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Culture and self

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... primarily by reference to one's own internal repertoire of ... basic cognition. Implications for emotion. Ego-focused emotions. anger, frustration, pride ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Culture and self


1
Culture and self
  • Independent and interdependent self-construals

2
Overview of topic
  • Theories of culture and self
  • Some relevant findings
  • Embarrassability
  • Self-esteem and self-enhancement
  • Some key critiques

3
Theories of culture and self
4
Why study cultural differences?
  • The Western conception of the person as a
    bounded, unique, more or less integrated
    motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic
    center of awareness, emotion, judgment, and
    action organized into a distinctive whole and set
    contrastively both against other such wholes and
    against a social and natural background is,
    however incorrigible it may seem to us, a rather
    peculiar idea within the context of the worlds
    cultures. (Geertz, 1975, p. 48)

5
Triandis (1989)
  • Distinguishes private, public collective selves
  • private traits, states, behaviours
  • public generalised others view of self
  • collective groups view of self/social identity
  • Three dimensions of cross-cultural variation
  • individualism-collectivism (private vs.
    collective)
  • tightness-looseness (public, collective vs.
    private)
  • simplicity-complexity (public, collective vs.
    private)

6
Individualism-collectivism
  • Individualism the conception of individuals as
    autonomous from groups
  • Collectivism the conception of individuals as
    aspects of groups or collectives
  • (Triandis, Chan, Bhawuk, Iwao Sinha, 1995, p.
    462)

7
American/Chinese self-concept
  • Trafimow, Triandis Goto (1991) studied the
    self-concept among 24 North American and 18
    Chinese students at the University of Illinois
  • Coded TST responses into idiocentric (private),
    allocentric (public), group (collective) selves
  • All students gave more idiocentric than group
    responses, but North American students gave more
    idiocentric and less group responses in
    comparison with Chinese students

8
The theory of self-construals
  • Markus Kitayama (1991)
  • Review paper which defines area
  • Cited over 1000 times!
  • Central idea
  • Eastern and Western cultures differ in
    relative prevalence of independent and
    interdependent self-construals

9
Independent self-construal
  • Achieving the cultural goal of independence
    requires construing oneself as an individual
    whose behavior is organized and made meaningful
    primarily by reference to ones own internal
    repertoire of thoughts, feelings and action,
    rather than by reference to the thoughts,
    feelings and actions of others. (Markus
    Kitayama, 1991, p. 226)

10
Interdependent self-construal
  • Experiencing interdependence entails seeing
    oneself as part of an encompassing social
    relationship and recognizing that ones behavior
    is determined, contingent on, and, to a large
    extent organized by what the actor perceives to
    be the thoughts, feelings, and actions of
    others in the relationship. (Markus
    Kitayama,1991, p. 227)

11
Self-construals
12
Implications for cognition
  • Compared to Americans, South-East Asian
    participants typically show
  • more interpersonal knowledge
  • more context-specific knowledge of self and
    other
  • more attention to interpersonal context in basic
    cognition

13
Implications for emotion
  • Ego-focused emotions
  • anger, frustration, pride
  • predicted to be more important in US
  • Other-focused emotions
  • sympathy, feelings of interpersonal communion,
    shame
  • predicted to be more important in Japan

14
Implications for motivation
  • Self-expression or self-restraint
  • Bases of achievement
  • Self-enhancement or modesty

15
Some relevant findings
16
Self-construal and embarrassability
  • Study by Singelis and Sharkey (1995)
  • Participants
  • 86 Euro-American and 417 Asian-American (Chinese,
    Filipino, Japanese, Korean) university students
  • Questionnaire measures
  • Self-construal scale (Singelis, 1994)
  • Embarrassability scale (Modigliani, 1968)

17
Ethnocultural group differences
  • Significant ethnocultural group differences in
    embarrassability (p lt .001, R2 4.5)
  • Generally, Asian-Americans were more susceptible
    to embarrassment than were Euro-Americans
  • Significant group differences in independent (p
    lt .001, R2 6.7) and interdependent (p lt .01,
    R2 3.4) self-construals
  • Asian-Americans reported less independent and
    more interdependent self-construals than did
    Euro-Americans

18
Self-construal and embarrassability
  • Independent and interdependent self-construals
    were both significant predictors of
    susceptibility to embarrassment (p lt .001, R2
    19)
  • However, after controlling for self-construals,
    ethnocultural group membership did not predict
    embarrassability (p gt .05, partial R2 0.7)
  • Intepreted as evidence for mediation
  • Culture ? self-construal ? embarrassability

19
Self-esteem across cultures
  • Self-enhancement in Western cultures
  • Self-criticism (modesty) in Eastern cultures
  • Heine et al. (1999) review paper Is there a
    universal need for positive self-regard?
  • Evidence for self-criticism rather than
    self-enhancement effects among Asian populations
    (see e.g. Kitayama, Markus, Matsumoto
    Norasakkunkit, 1997)
  • Asian populations show lower levels of
    self-esteem than do North Americans

20
Self-esteem across cultures
21
Self-esteem across cultures
22
Self-esteem across cultures
23
Constructions of self-esteem
  • Relationship esteem
  • Need for face
  • Need to do ones best
  • Temporal/situational differences
  • Need to be a good cultural member

24
Collectivist self-enhancement?
  • Sedikides, Gaertner Toguchi (2003)

25
Some key critiques
26
Critiques 1 Kim
  • Collectivism is more about relatedness of
    individuals than about subordination of
    individuality to group memberships
  • Three modes of collectivism
  • Undifferentiated
  • Relational
  • Coexistence

27
Critiques 2 Spiro
  • Argues Markus Kitayama (and others) are
    misreading anthropology
  • Different meanings of self
  • Flawed comparisons
  • Evidence for much independence in East and
    interdependence in West

28
Critiques 3 Matsumoto
  • Theoretically, self-construals explain
    cross-national differences in cognition, emotion,
    motivation (and behaviour)
  • Most research does not test this assertion
  • Evidence does not support this assertion

29
Critiques 4 Hermans Kempen
  • Perils of cultural dichotomies
  • What about change?
  • What about mobility?
  • What about communication between cultures?
  • What about diversity within cultures?
  • Culture is not the same as nation

30
Conclusions
  • Cross-cultural differences in the self-concept
    provide a fruitful area of research for examining
    social constructionist ideas.
  • The precise nature and distribution of these
    differences remains a matter of debate.
  • The motivation to maintain and enhance
    self-esteem may vary in strength across cultures
    or may vary in how self-esteem is constructed.
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