Cultural Differences 2

Question 1

Collectivism and individualism:

Answer 1

• “Collectivism and individualism are ‘cultural syndromes’. They reflect shared attitudes, beliefs, categorizations, norms, roles, and values organized around a central theme, that are found among individuals who speak a particular language, and live in a specific geographic region, during a specific historical period.” (Triandis, Chan, Bhawuk, Iwao, & Sinha, 1995, p. 462)

Question 2

Some key questions:

Answer 2

• How shared are elements of subjective culture?
  
  • Schwartz values 6% to 26% country-level variance (Fischer & Schwartz, 2011)
  • How strongly do they covary?
  • Individual-level vs. ecological-level relationships
  • What makes them covary?
  • What is the “common theme”?
  • Just a pattern or a cultural system?

Question 3

A classic paper:

Answer 3

· Markus & Kitayama (1991)
- Review paper which defines area
- Over 33,000 citations in Google Scholar!
· Central idea
- ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ cultures differ in relative prevalence of independent and interdependent self-construals

Question 4

Self-construal theory:

Answer 4

· “People in different cultures have strikingly different construals of the self, of others, and of the interdependence of the two.
· “These construals can influence, and in many cases determine, the very nature of individual experience, including cognition, emotion, and motivation.” (Markus & Kitayama, 1991, p. 224).

Question 5

Ways of being independent - Markus and Kitayama, 1991:

Answer 5

· Separate from social context
· Structure - bounded, unitary, stable
· Important features - internal, private
· Tasks - be unique, express self, promote own goals
· Role of others - social comparison, reflected appraisal
· Basis of self-esteem - ability to express self, validate internal attributes

Question 6

Ways of being interdependent - Markus and Kitayama, 1991:

Answer 6

· Connected with social context
· Structure - flexible, variable
· Important features - external, public
· Tasks - belong, fit-in, promote others’ goals
· Role of others - relationships with others in specific contexts define self
· Basis of self-esteem - ability to adjust, restrain self, maintain harmony

Question 7

Implications for cognition:

Answer 7

· Compared to Americans, South-East Asian participants typically show:
- more interpersonal knowledge
- more context-specific knowledge of self and other
- more attention to interpersonal context in basic cognition

Question 8

Implications for emotion:

Answer 8

· Ego-focused emotions
- anger, frustration, pride
- predicted to be more important in US
· Other-focused emotions
- sympathy, feelings of interpersonal communion, shame
- predicted to be more important in Japan

Question 9

Implications for motivation:

Answer 9

· Cultural differences in self-construal predicted to foster:
- Self-expression or self-restraint
- Individual or collective bases of achievement
- Self-enhancement or modesty

Question 10

Markus and Kitayama’s evidence:

Answer 10

· Country -> cognition
· Country -> emotion
· Country -> motivation
· Matsumoto (1999)

Question 11

Markus and Kitayama’s theory:

Answer 11

· National culture -> self-construals -> cognition, emotion, and motivation

Question 12

Early measurements of self construals:

Answer 12

· Twenty Statements Test (TST)
- “I am …” x 20
- Coding for ‘interdependence’, ‘sociality’, etc.
· Likert measures (e.g., Singelis, 1994)
- e.g., “I enjoy being unique and different from others in many respects” / “My happiness depends on the happiness of those around me”
- 2 orthogonal factors: independence, interdependence
- But no control for acquiescent responding

Question 13

“unpackaging” studies:

Answer 13

· Group membership -> cultural orientation -> outcome variable

Question 14

Self-construal and embarrassability:

Answer 14

· Study by Singelis and Sharkey (1995)
· Participants
- 86 Euro-American and 417 Asian-American (Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean) university students
· Questionnaire measures
- Self-construal scale (Singelis, 1994)
- Embarrassability scale (Modigliani, 1968)

Question 15

Self-construal and embarrassability 2:

Answer 15

· Group differences in embarrassability
- (p < .001, R2 = 4.5%)
- Asian-Americans on average more susceptible to embarrassment than Euro-Americans
· Significant group differences in independent and interdependent self-construals
- (ind: p < .001, R2 = 6.7%) (int: p < .01, R2 = 3.4%)
- Asian-Americans on average reported less independent and more interdependent self-construals than did Euro-Americans

Question 16

Self-construal and embarrassability 3:

Answer 16

· Independent and interdependent self-construals significantly predicted embarrassability
- (p < .001, R2 = 19%)
· After controlling for self-construals, group membership did not predict embarrassability
- (p > .05, partial R2 = 0.7%)
· Intepreted as evidence for mediation:
- Culture -> self-construal -> embarrassability

Question 17

A problem:

Answer 17

· In most studies using self-report measures of independence and interdependence, “Western” and “Eastern” cultures do not differ as expected.
- (e.g., Kitayama et al., 2009; review by Cross et al., 2011; meta-analysis by Levine et al., 2003)
· Some possible explanations:
- Inadequate sampling?
- Inadequate measures?
- Need for implicit measures?
- The theory is wrong?

Question 18

Sampling individuals:

Answer 18

· Can nation-level scores be used reliably to characterise particular samples?
- Many studies rely on student samples
- Unrepresentative of nations from which drawn
- Misrepresent some nations more than others
· Representative sampling unrealistic
- Need for “comparable” samples?
- Measure cultural orientation at individual level
- Problem of “reference-group effects”

Question 19

Sampling cultural groups:

Answer 19

· Not representative or theory-driven
· Opportunistic national comparisons
- USA treated as prototypical “individualist” nation
- Japan treated as prototypical “collectivist” nation
· Hofstede rankings for individualism (out of 53)
- USA: 1st
- Japan: 22nd
- Guatemala: 53rd

Question 20

USA vs Japan reconsidered:

Answer 20

· Takano and Osaka (1999) argued that Japanese culture is not collectivist
- Detailed review of empirical studies
- Explained by social psychological processes
- Threat (e.g., WW2)  conformity and self-sacrifice
- Western observers make FAE  stereotype
- Japanese commentators echo  self-stereotype
· Still contentious question
- See update by Takano and Osaka (2018) with commentaries and response

Question 21

Reconsidering measurement of self-construal (Vignoles and 72 co-authors, 2016):

Answer 21

· Study 1: Exploratory factor analysis
- 2924 high-school students in 16 nations
- 62 Likert-type items (existing scales, new)
- Ipsatisation to control for acquiescence
· Study 2: Confirmatory factor analysis
- 7279 adults from 55 cultural groups in 33 nations
- New scale: 38 items → 22 items
- Method factor to control for acquiescence
- Testing for measurement invariance

Question 22

Ways of being independent (Vignoles, 2016):

Answer 22

· Defining the self - difference
· Experiencing the self - self-containment
· Making decisions - self-direction
· Looking after oneself - self-reliance
· Moving between contexts - consistency
· Communicating with others - self-expression
· Dealing with conflicting interests - self-interest

Question 23

Ways of being interdependent (Vignoles, 2016):

Answer 23

· Defining the self - similarity
· Experiencing the self - connection to others
· Making decisions - receptiveness to influence
· Looking after oneself - dependence on others
· Moving between contexts - variability
· Communicating with others - harmony
· Dealing with conflicting interests - commitment to others

Question 24

Why self-construals?:

Answer 24

· “People in different cultures have strikingly different construals of the self, of others, and of the interdependence of the two” (Markus & Kitayama, 1991, p. 224, italics added)
- But theoretical focus is largely on self
- Is self the key construct?
· One alternative: Thinking about others

Question 25

Other construals:

Answer 25

· People in Western cultures attribute ambiguous behaviour to dispositions rather than situation
- Correspondence bias (fundamental attribution error)
- Assumed to be universal human nature (Ross, 1977)
· Bias reduced/absent in East Asian participants
- Attribution to situation/context, rather than individual dispositions (Miller, 1984; Morris & Peng, 1994)
- Not-so-fundamental attribution error!

Question 26

Possible explanations:

Answer 26

· Little cultural difference in dispositionism
· Situationism (Choi, Nisbett, & Norenzayan, 1999)
- Perhaps relates to Confucian culture – focus on social positions and cardinal relationships
· Implicit theories of group agency (Menon, Morris, Chiu, & Hong, 1999; also Kashima et al., 2004)
- Greater attribution to agency of group in Hong Kong newspaper articles and participants than in USA

Question 27

Cognitive styles:

Answer 27

· East Asians: holistic thinking
- “attending to the entire field and assigning causality to it, making relatively little use of categories and formal logic, and relying on ‘dialectical’ reasoning”
· Westerners: analytic thinking
- “paying attention primarily to the object and the categories to which it belongs and using rules, including formal logic, to understand its behavior” (Nisbett et al., 2001)

Question 28

Frame switching studies:

Answer 28

· Research in bi-cultural Hong Kong context
- “Two unrelated studies” paradigm
1. Priming with Western or Chinese images
2. Measure attributions
- Western primes  dispositional inferences
- Chinese primes  situational inference (Hong, Morris, Chiu, & Benet-Martinez, 2000)
· Many subsequent studies into “culture priming”
- Review by Oyserman and Lee (2008)

Question 29

Culture as “situated cognition”:

Answer 29

· Culture more flexible than previously imagined
- Attributed to activation of implicit theories
- Differences in behaviour depend on accessibility rather than availability of cultural knowledge
- Brings culture under experimental control!
- What are the benefits and drawbacks?
- Can we all switch between meaning systems?
- Role of symbols in cultural maintenance?