Modern and Traditional Approaches to Cultural Mentalities: Methodological Implications from Research on Traditional Chinese Psychology

Research on cultural mentalities drawing on traditional Chinese psychology has become increasingly visible in indigenous and cultural psychology. The present article argues that this body of work in fact involves two distinct approaches that should not be conflated. The modern approach, following mainstream cultural psychology, investigates cultural mentalities as socially prevalent psychological phenomena in contemporary populations, whereas the traditional approach engages constructs articulated in classical traditions as objects of inquiry and practice. Based on these different ways of establishing the research object, the two approaches systematically differ in methodology and practical implications. Specifically, the traditional approach more often relies on competence-based participant selection, intervention as a methodological precondition, and measurement attentive to conceptual meanings, participant understanding, and holistic structure of the construct. It is also comparatively more transferable across cultural contexts and more explicitly normative than the modern approach. Drawing on examples from previous studies, the article shows how the absence of this distinction may lead to conceptual ambiguity and methodological mismatch. Beyond clarifying these two approaches through research on traditional Chinese psychology, the article also shows that Asian traditions contribute to psychology not only through culturally distinctive concepts and empirical data, but also through alternative methodological orientations.