Culture, Self & Identity Flashcards
Self
psychological construct people create in order to help understand themselves and their world better
Self-concept
cognitive representations of one’s own self, idea or images one has baout oneself and how and why one behaves.
Why do people have Self-Concepts?
Cultural worldviews
- Belief systems about oneself and culture
- Products of several uniquely human abilities.
Self-concepts are functional
- Aid in addressing needs for affiliation and uniqueness and explain the importance of understanding values as guiding principles within a specific culture.
Cultural Differences in Self-Concept
Cultural psychology received major boost with theory of independent and interdependent self-construal.
Independent and interdependent self-construal theory has been major impetus for many studies in cultural psychology since its inception.
Independent construal of self:
individuals focus on personal, internal attributes.
Collectivistic cultures have a composite construal of self; individual is interdependent and inseparable from social context.
Interdependent construal of self:
self is unbounded, flexible, and contingent on context.
Data regarding assumptions concerning culture and self:
Idea that American culture is individualistic/independent and Asian cultures are collectivist/interdependent challenged by several studies.
Australia’s Individualism Rating before and after 2023, why?
Bfre: 90
After: 73
Australia is not one culture:
Indigenous culture is more collectivist.
Ethnic groups such as Greek-Australian, Latvian-Australian, Italian-Australian and Chinese-Australian have high “family collectivism”.
Natural selection has fostered 2 basic developmental approaches:
Self-definition
Development of interpersonal relatedness
Niedenthal and Beike theory
existence of both interrelated and isolated self-concepts.
Triandis theory:
existence of 3 types of selves – private, public & collective – that coexist in everyone.
Self-esteem
cognitive and affective evaluations we make about ourselves.
Self-enhancement:
collection of psychological processes by which we bolster our self-esteem.
Terror management theory:
humans are aware of and terrified of inevitable death – this is why we have self-esteem.
- Psychological phenomena buffer terror of dying.
- Cultural meaningfulness and self-worth arise because humans balance propensity for life w/awareness of inevitable death.
Influence of 4 bases of self-esteem:
controlling one’s life, doing one’s duty, benefitting others, achieving social status.
Derived positive self-regard from all 4 bases but mostly from those that were consistent w/the value priorities of other people in the same cultural context.
