Understanding the Taiwan Indigenous Psychology Movement: A ...

UNDERSTANDING THE TAIWAN INDIGENOUS PSYCHOLOGY MOVEMENT A Sociology of Science Approach WILLIAM K. GABRENYA, JR. MEI-CHUAN KUNG Florida Institute of Technology LI-YU CHEN West Virginia University

A five-part model of the development of indigenous psychology movements was proposed from a sociology of science perspective, two parts of which, the local relevance path and the conditions of work path, were examined in the context of the Taiwan Indigenous Psychology Movement (TIPM). The Local Relevance Path focuses on indigenous movements’ concerns with the cultural relevance of Western psychology, the validity of positivist epistemology and methodology, and the appropriateness of Englishlanguage communication. The Conditions of Work Path places the research activities and career strategies of non-Western psychologists in the context of their available resources and career contingencies. A study of 103 proponents and opponents of the TIPM provided support for both models, particularly in respondents’ dissatisfaction with positivist epistemology and their research resources. The TIPM is well known in Taiwan and garners moderate support, but strong divisions were found among subdisciplines and between locally versus overseas-educated respondents on most measures. Issues of qualitative versus quantitative methods, the influence of the Taiwanese cultural renaissance, and the validity of outsider analyses of indigenous movements are discussed. Keywords:

indigenous psychology; sociology of science; Taiwan; epistemology

Cross-cultural psychology, cultural psychology, psychological anthropology, and comparative anthropology have gradually but persistently enriched psychological thinking in the West during the past three decades and fomented deep-seated changes in the conceptualization and conduct of psychology in many non-Western countries. Perhaps the most far reaching of these changes is the appearance and sometimes flourishing of indigenous psychology movements. The importance of indigenous psychology to cross-cultural psychologists and to psychologists of all stripes outside the West is evident in the intellectual activities of our discipline, as evidenced by a proliferation of books that explain or popularize indigenous ideas (e.g., Kao & Sinha, 1997; Kim & Berry, 1993; K. S. Yang, Hwang,

AUTHORS’ NOTE: This research was supported by a grant from the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for Scholarly Exchange. We would like to thank the Department of Psychology of National Taiwan University for its support of this project. We would also like to thank Shu-Ping Lin, Fen-Fang Tsai (Cai Fen-Fang), Chi-Wei Hue (Hu Zhi-Wei), Kwang-Kuo Hwang (Huang GuangGuo), and Ovid Tzeng (Zeng Zhi-Lang) for their assistance in various stages of the research. An earlier version of this article was presented at the Third Conference of the Asian Association for Social Psychology, Taibei, Taiwan, August 2000. We are grateful to Kuo-Shu Yang (Yang Guo-Shu), Kwang-Kuo Hwang, Chi-Wei Hue, and Shu-Ping Lin for their comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to William Gabrenya, School of Psychology, 150 W. University Blvd., Melbourne, FL 32901; e-mail: [email protected]. JOURNAL OF CROSS-CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY, Vol. 37 No. 6, November 2006 597-622 DOI: 10.1177/0022022106290480 © 2006 Sage Publications

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Pedersen, & Daibo, 2003; Yeh, 2002), symposia on the topic at International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP) Congresses (e.g., Adair, Coelho, & Luna, 2000; Adair & Gabrenya, 2002), conferences devoted mainly to indigenous material (e.g., in Taiwan), and the inclusion of a chapter on the topic in the second edition of the Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology (D. Sinha, 1997). The relationships among indigenous, cross-cultural, and cultural psychology provided the guiding theme at the 1999 conference of the Asian Association for Social Psychology in Taipei, Taiwan (Hwang & Yang, 2000). Most recently, a special issue of the Asian Journal of Social Psychology discussed the epistemological challenges faced by indigenous psychologists (Sham & Hwang, 2005). Although such enthusiasm for this topic is not necessarily shared by mainstream Western psychology, cross-cultural psychologists are keenly aware of its theoretical and practical implications for both psychology and its culturally oriented subfields. Virtually all of the writings by indigenous and nonindigenous psychologists that promote, explain, or describe these movements can be characterized as intellectual products or statements of advocacy. By intellectual products we mean writings that focus on the intellectual aspects of the indigenous project: its ideas, goals, stated political or academic agendas, epistemology, metatheory, research programs, and so on (e.g., Hwang, 2003; Kim & Berry, 1993). The primary focus of these works is intellectual: They seek to develop or describe indigenous psychology or apply its theories and methods to further scientific progress. Statements of advocacy are writings or other communications that advocate for indigenous psychology either as their primary goal or secondarily to an intellectual product, often by comparing it favorably to other traditions such as Western psychology. The present article takes a third approach, viewing indigenous psychologies as social processes and turning the focus from the intellectual and promotional productions of the indigenous project to the project itself. In the present article, we attempt to describe one indigenous psychology—in Taiwan—as a social phenomenon occurring in a historical, political, and cultural context. Using survey and interview methods, we examined the extent to which indigenous thinking has progressed in Taiwan along the lines described and advocated by Taiwanese and non-Taiwanese psychologists. We focus on the characteristics, activities, consensus, and ideological diffusion of indigenous concepts and research programs in Taiwan, in particular the irrelevancy problem of Western research in non-Western settings. A companion article (Gabrenya, 2006) examines the dynamics of this development as a social movement, calling on both the sociology of science and sociology of social movements literature for guidance. The strategy employed here and in Gabrenya (2006) falls broadly within the endeavor alternately termed sociology of science, social studies of science, social-intellectual movements, and occasionally the social psychology of science (Ben-David, 1981; Campbell, 1969; J. R. Cole & Cole, 1973; S. Cole, 1992; Frickel & Gross, 2005; Fuchs, 1993; Kuhn, 1970; Merton, 1973; Mulkay, 1980; Restivo, 1994; Shadish & Fuller, 1994; Zuckerman, 1988). The goal of these approaches is to develop systematic, testable models for understanding the course of sciences, subfields, research programs, and scientific careers using a broad range of social science concepts and approaches. The broadest term, sociology of science, will be used in this article. INDIGENOUS PSYCHOLOGIES

The intellectual argument for indigenous psychologies is described in several sources, including D. Sinha (1997), Kim and Berry (1993), Kim, Park, and Park (2000), a special issue

Gabrenya et al. / TAIWAN INDIGENOUS PSYCHOLOGY

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of the Asian Journal of Social Psychology (Hwang & Yang, 2000), and elsewhere. The several indigenous psychologies that have emerged as organized, visible, seemingly long-lasting movements have each generated growing literatures (see D. Sinha, 1997, for a review). Intellectual statements in this literature are often written in English and available to a wide audience, the most prominent of which include Jai B. P. Sinha (2000, 2003), Kuo-Shu Yang (2000), Uichol Kim (1997), the late Virgilio Enriquez (1988, 1997), and D. Sinha (1997). A vigorous intellectual exchange among indigenous psychologists and between proponents and opponents of indigenization has been evident at culturally oriented conferences, such as those of the IACCP, for at least a decade, and some of the products of this interchange are now available in the publications that come out of such conferences (e.g., Setiadi, Lonner, Supratiknya, & Poortinga, 2004). In response to the growth of indigenous psychologies, a small literature that treats indigenous activity as an object of study in itself has developed. Some of this work can be seen as part of a countermovement that criticizes certain characteristics of indigenous psychology (e.g., Adair, 1996; Poortinga, 1996) while the main current of the literature takes a SoS orientation to treat it as an important social phenomenon in the development of cross-cultural psychology and perhaps of social science in general. John Adair has performed most of this groundbreaking work (Adair, 1992, 1999; Adair, Puhan, & Vohra, 1993). Adair’s work has documented the development of indigenous psychology in India and Bangladesh through analyses of published literature and self-report survey methods. The present research is in this tradition, focusing on one of the most vigorous extant indigenous movements—Taiwan. TAIWAN INDIGENOUS PSYCHOLOGY MOVEMENT

The Taiwan Indigenous Psychology Movement (TIPM) began in the mid-1970s, gained momentum in the 1980s, and came to fruition in the 1990s. Throughout this article, we will refer to it as TIPM using movement informally to indicate the development of ideology, activities, and organization among an increasingly large group of psychologists and students. The respondents in our study used the terms yundong (movement) and bentu yundong (indigenous movement), so we feel comfortable in this appellation. The most comprehensive English-language statements of the history and intellectual agenda of the TIPM can be found in K. S. Yang (1997b, 1999, 2000), whereas its most important intellectual statement is undoubtedly K. S. Yang’s (1993) “Why do we want to establish a Chinese indigenous psychology?” the inaugural article of the journal Indigenous Psychological Research (Bentu Xinlixue Yanjiu) that he edits.1 Some parts of K. S. Yang (1993) can be found in English in K. S. Yang (1997a, 1997b, 1999, 2000). An opposition countermovement to the TIPM, which, although not organized, carries on some informal activities to limit the advance of the indigenous movement, has developed in Taiwan. One goal of the present research was to determine the breadth and depth of the indigenous movement and its countermovement and to gauge the extent to which Taiwanese psychologists share a consensus about indigenous psychology. SOS AND INDIGENOUS PSYCHOLOGY

The SoS perspective employed in this article examines the motives, cognitive and social norms, institutional situations, and societal milieu of a community of psychologists to understand indigenous projects both as psychological and behavioral adaptations of

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individuals and as social movements that influence and organize individual behavior. Our examination of the TIPM does not evaluate the validity of its intellectual content. Although the present research program takes a realist orientation in SoS that maintains the veridicality of science, viewing it as constructed by nature rather than by society, no attempt is made to evaluate the progress of the TIPM against an objective standard. THE MODEL: FIVE PATHS

This research was guided by a model of the development of indigenous psychology movements that postulates five paths that contribute to the appearance and progress of indigenous psychologies, termed relevance, conditions of work, national identity, great leader, and social movement. The model was generated, in part, from the extant indigenous psychology literature and from the SoS literature. Only the first two of these paths are central to the present article, and only they are described in full here; the others are described briefly here and in more detail in Gabrenya (2006). An important characteristic of this model, reflecting much of the work in SoS, is an emphasis on the academic career. The word path, therefore, connotes both the routes through which indigenous movements develop within national psychologies and the career paths of the individuals who comprise a nation’s psychological community. (The term is not meant to indicate the statistical procedure, path analysis.) We suggest that the career path contingencies faced by individuals contribute to (but do not fully explain) the development of indigenous psychology and that indigenous psychology movements in turn affect individuals’ career paths. THE LOCAL RELEVANCE PATH

A common argument for the intellectual merits of indigenous movements is the inappropriateness or lack of relevance for non-Western societies of the Western research traditions and the cultural values on which they are founded (e.g., Enriquez, 1997; Kim, 1990; Kim & Berry, 1993; Naidoo, Olowu, Gilbert, & Akotia, 1999; Pe-Pua & Protacio-Marcelino, 2000; D. Sinha, 1997; J. B. P. Sinha, 2000; K. S. Yang, 1993, 1997b, 2000). Local psychologists are urged to use local cultural sources to study the behavior of real people in their local contexts, using methods appropriate to this task. Above all, indigenous psychology must be relevant to local cultural patterns and people’s concerns. Kim (1999) makes this point intimately: “I am writing for my grandmother.” (See Ho, 1988, for a partial disagreement with this idea.) The central goal in the Taiwan movement is that research should have bentu qi he xing (indigenous compatibility; K. S. Yang, 1993, 1997c). Indigenous compatibility begins with the demand that researchers and their research participants must come from the same nation, society, and ethnic group so that, through a lifetime of experience within an identical (or at least similar) social, cultural, philosophical, and historical context, psychological theory and research methods will be congruent with those of the participants’ psychological and behavioral characteristics (K. S. Yang, 1993, paraphrase of translation). Later, K. S. Yang (1997c, 1999) suggested some severe limiting conditions under which a nonnative could perform adequate indigenous compatibility research. K. S. Yang (1997c) suggests that holding indigenous compatibility as a fundamental criterion for adequate research will serve the goal of separating Taiwanese psychology from Western psychology. This argument has a corollary in the experiences of returning PhDs (PhDs who return to non-Western societies after graduate work in the West). The returning PhDs bring home the


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research ideas, research methods, lifestyle expectations, and career expectations to which they were socialized in the intense crucible of the graduate school experience. The seemingly most common complaint against Western psychology comes from psychologists in nonWestern societies who come to realize, some sooner and some later, that several features of what they brought home from their graduate school experiences are irrelevant to their home contexts (D. Sinha, 1997). Psychologists educated in their own societies would not be expected to experience the same degree of incongruity. One goal of the present study was to examine differences in attitudes and beliefs between locally educated and overseas-educated PhDs. Changes over time in the material or societal situations of a psychological community, or of the societal or cultural milieu, may also produce changes in the perspectives of natively trained psychologists and midcareer psychologists. Relevance problems in four domains are cited in the indigenous literature, albeit under a variety of terms: (a) research topics, (b) Western research methods, (c) Western ideology and epistemology, and (d) language use. The presence of each of these problems in Taiwan is addressed directly or indirectly in the present research. Topic relevance. Western research topics may appear disconnected from local cultural and material conditions. “Growing disillusionment with the foreign roots of psychology, the realization of the non-applicability of its concepts and tools or research in radically different sociocultural contexts” (D. Sinha, 1997, p. 137). Topics from romantic love to a fascination with the self to media violence may appear out of place (or worst of all, boring) in societies characterized by collectivist behavior norms, a strong ideology of group precedence, or ongoing armed conflict. For example, the indigenous Asian literature on face and related constructs is topically relevant to Asia but of less interest in the West. Returning PhDs may be caught between a desire to continue their doctoral research programs, generating research that would be publishable in Western journals, and a sense of need or obligation to launch new research programs that would engage the interest of local colleagues, students, and funding agencies. Indeed, Western research may come to appear silly in the home context, “alien to their life experiences as Chinese” (K. S. Yang, 1997b, p. 65). Social, intellectual, and material influences would be expected to lead returning PhDs to become disenchanted with this initial research program and to look for more locally acceptable and satisfying topics. Locally educated psychologists may adopt indigenous research topics from the start, or they may change their topical interests as an indigenous movement progresses. Methodological relevance. Returning PhDs (and psychologists with locally awarded degrees under certain conditions of social change) may perceive problems concerning the appropriateness and practicality, given available resources, of the methods they learned in graduate school. Method appropriateness relevance refers to perceived scientific usefulness or local ecological validity, that is, the extent to which research procedures are seen as ecologically valid in the home society and the importance of ecological validity relative to other considerations. In American experimental social psychology, for example, there is little concern for ecological validity because eating grasshoppers (Zimbardo, Weisenberg, Firestone, & Levy, 1965) may have as much (or more) internal validity as a field experiment on televised violence (Leyens, Camino, Parke, & Berkowitz, 1975). A seemingly universal characteristic of emerging indigenous psychologies is a turn toward qualitative research methods, viewed as more suitable for studying cultural characteristics that are often of interest in cultural psychology, symbolic interactionism, and cultural-historical studies (cf. Enriquez, 1997). These

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qualitative methods often facilitate an emic research strategy that places primacy on the interpretations of the respondent. Method resource relevance concerns the practical usefulness of the methods valued and taught in Western universities. Such methods may be difficult to employ in other academic settings for lack of large unpaid participant pools, laboratory and equipment resources, time away from teaching, and perhaps human resources such as PhD students. Method resource relevance is closely tied to the Conditions of Work Path. Ideological relevance. Beyond topic irrelevancy, most advocates of indigenous psychology decry the more fundamental mismatch between the cultural values and ideology that formed the basis of the Western research in which they were educated and those of their home societies (cf. D. Sinha, 1997). The leaders of all the major indigenous movements of which we are aware received their PhDs in the West and have had the opportunity to experience such value incongruence. Although poor topic relevancy could, arguably, be dismissed as essentially cosmetic, the absence of ideological relevancy may go so far as to challenge the basic epistemology of psychological science and one of its cornerstones, universalism (Lonner, 2000). A feature of some indigenous movements, for example in Taiwan, is a questioning of the utility and appropriateness of positivist epistemology (Sham & Hwang, 2005). Positivism (in a naïve form) is a guiding principle of Western social science, particularly of psychology. In the present research, we define positivism as an epistemological approach that emphasizes universalism, quantitative empiricism, deductive hypothesis testing, value-free science, and determinism. Indigenous psychologists usually have a more sophisticated, informed understanding of epistemology (e.g., see Hwang, 2001, 2005) than do their Western colleagues. The extent to which positivist ideas are rejected because of their association with the West or on their own merits is interesting from a SoS perspective. In the present study, we examined the diffusion of antipositivist ideas among Taiwanese psychologists. The Local Relevance Path suggests that a sense of irrelevance leads to changes in the way psychology is conceptualized and conducted and eventually—in concert with other paths discussed in the next section—to the development of indigenous movements. In the present research, the Local Relevance Path was examined by obtaining information about the perceived relevancy of research topics early and later in careers and judgments of the validity of positivism. LANGUAGE USE

A component of the relevance path is the question of the relevance (appropriateness) of English. Many indigenous writings discuss the problem of language (e.g., Enriquez, 1988, 1997; K. S. Yang, 1993). Given that English is indeed the international language of science, is it necessary to publish in English? Or does English obscure or distort native concepts to the point that its use has little scientific advantage and harms the societies it misinterprets? This debate entered cross-cultural psychology in the late 1980s when a discussion ensued over whether this journal should be bilingual (probably English and French). Gabrenya (1999, 2001) has shown that cross-cultural psychologists have strongly mixed opinions on the issue of language use and that the limited linguistic facility of Anglophone psychologists produces an asymmetrical exchange of information and understandings between Anglophones and essentially everyone else. Although it is awkward to say that English is irrelevant to non-Western or non-Anglophone research settings, the status of English may be viewed among other


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inappropriate adaptations of Western culture to non-Western research settings. To indigenous psychologists, a certain degree of linguistic relativity seems to be taken for granted, such that using English in a non-Western context is analogous to an imposed etic use of Western theory or ideology. A common warning is that terms cannot be translated adequately across languages (Enriquez, 1997; Gabrenya, 2001; K. S. Yang, personal communication, June 11, 1998) and that many of the accepted translations to English are in fact incorrect or misleading. CONDITIONS OF WORK PATH

The resources available within the university setting in which a new PhD first enters academia have strong and long-lasting effects on the course of his or her career, independently for the most part of the talents of the new scientist (Zuckerman, 1988). Early access to resources is particularly important and been found to determine the prestige of the new PhD throughout his or her career. Academics respond to the affordances presented by their universities and societies in ways to either maximize their career potential or to change their career goals to have a satisfying career. The Conditions of Work Path hypothesizes at least six characteristics of an academic situation that affect career activities and goals: (a) the academic role expectations in the university; (b) resources for research and scholarly activities; (c) teaching loads; (d) the importance of publishing, resources, and impediments to publishing; (e) the general intellectual atmosphere experienced in the university; and (f) characteristics of the larger society such as the esteem given pure researchers. These six characteristics are as relevant to a locally trained new PhD as they are to a returning PhD and are important in both developed and developing nations. The challenge to new PhDs is to adjust their activities to the expectations and resources of the institution in which they find themselves. For returning PhDs, especially those from high-prestige graduate programs, the home country may provide fewer comparable work settings, and they must adjust their careers accordingly. Compared with their graduate school peers, they may experience a subjective or real deprivation in resources, in time for research, in publication possibilities, and in atmospheres conducive to producing cutting-edge ideas. The most prestigious journals in psychology and other sciences publish in English, so PhDs returning to non-English-speaking nations must overcome the barrier of writing in a foreign language, a hurdle with which their graduate school peers (if their degrees are from English-speaking programs) need not be concerned. We also expect, and investigate in this article, that returning PhDs believe that human research using participants from their home country will be less acceptable in American and European journals, reducing their access to international journals. In the present article, we examined five of these work characteristics: general resources, the intellectual atmosphere, writing in English, ability to keep current, and acceptability of work to American and European journals. Method resource relevance, language use, and conditions of work collectively present individual psychologists with an “opportunity structure” (Frickel & Gross, 2005, p. 214) within which they must conduct their careers. One goal of indigenous psychology movements may be to alter this opportunity structure. MORE PATHS TO INDIGENOUS PSYCHOLOGY

Our model incorporates three additional components that are mainly the focus of Gabrenya (2006). These paths are presented here to place the Local Relevance Path and

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Conditions of Work Path in the context of the larger model. The national identity path proposes that non-Western psychologists, aware of European and American domination in politics and science and the extent to which their work is ignored in the West (Gabrenya, 1988, 2004a), seek to establish an identity independent of Western ideas and dominance. The Great Leader Path looks at the functions and centrality of the leaders whose intellectual ideas and social influence seem to have been instrumental in the movements’ inception and progress. The Social Movement Path applies the theory and research in the social movement literature to indigenous movements. Social movements include some or most of the following features: ideology, charismatic leadership, members who share personal motivations for participation, resource mobilization, social or material control over members, mobilizing structures such as departments and networks, and complaints about the status quo that often define and motivate the movements (Crossley, 2002; Frickel & Gross, 2005; McAdam, 1982; McAdam, McCarthy, & Zald, 1988). PROGRESS AND PROSPECT OF TIPM: ACCEPTANCE, UNDERSTANDING, DIFFUSION, AND QUALITY

In this study, we looked at the extent to which psychologists in Taiwan agreed with the epistemological and methodological ideas of the TIPM. Because one measure of the success of a scientific paradigm is consensus on theory and methods (S. Cole, 1992), we looked at how Taiwan’s psychologists interpret or understand the main tenets of the movement. Finally, we addressed the difficult issue of the quality of work produced thus far. RESEARCH STRATEGY

The research reported in this article combined a quantitative, self-report questionnaire study of a sample of Taiwanese psychologists with a qualitative study using open-ended items in the questionnaire and unstructured interviews with both proponents and opponents of the movement. The quantitative results of the study will be emphasized here. The goal of this research report is to describe the TIPM’s principal characteristics with a view to empirically addressing several key issues in indigenous psychology: (a) To what extent do psychologists (here, Taiwanese psychologists) in fact feel that Western research is irrelevant in topic, epistemology, and methodology? (b) What is the status of English language in Taiwanese psychology? (c) How are academic resources viewed by locally educated and overseas-educated psychologists? (d) How well accepted are indigenous ideas, and how far have they diffused through the Taiwan psychology community? (e) How much, and what, do Taiwanese psychologists know or understand about the TIPM? (f) How do Taiwanese psychologists assess the quality and progress of the movement? (g) Finally, is the sociology of science a useful way of understanding the development of indigenous psychologies?

METHOD PARTICIPANTS

The quantitative component of the research design called for obtaining a comprehensive sample of Taiwanese psychologists and for assuring that three groups of psychologists were well represented: (a) psychologists who self-identified with the TIPM; (b) social psychologists,


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whose work in Taiwan and elsewhere appears most closely dependent on cultural and contextual factors and therefore who are most likely to be involved in indigenous movements; and (c) cognitive psychologists whose work might be viewed, along with other experimental psychology fields, as the mirror image of social psychology, less constrained by cultural and societal context while most strongly linked to a natural science, universalist orientation. The sample was drawn from three sources: the mailing list of the Indigenous Psychology Study Group (all members were sampled),2 the roster of the Personality and Social Psychology section of the Chinese (Taiwanese) Psychology Association (CPA), and the full roster of the CPA. Of the resulting list of 859 people, 224 were students. We selected 246 respondents from the nonstudent set of 635; 18 had incorrect addresses or wrote back to say they were not psychologists. Social and cognitive psychologists were oversampled, but all fields of psychology, as defined in Taiwan (essentially identical to Western psychology), were included. An initial mailing and two follow-up mailings were performed, eventually garnering a sample of 102, for a 45% response rate. This return rate is well above some other surveys performed by local psychologists using similar samples (H. Feng, personal communication, May 1998). Distribution of the sample over subdisciplines is presented in the results section. The questionnaires were distributed and collected from 1998 through 2000. Several analyses were performed to determine if the obtained sample was biased. We compared the target sample (n = 246) to the population (n = 635) from which it was drawn and to the obtained sample (n = 103) to the target sample.3 Probably because of the oversampling procedure described above, a gender bias was present in the target sample, such that males were slightly more likely (52%) to be sampled than were females (48%), although the population included more females (55%). The target sample was older (birth year M = 1953) than the unsampled group (M = 1960), z = 7.0, p < .0001. Return rates (comparing the obtained sample to the target sample) evidenced no biases as a function of the variables that were used to look for sample bias, with the exception that experimental psychologists were less likely (32%) to return the questionnaire than were members of the other fields (51%-60%). We were unable to identify variables that differentiated between responding and nonresponding experimentalists. QUESTIONNAIRE

The questionnaire employed in the quantitative portion of the study was developed in an iterative process, beginning with the conceptual models that were generated from the SoS, social movement, and indigenous psychology literatures. It was informed by 24 interviews conducted with Taiwanese academic psychologists and proponents and opponents of the TIPM, and the final version was developed in direct collaboration with leaders of these two groups. The questionnaire was developed in Chinese using traditional characters. All response scales were variations of a 5-point, Likert-type scale employing scale labels appropriate to the item phrasing, such as very important to not at all important (see Table 1). Some items included open-ended prompts for clarification, such as, “What are these ideas?”4 ADMINISTRATION PROCEDURE

Questionnaires in the initial administration were mailed from the psychology department of National Taiwan University (NTU) and included return envelopes addressed to NTU. The questionnaires were accompanied by an introductory cover letter written by two prominent psychologists, one a leader of the TIPM, Kwang-Kuo Hwang, and the other one of its most

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TABLE 1

Items Referenced in Text, Organized by Topics and Subscales A3 A5 A6

C1

C3 C4 C5 C7 C10 C11 D1 D2 D3

E1 E2 E3

F2 F4 F5 F6 F9

Topic Relevance My Taiwan colleagues think topic is important. This topic is relevant to important concerns of contemporary Taiwan. This topic is likely to be funded by governmental or private organizations in Taiwan. Ideological Relevance (Acceptance of Positivism) Speaking very generally, to what extent do you think that this model of science [description of positivism; see text] is appropriate for these subfields of psychology? Empirical, quantitative methods are appropriate. Universal theories can, in principle, be developed some time in the future. The values (personal or cultural) of the researcher will significantly affect choice of research topics, theorizing, or data interpretation. It is important that theory development in Taiwan always takes into account local cultural situations or characteristics. Theories must be developed in Chinese language in order to be appropriate to Chinese people. Research must be performed in an “indigenous” manner in this field. Language Use It important for people to read English-language research reports in order to do good research or writing in this field. Career advancement in this field requires publishing research reports in English-language journals. Further scientific advancement in this field is facilitated by publishing Taiwan research findings in journals outside of Taiwan. Conditions of Work—Resources Resources for research in my field are not as good as those available in the West. Working far from America and Europe makes it difficult to maintain currency in my field. The intellectual atmosphere at my university is not as good as the one I experienced when I was a PhD student. Conditions of Work—Publishing Advancement in my career requires that I publish my articles in American or European publications. European and American journals within my area are willing to publish articles in the topics of my research. European and American journals within my area are willing to publish research that uses Chinese subjects. European and American journals within my area are willing to publish research concerning issues of local interest in Taiwan. Compared to writing an article in Chinese, how much more time would writing the same article in English require? (the same, 25% more difficult, 50% more difficult, twice as hard, more than twice as hard, other)

[1] [1] [1]

[2]

[2] [3] [1] [1] [1] [1] [1] [1] [1]

[4] [5] [6]

[1] [7] [7] [7]

(continued)


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TABLE 1 (continued) Agreement with Taiwan Indigenous Psychology Movement (TIPM) I agree with most of the movements’ ideas about: G5: generating indigenous theory G6: appropriate methodology G7: use of Chinese language G10 G11

Assessment of TIPM Research Quality Has the indigenous movement produced work that has contributed to the advancement of psychology in Taiwan? How would you evaluate, overall, the quality of work coming out of the movement?

[8]

[9] [10]

Response Scales 1: Not at all important to very important 2: Very inappropriate to very appropriate 3: Very much cannot to very much can 4: Worse to better 5: Very easy to very difficult

6: highly lacking to much better 7: not at all willing to very willing 8: strongly disagree to strongly agree 9: no contribution to strong contribution 10: very bad to very good

NOTE: Numbers in brackets following items are keys to their associated response scales.

prominent critics, Ovid Tzeng (Zeng Zhi-Lang).5 The letter was designed to enlist the help of all camps and emphasized the neutrality of the foreign researcher and the value of the study for science. A reminder postcard was mailed 1 month after the initial mailing. The first follow-up was mailed to nonresponders 6 weeks later, with return envelopes to NTU. A second follow-up was mailed several months later, also with return envelopes to NTU. And the third was mailed from the United States with return envelopes to the United States. RESULTS DISCIPLINARY MAPPING

Our sampling strategy was designed to facilitate comparisons among some of the major subfields of psychology. We created four categories of subfields (termed fields for convenience) by combining similar areas as follows: clinical (clinical, counseling, school, sport; n = 24), social (social, personality, developmental; n = 39), experimental (cognitive, learning, physiological, psychometrics/quantitative; n = 20), applied (industrial/organizational, educational, human factors; n = 19).6 Returning PhDs and respondents who received their education in Taiwan were expected to differ in their beliefs concerning the TIMP. About one third of the respondents were Taiwan educated. Place of degree (Taiwan, overseas) was included in most of the analyses reported here. LOCAL RELEVANCE PATH

We hypothesized that Taiwanese psychologists would judge their graduate school and perhaps early professional work irrelevant and disvalued and that this sense of irrelevance

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would generalize to their ideas about methodology and epistemology. We tested this expectation in several ways. Topic relevance. We asked respondents to identify the most important research they performed in graduate school and their principal current research or scholarly activity. We assessed each topic’s relevance and fundability with three items (A3, A5, A6; see Table 1) that were combined to form a single index of topic relevancy (α = .69 for grad school; α = .57 for current research). A Field (4 categories) × Place of Degree (Taiwan, overseas) × Time (graduate school, current) mixed-design ANOVA revealed significant effects of field, F(3, 88) = 3.42, p < .05, and time, F(1, 88) = 17.52, p < .0001. Respondents reported that their current work is more relevant to local concerns than was their earlier work, Ms = 4.1 and 3.8, respectively. The field effect largely contrasted social, clinical and applied with experimental, Ms = 4.1, 4.0, 4.1, and 3.6, respectively. Method appropriateness relevance. A similar analysis focusing on method relevancy was performed using the single item, “I can perform research on this topic using the empirical methods that are commonly used in Western psychology” (not at all important to very important). Main effects of field, F(3, 83) = 6.72 p < .05, time, F(1, 83) = 6.03 p < .05, and place of degree, F(1, 83) = 4.91, p < .05, were found. Figure 1 illustrates these results. Experimentalists remembered Western methods as appropriate during graduate school, whether trained in Taiwan or abroad, and still feel this way. Members of other fields recalled less relevance in graduate school and an increasing sense of irrelevance moving to the present. The sense of irrelevance was greater for Taiwan-educated psychologists, particularly nonexperimentalists. Ideological relevance. Ideological relevance was examined in several ways. First, we looked at respondents’ sense of the value of using Western ideas in Taiwanese research. Respondents indicated the extent to which Western research in cognitive and in social psychology is applicable to Taiwan: “Looking at each area very generally, how great is the usefulness, relevance, or applicability of the research performed in the West to Taiwan?” (very low to very high). In a mixed-design Respondent Field (experimental, social, clinical, applied) × Place of Degree (Taiwan, overseas) × Rated Field (cognitive, social) ANOVA, a strong main effect of rated field was found, F(1, 79) = 34.2, p < .0001. Western cognitive research was judged more applicable than social psychology research, Ms = 4.20 and 3.56, respectively. The absence of a respondent field effect points to consensus across fields in these fundamental differences between cognitive and social psychology. Second, respondents were asked to appraise positivism generally and several of its main features in several specific, related epistemological and methodological statements by indicating how appropriate the statements are for cognitive psychology, social psychology, and their own areas. The following statement was presented in Chinese to represent the central points of positivism without attempting to take into consideration its variations, historical development, and ongoing controversies: Traditionally, psychology has adopted a natural science style of research, variously termed “the physics model,” “positivism,” “empiricism,” “experimentalism,” etc. The key components of this model are the acquisition of empirical, quantitative data by value-unbiased scientists to test hypotheses which will support or disprove universal theories that can, if properly developed, apply to humans in all times and places.

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Additional items in this section of the questionnaire concerned details of this statement (see Table 1). Items C1, C3, and C4 present abstract, philosophical propositions concerning positivism, whereas Items C7, C10, and C11 (and to some extent C5) focus on the implications of positivist epistemology for the concerns of indigenous psychologists. The former set of three items and the latter set of four items each formed cohesive testlets with alphas exceeding .69, the correlations among which were moderate, rs = .3 to .4. Given the importance of epistemological thinking in the context of indigenous psychology for the present study, a broad measure was generated by combining all seven items after reversing the scales when necessary. We examined how respondents assessed the status of positivism in their own fields by combining the respondent field and rated field variables to form a measure, my-field positivism. For respondents who were social psychologists, this measure used their ratings of social psychology; for cognitive psychologists, of cognitive psychology; and for the remaining respondents, of the my area response scale. A Respondent Field × Place of Degree (Taiwan, overseas) ANOVA revealed main effects of respondent field, F(3, 87) = 10.82, p < .0001, and place of degree, F(1, 87) = 4.38, p < .05. Experimentalists endorsed positivism most highly, M = 3.5, whereas members of the other fields rated it below the scale midpoint, Ms = 2.4 to 2.5. Overseas degree holders were more supportive than were Taiwan degree

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holders, Ms = 2.8 and 2.4. Not surprisingly, Taiwan-educated social psychologists expressed the lowest opinion of positivism, M = 2.2, whereas overseas-educated experimentalists expressed the highest opinion (albeit not very high), M = 3.6. Qualitative research—interviews with leaders and members of each group—revealed that these two groups represent the most antagonistic parties among the TIPM and its opponents. The degree of consensus in Taiwanese psychologists’ poor support for positivism, generally rating it hardly above the scale midpoint, was surprising. K. S. Yang (1999) claimed that “almost all [indigenous-oriented Chinese psychologists] endorse the view that the knower and the thing to be known are independent of each other and the knower’s posture should be one of objective detachment or value freedom” (p. 191). Item C5 in the positivism index focused on this issue specifically (but was worded in the opposite direction). A Field × Place of Degree ANOVA on this item revealed a strong field effect, F(3, 62) =16.6, p < .0001. Social, clinical, and applied psychologists disagreed with Yang, Ms = 4.7, 4.6, and 4.5, whereas experimental psychologists were neutral, M = 2.9. This result points to an important departure from one of the central tenets of positivist epistemology. Language use. We examined respondents’ views of the use of English and Chinese at various stages of their work. The three items that tapped language issues (accessing the literature, publishing, scientific progress; see Table 1) formed an index, with mediocre psychometric qualities (α = .60 for cognitive, α = .48 for social). Respondents evaluated cognitive and social psychology on these items. A Respondent Field × Rated Field (social/cognitive) × Place of Degree mixed-design ANOVA revealed a strong main effect of rated field, F(1, 82) = 29.8, p < .0001, and a marginally significant Place of Degree × Rated Field interaction, F(1, 82) = 3.27, p < .08. Members of all fields appeared to agree that both cognitive and social psychology should be conducted in English but that it is more important for the former, Ms = 4.71 and 4.49. Reading English research reports was viewed as particularly important: 89% said that doing so was “very important” to do good research in cognitive psychology, and 71% said so for social psychology. In the marginal interaction, Taiwan-trained psychologists felt that the use of English in social psychology was comparatively less important, M = 4.35, than it was for overseas-trained psychologists, albeit still near the top of the scale. However, when we looked at how respondents rated their own fields (see the positivism index analysis for a description of how this type of analysis was performed), we found no differences across fields, F(3, 97) = 1.37, ns, M = 4.52. This pattern of findings suggests that some respondents did not agree with others’ attributions of the (un)importance of English for their fields (i.e., the fields appear to be stereotyping each other). This high endorsement of English was surprising. To identify those who endorsed English more closely, a Place of Degree × Study Group Membership (member/not member of the Indigenous Psychology Study Group) × Rated Field mixed-design ANOVA was performed. All of the effects in this ANOVA were significant, or were marginally significant, except the Place × Membership interaction. The use of English was endorsed more strongly for cognitive than for social psychology, Ms = 4.69 and 4.37, but overseas-educated respondents and nonmembers of the Study Group endorsed it more than did Taiwan-educated respondents and members, respectively. Although we observed a strong endorsement of English, the effect of academic socialization and the implications of self-identification with the movement are apparent.


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CONDITIONS OF WORK

We explored the Conditions of Work Path by assessing the extent to which psychologists in Taiwan believe they face less favorable career contingencies than do those of their colleagues in the West. Resources, intellectual atmosphere, and keeping current. The three items that assessed respondents’ perceptions of their work environments (overall resources, ability to keep current, Taiwan intellectual atmosphere; see Table 1, Items E1, E2, E3) were averaged to form an index variable, resource, after reversing E2 (α = .97). Academic resources can be expected to vary widely in any country between the highest quality research universities and teaching-oriented colleges and universities. To adjust for this variability, an attempt was made to evaluate the prestige of the universities represented in our sample. Using publicly available entrance exam score criteria and prestige versus quality rankings, universities were assigned a prestige score ranging from 1 (low) to 10 (high). Only respondents working in universities could be included in these analyses. As expected, resource was found to be positively related to prestige, r(76) = .32, p < .01. Because resource judgments are subjective and undoubtedly influenced by respondents’ experiences in graduate school, we expected to find effects involving place of degree. A Respondent Field × Place of Degree analysis of covariance in which prestige served as the covariate was computed for the dependent variable resource. Besides the prestige main effect, F(1, 67) = 6.6, p < .05, only the place of degree effect approached significance, F(1, 67) = 2.6, p = .11. Western-educated psychologists tended to report a lower evaluation of their resources, adjusting for the prestige of their universities, than did Taiwan-educated psychologists, Ms = 2.2 and 2.6, respectively. The overall assessment was highly negative: 77% of respondents rated Taiwan below the midpoint of the scale. Younger faculty judged their resources more negatively than did their older colleagues, as indicated by a moderate partial correlation between year of degree and resource, controlling for prestige, r(64) = –.38, p < .01. Difficulty writing in English. We asked respondents to estimate how much more difficult they found writing in English compared to writing in Chinese (Table 1, Item F9). Response 4, “more than twice as hard,” was assigned the value 200%. The median value was between 100% and 200%, range 0% to 1,000%. In other words, the Taiwanese claimed that, on average, it takes them two to three times as long to write in English as in Chinese. Difficulty getting published in Western journals. Taiwanese psychologists are under increasing pressure to publish in Western journals. Our research found that this pressure is perceived to be quite high by those in the experimental and social fields, Ms = 4.2 and 3.8, but moderate for the clinical and applied fields, Ms = 3.2 and 3.0, F(3, 72) = 3.1, p < .05 (Table 1, Item F2). Only 22% of the sample reported that publishing in Taiwanese journals is more prestigious than is publishing in Western journals. We asked respondents to estimate the willingness of Western journals to publish articles of local interest in Taiwan using Taiwanese participants. These items were averaged to form an index (α = .93; Table 1, items F4, F5, F6). A Respondent Field × Place of Degree ANOVA found no effects. Overall, respondents were weakly optimistic that Western journals would accept their articles, grand M = 3.66.

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AGREEMENT WITH THE MOVEMENT’S IDEAS

One purpose of this study was to determine the extent and breadth of agreement in Taiwan with the main tenets of indigenous thinking. We assessed support for the intellectual qualities of the TIPM on three items (see Table 1) that were combined to form an index measure of agreement with the movement (α = .83). A Respondent Field × Place of Degree ANOVA of this index revealed no significant effects. Comparing the three domains, the TIPM’s theoretical value was assessed more highly, M = 3.7, than its methodology, M = 3.2, with language use intermediate, M = 3.5, F(2, 62) = 4.76, p < .05. Of respondents, 75% were above the scale midpoint of the index measure, indicating that indigenous psychology, represented as theoretical and methodological ideals in this measure, has achieved some acceptance in Taiwan, despite the considerable disagreement revealed by other measures. WHO NEEDS CULTURE?

The finding that psychologists in all fields of psychology were moderately favorable to the indigenous movement’s intellectual agenda must be qualified by looking at their views concerning specifically which fields need to take local culture into account. We asked, “To what extent must theory and research in this area take into account the culture in which the research is being performed?” (very important to not at all) Respondents were asked to rate social and cognitive psychology. A Field of Respondent × Rated Field (social, cognitive) mixed-design ANOVA revealed a strong main effect of rated field, F(3, 65) = 156, p < .0001. Respondents in all fields agreed that culture is more important for understanding social psychology, M = 4.8, than cognitive psychology, M = 3.4. UNDERSTANDINGS OF THE MOVEMENT

Diffusion of scientific theories and intellectual approaches is important in a SoS analysis, one characteristic of which is consensual understanding of these ideas within a scientific community. We looked at the extent to which our respondents understood and agreed on several important ideas of the TIPM: a general understanding of the indigenous psychology, the appropriate basis for theory building in Taiwanese psychology, methods, and language use. Data for this analysis were gleaned from several items in the questionnaire that included the open-ended ancillary question, “Please tell us what you think these ideas are.” These answers were translated to English and content analyzed by two raters, one working from the original Chinese and one from the English translations, using inductively generated response categories. The ratings were averaged over raters to produce percentages of respondents citing each category. TIPM goals. The content analysis revealed that respondents’ conceptions of the TIPM’s goals and complaints with Western psychology were in line with our description of the TIMP presented in the introduction to this article and with the major writings in the area (e.g., K. S. Yang, 1993): theory building that focused on the Taiwanese milieu (65%), emphasis on local research topics (58%), escaping Western psychological hegemony (20%). Theory and research. Respondents’ conceptions of how indigenous theory should be generated corresponded well to the formal statements of the TIPM, usually touching on some aspect of the indigenous compatibility concept described in the introduction: theory should


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be based on the unique Chinese point of view, experience, or situation (66%); theory should take into account the power of culture or pay attention to indigenous concepts (30%); establishing a Taiwanese identity or rejecting Western theory (24%). Although respondents appeared less likely to appreciate the importance of using qualitative methods to the TIPM (41%), this question provided an opportunity for respondents to express approbation (28%) or criticism (10%) for the movement’s epistemology and methodology. Methodology appears to be a hot-button issue in Taiwan that provokes strongly evaluative responses. Use of language. Similarly to methodology, respondents used our question about the indigenous use of language to express their opinions about language use. Consistent with earlier interview observations, they evidenced dual conflicts between the benefits of using the language of local people in research (37%) versus the language of science (21%) and between placing primacy on communicating results to the local people in Chinese (15%) versus communicating with the outside world (21%). ASSESSMENT OF THE MOVEMENT’S QUALITY

One way of determining the acceptance of the indigenous movement in Taiwan is to assess psychologists’ evaluation of the quality of its work. An index of research quality was calculated by averaging two items (r = .5) concerning the contributions and overall quality (see Table 1, Items G10 and G11). A Respondent Field × Place of Degree ANOVA on this index revealed a field main effect, F(3, 87) = 2.84, p < .05; the Field × Place interaction approached significance, F(3, 87) = 2.44, p < .07. Examination of the means showed that respondents in the three nonexperimental fields (Ms = 3.9-4.0) judged the quality better than the experimentalists, M = 3.35. Although 50% of experimentalists were above the scale midpoint, 82.5% of nonexperimentalists were above it. ALL TALK BUT NO ACTION?

Interviews conducted prior to developing the survey instrument revealed a widespread opinion among psychologists outside the movement that its members have devoted more energy to promoting the movement ideologically than to performing research in line with its tenets. As K. S. Yang (1999) put it, “This state of affairs has aroused the criticism that indigenous psychologists have talked much but done little” (p. 192). We asked the somewhat strong question, “Do you agree with the statement that the indigenous psychology movement is ‘all talk but no action’?” (very strongly disagree to agree) A Respondent Field × Place of Degree ANOVA on this item yielded a main effect of place of degree, F(1, 84) = 5.20, p < .05. Overseas-educated psychologists agreed with this statement more than did Taiwan-educated psychologists, Ms = 3.2 and 2.6, respectively. Open-ended comments solicited for this question revealed a broader range of opinions than the quantitative data, and the question evoked several strongly negative evaluations of the movement. Overall, 63% of respondents’ voiced support for the TIPM in this regard and 27% were critical (e.g., “Up to now, they have not produced any good or fully specified theories, so there’s no need to talk about promoting this work.”). DISTRIBUTION AND DIFFUSION OF INDIGENOUS THINKING

Acceptance of indigenous thinking is not uniform over geographical and demographic groups of psychologists in Taiwan, as most organized TIPM activities take place

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at high-status universities and research institutes in the northern region of Taiwan, notably NTU and the Institute of Ethnology at Academia Sinica. Members of the Indigenous Psychology Study Group were disproportionately more likely to be located in the north (88%) than in other regions (12%), χ2(1) = 4.65, p < .05. The dominance of one university and one region of Taiwan in the TIPM suggests that this ideology may be distributed unevenly over other individual-difference variables as well. To look for geographical, demographic, and individual-difference variables that are related to indigenous thinking, we examined differences in several of the measures described above as a function of respondents’ region of residence within the country, quality of the university at which they teach, age, gender, and ethnic identification. Admittedly a data-sifting endeavor, the following dependent variables were examined, all of which were index variables described previously: agreement with the idea of the TIPM, belief that positivism is appropriate for respondent’s own field, assessment of the quality of TIPM work, and support for English. No effects in these analyses approached significance. K. S. Yang (1997c) predicted that young researchers in Taiwan would acquire a greater preference for using indigenous methods than their older mentors and colleagues. This prediction is in line with Planck’s principle, the proposition that new ideas spread faster among young scientists who, by definition, have less invested in traditional theories and research programs. (Research in the psychology of science does not support Planck’s principle; see Feist & Gorman, 1998.) A direct measure of age was not available, but year in which the PhD was earned was used as a reasonable stand-in. No relationships between year of degree and the several indigenous opinion measures were found. Another way of looking at the diffusion of ideas is to determine the extent to which psychologists are reading TIPM literature. We asked two questions to this effect: how many articles respondents had read in the journal Indigenous Psychology Research (of 29 published articles) and if they had read K. S. Yang’s seminal 1993 article in the first issue of the journal. The median number of articles read was 11, but exposure varied over fields, KruskalWallis H(3) = 12.2, p < .01, such that members of our social psychology category read the most articles and experimentalists the fewest (see Figure 2). About 82% of the full sample claimed to have read K. S. Yang (1993), but this specific exposure to the TIPM also varied widely over field, χ2(3) = 17.3, p < .0001, parallel to the previously reported analysis.

DISCUSSION We set out in this research to examine the status and ideology of the Taiwan Indigenous Psychology Movement from a sociology of science perspective—that is, to look at the TIPM as a social process within a social and cultural context rather than as an intellectual development. A set of five paths or models was proposed to guide the research questions. The present article focused on the local relevance and Conditions of Work Paths and on the extent to which Taiwanese psychologists accept several components of the TIPM’s ideology. LOCAL RELEVANCE

We found support for several components of the Local Relevance Path. Respondents felt that their current research is more relevant to the concerns of Taiwan than was their graduate work, both in topics and in methods. Some of this temporal effect may be attributable to the


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tendency of researchers to value their current work more highly than any previous work, although the presence of the expected place of degree interaction effect for methodological relevance suggests that the development of indigenous thinking is also involved. Respondents judged that the work of social psychologists is more relevant to contemporary Taiwan than that of experimental psychologists, reflecting fundamental differences between these two prototypical fields that were evidenced throughout the study. One such difference was the finding that Taiwanese psychologists expressed tepid support for positivism and felt that it is more appropriate for experimental than for social psychology. If the mean values from our measure of positivist ideology are to be taken seriously (i.e., if our positivism index was a fair portrayal and the scaling was correct), then it appears that ideological relevancy is weak in some fields. A more complex question, beyond the present research, is why breaking with Western psychology seems to encourage a break with positivist epistemology. Intellectual merits aside (e.g., Hwang, 2005), a simplistic answer to this question is that both are Western concepts, rejected in tandem. Alternately, perhaps the answer begins with their divergent goals: Indigenous psychologists are often focused on cultural description, so they are informed and inspired by the work of other fields that have similar goals, such as cultural anthropology and cultural psychology. Both of these fields have strong antipositivist traditions. A third possibility relies on a yet-be-specified social psychological influence process: the social or academic settings in which indigenous psychologists work may develop a “cognitive ecology” (Gabrenya, 2004b), “material means of mental production” (Fuchs, 1993), or “epistemic culture” (Frickel & Gross, 2005) conducive to epistemological inquiry and rejection of positivism.

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ENGLISH RELEVANCE

To our surprise, respondents gave more support to the use of English than the Chineselanguage activities of the TIPM would predict, although there was some disagreement about social psychology. However, interviews suggested a considerably stronger antiEnglish orientation, approaching hostility in some cases. Complicating the language issue is the pressure placed on all Taiwan academics by the Taiwan Ministry of Education to publish in international (mainly English-language) journals. Perhaps our unexpected finding resulted from the emphasis in the items on the utility of English in a career rather than its scientific appropriateness or usefulness in meeting other goals of the TIPM, such as communication of research results to the local society. CONDITIONS OF WORK

Our primary argument in the Conditions of Work Path is that the development of indigenous psychologies cannot be understood without looking at the career contingencies of the individual psychologists who, collectively, drive and are driven by these developments. Our examination of the Conditions of Work Path in the present study was restricted to four workrelated issues: assessments of the overall availability of resources and intellectual atmosphere of respondents’ situations in Taiwan, difficulty writing in English, and access to Western journal publication outlets. The first three of these conditions were perceived as poor, regardless of field, whereas the fourth was weakly positive. It was not surprising to find that resources were viewed more positively by psychologists working in prestigious universities, although even those at the top universities in the country (rated 9 or 10 on our 10-point scale) averaged a resource measure value below the scale midpoint. That this resource problem was perceived more strongly by younger faculty, regardless of university prestige, may indicate accommodation to local conditions over time by older faculty, greater concern for resources earlier in the career among younger faculty, for whom they are more crucial, or the simple fact that older faculty usually have more access to resources. The weak place of degree effect suggests a perception that Taiwan does not afford the opportunities available in the West. It is of little surprise that non-native English speakers find writing in English difficult, but we were struck by the extent of the difficulty they expressed. (Professional English polishers are employed by faculty whenever possible and affordable.) Publication pressure, coupled with this difficulty, may engender the motivation to find justifications for writing in the local language, although ideological justification for such a shift in beliefs must also develop within the scientific community over time. The present research design cannot demonstrate a direct relationship between resource problems and the growth of indigenous psychology, but the initial conditions posited by the conditions of work model are clearly present. DIFFUSION OF MOVEMENT IDEAS

Central concerns in examining a social movement include how widely its ideas diffuse within a community and the extent of agreement with those ideas. We used a series of openended questions to look at the diffusion of ideas about theory, methods, and language use and of the global agenda of the TIPM. The results were complex, but two conclusions can be drawn. First, proponents of the TIPM seem to share the ideas and beliefs that its most visible writers advocate, suggesting that the movement has made good progress in getting the


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word out. Second, opponents of the TIPM appear sufficiently aware of its ideas to roundly criticize the movement and to put forward their own views, reflecting the polarization of opinion discussed elsewhere in this article. It appears that the TIPM has successfully developed an intellectual identity. Interviews with proponents revealed a generally held acceptance of the diversity of opinions within the general framework of indigenous psychology. As one respondent put it, “The movement speaks with many voices.” We found that most Taiwanese social, personality, and developmental psychologists have some degree of familiarity with the work of Yang (specifically K. S. Yang, 1993), but experimentalists do not. Analyses of diffusion across regional, demographic, and stratification categories failed to find any differences on a variety of measures. We speculate that the Taiwanese psychology community is too small and tightly integrated, within a small land mass, for noticeable differences of this kind to emerge. Place of graduate education (Taiwan or overseas) proved to be an important background variable in some of the research findings reported here. Proponents of the TIPM evidence strong feelings about this distinction. One member of the movement, for example, suggested that returning PhDs had been “brainwashed” during their time in American graduate schools. This Western education, paired with a pervasive lack of experience as working adults in Taiwan (i.e., respondents spent much of their lives in Taiwan as students before going abroad), poses a double challenge for indigenization: The returning PhDs know little of Taiwanese life but a lot of American psychology. CONSENSUS AND PROGRESS

We called on both our quantitative and qualitative data to look at the extent to which Taiwanese psychologists agree with the TIMP. Agreement with the movement in general was high among nonexperimental psychologists, whereas experimentalists expressed a middling opinion. Qualitative aspects of the study, mainly interviews with proponents and opponents, showed a much deeper rift in the Taiwanese psychology community than the quantitative results revealed, ranging from “only indigenous psychology is meaningful” to “indigenous psychology is worthless.” O. Tzeng (personal communication, June 29, 1998) pointed out that three camps can be identified in Taiwan: (a) people who think it is simply common sense to localize research (vs. indigenize), (b) people who strongly dislike the idea of indigenous psychology, (c) and people who are in the movement and have very extreme ideas about indigenizing. Interviews with others corroborated this assessment, but in many cases, we found that applied psychologists belonged to the first camp, experimentalists to the second, and some social psychologists to the third. However, a cognitive psychologist pointed out in an interview that all research in Taiwanese psychology is basically indigenous, including seemingly theoretical research, because it uses Taiwanese research participants and frequently must address local problems (particularly in the clinical and applied areas). Although agreement with the movement’s ideas may reflect assessments of its long-term directions and goals, we were also interested in respondents’ judgments of its current state or progress. Nonexperimental psychologists gave the movement what might be interpreted as an average grade, whereas experimentalists gave it a below average evaluation. Interviews with members of the TIPM revealed a diversity of opinions, but the general consensus was that their work was on the right path but needed to (a) indigenize more completely by rising to a level of theoretical and methodological sophistication commensurate with the ideal of “indigenous compatibility” and (b) improve in overall quality, particularly in methodology.

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METHOD AND SAMPLING REVISITED

Our experience in performing this research led us to agree with Raybeck’s (2000) and others’ suggestions that research blending quantitative and qualitative methods is often preferable to purely quantitative research. Comparing these two components of the present study is instructive. Indeed, it would be fair to say that the quantitative study presents a rather pallid, one-dimensional (yet seemingly scientific) picture of the TIPM and fails to fully tell the whole inside story of the movement. This contrast was particularly vivid with respect to the ongoing competition between proponents and opponents of the TIPM. Beyond corroborating the dissension revealed by the quantitative data, the qualitative findings better illuminated the strong affective and complicated social-political characteristics of this disagreement. Looking beyond supplementing quantitative methods with qualitative work, we propose that a full account of phenomena such as the TIPM is best accomplished through a historicalcomparative research style that places the ideas, behaviors, and careers of psychologists in a larger cultural context. In such an approach, data include the broadest array of information available to social scientists, only one component of which would be quantitative selfreport measures. INDIGENOUS PSYCHOLOGY IN TAIWANESE SOCIOPOLITICAL CONTEXT

We have presented the TIPM as a movement within Taiwanese psychology, but it developed during a time of rapid social and political change in Taiwan and could—like most social movements—be viewed as a reflection of such larger developments. The 1980s and 1990s were tumultuous as Taiwan witnessed rapid political and social change, in particular following the lifting of martial law in 1987 and the subsequent legitimization of opposition political parties. Civil society and human rights expanded greatly into the 1990s (Harrell & Huang, 1994), and by 2000, a native Taiwanese was chosen president in an open election. Taiwan’s wealth and per capita income rose significantly during the 1980s and 1990s, with several predictable results: The arts began to flourish, academia expanded, Taiwanese began to travel abroad, family life and social relations became more modern (Marsh, 1996), and interest in Taiwanese—versus Chinese or Western—culture and language surged. TIPM must be viewed as an element within this modernization, increased wealth, and Taiwanese cultural revival. STUDYING INDIGENOUS PSYCHOLOGIES AND THE INSIDER-OUTSIDER DEBATE

The study of indigenous psychologies presents an especially problematic and complex challenge in its intersection with the ubiquitous insider-outsider problem. By their nature, indigenous movements emphasize internal, intimate knowledge (e.g., indigenous compatibility, described in the introduction). At a practical level, indigenous psychologists can, with some justification, make the argument that outsiders studying their movements are intrinsically unqualified to adequately understand them, particularly if these outsiders cannot read the language in which many of the indigenous works are written. However, we argue that outsider status has advantages and weaknesses, particularly if etic research strategies are valued. Outsider perspectives can complement the points of view of insiders, and both are necessary. Some anthropologists have a similar view: A century of fieldwork has proven that it is the outsider who is able to articulate cultural practices that are invisible and commonsensical to insiders. (Fiske, 2002, p. 85)


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D. H. Yu (1997), a member of the TIPM, takes a similar stance in his suggestion that only outsiders can see others’ behavior in an objective manner. Yu goes further by asking how effective a purely monocultural, internal analysis of culture can be in producing indigenous compatibility. Poortinga (2004) likewise questions the precedence of insider analysis. Hence, we believe that this outsider analysis of the TIMP, limited as it is, can contribute to our understanding of indigenous psychologies (see Gabrenya, 2004b, for an elaboration of this idea). IMPLICATIONS FOR A SOS UNDERSTANDING OF INDIGENOUS MOVEMENTS

Without denying that we have a special interest in the Taiwan situation, our main goal has been to demonstrate the usefulness of a SoS approach for understanding indigenous movements in general. The results presented here may generalize to other indigenous movements, although empirical research would be needed to make such claims with confidence. The post1965 movement, “cross-cultural psychology,” is itself a worthy subject for an SoS-inspired analysis. Like indigenous psychologies, cross-cultural psychology repudiates Campbell’s (1969) dark view of the artificial boundaries among the social sciences (see Gabrenya, 2000). Both traditions self-consciously attempt to transgress many of the boundaries endemic to mainstream Western psychology, doing so through the efforts of individual social scientists who are embedded in societies, communities, and scientific careers.

NOTES 1. Indigenous Psychology Research has published thematically organized, book-length issues once or twice a year since 1993. Each volume is devoted to a single topic, with a special issue editor. It is consciously Chinese language, including the initial decision not to include English abstracts (in contrast to the custom of most Taiwanese and Chinese journals; K. S. Yang, personal communication, February 18, 1998). Topical issues have included cultural, social, developmental, organizational, and clinical psychology, plus indigenous psychology per se. 2. The Indigenous Psychology Study Group meets about once a month at National Taiwan University’s Psychology Department in a colloquium-style setting. The organizer is currently Kwang-Kuo Hwang, a socialcultural psychologist at National Taiwan University. Members are mainly psychologists employed at universities in northern Taiwan or in the Institute of Ethnology at Academia Sinica. Guests have included Richard Shweder, Carl Ratner, and the first author. The manifest function of this get-together is to popularize indigenous thinking in Taiwan and to exchange ideas in a familiar academic setting. 3. The following measures were available to perform these analyses: year of birth, ethnicity (province of origin on mainland China, Taiwan), gender, quality of university (for academic psychologists only), type of organization (academia, clinical practice, government, business), and region of Taiwan (north, central, south, east coast). 4. The Chinese-language questionnaire may be obtained from the authors. 5. Ovid Tzeng subsequently was appointed Taiwan Minister of Education by the Democratic Progressive Party administration. 6. A more-precise, seven-category field variable was also developed but resulted in very small or missing cells in some analyses. Where analyses using both the four-category and seven-category variables could be performed, no differences were found.

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William K. Gabrenya, Jr. is an associate professor of psychology at Florida Institute of Technology and chair of psychology undergraduate programs. He is the editor of the Cross-Cultural Psychology Bulletin and webmaster for IACCP. His area interests include Taiwan, East Asia, and the United States. His research interests focus on sociology of science, modernization, sex, and political psychology. Mei-Chuan Kung is a PhD candidate in industrial/organizational psychology at the Florida Institute of Technology and is a research consultant for an international personal selection and assessment company. Her research interests include feedback-seeking processes, personnel selection, and international or multicultural implementations. Li-Yu Chen received her master’s degree in applied behavior analysis at Florida Institute of Technology and is a doctoral student in educational psychology at West Virginia University. Her research interests include cross-cultural psychology, children with autism, effective learning, and motivation. She is a native of Taiwan, where she received her bachelor’s degree at Tung-Hai University.