A distinction that has played a role in theorising related to cross-cultural psychological research research. Emic refers to a researchstrategy that takes an insider view of a particular culture and starts data collection from theperspectives and reports of participants. The etic approach is a diametrically different strategy in that it aims to examine the extent to which psychological phenomena are universal, and thus it typically emphasizes Western-derived models and instruments that are thentried and tested across a range of contrasting cultures. The distinction was originally made by the linguist Kenneth Pike (1912-2000) who derived it from the terms phonemic and phonetic. It was reviewed and further developed by the anthropologist Marvin Harris (1927-2001) in a paper published in 1976.
See Anthropology, Cross-cultural psychology, Ethnography, Linguistic anthropology, Psychic unity of mankind, Relativism (or cultural relativism), Universal, Universalism
Harris, M. (1976). History and significance of the emic-etic distinction. Annual Review of Anthropology, 5, 329-350.