Turning away from epistemic violence by capturing a lived experience of the other

Broadening the psychological perspective

First, we suggest that researchers extend their psychological perspective and apply a broader historiosophical framework on the investigated phenomena. Even psychological positions are embedded in folk intuitions, which is somewhat reflected in Held’s reference to Smith’s (2020) view about the folk theory of race. This issue should be systematically investigated from the historiosophical perspective, which would allow researchers to (a) identify mechanisms that underlie the way (in the long-term and cultural perspective) researchers perceive and treat individuals as others and (b) establish methodological clues for preventing researchers from engaging in othering.

We believe literary journalism by Kapuściński may inform such efforts—especially his novel Travels with Herodotus (2008) and philosophical essays The Other (2009). Kapuściński brings out so-called epistemological responsibility as a remedy for civilizational ethnocentrism. Epistemological responsibility prevents the reporter from depriving the other (story protagonist) of their subjectivity. Drawing on the philosophies of dialogue by Buber (2002), Lévinas (1987), and Tischner (2002), Kapuściński sets the direction of the intellectual effort reporters have to make to avoid the objectivization of the story in which the other is construed as a statistical number, which leads to their depersonalization. However tempting the objectivization may look, offering convenient theories and conceptions of the other, it diverts our attention from their unique individuality and lived experience. Similarly to Held (2020), who seeks for conditions that allow researchers to eliminate epistemic violence in psychology, Kapuściński creates an agenda for “meeting the other” (the idea borrowed from Lévinas), whereby the journalist’s epistemic perspective toward the other is linked with their responsibility for the other—which triggers an attitude that allows for recognizing the other’s individuality (Kapuściński, 2009; cf., Lévinas, 1969, 1987). Such a cognitive attitude combined with the moral obligation (of responsibility) is meant to intensify people’s intellectual effort, leading to their mutual understanding. Most importantly, it is meant to serve people as a protective shield against confronting the other by reflecting on a cultural encounter concerning cultural superiority/inferiority or using the us-versus-them category. The moral attitude should trigger a desire to truly meet the other as an individual, whereas the cultural encounter should be regarded as an opportunity to meet the other in their lived experience and “read” their subjective story.

The sociocultural context in which the other functions can no longer be treated as an invariable in Kapuściński’s view of “meeting the other.” The other-in-the-center perspective and attitude of responsibility should allow us to discern that, as put by Platt (2011) in a commentary on The Other (2009), culture does not only surround a person (in the essentialist/functionalist sense), but it is defined by their existence and soul. In this (experientialist) sense, culture should be viewed via the lens of a lived experience. Lévinas’ idea of directing our attention to the other’s face means the essence of a true encounter with the other lies in discerning their story along with the story of their surroundings (Kapuściński, 2009). The above issues raised by Kapuściński based on his experience as a journalist and author, and enriched by Lévinas’ philosophical perspective, pave the way for the research practice that reduces the tendency to detach concepts and theories from personal experience and, thus, turns away from epistemic violence as described by Held (2020).

The narrative approach to a lived experience of the other

Responding to Held’s (2020) calls for establishing research practice that prevents numerous forms of othering in mainstream psychological research, we want to contribute to the field by proposing a methodological research strategy for capturing an individual’s lived experience and subjective perspective. We see considerable potential in the narrative approach to studying people’s lived experiences as it allows for capturing the narrator’s subjective experience enacted in the process of storytelling. When relating a personal story, the narrator organizes their experience and constructs their subjective reality, as well as cultural identity. This is why “stories unfold as an attractive object of study for exploring intercultural communication interactions and learning which require transformations of an individual’s behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, values, and so on, to better create meanings and function in social situations marked by cultural diversity” (Wilczewski, 2019, p. 61). In turn, the narrator’s lived experience and cultural perspective may be captured through a narrative analysis of their personal story by disclosing sense-making and sense-giving processes, and identity construction processes. Such an analysis reveals how and what knowledge is created in a cultural encounter from the cultural other’s perspective. The high potential of narrative inquiry has been proven by empirical research in the social sciences as an alternative method to investigate the ways people ascribe meanings to events (Denzin, 1997), including our research agenda into intercultural experience (Wilczewski, 2019), intercultural learning (Wilczewski et al., 2019), and intercultural communication processes (Wilczewski et al., 2018) in multinational companies. The narrative approach allows the researcher to link content (meaning, values, beliefs) with context (familial, social, cultural, ecological), which remain key in Indigenous psychology (Kim et al., 2006). For example, the narrative approach allowed us to show (Gut et al., 2020) that the prevalent application of the Western dichotomy of authoritative versus authoritarian parenting style (Baumrind, 1991) to Chinese mothers obscures the key aspects of the child–mother relationship in Chinese culture and stigmatizes Chinese mothers as authoritarian.

Social interaction and the emergence of concepts

Finally, Held (2020) overlooks that going beyond psychological essentialism in a sociocultural context requires rejecting the cognitive approach according to which an individual’s social competence must be linked to their having amodal and even inborn concepts. Before we respond to Held’s call for investigating the bases for selection of all concepts in psychology, we need to acknowledge that concepts emerge in social interaction. Such interaction-based concepts are not coded as amodal symbols (or as “natural kinds,” to use Held’s terminology), but are inherently embodied in the individual’s actions (as “social kinds,” to use Held’s terminology). Accordingly, the content of such concepts is constructed through interaction and is grounded in the modalities of the experience. This is why capturing the lived experience, context, and subjectivity unfolds as the key task of psychological research (Mirski & Gut, 2018). A shift in the description of how concepts emerge in our thinking and cognitive system entails a shift in the description of the cognition of the other. Only an understanding of the emergence of concepts allows for recognizing why social understanding is fundamentally based on interaction—with intercorporeality at the core. To gain a deeper insight into the other’s lived experience, their reflective thinking needs to be captured, for example, in the storytelling process. Yet, the potential of the narrative approach cannot be fully exploited unless Cartesian cognitivism is discarded (Mirski & Gut, 2018).

General psychologists are inclined to develop decontextualized and universal theories of human behavior (also raised by Held, 2020), overlooking the lived experience and, thereby, nuances of cultural differences and the other’s cultural perspective. Such attempts result from misconceptions of how (especially folk) concepts and theories emerge in our cognitive system. According to them, the environment and social interactions are mere triggers of the cognitive system. Having been triggered, the cognitive system operates using internal mechanisms, whereby concepts are spontaneously created. In this view, the environment and the individual’s physical activity are excluded from the internal mechanisms of concept and folk theory creation. If the lived experience of the other is to take a central place in psychological research, we must acknowledge that the environment and the individual’s activity are integrally involved in the emergence of concepts—and this issue has not been raised strongly enough either by mainstream psychological research or in Held’s paper.