VIEWS FROM INSIDE AND OUTSIDE: INTEGRATING EMIC AND ETIC INSIGHTS ABOUT CULTURE AND lUSTICE JUDGMENT

component of applying a justice principle. Conversely, most emic research activity has focused on the more concrete component of construing the deservingness of the people involved. Quite likely, these biases of etic and emic perspectives are inherent ones. The tendency of etic perspective research to omit all but the most abstract components of a cognitive process is, in fact, rooted in the very procedure for identifying derived-etic constructs. Derived-etic constructs (Berry, 1990) are supposed to be the common denominators of the variables involved in a psychological process across cultures. Identifying behavioral events with equivalent meanings across cultures is easier to do if the behavior and meaning are conceptualized abstractly. As a result, all of the concrete details that are not equivalent across cultures drop out of the description. In other words, the search for constructs with measurement equivalence across cultures creates an upward pressure toward abstract descriptions. Concrete details differ qualitatively in ways that prevent comparison with parallel methodological procedures. Let us consider why an etic approach is able to illuminate the abstract component of applying justice principles but not the concrete component of interpreting actions. There seems to be a finite list of basic justice principles across cultures; a workable derived-etic model is possible. Event construal, however, involves a large number of overlapping constructs concerning social roles, relationships, symbols, and so forth. Endless variation seems possible—not merely in the frequency with which constructs are evoked but in the qualitative content of the constructs. As we have seen, etic hypotheses about construal of deservingness have not found empirical support. In sum, an etic approach leaves us with a highly abstract and incomplete view of culture and cognition that fails to offer predictions about any particular