ABSTRACT
The Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, had a well-developed psychology to explain and govern human behaviour as they perceived it. On contact with Western thought a cross-cultural awareness developed. Early records from missionaries, travellers and gentlemen scholars reveal a curiosity about the metaphysics of both cultures. In the 1920s the inter-cultural dialogue entered the universities and laid the foundation for cross-cultural psychology in New Zealand. Scholars such as Ernest Beaglehole and Margaret Mead in the 1920s used the Maori example in laying the theoretical foundations for this area of study. For seventy-five years New Zealand has had its own distinct tradition which grew from both culture and personality within anthropology and from the psychological study of culture and the individual. Currently, a new theme has emerged as Maori psychologists balance the dialogue as they develop an explicit Maori ethnopsychology. This paper will review this history and indicate its likely future development.
