Abstract
Abstract
This study investigates мэдрэмж (medremj), a Mongolian everyday concept that roughly translates as feeling or sensitivity, as a culturally embedded form of social intelligence. The term has no direct English equivalent and carries a broad semantic range in ordinary speech, yet in social interaction it consistently refers to a recognisable set of interpersonal competencies. Forty Mongolian university students (aged 18–23; 25 female, 13 male; 29 from Ulaanbaatar, 9 from rural pastoral backgrounds) participated in a short semi-structured interview study. Two blank responses were excluded, leaving n = 38 for analysis. NVivo-assisted thematic analysis, using researcher-led inductive–deductive double-coding across four predefined nodes, revealed the following coverage rates: Perceptive Awareness (E), 82% of responses; Situational Appropriateness (S), 76%; Empathic Understanding (R), 61%; and Boundary Meanings (B, non-relational uses of the term), 47%. The three relational dimensions form the E–R–S model of social-interactional мэдрэмж, a sequential-integrative process in which the мэдрэмжтэй (medremjtei) person first reads the social environment, then grasps others' perspectives, then adjusts behaviour accordingly. These findings suggest that мэдрэмж (medremj) is not a feeling per se but a relational capacity—culturally situated, behaviourally expressed, and not reducible to existing Western frameworks of emotional or social intelligence. The study contributes to indigenous psychology and cross-cultural research, and provides a conceptual foundation for future scale development.