Week 5 Flashcards
What is a Self?
A continually developing sense of awareness and agency that guides action and takes shape as the individual individual (brain/body) becomes attuned to its environment(s)
What does a “self” do?
Implicitly and explicitly involved in all aspects of behavior
* Example: Organizes attention, perception, cognition, emotion, motivation, relationships, group processes
Key role in self-regulation
Culture vs. Self
Culture:
- Afford different solutions to universal questions
- Images, ideas, norms, tasks, practices, and social interactions that characterize social environments
Self:
- Require input from sociocultural meanings and practices
- Incorporate and reflect sociocultural patterns
- Can reinforce or change socio-cultural contexts
In(ter)dependent Self-Construals
- Set of patterns prescribing normatively appropriate relations between oneself (the individual) and others (other individuals)
- Two types of sociality or social relations linked to divergent modes of being (e.g., Marx, 1857/58; Triandis, 1996)
Assumed to be universally available
Independent self-construals
- Bounded, unitary, stable, separate from the social context
- Self-expression, uniqueness, self- actualization
- Actions based on personal thoughts, feelings, and goals
Key boundary: Individuals
- See also “Gesellschaft”
Interdependent self-construals
- Closely connected to others, fluid, contextually embedded
- Fit in and maintain social harmony
- Actions based on situationally defined norms and expectations
- Key boundary: Groups
- See also “Gemeinschaft”
Independent Self in North America
Individual seen as the source of thought, feeling, and action
ie:
- Speak out and emphasize good qualities or successes to express defining preferences or attributes (Kim, 2002; Markus et al., 2006)
- Choice enhances performance, seen as expression of preferences, self-affirmation (Iyengar & Lepper, 1999; Snibbe & Markus, 2005)
- Individual achievements and successes imply happiness: Achievement signals positive internal attributes (Kitayama et al., 2009)
Interdependent Self in “the East”
Individual as socially aware, embedded, and interdependent:
Ie:
- Fostering good relations (Holloway et al., 2009)
- Having concerns about one’s enemies (Adams, 2005)
- Heightened sensitivity to others’ evaluations (Nisbett, 1993)
- Less concern with getting to choose (Snibbe & Markus, 2005)
- Same region of the brain activated by significant others (mother) and the self for people in Chinese contexts (Zhu et al., 2007)
Self-Construals vs. Individualism-Collectivism
Different uses in the earlier literature:
- I-C causing differences inself-construals (e.g., Gudykunstetal.,1996)
- I-C construals (e.g., Oysermanetal.,2002)
- Self-construals as individual-level analog of I-C (Smith,2011)
- I-C is not necessarily reducible to differences in self-construal
- I-C can be seen as multifaceted “cultural syndromes”
- Normative beliefs, values, practices, and self-construals
Problems With In(ter)dependence
Inadvertently black-and-white view of cultural diversity
- Research on “West” (North American) vs. “Rest” (East Asian)
- May not reflect original intentions (see Markus &
- Kitayama, 2003; 2010)
- Overly extreme juxtapositions of “individuality” vs. “sociality”
- Restricted theorizing, limited explanatory potential of self-construal
Empirical inconsistencies
- East-West comparisons often failed to show expected differences
Two Orthogonal Dimensions
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Ways of Being In(ter)dependent
7-dimensional model of in(ter)dependent self-construal
- 2 large-scale multinational surveys
- 49 nations, 55+ cultural groups, 10,000+ participants
- Compare individualism-collectivism (I-C, Hofstede, 2001)
- Predictive roles of eco-cultural contexts (e.g., socio-economic development; religious heritage)
Ways of Being In(ter)dependent
See photo
Ways of Being In(ter)dependent
See Photo
Example Exam Question:
Can you explain what was meant by the idea that independence and interdependence were thought of as “orthogonal”? How does that differ from the newer view proposed by Vignoles et al (2016)?
Eco-Cultural Contexts
Initial parsimonious exploration focusing on two variables:
Socio-Economic Development:
- Predicts various indicators of individualism, autonomy, independence
- Within USA: Higher SES/affluence associated with independent forms of agency (Snibbe & Markus, 2005; Adams et al., 2012)
Religious Heritage:
- Historical influences can last for centuries (Weber, 1905/1958)
- Religions define what it means to be a person or a good cultural member (e.g., Protestant vs. Buddhism)
- Low relational focus at work in USA = Protestant heritage (Sanchez- Burks, 2005)
Socio-Economic Development
Prediction for all dimensions:
- Higher HDI (i.e., long and healthy life, access to education, living standards) should predict higher independence
Results: Partly confirmed, partly not…
- Confirmed for difference, self- reliance, self-direction, self- expression
- But also: Commitment to others
Religious Heritage
Prediction for all dimensions:
- Protestant: Higher independence
- Muslim & Buddhist: Higher interdependence • Catholic/orthodox: Intermediate
Results:
- Protestant: Self-containment, but also dependence on others
- Muslim: Similarity, connection, harmony, but also self-reliance, consistency
- Buddhist: Variability, dependence, harmony
- Catholic: Difference, consistency, self-expression
- Orthodox: No differences from average
Beyond the East/West Dichotomy (Some initial takeaways from this study)
- Western + high HDI: Higher commitment to others than expected
- South/East Asian + Buddhist: Most similar to original self-construal ideas
- Latin America: Unexpectedly similar to Western samples in independence
- Middle East + Muslim: Findings seem consistent with culture of honor (focus on toughness/“machismo,” self-enhancement, attention to others/ social consequences of actions; see Maddux et al., 2011)
- Subsaharan African: Pattern not that in line with romanticized views of poverty increasing solidarity
Time for a New Cultural World Map?
No.
7-77% of variance due to differences within regional groups
- Spain, Italy, Iceland: Not above average on self-direction
- Japan: Highest self-direction, self-containment, variability, dependence
Don’t replace one set stereotyped approach with another
- Empirical data vs. location or ethnicity to determine norms
Need to shift from asking “Where?” to “Why?”
- Early notions of in(ter)dependent selves were partly accurate—but their success may have contributed to an overly simplistic view of cultural diversity.
- The seven-dimensional model is not a definitive account of global variation in models of selfhood—but a starting exploration.
- It should not preclude further exploration of indigenous forms of selfhood from the wider possible range of cultural contexts.
