ABSTRACT
All knowledge in the discipline of psychology is culture-bound, as mind and culture are mutually constituted. Since American and European participants have formed the bulk of samples in psychological research, many findings may not be generalisable to non-Western societies. When studying any psychological phenomena, it is important to consider culture as a critical dimension of human experiences by focusing on the diversity within and between sociocultural groups. There are three cultural approaches to psychological research: generalisability, group differences, and cultural psychology. The first two approaches adopt an etic perspective that aims to examine the cross-cultural applicability of psychological constructs that are mainly derived from Western societies. The third approach adopts an emic perspective that aims to elicit psychological constructs from the viewpoints of the ethnocultural group under study. The approach of cultural psychology informs the paradigms and methodologies of indigenous psychologies (IPs) that draw on local resources to construct psychological knowledge. In this chapter, the authors explore the development of (Western) psychology in Singapore, and discuss the challenges and opportunities for developing IPs in Singapore. One way to initiate the process of indigenisation in Singapore is to study indigenous healing systems, which is a subject area of IPs.
