Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation.¶
Why this mattered¶
TBD
Abstract¶
People in different cultures have strikingly different construals of the self, of others, and of the interdependence of the 2. These construals can influence, and in many cases determine, the very nature of individual experience, including cognition, emotion, and motivation. Many Asian cultures have distinct conceptions of individuality that insist on the fundamental relatedness of individuals to each other. The emphasis is on attending to others, fitting in, and harmonious interdependence with them. American culture neither assumes nor values such an overt connectedness among individuals. In contrast, individuals seek to maintain their independence from others by attending to the self and by discovering and expressing their unique inner attributes. As proposed herein, these construals are even more powerful than previously imagined. Theories of the self from both psychology and anthropology are integrated to define in detail the difference between a construal of the self as independent and a construal of the self as interdependent. Each of these divergent construals should have a set of specific consequences for cognition, emotion, and motivation; these consequences are proposed and relevant empirical literature is reviewed. Focusing on differences in self-construals enables apparently inconsistent empirical findings to be reconciled, and raises questions about what have been thought to be culture-free aspects of cognition, emotion,
Related¶
- cite → A circumplex model of affect. — Markus and Kitayama use Russell’s affect circumplex to connect cultural models of self with systematic variation in emotional experience.
- enables → The weirdest people in the world? — Markus and Kitayama's independent-versus-interdependent self construals supplied a core example of culturally variable cognition in the WEIRD critique.
- cite ← The weirdest people in the world? — The WEIRD paper invokes independent versus interdependent self-construals to explain cultural variation in cognition, emotion, and motivation.
- enables ← A circumplex model of affect. — Russell's valence-arousal circumplex enabled Markus and Kitayama to compare cultural self-construals through systematic differences in emotional experience.