Biological, socio-cultural and indigenous perspectives

Lakshmi (an invented example) is a forty-year-old handloom weaver in a village near Varanasi. For six months she has slept badly, felt tired all day, and worried about money since power looms in the town took away much of her work. Her neighbours say she has been "thinking too much". Her mother-in-law says the family's troubles are the result of past karma. A doctor at the district hospital found nothing wrong with her heart or thyroid.

How should a psychologist understand Lakshmi? One way is to ask what is happening in her body: her sleep, her hormones, her nervous system. A second way is to ask about her world: her family, her castecasteLiterally: from Portuguese casta, breed or lineageA caste is a hereditary social group in India. People are born into it and traditionally marry within it. Castes were ranked, and lower-ranked castes faced exclusion and discrimination.Compare Close to social class or to an ethnic group, but caste is fixed at birth, kept by marriage within the group, and was given religious justification. Psychologists study caste prejudice much as they study racial prejudice.Full entry in the glossaryClose and income, the collapse of her trade, and the beliefs her community uses to explain misfortune. A third way is to ask what her own culture's ideas of mind and suffering say, and whether those ideas could guide both the understanding and the help. These are the three perspectives of this syllabus topic: the biological, the socio-cultural and the indigenous. A perspective here means a way of looking: a set of questions, methods and assumptions that decides what you notice.

This page explains each perspective, its Indian content, its nearest cousin in Western psychology, what it does well and what it misses. Then it shows how the three fit together.

Where this three-part framing comes from

Start with an honest point. None of the books supplied for this course uses the phrase "biological, socio-cultural and indigenous perspectives". The research for this guide searched all six. (One textbook on the syllabus, Dalal's Whither Indian Psychology? of 2019, could not be checked.) As far as the guide can tell, the three-part framing is the syllabus's own. This page builds each perspective from the nearest sources, and you should say so if you use the framing in an exam answer.

Three sources come closest.

Physical, social and spiritual. The editors of the Foundations textbooks, Cornelissen, Girishwar MisraGirishwar MisraIndian psychologist (born 1951) at Delhi University who studies culture, self, emotion and wellbeing. A co-editor of the course textbook Foundations of Indian Psychology.Full entry in the glossaryClose and Varma, argue that Western psychology "is largely confined to two dimensions which are both fully accessible to the ordinary waking consciousness": "the physical and the social" (2014, Introduction, p. xii). The physical side includes genetics, brain science and cognitive science. The social side includes psychoanalysis, cross-cultural psychology and social constructivism, the view that much of what we know is built up in social life. The Indian view of the person, they write, has "a multidimensionality that is not limited to the physical and the social, but that extends to, or rather starts with, the spiritual" (2011, Introduction, p. xxi). Read the syllabus's three terms against this: biological is close to their physical, socio-cultural to their social, and the indigenous perspective is where India's own ideas, including its ideas about consciousness, come in. The match is this guide's reading, not the editors' claim.

Where indigenization is needed. Durganand SinhaDurganand SinhaIndian psychologist (1922 to 1998) at Allahabad. He led the call to 'indigenize' psychology in India, so that it fits Indian life and problems.Full entry in the glossaryClose (1994) made a sharp point about how far each kind of psychology changes from culture to culture. The call for indigenization, he wrote, "does not apply to those areas of psychology that deal mainly with the biological and physiological aspects of behaviour". In those areas "universality of principles and theories is seldom questioned". But in social, organisational, personality, clinical and developmental psychology, he saw indigenization "not only as desirable but also inevitable". Higher perception and thinking fall in between. This is the clearest statement in the sources about how the three perspectives relate.

Body, mind and consciousness. K. Ramakrishna RaoK. Ramakrishna RaoIndian psychologist and philosopher (1932 to 2021). A leader of the Indian psychology movement and co-author of the course textbook Psychology in the Indian Tradition.Full entry in the glossaryClose and Anand C. ParanjpeAnand C. ParanjpeIndian-Canadian psychologist, Professor Emeritus at Simon Fraser University in Canada. He writes on self and identity in Western and Indian thought.Full entry in the glossaryClose (2016, section 1.1.3) describe the person as "a composite of body, mind, and consciousness". The body is the nervous system and senses. The mind is a subtle kind of matter. ConsciousnessconsciousnessLiterally: Latin conscire, to know togetherConsciousness is awareness: the fact that we experience anything at all, such as seeing a colour, feeling pain or knowing that we exist.Indian link chit, purusha or atman (pure consciousness), as distinct from chitta and manas (the mind and its contents).Full entry in the glossaryClose is something else again, which no physical account can capture. The biological perspective can reach the body and part of the mind. Indian psychology insists that it cannot reach consciousness.

Three lenses on one person

The three-part framing is the syllabus's. What sits inside each lens comes from the sources named on this page.

One person

• body
• mind
• consciousness

Rao and Paranjpe's model of the person. Indian psychology holds that the biological and socio-cultural lenses do not reach the third layer.

1. Biological

   What do the body and brain contribute?

   Indian contentAyurveda's doshas and constitution, prana, the gunas; research on the bodily effects of yoga and meditation

   Western cousinBiological psychology, neuroscience, psychophysiology

   Sinha (1994)Seldom needs indigenization: its principles are rarely questioned across cultures

2. Socio-cultural

   What do family, caste, class, ecology and culture contribute?

   Indian contentDesh-kala-patra; the ecology of deprivation; ecocultural studies; duty-based morality; beliefs about the causes of illness

   Western cousinCultural and cross-cultural psychology; Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems

   Sinha (1994)Here indigenization is seen "not only as desirable but also inevitable"

3. Indigenous

   Which questions, ideas and methods does the culture's own tradition bring?

   Indian contentIndian psychology built from the darshanas, the Gita, Buddhism and Ayurveda; non-attachment; the guru relationship in healing

   Western cousinIndigenous psychologies worldwide; emic research

   Sinha (1994)The road to universals that are "proved rather than merely assumed"

The editors of Foundations of Indian Psychology describe Western psychology as covering "the physical and the social". They add that the Indian view of the person "extends to, or rather starts with, the spiritual" (Cornelissen, Misra and Varma, Introduction).

There is also a Western cousin of the whole framing. Clinicians around the world use the biopsychosocial modelbiopsychosocial modelThe view, used widely in medicine and clinical psychology, that health and illness come from biological, psychological and social causes working together.Indian link Ayurveda's view of body, mind and self as one system, and the pancha kosha model of the person in layers.Full entry in the glossaryClose, proposed by the American psychiatrist George Engel in 1977, which asks them to look at biological, psychological and social causes together. A writer in one of your textbooks, Michael Miovic, calls it "the reigning biopsychosocial model of clinical practice" (2014, p. 281). The syllabus's triad may be an Indian adaptation of this model, with the indigenous perspective in place of the psychological one. That is a guess about origins, not a documented fact.

The biological perspective

What it asks

The biological perspective asks what the body contributes to the mind: the brain and nervous system, hormones, genes, breath, food and sleep. In Western psychology this is the territory of biological psychology, psychophysiology (the study of bodily signals such as heart rate and brain waves that go with mental states), neuroscience and behavioural genetics. Its usual assumption, as the Foundations editors put it, is that consciousness depends on working neural systems. The brain comes first; the mind is what the brain does.

What Indian traditions say about the body and the mind

Indian traditions also took the body seriously, but they drew the line between body and mind in a different place. Three ideas carry most of the weight. The first comes from AyurvedaAyurvedaआयुर्वेदĀyurvedasay: aa-yur-vay-duhLiterally: knowledge of life (āyus + veda)Ayurveda is India's traditional system of medicine. It treats body and mind together and aims to keep health in balance, not only to cure illness.Western link Close to holistic or biopsychosocial medicine. The key difference: its concepts (doshas, gunas) do not match Western physiology, and its care includes diet, daily routine and ethics.Full entry in the glossaryClose, India's classical medicine.

New Sanskrit word

dosha दोष

Written

doṣa

Say

do-shuh

Literally

fault, defect

Ayurveda describes three doshas: vatavataवातvātasay: vaa-tuhLiterally: wind (vā-, to blow)Vata is the Ayurvedic dosha of movement, linked with air. It governs breathing, circulation and all movement in body and mind.Western link No direct match. Vata types resemble restless, changeable temperaments, but vata is a body-mind process concept, not a psychological diagnosis.Full entry in the glossaryClose (movement, linked with air), pittapittaपित्तsay: pit-tuhLiterally: bilePitta is the Ayurvedic dosha of heat and change, linked with fire. It governs digestion, body heat and sharpness of mind.Western link No direct match. Pitta types resemble quick, intense temperaments, but pitta is a body-mind process concept, not a trait measure.Full entry in the glossaryClose (heat and change, linked with fire) and kaphakaphaकफsay: kuh-phuhLiterally: phlegmKapha is the Ayurvedic dosha of structure and stability, linked with water and earth. It gives the body strength and the mind steadiness.Western link No direct match. Kapha types resemble calm, steady temperaments, but kapha is a body-mind process concept, not a trait measure.Full entry in the glossaryClose (structure and stability, linked with water and earth). Each person is born with a particular mix of the three. Ayurveda calls this mix the person's constitution, using the word prakritiprakritiप्रकृतिprakṛtisay: pruh-kri-tiLiterally: what is made first; original natureIn Sankhya, prakriti is nature: the single source of all matter and all mental activity. It is made of three qualities, the gunas.Western link Close to 'nature' or 'matter-energy'. The key difference: prakriti includes the mind, so thoughts and feelings are natural processes, not consciousness itself.Full entry in the glossaryClose, which in philosophy means nature as a whole.

The doshas describe body type and temperament together. Following the classical texts, Rao and Paranjpe (2016) describe a pitta-dominant person as quick to understand, argumentative and quick to anger, and a kapha-dominant person as strong, steady and generous. A balanced mix of doshas means health. An imbalance means illness, of body or mind.

The word itself is misleading. "Dosha" literally means "defect" or "fault", yet the doshas in balance are what keep a person healthy (Rao and Paranjpe, 2016, section 5.11).

Nearest Western idea Loosely close to the four humours of ancient Greek medicine, or to temperament types. The difference: doshas are not part of modern physiology, and self-report dosha questionnaires still need validation.

dosha in the glossary

The second idea comes from the philosophy of the SankhyaSankhyaसांख्यSāṃkhyasay: saang-khyuhLiterally: enumeration, countingSankhya explains everything with two realities: pure consciousness (purusha) and nature (prakriti). In Sankhya, the mind belongs to nature, not to consciousness.Western link Close to mind-body dualism, as in Descartes. The key difference: Sankhya puts the mind on the material side; only pure consciousness is separate.Full entry in the glossaryClose school, and it is used in Ayurveda and Yoga alike.

New Sanskrit word

guna गुण

Written

guṇa

Say

gu-nuh

Literally

strand, thread; quality

The three gunas are sattvasattvaसत्त्वsay: suht-tvuhLiterally: being-ness; from sat, beingSattva is the guna of clarity, lightness and calm. A sattvic mind is clear, peaceful and ready for knowledge.Western link Close to emotional stability and openness in trait models, or to a calm, focused state. Unlike a trait, sattva is also a quality of foods and actions.Full entry in the glossaryClose (clarity, lightness, calm), rajasrajasरजस्say: ruh-juhsLiterally: dust, haze; the coloured or dim spaceRajas is the guna of activity, passion and restlessness. It drives desire, effort and change, and too much of it brings agitation.Western link Close to high arousal, drive or impulsivity. The difference: rajas is one part of a three-way balance, not a single scale.Full entry in the glossaryClose (activity, desire, restlessness) and tamastamasतमस्say: tuh-muhsLiterally: darknessTamas is the guna of heaviness, dullness and inertia. It brings sleep, confusion and resistance to change.Western link Close to low arousal, inertia, or the lethargy seen in depression. The difference: tamas is also a quality of matter and of food.Full entry in the glossaryClose (heaviness, dullness, inertia). In Sankhya they are the three strands from which all of nature is made, matter and mind alike. Every person, every food and every action has some mix of them.

This is why Indian thought does not separate mind from matter as sharply as Western thought does. If the mind is made of the same three strands as the body and the world, then food, breath and posture can change the mind directly, and the mind can change the body. The scholar Kiran Kumar (2008, p. 22), following the writer Lannoy, calls this "hylozoistic" thinking: treating matter as alive and mind as material.

The gunas also give a theory of personality. A person in whom sattva dominates is calm and clear. A person in whom rajas dominates is driven and restless. A person in whom tamas dominates is sluggish and confused. Unlike most Western traits, the mix can change with practice, diet and way of life.

Nearest Western idea Close to trait or temperament models of personality, such as the Big Five. The difference: the gunas also describe matter, and their balance can change with practice.

guna in the glossary

The third idea comes from YogaYogaयोगsay: yo-guhLiterally: joining, yoking; discipline; from yuj-, to yokeYoga is both a school of philosophy and a set of practices that train body, breath and mind. Its classic text is Patanjali's Yoga Sutra.Western link Often compared with mind-body or mindfulness-based interventions. The key difference: classical Yoga is a full ethical and spiritual path, not only a technique for health.Full entry in the glossaryClose, which uses the body to change the mind.

New Sanskrit word

prana प्राण

Written

prāṇa

Say

praa-nuh

Literally

breath, life (pra + an-, to breathe)

Prana means breath, and more broadly the life energy that moves through the body. Yoga and Ayurveda describe it as the link between body and mind: when the breath is fast and uneven, the mind is agitated; when the breath is slow and even, the mind settles.

This is why yoga practice begins with the body. Postures (asanasasanaआसनāsanasay: aa-suh-nuhLiterally: seat, sitting; posture (ās-, to sit)An asana is a yoga posture. In Patanjali's Yoga it is the third limb and means a steady, comfortable seat for meditation.Western link Close to physical exercise or stretching. The difference: in Yoga, posture serves stillness of body, breath and mind, not fitness alone.Full entry in the glossaryClose) and breath regulation (pranayamapranayamaप्राणायामprāṇāyāmasay: praa-naa-yaa-muhLiterally: extension or control of prana (prāṇa + āyāma)Pranayama is the regulation of breath and life energy (prana). It is the fourth limb of Yoga and is used to calm and steady the mind.Western link Close to the breathing techniques used in stress management and therapy, such as paced breathing. The difference: in Yoga the breath is a way to work with prana and the mind.Full entry in the glossaryClose) come before concentration and meditation in PatanjaliPatanjaliपतञ्जलिPatañjalisay: puh-tuhn-juh-liThe compiler of the Yoga Sutras, a short classical text on training the mind. Most scholars date it to the 1st or 2nd century CE, and no later than the 5th century.Full entry in the glossaryClose's eight limbs of yoga. The idea is not that the body causes the mind, as in Western biology, but that body, breath and mind are three levels of one system, and you can enter the system at any level.

Nearest Western idea Close to 'vital energy' in older Western ideas, or to breathing and autonomic regulation in physiology. Modern science has no measure for prana as such.

prana in the glossary

Rao (2008, p. 6) sums up the Indian position. The mind is "material but subtle": it belongs to the physical world, though it is finer than the body. Consciousness is different. Rao and Paranjpe (2016, section 4.4) put it in one line: "Mind does not generate consciousness; rather it reflects consciousness." The image is a mirror. The mind shows what consciousness lights up, as a mirror shows the light of the sun, but the mirror does not make the light.

This means Indian psychology accepts biological research but will not stop there. In Rao's words:

neurophysiological studies are not considered irrelevant to Indian psychology, but are regarded as insufficient to give us a complete understanding of human nature.

Rao (2008, p. 8)

Research from this perspective

Indian researchers have studied the bodily side of Indian practices since the 1950s.

• Yogis in the laboratory. Anand, Chhina and Singh (1961) studied a yogi sealed in an airtight box and recorded a fall in his pulse and his use of oxygen. In the same year they recorded the brain waves of yogis in deep meditative absorption, called samadhisamadhiसमाधिsamādhisay: suh-maa-dhiLiterally: putting together; complete absorption (sam + ā + dhā-)Samadhi is deep absorption in meditation, where the sense of a separate meditator fades and the mind becomes one with its object. It is the eighth limb of Yoga.Western link Close to 'altered' or non-ordinary states of consciousness, and loosely to deep flow. The difference: samadhi comes from long training and is said to give true knowledge.Full entry in the glossaryClose, and found that the yogis barely reacted to strong outside stimuli. Some books date this study to 1969, the year it was reprinted in a collection edited by Charles Tart.
• Yoga as treatment. Vahia and colleagues (1972, 1973) tested a therapy based on Patanjali's yoga with patients at KEM Hospital in Bombay, in a trial where patients were assigned to treatments by chance. Udupa, Singh and Yadav (1973) studied the effects of hatha yoga, the school of yoga built on posture and breath.
• Measuring constitution and temperament. Shilpa and Murthy built the Mysore Tridosha Scale and the Mysore Triguna Scale, questionnaires that measure a person's doshas and gunas, and tested them with more than 1,500 people (2011 to 2012). Manickam (2008, p. 497) counted at least eight different guna questionnaires.
• Western studies of Indian practice. In 1970 the journal Science published Wallace's study of the bodily effects of Transcendental Meditation. Later studies recorded changes in brain waves during meditationmeditationLiterally: Latin meditari, to think over, reflectMeditation is a family of practices that train attention and awareness, for example by focusing on the breath, a word or a sound, or by watching the mind.Indian link dhyana (Yoga), and in Buddhism samatha (calm) and vipassana (insight) meditation.Full entry in the glossaryClose.

Sources for these studies

All are reported in Rao and Paranjpe (2016, sections 5.14, 8.1.3 and 8.2.4), Sinha (1994) and Manickam (2008). The guide has not read the original papers, so it reports only what these sources say about them.

Strengths and blind spots

Strengths. Biological research produces measurements that sceptics accept: a pulse rate is a pulse rate in any culture. It can give what Rao and Paranjpe (2016, section 8.1.3) call "reliable objective correlates of the subjective experience of meditation", that is, bodily signs that go with an inner experience. It links psychology to medicine and health. Reviews that combine many studies find smaller but positive effects on attention and memory, alongside larger effects on emotion (Sedlmeier and colleagues, 2012; see the paradigm debate page).

Blind spots. The same sources list several.

• No clear signature. Scientists have not found a pattern in the brain that marks meditation. One review concluded that the working of the central nervous system "is clearly affected by meditation, but the specific neural changes ... are far from clear" (Cahn and Polich, 2006, quoted in Rao and Paranjpe, 2016, section 8.1.3).
• Technique is not experience. Many studies measure what people do, such as sitting with eyes closed and repeating a word, and assume this produces a meditative state. It may not.
• Weak methods. A review of meditation research in 2007 found that much of it was poorly designed (Ospina and colleagues, reported in Rao and Paranjpe, 2016, section 8.2).
• ReductionismreductionismLiterally: Latin reducere, to lead backReductionism explains complex things by breaking them into simpler parts, for example explaining thoughts entirely by brain chemistry.Indian link none directly; Charvaka's view of mind as a product of matter is the nearest. Most Indian schools are holistic.Full entry in the glossaryClose. Explaining a whole experience by its bodily parts can leave out what matters. Kiran Kumar (2008, p. 27) complains of love being "discussed in terms of its underlying glandular basis".
• Lost in translation. Manickam (2008, p. 494) warns that yoga gets "equated to relaxation" or to behaviour therapy, so that an Indian practice is renamed with a Western label. He calls this the "India-made foreign" effect.
• Value-laden scales. In Indian culture sattva is admired and tamas is not. On a questionnaire, few people want to describe themselves as tamasic, so self-report guna scales may measure what people wish they were (Rao and Paranjpe, 2016, section 5.14).

The socio-cultural perspective

What it asks

The socio-cultural perspective asks what a person's social world contributes: family, caste, class, religion, language, the local economy and the natural environment. It treats culture not as background noise but as part of how minds are made.

Indian tradition already had a version of this idea. Durganand Sinha (2002) pointed out:

According to Hindu tradition, to understand behaviour and evaluate the same, it is essential to view it in the context of desh (place), kala (time) and patra (the person or individual).

Sinha (2002), reprinted in Psychology for India, ch. 4

The phrase desh-kala-patradesh-kala-patraदेश-काल-पात्रdeśa-kāla-pātrasay: day-shuh kaa-luh paa-truhLiterally: place, time and person (literally 'vessel')Place, time and person: the three things Hindu tradition says you must know before you can judge an action as right or wrong.Western link Close to Kurt Lewin's idea that behaviour depends on the person and the situation together. The difference: desh-kala-patra adds time, and it is used to judge whether an act is right, not only to explain it.Full entry in the glossaryClose is still used in Indian languages. It means that the same act can be right in one place, time or role and wrong in another. A lie told to protect a frightened child is judged differently from a lie told to cheat a customer.

Two Western traditions that study culture

Western psychology has two main ways of studying culture. Indian psychologists have used both.

Key concept

cross-cultural psychology

Cross-cultural psychology tests whether a theory holds in more than one culture. A researcher takes a theory or a test developed in one country, usually a Western one, and gives it to people in other countries. If the results agree, the finding may be universal. If they differ, culture matters.

Cross-cultural psychology has been important in India. Durganand Sinha was president of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology from 1982 to 1984. Its standard textbook, by John BerryJohn BerryCross-cultural psychologist known for the ecocultural framework and a model of acculturation. He co-edited Indigenous Psychologies (1993) with Uichol Kim.Full entry in the glossaryClose and colleagues (1992), lists the ways Western ethnocentrism, the habit of treating one's own culture as the standard, can creep into research: in the choice of test items, of instruments, of concepts and of topics.

Closest Indian idea no classical term.

cross-cultural psychology in the glossary

Key concept

cultural psychology

Cultural psychology starts from a different idea. Culture and mind make each other. People's thinking and feeling cannot be understood apart from the meanings their culture gives them, so the researcher must study a culture from the inside, in its own terms, before comparing it with anything else.

In India, Girishwar Misra and the American psychologist Kenneth Gergen (1993) argued for this view: culture is part of the psyche, not a variable added on top. Their approach treats Indian concepts as possible sources of theory, not only as local colour.

Closest Indian idea the context-sensitive view of dharma, in which right action depends on place, time and person.

cultural psychology in the glossary

Indian research from this perspective

The ecology of deprivation. Sinha (1982) studied how poverty affects children's development. He described two layers of environment around a child. The visible inner layer is home, school and friends. The surrounding outer layer is geography, caste and class, and civic amenities such as water, roads and electricity. A child from a scheduled casteScheduled CastesLiterally: castes listed in a 'schedule' (an official list) of the ConstitutionScheduled Castes are the caste groups that the Constitution of India lists for protection and support, because they suffered untouchability and exclusion. Scheduled Tribes are the matching list for Adivasi communities.Compare Close to the protected groups of affirmative-action policies in other countries.Full entry in the glossaryClose may share a classroom with richer children and still live inside a very different outer layer. Sinha later linked his model to the American psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory, which nests the child inside layers of environment from family out to society.

Ecology and culture together. With John Berry, Indian researchers used the ecocultural approachecocultural approachA way of studying behaviour that starts from a group's natural setting and way of making a living, then traces how these shape its culture and the minds of its members.Compare Compare: Urie Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory, which places the person inside nested layers of environment, from family to society.Full entry in the glossaryClose, which starts from how a group lives in its natural setting and traces the effects on its culture and on its members' minds. Mishra, Sinha and Berry (1996) studied three Adivasi (tribal) communities in Bihar: the Birhor, the Asur and the Oraon. Sinha (2002) describes ecology and culture working together "leading both to biological and cultural adaptation", which shows how the socio-cultural perspective can include the biological one.

Self and morality. Western cultural psychology often describes Asian cultures as having an interdependent selfinterdependent selfA way of seeing oneself as part of a web of relationships, with family, group and duties at the centre of who one is, rather than a separate set of personal traits.Indian link the self as defined through family, community and dharma, the duties of one's role.Full entry in the glossaryClose: people see themselves through their relationships and duties rather than as separate individuals (Markus and Kitayama, 1991). Indian research complicates this. Sinha and Tripathi (1994) found that individualist and collectivist tendencies exist side by side in Indians. Other studies found that Indians treat helping others as a moral duty in more situations than Americans do (Miller, Bersoff and Harwood, 1990). Shweder, Mahapatra and Miller (1990) studied reasoning about right and wrong in Odisha built on dharmadharmaधर्मsay: dhuhr-muhLiterally: that which holds or supports; from dhṛ-, to holdDharma is the right way of living: duty, ethics, and the order that holds society and the world together. It depends partly on one's role and stage of life.Western link Close to 'ethics', 'duty' or 'moral order'. The difference: dharma joins personal ethics, social roles and cosmic law, and it depends on context.Full entry in the glossaryClose, duty and the order of things. They described it as "alternative post conventional moralities": mature forms of moral thinking that the American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg's stage theory of moral development had not recognised. Miller (1984) found that Americans explained other people's behaviour more by their personality, and Hindu Indians more by the situation, and that the difference grew with age.

Leadership. J. B. P. SinhaJ. B. P. SinhaIndian organisational psychologist known for the 'nurturant task leader' model (1980), a leader who is both caring and demanding, fitted to Indian workplaces.Full entry in the glossaryClose (1980) described the nurturant task leader, a style he found suited to Indian organisations. Such a leader is focused on getting work done, but also draws on the affection, dependence and personal ties of Indian family life.

Beliefs about illness. Ajit K. DalalAjit K. DalalIndian psychologist at the University of Allahabad who studied health beliefs and folk healing, and wrote a widely used history chapter on psychology in India.Full entry in the glossaryClose and his colleagues studied how Indian patients explain their illness or injury, and whether their explanations affect recovery. Explaining why something happened is called making an attribution. Patients often explained their condition by karmakarmaकर्मsay: kuhr-muhLiterally: action, deed; from kṛ-, to doKarma means action, and also the result that every action brings back to the person who did it, in this life or a later one.Western link Close to moral causation, or 'you reap what you sow'. The difference: in most schools karma is an impersonal law that works across lives; theistic schools say God oversees it, but even there it is not a judge's verdict on a single life.Full entry in the glossaryClose or by God's will. Did these beliefs help or harm?

• Among 41 accident victims in Allahabad, attributions to karma and God's will were linked to psychological recovery, while a sense of personal control was not a good sign of recovery (Dalal and Pande, 1988).
• Among 70 men after a first heart attack, beliefs about karma, God and a just world were linked to better recovery, but blaming the illness on God was linked to worse recovery and mood a month later (Agrawal and Dalal, 1993).
• Among 132 rural women with cervical cancer, karma and fate explanations were common but showed no clear link to recovery (Kohli and Dalal, 1998).
• Reviewing five hospital studies, Dalal (2000) concluded that patients "consistently attributed their illness to karma and God's will", but found "no consistent linkages" between these beliefs and how well patients adjusted. The meaning of the beliefs shifts with the illness and the social setting.

How to read these studies

The samples are small and the studies are correlational: they show that beliefs and recovery go together, not that one causes the other. The details come from the published abstracts. The direction of the link for karma in the 1988 study is not stated in the abstract.

Dalal also studied traditional healers. He estimated that India has more than half a million of them and that most Indians use their services at some point. He found such healing to be holistic, sacred and centred on the family and community rather than on the individual (Dalal, 2011). The psychoanalyst Sudhir KakarSudhir KakarIndian psychoanalyst and writer (1938 to 2024) who used psychoanalysis to study Indian childhood, family, healing and spirituality, for example in The Inner World (1978).Full entry in the glossaryClose made similar observations in Shamans, Mystics and Doctors (1982).

A caution about the healer figures

Dalal (2011, p. 21) gives "more than half a million traditional healers" and "more than 90%" of Indians using such services, citing a government plan document and a 1991 report. The citation of the plan document may be wrong, so treat these figures as Dalal's estimate.

Try this

Mr Sunil Verma (an invented example), 58, owns a small shop in Lucknow. Two weeks after a heart attack, he tells the hospital psychologist: 'It was my karma. God has decided what will happen to me.' He is taking his medicines but has stopped his daily walks, saying there is no point. His daughter wants the psychologist to 'talk him out of this superstition'.

Using the research of Dalal and his colleagues, explain why the psychologist should not simply try to remove Mr Verma's beliefs, and what the psychologist should pay attention to instead.

Show the reasoning

Dalal's studies found that explanations through karma and God's will are very common among Indian patients and often sit alongside medical treatment. They do not have one fixed effect. In some studies karma beliefs went with better recovery, and in the heart-attack study blaming the illness on God went with worse recovery and mood. Dalal's review found "no consistent linkages" overall, because the meaning of the belief changes with the person and the situation. So the belief itself is not the problem, and calling it superstition would damage trust and ignore what the belief means to him.

The psychologist should look at what the belief is doing for Mr Verma now. Taking his medicines shows he has not given up on treatment. Stopping his walks suggests the belief has become a reason for passivity. The psychologist can explore what karma means to him. Many people in the tradition hold that karma calls for right action now, not only acceptance. Working within his own framework to restore the walks is the socio-cultural perspective in practice: it takes his cultural meanings seriously instead of replacing them.

Strengths and blind spots

Strengths. The socio-cultural perspective made psychology useful to India: to work on poverty, caste, rural development and health (Sinha, 1989, 1994). It exposed how much mainstream psychology rested on narrow samples. Sinha (2002) criticised "WASP", his name for "Western Academic Scientific Psychology", and its reliance on "the American sophomore population", that is, American university students. Modern psychologists call the same problem WEIRD samplesWEIRD samplesLiterally: acronym: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, DemocraticWEIRD stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic. Most psychology research has studied such people, yet presents the results as true for all humans.Indian link none; but the finding supports Indian psychologists' long-standing claim that mainstream findings are not culture-free.Full entry in the glossaryClose. It also changed how psychologists think about culture: from noise that spoils results to "the source of constructs and ideas" (Sinha, 2002).

Blind spots.

• Western theories on Indian samples. Much cross-cultural work in India simply tested Western theories on Indians. In such work, Dalal (2014, p. 31) writes, "culture remained a peripheral concern".
• Culture as a label. Studies often treat culture as one "packaged variable", for example by comparing "Indians" with "Americans", as if everyone in a country thought alike.
• Borrowed categories. Calling India simply "collectivist" forces a Western category onto a more mixed reality (Kiran Kumar, 2008, p. 23).
• Too much relativism. If every group's psychology is valid only for itself, comparison and general theory become impossible. Sinha (1994) warned against this "radical cultural relativism".
• Consciousness left out. Like the biological perspective, it usually assumes, without saying so, that the mind is a product of the brain and of social learning (Cornelissen, Misra and Varma, 2014, p. xiii).

The indigenous perspective

What it asks

The indigenous perspective asks which questions, concepts and methods a culture's own traditions bring to psychology. Instead of starting with a Western theory and testing it on Indians, it starts with Indian ideas and Indian problems.

Key concept

indigenous psychology

Literally

Latin indigena, born in a place

Indigenous psychology is psychology that grows from a people's own ideas, problems and ways of knowing, and is built for that people. The term spread through a 1993 book, Indigenous Psychologies, edited by Uichol Kim and John Berry. It has movements in many countries, such as Filipino psychology (Sikolohiyang Pilipino), founded by Virgilio EnriquezVirgilio EnriquezFilipino psychologist (1942 to 1994) who founded Sikolohiyang Pilipino (Filipino psychology) and named the difference between indigenization 'from within' and 'from without'.Full entry in the glossaryClose.

The idea behind it is that Western psychology is itself an indigenous psychology: the psychology of Europe and North America, exported to the rest of the world as if it were universal. Kiran Kumar (2008, p. 19) uses Kim and Berry's term for this: an "imposed etic".

In India, indigenous psychology takes the two directions you met on the previous topic page: adapting imported psychology, and building psychology from Indian thought. Because India has many cultures, Kiran Kumar adds, "we have indigenous psychologies!", in the plural.

Closest Indian idea Indian psychology is often called an indigenous psychology, but this is debated. Rao and Paranjpe say Indian psychology carries its own theory, while indigenous psychology is an approach that is neutral about theory.

indigenous psychology in the glossary

To understand the indigenous perspective you need two pairs of terms that cross-cultural psychologists use.

Key concept

emic and etic

Say

ee-mik, e-tik

Literally

from the linguistics terms 'phonemic' and 'phonetic'

The words come from linguistics. An emic approach studies a culture from the inside, with the concepts its own members use. An etic approach studies cultures from the outside, with concepts meant to fit all of them, so that they can be compared.

Problems arise when one culture's emic concepts are used as if they were etic. That is an imposed etic: a local Western concept, such as a particular test of intelligence, treated as universal and imposed on everyone. The alternative is a derived etic: a general concept built up by comparing several careful emic studies, so that the universal is found rather than assumed.

A hypothetical example: suppose a Western test treats intelligence as speed and abstract reasoning, and gives it unchanged in every country. That is an imposed etic. Now suppose careful emic studies in several cultures found that people there also count social responsibility as part of being capable. A derived etic concept of intelligence would include what those studies found, not only the Western version.

Closest Indian idea studying a darshana on its own terms (emic) versus comparing it with Western psychology (etic).

emic and etic in the glossary

Key concept

universalism

Universalism is the view that the basic processes of the mind are the same in all human beings, so a theory that is true in one culture should be true in all. Its opposite is cultural relativismcultural relativismCultural relativism is the view that beliefs, values and behaviour should be understood within their own culture, not judged by the standards of another.Indian link the Jain teaching of anekantavada (truth has many sides), and the idea that dharma depends on place, time and person.Full entry in the glossaryClose, the view that beliefs and behaviour can be understood only within their own culture.

Most psychologists take a middle position: basic processes are shared, but culture shapes how they develop and show themselves. Durganand Sinha held this middle position. He wanted psychology to find true universals, but he insisted they must be "proved rather than merely assumed", and that indigenous psychologies are the way to prove them (Sinha, 1994).

Closest Indian idea the self (atman) as the same in all beings, and sadharana dharma, the duties common to all people.

universalism in the glossary

Indian research from this perspective

These studies start from an Indian concept and study it with the tools of psychology.

• Non-attachment. Pande and Naidu built a scale of anasaktianasaktiअनासक्तिanāsaktisay: uh-naa-suhk-tiLiterally: non-attachment (an + āsakti, clinging)Anasakti means non-attachment: acting and enjoying life without clinging to things or to results. Indian psychologists study it as a source of calm and happiness.Western link Close to 'non-attachment' in mindfulness research, and to acceptance in acceptance-based therapies. The difference: it is rooted in duty (dharma) and service, not only in managing emotion.Full entry in the glossaryClose, non-attachment, from the Bhagavad GitaBhagavad Gitaभगवद्गीताBhagavad Gītāsay: bhuh-guh-vuhd gee-taaLiterally: song of the Blessed LordThe Bhagavad Gita is a 700-verse dialogue inside the Mahabharata. Krishna advises the warrior Arjuna, who is in crisis before a battle.Western link Often read as a counselling text: a person in crisis talks with a guide. Unlike most Western therapy, the guide also gives moral and spiritual teaching.Full entry in the glossaryClose's description of a person who acts without clinging to the results. In their 1992 study, people who scored low on non-attachment reported more distress and poorer health under stress, and non-attachment was the strongest predictor of symptoms.
• Wellbeing as harmony. Sinha (1990) described an Indian idea of wellbeing drawn from the Charaka SamhitaCharaka SamhitaचरकसंहिताCarakasaṃhitāsay: chuh-ruh-kuh suhm-hi-taaLiterally: the compendium of CarakaThe Charaka Samhita is the oldest major text of Ayurveda. It covers health, disease and treatment, and it has much to say about the mind.Western link Comparable to the Hippocratic writings of Greek medicine as a founding medical text. It differs in giving a full place to the mind and to ethics in health.Full entry in the glossaryClose, the Sushruta Samhita, Sankhya and the Gita: wellbeing as balance and harmony, not as the satisfaction of more and more needs.
• Stress. Palsane and colleagues (1986) built a model of stress from the Charaka Samhita, the Yoga SutraYoga Sutraयोगसूत्रYogasūtrasay: yo-guh soo-truhLiterally: threads (aphorisms) on yogaThe Yoga Sutra is the classic text of the Yoga school, by Patanjali. In about 195 short lines it explains how to calm and master the mind.Western link Close to a manual of attention training and self-regulation. The key difference: its goal is the freedom of pure consciousness (purusha), not only better mental health.Full entry in the glossaryClose and the Yoga Vasistha. It focuses on the person's desires and inner control, and on coping, rather than on the outside events that Western stress research tends to count (Rao and Paranjpe, 2016, section 8.2.4).
• The healing relationship. Neki (1973) argued that the relationship between guruguruगुरुsay: gu-ruLiterally: heavy, weighty; hence venerableA guru is a teacher, especially a spiritual teacher who guides a student in knowledge and practice. The guru is deeply respected in Indian tradition.Western link Close to a mentor or a therapist. The difference: the guru teaches by example and personal realisation, and the relationship includes devotion and service.Full entry in the glossaryClose and disciple offers a model for Indian psychotherapy. In it the therapist is closer to a respected elder or parent than to a neutral expert (Dalal, 2011).
• Emotion and ego. Girishwar Misra studies emotion through the theory of feeling that grew from the NatyashastraNatyashastraनाट्यशास्त्रNāṭyaśāstrasay: naat-yuh-shaas-truhLiterally: treatise on dramaThe Natyashastra is an ancient book on drama, dance and music, credited to Bharata. It contains an early theory of emotion called rasa.Western link Close to theories of basic emotions and of audience response in drama. The key difference: rasa is a shared, aesthetic emotion that is enjoyed, not a private reaction.Full entry in the glossaryClose, the classical text on drama. Kiran Kumar Salagame compares the Indian idea of ahamkaraahamkaraअहंकारahaṃkārasay: uh-huhng-kaa-ruhLiterally: I-maker (aham, I + kāra, maker)Ahamkara is the 'I-maker': the function that makes us feel 'I am this body and mind, and these things are mine'. In daily Hindi it means pride.Western link Often translated 'ego'. Freud's ego manages between drives and reality; ahamkara is the sense of 'I' and 'mine' that wrongly identifies with body and mind.Full entry in the glossaryClose, the sense of "I", with the Western egoegoLiterally: Latin ego, IIn psychology, the ego is the part of the self that manages between inner drives, conscience and the outside world (Freud). In daily English it means self-importance.Indian link ahamkara (the I-maker) and asmita (I-am-ness).Full entry in the glossaryClose.

Strengths and blind spots

Strengths. The indigenous perspective produces psychology that fits the people it studies, and it can generate new hypotheses that Western psychology would never think of. It adds topics mainstream psychology has neglected, such as consciousness, self-transformation and first-person methods (Rao, 2008, pp. 8 to 10). And it is the route to derived, rather than imposed, universals.

Blind spots. Sinha's five pitfalls of indigenization, set out on the discipline page, all apply here. L. S. S. Manickam (2008, pp. 494 to 495) adds five attitudes that hold Indian research back. Their names are memorable:

Three more problems need naming.

• Translation. A single Sanskrit word may be translated in several ways. Manickam (2008, p. 493) notes that vijnana is rendered as intelligence, knowledge or consciousness, and each choice leads to different research.
• "Indian" is not "Hindu". It is easy to equate Indian concepts with Hindu religion, or to present one school, often VedantaVedantaवेदान्तVedāntasay: vay-daan-tuhLiterally: end of the VedaVedanta is the family of schools based on the Upanishads. They ask how the self (atman) relates to ultimate reality (Brahman).Western link Sometimes compared with idealist philosophy, which holds that mind or spirit is basic. The key difference: Vedanta claims this can be known by direct experience, not only by argument.Full entry in the glossaryClose, as "the Indian view" (Manickam, 2008, pp. 493, 496).
• Whose traditions? Most writing on Indian psychology draws on Sanskrit, Hindu and Buddhist texts. AdivasiAdivasiआदिवासीādivāsīsay: aa-di-vaa-seeLiterally: original inhabitantsAdivasi, 'original inhabitants', is a name for India's tribal peoples. Many live in forest and hill regions, with their own languages, religions and ways of life.Compare Close to 'Indigenous peoples' in other countries.Full entry in the glossaryClose, folk, Islamic and Sufi, and DalitDalitदलितdalitasay: duh-litLiterally: broken, crushed, oppressedDalit is a name used by and for people from the castes that were once treated as 'untouchable'. Many prefer it to older insulting labels because it names the oppression they faced.Full entry in the glossaryClose perspectives get far less space. One of your textbooks has a single chapter on the Sufi path, and Dalal has written on folk healing, but these are exceptions. This is the guide's own observation from the course books, not a finding from a study.

Not every Indian psychologist wanted this perspective either. A survey by Adair and colleagues (1995) found that many supported indigenization but did not support a "return to Vedic or other traditional writings" (quoted in Kiran Kumar, 2008, p. 27).

The indigenous perspective also contains the debate you met on the discipline page: is the Indian psychology movement one of the world's indigenous psychologies, or a school that claims to speak for all human beings? Rao and Paranjpe say it is a "theory-loaded" school. If they are right, its claims are universal, and they must be tested as universal claims.

How the three perspectives fit together

The three perspectives are not rival teams. They are lenses that show different parts of the same person, and each can correct the others.

Sinha's (1994) argument shows how they relate. Biological findings are the most likely to be universal. Social behaviour is the most shaped by culture. The indigenous perspective is not a third region of the mind but a method: starting from local concepts so that universals can be tested rather than assumed. The ecocultural approachecocultural approachA way of studying behaviour that starts from a group's natural setting and way of making a living, then traces how these shape its culture and the minds of its members.Compare Compare: Urie Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory, which places the person inside nested layers of environment, from family to society.Full entry in the glossaryClose shows how the levels connect in research, since ecology and culture shape both bodies and minds over time.

Indian psychology adds one more claim that the other two perspectives do not share. The Foundations editors argue that physical and social factors are real causes, "but not as the full story". Consciousness, in their view, is a dimension of its own. You do not have to accept this claim to use the three perspectives. But you should notice that the indigenous perspective, in its Indian psychology form, brings a view of the person that the other two cannot test with their usual tools. The scientific-paradigm debate is about exactly this problem.

Why this matters for a psychologist

Go back to Lakshmi, the weaver near Varanasi. A careful psychologist would use all three perspectives. The biological lens asks about her sleep, appetite, energy and any illness the doctor might have missed, and it might suggest breathing practice to calm a racing mind at night. The socio-cultural lens asks about the loss of her trade, her debts, her family's support and her community's explanations, including her mother-in-law's talk of karma. The indigenous lens asks what Lakshmi herself means by "thinking too much", a phrase people in many parts of India use for distress, and whether ideas such as non-attachment, or the support of a respected elder, could be part of the help she accepts.

No one lens is enough. A purely biological approach would miss the collapse of her livelihood. A purely socio-cultural approach might miss a treatable sleep problem. A purely indigenous approach might romanticise tradition and ignore the power looms. Using the three together, and knowing what each cannot see, is the practical lesson of this topic.

Try this

A research team at a hospital in Bengaluru wants to understand stress among its nurses. Dr Kavya (an invented example) proposes three studies. Study 1 measures cortisol, a stress hormone, in the nurses' saliva before and after night shifts. Study 2 interviews nurses about their duties at home and at work, their families' expectations, and how their caste and language background affect how patients treat them. Study 3 builds a scale of non-attachment from the Bhagavad Gita and from interviews with senior nurses, and tests whether it predicts burnout.

Name the perspective of each study, say one thing each can show and one thing it cannot, and use Durganand Sinha's 1994 argument to say which study most needs indigenization.

Show the reasoning

Study 1 takes the biological perspective. It can show whether night shifts change the nurses' bodies, in a measurement that means the same in Bengaluru as anywhere else. It cannot show what the stress means to the nurses or where it comes from in their lives. Study 2 takes the socio-cultural perspective. It can show how family duties, caste and language shape the nurses' stress. It cannot easily show whether these pressures change their health, and it may treat "culture" as a set of labels. Study 3 takes the indigenous perspective, building an Indian concept into a measure in the "from within" direction. It can test whether an Indian idea protects against burnout. It cannot show the idea is universal unless it is tested elsewhere, and it risks the value-laden self-report problem, since non-attachment is admired.

Sinha argued that biological and physiological areas rarely need indigenization, because their principles hold across cultures, while social, organisational and clinical areas need it most. So Study 1 needs indigenization least, and Studies 2 and 3, which deal with work, family and clinical outcomes, need it most. Study 3 is the clearest attempt at indigenization from within. Study 2 would also benefit from using the nurses' own words rather than imported categories such as "collectivism".