The concept of subjective culture comes from Dr. Harry Triandis, a cross cultural psychologist, viewed culture as objective (also known as material) and subjective.

Subjective culture comprises ideas, attitudes and beliefs. An inter-culturist would focus primarily on subjective culture.

Material culture is man-made such as clothes and tools. On the other hand, subjective culture is the intangible part of culture such as ideas, attitudes, assumptions and beliefs. In other words, it is “a society’s characteristic way of perceiving its social environment”.

We can subdivide these further by taking either an ‘etic‘ or ‘emic‘ approach to studying the subjective elements.

“Etic” refers to the general categories. These elements can be found in all cultures and which we use to make comparisons.

“Emic” refers to elements which are specific to a given culture. This makes cultures unique.

Cultures have their own unique mix of beliefs, attitudes, norms and values.

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