East Asian cultures are relatively
distinct and the existence of a Chinese indigenous psychology as an independent discipline
makes sense, cultures that neighbor the Czech Republic are probably closer to Czech culture
than the mutual closeness of East Asian countries. So it is questionable as to whether Czech
psychologists should be inspired by Chinese indigenous psychology and try to create a Czech
153
indigenous psychology or an indigenous psychology for some large cultural entity, like
European or Slavic.
It seems that nothing branded as “indigenous psychology” has been developed for
Europe as a cultural entity that is different from non-European cultures. Smith (2005) thinks
that it is not possible to apply to Europe a model of indigenous psychology development as a
reaction to the mainstream, because academic psychology has a European origin. Smith
considers Tajfel’s social identity theory and Moscovici’s theory of social representations to be
European indigenous social psychologies. However, the term “original” would be more
appropriate in both cases, because both are universal theories that originally developed in
Europe, not theories that developed as applicable only to people with European cultural
backgrounds as is found in indigenous psychologies, which means describing local behavior
as different from behavior in other places (Poortinga, 2016).
An indigenous Slavic psychology of religion was suggested for Slavic countries by
Pankalla and Kośnik (2018). They describe how people experienced Slavic pagan spirituality,
which had a base built from the Slavic understanding of a soul that consists of three
meanings: place, where the person resides; the object associated to the breath which gives life;
and the afterlife existence of a person. The soul should be the root term for these theoretical
categories of the Slavic indigenous psychology of religion, as well as its ontology and
epistemology (Pankalla & Kośnik, 2018).
The purpose of indigenous psychologies is not to develop indigenous psychology for
every culture. More likely, it is to accent the role of local culture in individual psychology
(Hwang, 2016). It is not necessary to have indigenous psychology in every cultural group.
Nevertheless, Chinese culture is a really unique culture and, as such, it deserves its own
indigenous psychology.
Acknowledgements
This article was produced with the financial support of the Ministry of Education,
Youth and Sports within National Sustainability Programme I, a project of the Transport
R&D Centre (LO1610), on a research infrastructure acquired from the Operation Programme
Research and Development for Innovations (CZ.1.05/2.1.00/03.0064).
154
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https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440211009191
SAGE Open
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DOI: 10.1177/21582440211009191
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Creative Commons CC BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of
the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages
(https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Original Research
Research published in international social science journals is
not culturally diverse. The vast majority of published studies
come from affluent and developed countries, and small cultures
and the cultures of indigenous people are neglected
(Arnett, 2008). This might be because the cultural diversity
of published research is not rewarded by the people who
evaluate research. Scientometric indicators currently used in
the evaluation of scientific research blind policy setters to
many issues (Barré, 2019), of which cultural diversity is one.
Current indicators do not reward cultural diversity, and therefore,
this diversity does not exist as an important issue for
people who use these indicators as evidence of research quality.
This article aims to help diminish this problem by offering
a scientific indicator that measures cultural diversity in
academic texts.
Scientific output is variable, so it is not easy to measure
(Pedersen et al., 2020). This is especially true when it comes
to the measured output of the social sciences and humanities
(Reale et al., 2018) because they are heterogenous (Fanelli &
Glänzel, 2013). To measure this output, it is necessary to first
evaluate “what is and is not desirable change in academic
knowledge” (Hammersley, 2014, p. 351). In the social sciences
and humanities, research concerns its influence on
society (Ochsner et al., 2013), so this desirable change might
be to “produce improvements in relation to the stated goals
of society” (Reale et al., 2018, p. 300). Such goals might be
to improve the cultural capital of society (Donovan, 2008)
and cultural diversity. Nevertheless, research in the social
sciences is mainly evaluated by the same standards as
research in the natural sciences: by the number of citations
the research receives (Hoblík, 2020), which does not support
cultural diversity.
The academic world is more dependent on Englishlanguage
sources than it was 30 years ago. Scholars are
forced to become part of the English-language publication
system, which values themes relevant for the dominant cultures
of the English-speaking world (Dahler-Larsen, 2018).
1009191SGOXXX10.1177/21582440211009191SAGE OpenLinkov et al.
research-article20212021
1
CDV – Transport Research Centre, Brno, Czech Republic
2
University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada
3
Korea University, Seoul, Korea
4
Chonnam National University, Gwangju, Korea
Corresponding Author:
Václav Linkov, CDV – Transport Research Centre, Líšeňská 33a, Brno
63600, Czech Republic.
Email: vaclav.linkov@hotmail.com
Linguistic Diversity Index: A
Scientometric Measure to Enhance
the Relevance of Small and Minority
Group Languages
Václav Linkov1
, Kieran O’Doherty2
, Eunsoo Choi3
,
and Gyuseog Han4
Abstract
Current scientometric indexes do not encourage the linguistic diversity of sources cited in academic texts and researchers
are not motivated to cite texts written in smaller languages. This diminishes the cultural diversity of the sources cited
and limits the representation of small and indigenous cultures. This text proposes a scientometric measure designed to
encourage the linguistic diversity of sources cited in articles, books, and papers. The Linguistic Diversity Index is based on
two stipulations: (a) the more linguistically diverse the sources, the higher the score, and (b) the rarer the languages cited, the
higher the score. If such a metric were used for the evaluation of social science and humanities journals, it would encourage
the publication of papers that cite ideas from rarely represented cultural groups such as indigenous nations, ethnic groups
from small countries, and other linguistic groups that have been omitted from mainstream scientific discourse. This might
help to produce new research, which would help to improve the situation for these groups and create an epistemology that
is more just to small cultural groups.
Keywords
scientometrics, bibliometrics, linguistic diversity, cultural diversity, research evaluation
2	 SAGE Open
If scholars focus on themes that are specific for local cultures
and of low interest for this larger academic world, they might
be disadvantaged compared with those who work on themes
that are highly cited in the English-speaking world. When
scientific output is judged by the number of citations in citation
databases, publications in languages other than English
are discriminated against (Towpik, 2015). Articles written in
English that are published in multilanguage journals are
cited more often than articles written in other languages and
published in the same journal (Diekhoff et al., 2013).
Scientists want to increase their number of citations
(Furnham, 2020), and this forces them to publish in English
and not in their native language (López-Navarro et al., 2015).
Journals have a similar motivation (Chavarro et al., 2018), so
they follow the same pattern, abandoning local languages
and publishing in English (Dinkel et al., 2004). For an
increased citation rate, it is also beneficial to get co-authors
from developed countries (Meneghini et al., 2008) and publish
in journals in these countries (Strehl et al., 2016). The
advantage for those who want to increase their citation count
is to cite texts written in English. Gong et al. (2019) have
shown that Chinese scholars’ publications that cite more
English-language sources are more cited than publications
that cite more sources in Chinese. However, abandoning
publishing in a native language and abandoning the citation
of sources in non-English languages contribute to the impoverishment
of native cultures (Filippov, 2016) and a decrease
in cultural diversity. This can leave indigenous and small cultures
less researched.
When diversity is mentioned in the context of scientometrics,
it is usually diversity in disciplinary approaches (Zitt &
Bassecoulard, 2008) and not cultural or linguistic diversity.
This is because the prevalent methods of scientific evaluation
were developed with a focus on “narrower” disciplines.
Scientific disciplines differ according to their narrow focus
(e.g., details and mechanisms) or wide focus (e.g., systems
and larger processes). For example, cognitive psychology
and experimental psychology are narrower; social psychology
is broader. Some researchers in narrower fields think
that the broader fields lack a solid basis upon which to build
theories, whereas some of those in broader fields think that
the narrow fields lack questions of real value and lose sight
of the forest for the trees (Peterson, 2017). Research in the
social sciences and humanities benefits from understanding
specific cultures (Choi & Han, 2000), but researchers from
narrow fields might consider the diversity of cultural experience
to be less important than those from broad fields.
Problems with the current indicators that were developed
with such a narrow focus lead to the necessity of developing
new and better indicators (Barré, 2019). Therefore, it might
be beneficial if broader disciplines would use newly developed
scientometric indexes that are different from those used
in the narrower disciplines, so that these new indices would
enhance the value of cultural diversity. This type of metric is
proposed in this text.
Linguistic Diversity Index (LDI)
Research in the social sciences and humanities often studies
phenomena that vary among cultures. If a researcher wants
to study some culturally specific phenomenon in a particular
cultural group, they need to improve their understanding of
that culture (Linkov, 2014). This is best fulfilled if the
researcher knows the opinions of the members of this cultural
group and includes these members in the research.
Indeed, the more widespread inclusion of the opinions of
small cultural groups in the international research arena
would allow them to influence the usage of the research
questions and the methods created for larger groups, which
are not necessarily fair in the treatment and assessment of
these small groups (Urbánek & Čeněk, 2019). A good understanding
of various cultural groups in published research
should, therefore, be supported.
The managers of research institutions have to rely on the
quantitative indicators of scientific output because they are not
professionals in the specific fields (Kuleshova & Podvoyskyi,
2018). As Ruscio (2016) wrote, using citation-based measures
of merit is quick: With the calculation of one number, the evaluation
is done. The LDI—the scientometric measure proposed
in the following paragraphs—is similarly an easy-to-compute
number. It is based on two premises. First, the more culturally
diverse the experience contained in the scientific text, the
higher the quality of the text. Second, as Lewin (1930) argued,
to construct scientific knowledge, it is equally important to
study phenomena that are common and phenomena that are
rare, even if they happen only once. When applied to culture,
this means that studying cultures with a 100 million members—such
as English- or Chinese-speaking cultures—is
equally as important as studying cultures with just one member
such as the last surviving member of an Indigenous nation.
Therefore, the more a culture is omitted from scientific discourse,
the better the text is because it provides the experience
coming from that culture—even if that culture were to consist
of one last, single person. LDI should, therefore, give value to
languages of small local cultures.
Current scientific evaluation practices are based on how
often a work is cited, so there are several well-developed
databases that track the citations of scientific works. These
databases might be used for assessing the cultural diversity
of a scientific text by assigning the linguistic diversity of the
cited sources. To reach the premises stated above, the LDI
score is computed from the sources cited in the references of
the evaluated text: (a) the more linguistically diverse the
sources cited in the references, the higher the LDI score, and
(b) the rarer the languages cited in the references, the higher
the score. The LDI score would be computed this way:
1.	 Once a year will be computed how many citations of
publications written in various languages were used
in all publications written in language A for the preceding
5 years. All cited languages in publications
Linkov et al.	 3
written in A will be ordered from the most cited language
α1 to the least cited language αn: α1, . . . , αn.
The order of languages shows how much a specific
language is included in the publications in language
A. Function φΑ, from the set of all languages to the set
of natural numbers, is defined as giving a logarithm
of order of language αi as follows: φ αA i i( ) log= 2 . If
the first most cited language in A-written texts is, for
example, English, then ƒ EnglishA( ) = 0, and the φΑ
of other languages will be nonzero.
2.	 Let’s have language β and article/publication p and
let’s define λ (p, β) as a ratio:
λ βp
p
,
,
( ) =
Number of references to sources
writt
s
een in the language
Number of all references in
β
p
.
3.	 Let’s define Ψ(p) as follows:
Ψ p( ) = +1 10log
number of languages in which
are written teexts cited in p





.
4.	 The LDI(p) of article p written in language A, which
cites references from languages β1, β2, . . . , βm, is
defined as follows:
LDI p p
p
p
A
m A m
( ) = ( )×
( )× ( )+ +
( )× ( )








Ψ
λ β φ β
λ β φ β
,
,
,
1 1 
	(1)
where Ψ(p) will always be lower than 3 (there would never
be more than 100 languages cited and log10 100 2= ). There
would be less than 2,048 languages with written sources to
be citable, so φΑ(αi) will always be lower than log2 2048 11=
for any pair of languages A, αi. The number in the brackets
on the right in Equation 1 will be always lower than 11. The
LDI will therefore be a number between 0 and 33 (= 3 × 11).
If an article cites only publications from the most cited language
in the publications written in the language of that article,
the LDI for the article will be 0. The LDI of an article
will be higher for publications written in more uncommon
languages cited in this article (the brackets on the right) and
also for publications with cited sources written in more languages,
Ψ(p).
The LDI for a journal could be defined as the average of
the LDIs of the articles it published in the previous year. The
journal’s LDI would therefore be a number between 0 and
33. Computing such an index will allow for the ranking of
journals according to their inclusion of texts that cite sources
from rare and/or multiple languages.
Google Scholar might be a good citation database to calculate
LDI because it is less biased toward languages other
than English compared with other databases (Dahler-Larsen,
2018). Web of Science and Scopus, in 2018, contained documents
written in only 51 languages (Vera-Bacdeta et al.,
2019). The reason is that Web of Science and Scopus consist
mostly of academic publications (Aksnes et al., 2019),
whereas Google Scholar has a wider range of texts (Kousha
& Thelwall, 2008). For a meaningful evaluation of published
research according to cited languages, it might also be suitable
to use a larger set of resources such as texts published in
the media or on the internet (Ravenscroft et al., 2017).
Both Ψ and φ in Equation 1 could be computed differently
than proposed above. Any function that computes a value
based on the number of cited languages could be used as Ψ
and any function that computes a value based on the rarity of
languages could be used as φ.
Example
Let us present an example of the computation of the LDI for
the current text. First, we need an order of languages. For this
purpose, we use an order of languages according to how often
various languages were cited in documents written in English,
indexed by Microsoft Academic, and published in the years
2015–2019. The order is therefore the same, as would be valid
if Microsoft Academic were used as the database for computing
LDI using theAlgorithm 1 to 4 presented above. Microsoft
Academic contains 11,886,288 documents published in
English with publication years from 2015 to 2019. The order
of languages according to how often sources written in these
languages were cited in these 11,886,288 documents is presented
in Table 1. There are five languages cited in the references
in this text: English (46 times), Russian (3), Czech (3),
Korean (1), and Polish (1). Altogether, there are 54 references.
As we can see in Table 1, the rankings of these five languages
are as follows: The most common language cited in Englishwritten
documents is English. Korean is the eighth most cited
language in English-written documents according to Microsoft
Academic, Polish is 10th, Russian is 12th, and Czech is 16th.
If we use this as the order for the computation of φ (i.e., the
order or other function that is computed based on rarity), the
LDI of this text would be as follows:
1 5
46
54
1
3
54
12
3
54
16
1
54
8
1
54
10
2 2 2
2
+( )×
× + × + × +
× + ×
log
log log log
log llog
.
.
2 10
1 0 699
46
54
0
3
54
3 585
3
54
4
1
54
3












= +( )×
× + × + × +
× ++ ×












= × + + + +( )
=
1
54
3 322
1 699 0 0 199 0 222 0 056 0 062
.
. . . . .
11 699 0 539 0 916. . . .× =
Discussion
Explanation of LDI
The purpose of this article is to introduce a new scientometric
index—the Language Diversity Index. This index is not
4	 SAGE Open
based on previously published indices and should solve a
problem largely omitted in scientometric scientific discourse—the
language diversity of sources, the lack of which
results in the researchers’ view of their research question.
This is different than the issue of disciplinary diversity more
often discussed by scientometric community (e.g., Zitt &
Bassecoulard, 2008). The proposed index should contribute
to the multidimensional evaluation of research as demanded
by social science and humanities studies (Toledo, 2018). In
the following paragraphs, we therefore focus on the explanation
of this index and the role it should serve in scientific
discourse.
Computation of the LDI of a document written in language
A varies according to this language. First, how often
were the publications written in various languages cited in
documents written in A in the previous 5 years should be
computed (this computation could be done only yearly). All
cited languages are ordered according to how often they
appear in the references of A-language documents. Function
ΦA then transforms each language’s order to its logarithm,
which is used as a value of this language in the computation
formula. This formula consists of the rarity part, which computes
the rarity of languages cited in the references as a product
of these languages’ value and their frequency in
references, and the diversity part, which is the logarithm of
the number of various languages of published documents in
the references. Logarithms are used to make the final LDI
value smaller. The logarithm in the diversity part has a larger
base than the logarithm in the rarity part to give greater stress
on the rarity of languages than on the number of languages.
This should give higher value to languages of small cultural
groups.
Language A could be any language in which a document
is published (Korean, Czech, Swahili, English, etc.). Because
the order of cited languages depends on the language A, documents
with the same reference list might have different
LDIs, depending on the language in which the document is
published. The order of languages used in the LDI computation
depends on the database from which it is computed.
Different databases have different coverage of various languages
documents; the order of cited languages will therefore
vary according to this coverage.
Scientometric indices should lead to desirable changes in
scientific discourse (Hammersley, 2014). LDI has been
created to support such desirable change—to encourage
researchers to get closer to the communities they research,
that members of these communities might have a greater
chance of being included in scientific discourse, and that
information between cultures can circulate more often without
the intermediate role of English scientific discourse.
The suggested index might be helpful if the following
propositions are valid:
Proposition 1: There is at least one language for which
documents published in this language do not cite sources
from all languages evenly.
Proposition 2: Lewin’s (1930) opinion that sciences should
study common phenomena as thoroughly as phenomena
Table 1.  First 20 Most-Cited Languages in Documents in the English Language Published During Publication Years 2015–2019
Contained in Microsoft Academic (A = English).
Languages ordered by number of citations in A
Number of times documents published in this language were
cited in documents published in 2015–2019 in A = English
α1 = English 326,005,701
α2 = Japanese 4,222,865
α3 = Spanish 487,191
α4 = French 407,340
α5 = German 372,443
α6 = Portuguese 254,774
α7 = Chinese (both simplified and traditional) 196,326
α8 = Korean 161,571
α9 = Italian 102,735
α10 = Polish 92,331
α11 = Persian 52,036
α12 = Russian 46,739
α13 = Indonesian 43,919
α14 = Dutch 28,283
α15 = Turkish 24,401
α16 = Czech 14,941
α17 = Finnish 14,423
α18 = Croatian 12,959
α19 = Catalan 7,717
α20 = Swedish 7,361
Linkov et al.	 5
happening only once, because it cannot be known in
advance study which phenomenon might bring greater
increase in knowledge, is valid. Therefore, a small language
environment might bring breakthrough with the
same probability as a large language environment.
Proposition 3: Studying a phenomenon happening in the
concrete cultural environment might attain a better quality
when the researcher knows the language spoken in that
cultural community.
Proposition 4: Researchers change their behavior according
to the currently used scientometric indices.
Proposition 5: LDI benefits those researchers citing rarer
languages.
Proposition 1 is valid, because languages will be never known
and knowledge distributed evenly. Propositions 2 and 3
depend on the values of the researcher. Proposition 4 is supported
by the fact that researchers change their behavior to
increase their citation-rate-based scientometric indices
(López-Navarro et al., 2015). For example, in the humanities,
more publications are in English and in peer-reviewed publications,
to increase their scientometric ratings (Hammarfelt,
2017). Proposition 5 is a consequence of the LDI computation
algorithm. If these propositions are valid, then LDI should
change scientist’s behavior to search language sources more
equally across all languages, giving a more equal chance to
discover scientific findings across all language environments,
and this way, improve the quality of science.
Impact of Language Diversity on Scientific
Discourse
In a monolingual, globalized scientific discourse, authors
expect readers and reviewers to favor this discourse. They
prefer to include references to the most internationally cited
authors and remove references to the cultural heritage not
shared by a globalized reader: “Authors prefer citations to
recent thinkers who write in English: Austin, Grice, Searle,
Wittgenstein . . . rather than Hegel, Husserl or Bergson”
(Maingueneau, 2016, p. 116). This approach leads to “the
impoverishment of scientific creation” (p. 116). Sharing the
same global, English, scientific discourse decreases theoretical
conflicts in the research community. This increases the
danger of false consensus, when “researchers are (more and
more as time passes) professionals who do their job and
avoid challenging dominant assumptions” (Maingueneau,
2016, p. 118).
When scientific discourse is divided into more linguistically
diverse communities, these multiple scientific discourses
have different epistemological assumptions, allowing
the creation of better science than when these discourses are
merged into one in the global English discourse. The quality
of science might be therefore improved when English serves
not as a language of the production of knowledge but only as
a language of transmission of knowledge among cultures
(Maingueneau, 2016). English is the dominant language in
global, scientific discourse (Stockemer & Wigginton, 2019),
which negatively affects social science and humanities studies.
Nevertheless, it is supported by the current scientometric
practices, which face numerous critiques. Researchers in the
social sciences and humanities should not rely on “laissez
faire attitude and wait for these criticisms to change the new
reality of science accountability as this is very unlikely to
happen” (Pajic et al., 2019, p. 89). Adopting the LDI proposed
in this article might be one of the active strategies that
researchers might employ.
A = English
Researchers in Western countries are currently not motivated
to study non-Western populations because research evaluation
practices favor research of Western cultures (Brady et al.,
2018). This leads to “anglophone scientists neglecting foreign
language publications” (Ammon, 2012, p. 338). Ammon
(2012) thinks that the “major reason why publications in languages
other than English do not often reach the global level
is theAnglophones’disinclination to learn foreign languages”
(p. 349). Computing LDI for language A being English might
therefore create an incentive to learn foreign languages and
study other cultures. It might help to create an incentive for
the inclusion of more diverse group of scientists who are able
to ask more variable questions as required by Rad et al.
(2018). The resulting research might increase its interpretive
power—the ability to understand the cultural contexts of individuals’
behavior (Brady et al., 2018).
A = Some Language Other Than English
National research evaluation policies in smaller countries
(e.g., in Eastern Europe) force researchers to publish in journals
indexed in Web of Science and abandon publishing in
their own language (Pajic, 2015). If journals are evaluated
only by their impact factors, it motivates scholars to publish
only in English because articles written in English get a
higher number of citations than those written in other languages
(Di Bittetti & Ferreras, 2017). As a result, journals
stop publishing in local languages and switch their language
to English, which “might hamper the intermediary role of
science in the society at large” (Schuermans et al., 2010, p.
422). LDI could reach higher values both for local languages
and languages of other countries, so if it is used in research
evaluation, it will increase researchers’and journals’motivation
to publish in the local language. Currently, authors lose
the ability to write well in their native language because of
writing only in English (Nygaard, 2019). If writing in their
native language were more valued, they might improve this
ability. This might help researchers to preserve the identity of
the local language as a scientific language (Li, 2019).
When there is no incentive to learn and to read documents
written in other foreign languages than English, researchers
6	 SAGE Open
might be motivated to ignore other foreign languages and
cite only sources in their native language and in English
because it increases their citations. As discussed by Gong
et al. (2019), Chinese language texts receive more citations
when they cite foreign language documents and this foreign
language is nearly always English.
Several social science subdisciplines are centered on a
particular cultural community and they use this community
language as the communication language of their subdiscipline
(Stockemer & Wigginton, 2019). LDI will motivate
researchers to cite sources from smaller languages, which
might increase the reputation of texts published in these languages,
given that “the primary motivator of choosing
English as a publication language is the belief that publishing
in English will increase the reputation of one’s work”
(Stockemer & Wigginton, 2019, p. 645), LDI might lead to
increased publishing in smaller languages and enhancing the
quality of their scientific discourse.
Research production in non-Western countries is mostly
read by local scholars and does not have the opportunity to
influence global science (Tijssen et al., 2006) because inclusion
of local and minority cultures in global science is not
encouraged by the current system of scientific evaluation,
and cultural diversity is not included in its notion of the quality
of science (Pontille & Torny, 2010). Publishing in English
in Western journals and publishing houses leads to situations
in which local communities and languages are connected to
the West, but they are not connected to each other (Neylon,
2020). This diminishes international cultural exchange. LDI
is computed for each language separately, so it benefits local
researchers who focus on connecting their language community
to communities in small countries. Because LDI values
the citing of various languages, researchers from other cultures
are motivated to learn this culture’s language, so texts
written in this language might spread knowledge globally
without the need for English to serve as mediator of knowledge.
Scientific discourse written in the researcher’s language
will be also enriched by the usage of LDI because
researchers will be motivated to include knowledge from
more diverse set of cultures into their texts. Its usage might
support cultural diversity in small non-Western cultures.
Benefits of the LDI
Current scientific evaluation practices do not promote cultural
and linguistic diversity. LDI is designed to encourage
linguistic diversity and cultural diversity in published academic
texts. If the linguistic diversity of sources cited in academic
texts increases, it will increase the chance that
opinions, ideas, and the lives of linguistic and cultural minorities
(in a specific country or globally) are included in published
texts.
LDI acknowledges the fact that the same knowledge does
not have the same value in two different language communities.
Knowledge of Burmese is rarer in the Czech Republic
than in Thailand, whereas the knowledge of Polish is rarer in
Thailand than in the Czech Republic. That is the reason that
the order of the languages of the cited sources would be computed
separately for each language in which articles are published.
The usage of LDI might, therefore, encourage
linguistic diversity in all academic texts in all language
environments.
The humanities are heterogenous (Fanelli & Glänzel,
2013), which makes their measurement by scientometric
indices more difficult. However, they are generally more
dependent on the language used by the studied population
than natural sciences. Computing scientometric indices from
the number and rarity of languages cited in a text is more
effective for judging humanities when compared with the
indices that measure the number of citations at a certain time.
Research in the humanities might take a long time to be
cited; sometimes, it takes more than 10 years to get citations
(Ardanuy et al., 2009). When research is evaluated according
to the number of citations it gets in the preceding few years,
texts in the humanities cannot be compared because many of
them (despite being quality work) would not yet have citations.
LDI overcomes this problem because all of the necessary
information for its computation is already in the text.
Research evaluation practice should take into consideration
differences between scientific disciplines; otherwise, it
risks epistemic injustice between disciplines. Current scientometric
practices are better suited for laboratory sciences
than for the humanities because they serve more disciplines
aimed to create facts than disciplines aimed to enhance
understanding (Lohkivi et al., 2012). Evaluation practices
should be improved to better conform to epistemic aims of
disciplines, which creates understanding between cultures by
sharing knowledge contained in sources written in those cultures’
languages. LDI might enhance the value of research,
which needs sources from small and minority languages in
disciplines like cultural psychology and therefore creates a
more epistemic just environment for them.
LDI is designed to enhance linguistic diversity, which is
not the same as cultural diversity. Nevertheless, in most of
the world, separate cultural groups are usually separate linguistic
groups. This is especially true for Indigenous nations
in many countries. These Indigenous nations do not have
their own academic literature, but if citations of nonacademic
texts would be included in the computation of LDI, it would
benefit the texts written in these Indigenous languages when
they are being cited in academic texts. Such an inclusion
might benefit those indigenous minorities.
Limitations of the LDI
No scientometric index is perfect. LDI has some weak points
that are inevitable when it is computed from the number of
languages in the references. First, the definition of a separate
language can be a political, rather than an academic, issue.
Serbian and Croatian are nearly the same language, but they
Linkov et al.	 7
are considered distinct because the countries where they are
spoken are separate. On the contrary, different Chinese dialects
are considered to belong to one language despite being
mutually incomprehensible. Researchers who read in a language
with an existing similar language that is considered
separate because of political issues will have an advantage
when computing LDI. Second, it would be easy to increase
the LDI by citing papers that the researcher never read
because they do not understand the language of these papers.
However, this problem could be resolved by employing
field/site visits, a research evaluation method where the evaluator
speaks with the researchers about their experience and
research strategies (Pedersen et al., 2020). LDI should be
used together with other methods of measuring scientific
quality. If not used together with other scientometric indices,
LDI might lead researchers to pursue linguistic diversity at
the expense of other aspects of scientific quality.
Another one of LDI’s limitations is that bibliometric databases
do not cover enough documents in smaller languages
(Ochsner et al., 2017). Given the current databases’ coverage,
the usage of LDI might be limited by this fact. If LDI is
used for the evaluation of scientific research, companies producing
these databases should work on improving the coverage
of smaller languages. Another problem is that some
databases might not identify the document’s language with
good precision. Correct identification of the document language
is necessary for LDI to be effective.
Conclusion
Research quality is not equivalent to being cited (Feist,
2016). It consists of several dimensions such as scientific
quality, plausibility, originality, and societal value. Citation
indicators (i.e., indicators for how often a text is cited) are
“of little help in the evaluation of the . . . societal value of
research” (Aksnes et al., 2019, p. 12). One aspect of the societal
value of research is the representation of ideas, values,
and opinions from minority and remote cultures such as language
communities whose languages are rarely mentioned in
the society. There is a lack of scientometric indicators to
evaluate this representation of the minority and remote language
communities in scientific discourse. This article offers
such an indicator to measure the rarity of cultural influence
in a scientific discourse based upon the citations of the
sources published in various languages.
Even if many scientists consider the quantitative measurements
of scientific output impossible (Funk, 2016), some
sort of measurement is inevitable because of its usability for
governmental authorities. It is, therefore, worth using such
measures, which support positive changes in society.
Focusing on the improvement of bibliometric measures
changes the behavior of scientists. Focus on being cited
means that more citations are used when writing articles, and
journals might require more citations (Weingart, 2005).
Focusing on citing linguistically variable sources might lead
to more such sources being cited by scientists and required
by journals. If some journals adopt the increase of LDI as a
goal, it might lead to the increase of linguistic diversity of
opinions, views, and ideas cited in the published articles.
This might lead to the increased presence of values and the
views of indigenous, minority, and small cultural communities.
Such a development might help in the production of scientific
texts that help to develop a more just and better world.
Acknowledgment
We thank to Pavel Šmerk for giving us information from Microsoft
Academic presented in Table 1.
Author Contributions
V.L. presented the idea, developed the algorithm for computation of
LDI and the example in the article, created conceptualization of the
text, wrote the first version of the manuscript, and participated in
the manuscript rewriting and revisions. K.O., E.C., and G.H. participated
in the manuscript rewriting and revisions. All authors have
approved the final version of the article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect
to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for
the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The work
of Václav Linkov was supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth
and Sports within National Sustainability Programme I, a project of
Transport R&D Centre (LO1610), on a research infrastructure
acquiredfromtheOperationalProgrammeResearchandDevelopment
for Innovations (CZ.1.05/2.1.00/03.0064).
Ethical Statement
This article does not contain any research on human or animal
subject.
ORCID iD
Václav Linkov https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8473-1465
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