2006 cornejo comment on matsumoto 2006

CommentaryAbstract In his paper, David Matsumoto (2005) offers a criticalapproach to the adequacy of verbal reports as representations ofculture, arguing that they represent a cultural ideology (what hecalls ‘consensual culture’ or a ‘consensual cultural worldview’)rather than a culture’s actual complexity (‘cultural ways’ or‘actual cultural behaviors’). I agree with the author that we makemistakes when describing our own culture. But the fact that wemay sometimes err does not necessarily mean that we always do.The problem with such a view is that the denial of the epistemicvalue of verbal reports also invalidates the capacities of thescientist as a member of the culture, unless we consider thescientist to exist outside her/his culture. This is the classicalobjectivist approach in science and, furthermore, the assumptiontacitly accepted by cross-cultural studies.Key Words anthopological universalism, cross-culturalmethodology, etic/emic approaches, verbal reportCarlos CornejoPontificia Universidad Católica de ChileTo Believe or Not to Believe in VerbalReports: The Denial of First-PersonAuthority and the Blind Spot ofUniversalist Cross-cultural StudiesIn general terms, the central statement proposed by Matsumoto (2005)is an important and appealing one. The main thesis has two possibleinterpretations: either as a methodological criticism or, more radically,as questioning what we understand by ‘culture’. Matsumoto opts forthe former while I ...