SELF: Collectivism and

Individualism
 Self and Culture
◦Individualism
◦Collectivism
◦Interdependent self
◦Independent Self
Individualism
The concept of giving priority to one’s own
goals over group goals and defining one’s
identity in terms of personal attributes rather
than group identifications.
Independent Self-Construal
Construing one’s identity as an autonomous self.
Emphasis on:
1) internal abilities, thoughts, and feelings
2) being unique and expressing the self
3) realizing internal attributes and promoting one’s own goals
4) being direct in communication (Singelis,1995).
Collectivism
Giving priority to the goals of one’s group
(often one’s extended family or work
group) and defining one’s identity
accordingly.
Interdependent Self-Construal
Construing one’s identity in relation to others.
Emphasis on:
1) external, public features such as status, roles, and relationships
2) belonging and fitting-in
3) occupying one’s proper place and engaging in appropriate action
4) being indirect in communication and “reading others’ minds.”
(Singelis,1995).
Opinions
Way of Life
Punctuality
Contacts
Anger/Displeasure
Queues
View of Myself
Sunday on City Streets
Parties
Restaurants
Travelling
Perception of Beauty
Handling Problems
Daily Meals
Life of an Elderly
Moods & Weathers
Sunshine
The Boss
Whats Trendy
The Child
New Things
Perception of Each Other’s Culture
Purpose of Language
American students were more likely to explain that it
allows self-expression, whereas Korean students
focused on how language allows communication with
others.
Others’ opinion Towards the Self
60 percent of American students said they had seriously dated
someone even though their friends disliked him or her,
compared to only 27 percent of Chinese students. Half of the
Chinese students said they would stop dating someone if their
parents disapproved, compared with less than one-third of
American students (Zhang & Kline, 2009).
CULTURE AND SELF-ESTEEM
Self-esteem in collectivist cultures correlates closely with
“what others think of me and my group.” Self-concept in
these cultures is malleable (context-specific) rather than
stable (enduring across situations).

For those in individualistic cultures, self-esteem is more

personal and less relational.
CULTURE AND SELF-ESTEEM
For Japanese students, happiness comes with
positive social engagement—with feeling close,
friendly, and respectful. For American students, it
more often comes with disengaged emotions—with
feeling effective, superior, and proud (Kitayama &
Markus, 2000).
“Our self-concepts seem to adjust to our situation: If
you interact with the same people all your life, they
are more important to your identity than if you are
uprooted every few years and must make new
friends. Your self becomes your constant companion”
(Myers, 2013, p.43).
Holistic and analytic reasoning
Holistic thought involves an orientation to the context or
field as a whole. Characterized by comprehension of the
parts of something as intimately interconnected and
explicable only by reference to the whole.

Analytic thought involves detachment of the object from its

context.
Attention to object vs field
Masuda and Nisbett (2001)
Witkin and colleagues demonstrated that there are substantial differences in
the extent to which people decontextualize an object from the field in which it
appears.
Cultural variation in eye movements during scene perception
Culture and the Physical Environment
Causal explanation and prediction
Americans are more to decontextualize the object from its context
than are East Asians.
Americans would likely explain events by reference to properties of
the object, and that East Asians would be inclined to explain the
same events with reference to interactions between the object and
the field.
Causal explanation and prediction
East Asians have holistic assumptions about the universe, dictating
that all elements in the universe are somehow interconnected. An
object cannot be understood in isolation from the whole.
Westerners hold that the universe consists of separate objects that
can be understood in isolation from one another.

Choi, Dalal, Kim-Prieto, and Park (2003) – a murder incident along

with a list of 97 items of information that might or might not be
relevant to the explanation.
Similarity and relationships vs categories
and rules
East Asians are more likely to group objects on the basis of similarities and
relationships among the objects, where as Americans are more likely to group
objects on the basis of categories and rules.
Dialectical reasoning
1. The principle of change.
2. Principle of contradiction
3. Principle of relationship or holism.

Contradiction is to be expected and is not necessarily resolved

The goal is to search for the “middle way”
Dialectical reasoning
Peng and Nisbett (1999):
Chinese proverbs were found to have larger proportion of dialectical
proverbs containing contradictions.
Chinese undergrads tend to like dialectical proverbs more than
American undergrads.
In interpersonal conflicts: Chinese would try to say that both sides
had some merit while Americans were more likely to say that one
side or the other was correct.