Rethinking multi‐site studies in social and personality psychology: Can the cross‐indigenous approach remedy common cross‐cultural vulnerabilities?

Abstract The cross‐indigenous approach is introduced as a framework for conducting multi‐site studies. The cross‐indigenous approach is a simultaneous multi‐emic approach to studying psychological and social phenomena across cultures which intends to mitigate vulnerabilities commonly found in typical cross‐cultural studies done in social and personality psychology including methodological artifacts introduced when instruments, protocols, or research design do not work as expected across target cultures, and the unrealistic expectation of construct equivalence across sites. The article discusses ways to carry out a cross‐indigenous project which aims to be a principled way of making comparisons across cultures, aiming to stake out what are unique, what are shared and what are universals across populations, to explain psychological and social processes through culture‐sensitive and naturalistic methods.