is a special case of Ethnocentrism, which refers to
“the tendency to view one’s own ethnic group and its
social standards as the basis for evaluative judgements
concerning the practices of others – with the implication
that one views one’s own standards as superior”
(Joseph, Reddy, & Searle-Chatterjee, 1990).
Eurocentrism refers to a tendency to interpret the world
in terms of European or Anglo-American values and
experiences (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2017).
The abstract noun ‘Eurocentrism’ as the term for an
ideology was coined in the 1970s by the Egyptian
Marxian economist Samir Amin. Eurocentrism is a certain Euro-American chauvinism about the superiority
of the West (Hobson, 2012).
In the field of social science (or psychology), it refers to
a way of (white, male, heterosexual, middle-class) knowing.
Marsella (2009) identified 10 basic assumptions of
Eurocentric/Western psychology, which are Individuality,
Reductionism, Experiment-based empiricism, Scientism,
Quantification/measurement, Materialism, Male dominance,
‘Objectivity,’ Nomothetic laws, and Rationality.
However, its universal applicability in a world of cultural
diversity is questionable.
The indigenous scholars argued that current mainstream
psychology contains Western ethnocentric bias
and generally reflects the culture of Europe and United
States, particularly the main normative system of the
culture, and more specifically the biases of the white
males who have historically dominated the discipline
(Moghaddam & Studer, 1997, p. 200). In psychology,
however, psychological theories have been regarded as
culture-bound, value-laden, and with
