In one line: What you conclude about a behaviour depends on whose viewpoint you take: the insider's or the outsider's.
Perspective is not only about the body, the mind and the world around. It is also about whose eyes you look through.
A researcher watching an unfamiliar greeting might write it down as "odd". To the people doing it, the greeting is full of meaning. The same custom can look strange from outside and completely sensible from inside.
Remember: The view changes with the seat.
Ask whose perspective is being used.
Free preview
This is the free notes preview
You're reading the free notes. Aimnova Pro unlocks the full study experience — and you can try it with your first topic free to keep:
- FlashcardsLock in vocabulary and key terms with spaced repetition.
- Practice questionsAnswer exam-style questions and get instant AI marking.
- Mock exams & past-paper vaultSit full mocks and see exactly how examiners award marks.
- Personalised study planA daily plan built around your exam date and weak areas.
Key idea: A culture can be studied from the inside, on its own terms, or from the outside, by comparing it with others.
From the inside
- Called the emic approach
- Asks what a behaviour means to the people themselves
- Gives depth and local meaning
- Hard to compare with other cultures
From the outside
- Called the etic approach
- Compares cultures using the same categories
- Shows patterns across cultures
- Can miss what a behaviour means locally
Take eye contact. An outside study might time eye contact in ten countries and rank them. An inside study asks what eye contact means in each place: respect here, rudeness there.
The risk of looking only from outside is judging everyone by the standards of your own culture, which is ethnocentrism.
Use both: The outside view lets you compare. The inside view keeps the meaning.
The strongest research uses the two together.
See how examiners mark answers
Answer exam-style questions with model answers. Learn exactly what earns marks and what doesn't.
Key idea: A researcher may belong to the group she studies, or come from outside it. Each position lets her see some things and hides others.
An insider
- Belongs to the group
- Is trusted, and understands what things mean
- May take things for granted
- May be too close to see clearly
An outsider
- Comes from outside the group
- Notices what members no longer see
- May misread what things mean
- May not be told the whole story
Suppose a school wants to understand pressure before exams. A student who interviews her own classmates is an insider: they talk freely to her, and she knows what they mean. But she may never think to ask about things that seem normal to her.
Exam tip: For any study, ask who collected the data and how close they were to the people studied.
Then say what that position helps with, and what it could hide.
Key idea: Most of psychology was written in Western countries. Indigenous peoples have their own ways of understanding mind, health and behaviour.
Indigenous peoples often understand well-being differently from a Western textbook. The Western view tends to look at the individual. Many Indigenous views look at the person's ties to family, community, land and ancestors.
A house with four walls: In one Māori model of health, a person is like a house with four walls: the body, the mind and feelings, the family, and the spirit.
If one wall is weak, the house is not sound. Treating the mind alone would miss three walls.
These are perspectives in their own right, not "beliefs" to be corrected. Psychologists who work with a community, and not just on it, learn what health means there and avoid judging it by outside standards.
Remember: Western psychology is one perspective among others.
Study smarter, not longer
Most students waste 40% of study time on topics they already know. Our AI tracks your progress and optimizes every minute.
How this is asked: Perspective is one of the concepts for the 15-mark essay on Paper 1, set in a context such as health and well-being.
Details of studies are not needed. Clear ideas, explained examples and a judgement are.
The essay pattern
- Say whose perspective most research takes.
- Show what an outside view can do, and what it misses.
- Show what an inside view adds, with an example.
- Bring in an Indigenous perspective, or the researcher's own position.
- Finish with a judgement about using more than one.
The trap: "every culture is different": That is where the answer starts, not where it ends.
Say how a perspective changes what is found, with an example.
In the context of health and well-being, discuss why psychologists need more than one cultural perspective to understand well-being.
Model answer plan
See the answer broken into clear points, with guidance on how each point earns marks.