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To prepare for this discussion, please read Chapters 2 and 3 of your
textbook
(Feenstra, 2013). In addition, read
Culture as Patterns: An Alternative Approach to the Problem of Reification
(Adams and Markus, 2001) and
Culture and the Self: Implications for Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation
(Markus and Kitayama, 1991). Finally, review Instructor Guidance and Announcements. In this discussion, you will consider patterns that have shaped your sense of self. Be sure to use your own academic voice and apply in-text citations appropriately throughout your post.
- Identify some of the primary cultural influences in your life. (Note that culture can be defined broadly to include a number of dimensions.)
- Examine your sense of self.
Would you characterize yourself as more independent or interdependent? Why? Identify specific examples that illustrate. You might find it helpful to start by considering Figure 1 and Table 1 in Markus and Kitayama (1991).
- Appraise the consequences of your self-construction.
What are some of the implications of independence/interdependence (for cognition, emotion, motivation, etc.)?
- Analyze your responses to the Twenty Statements Test in the introduction (Post Your Introduction).
Does your description fit with predictions of theory and research findings, as described by Markus and Kitayama (1991)?
Post your initial response of 250 words or more by Day 3 (Thursday). Respond to at least two of your peers by Day 7 (Monday). You are encouraged to post one or more of your required replies early each week (e.g., by Saturday) to stimulate more meaningful and interactive discourse in the discussion forum. In addition, strive to provide a response to classmates who replied to your initial post and/or the Instructor (if applicable). Peer responses may vary in length but should be carefully crafted and insightful. Below are some suggestions to assist your thinking.].
Abstract To challenge the treatment of culture and self as reified
entities, Hermans (2001) proposes a model of both culture and self
as a multiplicity of dialogical positions. We question whether this
model fully responds to his challenge. First, the notion of
positioning itself appears to reify culture by treating flowing
patterns as fixed locations. Second, the notion of dialogue appears
to neglect the possibility of automatic influence from implicit
cultural patterns. This implies a core, universal self whose
functioning is insensitive to cultural variation. We suggest an
alternative approach to the problem of reification: to conceive of
culture not as group, but as patterns. Corresponding to this shift,
we propose a distinction between the negotiation of cultural
identity and the cultural grounding of self. As a model of identity
negotiation, Hermans’ dialogical self makes important
contributions: it emphasizes the multiplicity of identity, highlights
the agency of the self as a constructor of identity, and suggests the
importance of psychology—and the study of self, in particular—
for the study of culture.
Key Words culture, conception, entity, identity, patterns,
reification, self
Glenn Adams
University of Kansas, USA
Hazel Rose Markus
Stanford University, USA
Culture as Patterns: An Alternative
Approach to the Problem of
Reification
Hermans (2001) challenges the conception of culture and self as core,
essential entities in favor of a more dynamic conception as ‘a multi-
plicity of positions among which dialogical relationships can develop’
(p. 243). More generally, Hermans and colleagues (e.g. Hermans &
Kempen, 1998) hope to contribute to a conception of culture that is less
stereotypical, monolithic or reifying than the conception that typically
prevails in the discipline of psychology. These are worthwhile objec-
tives, and this is a significant essay if it serves no other purpose than
raising awareness of the extent to which the treatment of culture in
psychology reflects and fosters reification. However, it is not clear
Culture & Psychology Copyright © 2001 SAGE Publications
(London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
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whether the dialogical self meets the objective of a non-reifying
account of culture and self. Regarding the former, a treatment of
culture as positions may itself entail the reification of dynamic, flowing
patterns into static, fixed entities. Regarding the latter, the metaphor of
dialogue restricts cultural influence to knowable, objectified ‘me’
aspects of the Jamesian self and appears to neglect or understate the
possibility of cultural influence on knowing, subjective ‘I’ aspects. This
implies an essential, core self—whether unitary and continuous or
multiple and discontinuous—that is insensitive to cultural variation.
These observations do not constitute serious objections if the
purpose of the dialogical-self framework is to model how people
negotiate relatively explicit cultural identities. In that case, it is likely
that people construct an experience of both self and culture that is more
coherent, continuous, reified or thing-like than is true in fact. These
observations are more serious if the purpose of the framework is to
elaborate a dynamic, non-reifying account of culture and self. In that
case, a promising alternative might be to abandon the conception of
culture as group entity that underlies Hermans’ framework (and
prevails in the field of psychology) in favor of a less reifying concep-
tion of culture as patterns.
Reifying Culture: Turning Names into Things
Hermans refers frequently to a 1998 article in which he and Kempen
discuss problems associated with the reification of culture: ‘People turn
names into things and endow nations, societies, and cultures with the
qualities of internally homogenous and externally distinctive objects’
(Hermans & Kempen, 1998, p. 1113). They join Wolf (1982) in wonder-
ing, ‘Why do people persist in turning dynamic, interconnected
phenomena into static, separated things?’ (Hermans & Kempen, 1998,
p. 1113). They then link this tendency toward reification to the ‘perilous
problem of cultural dichotomies’: the common practice—at least in
psychology—of investigating cultural differences as dichotomous dis-
tinctions.
This discussion parallels a similar concern with the reification of
culture in other social science disciplines (cf. Appadurai, 1996;
Hannerz, 1992; Meyer & Geschiere, 1999; Said, 1978). For example, in
their introduction to a volume on ‘globalization and identity’, Meyer
and Geschiere (1999) note ‘a need to “liquidate” culture, that is, to
exchange a static, homogenizing concept of culture in favour of more
open, fluid notions’ (p. 3). Later in the same paragraph, they add that
success in this endeavor
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. . . is only possible if we leave behind the view—propagated by anthro-
pology, but internalized by social scientists in general and by the people
concerned—of the world as a conglomerate of separate and internally
homogenous cultures, each with its own essence, so that intercultural
contacts are understood in terms of loss of authenticity. (p. 4)
Another example of the concern with reification is what Appadurai
(1996) refers to as ‘the mutually constitutive relationship between
anthropology and locality’ (p. 178). Although most anthropological
work considers neatly bounded societies, ‘tribes’, ‘cultures’ or com-
munities, these objects of study do not necessarily occur naturally.
Instead, they are, to some extent, ethnographic constructions: dynamic,
flowing societal patterns turned by ethnographic description into
static, clearly bounded, concrete things. In some cases, this reification
takes the form of ‘construction of the other’: the process by which the
object of study is presented as a homogeneous outgroup, defined
mainly by its difference from the observer’s ingroup (Said, 1978). In
other cases, this reification takes the form of ‘the invention of tradition’:
the tendency of ethnographic description to freeze flowing behavioral
patterns into timeless, defining group characteristics. In extreme (but
not unusual) cases, this reification takes the form of outright identity-
creation: the construction of cultural categories that did not previously
exist as such (Appiah, 1992; Mudimbe, 1988).
The point here is that the reification of culture cannot be solely a
function of dichotomous comparison because the problem also arises
in ethnographic studies of a single society. Rather than a product of
comparison, the reification of culture—the tendency to turn names into
things—may be inherent in the act of naming (Appadurai, 1996).1 That
is, by naming or describing an observed pattern as ‘American’ or
‘Dutch’, one takes something that was dynamic and flowing and
renders it—at least for a moment—static and fixed. One proposes a
baseline or implicit standard against which deviations or innovations
appear ‘un-American’ or ‘not Dutch’. Those individuals who already
do not fit the modal pattern or who would produce innovation get
marginalized, labeled as ‘bad’ members, and have less influence over
the meaning and direction of ethnic categories. Thus, the act of naming
itself contributes to homogenization and cultural conservatism
(Appiah, 1992; Said, 1978).
Hermans’ concept of positioning seems to have similar conse-
quences. The notion of positioning is based on the idea that selves and
‘cultures’ can be represented or ‘fixed’ as locations in space. Yet, as
Hermans notes, a conception of culture as spatially localized tends to
freeze dynamic, interconnected patterns into static, separated things.
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Ironically, then, Hermans’ dialogical-self framework is not free from
reification of culture; instead reification, in the form of ‘positioning’,
may be a central feature.
From Entity to Patterns: A Less Reifying Conception of
Culture
Rather than a ‘perilous problem of cultural dichotomies’ (Hermans &
Kempen, 1998), we propose that a more fundamental source of reifi-
cation in the discipline of psychology is the prevailing tendency to
equate culture with group. This tendency is based on and fosters a con-
ception of culture as a more-or-less explicit, internally homogeneous,
externally distinctive, collective entity. This conception of culture as
group entity is evident in Hermans’ paper in his discussion of culture
as collective voices (p. 261), his discussion of being caught between
cultures (p. 271), and—along with a conception of culture as geo-
graphically localized—in his distinction between core and contact
zones (p. 272). More generally, this conception is evident in phrases
like ‘members of culture X’ and in the practice of using culture syn-
onymously with society, nation or ethnicity.
One consequence of this entity conception of culture is a static, essen-
tializing, stereotype-prone account of cultural difference. Audiences
interpret descriptions of modal patterns as claims about invariant,
characteristic, group properties. Similarly, they treat these patterns as
inherent in group categories rather than the product of circumstances
associated with categories.
More relevant for the present topic is another consequence: It is
largely due to an entity conception of culture that the act of naming
promotes reification. The mere description of modal patterns does not
necessarily imply abrupt, categorical boundaries. Instead, the turning
of names into things requires the idea that the patterns being described
correspond to some object—in this case, a group of people. Given a
conception of culture as group, description of modal patterns becomes
definition of group boundaries. It ‘fixes’ group membership around a
particular way of being, makes group boundaries more concrete and
categorical than they are in reality, and even reinforces or confers their
sense of entity-ness (cf. Appadurai, 1996; Meyer & Geschiere, 1999;
Mudimbe, 1997; Said, 1978).2
In contrast to this reification-prone conception of culture as group
entity, we borrow from a classic definition and advocate a less reifying
conception of culture as patterns:
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Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior
acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achieve-
ment of human groups, including their embodiments of artifacts; the core of
culture consists of traditional (i.e., historically derived and selected) ideas
and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on one hand, be
considered as products of actions and on the other hand as conditioning
elements of further action. (Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1952, p. 357, emphasis
added)
This definition makes clear that culture resides not in groups them-
selves, but in the implicit and explicit patterns that are (often) associ-
ated with groups (cf. Sperber, 1984). It frames cultural involvement not
as membership in a more-or-less recognized group, but as engagement
with patterns. Though an entity conception of culture tends to limit
cultural influence to those people who are defined by (or in opposition
to) some group, a conception of culture as patterns allows for broader,
more diffuse influence. A person need not be a member of some
cultural group to engage and be shaped by cultural patterns.
These two conceptions of culture are conveniently juxtaposed in an
introductory chapter to a popular collection of papers on ‘culture and
psychology’ (Veroff & Goldberger, 1995). After quoting the above defi-
nition, Veroff and Goldberger (1995) remark in their very next sentence
that: ‘More useful definitions, perhaps, are less encompassing and
more accessible, but most support the usage of the word “culture” as
referring to a collectivity of people . . .’ (p.10, emphasis added). We agree
that this conception of culture as group entity may be ‘more useful’ for
certain topics, like the construction and negotiation of cultural identity.
However, it is less useful (and perhaps even misleading) for discussing
the cultural grounding of self-experience. We will return to this dis-
tinction shortly. First, though, we discuss the implications of this defi-
nition for Hermans’ dialogical self.
Implicit and Explicit Patterns
Although there are several important features of this definition that we
might emphasize, the most relevant feature for a discussion of
Hermans’ dialogical self is the distinction between explicit and implicit
patterns. Hermans’ model appears to be concerned mostly with
cultural patterns, like group entities or collective voices, that are suf-
ficiently explicit and consciously considered that they can be localized
as positions and engaged in dialogue.3 However, cultural influence
does not just happen through explicit, consciously considered patterns
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like group entities and their collective voices. In addition, as the
Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952) definition emphasizes, cultural influ-
ence is also mediated by implicit, unrecognized, nameless or ‘posi-
tionless’ patterns that are embedded in local meanings, institutions,
practices and artifacts. A full account of the relationship between
culture and self requires an appreciation for this automatic shaping of
self by patterns that are implicit in everyday life and do not necess-
arily coincide with explicit, group entities.4
It is not clear from the present paper whether Hermans’ model of
the dialogical self can accommodate this sort of automatic or implicit
patterning. At issue is the notion of dialogue. It is clear from his dis-
cussion of ‘prelinguistic and embodied dialogues’ that Hermans does
not intend to restrict the notion to its verbal form. What remains
unclear is whether the extension of dialogue to include embodied forms
is sufficient to capture the ‘automatic’ shaping of behavior and experi-
ence described above. Some passages suggest that it could be. For
example, Hermans notes that dialogue is sometimes patterned by
‘culturally established and institutionally congealed provisions and
constraints on communicative activities (p. 263)’ (an observation he
attributes to Linell, 1990). However, having dialogue shaped by
implicit, ‘institutionally congealed’ patterns is not the same as being in
dialogue or otherwise involved with these patterns. More important,
it is not clear that the notion of dialogue—rather than some other form
of involvement, like engagement or negotiation, that connotes a less
explicit activity—is the optimal characterization of these automatic
influences.
Even if one extends Hermans’ notion of embodied dialogue to
include engagement with implicit, unrecognized patterns, his model of
the dialogical self apparently restricts cultural influence to patterns that
become explicit and known. Using the Jamesian model of self, Hermans
proposes that cultural influence happens as subjective I-positions take
potentially formless patterns and construct them into a multiplicity of
more-or-less concrete, objective me-positions. Accordingly, cultural
influence in Hermans’ model appears to focus on the objective content
of self-knowledge.
But what about cultural influence on the subjective processors of
self-knowledge: the Jamesian I-positions themselves? Hermans’ model
appears to neglect automatic influences on self-experience from
implicit cultural patterns that, because they remain unrecognized by
knowing subjects, do not get constructed into me-positions. Yet the
moment-to-moment way of being an I (as in ‘I perceive’, ‘I think’, ‘I
feel’) is also culturally patterned. A set of I-positions that engages a
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cultural setting where it is commonplace in everyday activity to ex-
plicitly reference the feelings or expectations of specific others may
well have a different experience of ‘I’ than a set of I-positions that
engages a setting where explicit referencing of specific others is less
common.
As a result, it remains unclear whether Hermans’ model can (or is
intended to) account for the cultural grounding of the subjective I or
knowing self. Although Hermans does not deny the possibility of such
variation, neither does he mention this possibility (nor is it clear from
his model how such variation might arise). Instead, he tends to
describe the subjective, identity-synthesizing I-positions as if their pro-
cesses were relatively impervious to contextual variation.
The Dialogical Self as a Model of Identity
Although perhaps incomplete as an account of the cultural grounding
of self, Hermans’ framework works better as a model of identity con-
struction. Using his framework, we define cultural identity as a system
of positions derived from or organized around a cultural group. (We
will defer for a moment the issue of whether this organization is objec-
tively provided in the social world or ‘merely’ a subjective construc-
tion.) One can then consider Hermans’ framework as a model for
understanding how the subjective self negotiates these identities.
Understood as such, his model is a welcome contribution.
Multiplicity
One important contribution is to emphasize the multiplicity of self and
identity. As Hermans notes, this emphasis on multiplicity and discon-
tinuity contrasts with the emphasis on unity and continuity that has
characterized the field of psychology. In general, bicultural or multi-
cultural being has been and continues to be characterized as an
abnormal or marginal condition (for similar points, see LaFromboise,
Coleman, & Gerton, 1993; Root, 1998). In contrast, Hermans’ model
suggests that most people in normal circumstances are constituted by
multiple cultural influences. Rather than a marginal condition, multi-
cultural being may be the norm.
Here again, though, the discussion of multiplicity is hindered by
reliance on an entity conception of culture. From this perspective,
‘multiplicity’ translates into ‘multiple group memberships’, an idea
that seems incompatible with typical articulations of an entity concep-
tion.5 Even if one stretches the notion to allow that people can be
members of multiple groups, the entity conception remains inadequate
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for understanding how people can be shaped by mutually exclusive
groups. In contrast, the multiplicity of self and identity entails no such
problems for a conception of culture as patterns. This conception
allows that a person can engage and be shaped by patterns associated
with seemingly incompatible identities.
To illustrate, consider the cultural setting of Protestantism. An entity
conception of culture would seem to limit Protestantism’s influence to
members of Protestant groups. (Whether the groups are based on
religious identity or something akin to ethnic identity, as in Northern
Ireland, is not important for this example. Instead, what is important
is that the site of cultural involvement is more-or-less explicit category.)
Although one can stretch this conception to allow that people can be
members of multiple groups—Protestant and a university student, of
Surinamese ethnicity, a resident of Amsterdam, a fan of the Ajax
football club, etc.—it seems inadequate for understanding how, say, a
staunchly loyal member of a Catholic group, resident in the USA,
might be shaped by forces of Protestantism.
However, the power of Protestantism to shape psychological func-
tioning is not limited to members of Protestant groups. Instead, the
more pervasive and enduring source of Protestantism’s power is as a
cultural pattern. It is an often implicit, unrecognized part of the insti-
tutions, practices and artifacts that constitute everyday reality in main-
stream American settings. In these settings, the legacy of Protestantism
is embedded in the common ground for interaction and experience. Its
legacy is present, for example, in the idea that success is the result of
self-discipline and one’s own hard work, or in the relationship of
control feelings and internal attributions to happiness and well-being
(Ji, Peng, & Nisbett, 2000; Kluegel & Smith, 1986; Lachman & Weaver,
1998). Regardless of personal identity, people in mainstream American
settings necessarily encounter this cultural legacy in the course of
everyday activity. A person can fervently embrace cultural patterns
associated with Catholicism but must simultaneously engage—often
unwittingly—the Protestantism-informed patterns that dominate
everyday reality in mainstream American settings. Clearly, a person
need not be a member of a Protestant group to engage and be shaped
by Protestant cultural patterns.
Agency
A second contribution of Hermans’ model is to highlight the dynamic
role of an agentic self in negotiating these multiple identities. As
Granovetter (1985) puts it: ‘Actors do not . . . adhere slavishly to a
script written for them by the particular intersection of social categories
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that they happen to occupy’ (p. 487). Instead, different persons—and
the same person at different times—can create different syntheses from
the same ‘intersection of categories’ (cf. Root, 1998). Hermans’ dialog-
ical self provides a useful framework for theorizing this agency. For
example, his discussion suggests that the construction of identity may
be more a matter of alternation between, or the integration of, existing
positions than of the construction of new positions ‘from scratch’ (p. 15;
see also LaFromboise et al., 1993).
Ironically, another form that this agentic construction of identity
takes is often the reification of cultural groups. People caught in the
uncertainty of cultural flux often solidify group boundaries that used
to be flexible—and sometimes construct new group boundaries—in an
attempt to reassert power or gain some control over macrolevel or
global forces (Comaroff & Comaroff, 1993; Meyer & Geschiere, 1999).
So, rather than the supposed disappearance of cultural diversity pre-
dicted by global-systems theorists, entry into the world system often
fuels the defiant ‘production of locality’ (Appadurai, 1996).
The important point for present purposes concerns the product of
the identity-construction process. The self does not just synthesize iden-
tities; it also constructs identities. It organizes flowing patterns into
reified structures that extend beyond the person into institutions, prac-
tices and artifacts of the physical world. This implies that the organiz-
ation of patterns into reified identities is not simply a ‘subjective’
construal. In addition, the organization of patterns into reified identi-
ties is to some extent given in ‘objective’ reality. In other words, the
reification of culture into group entities is often not illusory but is
present in the structure of worlds that individuals inherit. This point
has important implications for Hermans’ framework.
First, reacting to practices in psychology that lead to the reification
of culture, Hermans appears to underweight the extent to which
received identity categories have objective reality (cf. Holdstock, 1999).
Rather than deny this apparent ‘fixedness’ or reification of identities,
perhaps the task for a cultural psychology should be to emphasize the
dialectical process through which identities arise. Cultural identity
categories—and the supposedly ‘defining features’ associated with
these categories—are not ‘just so’; instead, they are the way they are
because people make them so. Their reified fixedness is not natural or
inevitable but is instead a social construction: the cumulative, material
residue of the identity syntheses achieved by wave after wave of sub-
jective selves.
Despite common misconceptions, to say something is ‘socially con-
structed’ does not mean that it is optional or inconsequential. Instead,
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inherited categories place very real, objective constraints on the
identity-construction activities of the subjective self. In the first place,
inherited categories provide the raw materials from which individuals
construct personal identity. It is difficult to build a personal identity as
a footballer if football is unknown in a setting. In addition, inherited
categories constrain identity construction by defining consensual
reality. On one hand, individual attempts to claim certain identities are
subject to ratification by social consensus. For example, no matter how
much an adolescent who is conventionally defined as White tries to
claim Black identity, the typical consequences for self-experience of
being Black in America will not follow unless others treat or accept him
as Black. On the other hand, some individuals will have identities
imposed upon them regardless of individual acceptance or resistance.
For example, no matter what identities a person who is conventionally
considered Native American tries to claim, research suggests that she
will be treated according to a limited number of identity represen-
tations propagated by and for mainstream American society (Fryberg
& Markus, 2001; cf. Waters, 1990).
Accordingly, the second implication for Hermans’ model is that the
subjective I is not infinitely agentic or entirely free to take any position
or construct any identity that it wishes. Instead, as the notion of
dialogue implies, identity construction is a dialectical process. In the
process of doing personal identity, individual selves produce and
reproduce institutions, practices and artifacts of identity that take on a
life of their own (Appadurai, 1986; Bourdieu, 1977; Kopytoff, 1986).
Products of identity-construction activity at one moment, these objec-
tive patterns serve as ‘conditioning agents’ (à la Kroeber & Kluckhohn,
1952) on the identity-construction activities of other selves in the next
moment (Gone, Miller, & Rappaport, 1999). Hermans’ dialogical-self
framework is an explicit articulation of this dialectical process.
However, perhaps reacting to oversocialized accounts of culture and
self, the present paper highlights the agency of the subjective self in
this dialectical process, while underweighting the countervailing,
objective constraints.
Finally, a third implication for Hermans’ framework is a particularly
important constraint on the process of identity construction: the possi-
bility of contextual variation in the subjective I or self-experiencer.
Although objective constraints on identity construction exist in all
settings, the process may be more constrained in some settings than
others. A history of engagement with settings that constrain identity
construction may foster a subjective I that is less agentic than the one
portrayed in Hermans’ framework. More appropriately, the relatively
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unconstrained identity negotiator portrayed by Hermans’ framework
may be the product of particular circumstances—’borders’, instability,
or people living in especially ‘postmodern’ spaces (cf. Holdstock,
1999)—that do not apply, or apply to a lesser extent, in other settings.
Not all people may be free to do (or burdened with) the task of post-
modern identity construction.
The Dialogical Self as a ‘Zone of Proximal Development’
Perhaps the most generative contribution of Hermans’ essay is to
suggest how psychology in general, and the study of self in particular,
can contribute to the study of culture. The model illustrates how the
self functions as a ‘zone of proximal development’ (cf. Cole, 1996;
Rogoff, 1992; Vygotsky, 1978): a key site where personal-identity and
cultural-identity categories ‘make each other up’ (Shweder, 1990; cf.
Fiske, Kitayama, Markus, & Nisbett, 1998; Gone et al., 1999). Histori-
cally, psychologists have emphasized the agentic construction of
personal identity. Increasingly, they recognize the social and cultural
grounding of this identity-construction process. What remains is a
greater appreciation for the consequences of this process. What gets
developed in this zone is not just personal identity but also the received
identity categories that seem like natural features of the inherited
world (cf. Berger & Luckmann, 1966). Hermans’ dialogical-self frame-
work is a useful base from which to explore this process.
Notes
1. A recognition of the reification inherent in naming underlies Appadurai’s
(1996, p. 13) suggestion that scholars refrain from using culture as a noun
(e.g. ‘people from this culture’) and instead restrict their use of the concept
to its adjectival form, cultural (e.g. ‘cultural pattern’ or ‘cultural group’).
2. As Kelly (1999) suggests, ‘Nothing, it seems to me, is less likely to solve the
problem of “grasping the flux” ‘—avoiding the reification of culture in the
context of globalization (Hannerz, 1992)—’than allowing new names to
revitalize the old units and keep us operating as if the world is first of all a
collection of nameable groups’ (p. 241).
3. This implies one way of integrating the two approaches to culture that we
contrast above. One can consider cultural groups to be particularly explicit,
reified sets of cultural patterns. In this way, the conception of culture as
patterns subsumes the conception of culture as group entity.
4. See Bargh (1997; Bargh & Chartrand, 1999) on the concept of automaticity,
although he probably did not have ‘culture’ in mind when discussing
implicit patterns. Likewise, Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952) probably did
not intend the word ‘implicit’ to have quite the same sense that it has in
contemporary social psychology. Even so, this coincidence of terminology
is nevertheless provocative.
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5. For example, the singular, ‘in one’s culture’—but not the plural ‘in one’s
cultures’—is the common formulation in both scholarly and lay
discourse.
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Biographies
GLENN ADAMS Glenn Adams is an Assistant Professor in the Department of
Psychology at the University of Kansas. He served as a Peace Corps Volunteer
in Sierra Leone (West Africa) before beginning graduate training at Stanford
University. While at Stanford, he was awarded fellowships from the Social
Science Research Council and Fulbright Fellowship Board to return to West
Africa and pursue field work in Ghana. The result was a dissertation on the
collective construction of enemyship, which he completed in August 2000.
ADDRESS: Glenn Adams, Department of Psychology, University of Kansas,
Lawrence, KS 66045, USA. [email: adamsg@uci.edu]
HAZEL ROSE MARKUS is the Davis-Brack Professor in the Behavioral
Sciences at Stanford University. Her research has focused on the role of the
self in regulating behavior. Her work in the area of cultural psychology has
explored the mutual constitution between psychological structures and
processes and sociocultural practices and institutions. As a member of the
MacArthur Research Network on Successful Midlife Development, she has
examined the constructive role of the self in adult development. She was
elected to the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences in 1994. ADDRESS:
Hazel Rose Markus, Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford,
CA 94305, USA. [email: hazel@psych.stanford.edu]
Culture & Psychology 7(3)
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Psychological Review
1991, Vol. 98, No. 2,
224
-253
Copyright 1991 by the American Psychological Association. Inc.
0033-295X/91/S3.0
0
Culture and the Self: Implications for Cognition, Emotion, and Motivation
Hazel Rose Markus
University of Michigan
Shinobu Kitayama
University of Oregon
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 cul-
tures have distinct conceptions of individuality that insist on the fundamental relatedness of indi-
viduals to each other. The emphasis is on attending to others, fitting in, and harmonious interde-
pendence 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 motiva-
tion; 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,
and motivation.
In America, “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.” In Japan,
“the nail that stands out gets pounded down.” American par-
ents who are trying to induce their children to eat their suppers
are fond of saying “think of the starving kids in Ethiopia, and
appreciate how lucky you are to be different from them.” Japa-
nese parents are likely to say “Think about the farmer who
worked so hard to produce this rice for you; if you don’t eat it,
he will feel bad, for his efforts will have been in vain” (H. Ya-
mada, February 16,1989). A small Texas corporation seeking to
elevate productivity told its employees to look in the mirror and
say “I am beautiful” 100 times before coming to work each day.
Employees of a Japanese supermarket that was recently opened
in New Jersey were instructed to begin the day by holding
hands and telling each other that “he” or “she is beautiful” (“A
Japanese Supermarket,” 1989).
Such anecdotes suggest that people in Japan and America
may hold strikingly divergent construals of the self, others, and
the interdependence of the two. The American examples stress
attending to the self, the appreciation of one’s difference from
others, and the importance of asserting the self. The Japanese
examples emphasize attending to and fitting in with others and
Many thanks to Hiroko Akiyama, Nancy Cantor, Steve Cousins,
Susan Cross, Alan Fiske, Carol Gilligan, Tom Givon, Lawrence
Hirschfeld, Chie Kanagawa, John Kihlstrom, Joan Miller, Richard
Nisbett, Jeanne Oggins, Richard Shweder, Mark Snyder, Harry Trian-
dis, Hiroko Yamada, and Robert Zajonc for their extremely helpful
comments on earlier versions of this article, and thanks to Debbie
Apsley for preparing the manuscript.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ha-
zel Rose Markus, Research Center for Group Dynamics—ISR, Univer-
sity of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106-1248, or to Shinobu
Kitayama, Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene,
Oregon 97403-1227.
the importance of harmonious interdependence with them.
These construals of the self and others are tied to the implicit,
normative tasks that various cultures hold for what people
should be doing in their lives (cf. Cantor & Kihlstrom, 1987;
Erikson, 1950; Veroff, 1983). Anthropologists and psycholo-
gists assume that such construals can influence, and in many
cases determine, the very nature of individual experience (Cho-
dorow, 1978; Dumont, 1970; Geertz, 1975; Gergen, 1968; Gilli-
gan, 1982; Holland & Quinn, 1987; Lykes, 1985; Marsella, De
Vos, & Hsu, 1985; Sampson, 1985,1988,1989; Shweder & Le-
Vine, 1984; Smith, 1985; Triandis, 1989; Weisz, Rothbaum, &
Blackburn, 1984; White & Kirkpatrick, 1985).
Despite the growing body of psychological and anthropolog-
ical evidence that people hold divergent views about the self,
most of what psychologists currently know about human na-
ture is based on one particular view—the so-called Western
view of the individual as an independent, self-contained, au-
tonomous entity who (a) comprises a unique configuration of
internal attributes (e.g., traits, abilities, motives, and values) and
(b) behaves primarily as a consequence of these internal attri-
butes (Geertz, 1975; Sampson, 1988,1989; Shweder & LeVine,
1984). As a result of this monocultural approach to the self (see
Kennedy, Scheier, & Rogers, 1984), psychologists’ understand-
ing of those phenomena that are linked in one way or another to
the self may be unnecessarily restricted (for some important
exceptions, see Bond, 1986,1988; Cousins, 1989; Fiske, in press;
Maehr & Nicholls, 1980; Stevenson, Azuma, & Hakuta, 1986;
Triandis, 1989; Triandis, Bontempo, Villareal, Asai, & Lucca,
1988). In this article, we suggest that construals of the self, of
others, and of the relationship between the self and others may
be even more powerful than previously suggested and that their
influence is clearly reflected in differences among cultures. In
particular, we compare an independent view of the self with one
other, very different view, an interdependent view. The indepen-
224
CULTURE AND THE SELF 225
dent view is most clearly exemplified in some sizable segment
of American culture, as well as in many Western European
cultures. The interdependent view is exemplified in Japanese
culture as well as in other Asian cultures. But it is also character-
istic of African cultures, Latin-American cultures, and many
southern European cultures. We delineate how these divergent
views of the self—the independent and the interdependent
—
can have a systematic influence on various aspects of cognition,
emotion, and motivation.
We suggest that for many cultures of the world, the Western
notion of the self as an entity containing significant disposi-
tional attributes, and as detached from context, is simply not an
adequate description of selfhood. Rather, in many construals,
the self is viewed as /’nterdependent with the surrounding con-
text, and it is the “other” or the “self-in-relation-to-other” that is
focal in individual experience. One general consequence of this
divergence in self-construal is that when psychological pro-
cesses (e.g., cognition, emotion, and motivation) explicitly, or
even quite implicitly, implicate the self as a target or as a refer-
ent, the nature of these processes will vary according to the
exact form or organization of self inherent in a given construal.
With respect to cognition, for example, for those with interde-
pendent selves, in contrast to those with independent selves,
some aspects of knowledge representation and some of the pro-
cesses involved in social and nonsocial thinking alike are in-
fluenced by a pervasive attentiveness to the relevant others in
the social context. Thus, one’s actions are more likely to be seen
as situationally bound, and characterizations of the individual
will include this context. Furthermore, for those with interde-
pendent construals of the self, both the expression and the expe-
rience of emotions and motives may be significantly shaped and
governed by a consideration of the reactions of others. Specifi-
cally, for example, some emotions, like anger, that derive from
and promote an independent view of the self may be less preva-
lent among those with interdependent selves, and self-serving
motives may be replaced by what appear as other-serving mo-
tives. An examination of cultural variation in some aspects of
cognition, emotion, and motivation will allow psychologists to
ask exactly what is universal in these processes, and it has the
potential to provide some new insights for theories of these
psychological processes.
In this analysis, we draw on recent research efforts devoted to
characterizing the general differences between American or
Western views of personhood and Eastern or Asian perspec-
tives (e.g., Heelas & Lock, 1981; Hofstede, 1980; Marsella et al.,
1985; Roland, 1988; Schwartz & Bilsky, 1990; Shweder, 1990;
Shweder & LeVine, 1984; Stigler, Shweder, & Herdt, 1990;
Triandis, 1989; Triandis & Brislin, 1980; Weisz et al, 1984). We
extract from these descriptions many important differences
that may exist in the specific content, structure, and function-
ing of the self-systems of people of different cultural back-
grounds. The distinctions that we make between independent
and interdependent construals must be regarded as general ten-
dencies that may emerge when the members of the culture are
considered as a whole. The prototypical American view of the
self, for example, may prove to be most characteristic of White,
middle-class men with a Western European ethnic back-
ground. It may be somewhat less descriptive of women in gen-
eral, or of men and women from other ethnic groups or social
classes.1 Moreover, we realize that there may well be important
distinctions among those views we discuss as similar and that
there may be views of the self and others that cannot easily be
classified as either independent or interdependent.
Our intention is not to catalog all types of self-construals, but
rather to highlight a view of the self that is often assumed to be
universal but that may be quite specific to some segments of
Western culture. We argue that self-construals play a major role
in regulating various psychological processes. Understanding
the nature of divergent self-construals has two important conse-
quences. On the one hand, it allows us to organize several appar-
ently inconsistent empirical findings and to pose questions
about the universality assumed for many aspects of cognition,
emotion, and motivation (see Shweder, 1990). On the other
hand, it permits us to better specify the precise role of the self in
mediating and regulating behavior.
The Self: A Delicate Category
Universal Aspects of the Self
In exploring the possibility of different types of self-con-
struals, we begin with Hallowell’s (1955) notion that people
everywhere are likely to develop an understanding of them-
selves as physically distinct and separable from others. Head
(1920), for example, claimed the existence of a universal
schema of the body that provided one with an anchor in time
and space. Similarly, Allport (1937) suggested that there must
exist an aspect of personality that allows one, when awakening
each morning, to be sure that he or she is the same person who
went to sleep the night before. Most recently, Neisser (1988)
referred to this aspect of self as the ecological self which he
defined as “the self as perceived with respect to the physical
environment: T am the person here in this place, engaged in
this particular activity” (p. 3). Beyond a physical or ecological
sense of self, each person probably has some awareness of inter-
nal activity, such as dreams, and of the continuous flow of
thoughts and feelings, which are private to the extent that they
cannot be directly known by others. The awareness of this un-
shared experience will lead the person to some sense of an
inner, private self.
Divergent Aspects of the Self
Some understanding and some representation of the private,
inner aspects of the self may well be universal, but many other
aspects of the self may be quite specific to particular cultures.
People are capable of believing an astonishing variety of things
about themselves (cf. Heelas & Lock, 1981; Marsella et al, 1985;
Shweder & LeVine, 1984; Triandis, 1989). The self can be con-
strued, framed, or conceptually represented in multiple ways. A
cross-cultural survey of the self lends support to Durkheim’s
(1912/1968) early notion that the category of the self is primar-
1 The prototypical American view may also be further restricted to a
particular point in history. It may be primarily a product of late, indus-
trial capitalism (see Baumeister, 1987). For an analysis of the origins of
the independent view, see Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, & Tipton
(1985) and Weber (195 8).
226 HAZEL ROSE MARKUS AND SHINOBU KITAYAMA
ily the product of social factors, and to Mauss’s (1938/1985)
claim that as a social category, the self is a “delicate” one, subject
to quite substantial, if not infinite, variation.
The exact content and structure of the inner self may differ
considerably by culture. Furthermore, the nature of the outer or
public self that derives from one’s relations with other people
and social institutions may also vary markedly by culture. And,
as suggested by Triandis (1989), the significance assigned to the
private, inner aspects versus the public, relational aspects in
regulating behavior will vary accordingly. In fact, it may not be
unreasonable to suppose, as did numerous earlier anthropolo-
gists (see Allen, 1985), that in some cultures, on certain occa-
sions, the individual, in the sense of a set of significant inner
attributes of the person, may cease to be the primary unit of
consciousness. Instead, the sense of belongingness to a social
relation may become so strong that it makes better sense to
think of the relationship as the functional unit of conscious
reflection.
The current analysis focuses on just one variation in what
people in different cultures can come to believe about them-
selves. This one variation concerns what they believe about the
relationship between the self and others and, especially, the de-
gree to which they see themselves as separate from others or as
connected with others. We suggest that the significance and the
exact functional role that the person assigns to the other when
defining the self depend on the culturally shared assumptions
about the separation or connectedness between the self and
others.
Two Construals of the Self: Independent
and Interdependent
The Independent Construal
In many Western cultures, there is a faith in the inherent
separateness of distinct persons. The normative imperative of
this culture is to become independent from others and to dis-
cover and express one’s unique attributes (Johnson, 1985; Mar-
sella et al., 1985; J. G. Miller, 1988; Shweder & Bourne, 1984).
Achieving the cultural goal of independence requires constru-
ing oneself as an individual whose behavior is organized and
made meaningful primarily by reference to one’s own internal
repertoire of thoughts, feelings, and action, rather than by refer-
ence to the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others. According
to this construal of self, to borrow Geertz’s (1975) often quoted
phrase, the person is viewed 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”
(p. 48).
This view of the self derives from a belief in the wholeness
and uniqueness of each person’s configuration of internal attrib-
utes (Johnson, 1985; Sampson, 1985, 1988, 1989; Waterman,
1981). It gives rise to processes like “self-actualization,” “realiz-
ing oneself,” “expressing one’s unique configuration of needs,
rights, and capacities,” or “developing one’s distinct potential.”
The essential aspect of this view involves a conception of the self
as an autonomous, independent person; we thus refer to it as the
Mother
Sibling
Friend
Co-worker
‘Friend
A. Independent View of Self
Y X7
Self IX
” X x ^^Sibling
Co-worker
Friend
B. Interdependent View of Self
Figure 1. Conceptual representations of the self. (A: Independent
construal. B: Interdependent construal.)
independent construal of the self Other similar labels include
individualist, egocentric, separate, autonomous, idiocentric, and
self-contained. We assume that, on average, relatively more indi-
viduals in Western cultures will hold this view than will individ-
uals in non-Western cultures. Within a given culture, however,
individuals will vary in the extent to which they are good cul-
tural representatives and construe the self in the mandated way.
The independent self must, of course, be responsive to the
social environment (Fiske, in press). This responsiveness, how-
ever, is fostered not so much for the sake of the responsiveness
itself. Rather, social responsiveness often, if not always, derives
from the need to strategically determine the best way to express
or assert the internal attributes of the self. Others, or the social
situation in general, are important, but primarily as standards
of reflected appraisal, or as sources that can verify and affirm
the inner core of the self.
The Western, independent view of the self is illustrated in
Figure 1A. The large circle represents the self, and the smaller
circles represent specific others. The Xs are representations of
the various aspects of the self or the others. In some cases, the
larger circle and the small circle intersect, and there is an X in
the intersection. This refers to a representation of the self-in-re-
lation-to-others or to a particular social relation (e.g., “I am very
polite in front of my professor”). An X within the self circle but
outside of the intersection represents an aspect of the self per-
ceived to be relatively independent of specific others and, thus,
invariant over time and context. These self-representations
usually have as their referent some individual desire, preference,
attribute, or ability (e.g., “I am creative”). For those with indepen-
dent construals of the self, it is these inner attributes that are
CULTURE AND THE SELF 227
most significant in regulating behavior and that are assumed,
both by the actor and by the observer alike, to be diagnostic of
the actor. Such representations of the inner self are thus the
most elaborated in memory and the most accessible when
thinking of the self (as indicated by Xs in Figure 1A). They can
be called core conceptions, salient identities, or self-schemata
(e.g., Gergen, 1968; Markus, 1977; Stryker, 1986).
The Interdependent Construal
In contrast, many non-Western cultures insist, in Kondo’s
(1982) terms, on the fundamental connectedness of human be-
ings to each other. A normative imperative of these cultures is to
maintain this interdependence among individuals (De Vos,
1985;Hsu,1985;Miller,1988;Shweder&Bourne,1984). Experi-
encing interdependence entails seeing oneself as part of an en-
compassing social relationship and recognizing that one’s be-
havior is determined, contingent on, and, to a large extent orga-
nized by what the actor perceives to be the thoughts, feelings,
and actions of others in the relationship. The Japanese experi-
ence of the self, therefore, includes a sense of interdependence
and of one’s status as a participant in a larger social unit (Samp-
son, 1988). Within such a construal, the self becomes most
meaningful and complete when it is cast in the appropriate
social relationship. According to Lebra (1976) the Japanese are
most fully human in the context of others.
This view of the self and the relationship between the self and
others features the person not as separate from the social con-
text but as more connected and less differentiated from others.
People are motivated to find a way to fit in with relevant others,
to fulfill and create obligation, and in general to become part of
various interpersonal relationships. Unlike the independent
self, the significant features of the self according to this con-
strual are to be found in the interdependent and thus, in the
more public components of the self. We therefore call this view
the interdependent construal of the self The same notion has
been variously referred to, with somewhat different connota-
tions, as sociocentric, holistic, collective, allocentric, ensembled,
constitutive, contextualist, connected, and relational. As with the
independent self, others are critical for social comparison and
self-validation, yet in an interdependent formulation of the self,
these others become an integral part of the setting, situation, or
context to which the self is connected, fitted, and assimilated.
The exact manner in which one achieves the task of connection,
therefore, depends crucially on the nature of the context, partic-
ularly the others present in the context. Others thus participate
actively and continuously in the definition of the interdepen-
dent self.
The interdependent self also possesses and expresses a set of
internal attributes, such as abilities, opinions, judgments, and
personality characteristics. However, these internal attributes
are understood as situation specific, and thus as sometimes elu-
sive and unreliable. And, as such, they are unlikely to assume a
powerful role in regulating overt behavior, especially if this be-
havior implicates significant others. In many domains of social
life, one’s opinions, abilities, and characteristics are assigned
only secondary roles—they must instead be constantly con-
trolled and regulated to come to terms with the primary task of
interdependence. Such voluntary control of the inner attributes
constitutes the core of the cultural ideal of becoming mature.
The understanding of one’s autonomy as secondary to, and con-
strained by, the primary task of interdependence distinguishes
interdependent selves from independent selves, for whom au-
tonomy and its expression is often afforded primary signifi-
cance. An independent behavior (e.g., asserting an opinion) ex-
hibited by a person in an interdependent culture is likely to be
based on the premise of underlying interdependence and thus
may have a somewhat different significance than it has for a
person from an independent culture.
The interdependent self is illustrated in Figure IB. For those
with interdependent selves, the significant self-representations
(the Xs) are those in relationship to specific others. Interdepen-
dent selves certainly include representations of invariant per-
sonal attributes and abilities, and these representations can be-
come phenomenologically quite salient, but in many circum-
stances they are less important in regulating observable
behavior and are not assumed to be particularly diagnostic of
the self.2 Instead, the self-knowledge that guides behavior is of
the self-in-relation to specific others in particular contexts. The
fundamental units of the self-system, the core conceptions, or
self-schemata are thus predicated on significant interpersonal
relationships.
An interdependent self cannot be properly characterized as a
bounded whole, for it changes structure with the nature of the
particular social context. Within each particular social situa-
tion, the self can be differently instantiated. The uniqueness of
such a self derives from the specific configuration of relation-
ships that each person has developed. What is focal and objecti-
fied in an interdependent self, then, is not the inner self, but the
relationships of the person to other actors (Hamaguchi, 1985).
The notion of an interdependent self is linked with a monistic
philosophical tradition in which the person is thought to be of
the same substance as the rest of nature (see Bond, 1986; Phil-
lips, 1976; Roland, 1988; Sass, 1988). As a consequence, the
relationship between the self and other, or between subject and
object, is assumed to be much closer. Thus, many non-Western
cultures insist on the inseparability of basic elements (Galtung,
1981), including self and other, and person and situation. In
Chinese culture, for instance, there is an emphasis on synthesiz-
ing the constituent parts of any problem or situation into an
integrated or harmonious whole (Moore, 1967; Northrop,
1946). Thus, persons are only parts that when separated from
the larger social whole cannot be fully understood (Phillips,
1976; Shweder, 1984). Such a holistic view is in opposition to
the Cartesian, dualistic tradition that characterizes Western
thinking and in which the self is separated from the object and
from the natural world.
Examples of the interdependent self. An interdependent
view of the self is common to many of the otherwise highly
diverse cultures of the world. Studies of the mainland Chinese,
for example, summarized in a recent book by Bond (1986),
show that even among the most rapidly modernizing segments
of the Chinese population, there is a tendency for people to act
2 For a discussion of how interdependent selves strive to maintain a
balance between internal (private) and extensive (public) representa-
tions, see T. Doi (1986).
228 HAZEL ROSE MARKUS AND SHINOBU KITAYAMA
primarily in accordance with the anticipated expectations of
others and social norms rather than with internal wishes or
personal attributes (Yang, 198 Ib). A premium is placed on em-
phasizing collective welfare and on showing a sympathetic con-
cern for others. Throughout the studies of the Chinese reported
by Bond, one can see the clear imprint of the Confucian empha-
sis on interrelatedness and kindness. According to Hsu (1985),
the supreme Chinese virtue, jen, implies the person’s capability
to interact with fellow human beings in a sincere, polite, and
decent fashion (see also Elvin, 1985).
Numerous other examples of cultures in which people are
likely to have some version of an interdependent self can also be
identified. For example, Triandis, Marin, Lisansky, and Betan-
court (1984) have described the importance of simpatico
among Hispanics. This quality refers to the ability to both re-
spect and share others’ feelings. In characterizing the psychol-
ogy of Filipinos, Church (1987) described the importance that
people attribute to smooth interpersonal relations and to being
“agreeable even under difficult circumstances, sensitive to what
others are feeling and willing to adjust one’s behavior accord-
ingly” Similarly, Weisz (in press) reported that Thais place a
premium on self-effacement, humility, deference, and on trying
to avoid disturbing others. Among the Japanese, it is similarly
crucial not to disturb the wa, or the harmonious ebb and flow of
interpersonal relations (see also Geertz, 1974, for characteriza-
tions of similar imperatives among the Balinese and Moroc-
cans).
Beattie (1980) claimed that Africans are also extremely sensi-
tive to the interdependencies among people and view the world
and others in it as extensions of one another. The self is viewed
not as a hedged closure but as an open field. Similarly, Marriott
(1976) argued that Hindu conceptions assume that the self is an
open entity that is given shape by the social context. In his
insightful book, Kakar (1978) described the Hindu’s ideal of
interpersonal fusion and how it is accompanied by a personal,
cultural sense of hell, which is separation from others. In fact,
Miller, Bersoff, and Harwood (1990), in a recent, carefully con-
trolled study on moral reasoning, found that Indians regard
responsiveness to the needs of others as an objective moral obli-
gation to a far greater extent than do Americans. Although the
self-systems of people from these cultures are markedly differ-
ent in many other important respects, they appear to be alike in
the greater value (when compared with Americans) that is at-
tached to proper relations with others, and in the requirement
to flexibly change one’s own behavior in accordance with the
nature of the relationship.
Even in American culture, there is a strong theme of interde-
pendence that is reflected in the values and activities of many of
its subcultures. Religious groups, such as the Quakers, explicitly
value and promote interdependence, as do many small towns
and rural communities (e.g., Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler,
& Tipton, 1985). Some notion of a more connected, ensembled,
interdependent self, as opposed to a self-contained, indepen-
dent self, is also being developed by several of what Sampson
(1989) calls “postmodern” theorists. These theorists are ques-
tioning the sovereignty of the American view of the mature
person as autonomous, self-determined, and unencumbered.
They argue that psychology is currently dominated by a view of
the person that does not adequately reflect the extent to which
people everywhere are created by, constrained by, and respon-
sive to their various interpersonal contexts (see Gergen & Ger-
gen, 1988; Gilligan, 1982; Miller, 1986; Tajfel, 1984).
Further definition of the interdependent self. Theorists of Jap-
anese culture are beginning to characterize the interdependent
self much more specifically than was previously attempted.
These descriptions offer some more refined ideas of how an
interdependent view of self can depart markedly from an inde-
pendent view of self (see Nakane, 1970; Plath, 1980; R. J. Smith,
1983). For example, building on a study of L. T. Doi (1973),
Bachnik (1986) wrote
(in Japanese society) rather than there being a single social reality,
a number of possible perspectives of both self and social life are
acknowledged. Interaction in Japanese society then focuses on the
definition of the appropriate choice, out of all the various possibili-
ties. This means that what one says and does will be different in
different situations, depending on how one defines one’s particu-
lar perspective versus the social other, (p. 69)
In Japan, the word for self, jibun, refers to “one’s share of the
shared life space” (Hamaguchi, 1985). The self, Kimura (cited
in Hamaguchi, 1985) claimed, is “neither a substance nor an
attribute having a constant oneness” (p. 302). According to Ha-
maguchi (1985), for the Japanese, “a sense of identification with
others (sometimes including conflict) pre-exists and selfness is
confirmed only through interpersonal relationships— Self-
ness is not a constant like the ego but denotes a fluid concept
which changes through time and situations according to inter-
personal relationships” (p. 302).
The Japanese anthropologist Lebra (1976) defined the es-
sence of Japanese culture as an “ethos of social relativism.” This
translates into a constant concern for belongingness, reliance,
dependency, empathy, occupying one’s proper place, and reci-
procity. She claimed the Japanese nightmare is exclusion,
meaning that one is failing at the normative goal of connecting
to others. This is in sharp contrast to the American nightmare,
which is to fail at separating from others, as can occur when one
is unduly influenced by others, or does not stand up for what
one believes, or when one goes unnoticed or undistinguished.
An interdependent view of self does not result in a merging of
self and other, nor does it imply that one must always be in the
company of others to function effectively, or that people do not
have a sense of themselves as agents who are the origins of their
own actions. On the contrary, it takes a high degree of self-con-
trol and agency to effectively adjust oneself to various interper-
sonal contingencies. Agentic exercise of control, however, is
directed primarily to the inside and to those inner attributes,
such as desires, personal goals, and private emotions, that can
disturb the harmonious equilibrium of interpersonal transac-
tion. This can be contrasted with the Western notion of control,
which primarily implies an assertion of the inner attributes and
a consequent attempt to change the outer aspects, such as one’s
public behaviors and the social situation (see also Weisz et al.,
1984).
Given the Japanese notion of control that is inwardly di-
rected, the ability to effectively adjust in the interpersonal do-
main may form an important basis of self-esteem, and individu-
alized styles of such adjustment to social contingencies may
contribute to the sense of self-uniqueness. Thus, Hamaguchi
CULTURE AND THE SELF 229
(1985), for example, reported that for the Japanese, “the
straightforward claim of the naked ego” (p. 303) is experienced
as childish. Self-assertion is not viewed as being authentic, but
instead as being immature. This point is echoed in M. White
and LeVine’s (1986) description of the meaning ofsunao, a term
used by Japanese parents to characterize what they value in
their children:
A child that is sunao has not yielded his or her personal autonomy
for the sake of cooperation; cooperation does not suggest giving
up the self, as it may in the West; it implies that working with
others is the appropriate way of expressing and enhancing the self.
Engagement and harmony with others is, then, a positively valued
goal and the bridge—to open-hearted cooperation, as in sunao—
is through sensitivity, reiterated by the mother’s example and en-
couragement, (p. 58)
Kumagai (1981) said sunao “assumes cooperation to be an act
of affirmation of the self” (p. 261). Giving in is not a sign of
weakness; rather, it reflects tolerance, self-control, flexibility,
and maturity.
The role of the other in the interdependent self. In an interde-
pendent view, in contrast to an independent view, others will be
assigned much more importance, will carry more weight, and
will be relatively focal in one’s own behavior. There are several
direct consequences of an interdependent construal of the self.
First, relationships, rather than being means for realizing
various individual goals, will often be ends in and of them-
selves. Although people everywhere must maintain some relat-
edness with others, an appreciation and a need for people will
be more important for those with an interdependent self than
for those with an independent self. Second, maintaining a con-
nection to others will mean being constantly aware of others
and focusing on their needs, desires, and goals. In some cases,
the goals of others may become so focal in consciousness that
the goals of others may be experienced as personal goals. In
other cases, fulfilling one’s own goals may be quite distinct from
those of others, but meeting another’s goals, needs, and desires
will be a necessary requirement for satisfying one’s own goals,
needs, and desires. The assumption is that while promoting the
goals of others, one’s own goals will be attended to by the person
with whom one is interdependent. Hence, people may actively
work to fulfill the others’ goals while passively monitoring the
reciprocal contributions from these others for one’s own goal-
fulfillment. Yamagishi (1988), in fact, suggested that the Japa-
nese feel extremely uncomfortable, much more so than Ameri-
cans, when the opportunity for such passive monitoring of
others’ actions is denied.
From the standpoint of an independent, “self-ish” self, one
might be led to romanticize the interdependent self, who is ever
attuned to the concerns of others. Yet in many cases, responsive
and cooperative actions are exercised only when there is a rea-
sonable assurance of the “good-intentions” of others, namely
their commitment to continue to engage in reciprocal interac-
tion and mutual support. Clearly, interdependent selves do not
attend to the needs, desires, and goals of all others. Attention to
others is not indiscriminate; it is highly selective and will be
most characteristic of relationships with “in-group” members.
These are others with whom one shares a common fate, such as
family members or members of the same lasting social group,
such as the work group. Out-group members are typically
treated quite differently and are unlikely to experience either
the advantages or disadvantages of interdependence. Indepen-
dent selves are also selective in their association with others but
not to the extent of interdependent selves because much less of
their behavior is directly contingent on the actions of others.
Given the importance of others in constructing reality and regu-
lating behavior, the in-group-out-group distinction is a vital
one for interdependent selves, and the subjective boundary of
one’s “in-group” may tend to be narrower for the interdepen-
dent selves than for the independent selves (Triandis, 1989).
To illustrate the reciprocal nature of interaction among those
with interdependent views, imagine that one has a friend over
for lunch and has decided to make a sandwich for him. The
conversation might be: “Hey, Tom, what do you want in your
sandwich? I have turkey, salami, and cheese.” Tom responds,
“Oh, I like turkey” Note that the friend is given a choice because
the host assumes that friend has a right, if not a duty, to make a
choice reflecting his inner attributes, such as preferences or
desires. And the friend makes his choice exactly because of the
belief in the same assumption. This script is “natural,” however,
only within the independent view of self. What would happen if
the friend were a visitor from Japan? A likely response to the
question “Hey, Tomio, what do you want?” would be a little
moment of bewilderment and then a noncommital utterance
like “I don’t know.” This happens because under the assump-
tions of an interdependent self, it is the responsibility of the host
to be able to “read” the mind of the friend and offer what the
host perceives to be the best for the friend. And the duty of the
guest, on the other hand, is to receive the favor with grace and
to be prepared to return the favor in the near future, if not right
at the next moment. A likely, interdependent script for the same
situation would be: “Hey, Tomio, I made you a turkey sandwich
because I remember that last week you said you like turkey
more than beef.” And Tomio will respond, “Oh, thank you, I
really like turkey.”
The reciprocal interdependence with others that is the sign of
the interdependent self seems to require constant engagement
of what Mead (1934) meant by taking the role of the other. It
involves the willingness and ability to feel and think what others
are feeling and thinking, to absorb this information without
being told, and then to help others satisfy their wishes and
realize their goals. Maintaining connection requires inhibiting
the “I” perspective and processing instead from the “thou” per-
spective (Hsu, 1981). The requirement is to “read” the other’s
mind and thus to know what the other is thinking or feeling. In
contrast, with an independent self, it is the individual’s responsi-
bility to “say what’s on one’s mind” if one expects to be attended
to or understood.
Consequences of an Independent or an Interdependent
View of the Self
Table 1 presents a brief, highly simplified summary of some
of the hypothesized differences between independent and in-
terdependent construals of the self. These construals of self and
other are conceptualized as part of a repertoire of self-relevant
schemata used to evaluate, organize, and regulate one’s experi-
ence and action. As schemata, they are patterns of one’s past
behaviors as well as patterns for one’s current and future behav-
230 HAZEL ROSE MARKUS AND SHINOBU KITAYAMA
Table 1
Summary of Key Differences Between an Independent and an
Interdependent Construal of Self
Feature compared Independent Interdependent
Definition
Structure
Important features
Tasks
Role of others
Basis of self-esteem8
Separate from social context
Bounded, unitary, stable
Internal, private (abilities, thoughts,
feelings)
Be unique
Express self
Realize internal attributes
Promote own goals
Be direct; “say what’s on your mind”
Self-evaluation: others important for
social comparison, reflected
appraisal
Ability to express self, validate
internal attributes
Connected with social context
Flexible, variable
External, public (statuses, roles,
relationships)
Belong, fit-in
Occupy one’s proper place
Engage in appropriate action
Promote others’ goals
Be indirect; “read other’s mind”
Self-definition: relationships
with others in specific
contexts define the self
Ability to adjust, restrain self,
maintain harmony with
social context
* Esteeming the self may be primarily a Western phenomenon, and the concept of self-esteem should
perhaps be replaced by self-satisfaction, or by a term that reflects the realization that one is fulfilling the
culturally mandated task.
iors (Neisser, 1976). Markus and Wurf (1987) called this assort-
ment of self-regulatory schemata the self-system. Whenever a
task, an event, or a situation is self-relevant, the ensuing pro-
cesses and consequences are likely to be influenced by the na-
ture of the self-system. The self-system has been shown to be
instrumental in the regulation of intrapersonal processes such
as self-relevant information processing, affect regulation, and
motivation and in the regulation of interpersonal processes
such as person perception, social comparison, and the seeking
and shaping of social interaction (see Cantor & Kihlstrom,
1987; Greenwald & Pratkanis, 1984; Markus & Wurf, 1987, for
reviews). The goal of this article is to further specify the role of
the self-system in behavior by examining how these divergent
cultural self-schemata influence individual experience.
In the current analysis, we hypothesize that the independent
versus interdependent construals of self are among the most
general and overarching schemata of the individual’s self-sys-
tem. These construals recruit and organize the more specific
self-regulatory schemata.3 We are suggesting here, therefore,
that the exact organization of many self-relevant processes and
their outcomes depends crucially on whether these processes
are rooted in an independent construal of the self or whether
they are based primarily on an interdependent construal of the
self. For example, in the process of lending meaning and coher-
ence to the social world, we know that people will show a
heightened sensitivity to self-relevant stimuli. For those with an
independent view of self, this includes information relevant to
one’s self-defining attributes. For one with an interdependent
view of self, such stimuli would include information about sig-
nificant others with whom the person has a relationship or in-
formation about the self in relation to another person.
Affect regulation involves seeking positive states and avoid-
ing negative ones. Positive states are those that enhance or pro-
mote one’s view of the self, and negative states are those that
challenge this view. For a person with an independent view of
self, this involves seeking information that confirms or en-
hances one’s internal, private attributes. The most desirable situ-
ations are those that allow one to verify and express those im-
portant internal attributes and that convey the sense that one is
appropriately autonomous. In contrast, for a person with an
interdependent view of self, one might expect the most desir-
able states to be those that allow one to be responsive to one’s
immediate context or that convey the sense that one is succeed-
ing in his or her interdependent relationships or statuses.
A third important function of the self-concept suggested by
Markus and Wurf (1987) is that of motivating persons, of mov-
ing them to action. The person with an independent view of self
should be motivated to those actions that allow expression of
one’s important self-defining, inner attributes (e.g., hardwork-
ing, caring, independent, and powerful), whereas the person
with an interdependent view of self should be motivated to
3 What these very general cultural self-schemata of independence or
interdependence mean for a given individual’s articulated view of self
cannot be specified, however. The self-concept derives not only from
the cultural self-schema that is the focus herein but from the complete
configuration of self-schemata, including those that are a product of
gender, race, religion, social class, and one’s particular social and devel-
opmental history. Not all people who are part of an independent cul-
ture will thus characterize themselves as independent, nor will all
those who live as part of an interdependent culture claim to be interde-
pendent. Within independent and interdependent cultures, there is
great diversity in individual self-definition, and there can also be
strong similarities across cultures. For example, many artists, whether
Japanese or American, may describe themselves as nonconformist,
innovative, and breaking with tradition. And many aspects of their
behavior are indeed very similar. Yet, nonconformity Japanese-style
and nonconformity American-style, although similar in some respects,
will not, because of the differences in their supporting cultural con-
texts, be identical. For Japanese, nonconformity is a privilege afforded
only to selected, talented individuals whose deviance from the norm of
interdependence is implicitly sanctioned by the rest of society. For
Americans, nonconformity is regarded as every individual’s birthright.
CULTURE AND THE SELF 231
those actions that enhance or foster one’s relatedness or connec-
tion to others. On the surface, such actions could look remark-
ably similar (e.g., working incredibly hard to gain admission to a
desirable college), but the exact source, or etiology, of the ener-
gizing motivation may be powerfully different (De Vos, 1973;
Maehr & Nicholls, 1980).
In the following sections, we discuss these ideas in further
detail and review the empirical literature, which suggests that
there are significant cognitive, emotional, and motivational
consequences of holding an independent or an interdependent
view of the self.
Consequences for Cognition
If a cognitive activity implicates the self, the outcome of this
activity will depend on the nature of the self-system. Specifi-
cally, there are three important consequences of these divergent
self-systems for cognition. First, we may expect those with in-
terdependent selves to be more attentive and sensitive to others
than those with independent selves. The attentiveness and sensi-
tivity to others, characterizing the interdependent selves, will
result in a relatively greater cognitive elaboration of the other or
of the self-in-relation-to-other. Second, among those with inter-
dependent selves, the unit of representation of both the self and
the other will include a relatively specific social context in
which the self and the other are embedded. This means that
knowledge about persons, either the self or others, will not be
abstract and generalized across contexts, but instead will re-
main specific to the focal context. Third, a consideration of the
social context and the reactions of others may also shape some
basic, nonsocial cognitive activities such as categorizing and
counterfactual thinking.
In exploring the impact of divergent cultural construals on
thinking, we assume that how people think (the process) in a
social situation cannot be easily separated from what they think
about (the content; Shweder, 1990; Shweder & Bourne, 1984).
Extensive research on social cognition in the past decade has
suggested the power of content in social inference (e.g., see Fiske
& Taylor, 1984; Markus & Zajonc, 1985, for reviews). It is the
nature of the representation (e.g., self, another person, a weed,
or clam chowder) that guides attention, and that determines
what other relevant information will be retrieved to fill in the
gap of available sense data. For example, investigations by
DAndrade (1981) and Johnson-Laird (1983) indicate that the
greater the familiarity with the stimulus materials, the more
elaborate the schemata for framing the problem, and the better
the problem solving. In general, then, how a given object is
culturally construed and represented in memory should impor-
tantly influence and even determine how one thinks about the
object. Accordingly, the divergent representations of the self we
describe should be expected to have various consequences for
all cognition relevant to self, others, or social relationships.
More interpersonal knowledge. If the most significant ele-
ments of the interdependent self are the self-in-relation-to-
others elements, there will be a need, as well as a strong norma-
tive demand, for knowing and understanding the social
surrounding, particularly others in direct interaction with the
self. That is, if people conceive of themselves as interdependent
parts of larger social wholes, it is important for them to be
•c
I
w
•o
.1
8
o
0.
4.0
3.9
3.8
3.7
3.6
3.5
3.4
3.3
BSelf to OtherOther to Self
Eastern Western
Cultural Background
Figure 2. Mean perceived similarity of self to other and other to self by
subjects with Eastern and Western cultural backgrounds.
sensitive to and knowledgeable about the others who are the
coparticipants in various relationships, and about the social
situations that enable these relationships. Maintaining one’s re-
lationships and ensuring a harmonious social interaction re-
quires a full understanding of these others, that is, knowing
how they are feeling, thinking, and likely to act in the context of
one’s relationships to them. It follows that those with interde-
pendent selves may develop a dense and richly elaborated store
of information about others or of the self in relation.
Kitayama, Markus, Tummala, Kurokawa, and Kato (1990)
examined this idea in a study requiring similarity judgments
between self and other. A typical American finding is that the
self is judged to be more dissimilar to other than other is to the
self (Holyoak & Gordon, 1983; Srull & Gaelick, 1983). This
finding has been interpreted to indicate that for the typical
American subject, the representation of the self is more elabo-
rated and distinctive in memory than the representation of an-
other person. As a result, the similarity between self and other is
judged to be less when the question is posed about a more
distinctive object (Is self similar to other?) than when the ques-
tion is posed about a less distinctive object (Is other similar to
self?). If, however, those with interdependent selves have at least
as much knowledge about some others as they have about them-
selves, this American pattern of findings may not be found.
To test these predictions, Kitayama et al. (1990) compared
students from Eastern cultural backgrounds (students from In-
dia) with those from Western cultural backgrounds (American
students). As shown in Figure 2, for the Western subjects,
Kitayama et al. replicated the prior findings in which the self is
perceived as significantly more dissimilar to the other than is
the other to the self. Such a finding is consistent with a broad
range of studies showing that for individuals with a Western
background, supposedly those with independent selves, self-
knowledge is more distinctive and densely elaborated than
knowledge about other people (e.g., Greenwald & Pratkanis,
1984). This pattern, however, was nonsignificantly reversed for
the Indian subjects, who judged the self to be somewhat more
similar to the other than is the other to the self. It appears, then,
232 HAZEL ROSE MARKUS AND SHINOBU KITAYAMA
that for the latter, more interdependent subjects, knowledge
about others is relatively more elaborated and distinctive than
knowledge about the self. Asymmetry in similarity judgments
is an indirect way to evaluate knowledge accessibility, but a
more direct measure of cross-cultural differences in knowledge
of the other should reveal that those with interdependent selves
have more readily accessible knowledge of the other.
Context-specific knowledge of self and other. A second con-
sequence of having an interdependent self as opposed to an
independent self concerns the ways in which knowledge about
self and other is processed, organized, and retrieved from mem-
ory. For example, given an interdependent self, knowledge
about the self may not be organized into a hierarchical structure
with the person’s characteristic attributes (e.g., intelligent, com-
petent, and athletic) as the superordinate nodes, as is often as-
sumed in characterizations of the independent self. In other
words, those with interdependent selves are less likely to orga-
nize knowledge about the “self in general” or about the “other in
general.” Specific social situations are more likely to serve as the
unit of representation than are attributes of separate persons.
One learns about the self with respect to a specific other in a
particular context and, conversely, about the other with respect
to the self in a particular context.
In exploring variations in the nature of person knowledge,
Shweder and Bourne (1984) asked respondents in India and
America to describe several close acquaintances. The descrip-
tions provided by the Indians were more situationally specific
and more relational than those of Americans. Indian descrip-
tions focused on behavior; they described what was done,
where it was done, and to whom or with whom it was done. The
Indian respondents said, “He has no land to cultivate but likes
to cultivate the land of others,” or “When a quarrel arises, he
cannot resist the temptation of saying a word,” or “He behaves
properly with guests but feels sorry if money is spent on them.”
It is the behavior itself that is focal and significant rather than
the inner attribute that supposedly underlies it. Notably this
tendency to provide the specific situational or interpersonal
context when providing a description was reported to character-
ize the free descriptions of Indians regardless of social class,
education, or literacy level. It appears, then, that the concrete-
ness in person description is not due to a lack of skill in ab-
stracting concrete instances to form a general proposition, but
rather a consequence of the fact that global inferences about
persons are typically regarded as not meaningful or informa-
tive.
Americans also describe other people in terms of the spe-
cifics of their behavior, but typically this occurs only at the
beginning of relationships when the other is relatively un-
known, or if the behavior is somehow distinctive and does not
readily lend itself to a trait characterization. Rather than saying
“He does not disclose secrets,” Americans are more likely to say
“He is discreet or principled.” Rather than “He is hesitant to
give his money away,” Americans say “He is tight or selfish.”
Shweder and Bourne (1984) found that 46% of American de-
scriptions were of the context-free variety, whereas this was true
of only 20% from the Indian sample.
A study by J. G. Miller (1984) on patterns of explanation
among Indian Hindus and Americans revealed the same ten-
dency for contextual and relational descriptions of behavior
among Indian respondents. In the first phase of her study, re-
spondents generated two prosocial behaviors and two deviant
behaviors and then explained why each behavior was under-
taken. For example, in the prosocial case, respondents were
asked to “describe something a person you know well did re-
cently that you considered good for someone else.” Miller coded
the explanations for reference to dispositional explanations; for
reference to social, spatial, temporal location; and for reference
to specific acts or occurrences. Like Shweder and Bourne
(1984), she found that on average, 40% of the reasons given by
American respondents referred to the general dispositions of
the actor. For the Hindu respondents, dispositional explana-
tions constituted less than 20% of their responses.
In a second phase of the study, Miller (1984) asked both Amer-
ican and Indian respondents to explain several accounts of the
deviant behaviors generated by the Indian respondents. For ex-
ample, a Hindu subject narrated the following incident:
This concerns a motorcycle accident. The back wheel burst on the
motorcycle. The passenger sitting in the rear jumped. The mo-
ment the passenger fell, he struck his head on the pavement. The
driver of the motorcycle—who is an attorney—as he was on his
way to court for some work, just took the passenger to a local
hospital and went on and attended to his court work. I personally
feel the motorcycle driver did a wrong thing. The driver left the
passenger there without consulting the doctor concerning the
seriousness of the injury—the gravity of the situation—whether
the passenger should be shifted immediately—and he went on to
the court. So ultimately the passenger died. (p. 972)
Respondents were asked why the driver left the passenger at
the hospital without staying to consult about the seriousness of
the passenger’s injury. On average, Americans made 36% of
their attributions to dispositions of the actors (e.g., irresponsi-
ble, pursuing success) and 17% of their attributions to contex-
tual factors (driver’s duty to be in court). In comparison, only
15% of the attributions of the Indians referred to dispositions,
whereas 32% referred to contextual reasons. Both the American
and the Indian subjects focused on the state of the driver at the
time of the accident, but in the Indian accounts, the social role
of the driver appears to be very important to understanding the
events. He is obligated to his role, he has a job to perform.
Actions are viewed as arising from relations or interactions with
others; they are a product of obligations, responsibilities, or
commitments to others and are thus best understood with re-
spect to these interpersonal relations. This preference for con-
textual explanations has also been documented by Dalai,
Sharma, and Bisht (1983).
These results call into question the exact nature of the funda-
mental attribution error (Ross, 1977). In this error, people, in
their efforts to understand the causes of behavior, suffer from
an inescapable tendency to perceive behavior as a consequence
of the internal, personal attributes of the person. Miller’s (1984)
Indian respondents also explained events in terms of properties
or features of the person, yet these properties were their role
relationships—their socially determined relations to specific
others or groups. Because role relationships necessarily impli-
cate the social situation that embeds the actor, it is unclear
whether the explanations of the Indian respondents can be
viewed as instances of the fundamental attribution error. It may
be that the fundamental attribution error is only characteristic
of those with an independent view of the self.
CULTURE AND THE SELF 233
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American students
Japanese students
Twenty
Statements
Test
Contextualized
Format
Figure 3. Mean proportion of psychological attributes endorsed by
American and Japanese students in two self-description tasks.
The tendency to describe a person in terms of his or her
specific behavior and to specify the context for a given behavior
is also evidenced when those with interdependent selves pro-
vide self-descriptions. Cousins (1989) compared the self-de-
scriptions of American high school and college students with
the self-descriptions of Japanese high school and college stu-
dents. He used two types of free-response formats, the original
Twenty Statements Test (TST; Kuhn & McPartland, 1954),
which simply asks “Who Am I?” 20 consecutive times, and a
modified TST, which asks subjects to describe themselves in
several specific situations (me at home, me with friends, and me
at school). When responding to the original TST, the Japanese
self-descriptions were like those of the Indians in the Shweder
and Bourne (1984) study. They were more concrete and role
specific (“I play tennis on the weekend”). In contrast, the Ameri-
can descriptions included more psychological trait or attribute
characterizations (“I am optimistic,” and “I am friendly”). How-
ever, in the modified TST, where a specific interpersonal con-
text was provided so that respondents could envision the situa-
tion (e.g., me at home) and presumably who was there and what
was being done to whom or by whom, this pattern of results was
reversed. As shown in Figure 3, the Japanese showed a stronger
tendency to characterize themselves in psychological trait or
attribute terms than did Americans. In contrast, Americans
tended to qualify their self-descriptions, claiming, for example,
“I am sometimes lazy at home.”
Cousins (1989) argued that the original TST essentially iso-
lates or disembeds the “I” from the relational or situational
context, and thus self-description becomes artificial for the Jap-
anese respondents, who are more accustomed to thinking
about themselves within specific social situations. For these re-
spondents, the contextualized format “Describe yourself as you
are with your family” was more “natural” because it locates the
self in a habitual unit of representation, namely in a particular
interpersonal situation. Once a defining context was specified,
the Japanese respondents were decidedly more willing to make
generalizations about their behavior and to describe themselves
abstractly using trait or attribute characterizations.
American students, in contrast to their Japanese counter-
parts, were more at home with the original TST because this
test elicits the type of abstract, situation-free self-descriptions
that form the core of the American, independent self-concept.
Such abstract or global characterizations, according to Cousins
(1989), reflect a claim of being a separate individual whose
nature is not bound by a specific situation. When responding to
the contextualized self-description questions, the American
students qualified their descriptions as if to say “This is how I
am at home, but don’t assume this is the way I am everywhere.”
For American respondents, selfness, pure and simple, seems to
transcend any particular interpersonal relationships.
Basic cognition in an interpersonal context. One’s view of self
can have an impact even on some evidently nonsocial cognitive
activities. I. Liu (1986) described the emphasis that the Chinese
place on being loyal and pious to their superiors and obedience
to them, whether they are parents, employers, or government
officials. He claimed that most Chinese adhere to a specific rule
that states “If your superiors are present, or indirectly involved,
in any situation, then you are to respect and obey them” (I. Liu,
1986, p. 78). The power and the influence of this rule appear to
go considerably beyond that provided by the American admoni-
tion to “respect one’s elders.” I. Liu (1986) argued that the stan-
dard of self-regulation that involves the attention and consider-
ation of others is so pervasive that it may actually constrain
verbal and ideational fluency. He reasoned that taking account
of others in every situation is often at odds with individual as-
sertion or with attempts at innovation or unique expression.
This means, for example, that in an unstructured creativity task
in which the goal is to generate as many ideas as possible, Chi-
nese subjects may be at a relative disadvantage. In a similar vein,
T. Y. Liu and Hsu (1974) suggested that consideration of the
rule “respect and obey others” uses up cognitive capacity that
might otherwise be devoted to a task, and this may be the rea-
son that Chinese norms for some creativity tasks fall below
American norms.
Charting the differences between an independent self and
interdependent self may also illuminate the controversy
surrounding the debate between Bloom (1981,1984) and Au
(1983,1984) over whether the Chinese can reason counterfac-
tually (for a thorough review of this debate, see Moser, 1989).
Bloom’s studies (1981) on the counterfactual began when he
asked Chinese-speaking subjects questions like “If the Hong
Kong government were to pass a law requiring that all citizens
born outside of Hong Kong make weekly reports of their activi-
ties to the police, how would you react?” Bloom noted that his
respondents consistently answered “But the government
hasn’t,” “It can’t,” or “It won’t.” Pressed to think about it anyway,
the respondents became frustrated, claiming that it was unnatu-
ral or un-Chinese to think in this way. American and French
respondents answered similar questions readily and without
complaint. From this and subsequent studies, Bloom (1981,
1984) concluded that Chinese speakers “might be expected typi-
cally to encounter difficulty in maintaining a counterfactual
perspective as an active point of orientation for guiding their
cognitive activities” (1984, p. 21).
Au (1983) challenged Bloom’s conclusions. Using different
234 HAZEL ROSE MARKUS AND SHINOBU KITAYAMA
stimulus materials and also different translations of the same
stimulus materials, she reported that Chinese subjects per-
formed no differently from their Western counterparts. The
controversy continues, however, and many investigators remain
unconvinced that the differences Bloom and others have ob-
served in a large number of studies on counterfactual reasoning
are solely a function of awkward or improper translations of
stimulus materials.
Moser (1989), for example, discussed several of Bloom’s
(1981, 1984) findings that are not easily explained away. He
described the following question that Bloom (1981, pp. 53-54)
gave to Taiwanese, Hong Kong, and American subjects in their
native language.
Everyone has his or her own method for teaching children to re-
spect morality. Some people punish the child for immoral behav-
ior, thereby leading him to fear the consequences of such behavior.
Others reward the child for moral behavior, thereby leading him
to want to behave morally. Even though both of these methods
lead the child to respect morality, the first method can lead to
some negative psychological consequences—it may lower the
child’s self-esteem.
According to the above paragraph, what do the two methods have
in common? Please select only one answer.
A. Both methods are useless.
B. They have nothing in common, because the first leads to nega-
tive psychological consequences.
C. Both can reach the goal of leading the child to respect mor-
ality.
D. It is better to use the second.
E. None of the above answers makes sense. (If you choose this
answer, please explain.)
Bloom (1984) reported that 97% of American subjects re-
sponded C, but that only 55% of the Taiwanese and 65% of the
Hong Kong respondents answered C. In explaining his results,
he wrote:
Most of the remaining Chinese-speaking subjects chose D or E
and then went on to explain, based on their own experience and
often at great length and evidently after much reflection, why, for
instance, the second method might be better, or why neither
method works, or why both methods have to be used in conjunc-
tion with each other, or perhaps, why some other specified means
is preferable. For the majority of these subjects, as was evident
from later interviewing, it was not that they did not see the para-
graph as stating that both methods lead the child to respect moral-
ity, but they felt that choosing that alternative and leaving it at that
would be misleading since in their experience that response was
untrue. As they saw it, what was expected, desired, must be at a
minimum an answer reflecting their personal considered opin-
ion, if not a more elaborated explanation of their own experiences
relevant to the matter at hand. Why else would anyone ask the
question? American subjects, by contrast, readily accepted the
question as a purely “theoretical” exercise to be responded to ac-
cording to the assumptions of the world it creates rather than in
terms of their own experiences with the actual world. (Bloom,
1981, p. 54)
It is our view that the differences in response between the
Americans and the Chinese may be related to whether the re-
spondent has an independent or interdependent construal of
the self. If one’s actions are contingent on, determined by, or
made meaningful by one’s relationships and social situations, it
is reasonable to expect that respondents with interdependent
selves might focus on the motivation of the person administer-
ing the question and on the nature of their current relationship
with this person. Consequently, in the process of responding,
they might ask themselves, “What is being asked of me here?
What does this question expect of me or require from me?
What are potential ramifications of answering in one way or
another in respect to my relationship with this person?” In Le-
bra’s (1976) terms, what is “my proper place?” in this social
interaction [i.e., me and the interviewer], and what are the “obli-
gations attached to [it?]” (p. 67). To immediately respond to the
question as a purely abstract or theoretical exercise would re-
quire ignoring the currently constituted social situation and the
nature of one’s relationship with the other. This, of course, can
be done, but it does not mean that it will be easily, effortlessly, or
automatically done. And this is especially true when the prag-
matics of a given context appears to require just the opposite. It
requires ignoring the other’s perspective and a lack of attention
to what the other must be thinking or feeling to ask such a
question. One’s actions are made meaningful by reference to a
particular set of contextual factors. If these are ignored or
changed, then the self that is determined by them changes also.
Those with relatively unencumbered, self-contained, indepen-
dent selves can readily, and without hesitation, entertain any of
a thousand fanciful possible worlds because there are fewer
personal consequences—the bounded, autonomous self re-
mains essentially inviolate.
One important implication of this analysis is that people with
interdependent selves should have no disadvantage in counter-
factual reasoning if the intent of the questioner and the demand
of the situation is simply to test the theoretical reasoning capaci-
ties of the person. One such situation would involve an aptitude
test such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). Indeed, on the
quantitative portion of the SAT that requires substantial hypo-
thetical and counterfactual reasoning (e.g., “If Tom walked 2
miles per hour, then how far will he have walked in 4 hours?”),
both Taiwanese and Japanese children perform considerably
better than their American peers (Stevenson et al, 1986).
It would appear important, therefore, to distinguish between
competence and performance or between the presence of par-
ticular inference skills and the application of these skills in a
particular pragmatic context (see also Laboratory of Compara-
tive Human Cognition, 1982). The discussion thus far implies
that regardless of the nature of the self-system, most people
with an adequate level of education possess the skills of hypo-
thetical reasoning and the ability to think in a counterfactual
fashion. Yet, the application of these skills in a particular situa-
tion varies considerably with the nature of the self-system.
Some people may invoke these skills much more selectively. For
those with interdependent selves, in contrast to those with inde-
pendent selves, a relatively greater proportion of all inferences
will be contingent on the pragmatic implications of a given
situation, such as the perceived demands of the interviewer, the
convention of the situation, and the rules of conversation.
Do styles of thinking and inference vary above and beyond
those that derive from the pragmatic considerations of particu-
lar social situations? This question has yet to be more carefully
addressed. However, given the tendency to see people, events,
and objects as embedded within particular situations and rela-
tionships, the possibility seems genuine. Chiu (1972), for exam-
ple, claimed that the reasoning of American children is charac-
CULTURE AND THE SELF 235
terized by an inferential-categorical style, whereas the
reasoning of Taiwanese Chinese subjects displays a relational-
contextual style. When American children described why two
objects of a set of three objects went together, they were likely to
say “because they both live on a farm.” In contrast, Chinese
children were more likely to display a relational-contextual
style, putting two human figures together and claiming the two
go together “because the mother takes care of the baby.” In the
latter case, the emphasis is on synthesizing features into an orga-
nized whole. Bruner (1986) referred to such differences as aris-
ing from a paradigmatic versus a narrative mode of thought. In
the former, the goal is abstraction and analyzing common fea-
tures, in the latter, establishing a connection or an interdepen-
dence among the elements.
Consequences for
Emotion
In psychology, emotion is often viewed as a universal set of
largely prewired internal processes of self-maintenance and
self-regulation (Buck, 1988; Darwin, 1896; Ekman, 1972; Le-
Doux, 1987). This does not mean, though, that emotional expe-
rience is also universal. On the contrary, as suggested by anthro-
pologists Rosaldo (1984), Lutz (1988), and Solomon (1984), cul-
ture can play a central role in shaping emotional experience. As
with cognition, if an emotional activity or reaction implicates
the self, the outcome of this activity will depend on the nature of
the self-system. And apart from the fear induced by bright
lights and loud sounds, or the pleasure produced by a sweet
taste, there are likely to be few emotions that do not directly
implicate one’s view of the self. Thus, Rosaldo (1984) contended
“feelings are not substances to be discovered in our blood but
social practices organized by stories that we both enact and tell.
They are structured by our forms of understanding” (p. 143),
and we would add, specifically, by one’s construal of the self. In
an extension of these ideas, Lutz (1988) argued that although
most emotions are viewed as universally experienced “natural”
human phenomena, emotions are anything but natural. Emo-
tion, she contended, “can be viewed as cultural and interper-
sonal products of naming, justifying, and persuading by people
in relationship to each other. Emotional meaning is then a so-
cial rather than an individual achievement—an emergent prod-
uct of social life” (Lutz, 1988, p. 5).
Among psychologists, several cognitively oriented theorists
of emotion have suggested that emotion is importantly impli-
cated and embedded in an actual social situation as construed
by the person (e.g., De Riviera, 1984; Roseman, 1984; Scherer,
1984). Accordingly, not only does the experience of an emotion
depend on the current construal of the social situation (e.g.,
Frijda, Kuipers, & ter Schure, 1989; Shaver, Schwartz, Kirson,
& O’Connor, 1987; C. Smith & Ellsworth, 1987), but the experi-
enced emotion in turn plays a pivotal role in changing and
transforming the very nature of the social situation by allowing
a new construal of the situation to emerge and, furthermore, by
instigating the person to engage in certain actions. From the
current perspective, construals of the social situation are con-
strained by, and largely derived from, construals of the self,
others, and the relationship between the two. Thus, emotional
experience should vary systematically with the construal of the
self.
The present analysis suggests several ways in which emo-
tional processes may differ with the nature of the self-system.
First, the predominant eliciting conditions of many emotions
may differ markedly according to one’s construal of the self.
Second, and more important, which emotions will be ex-
pressed or experienced, and with what intensity and frequency,
may also vary dramatically.
Ego-focused versus other-focused emotions. The emotions
systematically vary according to the extent to which they follow
from, and also foster and reinforce, an independent or an inter-
dependent construal of the self. This is a dimension that has
largely been ignored in the literature. Some emotions, such as
anger, frustration, and pride, have the individual’s internal at-
tributes (his or her own needs, goals, desires, or abilities) as the
primary referent. Such emotions may be called ego focused.
They result most typically from the blocking (e.g., “I was treated
unfairly”), the satisfaction, or the confirmation (e.g., “I per-
formed better than others”) of one’s internal attributes. Experi-
encing and expressing these emotions further highlights these
self-defining, internal attributes and leads to additional at-
tempts to assert them in public and confirm them in private. As
a consequence, for those with independent selves to operate
effectively, they have to be “experts” in the expression and expe-
rience of these emotions. They will manage the expression, and
even the experience, of these emotions so that they maintain,
affirm, and bolster the construal of the self as an autonomous
entity. The public display of one’s own internal attributes can be
at odds with the maintenance of interdependent, cooperative
social interaction, and when unchecked can result in interper-
sonal confrontation, conflict, and possibly even overt aggres-
sion. These negative consequences, however, are not as severe as
they might be for interdependent selves because the expression
of one’s internal attributes is the culturally sanctioned task of
the independent self. In short, the current analysis suggests
that, in contrast to those with more interdependent selves, the
ego-focused emotions will be more frequently expressed, and
perhaps experienced, by those with independent selves.
In contrast to the ego-focused emotions, some other emo-
tions, such as sympathy, feelings of interpersonal communion,
and shame, have another person, rather than one’s internal at-
tributes, as the primary referent. Such emotions may be called
other focused. They typically result from being sensitive to the
other, taking the perspective of the other, and attempting to
promote interdependence. Experiencing these emotions high-
lights one’s interdependence, facilitates the reciprocal ex-
changes of well-intended actions, leads to further cooperative
social behavior, and thus provides a significant form of self-val-
idation for interdependent selves. As a consequence, for those
with interdependent selves to operate effectively, they will have
to be “experts” in the expression and experience of these emo-
tions. They will manage the expression, and even the experi-
ence, of these emotions so that they maintain, affirm, and rein-
force the construal of the self as an interdependent entity. The
other-focused emotions often discourage the autonomous ex-
pression of one’s internal attributes and may lead to inhibition
and ambivalence. Although among independent selves these
consequences are experienced negatively (e.g., as timidity) and
can, in fact, have a negative impact, they are tolerated, among
interdependent selves, as the “business of living” (Kakar, 1978,
236 HAZEL ROSE MARKUS AND SHINOBU KITAYAMA
p. 34). Creating and maintaining a connection to others is the
primary task of the interdependent self. In short, this analysis
suggests that, in contrast to those with more independent
selves, these other-focused emotions will be more frequently
expressed and perhaps even experienced among those with in-
terdependent selves.
Ego-focused emotions—emotions that foster and create inde-
pendence. In a comparison of American and Japanese under-
graduates, Matsumoto, Kudoh, Scherer, and Wallbott (1988)
found that American subjects reported experiencing their emo-
tions longer than did Japanese subjects, even though the two
groups agreed in their ordering of which emotions were experi-
enced longest (i.e., joy = sad > anger = guilt > fear = shame =
disgust). Americans also reported feeling these emotions more
intensely than the Japanese and reported more bodily symp-
toms (e.g., lump in throat, change in breathing, more expressive
reactions, and more verbal reactions) than did the Japanese.
Finally, when asked what they would do to cope with the conse-
quences of various emotional events, significantly more of the
Japanese students reported that no action was necessary.
One interpretation of this pattern of findings may assume
that most of the emotions examined, with the exception of
shame and possibly guilt, are what we have called ego-focused
emotions. Thus, people with independent selves will attend
more to these feelings and act on the basis of them, because
these feelings are regarded as diagnostic of the independent
self. Not to attend to one’s inner feelings is often viewed as being
inauthentic or even as denying the “real” self. In contrast,
among those with more interdependent selves, one’s inner feel-
ings may be less important in determining one’s consequent
actions. Ego-focused feelings may be regarded as by-products of
interpersonal relationships, but they may not be accorded privi-
leged status as regulators of behavior. For those with interde-
pendent selves, it is the interpersonal context that assumes prior-
ity over the inner attributes, such as private feelings. The latter
may need to be controlled or de-emphasized so as to effectively
fit into the interpersonal context.
Given these differences in emotional processes, people with
divergent selves may develop very different assumptions about
the etiology of emotional expressions for ego-focused emotions.
For those with independent selves, emotional expressions may
literally “express” or reveal the inner feelings such as anger,
sadness, and fear. For those with interdependent selves, how-
ever, an emotional expression may be more often regarded as a
public instrumental action that may or may not be related di-
rectly to the inner feelings. Consistent with this analysis, Matsu-
moto (1989), using data from 15 cultures, reported that individ-
uals from hierarchical cultures (that we would classify as being
generally interdependent; see Hofstede, 1980), when asked to
rate the intensity of an angry, sad, or fearful emotion displayed
by an individual in a photograph, gave lower intensity ratings
than those from less hierarchical cultures. Notably, although the
degree of hierarchy inherent in one’s cultures was strongly re-
lated to the intensity ratings given to those emotions, it was not
related to the correct identification of these emotions. The one
exception to this finding was that people from more hierarchi-
cal cultures (those with more interdependent selves) were less
likely to correctly identify emotional expressions of happiness.
Among those with interdependent selves (often those from hier-
archical cultures), positive emotional expressions are most fre-
quently used as public actions in the service of maintaining
interpersonal harmony and, thus, are not regarded as particu-
larly diagnostic of the actor’s inner feelings or happiness.
For those with interdependent selves (composed primarily of
relationships with others instead of inner attributes), it may be
very important not to have intense experiences of ego-focused
emotions, and this may be particularly true for negative emo-
tions like anger. Anger may seriously threaten an interdepen-
dent self and thus may be highly dysfunctional. In fact, some
anthropologists explicitly challenge the universalist view that
all people experience the same negative emotions. Thus, in Ta-
hiti, anger is highly feared, and various anthropological ac-
counts claim that there is no expression of anger in this culture
(see Levy, 1973; Solomon, 1984). It is not that these people have
learned to inhibit or suppress their “real” anger but that they
have learned the importance of attending to others, considering
others, and being gentle in all situations, and as a consequence
very little anger is elicited. In other words, the social reality is
construed and actually constructed in such a way that it does
not lend itself to the strong experience, let alone the outburst, of
negative ego-focused emotions such as anger. The same is
claimed for Ukta Eskimos (Briggs, 1970). They are said not to
feel anger, not to express anger, and not even to talk about
anger. The claim is that they do not show anger even in those
circumstances that would certainly produce complete outrage
in Americans. These Eskimos use a word that means “childish”
to label angry behavior when it is observed in foreigners.
Among the Japanese, there is a similar concern with averting
anger and avoiding a disruption of the harmony of the social
situation. As a consequence, experiencing anger or receiving
anger signals may be relatively rare events. A study by Miyake,
Campos, Kagan, and Bradshaw (1986), which compared Japa-
nese and American infants of 11 months of age, provides sug-
gestive evidence for this claim. These investigators showed each
infant an interesting toy and paired it with a mother’s vocal
expression of joy, anger, or fear. Then they measured the child’s
latency to resume locomotion toward the toy after the mother’s
utterance. The two groups of infants did not differ in their
reactions to expressions of joy or fear. But, after an angry vocal
expression of the mother, there was a striking difference be-
tween the two groups. The Japanese children resumed locomo-
tion toward the toy after 48s, American children after only 18 s.
It may be that the Japanese children are relatively more trauma-
tized by their mother’s anger expressions because these are such
rare events.
Notably, in the West, a controversy exists about the need, the
desirability, and the importance of expressing one’s anger. As-
suming a hydraulic model of anger, some argue that it is neces-
sary to express anger so as to avoid boiling over or blowing up at
a later point (Pennebaker, 1982). Others argue for the impor-
tance of controlling one’s anger so as not to risk losing control.
No such controversy appears to exist among those in predomi-
nantly interdependent cultures, where a seemingly unchal-
lenged norm directs individuals to restrain their inner feelings
and particularly the overt expression of these feelings. Indeed,
many interdependent cultures have well-developed strategies
that render them expert at avoiding the expression of negative
emotions. For example, Bond (1986) reported that in China
CULTURE AND THE SELF 237
discussions have a clear structure that is explicitly designed to
prevent conflict from erupting. To begin with, discussants pres-
ent their common problems and identify all the constraints that
all the participants must meet. Only then do they state their
own views. To Westerners, such a pattern appears as vague,
beating around the bush, and not getting to the heart of the
matter, but it is part of a carefully executed strategy of avoiding
conflict, and thus perhaps the experience of negative emotions.
Bond, in fact, noted that among school children in Hong Kong
and Taiwan, there is a tendency to cooperate with opponents
even in a competitive reward structure and to rate future oppo-
nents more positively than others who will not be opponents
(Li, Cheung, & Kau, 1979,1982).
In a recent cross-cultural comparison of the eliciting condi-
tions of several emotions, Matsumoto et al. (1988) also found
that Japanese respondents appear to be avoiding anger in close
relations. Specifically, for the Japanese, closely related others
were rarely implicated in the experience of anger. The Japanese
reported feeling anger primarily in the presence of strangers. It
thus appears that not only the expression but also the experi-
ence of such an ego-focused emotion as anger is effectively
averted within an interdependent structure of relation. When
anger arises, it happens outside of the existing interdependence,
as in confrontation with out-groups (e.g., Samurai warfare in
feudal Japan). In contrast, Americans and Western Europeans
report experiencing anger primarily in the presence of closely
related others. This is not surprising, given that expressing and
experiencing ego-focused, even negative emotions, is one viable
way to assert and affirm the status of the self as an independent
entity. Consistent with this analysis, Stipek, Weiner, and Li
(1989) found that when describing situations that produce
anger, Chinese subjects were much more likely than American
subjects to describe a situation that happened to someone else
(“a guy on a bus did not give up a seat to an old woman”). For
Americans, the major stimulus to anger was the situation where
the individual was the victim (“a friend broke a promise to
me”).
Other emotions, such as pride or guilt, may also differ ac-
cording to the nature of the mediating self-system. As with
anger, these expressions may be avoided, or they will assume a
somewhat different form. For example, if defined as being
proud of one’s own individual attributes, pride may mean hu-
bris, and its expression may need to be avoided for those with
interdependent selves.4 Consistent with the idea that pride in
one’s own performance may be inhibited among those with
interdependent selves, Stipek et al. (1989) found that the Chi-
nese were decidedly less likely to claim their own successful
efforts as a source of pride than were Americans. These investi-
gators also reported that the emotion of guilt takes on some-
what different connotations as well. Among those with indepen-
dent selves, who are more likely to hold stable, cross-situational
beliefs and to consider them self-definitional, “violating a law
or a moral principle” was the most frequently mentioned cause
of guilt. Among Chinese, however, the most commonly re-
ported source of guilt was “hurting others psychologically”
Other-focused emotions—emotions that create and foster in-
terdependence. Those with interdependent selves may inhibit
the experience, or at least the expression, of some ego-focused
emotions, but they may have a heightened capacity for the expe-
rience and expression of those emotions that derive primarily
from focusing on the other. In Japan and China, for example,
there is a much greater incidence of cosleeping, cobathing, and
physical contact between mother and child than is typically
true in most Western countries. The traditional Japanese
mother carries the child on her back for a large part of the first 2
years. Lebra (1976) claimed that Japanese mothers teach their
children to fear the pain of loneliness, whereas Westerners
teach children how to be alone. Japanese and Chinese sociali-
zation practices may help the child develop an interdependent
self in the first place, and at the same time, the capacity for the
experience of a relatively greater variety of other-focused emo-
tions.
The greater interdependence that results between mothers
and their children in Japan is reflected in the finding that the
classification of infants according to the nature of their attach-
ments to their mothers (i.e., secure, ambivalent, and avoidant)
departs markedly from the pattern typically observed in West-
ern data. Specifically, many more Japanese infants are classi-
fied as “ambivalently attached” because they seem to experi-
ence decidedly more stress following a brief separation from the
mother than do American infants (Ainsworth, Bell, & Stayton,
1974; Miyake, Chen, & Campos, in press). This finding also
indicates that a paradigm like the typical stranger situation is
inherently linked to an independent view of self and, thus, may
not be appropriate for gauging attachment in non-Western cul-
tures.
In Japan, socialization practices that foster an intense close-
ness between mother and child give rise to the feeling ofamae.
Amae is typically defined as the sense of, or the accompanying
hope for, being lovingly cared for and involves depending on
and presuming another’s indulgence. Although, as detailed by
Kumagai and Kumagai (1985), the exact meaning of amae is
open to some debate, it is clear that “the other” is essential.
When a person experiences amae, she or he “feels the freedom
to do whatever he or she wills” while being accepted and cared
for by others with few strings attached. Some say amae is a type
of complete acceptance, a phenomenal replication of the ideal
mother-infant bond (L. T. Doi, 1973). From our point of view,
experiencing amae with respect to another person may be inher-
ent in the formation and maintenance of a mutually reciprocal,
4 In interdependent cultures, if pride is overtly expressed, it may
often be directed to a collective, of which the self is a part. For example,
the Chinese anthropologist Hsu (1975) described an event in which a
Japanese company official showed a “gesture of devotion to his office
superior which I had never experienced in the Western world” (p. 215).
After talking to Hsu in his own small, plain office, the employee said,
“Let me show you the office of my section chief.” He then took Hsu to a
large, elaborately furnished office, pointed to a large desk, and said
proudly, “This is the desk of my section chief.” Hsu’s account makes
clear that this was not veiled cynicism from the employee, just com-
plete, unabashed pride in the accomplishments of his boss. Americans
with independent self-systems can perhaps understand this type of
pride in another’s accomplishment if the other involved is one’s relative,
but it is typically unfathomable in the case of one’s immediate supervi-
sor. Without an understanding of the close alignment and interdepen-
dence that occurs between employees and supervisors, the emotion
experienced by the employee that prompted him to show off his super-
visor’s office would be incomprehensible.
238 HAZEL ROSE MARKUS AND SHINOBU KITAYAMA
interdependent relationship with another person. If the other
person accepts one’s amae, the reciprocal relationship is symbol-
ically completed, leading to a significant form of self-valida-
tion. If, however, the other person rejects one’s amae, the rela-
tionship will be in jeopardy.
For the purpose of comparing indigenous feelings, such as
amae, with the more universal ones, such as anger and happi-
ness, Kitayama and Markus (1990) used a multidimensional
scaling technique, which allows the identification of the dimen-
sions that individuals habitually or spontaneously use when
they make judgments about similarities among various emo-
tions. Recent studies have demonstrated that people are capa-
ble of distinguishing among various emotions on as many as
seven or eight cognitive dimensions (Mauro, Sato, & Tucker,
1989; C. Smith & Ellsworth, 1987). In these studies, however,
the dimensions have been specified a priori by the experi-
menter and given explicitly to the respondents to use in describ-
ing the emotions. When the dimensions are not provided but
allowed to emerge in multidimensional scaling studies, only
two dimensions are typically identified: activation (or excite-
ment) and pleasantness (e.g., Russell, 1980). And it appears that
most Western emotions can be readily located on a circumplex
plane defined by these two dimensions. Thus, although people
are capable of discriminating among emotions on a substantial
number of dimensions, they habitually categorize the emotions
only on the dimensions of activation and pleasantness.
More recently, Russell (1983; Russell, Lewicka, & Niit, 1989)
applied the same technique to several non-Western cultural
groups and replicated the American findings. He thus argued
that the lay understanding of emotional experience may indeed
be universal. Russell used, however, only those terms that have
clear counterparts in the non-Western groups he studied. He
did not include any emotion terms indigenous to the non-Wes-
tern groups such as amae. It is possible that once terms for such
indigenous feeling states are included in the analysis, a new
dimension, or dimensions, may emerge. To explore this possibil-
ity, Kitayama and Markus (1990) sampled 20 emotions from the
Japanese language. Half of these terms were also found in En-
glish and were sampled so that they evenly covered the circum-
plex space identified by Russell. The remaining terms were
those indigenous to Japanese culture and those that presuppose
the presence of others. Some (e.g., fureai [feeling a close connec-
tion with someone else]) refer primarily to a positive associa-
tion with others (rather than events that happen within the indi-
vidual, such as success), whereas others refer to interpersonal
isolation and conflict (e.g., oime [the feeling of indebtedness]).
Japanese college students rated the similarity between 2 emo-
tions for each of the 190 pairs that could be made from the 20
emotions. The mean perceived similarity ratings for these pairs
were then submitted to a multidimensional scaling.
Replicating past research, Kitayama and Markus (1990)
identified two dimensions that closely correspond to the activa-
tion and the pleasantness dimensions. In addition, however, a
new dimension emerged. This third dimension represented the
extent to which the person is engaged in or disengaged from an
interpersonal relationship. At the interpersonal engagement
end were what we have called other-focused emotions, such as
shame, fureai [feeling a close connection with somebody else],
and shitashimi [feeling familiar], whereas at the disengagement
end were found some ego-centered emotions, such as pride and
tukeagari [feeling puffed up with the sense of self-importance],
along with sleepiness and boredom. This interpersonal engage-
ment-disengagement dimension also differentiated between
otherwise very similar emotions. Thus, pride and elation were
equally positive and high in activation, yet pride was perceived
as considerably less interpersonally engaged than elation. Fur-
thermore, anger and shame were very similar in terms of activa-
tion and pleasantness, but shame was much higher than anger
in the extent of interpersonal engagement.
More important, this study located the indigenous emotions
within the three-dimensional structure, permitting us to under-
stand the nature of these emotions in reference to more univer-
sal emotions. For instance, amae was low in activation, and
neither positive nor negative, fairly akin to sleepiness, except
that the former was much more interpersonally engaged than
the latter. This may indicate the passive nature of amae, involv-
ing the hopeful expectation of another person’s favor and indul-
gence without any active, agentic solicitation of them. Comple-
tion of amae depends entirely on the other person, and, there-
fore, amae is uniquely ambivalent in its connotation on the
pleasantness dimension. Another indigenous emotion, oime,
involves the feeling of being psychologically indebted to some-
body else. Oime was located at the very negative end of the
pleasantness dimension, perceived even more negatively than
such universal negative emotions as anger and sadness. The
extreme unpleasantness of oime suggests the aversive nature of
unmet obligations and the press of the need to fulfill one’s obli-
gations to others and to return favors. It also underscores the
significance of balanced and harmonious relationships in the
emotional life of those with interdependent selves.
The finding that the Japanese respondents clearly and reli-
ably discriminated between ego-focused emotions and other-
focused emotions on the dimension of interpersonal engage-
ment versus disengagement strongly suggests the validity of this
distinction as an essential component of emotional experience
at least among Japanese and, perhaps, among people from
other cultures as well. In a more recent study, Kitayama and
Markus (1990) further tested whether this theoretical dimen-
sion of emotion also underlies and even determines how fre-
quently people may experience various emotions and whether
the frequency of emotional experience varies with their domi-
nant construal of self as independent or interdependent.
Kitayama and Markus (1990) first sampled three emotions
common in Japanese culture that were expected to fall under
one of the five types theoretically derived from the current anal-
ysis. These types are listed in Table 2. Ego-focused positive
emotions (yuetukan [feelingsuperior], pride, and tukeagari [feel-
ing puffed up] are those that are most typically associated with
the confirmation or fulfillment of one’s internal attributes, such
as abilities, desires, and needs. Ego-focused, negative emotions
(anger, futekusare [sulky feeling], and yokyufuman [frustra-
tion]) occur primarily when such internal attributes are
blocked or threatened. Also included were those correspond-
ingly positive or negative emotions associated with the mainte-
nance or enhancement of interdependence. Thus, three emo-
tions are commonly associated with the affirmation or the com-
pletion of interdependent relationships (fureai [feeling of
connection with someone], shitashimi [feeling of familiarity to
CULTURE AND THE SELF 239
someone], sonkei [feeling of respect for someone]) and thus
were designated as positive and other focused. In contrast, some
negative emotions are typically derived from one’s failure to
offer or reciprocate favors to relevant others and thus to fully
participate in the relationship. They are thus closely linked to
disturbance to interdependence and a consequent desire to re-
pair the disturbance. They include oime [feeling of indebted-
ness], shame, and guilt. Finally, as noted before, interdependent
selves are likely to tolerate ambivalence regarding one’s interde-
pendent status with some relevant others. Interestingly, some
emotions are uniquely linked to this interpersonal ambivalence.
Three such emotions (amae [hopeful expectation of others’ in-
dulgence or favor], tanomi [feeling like relying on someone],
and sugari [feeling like leaning on someone]) were examined.
Japanese respondents reported how frequently they experi-
enced each of the 15 emotions listed in Table 2. The five-factor
structure implied by the theoretical designation of the 15 emo-
tions to one of the five types was verified in a confirmatory
factor analysis (Joreskog, 1969). A correlation matrix for the five
types is given in Table 3. There was a strong correlation be-
tween positive and negative ego-focused emotions, as may be
expected if both of them are derived from and also foster and
reinforce an independent construal of self. Furthermore, these
ego-focused emotions are clearly distinct from the other-fo-
cused emotions. Thus, neither positive nor negative ego-focused
emotions had any significant relationship with other-focused,
positive emotions. Interestingly, however, these ego-focused
emotions were significantly associated with the ambivalent and,
to a larger extent, with the negative other-focused emotions,
suggesting that the experience of ego-focused emotions, either
positive or negative, is readily accompanied, at least in Japanese
culture, by the felt disturbance of a relationship and, thus, by a
strong need to restore harmony. Alternatively, being embedded
Table 2
The 15 Emotions and Their
Meaning
Table 3
Correlations Among the Five Types of Emotions
Emotion type
(factor)
Ego focused
Positive
Negative
Other focused
Positive
Ambivalent
Emotion
Yuetukan
Tukeagari
Pride
Futekusare
Yokyufuman
Anger
Fureai
Shitashimi
Sonkei
Amae
Meaning
Feeling superior
Feeling puffed up with the
sense of self-importance
Sulky feeling
Frustration
Feeling of connection
with someone
Feeling of familiarity to
someone
Feeling of respect for
someone
Hopeful expectation of
Negative
Tanomi
Sugari
Oime
Shame
Guilt
someone’s indulgence
and favor
Feeling like relying on
someone
Feeling like leaning on
someone
Feeling of indebtedness
Emotion 1
Ego focused
1. Positive
2. Negative
Other focused
3. Positive
4. Ambivalent
5. Negative
.70
-.05
.35
.49
—
-.18 —
.63 .40 —
.69 .18 .43 —
in a highly reciprocal relation and feeling obliged to contribute
to the relationship may sometimes be perceived as a burden or
pressure, hence rendering salient some of the ego-focused emo-
tions.5 Finally, the three types of other-focused emotions (posi-
tive, ambivalent, and negative) are all positively correlated (see
Table 3).
Can the frequency of experiencing the five types of emotions
be predicted by one’s predominant construal of self as indepen-
dent or interdependent? To address this issue, Kitayama and
Markus (1990) also asked the same respondents eight questions
designed to measure the extent to which they endorse an inde-
pendent construal of self (e.g., “Are you a kind of person who
holds on to one’s own view?”; “How important is it to hold on to
one’s own view?”) and eight corresponding questions designed
to measure the extent to which they endorse an interdependent
construal of self (e.g., “Are you the kind of person who never
forgets a favor provided by others?”; “How important is it to
never forget a favor provided by others?”). Consistent with the
current analysis, the frequency of experiencing both positive
and negative ego-focused emotions significantly increased with
the independent construal of self. They were, however, either
negatively related (for positive emotions) or unrelated (for nega-
tive emotions) to the interdependent construal of self. In
marked contrast to this pattern for the ego-focused emotions,
all three types of other-focused emotions were significantly
more frequently experienced by those with more interdepen-
dent construals of self. These emotions, however, were either
unrelated (for positive and negative other-focused emotions) or
negatively related (for the ambivalent emotions) to the indepen-
dent construal of self.
Consequences for Motivation
The study of motivation centers on the question of why peo-
ple initiate, terminate, and persist in specific actions in particu-
lar circumstances (e.g., Atkinson, 1958; Mook, 1986). The an-
swer given to this question in the West usually involves some
type of internal, individually rooted need or motive—the mo-
tive to enhance one’s self-esteem, the motive to achieve, the
motive to affiliate, the motive to avoid cognitive conflict, or the
motive to self-actualize. These motives are assumed to be part
5 On these occasions, perhaps interdependent selves are most clearly
aware of their internal attributes. Such awareness (the honne in Japa-
nese) may be typically accompanied by a situational demand (the tate-
mae in Japanese).
240 HAZEL ROSE MARKUS AND SHINOBU KITAYAMA
of the unique, internal core of a person’s self-system. But what is
the nature of motivation for those with interdependent self-sys-
tems? What form does it take? How does the ever-present need
to attend to others and to gain their acceptance influence the
form of these internal, individual motives? Are the motives
identified in Western psychology the universal instigators of
behavior?
As with cognition and emotion, those motivational processes
that implicate the self depend on the nature of the self-system.
If we assume that others will be relatively more focal in the
motivation of those with interdependent selves, various impli-
cations follow. First, those with interdependent selves should
express, and perhaps experience, more of those motives that are
social or that have the other as referent. Second, as we have
noted previously, for those with independent selves, agency will
be experienced as an effort to express one’s internal needs,
rights, and capacities and to withstand undue social pressure,
whereas among those with interdependent selves, agency will
be experienced as an effort to be receptive to others, to adjust to
their needs and demands, and to restrain one’s own inner needs
or desires. Motives related to the need to express one’s agency or
competency (e.g., the achievement motive) are typically as-
sumed to be common to all individuals. Yet among those with
interdependent selves, striving to excel or accomplish challeng-
ing tasks may not be in the service of achieving separateness
and autonomy, as is usually assumed for those with independent
selves, but instead in the service of more fully realizing one’s
connectedness or interdependence. Third, motives that are
linked to the self, such as self-enhancement, self-consistency,
self-verification, self-affirmation, and self-actualization, may
assume a very different form depending on the nature of the self
that is being enhanced, verified, or actualized.
More interdependent motives? Murray (1938) assembled
what he believed to be a comprehensive list of human motiva-
tions (see also Hilgard, 1953, 1987). Many of these motives
seem most relevant for those with independent selves, but the
list also includes some motives that should have particular sa-
lience for those with interdependent selves. These include defer-
ence, the need to admire and willingly follow a superior, to serve
gladly; similance, the need to imitate or emulate others, to agree
and believe; affiliation, the need to form friendships and associ-
ations; nurturance, the need to nourish, aid, or protect another;
succorance, the need to seek aid, projection, or sympathy and to
be dependent; avoidance of blame, the need to avoid blame,
ostracism, or punishment by inhibiting unconventional im-
pulses and to be well behaved and obey the law; and abasement,
the need to comply and accept punishment or self-deprecation.
Many of the social motives suggested by Murray seem to cap-
ture the types of strivings that should characterize those with
interdependent selves. When the cultural imperative is to seek
connectedness, social integration, and interpersonal harmony,
most of these motives should be typically experienced by the
individual as positive and desirable. In contrast, when the cul-
tural task centers on maintaining independence and separate-
ness, holding any of these motives too strongly (e.g., similance
and succorance) often indicates a weak or troubled personality.
Thus, Murray, for example, gave the need to comply the pejora-
tive label of need for abasement.
The limited evidence for the idea that those with interdepen-
dent selves will experience more of the social or interdependent
motives comes from Bond (1986), who summarized several
studies exploring the motive patterns of the Chinese (see also
McClelland, 1961). He found that the level of various motives
are a fairly direct reflection of the collectivist or group-oriented
tradition of the Chinese. Thus, Chinese respondents show rela-
tively high levels of need for abasement, socially oriented
achievement, change, endurance, intraception, nurturance, and
order; moderate levels of autonomy, deference, and dominance,
and succorance; and low levels of individually oriented achieve-
ment, affiliation, aggression, exhibition, heterosexuality, and
power. The socially oriented achievement motive has, as its ulti-
mate goal, a desire to meet expectations of significant others,
whereas the individually oriented achievement motive implies a
striving for achievement for its own sake (discussed later).
Hwang (1976) found, however, that with continuing rapid social
change in China, there is an increase in levels of exhibition,
autonomy, intraception, and heterosexuality and a decrease in
levels of deference, order, nurturance, and endurance. Interest-
ingly, it appears that those with interdependent selves do not
show a greater need for affiliation, as might at first be thought,
but instead they exhibit higher levels of those motives that re-
flect a concern with adjusting oneself so as to occupy a proper
place with respect to others.
The motive for cognitive consistency. Another powerful mo-
tive assumed to fuel the behavior of Westerners is the need to
avoid or reduce cognitive conflict or dissonance. Classic disso-
nance occurs when one says one thing publicly and feels an-
other, quite contrasting thing privately (Festinger & Carlsmith,
1959). And such a configuration produces particular difficulty
when the private attitude is a self-defining one (Greenwald,
1980). One might argue, however, that the state of cognitive
dissonance arising from counterattitudinal behavior is not
likely to be experienced by those with interdependent selves.
First it is the individuals’ roles, statuses, or positions, and the
commitments, obligations, and responsibilities they confer,
that are the constituents of the self, and in that sense they are
self-defining. As outlined in Figure 1, one’s internal attributes
(e.g., private attitudes or opinions) are not regarded as the signifi-
cant attributes of the self. Furthermore, one’s private feelings
are to be regulated in accordance with the requirements of the
situation. Restraint over the inner self is assigned a much higher
value than is expression of the inner self. Thus, Kiefer (1976)
wrote:
Although Japanese are often acutely aware of discrepancies be-
tween inner feelings and outward role demands, they think of the
latter . . . as the really important center of the self. Regarding
feelings as highly idiosyncratic and hard to control, and therefore
less reliable as sources of self-respect than statuses and roles, the
Japanese tends to include within the boundaries of the concept of
self much of the quality of the intimate social group of which he is
a member. (R. J. Smith, 1985, p. 28)
More recently, T. Doi (1986) has argued that Americans are
decidedly more concerned with consistency between feelings
and actions than are the Japanese. In Japan there is a virtue in
controlling the expression of one’s innermost feelings; no virtue
accrues from expressing them. Triandis (1989), for example,
reported a study by Iwao (1988), who gave respondents a series
of scenarios and asked them to judge which responses would be
CULTURE AND THE SELF 241
appropriate for the person described in the scenario. In one
scenario, the daughter brings home a person from another race.
One of the possible responses given was “thought that he would
never allow them to marry but told them he was in favor of their
marriage.” This answer was rated as best by only 2% of Ameri-
cans. In sharp contrast, however, it was rated as best by 44% of
the Japanese. Among the Americans, 48% thought it was the
worst response, whereas only 7% of the Japanese rated it as the
worst.
Common motives in an interdependent context. Of those mo-
tives assumed by Murray (1938) and Hilgard (1987) to be univer-
sally significant, the achievement motive is the most well-docu-
mented example. Variously defined as the desire to overcome
obstacles, to exert power, to do something as well as possible, or
to master, manipulate, or organize physical objects, human be-
ings, or ideas (Hall & Lindzey, 1957; Hilgard, 1987), the achieve-
ment motive is thought to be a fundamental human characteris-
tic. However, the drive for achievement in an interdependent
context may have some very different aspects from the motive
for achievement in an independent cultural context. In a recent
analysis of the content and structure of values in seven cultures
(i.e., Australia, United States, Spain, Finland, Germany, Israel,
and Hong Kong), S. H. Schwartz and Bilsky (1990) found a
conflict between values that emphasize independent thought
and action and those that emphasize restraining of one’s own
impulses in all samples except Hong Kong. In the Hong Kong
sample, self-restraint appeared to be quite compatible with inde-
pendent thought and action.
Although all individuals may have some desire for agency or
control over their own actions, this agency can be accomplished
in various ways (Maehr, 1974). Pushing oneself ahead of others
and actively seeking success does not appear to be universally
valued. An illuminating analysis of control motivation by Weisz
et al. (1984) suggests that acting on the world and altering the
world may not be the control strategy of choice for all people.
Instead, people in many Asian cultures appear to use what is
termed secondary control. This involves accommodating to ex-
isting realities “sometimes via acts that limit individualism and
personal autonomy but that enhance perceived alignment or
goodness of fit with people, objects, or circumstances” (Weisz
etal.,1984, p. 956).
The American notion of achievement involves breaking
away, pushing ahead, and gaining control over surroundings.
How do selves concerned with fitting in and accommodating to
existing realities achieve? The question of achievement motive
in an interdependent context is all the more compelling be-
cause many of the most collective societies of the world
currently appear extremely preoccupied with achievement. In
an analysis of Chinese children’s stories, for example, Blu-
menthal (1977) found that the most common behavior was
achievement-oriented in nature, the second most frequent was
altruism, and the third was social and personal responsibility.
Among junior high school students in Japan, the motto “pass
with four, fail with five” is now common. This refers to the fact
that if one is sleeping 5 hr a night, he or she is probably not
studying hard enough to pass exams. It appears, however, that
this strong emphasis on achievement motivation is, in part,
other motivated. It is motivated by a desire to fit into the group
and to meet the expectations of the group. In the child’s case,
the group is the family, and the child’s mission is to enhance the
social standing of the family by gaining admission to one of the
top universities. The motive to achieve need not necessarily
reflect a motive to achieve for “me” personally (Maehr & Ni-
cholls, 1980). It can have social or collective origins. Children
are striving to achieve the goals of others, such as family and
teachers, with whom they are reciprocally interdependent.
Consistent with this notion, Yu (1974) reported that the
strength of achievement motivation was correlated positively
with familism and filial piety. Striving for excellence necessar-
ily involves some distancing or separating from some others,
but the separation allows the child to properly accomplish the
task of the student and thus to fulfill his or her role within the
family.
Several studies by Yang (Yang, 1982/1985; Yang & Liang,
1973) have sought to distinguish between two types of achieve-
ment motivation: individually oriented and socially oriented.
Individually oriented achievement motivation is viewed as a
functionally autonomous desire in which the individual strives
to achieve some internalized standards of excellence. In con-
trast, socially oriented achievement motivation is not function-
ally autonomous; rather, individuals persevere to fulfill the ex-
pectations of significant others, typically the family (Bond,
1986). With socially oriented achievement, when the specific
achievement goal is met, the intense achievement motivation
formerly evident may appear to vanish. This analysis indeed fits
many anecdotal reports indicating that once admitted into the
college of their choice, or hired by their preferred company,
Japanese high school and college students are no longer particu-
larly interested in achievement.
Once a new goal is established, of course, the socially ori-
ented achievement motive may be easily reengaged by any fig-
ure who can serve as a symbolic substitute for family members.
A longitudinal survey conducted in Japan over the last 30 years
(Hayashi, 1988) has repeatedly shown that approximately 80%
of the Japanese, regardless of sex, age, education, and social
class, prefer a manager with a fatherlike character (who de-
mands a lot more than officially required in the work, yet ex-
tends his care for the person’s personal matters even outside of
work) over a more Western-type, task-oriented manager (who
separates personal matters from work and demands as much as,
yet no more than, officially required). In a large number of
surveys and experiments, Misumi and his colleagues (summa-
rized in Misumi, 1985) have demonstrated that in Japan a
leader who is both demanding and personally caring is most
effective regardless of the task or the population examined (e.g.,
college students, white-collar workers, and blue-collar workers).
This is in marked contrast to the major conclusion reached in
the leadership literature in the United States, which suggests
that leadership effectiveness depends on a complex interaction
between characteristics of leaders, characteristics of followers,
and, most important, on the nature of the task (Fiedler, 1978;
Hollander, 1985). According to our analysis, in Japan as well as
in other interdependent cultures, it is the personal attachment
to the leader and the ensuing obligation to him or her that most
strongly motivate people to do their work. Motivation mediated
by a strong personal relationship, then, is unlikely to be contin-
gent on factors associated with the specific task or environ-
ment.
242 HAZEL ROSE MARKUS AND SHINOBU KITAYAMA
The self-related motives. The motive to maintain a positive
view of the self is one motive that psychologists since James
(1890) through Greenwald (1980), Harter (1983), Steele (1988),
and Tesser (1986) have assumed to be universally true. What
constitutes a positive view of self depends, however, on one’s
construal of the self.6 For those with independent selves, feeling
good about oneself typically requires fulfilling the tasks asso-
ciated with being an independent self; that is, being unique,
expressing one’s inner attributes, and asserting oneself (see Ta-
ble 1). Although not uncontested, a reasonable empirical gener-
alization from the research on self-related motives is that West-
erners, particularly those with high self-esteem, try to enhance
themselves whenever possible, and this tendency results in a
pervasive self-serving bias. Studies with American subjects dem-
onstrate that they take credit for their successes, explain away
their failures, and in various ways try to aggrandize themselves
(e.g., Gilovich, 1983; Lau, 1984; J. B. Miller, 1986; Whitley &
Frieze, 1985; Zuckerman, 1979). Maintaining self-esteem re-
quires separating oneself from others and seeing oneself as dif-
ferent from and better than others. At 4 years old, children
already show a clear self-favorability bias (Harter, 1989). When
asked to compare themselves with others with respect to intelli-
gence, friendliness, or any skill, most children think they are
better than most others. Wylie (1979) reported that American
adults also consider themselves to be more intelligent and more
attractive than average, and Myers (1987), in a national survey
of American students, found that 70% of students believe they
are above average in leadership ability, and with respect to the
“ability to get along with others,” 0% thought they were below
average, 60% thought they were in the top 10%, and 25% thought
they were in the top 1%. Moreover, as documented by Taylor
and Brown (1988), among Americans, most people feel that
they are more in control and have more positive expectations
for themselves and their future than they have for other people.
This tendency toward false uniqueness presumably derives
from efforts of those with independent selves to maintain a
positive view of themselves.
The motive to maintain a positive view of the self may as-
sume a somewhat different form, however, for those with inter-
dependent selves. Feeling good about one’s interdependent self
may not be achieved through enhancement of the value at-
tached to one’s internal attributes and the attendant self-serving
bias. Instead, positive feelings about the self should derive from
fulfilling the tasks associated with being interdependent with
relevant others: belonging, fitting in, occupying one’s proper
place, engaging in appropriate action, promoting others’ goals,
and maintaining harmony (see Table 1). This follows for at least
two reasons. First, people with interdependent selves are likely
to be motivated by other-focused emotions, such as empathy
and oime (i.e., the feeling of psychological indebtedness) and to
act in accordance with the perceived needs and desires of their
partners in social relations, and this may produce a social dy-
namic where individuals strive to enhance each other’s self-es-
teem. In such reciprocal relationships, other enhancement
could be more instrumental to self-enhancement than direct
attempts at self-enhancement because the latter are likely to
isolate the individual from the network of reciprocal relation-
ships. Second, self-esteem among those with interdependent
selves may be based in some large measure on their capacity to
exert control over their own desires and needs so that they can
indeed belong and fit in. As noted earlier (see also Weisz et al.,
1984), such self-control and self-restraint are instrumental to
the ability to flexibly adjust to social contingencies and thus are
highly valued in interdependent cultures. Indeed, self-restraint
together with flexible adjustment is often regarded as an impor-
tant sign of the moral maturity of the person.
A developmental study by Yoshida, Kojo, and Kaku (1982,
Study 1) has documented that self-enhancement or self-promo-
tion are perceived quite negatively in Japanese culture. Second
(7-8 years old), third (8-9 years old), and fifth graders (10-11
years old) at a Japanese elementary school were asked how their
classmates (including themselves) would evaluate a hypotheti-
cal peer who commented on his own superb athletic perfor-
mance either in a modest, self-restrained way or in a self-en-
hancing way. The evaluation was solicited on the dimension of
personality (“Is he a good person?”) and on the dimension of
ability (“Is he good at [the relevant athletic domain]?”). As
shown in Figure 4A, the personality of the modest peer was
perceived much more positively than was that of the self-en-
hancing peer. Furthermore, this difference became more pro-
nounced as the age (grade) of the respondents increased. A simi-
lar finding also has been reported for Chinese college students
in Hong Kong by Bond, Leung, and Wan (1982), who found
that individuals giving humble or self-effacing attributions fol-
lowing success were liked better than those giving self-enhanc-
ing attribution. The most intriguing aspect of the Yoshida et al.
(1982) study, however, is their finding for the ability evaluation,
which showed a complete crossover interaction (see Figure 4B).
Whereas the second graders took the comment of the peer at
face value, perceiving the self-enhancing peer to be more com-
petent than the modest peer, this trend disappeared for the
third graders, and then completely reversed for the fifth
graders. Thus, the fifth graders perceived that the modest peer
was more competent than the self-enhancing peer. These find-
ings indicate that as children are socialized in an interdepen-
dent cultural context, they begin to appreciate the cultural
value of self-restraint and, furthermore, to believe in a positive
association between self-restraint and other favorable attributes
of the person not only in the social, emotional domains but also
in the domains of ability and competence. Although it is cer-
tainly possible for those with independent selves to overdo their
self-enhancement (see Schlenker & Leary, 1982), for the most
part, the American prescription is to confidently display and
express one’s strengths, and those who do so are evaluated posi-
tively (e.g., Greenwald, 1980; Mullen & Riordan, 1988).
Self- or other-serving bias. Given the appreciation that those
with interdependent selves have for self-restraint and self-con-
trol, the various self-enhancing biases that are common in West-
ern culture may not be prevalent in many Asian cultures. In an
initial examination of potential cultural variation in the ten-
dency to see oneself as different from others, Markus and
Kitayama (in press) administered questionnaires containing a
series of false-uniqueness items to large classes of Japanese col-
lege students in Japan and to large classes of American college
6 For a compelling analysis of how self-esteem is related to culture,
see Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski (in press).
CULTURE AND THE SELF 243
A. Personality B. Ability
14 r-
CO
“ca 10
14 r-
I «
CO
I 10
Ul
-O- Modest
—K— Self-enhancing
I I I
Grade Grade
15 = most positive
1 = most negative
Figure 4. Mean evaluations by second, third, and fifth graders. (A: Personality of target person. B: Ability
of target person. Drawn from results reported by Yoshida, Kojo, and Kaku, 1982.)
students in the United States. In both cases, the classes were
chosen to be representative of university students as a whole.
They asked a series of questions of the form “What proportion
of students in this university have higher intellectual abilities
than yourself?” There were marked differences between the
Japanese and the American students in their estimations of
their own uniqueness; the Americans displayed significantly
more false uniqueness than the Japanese. American students
assumed that only 30% of people on average would be better
than themselves on various traits and abilities (e.g., memory,
athletic ability, independence, and sympathy), whereas the Japa-
nese students showed almost no evidence of this false unique-
ness. In most cases, the Japanese estimated that about 50% of
students would be better than they were or have more of a given
trait or ability. This is, of course, the expected finding if a repre-
sentative sample of college students were evaluating themselves
in a relatively nonbiased manner.
In a recent series of studies conducted in Japan with Japanese
college students, Takata (1987) showed that there is no self-en-
hancing bias in social comparison. In fact, he found just the
opposite—a strong bias in the self-effacing direction. Partici-
pants performed several anagram problems that were alleged to
measure memory ability. After completion of the task, the par-
ticipants were presented with their actual performance on some
of the trials and also the performance of another person picked
at random from the pool of subjects who had allegedly com-
pleted the study. The direction of the self-other difference was
manipulated to be either favorable or unfavorable to the subject.
The dependent measures were collected in a private situation to
minimize self-presentational concerns. Furthermore, because
it was considered possible that the subjects might still believe
they had a chance of seeing the other person afterward, in a
followup study the “other person” was replaced with a computer
program that allegedly simulated the task performance of the
average college student.
Several studies (e.g., Goethals, 1989; Marks, 1984; Wylie,
1979) reveal that with respect to abilities, Americans typically
give themselves higher ratings than they give to others. Thus,
when a comparison with another is unfavorable to the self, the
self-enhancement hypothesis predicts that Americans should
show little confidence in this estimate of their ability and seek
further information. This, in fact, was the case in an American
study by J. M. Schwartz and Smith (1976), which used a proce-
dure very similar to Takata’s (1987). When subjects performed
poorly relative to another person, they had very little confi-
dence in their own score. These American data contrast sharply
with the Japanese data. Takata’s study shows a tendency exactly
the opposite of self-enhancement. Furthermore, the pattern did
not depend on whether the comparison was made with another
person or with the computer program. The Japanese subjects
felt greater confidence in their self-evaluation and were less
interested in seeking further information when they had unfa-
vorable self-evaluations than when they had favorable ones. Sim-
ilarly, Wada (1988) also reported that Japanese college students
were convinced of their level of ability on a novel, information-
integration task after failure feedback, but not after success
feedback. These data suggest what might be called a modesty
bias or an other-enhancement bias in social comparison.
A similar modesty bias among those with interdependent
selves has also been suggested by Shikanai (1978), who studied
the causal attribution for one’s own success or failure in an
ability task. Typically, American subjects believe that their in-
ternal attributes such as ability or competence are extremely
important to their performance, and this is particularly the case
when they have succeeded (e.g., Davis & Stephan, 1980; Gilmor
& Reid, 1979; Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1982;
Weiner, 1986). In the Shikanai study, Japanese college students
performed an anagram task. Half of them were subsequently
led to believe that they scored better than the average and thus
“succeeded,” whereas the other half were led to believe that they
scored worse than the average and thus “failed.” Subjects were
then asked to choose the most important factor in explaining
the success or the failure for each of 10 pairs made from the 5
possible causes for performance (i.e., ability, effort, task diffi-
culty [or ease], luck, and mental-physical “shape” of the day).
Shikanai analyzed the average number of times each cause was
picked as most important (possible minimum of 0 and maxi-
mum of 4). As shown in Figure 5, a modesty bias was again
obtained, especially after success. Whereas failure was attrib-
uted mainly to the lack of effort, success was attributed primar-
244 HAZEL ROSE MARKUS AND SHINOBU KITAYAMA
gSuccessFailure
a,3uc
(0t: 2
oa.
E
“” 1
Ability Effort Task Luck Shape
Difficulty/Ease
Causes
Figure 5. Mean importance rating given to each of five causes following
success and failure. (Drawn from results reported by Shikanai, 1978.)
ily to the ease of the task. Furthermore, the potential role of
ability in explaining success was very much downplayed. In-
deed, ability was perceived to be more important after a failure
than after a success, whereas task difficulty (or its ease) was
regarded to be more important after a success than after a fail-
ure. Subsequent studies by Shikanai that examined attribution
of success and failure of others did not find this pattern (Shi-
kanai, 1983, 1984). Thus, the pattern of “modest” appraisal
seems to be specific to the perception and the presentation of
the self and does not derive from a more general causal schema
applicable to both self and others. For others, ability is impor-
tant in explaining success. Yoshida et al. (1982, Studies 2 and 3),
who studied explanations of performance in a Japanese elemen-
tary school, found the tendency to de-emphasize the role of
ability in explaining success as early as the second grade.
Observations of a tendency to self-efface, and not to reveal
the typical American pattern of blaming others or the situation
when explaining failure, have been made outside of the experi-
mental laboratory as well. In a study by Hess et al. (1986), Japa-
nese mothers explained poor performance among their fifth
graders by claiming a lack of effort. In marked contrast, Ameri-
can mothers implicated effort in their explanations but viewed
ability and the quality of the training in the school as equally
important. This study also required the children to explain
their own poor performance by assigning 10 points to each of
five alternatives (ability, effort, training at school, bad luck, and
difficulty of math). Japanese children gave 5.6 points to lack of
effort, but American children gave 1.98 points. H. Stevenson
(personal communication, September 19, 1989) noted that in
observations of elementary school classrooms, Japanese
teachers, in contrast to American teachers, rarely refer to differ-
ences in ability among their students as an explanation for per-
formance differences, even though the range of ability as as-
sessed by standardized tests is approximately the same. Those
with interdependent selves thus seem more likely to view intel-
lectual achievement not as a fixed attribute that one has a cer-
tain amount of, but instead as a product that can be produced
by individual effort in a given social context.7
The nature of modesty. The exact nature of these modesty,
self-effacing, or other-enhancing biases has yet to be specified.
Perhaps those from interdependent cultures have simply
learned that humility is the desired response, or the culturally
appropriate response, and that it is wise not to gloat over their
performance or to express confidence in their ability. This inter-
pretation implies that the modesty biases observed in the stud-
ies described herein are primarily the result of impression man-
agement and that the subjects involved actually could have held
different, perhaps opposite, beliefs about themselves and their
ability. However, it is also possible that these other-enhance-
ment biases reflect, or are accompanied by, psychologically au-
thentic self-perceptions. There are two related possibilities con-
sistent with this suggestion.
First, given the press not to stand out and to fit in, people in
interdependent cultures may acquire through socialization a
habitual modest-response tendency. In large part, it may be a
function of the need to pay more attention to the other than to
the self, just as the self-serving bias is believed to result from a
predominant focus on the self (see Ross & Fletcher, 1985). Con-
sequently, for those with interdependent selves, whenever cer-
tain aspects of self need to be appraised in public, a modest,
self-effacing pattern of responses may occur spontaneously. Fur-
thermore, this modesty can be motivated by many other-fo-
cused emotions that are central to the construal of self as an
interdependent entity. From an independent viewpoint, such
modesty seems false and the result of suppressing a “natural”
pride in one’s attributes. Yet, such pride is only natural within a
view of the self as an independent entity. From an interdepen-
dent view, modest responses may be experienced quite posi-
tively and engender the pleasant, other-focused feelings that are
associated with connecting and maintaining interdependence.
Such positive, other-focused feelings also may be responsible
for the finding that Japanese students are more convinced of
and more confident in their ability after failure than success.
The satisfaction of doing well that can accompany good perfor-
mance on a novel, decontextualized task may be mitigated by
the threat of potential uniqueness and uncertainty over how to
respond to it. Moreover, if a predominant basis of self-esteem is
how well one fits in and preserves relationships and interper-
sonal harmony, then failing to distinguish oneself with a highly
successful performance may not be particularly devastating.8
7 Of course, because those in Asian cultures believe high ability to be
a result of effort does not mean that they do not differentiate between
ability and effort. In all likelihood, they believe that effort and ability
are related in a multiplicative fashion to determine performance. Thus,
for instance, in a recent study by Stipek, Weiner, and Li (1989), Chinese
respondents reasoned, just as their American counterparts did, that if
a person shows the same level of performance with much less effort
expended on the task, the person must have a high level of the relevant
ability. Our point is simply that those in Asian cultures believe that
abilities are relatively more changeable over a long span of time
through the effort the person expends.
8 As noted, achievement may sometimes be construed as a means to
complete one’s interdependence, as may well be the case for a Japanese
high school student who studies hard to gain admission to a prestigious
college. In this case, failure may well be extremely troubling for those
with interdependent selves.
CULTURE AND THE SELF 245
Certainly it will not be as devastating as it is to the person whose
self-esteem rests primarily on doing well individually and on
separating oneself from others.
Second, among those with interdependent selves, there may
not be an awareness of one’s own ability in general or in the
abstract. Instead, one’s own ability in a given task under a given
condition may be inferred from whatever cues are available in
the specific situation in which the task is performed. And what-
ever is inferred in this way may be experienced as authentic and
genuine. For example, upon receipt of feedback about their
ability, interdependent selves may first attend and think not so
much about their ability as about the approval or disapproval of
the person who gives the feedback. If approval or disapproval
can be strongly and unambiguously inferred, then the percep-
tion of approval or disapproval may provide a strong heuristic
clue about ability; if one receives approval, one must have high
ability in this situation, whereas if one receives disapproval,
then one must have low ability in this situation. In the absence
of a strong, enduring belief about one’s ability in the abstract,
such a heuristic may provide a subjectively genuine self-apprai-
sal. This analysis also suggests why those with interdependent
selves may be convinced of their low ability after a failure feed-
back to a much greater extent than they are convinced of their
high ability after a success feedback. Because of the prevalent
social norms for polite behavior in interdependent cultures, dis-
approval can be more unequivocally inferred from negative
feedback than approval can be inferred from positive feedback.
These suggestions about the source of a modest self-appraisal
have yet to be empirically tested, but they are worthy of careful
inquiry because these forms of self-appraisal may be quite
unique to interdependent cultures. On the basis of empirical
evidence, however, this much seems clear: Those with interde-
pendent selves will typically not claim that they are better than
others, will not express pleasure in the state of feeling superior
to others, and indeed may not enjoy it. A strong, pervasive
motive for self-enhancement through taking personal credit for
success, denying personal responsibility for failure, and believ-
ing oneself to be better than average may be primarily a West-
ern phenomenon. It is akin to being the nail that stands out.
So far, the empirical evidence on cultural variation in self-re-
lated motives is limited largely to differences in self-enhance-
ment versus other enhancement. However, other self-related
motives, such as self-affirmation (Steele, 1988), self-verification
(Swann & Read, 1981), and self-actualization (Maslow, 1954),
may also differ across cultures in similar ways. A series of stud-
ies by Steele has shown that the negative psychological impact
of one’s own misdeed, blunder, or public embarrassment can be
reduced once another, significant aspect of the self is activated
and affirmed. Thus, one’s threatened self-worth can be restored
by a reminder of another, unthreatened aspect of the self (e.g., “I
may not be athletic, but at least I’m creative”). To the extent that
very different aspects of self are highly valued among those with
interdependent selves, this process of self-affirmation may also
differ. For those with independent selves it will be the internal
attributes of self that may most effectively offset each other and
reestablish threatened self-esteem, whereas for those with inter-
dependent selves it may be the more public aspects of the self,
like one’s significant social roles, statuses, and important inter-
personal relations, that must be focal in self-esteem mainte-
nance. Thus, self-affirmation for an interdependent self will
require an opportunity to ensure that one is fitting in and en-
gaging in proper action in a given situation.
In a similar vein, exactly what is verified in self-verification
and what is actualized in self-actualization may also differ con-
siderably across cultures. Currently, it is common to assume
that individuals are motivated to verify and actualize an inter-
nally coherent set of attributes that they regard as significant.
Our present analysis would imply, however, that people with
interdependent selves may strive to verify and actualize the
more public qualities of the self—the ones that allow them to
conceive of themselves as respectable and decent participants
in significant interpersonal relationships.
Furthermore, among those with interdependent selves, self-
verification and self-actualization may even be achieved
through the realization of some more general, abstract forms of
relation, that is, one’s relationship to or one’s role in society or
even in the natural or cosmic system. The self-description stud-
ies reviewed earlier suggest this possibility. In general, the self-
descriptions of those with interdependent selves have been
found to be quite concrete and situation specific (see Cousins,
1989). There is, however, one interesting, reliable exception to
this. Subjects from Asian cultural backgrounds (presumably
those with predominantly interdependent selves) often provide
extremely global self-descriptions, such as “I am a unique cre-
ation,” “I am a human being,” “I am an organic form,” and “I
am a product of my environment.” It could appear that these
statements are too abstract to be informative in any pragmatic
sense (Rosch, 1978). The lack of information contained in these
descriptions, however, may be more apparent than real. Note
that these global statements presuppose a view of the world as
an encompassing whole in which these subjects perceive them-
selves to be a part or a participant. And for these subjects, it may
be these relationships that must be verified and actualized.
We have suggested the different forms that some self-related
motives might assume if they are based in an interdependent
rather than an independent construal of self. Further empirical
work is required to determine whether the types of self-related
motives described herein are indeed as prevalent in Eastern
interdependent cultures as they have been found to be in West-
ern, particularly American, cultures. It could be that these self-
relevant motives are not part of the set of universal individual
strivings,9 but instead an outgrowth of an independent self-sys-
tem rooted in the press for separation and individuation.
Conclusions
We have described two divergent construals of the self—an
independent view and an interdependent view. The most signifi-
cant differences between these two construals is in the role that
is assigned to the other in self-definition. Others and the
surrounding social context are important in both construals,
but for the interdependent self, others are included within the
boundaries of the self because relations with others in specific
9 It is intriguing that Murray’s (1938) original study of motives, as
well as Hilgard’s (1953,1987) update of it, did not include any of the
self-focused motives that are so central to current research on the self.
246 HAZEL ROSE MARKUS AND SHINOBU KITAYAMA
contexts are the defining features of the self. In the words of
Lebra (1976), the individual is in some respects “a fraction” and
becomes whole when fitting into or occupying one’s proper
place in a social unit. The sense of individuality that accompa-
nies an interdependent self includes an attentiveness and re-
sponsiveness to others that one either explicitly or implicitly
assumes will be reciprocated by these others, as well as the
willful management of one’s other-focused feelings and desires
so as to maintain and further the reciprocal interpersonal rela-
tionship. One is conscious of where one belongs with respect to
others and assumes a receptive stance toward these others, con-
tinually adjusting and accommodating to these others in many
aspects of behavior (Azuma, 1984; Weisz et al., 1984). Such acts
of fitting in and accommodating are often intrinsically reward-
ing, because they give rise to pleasant, other-focused emotions
(e.g., feeling of connection) while diminishing unpleasant ones
(e.g., shame) and, furthermore, because the self-restraint re-
quired in doing so forms an important basis of self-esteem.
Typically, then, it is others rather than the self that serve as the
referent for organizing one’s experiences.
With an independent construal of the self, others are less
centrally implicated in one’s current self-definition or identity.
Certainly, others are important for social comparison, for re-
flected appraisal, and in their role as the targets of one’s actions,
yet at any given moment, the self is assumed to be a complete,
whole, autonomous entity, without the others. The defining fea-
tures of an independent self are attributes, abilities, traits, de-
sires, and motives that may have been social products but that
have become the “property” of the self-contained individual
(see Sampson, 1989) and that are assumed to be the source of
the individual’s behavior. The sense of individuality that accom-
panies this construal of the self includes a sense of oneself as an
agent, as a producer of one’s actions. One is conscious of being
in control over the surrounding situation, and of the need to
express one’s own thoughts, feelings, and actions to others, and
is relatively less conscious of the need to receive the thoughts,
feelings, and actions of others. Such acts of standing out are
often intrinsically rewarding because they elicit pleasant, ego-
focused emotions (e.g., pride) and also reduce unpleasant ones
(e.g., frustration). Furthermore, the acts of standing out, them-
selves, form an important basis of self-esteem.
The Role of the Self
The relative importance that is accorded to others in these
two construals has a wide range of psychological implications.
In this article, we have outlined some of the cognitive, emo-
tional, and motivational consequences of holding a view of the
self that includes others and that requires others to define the
self. Although a rapidly expanding volume of studies suggest
that some aspects of cognitive functioning are relatively hard-
wired, many features of the way people perceive, categorize, or
assign causality are probably not basic processes that derive in
any straightforward way from the functioning of the human
machinery or “hardware.” Rather, these processes are to a large
extent personal, reflecting the nature of the self that anchors
them. Thus, they reflect all of those factors, including cultural
aspects, that jointly determine the self. If one perceives oneself
as embedded within a larger context of which one is an interde-
pendent part, it is likely that other objects or events will be
perceived in a similar way. For example, a given event involving
a particular actor will be perceived as arising from the situa-
tional context of which this actor is an interdependent part,
rather than as stemming solely from the attributes of the actor.
Or, in answering any question, one’s first tendency may be to
consider the particular social situation that is defined by the
current interaction (e.g., teacher-student, worker-co-worker,
and younger-elder) and then to gauge the range of responses
that are most appropriate to this situation. These construals of
self are probably abstracted through early patterns of direct
interactions with parents and peers. The way people initially,
and thus thereafter, most naturally or effortlessly perceive and
understand the world is rooted in their self-perceptions and
self-understandings, understandings that are themselves con-
strained by the patterns of social interactions characteristic of
the given culture.
Consequences for Self-Processes
Our discussion of the cognitive, emotional, or motivational
consequences has by no means exhausted the range of potential
consequences of holding an independent or interdependent
construal of the self. Consider first the set of processes con-
nected by a hyphen to the self. It is reasonable to assume that all
of these phenomena (e.g., self-affirmation [Steele, 1988], self-
verification [Swann, 1983], self-consciousness [Fenigstein,
Scheier, & Buss, 1975], self-control [Carver & Scheier, 1981],
self-actualization [Maslow, 1954], or self-handicapping [Jones
& Berglas, 1978]) could assume a somewhat different form de-
pending on how interdependent the self is with others.
Self-esteem for those with an independent construal of the
self depends on one’s abilities, attributes, and achievements.
The most widely used measure of self-esteem, the Rosenberg
Self-Esteem Scale, requires the endorsement of items like “I am
a person of worth” or “I am proud of my abilities.” Self-esteem
associated with an interdependent self could include endorse-
ment of similar items, although what it means to be, for exam-
ple, a person of worth could well have a different meaning. Or
high self-esteem may be more strongly associated with an en-
dorsement of items that gauge one’s ability to read the situation
and to respond as required. If this is the case, a threat or a
challenge to the self may not come in the form of feedback that
one is unlike a cherished conception of the inner or disposi-
tional self (dumb instead of smart; submissive rather than domi-
nant) but instead in terms of a threat of a disruption of, or a
disconnection from, the relation or set of relations with which
one forms an interdependent whole.
The focus on the distinction between independent versus
interdependent selves has the potential to provide a means of
integrating research on a large number of separate personality
constructs. One of the significant distinctions that appears re-
peatedly throughout Western psychology reflects a variation
among individuals in how tuned in, sensitive to, oriented to-
ward, focused on, or concerned they are with others. The intro-
version-extraversion dimension reflects this difference, as does
the inner-directed-outer-directed distinction (Reisman, Den-
ney, & Glazer, 1950). Other related distinctions include high
versus low self-monitoring (Snyder, 1979), personal identity
CULTURE AND THE SELF 247
versus social identity (Cheek, 1989; Hogan, 1975), public versus
private self-consciousness (Fenigstein, 1984), social orientation
versus individual orientation (Greenwald, 1980), collectivism-
individualism (Hui, 1988; Triandis, 1989), and field indepen-
dence-field dependence (Witkin & Goodenough, 1977). In
fact, Witkin and his colleagues described a field-dependent
person as one who includes others within the boundaries of the
self and who does not make a sharp distinction between the self
and others. Many of the empirical findings (described in Wit-
kin & Goodenough, 1977; Witkin, Goodenough, & Oltman,
1979) about the interpersonal expertise and sensitivities of
field-dependent people are similar to those described herein
for people with interdependent selves.
unbelievable. People conform, obey, diffuse responsibility in a
group, allow themselves to be easily persuaded about all man-
ner of things, and become hopelessly committed to others on
the basis of minimal action (e.g., see Myers, 1989). Even within
highly individualist Western culture, most people are still much
less self-reliant, self-contained, or self-sufficient than the pre-
vailing cultural ideology suggests that they should be. Perhaps
Western models of the self are quite at odds with actual individ-
ual social behavior and should be reformulated to reflect the
substantial interdependence that characterizes even Western
individualists. Sampson (1989) has recently argued that the real-
ity of globalization and a shrinking world will force just such a
rethinking of the nature of the individual.
Consequences for Social Psychological Phenomena
Other social behaviors may also depend on one’s mediating
model of the self (see Triandis, 1989, for a recent analysis of
some of these effects). Thus, for one with an interdependent self,
conformity may not reflect an inability to resist social pressure
and to stick by one’s own perceptions, attitudes, or beliefs (the
defining features of the self). Instead, conformity to particular
others with whom the other is interdependent can be a highly
valued end state. It can signify a willingness to be responsive to
others and to adjust one’s own demands and desires so as to
maintain the ever-important relation. The conformity observed
for these subjects with interdependent selves when surrounded
with others who form part of an important social unit, could
well be much higher than typically observed. However, confor-
mity to the desires and demands of those outside the important
social unit or the self-defining in-group may not be required at
all. Thus, for those with interdependent selves, a typical Asch-
type conformity paradigm involving subjects and strangers as
confederates may result in less conformity than typically ob-
served in American studies.
Studies of other phenomena such as social facilitation or so-
cial loafing could also produce differential effects, depending
on the self-systems of the subjects. Should those with interde-
pendent construals of the self show pronounced social facilita-
tion compared with those with individual selves? Or should
those with interdependent selves be less susceptible to social
loafing (decrements in performance when one’s individual con-
tribution to the group product cannot be identified; see Har-
kins, Latane, & Williams, 1980)? Our analysis is also relevant to
two of the central problems in Western psychology—the incon-
sistency between attitudes and behavior and the inconsistency
between personality and behavior. As we have noted, interde-
pendent selves do not prescribe or require such a consistency
between one’s internal attributes and one’s actions. Conse-
quently, the press for consistency should be much less impor-
tant and much less bemoaned when not observed. In fact, con-
sistency from an interdependent perspective may reflect a lack
of flexibility, insensitivity to the context, rigidity, or imma-
turity.
Further analysis of the consequences of different construals
of the self may also prove fruitful in understanding some basic
social psychological questions. Social psychologists report that
people are enormously influenced by others, often to an extent
that the investigators and certainly individuals themselves, find
Construals of the Self and Gender
Many important gender differences may also be linked to
divergent construals of the self. Recent feminist theory on em-
pathy suggests that relations have a power and a significance in
women’s lives that have gone largely unrecognized (e.g., Belenky,
Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986; Jordan & Surrey, 1986; J.
B. Miller, 1986; Stewart & Lykes, 1985). An awareness of and
sensitivity to others is described as one of most significant fea-
tures of the psychology of women. If this is the case, then self-
esteem and self-validation should depend not only on being
able to do a job well, but on fostering and sustaining relation-
ships. As Gilligan (1986) claimed, a willingness and an ability
to care are standards of self-evaluation for many women. This
theoretical work is forging a new vision of dependence, one that
is similar in many ways to some Eastern views. Being depen-
dent does not invariably mean being helpless, powerless, or
without control. It often means being interdependent. It thus
signifies a conviction that one is able to have an effect on others
and is willing to be responsive to others and to become engaged
with them. In other words, there is an alternative to selfishness
(which implies the exclusion of others) besides selflessness
(which is to imply the exclusion of the self or self-sacrifice):
There is a self defined in relationship to others (see Chodorow,
1978; Gilligan, 1982; Markus & Oyserman, 1988).
Difficult Questions
Carrying out the research necessary to systematically investi-
gate the range of basic consequences of having one or another
construal of the self raises several complex questions. Some of
these we have only touched on. For example, a persistent issue
is how deep or pervasive are these cultural differences? Are the
observed differences primarily a reflection of differences in
styles of behavioral expression, or do they also reflect differ-
ences in the phenomenology accompanying the behavior? If
there are norms against the display or expression of anger, what
happens to the nature of the felt anger? In other words, is it the
case, as we suggest here, that these norms can sometimes be
internalized to the extent that they determine the nature of
one’s experience? For example, a recent study by Bontempo,
Lobel, and Triandis (1989) compared the public and private
responses of individuals from a collectivist culture with those of
individuals from an individualist culture. The researchers
asked respondents to indicate how enjoyable it would be to
248 HAZEL ROSE MARKUS AND SHINOBU KITAYAMA
engage in a time-consuming, individually costly behavior such
as visiting a friend in the hospital. Only in the public condition
did individualists claim that the behavior would be enjoyable.
The collectivists, in contrast, claimed that the behavior would
be enjoyable even when their responses were private.
The view that altruistic behaviors are only seemingly altru-
istic and that they are public actions without any subjective,
private foundation can perhaps be traced to the insistence of
Western psychologists on the internal attributes (feeling,
thought, and traits) as the universal referents for behavior. They
have thus understandably failed to attend to the possibility of
the other as a referent for behavior, and thus to the possibility of
other-focused emotions. There is, however, the possibility that
such emotions can motivate genuine, other-oriented, altruistic
behaviors, without any conscious, or even unconscious, calcu-
lation of individual payoff, and as such serve as the important
glue of interdependent relationships.
Another thorny issue centers on the assessment of cultural
differences. The use of introspective reports, for example,
which are typically quite useful in the study of cognition, emo-
tion, and motivation, may be problematic in cross-cultural re-
search because within a given cultural context, people have
little access to the absolute extent of their attention or respon-
siveness to others. This may explain, for example, why Triandis
et al. (1988) found that those with collective selves do not report
a greater than average awareness of or concern for the demands
of others. Another persistent issue is that of translation and
equating stimuli and questionnaires. Can psychologists readily
assume that when an American and a Japanese use the word
embarrass it indicates a similar emotional experience? Can they
hypothesize, for example, that those with interdependent selves
should show more high self-monitoring (i.e., attention to the
behavior of others) than those with independent selves, and
then assume that a translation of Snyder’s (1979) scale into Japa-
nese or Chinese will be sufficient to reflect these differences?
One may even ask to what extent a construct such as self-moni-
toring can be unequivocally denned across different cultures
with remarkably different construals of self.
In sum, we have argued that the view one holds of the self is
critical in understanding individual behavior and also in un-
derstanding the full nature of those phenomena that implicate
the self. A failure to replicate certain findings in different cul-
tural contexts should not lead to immediate despair over the
lack of generality of various psychological principles or to the
conclusion of some anthropologists that culturally divergent in-
dividuals inhabit incomparably different worlds. Instead, it is
necessary to identify the theoretical elements or processes that
explain these differences. We suggest that how the self is con-
strued may be one such powerful theoretical element.
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CULTURE AND THE SELF 253
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Received February 1,1990
Revision received June 28,1990
Accepted July 11,1990 •
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Chapter 2
Studying the Self
2.1 Who Am I?
My Self
Awareness of the Self
Evalua�ng the Self: Self-Esteem
The Posi�ve Self
2.2 The Ac�ng Self
Presen�ng the Self
Regula�ng the Self
The Power of the Self
Chapter Summary
Hemera/Thinkstock
Learning Objec�ves
By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:
Define social psychology
Describe the history of social psychology
Describe the scien�fic method
Discuss the observa�onal method and explain when that method is most appropriate to the research ques�on
Discuss the correla�onal method and explain when that method is most appropriate to the research ques�on
Discuss the experimental method and explain when that method is most appropriate to the research ques�on
Define terms associated with the experimental method including independent and dependent variable,
experimental group and control group, random assignment and random sampling, internal and external validity,
generalizability, experimental and mundane realism, and demand characteris�cs
Understand the dangers of hindsight bias
Chapter Outline
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* * *
Think back to your last job interview. What did the interviewer ask you? If you have been through a number of interviewers, have you no�ced any
common ques�ons? Job applicants are o�en asked to describe themselves in an interview (Kennedy, 2008). Ar�cula�ng strengths and weaknesses is
also common (Powers, 2010). What do you think a job interviewer is trying to discover by asking these ques�ons? How does your understanding
and view of self impact how you answer these ques�ons?
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Our possible selves can influence our behaviors.
2.1
Who Am I?
“Tell us about yourself” is a popular interviewer request. If you were asked the ques�on “Who are you?” how would you answer it? Psychologists have long
explored our views of our self and how we come to those views (James, 1890). Self-concept is the collec�on of things you know about yourself—such as your
overall cogni�ve understanding (beliefs, a�tudes, and opinions) about yourself. When you answer the ques�on “Who am I?” you are describing your self-
concept.
My Self
What we know about ourselves is not just a random collec�on of facts and beliefs. Human beings (or at least the brains of human beings) like organiza�on and
pa�ern. We naturally categorize and organize informa�on that comes into our environment (Markus, 1977; Macrae, Milne, & Bodenhausen, 1994). These
organized categories of informa�on are called schemas. You may recognize this term if you have taken a developmental psychology course. Developmental
psychologists inves�gate how children learn to sort through, recognize, and categorize informa�on. Children do not know what a dog is when they come into the
world—they must learn this concept. You know that dogs are furry, have four legs, and bark; your schema of a dog is a barking, four-legged, furry animal.
We have schemas about ourselves as well. Self-schemas are knowledge structures about the self. Although some�mes the terms self-schema and self-concept are
used interchangeably, self-schemas organize and help us use the vast amounts of informa�on within the self-concept. Because they organize and help us use
informa�on about ourselves, self-schemas affect how we view the world (Markus, 1977). People tend to no�ce things in the world that are associated with their
schema, and engage in behavior that fits with their self-schema. For example, would you describe yourself as an exerciser? Do you like to keep in shape, stay
physically ac�ve, and work out regularly? If so, you have an exercise self-schema. Researchers consider schemas to be on a con�nuum, so if your responses to
the preceding ques�ons were “absolutely not,” you would have a nonexercise self-schema. Those in the middle researchers call aschema�c in regard to a self-
schema for exercise. Aschema�c simply means “without schema.” In general, individuals who have a self-schema for exercise are quicker to respond to s�muli
that pertains to their schema (energe�c), are able to provide more examples of behaviors that relate to their schema (running), and are more likely to choose
and do behaviors in accord with that schema (par�cipate in an exercise program) (Kendzierski, 1990).
We have a tendency to be�er remember those things that are related to ourselves, something called the self-reference effect (Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977).
For example, you might remember that Joelle has a blue car like yours, but not remember what color car Shana drives because it is different from yours. We
o�en think about ourselves and relate things to ourselves, and this appears to be a good strategy for memory (Symons & Johnson, 1997; Yang, Truong, Fuss, &
Bislimovic, 2012). Researchers have even located the area of the brain associated with the self-reference effect, an area of the prefrontal cortex, a part of the
brain in the front of your head, behind your forehead (Leshikar & Duarte, 2012). Individuals with damage to this part of the brain do not engage in the self-
reference effect (Philippi, Duff, Denburg, Tranel, & Radrauf, 2012). As you study, keeping the self-reference effect in mind may be helpful. Relate new material to
your life, and when it is �me to remember the material later, you will be more likely to be able to come up with it.
Possible Self
Another popular interview ques�on is “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” Our concep�ons of
ourselves include not only what we currently are but also who we might become. Possible selves
are the selves we hope to be and the selves we fear we might become (Erikson, 2007; Markus &
Nurius, 1986). A job applicant, for example, might have a vision of herself as the inhabitant of the
corner office, efficiently handling mul�ple tasks before a�ending a mee�ng where she gives a
brilliant sales presenta�on. Possible selves influence the choices we make (Markus and Nurius,
1986). For example, a job applicant with a “successful execu�ve” possible self is likely to apply for
jobs that will help her get closer to that possible self and work hard to prepare for job interviews.
Possible selves also change the way we view our current circumstances. The applicant with the
“successful execu�ve” possible self is likely to be more upset by a rejec�on le�er from a company
where she could have moved into that execu�ve posi�on than would another applicant without that
possible self. Possible selves, however, are more suscep�ble to change based on feedback from the
environment than are other parts of the self. For example, a�er receiving several rejec�ons, the job
applicant may revise her “successful execu�ve” possible self to a poten�ally more a�ainable
“adequate sales manager” possible self.
We have possible selves for what we hope to become, but we also have possible selves for what we
fear we may become. For example, someone may have a possible self that sits in front of a pile of
bills, unemployed and broke. Such an image mo�vates a person to apply for jobs and prepare well
for interviews. Mo�va�on is highest when there is a balance between a feared possible self and a
possible self in a posi�ve and desired state.
Delinquent youth have a feared self that con�nues involvement in delinquent ac�vity but o�en that
is not balanced out with an expected self that does well in school or gets a part-�me job. Without a
vision of themselves in a more posi�ve role, these youth lack the mo�va�on to do the things they
might to put them on a more posi�ve path (Oyserman & Markus, 1990). Possible selves do seem to become less important with �me; perhaps because our
possible selves become our current selves, and we let go of selves we will never become. Over the course of adulthood, possible selves play less of a role in self-
mo�va�on (Frazier, Barreto, & Newman, 2012).
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Even without achieving a hoped for possible self, simply imagining a successful possible self can have a posi�ve impact on our well-being (King, 2001). As might
be expected, people who get closer to their hoped for possible selves and avoid feared possible selves during life transi�ons have more posi�ve emo�ons and
less depression (Manzi, Vignoles, & Regalia, 2010). That is not to say all of our hoped for possible selves need to be realized for us to lead full and sa�sfying
lives. Possible selves that have been lost due to life circumstances or missed opportuni�es can lead to greater maturity and courage in facing life’s challenges
(King & Hicks, 2007). A mother with a disabled child may have lost her “proud mother of valedictorian son at college gradua�on” possible self, but may also have
learned to face each day with joy and courage in mourning the loss of that possible self.
Ought, Ideal, and Actual Self
Possible selves can be categorized as a self that fulfills all responsibili�es and obliga�ons, and a self that achieves hopes, wishes, or dreams. An ought self is the
self we feel we should be or others feel we should be, and includes obliga�ons, responsibili�es, and roles. The ideal self is the self we want to be or think others
want us to be, and includes our hopes and dreams for ourselves in the future. The actual self is the self we believe we are today. Self-discrepancy theory
proposes that differences between our actual selves and our ought selves or ideal selves lead to different emo�ons and mo�va�ons (Higgins, 1987). The ideal
self and the ought self serve as guides for evalua�ng one’s behavior, called self-guides. For example if a person’s ideal self contains a dream of ge�ng all As in
college, then grades received in classes would be judged based on that standard for behavior.
Differences between the different selves bring about different emo�ons. A discrepancy between the actual self and the ideal self can bring about dejec�on-
related emo�ons like disappointment, dissa�sfac�on, or hopelessness (Higgins, 1987). At the extreme, hopelessness contributes to depression and thoughts of
suicide (Corne�e, Strauman, Abramson, & Busch, 2009). When ideal selves are defined by others rather than by the self, a gap between the two will s�ll result in
dejec�on-related emo�ons, but those emo�ons may focus more on being ashamed or embarrassed. On the other hand, when the actual self and the ought self
do not align, emo�ons of anxiety, nervousness, guilt, or fear may result (Higgins, 1987). A son who believes it is his duty to call his mother regularly but does not
do so may feel anxious or guilty about that behavior. The discrepancies between our actual selves and our ideal or ought selves tend to be stable over �me
(Strauman, 1996). Although one may achieve a goal of the ideal self or do a duty of the ought self, other goals and du�es tend to replace those that have been
achieved, contribu�ng to a stability in the way one sees oneself and approaches the world.
Test Yourself
Click on each ques�on below to reveal the answer.
If you saw yourself as a gardener, gardening was part of your self-schema, how would that impact you?
(h�p://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�
Research suggests you would choose and do behaviors in line with your gardener self-schema: You might peruse seed catalogs rather than
fashion catalogs in the winter, grow tomatoes and beans if you had space, or talk to others about gardening. The self-reference effect means
you would likely know which of your neighbors were growing gardens.
Sam has a feared possible self that includes being unemployed and depressed, but this is not balanced out by a possible self that is
successful at a job and happy. Should we worry about Sam?
(h�p://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�
Yes. Lack of balance between a feared and a more posi�ve possible self can be problema�c. Without a posi�ve vision to work toward, Sam
may lack the mo�va�on to work to avoid the feared possible self, because he is not working toward anything posi�ve.
Awareness of the Self
In answering a “Who am I?” ques�on for an interviewer, we may answer to the best of our ability, but the degree to which we are aware of ourselves, or
par�cular aspects of ourselves, can vary. Your awareness of your internal states—for example, your thoughts, feelings, or desires—is your private self-awareness.
Knowing you are nervous for your interview is part of your private self-awareness. Awareness of how you appear to others is your public self-awareness.
Knowing that the interviewer will be evalua�ng the professional image you present, you dress carefully and try to smile.
Private self-awareness can make us more aware of our a�tudes and values (Fejfar & Hoyle, 2000). When our behaviors do not match our a�tudes or values (our
standards), a discrepancy is created. Because we do not like discrepancies, we usually seek to change our behavior or avoid being self-aware (Gibbons, 1990;
Silvia & Duval, 2001). A discrepancy could lead people to act in a more posi�ve way, striving to live up to their values. In the case of the job interview, your
awareness of your own deep desire for the job may mo�vate you to act in such a way that demonstrates your desire to the interviewer, rather than the casual
or sarcas�c way you may usually act. However, private self-awareness can also lead to destruc�ve behaviors. Realizing their behavior on an interview did not
match their high standards for that situa�on, someone might engage in binge ea�ng, drug use, or have suicidal thoughts in an a�empt to escape self-awareness
(Tassava, & Ruderman, 1999). In one study of adolescent drinking, more nega�ve self-schemas in teens predicted an earlier onset of drinking (Corte & Zucker,
2008). For these youth, ge�ng drunk was a way to escape knowledge of the nega�ve aspects of themselves (see Figure 2.1).
Figure 2.1: Drinking outcomes based on healthy or vulnerable self-concepts
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Due to heightened public self-awareness, people are more likely to wash their
hands if someone else is in the restroom.
The results of this study support the idea that private self-awareness can lead to destruc�ve and dangerous behaviors.
Based on Corte, C. & Zucker, R. A. (2008). Self-concept disturbances: Cogni�ve vulnerability for early drinking and early drunkenness in adolescents at high
risk for alcohol problems. Addic�ve Behavior, 33, 1282–1290. doi: 10.1016/j.addbeh.2008.06.002
Public self-awareness is higher when we believe we are being observed. For example, if you knew you were being videotaped or saw yourself in a mirror, your
public self-awareness would rise (George & Stopa, 2008). Children were less likely to steal Halloween candy when a mirror was placed behind the bowl (Beaman,
Klentz, Diener, & Svanum, 1979). People with faith in God who believe God knows their thoughts and ac�ons show greater self-awareness when reminded about
God (Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012). We o�en have high public self-awareness on a job interview because we, rightly or wrongly, believe our every behavior is
being watched. Public self-awareness can be problema�c for individuals who are not as confident in their social abili�es. Individuals who are socially anxious
show higher public self-awareness when they are made aware of their public ac�ons, contribu�ng to their social anxiety (George & Stopa, 2008). When high in
public self-awareness, individuals who do not believe in their ability to do well in social interac�ons retreat from such interac�ons and believe their interac�on
partners will like them less. Perhaps because of their nervous behavior their partners do like them less (Alden, Teschuk, & Tee, 1992).
Even those without social anxiety may have trouble processing incoming informa�on
when public self-awareness is high. When students with high public self-consciousness
were asked to recall the names of people they met, they were less likely to be able to
do it than those who were not high in public self-consciousness (Kimble, Hirt, &
Arnold, 1985). You may have encountered such a phenomenon in a class or a mee�ng
where everyone introduced themselves. Nervous about how you would appear when
your turn came, you failed to catch the names of the people si�ng around you.
During public self-consciousness, when we are focused on the image we present, our
ability to process new informa�on is impaired.
Public self-awareness generally leads individuals to act in ways that sa�sfy social
norms. One set of researchers measured how o�en women in a public restroom
washed their hands (Munger & Harris, 1989). When someone else was in the
restroom, increasing public self-awareness, 24 of the 31 women (77%) washed their
hands. When the women believed they were alone in the restroom—public self-
awareness was rela�vely low—11 of the 28 women (39%) washed their hands.
However, public self-awareness may not always have a posi�ve effect on behavior. In a
study on chea�ng on an academic task and self-awareness, researchers found that
par�cipants with high public self-awareness were more likely to cheat because they
were concerned about how their performance on a task would be viewed (Malcolm &
Ng, 1989). High public self-awareness can also lead to compensatory behaviors. College students with low evalua�ons of themselves who were high in public
awareness friended more people on Facebook than those with low evalua�ons of themselves who were low in public awareness (Lee, Moore, Park, & Park,
2012). When more aware of the image they might be showing the world, these students a�empted to project an image of popularity with a high friend count on
social media.
Test Yourself
Which of the following is likely to increase your public self-awareness? Which will increase your private self-awareness? Click on each statement
below to reveal the answer.
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Expand Your Knowledge: Test Your Self-Esteem
Wondering where you fall on the con�nuum of self-esteem? The
Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale is a short measure of self-esteem and
is widely used by researchers. Rosenberg originally tested the scale
on high school juniors and seniors, but it has been used with
various popula�ons since its development. It tends to have good
reliability and validity. The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale can be
found here (h�p://www.bsos.umd.edu/socy/research/rosenberg.htm) .
You see a sign at the store that says you are being watched over closed circuit television.
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Public self-awareness
The therapist asks you about your hopes for the future.
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Private self-awareness
You are told that Santa Claus is making a list, trying to figure out who is naughty and who is nice. Provided, of course, you believe in
Santa Claus.
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Public self-awareness
You give a speech in front of 100 people.
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Public self-awareness
You write a journal entry about how you feel about the events of the day.
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Private self-awareness
Evalua�ng the Self: Self-Esteem
When mee�ng new people or going on a job interview, our descrip�ons of ourselves may include how we feel about ourselves and our abili�es. Researchers are
also interested in our evalua�ons of ourselves, both the quali�es we believe we have and the ac�ons we believe we can do. If you were to describe yourself to
someone, it is likely you would list some things about yourself that you liked (I am helpful) and some things you didn’t like (I get angry easily). Your overall
evalua�on of these quali�es or how you emo�onally feel about or value yourself is your self-esteem. Self-esteem, at least theore�cally, is on a con�nuum from
very high, individuals who think very well of themselves, to very low, individuals who think very poorly of themselves. When large groups of people are given
self-esteem evalua�ons, researchers find that most people feel pre�y good about themselves, and very few actually evaluate themselves nega�vely. Therefore,
when researchers compare those with high self-esteem to those with lower levels of self-esteem, they generally end up looking at those who simply feel okay
about themselves, rather than those who evaluate themselves nega�vely (Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger, & Vohs, 2003).
There are two different types of self-esteem: implicit and explicit. Explicit self-
esteem pertains to the global evalua�on of personal quali�es that one is
consciously aware of and can report on. However, some of our evalua�ons of
ourselves are more deeply rooted; they are unconscious and automa�c. This
unconscious, automa�c evalua�on of the self is called implicit self-esteem
(Greenwald & Farnham, 2000; Koole, Dijksterhuis, & van Knippenberg, 2001).
People with high explicit self-esteem are more likely to take ini�a�ve, speak up in
social situa�ons, make friends, and take risks (Baumeister et al., 2003). Individuals
with low explicit self-esteem are more vulnerable to depression (Orth, Robins,
Trzesniewski, Maes, & Schmi�, 2009). This vulnerability seems to be independent
of the stressful events one experiences. Studies have shown that it is how you
view the quali�es you possess and how you value yourself that affects your
tendency toward depression (Sowislo & Orth, 2013; Orth, Robins, & Meier, 2009).
Although it might be logically assumed that high implicit self-esteem, like high explicit self-esteem, would be related to more posi�ve mental health, that has not
reliably been the case (De Raedt, Schacht, Franck, & De Houwer, 2006; Franck, De Raedt, & De Houwer, 2007). Individuals whose implicit and explicit self-esteem
does not match up have less posi�ve physical and psychological health (Creemers, Scholte, Engels, Prinstein, & Wiers, 2012; Schroder-Abe, Rudolph, & Schutz,
2007). An individual whose outwardly stated evalua�on is nega�ve but whose automa�c self-evalua�on is posi�ve would have a mismatch of explicit and implicit
self-esteem. This person is likely to show more depressive symptoms and report feeling lonely. Similarly, high self-esteem does not have a universally posi�ve
effect on people. Those with high self-esteem may take more risks, providing them with opportuni�es for be�er jobs or more adventuresome travel experiences.
But these risks can also include experimenta�on with drugs and risky sexual prac�ces (Baumeister et al., 2003; Baumeister, Heatherton, & Tice, 1993).
Self-esteem influences how accurately we perceive ourselves. For example, people with high self-esteem believe they are smarter, more well-liked, and very
a�rac�ve; but objec�vely they are not (Adams, Ryan, Ketsetzis, & Kea�ng, 2000; Bowles, 1999; Gabriel, Critelli, & Ee, 1994). Researchers find that when people
with high self-esteem are given IQ tests, their friends are surveyed, and their a�rac�veness is judged by others, none of these hold true. This inaccuracy is found
for both those within the normal range of self-esteem and narcissists. Self-esteem does, however, give us a general idea of our social standing and tends to rise
and fall with feelings of acceptance or rejec�on by others, an idea proposed by the sociometer theory (Leary, Tambor, Terdal, & Downs, 1995). Outward quali�es
that are more important to social acceptance like popularity and a�rac�veness are therefore more important to self-esteem than communal quali�es like
kindness, suppor�veness, and honesty. People who view themselves as popular have higher self-esteem than if they believe they are unpopular, no ma�er what
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/socy/research/rosenberg.htm
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Self-efficacy, or a person’s evalua�on of his ability to carry out tasks and goals,
can vary between behaviors.
they believe about their kindness and honesty. This principle does not hold true for those in roles or cultures where communal quali�es are more valued; in
these cultures honesty, suppor�veness, and kindness tend to rise in importance in determining self-esteem (Anthony, Holmes, & Wood, 2007).
Self-esteem has been found to correlate with academic success. Individuals with high self-esteem tend to have higher grades than those with lower self-esteem
(Bachman & O’Malley, 1986). Does having a high self-esteem help one get be�er grades, or does ge�ng be�er grades help raise one’s self-esteem? Remember,
correla�on is not causa�on. Just because self-esteem is related to academic success does not mean that raising one’s self-esteem causes a rise in grades. A child
may have high self-esteem because of her success in school, or school success and self-esteem may both be related to other factors such as ability or a
suppor�ve home environment (Bachman & O’Malley, 1986; Maruyama, Rubin, & Kingsbury, 1981). Raising or suppor�ng self-esteem through encouragement may
even be harmful to performance. Low-achieving college students that read a message bolstering their self-esteem along with review ques�ons for tests did worse
on subsequent tests than those who simply got the review ques�ons (Forsyth, Lawrence, Burne�e, & Baumeister, 2007). Interven�ons to raise academic
achievement should focus on increasing capabili�es rather than increasing self-esteem.
Narcissism
Explicit self-esteem can be excessively posi�ve and lead to an inflated view of self. This overly posi�ve and grandiose view of self is called narcissism. People high
in narcissism perceive themselves as deserving of special favors (Campbell, Bonacci, Shelton, Exline, & Bushman, 2004). Narcissists upload more photos of
themselves on social media, and portray images that are more self-promo�ng and sexy. Narcissists also do more pos�ng of status updates and update profile
informa�on more o�en than those low in narcissism (Carpenter, 2012; DeWall, Buffardi, Bonser, & Campbell, 2011). Although nega�ve feedback may not change
their inflated views, narcissists can react badly to this feedback. When narcissists feel as though par�cularly valued parts of themselves are being challenged or
mocked, they may respond with aggression toward the challenger (Konrath, Bushman, & Campbell, 2006).
Individuals with a strong need to maintain and present a posi�ve image of themselves and to have others acknowledge and admire that image are said to be
high in grandiose narcissism. Grandiose narcissists tend to be insensi�ve to nega�ve feedback, maintaining a posi�ve view of themselves despite evidence to the
contrary (Campbell, Reeder, Sedikides, & Elliot, 2000; Zuckerman & O’Loughlin, 2009). At first acquaintance, grandiose narcissists tend to be liked. The a�rac�ve,
warm, confident, and wi�y manner narcissists exhibit is designed to elicit admira�on and tends to be appealing at first blush (Back, Schmukle, & Egloff, 2010;
Paulhus, 1998). The self-promo�on of grandiose narcissists is found beyond face-to-face interac�ons.
Another form of narcissism, called vulnerable narcissism, is associated with unstable or low self-esteem. Vulnerable narcissists have fantasies of greatness, but
cycle between overly posi�ve views of themselves and feelings of inferiority. These narcissists are vulnerable to nega�ve feedback because of a fragile self-
concept (Rohman, Neumann, Herner, & Bierhoff, 2012). In more extreme cases, narcissism can rise to the level of a disorder. Narcissis�c personality disorder can
be diagnosed when self-esteem is high, empathy is low, and the need for admira�on leads the individual to manipula�ve and self-centered behavior.
Despite their a�empts to portray themselves posi�vely, the self-focused nature of narcissists’ beliefs and ac�ons tends to turn people off once they become
more acquainted (Paulhus, 1998). Roman�c rela�onships fall apart as the lure of the narcissist’s charm wears off and his or her selfishness, lack of commitment,
and disinterest in in�macy becomes clear (Campbell, Foster, & Finkel, 2002; Foster, Shrira, & Campbell, 2006). Annoyed that they get blamed for failures while
the narcissist takes credit for success while exhibi�ng hypercompe��veness, friends at work become enemies (Campbell et al., 2000; Luchner, Houston, Walker, &
Houston, 2011; Sedikides, Campbell, Reeder, Elliot, & Gregg, 2002). The increased likelihood of chea�ng in narcissists may at first allow them to succeed, but
their chea�ng may eventually lead to academic failure or other nega�ve consequences (Brunell, Staats, Barden, & Hupp, 2011). Narcissists may also suffer the
consequences of overly ambi�ous risks combined with a failure to take responsibility for and correct the mistakes their behavior brought about (Campbell &
Buffardi, 2008).
Self-efficacy
While self-esteem involves an evalua�on of the quali�es one possesses, self-efficacy
involves a person’s ability to perform par�cular tasks (Bandura, 1977, 2000). Have you
ever read the children’s book “The Li�le Engine That Could” (Piper & Long, 2005)? In
this book, a small train engine pulling a train loaded with animals a�empts to climb a
mountain. As the engine puffs up the hill, she says, “I think I can, I think I can, I think
I can.” This mantra is the essence of self-efficacy. People with high self-efficacy believe
they are very capable, and this self-assurance generally has posi�ve outcomes.
Individuals with higher self-efficacy are more persistent, more produc�ve, and less
depressed (Chemers, Hu, & Garcia, 2001; Cheung & Sun, 2000; Huang, 1998).
Self-efficacy beliefs can vary depending on the behavior. For example, someone might
have high self-efficacy for academics, but low self-efficacy for athle�cs. Because we
have a sense of self-efficacy for any behavior we might engage in, self-efficacy can be
fairly specific. Researchers have studied everything from leadership self-efficacy (Ng,
Ang, & Chan, 2008) to bicultural self-efficacy (David, Okazaki, & Saw, 2009), harm
reduc�on self-efficacy in drug abusers (Phillips & Rosenberg, 2008), and driver
competence self-efficacy (Sundstrom, 2008). In a job search it is likely that your job-
search self-efficacy would come into play (Brown, Cober, Kane, Levy, & Shalhoop,
2006).
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Test Yourself
Click on each ques�on below to reveal the answer.
A person with high self-esteem is likely to show all of these characteris�cs EXCEPT
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a. greater happiness
b. lower depression
c. academic success
d. greater physical a�rac�veness
Correct answer: d
Lisa gets an award in the mail for volunteering in the community. Marcia wins a contest where beauty and popularity were primary
factors in winning. Lisa shows no rise in self-esteem, while Marcia’s self-esteem shows a big boost. What theory helps us explain the
difference?
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Sociometer theory of self-esteem. According to this theory, aspects of the self that are �ed to social acceptance, like popularity, are more
likely to determine self-esteem than aspects of the self like kindness.
Are narcissists liked more than people with less inflated self-esteem?
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At first narcissists are liked. They work hard to present a posi�ve image, so they will be admired by others. Later their overly inflated self-
esteem becomes difficult for others to deal with, so they are liked less over �me.
What effect does self-efficacy have on a person?
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People with high self-efficacy tend to be more persistent at tasks, more produc�ve in their work, and show less depression than those with
lower self-efficacy.
The Posi�ve Self
When we think about ourselves, our ins�nctual desire is to view ourselves posi�vely. For this reason, we may have a tendency to distort reality, no�cing only the
good things and largely ignoring the bad (Heider, 1976). This bias toward a posi�ve view of self is called the self-serving bias. The self-serving bias means that
when we succeed at something, we a�ribute that success to something about us or something we did; we more o�en a�ribute failure to things outside of
ourselves. The self-serving bias is more likely to occur when we are thinking about and aware of ourselves (Duval & Silvia, 2002). For example, if you got an A on
your last test, you might a�ribute it to your level of intelligence. If you got an F, you might a�ribute it to the fact that the teacher was unreasonable and the test
was impossible. Although we have this tendency to a�ribute success to something inherent to the self, we may also a�ribute failure to ourselves when self-
awareness is high, and the failure mo�vates us to improvement (Duval & Silvia, 2002). For example, if you misunderstood what you would be tested on for your
history test, you could a�ribute the failure to yourself, knowing that next �me you will do be�er. The next �me we do the task we would presumably improve,
providing us with a boost in our posi�ve sense of self.
As noted in the sec�on on self-awareness, we are uncomfortable when there is a discrepancy between our behavior and a�tudes—something that could lead to
a self-serving bias. Who do people with high self-awareness blame when receiving a nega�ve evalua�on? If possible, they blame someone they do not like (Silvia
& Duval, 2001). For example, if you were to fail a group project, you would likely blame that annoying group member you do not like rather than the friendly
and fun group member you enjoyed working with. We also tend toward the self-serving bias when we feel a threat to our sense of self (Campbell & Sedikides,
1999). If someone were to ques�on whether you are a good student, you would want to find evidence of your academic prowess, such as the good test score,
and find an excuse for your failures.
Although the assump�on might be that living with a skewed view of reality is not op�mal for one’s mental health, the research suggests otherwise. Fully
func�oning self-serving bias is related to greater happiness and less depression (Abramson & Alloy, 1981; Kuiper, 1978; Rizley, 1978). For example, when
depressed and non-depressed par�cipants were given a word associa�on task and told they either succeeded or failed, the non-depressed people tended to
a�ribute their success to their own ability or effort and blamed failures on luck or the difficulty of the task (Kuiper, 1978). When the self-serving bias is not at
work, people are much more likely to show symptoms of depression (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, Burling, & Tibbs, 1992; Sweeney, Anderson, & Bailey, 1986). The
self-serving bias is common across cultures, though its strength can vary. The effect is not as strong in people from Asia as it is in individuals from Western
cultures (Mezulis, Abramson, Hyde, & Hankin, 2004). Western cultures, such as the United States, tend to put more value on individual effort and celebrate those
who seem to have made it on their own. Because of this, people from such cultures may have more incen�ve for taking credit for success and passing off failure
as something unrelated to themselves. More on cultural differences in views of the self will be discussed in the chapter on culture.
The self-serving bias may be in place partly because it is easier for our brains to process in a self-serving way and is therefore quite common. In a study looking
at brain ac�vity while people made a�ribu�ons, non-self-serving a�ribu�ons required brain ac�vity associated with self-control. Our self-serving a�ribu�ons
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seem to occur more naturally, and only when we exert self-control do we make less self-serving judgments (Krusemark, Campbell, & Clementz, 2008). Do you
engage in the self-serving bias? Students who learn about the self-serving bias believe they engage in the bias less o�en than others do, though this is logically
improbable (Friedrich, 1996).
Test Yourself
Click on the ques�on below to reveal the answer.
How does the self-serving bias serve the self?
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By biasing us toward taking credit for success and eschewing responsibility for failure, the self-serving bias helps us to develop and retain
a posi�ve view of ourselves.
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An interviewer might see a well-dressed applicant as more qualified for a job than
a casually dressed applicant.
2.2
The Ac�ng Self
From the previous sec�on you know that this thing we call the self is something we think about and evaluate. But does the self affect our ac�ons? We present
ourselves to others in ways that promote an image we want others to have of us. The roles we play affect our ac�ons. Applying self-regula�on within situa�ons
has an effect on our future abili�es to engage in ac�ons. The beliefs we have about our own ability to act influences how we act. The self may also affect where
we live and the profession we pursue, some�mes in surprising ways.
Presen�ng the Self
When going on a job interview, a�ending a party, or star�ng something new (new job, new school), we o�en pay special a�en�on to our appearance. Why? In
our interac�ons with others, we are interested in presen�ng a certain image of ourselves. Given the self-serving bias, we would expect that image we are trying
to project to be posi�ve, and it is. In a job interview, for example, people want to present a favorable image with the hope that the employer will give them a
job. If you think back to the sociometer theory of self-esteem, you know that how others view you affects your self-esteem.
In interac�ons we use a variety of tac�cs to influence the impressions others have of us. We might make excuses, jus�fica�ons, or apologies for our ac�ons—
tac�cs that are defensive. An employee might provide an excuse for being late to a mee�ng as due to traffic or a phone call from a client. A friend might disarm
our complaints about rude behavior by apologizing for the ac�on and jus�fying it by describing his or her bad day. Defensive tac�cs are designed to protect or
repair our image (Shaw, Wild, & Colqui�, 2003; Tata, 2002).
We might a�empt to project a posi�ve image through techniques that ac�vely help
construct a posi�ve image—asser�ve techniques. One such asser�ve technique,
ingra�a�on, involves some form of fla�ery, most o�en to someone of greater power.
For example, one might compliment the boss on a new ou�it or admire the
supervisor’s ability to have accurately predicted a sports team win. When others have
power over us, we engage in more impression management. For the employed,
impression management tends to increase in �mes of employment insecurity (Kang,
Gold, & Kim, 2012). At such �mes our employers have more power over us, so we
react by presen�ng the best side of ourselves that we can.
In an a�empt to influence others we may try to appear more a�rac�ve or
professional. Manipula�ng the impression of our pres�ge, power, or credibility can
influence a person’s view of us (Tedeschi & Melburg, 1984). Although such behavior
may seem disingenuous, like we are faking an image, appropriate self-presenta�on is
o�en expected and reveals that we know how to monitor and change our behavior to
accurately suit the social situa�on (Jansen, Konig, Stadelmann, & Kleinmann, 2012).
Some degree of impression management is an�cipated by interviewers and is
employed by most interviewees (Ellis, West, Ryan, & DeShon, 2002; Swider, Barrick,
Harris, & Stoverink, 2011). You might engage in some impression management during
a job search—hopefully with posi�ve results.
In trying to make an impression on others we do need to choose the impression we think is most important to portray in the context. The best strategy will
depend on what needs to be portrayed (explain an employment gap or promote one’s special talents), when the informa�on will be important (an immediate job
opening or one in the future), and what is appropriate within the culture (modesty or self-promo�on) (Konig, Hafsteinsson, Jansen, & Stadelmann, 2011; Mast,
Frauendorfer, & Popovic, 2011; Proost, Germeys, & Schreurs, 2012; Tsai, Huang, Wu, & Lo, 2010). Some�mes posi�ve images are in conflict. For example, when
people portray an image of competence, this o�en comes at the detriment of portraying an image of warmth (Holoien & Fiske, 2013). An applicant to a job as an
administra�ve assistant may get high marks for friendliness, but this is likely to come at the expense of the interviewer’s belief in his competence for the
posi�on.
The image a person projects does ma�er. Interviewers need to make rela�vely quick decisions about hiring based on limited informa�on. Impression
management statements on a resume tend to lead to more posi�ve impressions of an applicant’s hireability (Knouse, 1994). Impression management tac�cs in
interviews also tend to be related to more posi�ve evalua�ons by an interviewer, provided they are not overly decep�ve (Jansen et al., 2012; Swider et al., 2011;
Tsai et al., 2010). Despite the hopes of many to the contrary, physical appearance affects the ra�ng of the interviewer for a job candidate more than other things
a job candidate might have or do, such as agreeing with the interviewer (Barrick, Shaffer, & DeGrassi, 2009).
Self-presenta�on is a necessary part of social life, but it can create problems. A woman might take diet pills, smoke, or yo-yo diet to try to control weight,
seriously damaging her health (Camp, Klesges, & Relyea, 1993; Gritz & Crane, 1991; Wang, Houshyar, & Prinstein, 2006). The same woman may avoid the gym or
even the local jogging trails because of concerns about how she would look to others (Leary, Tchividjian, & Kraxberger, 1994). Some men might use steroids to
assist in gaining or maintaining a muscular body, despite medical issues like heart problems and stunted growth and psychological problems like depression and
increased aggressiveness (Leary et al., 1994; Galli & Reel, 2009).
Mar�n and Leary (1999) conducted a clever study that inves�gated how far people would go to make sure another person had a favorable impression of them. A
confederate offered the par�cipant a drink out of his water bo�le a�er the par�cipant had tasted something unpleasant. Although the researchers used clean
water bo�les, it appeared to the par�cipant that the confederate had already drunk out of the bo�le, presumably making the transfer of germs a dis�nct
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possibility. Some of the par�cipants were challenged by the confederate with the phrase “if you’re not worried about drinking out of the same bo�le as me” (p.
1095). The challenge brought up self-presenta�on concerns in the par�cipant, who did not want to be seen as overly cau�ous. The researchers found that those
par�cipants who were challenged by the confederate drank more than those who were offered the water but not challenged. For these par�cipants, concern
about how they might look to others caused them to engage in a poten�ally risky behavior.
The cross-cultural research tradi�on uses the term face to describe the roles we play. When we inhabit different roles, we have different faces. The face exists by
virtue of the posi�on rather than the person. For example, by occupying the posi�on of CEO one has a face as CEO, a face that must be maintained by
performing the ac�vi�es required by that role. When others judge that the individual occupying the role is not living up to requirements, that person can lose
face. Loss of face makes it difficult for an individual to con�nue in a role (Hamamura & Heine, 2008). Face also requires others, with their own face, to respond
appropriately. The manager face would require the person occupying that role to show some degree of deference and respect to the individual in the CEO
posi�on.
At �mes, the self we present needs to become the self we are, such as when we move from an interviewee to an employee. Have you ever started a new job
and felt out of place and awkward? This is not unusual. As we move into a new role there is a period of transi�on (Morrison, 1993). As we enter a role, it is as if
we are actors learning a new part; we learn our lines and what is expected of us. Erving Goffman’s (1959) classic theory proposes that in everyday life we engage
in a drama. It is as if we are on stage and must play a part. This approach to describing how we present ourselves is called the dramaturgical approach. The
power of roles and the transi�on we must go through as we enter these roles was drama�cally demonstrated in a study by Philip Zimbardo.
In 1973, Zimbardo and colleagues (Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, 1973) recruited 24 college men to par�cipate in a simulated prison for two weeks. Half were
randomly assigned the role of guard and half the role of prisoner. The prisoners were picked up by the local police, fingerprinted, and brought to a makeshi�
prison in the basement of the psychology building on campus. The guards were asked to maintain order but were not allowed to use physical force. Each
par�cipant wore a uniform appropriate for his role. Both prisoners and guards quickly became engrossed in their roles. Guards were controlling and manipula�ve
of the prisoners, some became verbally abusive. Prisoners acted in a passive way. Some prisoners became so distressed about their lack of power and control
over their situa�on that they exhibited extreme emo�onal reac�ons, including symptoms of depression, crying, anxiety, and rage. Condi�ons deteriorated and
prisoners were in such misery that the experiment was stopped a�er 6 days. It would have been unethical to con�nue. This study demonstrates just how
powerful roles can be in affec�ng our behavior.
In Season 9 of The Biggest Loser, one of the contestants, Daris, gained two pounds at the last weigh-in before the final episode. During his �me at home before
the weigh-in, he would binge-eat late at night (Barile, 2010). Knowing that the weigh-in was coming, why would he engage in such self-destruc�ve behavior?
There are a large number of factors at work here but one is self-handicapping. With self-handicapping, people create an excuse for a later failure by doing
something that is likely to hinder their success. Public performance is par�cularly vulnerable. If Daris really tried his hardest to lose weight and failed, he would
have no excuses to offer those watching. Sabotaging his own success failure was expected, and he could maintain, to himself and to others, that if he had really
tried, he would have succeeded. When others are more confident in your success than you are, self-handicapping allows you to maintain that posi�ve image
others hold (Lupien, Seery, & Almonte, 2010).
Self-handicapping behaviors come in various forms. A student might get drunk or take drugs the night before a test or procras�nate studying un�l the last minute
(Beck, Koons, & Milgram, 2000; Berglas & Jones, 1978; Higgins & Harris, 1988; Strunk & Steele, 2011). An employee might quit working on an important
presenta�on before it is done, and an athlete might quit prac�cing before a skill is well-learned (Baumeister, Hamilton, & Tice, 1985; Hirt, Deppe, & Gordon,
1991; Hirt, McCrea, & Kimble, 2000). At �mes, self-handicapping is not a behavior, or lack thereof, but a claim of performance anxiety or nega�ve mood
(Baumgardner, Lake, & Arkin, 1985; Smith, Snyder, & Handelsman, 1982). When the student fails the test, the employee does not get the account, or the athlete
misses the shot, they can point to the hangover, lack of prepara�on, or anxiety as the problem. This allows for maintenance of self-image in the eyes of others. If
each of these individuals worked their hardest and s�ll failed to do well on the test, get the big account, or make the shot, it might affect self-esteem or public
image (Bailis, 2001; Feick & Rhodewalt, 1997). If they do well despite the handicapping, their success is even more remarkable (Feick & Rhodewalt, 1997; Tice,
1991).
Self-handicapping can occur rarely or it can become habitual. Individuals who o�en engage in self-handicapping, have a low self-worth and believe that abili�es
are fixed—they cannot be changed with prac�ce or learning (Rhodewalt & Tragakis, 2002). Although self-handicapping may help some feel be�er about
themselves over the short term, long term self-handicapping is related to lower well-being, lower sa�sfac�on with one’s competence, and greater use of alcohol,
marijuana, and other drugs (Zuckerman & Tsai, 2005). Generally, men are more likely to self-handicap than women as are those who have a less certain sense of
iden�ty (Chorba, Was, & Isaacson, 2012; Kimble & Hirt, 2004; Lucas & Lovaglia, 2005). Table 2.1 provides defini�ons and examples of each of the self terms in
this sec�on.
Test Yourself
Click on each ques�on below to reveal the answer.
A�er an adequate, but not stellar, sales presenta�on by his boss, Jeffery compliments her on a wonderful presenta�on. What impression
management technique is he using?
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Ingra�a�on. He is using fla�ery to a�empt to make a good impression on his boss.
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Is the use of impression management techniques good or bad?
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Both. Some level of impression management is expected in interview and professional situa�ons. Use of such techniques helps people get
jobs, deal well with people, and be appropriate to the social situa�on. But impression management can lead to nega�ve, self-destruc�ve
behaviors such as yo-yo die�ng or drug use. People may also take unnecessary risks because they are trying to present a par�cular image.
If it o�en results in nega�ve outcomes (e.g., failure on a test, weight gain), how is self-handicapping helpful to people?
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Self-handicapping gives people an excuse for the nega�ve outcomes, so they can maintain a posi�ve view of themselves and present a
posi�ve image to others even when they fail. If they failed and had no excuse, they would not be able to keep their posi�ve view of
themselves or the posi�ve image others have of them.
What is the name of the approach that suggests we engage in a drama in everyday life, playing various roles?
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Dramaturgical approach
Why did Zimbardo quit his study involving a simulated prison early?
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It would have been unethical for Zimbardo to con�nue. The students playing the role of guards were verbally abusive toward the
prisoners; and the students who played the role of prisoners were showing extreme stress reac�ons such as crying, anger, and anxiety.
Table 2.1: Self terms: Defini�ons and examples
Term Defini�on Example
Self-awareness Self-awareness involves being aware of par�cular
aspects of one’s self-concept. There are two
types: Private self-awareness is awareness of
one’s internal states such as thoughts, feelings,
or desires. Public self-awareness is awareness of
how one appears to others.
Having been asked what she hopes to do a�er
college, Bri�any has an increase in private self-
awareness. Standing in front of her colleagues at
work, ready to give a speech, Selena has an
increase in public self-awareness.
Self-concept The collec�on of things one knows about the
self. This collec�on is large and diverse.
Elaine likes the color yellow, is good at math,
can run a mile in 8 minutes, enjoys jazz, is a
mother of two children, and wants to be a
teacher.
Self-efficacy One’s evalua�on of one’s ability to perform a
par�cular task.
If Andy believes he can do differen�al calculus,
he would be described as high in self-efficacy for
differen�al calculus.
Self-esteem One’s evalua�on of the quali�es one possesses;
how one values oneself.
Trina has an overall posi�ve evalua�on of
herself, she has high self-esteem.
Self-handicapping Crea�ng an excuse for later poor performance
by doing something that hinders success.
Shawna stays up late playing video games before
taking the Scholas�c Ap�tude Test (SAT),
crea�ng an excuse for her low scores.
Self-reference effect The tendency to remember be�er those things
related to the self.
Cindy remembers that her date takes his coffee
with cream, like she does, but forgets that he
told her he likes rock climbing, something she
has no interest in.
Self-regula�on Exer�ng control over your ac�ons. Although they look good to him, John does not
buy the donuts at the convenience store.
Self-schemas Knowledge structures about the self. Self-
schemas organize the informa�on within our
self-concept and affect our processing of
informa�on and our ability to remember
informa�on.
Music is very important to Ed. He thinks of
himself as a musician and a music lover.
Self-serving bias A bias toward viewing successes as something
we can a�ribute to the self and failure owing to
something outside the self, such as a difficult
situa�on. The self-serving bias helps us maintain
our self-schema and self-efficacy and influences
our tendency to self-handicap and use
impression management strategies.
Devon believes his success at selling used cars is
due to his intelligence and charm. He blames his
failure in his marriage on his ex-wife’s
unreasonable demands and unpleasant
personality.
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If you had just spent 3 hours at the library wri�ng a term paper,
you might be less able to do another difficult task. This is ego
deple�on.
Regula�ng the Self
Imagine you’ve signed up to be part of a study on taste percep�on. To prepare, you were asked not to eat anything for 3 hours. When you enter the room
where the study will take place, you smell baking chocolate chip cookies. A plate of warm cookies and other chocolates sits on a table, alongside a bowl of
radishes. The researcher explains to you that for this study you will be ea�ng one of two dis�nc�ve foods, radishes or chocolate. You have been assigned to the
radish condi�on. You are asked to eat two or three radishes within the next 5 minutes. The experimenter leaves the room. Even though you would probably
prefer the chocolate chip cookies, you du�fully eat three radishes before the researcher returns. While (supposedly) wai�ng for the sensory memory of the
radishes to diminish, you are asked to do a task that the researcher presents as unrelated to the taste percep�on study. You are asked to work as long as you
can on a task requiring you to trace a geometric figure without li�ing your pencil. Frustrated by your lack of success, you quit a�er only a couple minutes.
Unbeknownst to you, the researchers were very interested in how long you worked on those
geometric figures. The geometric figures were unsolvable, and the researchers wanted to know how
long you would persist without success. They believed you would work for a shorter period because
you ate radishes rather than the chocolate (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Mauraven, & Tice, 1998). Any
ideas on why that might be? Take a minute to think about it before reading on.
The researchers were studying something called ego deple�on. In this context, ego refers to a
resource that each of us has for voli�onal (chosen) ac�on. The idea is that when you choose to do
something, you use some of this resource, leaving less for future ac�ons (Hagger, Wood, S�ff, &
Chatzisaran�s, 2010). While exer�ng control over yourself, you are doing what social psychologists
call self-regula�on. By doing something you would rather not do, like ea�ng radishes in the presence
of chocolate, you use a lot of this resource, deple�ng it. Because you’ve depleted the ego, you are
less able to work on other difficult tasks. Think of the ego like a muscle. A�er li�ing something very
light, you have plenty of strength le� for li�ing again. If you li� something very heavy, the muscle
gets �red and you no longer have the strength to help your friend move that refrigerator.
Unless you are on a diet, you are not likely to spend much �me ea�ng radishes instead of chocolate.
It is also unlikely you would subject yourself to tracing geometric figures that are actually
untraceable. So why does this ma�er? Baumeister and colleagues (1998) believe that we encounter
such situa�ons every day. When you are studying for social psychology rather than watching TV, you
are deple�ng your ego. Ego deple�on will make other tasks (mowing the lawn, cooking dinner) more
difficult for you to get the energy to complete.
If you are on a diet, a student, have a tough job, or have household chores, this sounds like bad
news. But there is good news. It is our percep�on of deple�on more than actual deple�on of this
resource that seems to have the largest effect. When individuals engaged in a lot of self-regula�on
but perceived the task as not using much, they did be�er on later tasks (Clarkson, Hirt, Jia, &
Alexander, 2010). Encouragement can also help us out when we are depleted. Students who wrote
about a personal quality that was very important to them a�er they engaged in an ego-deple�ng
ac�vity did be�er at a later task than if they wrote about something that was not important to them
and was therefore not self-affirming (Schmeichel & Vohs, 2009). Theore�cally, you should also be able to work on increasing your ability to self-regulate by
strengthening the ego. If the ego is like a muscle, the more you use it the more you will have in the future. You might exhaust the ego today, but day a�er day
as you work and go to school and build rela�onships with friends and family, you will be building up strength for the future.
We may use self-regula�on to do ac�vi�es imposed on us by others, such as a job at work, but also might impose tasks on ourselves. One place such tasks
originate is in our possible selves. Envisioning your future self speaking French at a business mee�ng for the French company you want to work for, you sign up
for a French language class. Imagining turning heads on the beach as you walk by this summer, you put yourself on a diet. The hoped for and feared possible
selves give us an image that mo�vates us and influences our current self-regulatory behavior (Hoyle & Sherrill, 2006; van Dellen & Hoyle, 2008). Researchers
have found that specific parts of the prefrontal cortex contribute to self-regula�on. Damage to this part of the brain inhibits self-regula�on, and it is development
in this part of the brain that increases self-regula�on over childhood and adolescence (Berger, 2011; Heatherton, 2011).
Social Psychology in Depth: Tes�ng our Self-Regula�on
Is our capacity for self-regula�on like a muscle, or is it a skill we develop? If self-regula�on is like a muscle, it would �re as we use it. If self-
regula�on is a skill, using it should not affect later performance. The study by Baumeister and colleagues (1998) discussed earlier in the chapter
involving chocolate chip cookies and radishes cleverly pi�ed these two possibili�es against each other. A�er controlling their urge for freshly
baked chocolate chip cookies and forcing themselves to eat radishes instead, research par�cipants were less able to con�nue working on a
frustra�ng task. Self-regula�on, then, appears to work more like a muscle than skill set. When we engage in self-regula�on, we deplete the ego,
consume our limited store of self-regulatory strength, and have difficulty in the short term with tasks requiring more self-regula�on.
Ego deple�on can affect a number of behaviors. Ego deple�on is related to greater aggression. With ego deple�on we are less able to inhibit our
tendencies toward aggression (Stucke & Baumeister, 2006). Dieters asked to exhibit self-regula�on in making a choice or in not showing emo�on
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while watching a distressing movie clip later ate more than dieters who were not asked to exhibit self-regula�on (Kahan, Polivy, & Herman, 2003;
Vohs & Heatherton, 2000). Complex intellectual tasks and decision making also deteriorate with ego deple�on. Tasks that require a great deal of
mental energy and self-regula�on such as logic, reasoning, decision making, and reading comprehension suffer when we are depleted while tasks
requiring less from our systems such as simple memoriza�on do not suffer (Schmeichel, Vohs, & Baumeister, 2003; Zyphur, Warren, Landis, &
Thoresen, 2007).
The effects of ego deple�on are not irreversible, and a number of techniques can be used to avoid the effects. Ego deple�on is short term. A�er
a rest period, people regain their capacity for self-regula�on. Distrac�on can be an effec�ve counterstrategy. Even when ego is depleted,
distrac�ng individuals from what they are doing will lessen the decline in strength (Alberts, Mar�jn, Nievelstein, Jansen, & de Vries, 2008).
Individuals who engaged in self-affirma�on, focusing on a value that was important to them, showed more self-regula�on a�er ego deple�on
than those who did not engage in self-affirma�on (Schmeichel & Vohs, 2009). Inducing a posi�ve emo�on or reminding people of a persistent
person also has posi�ve effects for performance in the face of ego deple�on (Mar�jn et al., 2007; Ren, Hu, Zhang, & Huang, 2010). Posi�ons of
leadership can mo�vate people to expend resources even when depleted. Leadership, it seems, induces people to engage in self-regula�on,
some�mes even beyond their capaci�es (DeWall, Baumeister, Mead, & Vohs, 2011). A surprising source of self-regulatory strength is sugar
(glucose). Researchers have found that a�er a wide variety of acts of self-control, having people drink a sugary drink eliminates ego deple�on
(Gailliot et al. 2007). In fact, it seems that simply swishing a glucose/carbohydrate solu�on around in the mouth can improve self-regula�on
(Hagger & Chatzisaran�s, 2013; Molden et al., 2012). Above all, it is important to remember that prac�ce can increase capacity for self-regula�on
(Hagger et al., 2010). As with physical ac�vity, if you want to avoid straining a muscle in the short term, it is best to pace yourself in behavior
involving self-regula�on, but if you want to build up muscle over the long term, engaging in ego-deple�ng ac�vi�es is good for your future
strength.
Test Yourself
Click on each ques�on below to reveal the answer.
According to research on ego deple�on, should you start a new exercise program in the middle of an intense �me of prepara�on for
presenta�ons at work or school?
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Doing two ac�vi�es that both require self-regula�on may be a problem because of ego deple�on. These ac�vi�es will use up all ego
strength, and you are likely to have problems con�nuing both at the same �me.
What does it mean to say that the ego is like a muscle in the context of self-regula�on?
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The ego is like a muscle in that in using it we exhaust it over the short term, but with con�nued use we can strengthen it over the long
term.
The Power of the Self
How much control do you have over what happens to you? If you go to a job interview, to what extent do the results of that interview depend on you? Some
people think that, for the most part, their behavior and decisions dictate the events that occur and the outcomes of those events. Others consider the things
that happen to them as due to forces outside of their control. These two perspec�ves represent a difference in locus of control (Ro�er, 1966). Individuals who
believe that events and outcomes are primarily con�ngent on their own ac�ons have an internal locus of control. Individuals who believe that the things that
occur are due to something beyond their control have an external locus of control. For people with an external locus of control, the things that happen to them
might be due to chance or due to powerful others (e.g., a boss, God) (Levenson, 1981).
Overall, people have greater life sa�sfac�on and show fewer symptoms of depression when they believe they have some control over their lives (Cheng, Cheung,
Chio, & Chan, 2013; Wang, Bowling, & Eschleman, 2010). College students with an external locus of control that a�ributed much to chance had higher stress
levels (de Carvalho, Gadzella, Henley, & Ball, 2009). People who have an internal locus of control, either generally or focused specifically on health, are o�en
healthier, at lower risk for developing disease, and deal be�er with chronic diseases than those with an external locus of control (Gerstorf , Rocke, & Lachman,
2011; Hall, Chipperfield, Heckhausen, & Perry, 2011; Nabors, McGrady, & Kichler, 2010).
Part of the effect of locus of control is demonstrated by the behaviors someone engages in. If you believe that what you do will affect the outcome of your job
interview, you are more likely to prepare carefully, answer though�ully, and be more engaged. An internal locus of control for health leads to be�er health
behaviors such as exercise and preventa�ve care (Grotz, Hapke, Lampert, & Baumeister, 2010; Rodin, 1986; Seeman, Unger, McAvay, & Mendes de Leon, 1999).
However, there are circumstances where high internal control can be detrimental. A person dealing with a terminal disease, where nothing can be done to
prolong life, may become frustrated and depressed when he a�empts to gain control over the situa�on, blaming himself for his con�nued decline. Similarly, an
addict who says she has control over her behavior (“I could quit drinking if I wanted to”) may avoid ge�ng the help she needs to break the addic�on, and that
internal locus of control could set her up for failure (Shapiro, Schwartz, & As�n, 1996). When people believe they have control but are afraid they might fail,
different behaviors can manifest.
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Figure 2.2: Likelihood of living in a specific state as a func�on of one’s surname
Results from Pelham’s study show that implicit ego�sm can be present even in a person’s decision of where to live.
From Pelham, B. W., Mirenberg, M. C., & Jones, J. T. (2002). Why Susie sells seashells by the seashore: Implicit ego�sm and major life decisions. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 82(4), 469–487. Copyright © 2002 by the American Psychological Associa�on. Reprinted with permission.
Researchers have found evidence that the effect of the self on decisions goes further than most people realize. For example, do you think your name has any
rela�onship to where you live? Pelham, Mirenberg, and Jones (2002) argue that it does. These researchers looked at people’s first names and the city where they
lived (see Figure 2.2). They found that sta�s�cally, with the data they were using, we would expect 288 people with the name of Jack in Jacksonville, but 436
Jacks call this city home. Similar results were found for surnames. We would expect 760 people with a surnames beginning with the le�ers Cali to be living in
California, but 929 were in the telephone directory. Similarly, although we would expect only 7 entries for someone with a surname beginning with Texa in Texas,
34 are listed. This holds true for first names as well. There are more Florences in Florida, Georgias in Georgia, Louises in Louisiana, and Virginias in Virginia than
we would expect by chance. Lest you think all the parents in Georgia have the brilliant idea to name their child Georgia a�er the state they live in, the
researchers also found that Georgias move to Georgia at a greater rate than one would expect by chance. This unconscious a�rac�on to things that are related
to one’s self is called implicit ego�sm.
Implicit ego�sm interacts with self-esteem. Individuals with low self-esteem sat farther from other people sharing their ini�als than those with high self-esteem.
When par�cipants with high self-esteem met someone who shared their ini�als, they sat closer (Kocan & Cur�s, 2009). Feeling good about themselves, they
wanted to associate with someone who was similar to themselves, even if that similarity was just in the ini�als of their name. People who have focused on their
nega�ve quali�es and therefore need a self-esteem boost show greater social ego�sm than those who have been thinking about their posi�ve quali�es
(Brownlow, A�ea, Makransky, & Lopez, 2007). All of this is done without our conscious awareness. We are not being egocentric or selfish; our sense of self
seems to compel us to respond in par�cular ways. Implicit ego�sm shows us just how important the self is, even to aspects of our lives we would never suspect
being influenced by the self. Few Lauras would likely claim that their name helped a�ract them to the study of law, but the evidence is that this is so. If we
unconsciously make choices in line with our self, how much more might our conscious sense of self influence our lives?
Test Yourself
Click on each ques�on below to reveal the answer.
Why is an internal locus of control generally be�er for people?
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People with an internal locus of control believe their ac�ons make a difference, so they are more likely to do things that make a posi�ve
difference for them.
Given the findings about social ego�sm, would we expect to find more people with the last name of Jones living on Jones Street or
Richards living on Richard Street?
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Yes. Researchers have found this to be true about first and last names and states and a�rac�on to brands and professions that match
one’s names. Logically, we should see similar findings for names and streets.
Conclusion
Social psychologists are interested in who we are. We know a great deal about ourselves, and that knowledge affects how we process informa�on and view the
world around us. The self is a powerful force. The self affects how we feel, what we think we can do, and what we in fact do.
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Chapter Summary
Who Am I?
Self-concepts are the collec�on of things one knows about oneself. Self-schemas organize this informa�on, affec�ng how one views the world and takes in
informa�on. Our sense of our selves is not just one based in the present, we also envision possible selves in the future. We vary in our awareness of aspects of
ourselves. Private self-awareness is our focus on our internal thoughts, feelings, and desires, while public self-awareness is our awareness of how we appear to
others.
Evalua�ng the quali�es we associate with ourselves provides us with self-esteem. As a global evalua�on of the self, self-esteem can influence our confidence and
happiness. Individuals with high self-esteem report being be�er in many areas (e.g., they may believe they are smarter than their peers), but this belief seems to
be a result of self-esteem, not a cause. According to the sociometer theory of self-esteem, our self-esteem is based in our social standing. Narcissism occurs
when people have excessively high self-esteem. Our belief about our ability to do par�cular ac�ons or tasks makes up our self-efficacy. Self-efficacy can be
measured for very specific behaviors and tends to be related to persistence and performance of tasks related to those behaviors. To maintain posi�ve views of
ourselves we engage in the self-serving bias.
The Ac�ng Self
People a�empt to present certain images of themselves to others. We most o�en do this through presen�ng a posi�ve side of ourselves (e.g., appearing more
powerful or credible), and it does affect the judgments others make of us. Although it takes us a bit to enter into new social roles, these roles have a powerful
impact on our behaviors. In Zimbardo’s famous prison study, normal college men were quickly turned into defeated prisoners and power-hungry guards. In self-
handicapping we engage in behaviors that hinder our success, allowing us an excuse when things do not turn out well or greater accolades when we succeed.
Ego deple�on describes what happens when we have used self-regula�on and no longer have the willpower to perform in other ac�ons. We can avoid ego
deple�on by perceiving that an ac�on took less self-regula�on, by engaging in self-affirma�on, or by building up the ego through long-term use of self-regula�on.
When we have engaged in ac�ons involving self-regula�on, we find it more difficult to do other, seemingly unrelated ac�ons. We may differ in the control we
believe we have over what happens to us. Some people believe they have control over outcomes, with an internal locus of control, while others believe what
occurs is due to change or the ac�ons of others, with an external locus of control. Our self can have an impact of which we are not even aware. Researchers
have found that people live in places with names resembling their names at higher rates than would be expected by chance.
Cri�cal Thinking Ques�ons
1. Throughout the chapter, job interviews were used as an example of how we think about and encounter the self on a day-to-day basis. Are there other
aspects of job interviews that you might apply to concepts from the chapter?
2. Where might narcissism come from? Why might people develop such inflated self-esteem?
3. How might high academic self-efficacy affect you?
4. If a friend of yours said that how she feels about herself is not important, that it has no effect on her ac�ons, how would you respond? Does the self affect
everyday life?
5. How might your knowledge of ego deple�on affect how you structure your ac�vi�es?
Key Terms
Click on each key term to reveal the defini�on.
actual self
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Within self-discrepancy theory, the self a person believes he or she is presently.
ego deple�on
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The diminished capacity for voli�onal ac�on people experience a�er engaging in some other voli�onal ac�on.
explicit
self-esteem
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Conscious, global evalua�on of the quali�es people believe they possess. Contrast with implicit self-esteem.
external locus of control
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A sense that the things that occur are due to something beyond the individual’s control. Control may be held by chance or powerful others (e.g., boss).
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ideal self
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Within self-discrepancy theory, the self one wants to be or believes others want one to be, including hopes, wishes, and dreams.
implicit ego�sm
(h�p://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/boo
An unconscious a�rac�on to things related to one’s self.
implicit self-esteem
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Unconscious, automa�c evalua�ons of the self. Contrast with explicit self-esteem.
ingra�a�on
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Impression management strategy involving fla�ery.
internal locus of control
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A sense that events and outcomes are primarily con�ngent on the individual’s own ac�ons.
narcissism
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An inflated, overly posi�ve view of the self.
ought self
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Within self-discrepancy theory, the self one believes one should be or that others believe one should be, including obliga�ons, responsibili�es, and roles.
possible selves
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The selves we hope to be, and the selves we fear we might become
private self-awareness
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Your awareness of your internal states, for example, your thoughts, feelings, or desires.
public self-awareness
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Awareness of how you appear to others.
self-concept
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The collec�on of things you know about yourself.
self-discrepancy theory
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A theory that proposes that differences between one’s actual self and ideal self and one’s actual self and ought self will lead to different emo�ons and
mo�va�ons.
self-efficacy
(h�p://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/boo
Your evalua�on of your ability to perform par�cular tasks.
self-esteem
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Your overall evalua�on of the quali�es you associate with yourself.
self-guides
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1/17/2018 Imprimir
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Within self-discrepancy, the idea that ideal selves and ought selves serve as guides for evalua�ng behavior.
self-handicapping
(h�p://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/boo
Crea�ng an excuse for a later failure by doing something that is likely to hinder one’s success.
self-reference effect
(h�p://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/boo
The tendency to be�er remember those things related to the self.
self-regula�on
(h�p://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/boo
Exer�ng control over your ac�ons.
self-schemas
(h�p://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/boo
Knowledge structures about the self.
self-serving bias
(h�p://content.thuzelearning.com/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/books/AUPSY301.14.1/sec�ons/cover/boo
A bias toward viewing successes as something we can a�ribute to ourselves and blaming failures as something outside of the self. Overall, this bias allows for
people to maintain a posi�ve view of themselves.
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Chapter 3
Culture and
Gender
3.1
Culture
Independent Versus Interdependent Cultures
Cultural Dimensions
The Source of Cultural Differences
3.2 Gender
Comstock Images/Thinkstock
Learning Objec�ves
By the end of the chapter you should be able to:
Explain how culture allows large groups of people to live with one another
Differen�ate how independent and interdependent cultures define the self and affect cogni�on, emo�on, and
mo�va�on
Describe the cultural dimensions of power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity versus femininity, and
short-term versus long-term orienta�on
Describe some possible sources of cultural differences
Differen�ate sex and gender, gender role, and gender stereotype
Explain what gender differences researchers have found regarding for math ability and aggression
Explain what gender differences researchers have found regarding acceptance of casual sex, desired number of
sexual partners, reasons for jealousy in a roman�c rela�onship, and quali�es desired in a roman�c partner and a
possible explana�on for this group of differences
Chapter Outline
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Gender Differences: Source and Method
Gender Differences: What Are They?
Chapter Summary
* * *
The 7 billion people on planet Earth inhabit the approximate 57,500,000 square miles of land surface. Gathered into groups, they make up around
196 countries and speak approximately 6,800–6,900 languages, depending on the defini�on of country and language. As groups of people have
organized themselves, differen�a�ons have developed. For instance, with some groups an ac�vity begins at a specific �me, while for others the
star�ng �me is more fluid and the ac�vi�es begin whenever everyone arrives. Such things as views of �me are developed by people, but some
differences are inborn; for instance, roughly half of the world popula�on is male and half is female. In this chapter we explore some ways in which
people are differen�ated from one another on a large scale, first inves�ga�ng cultural differences and then looking at possible gender differences.
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Pantheon/SuperStock
Many Western stories, like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
center on an independent individual.
3.1 Culture
One challenge for people living in large social groups such as extended families, clans, tribes, states,
and na�ons is organiza�on. The human brain with all its complexity and ability to organize enables
large social groups to live together with some degree of harmony (Adolphs, 2009; Dunbar, 1998).
Groups must be able to get along and not hurt one another, to feed and shelter themselves, and to
take care of offspring. Culture—shared beliefs, a�tudes, values, and norms for behavior—allows
large groups to maintain social order and avoid chaos by developing and passing down standard
ways of living together. For example, when everyone in a culture shares an understanding of
expected and appropriate gree�ngs, everyone knows what to do when they meet friends and
strangers. By having standard rules for shared and private space, groups know where to keep
resources, engage in in�mate acts, or deal with bodily needs.
Culture is visible in a variety of ways and also influences the structure of our brains. How people
engage in daily interac�ons within a culture influences the way the brain is built (Kitayama & Park,
2010). As people meet and collaborate with one another, they learn how to engage in rewarding
interac�ons and how to avoid unpleasant or poten�ally dangerous interac�ons. This learning
strengthens neural pathways, influencing future mee�ngs as well as the general way in which the
individual approaches the world. Each of our brains is uniquely qualified to engage in culture and
specifically tuned to our own culture.
Independent Versus Interdependent Cultures
Our sense of self is developed and con�nues to change over our life�mes (Greve, Rothermund, &
Wentura, 2005). Culture has a large impact on the development of our self-concepts. Cultures vary
greatly in many ways, one large difference being the way cultures view the self and connec�ons with
others. In independent cultures (or individualis�c), people are viewed as separate, unique individuals
whose quali�es are independent of their social connec�ons. In interdependent cultures (or
collec�vis�c), people are viewed as enmeshed within social connec�ons such that the person cannot
be described adequately without social context and connec�ons (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Some
of the differences between these cultures are summarized in Table 3.1.
Table 3.1: Characteris�cs of independent and interdependent cultures
Independent/Individualis�c Interdependent/Collec�vis�c
Tend to be
found in . . .
United States, Western Europe Asia (e.g., Japan, Korea, China), Central and South
America
The self is
seen as . . .
unique, not dependent on social context flexible, varies with context
Internal
a�ributes
are . . .
expressed through interac�ons with others; others
allow for an expression of internal a�ributes
meaningful and complete only in interac�ons with others
Behavior is .
. .
largely determined by the self and one’s internal
a�ributes
a result of the situa�on and social roles; internal
a�ributes of the self are not powerful in regula�ng
behavior
When individuals from an interdependent culture are asked to write down statements in response to the ques�on “Who am I?” they tend to include more role-
specific and concrete informa�on (Cousins, 1989). For example, a Korean student might write that she is silly when with friends. People from independent
cultures respond with more trait or a�ribute characteriza�ons. An American might write that he is ar�s�c. No�ce how the individual from an interdependent
culture included context (with friends) when describing herself, but the person from an independent culture did not. This is not to say that people in an
independent culture never take into account the context or refer to themselves in rela�on to others or that people in an interdependent culture never describe
themselves according to traits; individuals from each culture are simply more likely to use each descrip�on (Kashima, Koval, & Kashima, 2011).
Test Yourself
Click on each ques�on below to reveal the answer.
Arnold offers to stay late at work to finish a project. How might explana�ons of his behavior be different in independent and
interdependent cultures?
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In an interdependent culture explana�ons might include his role as an employee or as provider for his family while in an independent
culture explana�ons are likely to focus on his personal strong work ethic.
When answering the ques�on “Who am I?” for themselves, how do people in independent and interdependent cultures differ?
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People from interdependent cultures are more likely to include context or role-related informa�on in their responses than those from
independent cultures.
Figure 3.1: Conceptual representa�ons of the self
Researchers have discovered that par�cipants with independent cultures
(like North Americans) tend to focus more on the self, while those with
interdependent cultures (like Chinese) tend to focus more on rela�onships.
From Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implica�ons for cogni�on,
emo�on, and mo�va�on. Psychological Review, 98, 224–253. doi: 10.1037/0033-295X.98.2.224
Copyright © 1991 by the American Psychological Associa�on. Reprinted with permission.
Different cultural construc�ons of the self will impact people’s reac�ons to the environment. For instance, individuals in interdependent cultures pay much more
a�en�on to the se�ng or the surroundings in all sorts of circumstances, while those from independent cultures focus on the main object or person, largely
ignoring the se�ng. In a study that illustrates this difference, par�cipants were asked to watch an animated scene of fish, seaweed, and other aqua�c objects.
Both the American (independent culture) and Japanese (interdependent culture) par�cipants noted the main fish, but the Japanese par�cipants were much more
likely to also make statements about the environment (“there was a pond”). Their judgments in later tasks were affected if the background was changed, though
the background change made no difference for the American par�cipants (Nisbe�, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, 2001).
This tendency also plays out in rela�onships and view of self. Because independent cultures focus on the unique self, people have a large and elaborate body of
knowledge about the self and a less elaborate body of knowledge about others (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). On the other hand, interdependent cultures focus
more on rela�onships—something evidenced in the way categories are formed (see Figure 3.1). When a group of Chinese children were asked to group cards
containing pictures, they put women and babies into one category because of their rela�onship. American children tended to put the adults together because of
shared category membership (i.e., they were both adults) (Chiu, 1972).
The expression of emo�ons also differs depending on culture. Individuals in interdependent cultures tend to express more other-focused emo�ons, emo�ons like
shame or sympathy that are centered on other people (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Ego-focused emo�ons, or those emo�ons that express a person’s a�ributes
and are centered on the individual, are more o�en expressed by those in independent cultures. Anger and pride are ego-focused emo�ons. Expressing an
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emo�on like anger is considered childish in interdependent cultures but is more accepted in independent cultures because these emo�ons come out of and help
dis�nguish the self. For example, in order for people to express anger, they must feel some sort of injury or offense to the self, and they must also believe that it
is all right for them to express that injury to the self.
In other studies on emo�ons, culture researchers found that independent cultures tend to focus more on posi�ve feelings than nega�ve feelings. Because
independent cultures view emo�ons as an expression of the self, it makes sense that people would encourage their posi�ve emo�ons and suppress or avoid
nega�ve emo�ons. Emo�ons as expressions of the self are less important in interdependent cultures since the self is more clearly defined by others. Emo�ons,
posi�ve or nega�ve, therefore receive less a�en�on (Kitayama, Markus, & Kurokawa, 2000). People in independent cultures generally report feeling emo�ons
longer and more intensely than those from interdependent cultures (Mastumoto, Kudoh, Scherer, & Wallbo�, 1988). For interdependent cultures such as Japan,
such expressions disrupt social rela�onships and the harmony in the group, so they are less acceptable than interpersonally engaged emo�ons (e.g., friendly
feelings) (Kitayama, Markus, & Kurokawa, 2000). For this reason, the Japanese have a series of emo�ons that involve relying on others that do not have
counterparts in English. For example, amae refers to a dependence on others, feeling or hoping to feel cared for by someone (Markus & Kitayama, 1991).
Social Psychology in Depth: Personal Space
Each person on our planet requires a certain amount of space. The space needed to feel comfortable when interac�ng with others varies from
culture to culture. Personal space is the bubble of space around an individual over which a person feels some kind of ownership. Because of this
sense of ownership, individuals feel a sense of discomfort when their personal space is violated by someone being too close physically. If
someone invades our space, we do not get more comfortable over the short term; our high level of discomfort remains (Hayduk, 1981). To
prevent such invasions, we o�en erect barriers such as placing personal objects in a space near to us (Fisher & Byrne, 1975). When someone
does invade our space, we may do nothing, move personal belongings away from them, leave, say something to the invader, or strike up a
conversa�on (Skolnick, Frasier, & Hadar, 1977).
Some space universals exist. Across cultures all people have a personal space. We begin to develop our sense of personal space around 3 years
old, and it con�nues to enlarge un�l about age 21 (Hayduk, 1983).When strangers encounter one another, they leave space between them,
though how that space is used will vary depending on situa�onal factors (Høgh-Olesen, 2008; Pedersen & Heaston, 1972; Mazur, 1977).
In some cultures personal space is small. Such cultures are o�en called contact cultures and include Southern European countries, La�n American
countries, and Arabian countries. Cultures with larger personal space are called no contact cultures. No contact cultures can be found in the
countries of Northern Europe and North America (Remland, Jones, & Brinkman, 1995). Even greater distance for interac�ng dyads can be found
in Asian cultures such as Japan (Beaulieu, 2004; Sussman & Rosenfeld, 1982).
Gender differences also exist for personal space. Women generally expect less personal space than men, par�cularly when interac�ng with other
women (Skolnick, Frasier, & Hadar, 1977; Sussman & Rosenfeld, 1982). When space is invaded and they are touched with no jus�fica�on for the
contact, men react nega�vely to the intrusion. Women, on average, do not react nega�vely (Sussman & Rosenfeld, 1978).
Researchers have found physiological reac�ons to space invasion. When seated close to one another on a train, people showed an increase in
stress hormones (Evans & Wener, 2007). Within the brain the amygdala seems to be important in the reac�on to invasions of personal space.
The amygdala is part of the brain’s limbic system and plays a role in emo�onal reac�ons, par�cularly aggression and fear. A pa�ent with severe
damage to her amygdala felt no discomfort even when standing nose-to-nose with another person (Kennedy, Gläscher, Tyszka, & Adolphs, 2009).
The tendency toward contextualiza�on can create problems for counterfactual thinking, “what-if” types of thinking, or abstract reasoning. When par�cipants in
Taiwan and Hong Kong were asked to decide which paren�ng technique was most appropriate based on a paragraph explaining why a par�cular technique would
be most helpful, many of them chose incorrectly. Their responses were not due to a lack of intelligence but rather a reluctance to answer something in a way
that went against their own experience. They did not want to suggest paren�ng behavior to others that they believed would not work. American par�cipants
may have disagreed with the conclusion of the paragraph based on their own experiences, but they were willing to answer in the abstract and choose the op�on
suggested by the paragraph (Bloom, 1981; Markus & Kitayama, 1991).
Mo�va�ons differ for those from different cultures. In independent cultures, mo�ves are internal and individual. Examples of mo�ves might include achievement,
self-actualiza�on, or enhancing self-esteem. A student in an independent culture may enter a wri�ng contest with the goal of showing how great a writer he is
and to receive praise for his abili�es. Mo�ves for those in interdependent cultures, on the other hand, restrain the self and focus on others. These mo�ves might
include affilia�on, nurturance, or deference (i.e., respect or submission) (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). A student in an interdependent culture may join the chess
club primarily as a way of gaining friends or honoring a teacher who asked her to join, rather than showing her abili�es in compe��ons. When a student in
interdependent cultures engages in ac�ons because of a need for achievement, that achievement is not focused on achieving for the self but rather achieving to
bring honor or meet expecta�ons of one’s in-group (Yang, 1982). Mo�va�ons for ac�ons in the two cultures certainly do overlap, but in each type of culture,
each type of mo�ve will be more dominant.
A mo�va�on for people in Western (independent) cultures is not to fit in but to show their own traits, preferably in a favorable light. People from Western
cultures take pride in their posi�ve a�ributes to a greater degree than they are remorseful about their nega�ve a�ributes. A great basketball player may take
great pride in that a�ribute and be mo�vated to work to improve basketball skills even more. A lack of cooking skills probably will not bother him or her, so that
person will not focus �me and energy on improving those skills. For interdependent cultures, there is less of a discrepancy between ra�ngs of posi�ve and
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nega�ve a�ributes, as well as less emphasis on posi�ve a�ributes. Individuals from interdependent cultures also desire to improve their nega�ve a�ributes
rather than their posi�ve a�ributes (Lo, Helwig, & Chen, 2011).
Test Yourself
For each of the following, decide whether you’d be more likely to see it in an independent or an interdependent culture. Click on each phrase
below to reveal the answer.
Expression of anger
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independent culture
Accurate assessment of control in a situa�on
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interdependent culture
More intense emo�ons
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independent culture
Counterfactual thinking
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independent culture
Categoriza�on based on rela�onships between objects
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interdependent culture
Sympathy
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interdependent culture
Achievement to be�er one’s own situa�on
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independent culture
Cultural Dimensions
There is more than one dimension of cultural differences. Hofstede (2001) explored cultural variability beyond differences in independent and interdependent
cultures by surveying thousands of employees at mul�na�onal corpora�ons, covering 72 different countries and many different languages. His early work was
with the large, mul�na�onal company IBM, but he found similar results within par�cular cultures when he surveyed people in other organiza�ons. To determine
how cultures differ, he examined individualism versus collec�vism (independent and interdependent), but also looked at power distance, uncertainty avoidance,
masculinity versus femininity, and long-term versus short-term orienta�on (see Figure 3.2).
Figure 3.2: Hofstede’s cultural dimensions
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Employees from large power distance countries might be less likely to openly
disagree with business execu�ves.
Hofstede surveyed various countries and discovered differing ranges between cultures on dimensions such as masculinity,
long-term orienta�on, individualism, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance.
Based on Hofstede, G. H. (2001). Culture’s consequences: Comparing values, behaviors, ins�tu�ons, and organiza�ons across na�ons (2nd ed.). Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage.
Power Distance
Power distance has to do with the acceptance and promo�on of a distance between
those at different levels of power. In some countries, people are differen�ated based
on their posi�on in a hierarchy, and rights and benefits come with posi�ons of power
that are not afforded to those lower on the hierarchy. Japan, for instance, has a large
power distance. A strong respect for the hierarchy is evident in the Japanese
language. The way individuals refer to themselves, for instance, changes depending on
whether they are talking to a peer or to someone with power over them, like a
teacher or a boss (Hamamura & Heine, 2008). Other countries high in power distance
include Malaysia, Guatemala, and Panama.
In cultures with low power distance, such as Israel, Denmark, Austria, New Zealand,
Canada, and the United States, rules and rituals that maintain status and power
differences are rarer. O�en the people within these cultures demand jus�fica�on for
inequality and work to equalize power. In countries with lower power distance, an
employee might make sugges�ons or disagree with the supervisor. Rituals, like having
the boss sit at the head of the table, may not be as rigidly adhered to, and leaders
may use different strategies and styles to influence their workers (Jackson, Meyer, &
Wang, 2013; Pasa, 2000). Cultures with a lower power distance, as well as more
independent cultures, also tend to show more innova�ve ideas and products (Rinne,
Steel, & Fairweather, 2012).
Uncertainty Avoidance
Different cultures have different ways of dealing with the uncertain�es of life. Some
cultures prescribe specific behaviors in specific situa�ons as a way to avoid life’s
uncertain�es. In many situa�ons, new, different, or unorthodox ideas are unwelcome and viewed as poten�ally dangerous. In Guatemala, for example,
appropriate rituals for gree�ng and saying good-bye are expected, and people have fairly rigid rules for acceptable behavior in various social situa�ons. A�empts
to change these rituals or disregard them will lead to nega�ve interac�ons and loss of trust. Countries high in uncertainty avoidance include Greece, Guatemala,
Uruguay, Portugal, Belgium, and Japan.
Other cultures are more relaxed when it comes to ambiguity, with few rules or rituals. Rather than being rigid, these cultures tend to be flexible and easygoing.
In Jamaica, for instance, gree�ngs may be quite informal, and few rituals are followed in everyday interac�ons. In cultures like Jamaica, wearing unusual clothing
or engaging in non-norma�ve behavior will have few social consequences. Countries low in uncertainty avoidance are Singapore, Sweden, Jamaica, and Denmark.
Masculinity Versus Femininity
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Culture and its influence on our behavior.
Cultural Context for our Behavior
Cri�cal Thinking Ques�ons
Why is it so important to consider cultural context?
What is an example of how culture is “dynamic” as
opposed to “monolithic”?
Masculine cultures are those in which men and women are expected to exhibit different quali�es—men are expected to be asser�ve, and women are expected
to be tender and caring. Some of the most masculine countries in the world are Japan, Austria, Venezuela, Italy, and Switzerland. In masculine cultures, men are
socialized to be tough and focused on success, while women are to be modest. These cultures seek to foster and maintain differences between men and women
through different norms for men/boys and women/girls (e.g., boys don’t cry), and by teaching men and women different things (e.g., women learn to cook).
Masculine cultures tend to be more driven by quali�es that are more o�en associated with men, such as achievement and success.
Feminine cultures are those where both men and women are socialized to be modest and tender (Hofstede, 2000). Feminine cultures tend to focus more on
caring for their ci�zens and overall quality of life, inves�ng more in human development programs (Rodrigues & Blumberg, 2000). For such cultures, some
success may need to be sacrificed for the good of the people, rather than the people sacrificing to help the society succeed as would be done in a more
masculine culture (van den Bos et al., 2010). Countries with more of a feminine culture include Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Costa Rica. The
United States is closer to the masculine than feminine end of the spectrum but has elements of both.
Long-Term Versus Short-Term Orienta�on
Some cultures encourage delay of gra�fica�on and forward-thinking. These cultures are considered to have a long-term orienta�on and are focused on preparing
for future events through saving and persistence in the present. For example, individuals in these cultures should show a higher savings rate and lower debt,
since current wants or needs will receive lower priority than having resources for the future. Asian cultures o�en have a long-term orienta�on, with Japan, China,
and Taiwan having the highest prevalence of this view.
Other cultures with a short-term orienta�on are more focused on the present and past. In these cultures, there is a greater emphasis on quick results, spending
now instead of saving for the future, as well as a respect for past tradi�ons. Cultures with short-term orienta�on include Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Spain,
Philippines, Spain, Canada, and the United States. One’s orienta�on also influences the culture’s view of truth. For those with more of a short-term orienta�on,
truth is absolute whereas with a long-term orienta�on, truth is more dependent on the situa�on (Hofstede, 1993).
Test Yourself
Click on the ques�on below to reveal the answer.
Where does U.S. culture stand on power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity versus femininity, and long-term versus short-term
orienta�on?
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The U.S. culture is one of low power distance, rela�vely low uncertainty avoidance, more masculinity than femininity, and a short-term
orienta�on.
The Source of Cultural Differences
Where do these cultural differences originate? Poin�ng to just one source is difficult because such differences arise from many places. One theory about the
source of differences points to explora�on of new fron�ers. For example, when we compare the culture of those who migrated to new territories to those
cultures who stayed put, differences in focus on the individual emerge. European Americans in the United States tend to be more individualis�c than Europeans
(Kitayama, Park, Sevincer, Karasawa, & Uskul, 2009). Greater individualism is also found within Japan among those who migrated from their original homes to
new islands (Kitayama, Duffy, & Uchida, 2007). Researchers should find Spanish-speaking people in La�n America and Portuguese-speaking people in Brazil versus
their counterparts in Spain or Portugal to be more individualis�c (Kashima et al., 2011).
Physical environment is also a factor in defining culture. Greater independence is needed in parts of
the world where making a living requires constant adjustment and movement. Among nomadic
people and those who herd animals, we tend to find more independent cultures. Greater
interdependence tends to develop when people are living in close geographic proximity and have low
geographic mobility, such as those found in agriculturally based communi�es (Kitayama & Uskul,
2011). Addi�onal differences are found when agricultural prac�ces that require vigilance and hard
work, such as those needed to grow rice, lead to a different approach to life than agricultural
prac�ces that rely on factors like the weather that are outside one’s control, such as those needed to
grow wheat and other grains (Nisbe�, 2003). Cultures with historic agricultural prac�ces that require
a�en�on and diligent labor tend to see achievement as based on those factors. Cultures with historic
agricultural prac�ces that rely on wishes and prayers tend to view achievement as at least par�ally
outside of their control.
Cultures are not sta�c; they are constantly changing, affected by history, economics, and changes in the natural world. Some of the current differences in cultures
come from events in history (Kitayama, Conway, Pietromanaco, Park, & Plaut, 2010). Japan, for example, made a dras�c change in its poli�cal organiza�on a�er
World War II, moving from an empire to a democracy (Kashima, Koval, & Kashima, 2011). Yet on an individual level, culture is passed down from genera�on to
genera�on and is changed by each genera�on.
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A culture begins to exhibit cultural values with its children early on. For example, children in independent cultures tend to sleep in their own beds in their own
rooms rather than co-sleeping, or sleeping in the same room or same bed as another family member (Shweder, Jensen & Goldstein, 1995). Co-sleeping is more
common in interdependent cultures such as China (Huang, Wang, Zhang, Liu, 2010). Parents in the United States tend to direct their baby’s a�en�on to objects
in the world, while parents in Japan direct their baby’s a�en�on to themselves or other people (Rothbaum, Weisz, Po�, Miyake, & Morelli, 2000). In these and
hundreds of other ways, children learn how to exist within their own culture and carry those pa�erns of behavior and percep�on into adulthood.
iStockphoto/Thinkstock; iStockphoto/Thinkstock
Parents begin ins�lling different cultural values in their children during infancy.
Because culturally appropriate responses to situa�ons are learned early and feel natural, visi�ng or living in a place with a different culture creates culture shock.
Culture shock is the result of a disparity between what feels natural or what one expects in a situa�on and the demands of that situa�on (Kitayama, Markus,
Matsumoto, & Norasakkunkit, 1997). The larger the difference between one’s home country and the culture of the country one visits, the greater the culture
shock (Zeitlin, 1996). Ea�ng with one’s fingers at a formal occasion may feel wrong to an American but might be expected from a guest at a wedding in India.
People who have more knowledge about cultural differences tend to encounter less culture shock, perhaps because the differences between cultures are not as
surprising (Chen, Lin, & Sawangpa�anakul, 2012). Although ea�ng with a fork may always feel unnatural to someone who grew up ea�ng with fingers, knowing
that utensils are required will not come as a shock to a more culturally knowledgeable person. Awareness of culture shock can also help someone living or
traveling in a new culture to iden�fy what they are feeling and work through it (Zapf, 1991).
It is also important to remember that even though people are different across cultures, there are also a great number of differences between people within a
culture. If you meet someone from a culture that is different from your own, you might use the differences between cultures described in this chapter as a
star�ng point in learning about that person; however, it is important to remember that these descrip�ons may not all be present in that individual.
Test Yourself
Click on the ques�on below to reveal the answer.
If someone were to tell you she came from a place that was se�led by people who migrated from a distant homeland and were
sheepherders, what could you predict about her culture?
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Given the findings discussed in the sec�on, it is likely her culture is more independent.
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Gender roles are o�en prescribed in early childhood. A young girl might be given
a doll to care for, while a young boy might be encouraged to manage a wooden
train track.
3.2 Gender
Besides culture, another poten�al source of difference between people is their sex. Although the words sex and gender are o�en used interchangeably, most
psychologists differen�ate between the two terms. Sex refers to biological sex, based on chromosomes or genitalia. Gender, on the other hand, refers to
differences between men and women that are based in culture, or to differences between men and women whose causality has not been established. Gender is
socially constructed; sex is biologically based (Gen�le, 1993; Unger & Crawford, 1993). Psychologists have inves�gated many poten�al differences between men
and women and the source of those differences.
Gender Differences: Source and Method
Biology is a major source of difference between men and women. Most men and
women have different sex chromosomes, different hormone levels, different genitalia,
and different reproduc�ve capabili�es. If biology is the basis for differences between
men and women, we should see such differences among almost all men and women
in all cultures and over history. One theory that has its basis in the biological
differences between men and women, par�cularly in their reproduc�ve capaci�es, is
evolu�onary theory. Evolu�onary theory will be described in more detail in the next
sec�on.
Another poten�al source of difference between men and women is the environment.
A social group may prescribe par�cular behaviors as appropriate for men and a
different set of behaviors for women. Gender roles are cultural or group-based norms
for appropriate behaviors and ac�vi�es for men and women. For example, the female
gender role in certain cultures and groups may include being nurturing and caring for
others. A gender stereotype is a set of beliefs about what individuals of a certain
gender are and should do and be. A gender stereotype might be that only women
should be nurses. If the environment is the cause of differences between men and
women, we should find somewhat different gender roles in different cultures and at
different periods.
Test Yourself
Click on the ques�on below to reveal the answer.
If your friend said, “My husband should mow the lawn. That’s his job, he’s a man.” What is she expressing?
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A gender stereotype because she is saying what a man should do because he is a man.
Gender Differences: What Are They?
One stereotype about women is that they are not as good at math as men (Nosek et al., 2009). Is there truth to this stereotype? In recent meta-analyses,
researchers found no difference between the mathema�cal ability of boys/men and girls/women (Lindberg, Hyde, Petersen, & Linn, 2010). In direct opposi�on to
this stereotype, girls earn be�er grades than boys in mathema�cs in elementary and high school (Kenney-Benson, Pomerantz, Ryan, & Patrick, 2006). Neither
gender is favored in general mathema�cs ability in elementary and middle school, but researchers have found slight preference for men in complex problem
solving in high school and college (Lindberg et al., 2010). In the past, girls were less likely to take advanced mathema�cs courses and are s�ll somewhat less
likely to take physics courses, so the discrepancy in complex problem solving may be due to lack of exposure and training in complex problem solving rather than
something inherent in the female sex.
In a study assessing nine predictors of mathema�cs performance at age 10, Melhuish and colleagues (2008) found that the best predictors were the mother’s
educa�on, quality of the home learning environment, and the effec�veness of the elementary school—not gender. Other predictors were birth weight, father’s
educa�on, family income, socioeconomic status, and preschool effec�veness. While gender gaps in math achievement do exist in different na�ons around the
world, these gaps tend to occur when there are differences in school enrollment, par�cipa�on of women in science and technology fields, and par�cipa�on of
women in roles of governmental leadership (Else-Quest, Hyde, & Linn, 2010). Given all of these findings, we can fairly safely conclude that, with opportuni�es
and encouragement, women and girls are just as capable in mathema�cs as men and boys.
Aggression is another variable where gender stereotypes are prevalent. In a meta-analysis of aggression, researchers find that men tend to be more aggressive
than women, though the effect size is small (Be�encourt & Miller, 1996; Eagly & Steffen, 1986). In instances of aggression without provoca�on, men are more
aggressive than women. But when a situa�on includes provoca�on, this difference largely disappears (Be�encourt & Miller, 1996). Provoca�on might include
being insulted or being harmed by another person. When showing aggression, men and women have different responses. Women are more likely to aggress if
they can use verbal aggression rather than physical aggression, and are also more likely to aggress if it is toward another woman rather than a man. Men also
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Gender differences impact the nature of da�ng
violence.
Age and Gender Differences in Teen Da�ng
Cri�cal Thinking Ques�ons
Who perpetrates more acts of violence in their teen
years, girls or boys?
Why does age ma�er?
©2010 Chau Doan/LightRocket/Ge�y Images
Evolu�onary psychologists believe that biological factors, like
paternity uncertainty and maternal investment, have shaped
gender differences in mate selec�on.
aggress more toward other men (Be�encourt & Miller, 1996). Because men and women are equally aggressive when provoked, some researchers have suggested
that differences are largely based in social roles (Richardson & Hammock, 2007). Men are aggressive generally because their masculine social role calls for it, and
women are not aggressive generally because their social role prohibits it. If, however, there is reason for aggression, both men and women are willing to show it.
On the other end of the spectrum, is there a difference between men and women in levels of coopera�on? As with aggression, there is essen�ally no difference
between the general coopera�veness of men and women (Balliet, Li, Macfarlan, & Van Vugt, 2011). There are some differences in the context in which men and
women are coopera�ve. Men tend to cooperate more when they are working with other men. Women cooperate more in groups that include both men and
women.
Men and women are different in their tendencies to forgive. Men are less likely to forgive than
women. In a meta-analysis the effect size for this difference was small (Miller, Worthington, &
McDaniel, 2008). A large difference between men and women was found for vengeance. Men had a
greater desire for vengeance than women. The results of studies in other cultures suggest that this
desire for vengeance is one encouraged by culture. In some cultures there are no differences in
vengeance between men and women (Kadiangandu, Mullet, & Vinsonneau, 2001).
One possible explana�on for gender differences is found in the social roles exhibited in
interdependent and independent cultures. For interdependent cultures, behaviors associated with
gender roles are a�ributed to the role rather than the person. A woman’s nurturing nature may not
be something characteris�c of herself but rather a requirement of her role as mother. In independent
cultures, on the other hand, social roles have less power, so similar nurturing behaviors are believed
to come out of an aspect of the self rather than the social role (Costa, Terracciano, & McCrae, 2001). Another possible explana�on is that inherent differences
between men and women are difficult to see in cultures where social roles are prescribed. These inherent differences are more obvious only in more egalitarian
cultures where men and women have the freedom to express what comes naturally to them—the personality characteris�cs they have based on biological
endowment rather than based in social roles (Schmi�, Realo, Voracek, & Allik, 2008). More research is needed to tease out the source of these findings.
Across cultures, men and women also differ in their acceptance of casual sex, desired number of sexual partners, desired quali�es of mates, and source of
jealousy in in�mate rela�onships. In general, men are more accep�ng of casual sex (Oliver & Hyde, 1993; Petersen & Hyde, 2010). Men prefer more sexual
partners than women, par�cularly if they are asked to es�mate how many partners they would desire if there were no social or health risks and no limita�ons in
their ability to find willing women. With no risks or limita�ons, men respond that their ideal number of sexual partners during their life�me is around 12.9, while
women report an ideal number of 4.9. However, when viewed from a different angle, researchers found that 47% of the women had an interest in more than
one partner compared to 76% of the men (Fenigstein & Preston, 2007). Another difference between men and women is that men place more emphasis on the
physical a�rac�veness of a roman�c partner (Feingold, 1990). Women tend to be pickier when choosing poten�al roman�c partners and put more focus on
status and poten�al to invest in children (Brase, 2006; Buss, 1989, 1995).
Evolu�onary psychologist David Buss points to differences in adap�ve challenges faced by men and
women in evolu�onary history as the cause of these differences. Because of biological differences,
reproduc�on requires different things. A man’s genes can poten�ally be passed on by having sex one
�me with a fer�le woman. A woman’s genes, however, can only be passed on if she has sex, gets
pregnant, invests 9 months in the pregnancy, has a successful birth, and feeds and cares for the child
un�l it can make it on its own. Women, then, have an exponen�ally larger investment in each
offspring than men do. Given this difference, the major tasks of men in passing down their genes are
to iden�fy fer�le women and convince them to have sex.
Unlike women, men do not necessarily know if an offspring of someone they had sex with is their
own—a phenomenon Buss calls paternity uncertainty. There are two, non-mutually exclusive
strategies to deal with this dilemma. A man can a�empt to protect the woman he had had sex with
from other men, thereby assuring that any offspring she produces are his. Because his contribu�on
to future children can be as small as a single act of sex, the other strategy a man could adopt is to
a�empt to have sex with as many women as possible, so even if one woman ends up not having his
baby, another might. Given her large investment in each offspring she produces, the major tasks of a
woman, on the other hand, is to iden�fy a man who is willing and able to invest in her and her
offspring and protect herself from ge�ng pregnant from a man who will not invest.
The gender differences in acceptance of casual sex, a�rac�ve quali�es in the opposite sex, and
feelings about different types of infidelity are generally found in all cultures around the world. Given
this cross-cultural consistency, it is unlikely that social roles are the basis of these differences.
Evolu�onary psychologist David Buss points to differences in adap�ve challenges faced by men and
women in evolu�onary history as the cause of gender difference. Evolu�onary theory proposes that
characteris�cs of organisms that help them survive and reproduce in a par�cular environment will
allow the genes of those organisms to be passed on. Organisms that do not have those advantages
will not survive and, therefore, those genes will not con�nue into the future. With evolu�onary
theory, we would expect men who have the skills to provide for a woman to be more successful. In
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a hunter-gatherer society, such as that in which our ancestors lived, a man’s physical a�ributes, such
as his ability to throw a spear quickly and accurately, would make him more successful.
Based on their reproduc�ve challenges, it makes sense that women would be more picky when choosing mates. Women need to iden�fy men who have the
resources to invest, that is, those of higher status and who are willing to invest in children. Evolu�onary theory also a�ributes women’s desire for fewer sexual
partners and tendency to be more upset by emo�onal infidelity to her desire to protect her children. Emo�onal infidelity could mean the man in her life would
leave and invest in someone else, leaving her with fewer resources to care for her children. Evolu�onarily speaking, men’s desire for more a�rac�ve partners
may be rooted in the need for men to iden�fy fer�le women. Similarly, men’s need to iden�fy their children as their own explains why men are more upset
when their roman�c partners have sex with another person.
Evolu�onary theory may not be the only way to explain cross-cultural similari�es in gender differences. There is also the social structural theory. According to
Alice Eagly and Wendy Wood (1999), some basic biological differences led, historically, to a difference in the structure of socie�es. Larger body size and strength
led men to engage in more physical ac�vi�es. The physical demands of pregnancy and lacta�on led women to engage in more home-based pursuits that could
be interrupted by demands of small children. Because men and women have the same biologically based capabili�es across cultures, these socie�es tended to
organize themselves in similar ways. Men tended to specialize in ac�vi�es like hun�ng or herding that brought greater resources, power, and status. Women
could not engage in those ac�vi�es and therefore were more likely to be dependent and specialize in nurturing ac�vi�es. According to the social structural
theory, the majority of differences between men and women are based in the social structure—if the social structure is changed, so too will the differences
between men and women. Indeed, in countries with greater gender equality, the social status of the man is not as important to women as in countries with less
gender equality. Men are less interested in the domes�c skills of women in more egalitarian countries.
Overall, men and women are more alike than different. Some differences, par�cularly those that are common in most cultures, can reasonably be a�ributed to
different challenges in evolu�onary history but might also be based in a society’s social structure. Differences that vary from culture to culture, such as those in
math performance, are be�er explained as due to social factors such as gender norms within a culture.
Test Yourself
Click on each statement below to reveal the answer.
Name two variables that meta-analyses have found are not appreciably different for men and women.
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Math ability, aggression with provoca�on
Name three variables where differences between men and women have been found.
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Aggression without provoca�on, acceptance of casual sex, desired number of sexual partners, reasons for jealousy in a roman�c
rela�onship, quali�es desired in a roman�c partner
Conclusion
The billions of people who live on planet Earth have organized themselves into groups, and, as a group, have developed par�cular ways of rela�ng that are
unique to their group. Cultures differ in various ways, and these differences impact the way people encounter and think about their worlds. Differences between
men and women are another source of difference. Some differences between men and women are based in biology, but some differences are due to the roles
they play due to group or cultural influences.
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Chapter Summary
Culture
Cultures can be divided into those that emphasize independence of the self from others, such as those found in the United States and Western Europe, and
those that focus on context and social roles as important, such as those found in Asia and Central and South America. These independent and interdependent
construc�ons of self affect how people think, feel, and what mo�vates them. Cultures differ in terms of power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity
versus femininity, and short-term orienta�on versus long-term orienta�on.
Gender
Gender differences may originate in biological differences between men and women, or may arise from different expecta�ons for men and women in different
cultures or groups, or a combina�on of the two. Few differences exist in men and women, such as mathema�cal ability and aggression with provoca�on.
Differences that do exist can o�en be traced to differences within cultures’ social roles. Evolu�onary theory helps explain differences in men’s and women’s
acceptance of casual sex, desired number of sexual partners, desired quali�es in a mate, and reasons for jealousy. Some of these differences can also be
explained by the ways socie�es tend to build social structures to address biological differences.
Cri�cal Thinking Ques�ons
1. What are some advantages of living in an independent culture? What are some advantages of living in an interdependent culture?
2. If cogni�on, emo�on, and mo�va�on are different in independent and interdependent cultures, what else about people might be different?
3. The chapter discusses the effect of independent and interdependent cultures on sense of self. How might Hofstede’s cultural dimensions influence a person’s
sense of self?
4. What other gender differences might exist? Do you think these differences are based in biology or have been developed because of social factors?
5. At �mes, evolu�onary explana�ons for behavior make people uncomfortable because someone might claim these differences are based in evolu�onary
history and cannot be changed or controlled by the individual. Is such a claim legi�mate? How would you respond to someone who made that argument?
Key Terms
Click on each key term to reveal the defini�on.
evolu�onary theory
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The theory that characteris�cs of organisms that help them survive and reproduce in a par�cular environment will allow the genes of those organisms to be
passed on to the next genera�on.
gender
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Differences between men and women that are based in culture or that refer to differences between men and women whose causality has not been established.
Contrast with sex.
gender roles
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Cultural or group-based norms for appropriate behaviors and ac�vi�es for men and women.
gender stereotype
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A set of beliefs about what individuals of a certain gender are and should do and be.
independent cultures
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Cultures where people are viewed as separate, unique individuals whose quali�es are independent of their social connec�ons.
interdependent cultures
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Cultures where people are viewed as enmeshed within social connec�ons such that the person cannot be described adequately without social context and
connec�ons. Also referred to as collec�vis�c cultures.
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personal space
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The bubble of space around an individual over which a person feels some kind of ownership.
sex
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Biological sex, based on chromosomes or genitalia. Contrast with gender.
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