Sympsium Title: Psycholexical studies: Bridging emic and etic approaches Conveners: Deon Meiring and Fons J. R. van de Vijver Symposium abstract: the once so popular controversy between emic and etic approaches has given way to the notion that we need to both approaches in cross-cultural psychology. Psycholexical studies have proven fruitful in identifying their complementarity. This symposium describes psycholexical studies on personality and social desirability in South Africa and the Levant. Both qualitative and quantitative studies will be described. These studies build on a tradition of similar studies in the Philippines (Church, Katigbak and colleagues) and China (Cheung, Leung, and colleagues). The studies start from local conceptualizations that are examined in qualitative studies. These studies provide insight in the concepts and discourse that are used in the ethnic groups studied to describe personality and social desirability. Taxonomies obtained this way can be compared with well-researched, Western taxonomies. Such locally developed taxonomies have shown both universal and culture-specific features, thereby illustrating how emic and etic approaches can be fruitfully combined.