Instead, they reinterpret events in a manner consistent with their beliefs. Two key anthropological concepts are ethnocentrism and cultural relativism . They refer to attitudes. Ethnocentrism is the view that one's culture's way of doing things is the right and natural way. All other ways are inferior, unnatural, perhaps even barbaric.
Cultural relativism is the attitude that other ways of doing things are different but equally valid.
It tries to understand the behavior in its cultural context. Most humans are ethnocentric. It is natural to think one's own culture's way is best. Anthropologists, however, strive to be culturally relativistic. If I were to tell most Americans about a group of people in Africa who sometimes kill healthy newborn infants, they would probably take the ethnocentric attitude that these people were barbarians.