Perspective

A viewpoint or level of explanation used to understand behaviour.

The body: brain, genes and hormones.

Mental processes — memory, attention, thinking and beliefs.

The social world: other people, groups and culture.

Reductionist: a behaviour explained at one level only. Holistic: the whole person, using several levels.

No. They work at different levels, and a full explanation uses more than one.

Stress hormones and an over-active stress response keep the body alert.

A noisy environment or exam-season pressure disrupts sleep.

Each sees a different part of the picture, so together they explain more.

Deductive: start from a theory and collect data to test it. Inductive: start from observations and build an explanation.

A theory explains why something happens and can be tested. A model is a simplified picture of how something works.

Understanding behaviour from inside a culture, on its own terms and meanings.

Studying behaviour from outside, comparing across cultures with general categories.

Judging another culture by your own culture's standards, treating yours as the norm.

Emic: from the inside, for meaning. Etic: from the outside, for comparison.

Calling a culture's customs "backward" just because they differ from your own.

You may miss local meaning and slip into ethnocentrism.

It becomes hard to compare across cultures.

Its questions assume one culture's norms, so others are judged by the wrong standards.

Combine outside comparison with inside understanding, and adapt measures to local meaning.

An insider is trusted and understands meanings, but takes things for granted. An outsider notices more, but may misread.

They look at a person's ties to family, community, land and ancestors, not only at the individual.

The community helps to plan the research, agrees to it, and benefits from it.