Psychology as a scientific discipline has been partial to universal findings, or at least makes modest claims to “generalizability”. The history of psychology as it has evolved in the west and the western tradition can be interpreted as moving towards this goal. In a sense, universality is the motive behind the series of systematically replicated experiments from rats to humans; from the laboratory to the field. The psychologists are no longer contended with the sophomore white students from American colleges or universities; they are now equally interested in Blacks and other groups. In fact, they have gone beyond the convenience of captive university classes in the many countries of the world and just like other colleagues in Anthropology would now occasionally risk the inconvenience of “mud huts and mosquitoes”. While this development might not always be welcomed as a socio-political development,(i.e., more and more countries say no to cross-cultural researchers , it is probably a turning point in the growth of western psychology for the data base of western psychology is now much broader.
It should be stressed however that a broader data base is far from adequate in assuring a universal psychology unless alternative perspectives from non-western psychologies are put to use.
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