Relationship between Social Anthropology and Psychology

Like sociologists and economists, most psychologists do research in their own society. Anthropology again contributes by providing cross-cultural data. Statements about human psychology can not be based solely on observations made in one society or a single type of society. The area of social anthropology known as psychological anthropology studies cross-cultural variation in psychological traits. Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and others attempted to find out different patterns and psychological traits among different cultures.

Both social anthropology and psychology deal with the same basic subject matter, people in relation with other people. Psychology is mainly concerned with the nature and functioning of individual human minds. Social anthropology is more keenly interested in the study of various forms and structure of groups and organizations. Its unit of study is society. It tries to find out types of society, their function, structure, origin and development. But psychology is not basically interested in the society and their forms. It is interested in the study of individual's behavior. Broadly speaking social anthropology studies the culture and social system in which the individuals live rather than the individuals themselves. But the individual and society can not exist separately of each other. Thus the subject matter is almost the same but with the difference in emphasis.
Regarding the importance of psychology in social anthropology, John Beattie states, "In fact every field anthropologist must be, to a considerable extent a practicing psychologist, for a main part of his job is to discover the thinking of those people whom he studies, and this is never a simple task. Ideas and values are not given as data; they must be inferred, and there are many difficulties and dangers in such inferences, especially when they are made in the context of an unfamiliar culture. It may well be that there is much to be learned about the less explicit values of other cultures (as well as about those of our own), especially about the kinds of symbolism involved in ritual and ceremonial, through techniques of depth psychology. But a word of warning is necessary. The incautious application in unfamiliar cultures of concepts and assumptions derived from psychological researchers in western society may lead - and indeed has led - to gross distortions. The Oedipus complex, for example, is something to be proved, not assumed, in other cultures. Nevertheless it is likely that as psychologists increasingly work in cultures other than their own (and they are doing this) profitable collaboration between them and social anthropologists will take place"

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