Unpackaging culture

Question 1

What did Hofstede’s (1980) study provide?

Answer 1

Initial ‘map’ of global differences in national culture
- Explosion of interest (and research) in cross-cultural psychology from 1980 to present
- Comparing nations with different Hofstede scores
- Usually focusing on individualism-collectivism
- Particular focus on USA vs East Asia (esp. Japan)

Question 2

Collectivism and individualism

Answer 2

“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)

culture is manifested within the individual in these things like attitudes, beliefs

Question 3

Cultural syndromes

Answer 3

“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)

shared among a particular group of people (eg. who share a language, live in the same part of the world)

these psychological variables can hang together at a cultural level even if they do not hang together in an individual level

Question 4

Some key questions

Answer 4

• 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 5

A classic paper

Answer 5

• Markus & Kitayama (1991)
  Review paper which defines area
• Central idea
  – ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ cultures differ in relative prevalence of independent and interdependent self-construals (ways of seeing yourself)

Question 6

Self-construal theory

Answer 6

• “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 7

Self-construal theory: Claim 1

Answer 7

“People in different cultures have strikingly different construals of the self, of others, and of the interdependence of the two.

Question 8

Independent self-construal (Markus & Kitayama, 1991)

Answer 8

The prevalent way of seeing yourself in terms of western cultures was the independent self- construal

Each person in this picture has their own properties

Question 9

Ways of being independent (Markus & Kitayama, 1991, Table 1)

Answer 9

• Definition: separate from social context
• Structure: bounded, unitary, stable
• Important features: internal, private
• Tasks: be unique, express self, realise internal attributes, promote own goals, be direct: “say whats on your mind”
• Role of others: self-evaluation: social comparison, reflected appraisal
• Basis of self-esteem: ability to express self, validate internal attributes

Question 10

Interdependent self-construal (Markus & Kitayama, 1991)

Answer 10

They argued this was more characteristic of Japanese culture and they suggested this might be characteristic of most cultures in the world that are not thought of as Western.

Differences:
- The self overlaps with other people rather than being separate
- The biggest X’s (most important characteristics of individual) might be towards things that they share with others/ relationships with other people.

Question 11

Ways of being interdependent (Markus & Kitayama, 1991, Table 1)

Answer 11

Definition: Connected with social context
Structure: Flexible, variable
Important features: External, public (statuses, roles, relationships)
Tasks: Belong, fit-in
Occupy one’s proper place
Engage in appropriate action
Promote others’ goals
Be indirect:“read other’s mind”
Role of others: Self-definition: relationships with others in specific contexts define self
Basis of self-esteem: Ability to adjust, restrain self, maintain harmony

Question 12

Self-construal theory: Claim 2

Answer 12

“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 13

Implications for cognition

Answer 13

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 14

Implications for emotion

Answer 14

• 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 15

Implications for motivation

Answer 15

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

Question 16

Markus & Kitayama’s evidence
Matsumoto (1999)

Answer 16

Country- cognition, emotion, motivation

Question 17

Markus & Kitayama’s theory

Answer 17

National culture (values, attitudes, behaviours, norms) → self-construals → cognition, emotion, motivation

Question 18

Early measures of self-construals

Answer 18

• 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 19

“Unpackaging” studies

Answer 19

Group membership → cultural orientation, outcome variable
Cultural orientation → outcome variable

Mediation model:

Idea that people may belong to different groups and in turn they would have different cultural orientations and this might predict an outcome you’re interested in

Key question: Do differences in the cultural dimension of interest account for differences observed in the outcome between members of different cultural groups?

Question 20

Self-construal and embarrassability
Singelis and Sharkey (1995)
participants, questionnaire measures

Answer 20

• 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 21

Self-construal and embarrassability

Answer 21

• 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 22

Self-construal and embarrassability

Answer 22

• 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 23

Current evidence for self-construal theory (Cross, Hardin, & Gercek-Swing, 2011; Levine et al., 2003)

Answer 23

Evidence that cultural context and comparisons between eastern and western predict differences in cognitive, emotional and motivational tendencies.

Cultural context → cognition, emotion, motivation → self construal
Cultural context → self-construal

Question 24

Kitayama’s revised perspective (Kitayama et al., 2009; Kitayama & Uskul, 2011)

Answer 24

cultural context → implicit cultural mandate → cognition, emotion, motivation → self construal

implicit cultural mandate → self-construal

Theory was revised- he now suggests that independence and interdependence are properties or societies not individuals, He describes them as implicit cultural mandates. Theres an expectation you aim to be more independent or interdependence. These are what he argues lead to differences in cognition, emotion and motivation.

Question 25

A problem!

Answer 25

• 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 26

Sampling individuals

Answer 26

• 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” (when people answer Likert scales, pp’s may be comparing themselves to other people in their society)

Question 27

Sampling cultural groups

Answer 27

• 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 (most collectivist)

Question 28

Where are USA and Japan?

Answer 28

USA- Mastery (by israel and skorea)
JAPAN- Mastery (next to israel)

Question 29

Minkov’s (2018) nation scores

Answer 29

USA and Japan are pretty much equal on individualism but they differ quite a bit on monumentalism-flexibility

Question 30

USA versus Japan reconsidered

Answer 30

• 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 31

Even in large-scale studies …

Answer 31

2 regions of the world were massively over represented. The most was confucian-influenced- which are east asian societies such as Japan

The second was WEIRD.

All the other areas of the world were underrepresented.

Question 32

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

Answer 32

• 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 33

Ways of being independent or interdependent (Vignoles & 72 co-authors, 2016)

Answer 33

Domain of functioning:
Defining the self: “Independent”- difference, “interdependent”- similarity

Experiencing the self: “Independent”- self-containment- “interdependent”- connection to others

Evidence for 7 dimensions

Question 34

No support for two-factor model (Vignoles & 72 co-authors, 2016)

Answer 34

Found separate factors for being independent and interdependent

Bipolar comparison but they didn’t go together either at the individual or cultural level of analysis

Question 35

Strong support for seven-factor model (Vignoles & 72 co-authors, 2016)

Answer 35

Certain ways of being independent or interdependent were emphasised in different regions but there wasn’t this big bipolar contrast of countries being independent or interdependent

Blue (western) countries occupy a region but they’re not particular different to other parts of the world

Japanese samples were quite atypical to east asian samples

Question 36

Self-construals: summary

Answer 36

• Highly influential theory
  – Few researchers willing to question theory
  – Binary view of cultural differences
  – Which level of analysis?
• Evidence remains problematic
  – Very little evidence for mediation
  – Need for better sampling and measures
  – Need for multilevel research

*(but see Kitayama et al., 2022: American Psychologist)

Question 37

Why self-construals?

Answer 37

• “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 38

Attribution and cognitive styles:
Other-construals

Answer 38

• 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 39

Attribution and cognitive styles:
Possible explanations

Answer 39

• 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 40

Attribution and cognitive styles:
Cognitive styles

Answer 40

• 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 41

Frame switching studies

Answer 41

• 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 42

Culture as “situated cognition”

Answer 42

• 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?

Question 43

Conclusions

Answer 43

• Researchers often try to ‘unpackage’ cultural differences with mediation tests
• Attempts to identify, measure and prime aspects of subjective culture
  – Values
  – Self-construals
  – Attribution styles
  – Cognitive styles
• However, much research plagued by methodological difficulties
  – Discriminant validity of measures
  – Acquiescent response bias
  – Non-equivalence of meaning
• Is culture reducible to individual-level psychological variables?