Shinobu Kitayama

CULTURE AND THE SELF: IMPLICATIONS FOR COGNITION, EMOTION, AND MOTIVATION

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 cultures have distinct conceptions of individuality that insist on the fundamental relatedness of individuals to each other. The emphasis is on attending to others, fitting in, and harmonious interdependence 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 motivation; 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.

Is There a Universal Need for Positive Self-Regard?

It is assumed that people seek positive self-regard; that is, they are motivated to possess, enhance, and maintain positive self-views. The cross-cultural generalizability of such motivations was addressed by examining Japanese culture. Anthropological, sociological, and psychological analyses revealed that many elements of Japanese culture are incongruent with such motivations. Moreover, the empirical literature provides scant evidence for a need for positive self-regard among Japanese and indicates that a self-critical focus is more characteristic of Japanese. It is argued that the need for self-regard must be culturally variant because the constructions of self and regard themselves differ across cultures. The need for positive self-regard, as it is currently conceptualized, is not a universal, but rather is rooted in significant aspects of North American culture. Conventional interpretations of positive self-regard are too narrow to encompass the Japanese experience.

Individual and Collective Processes in the Construction of the Self: Self-Enhancement in the United States and Self-Criticism in Japan

A collective constructionist theory of the self proposes that many psychological processes, including enhancement of the self (pervasive in the United States) and criticism and subsequent improvement of the self (widespread in Japan), result from and support the very ways in which social acts and situations are collectively defined and subjectively experienced in the respective cultural contexts. In support of the theory, 2 studies showed, first, that American situations are relatively conducive to self-enhancement and American people are relatively likely to engage in self-enhancement and, second, that Japanese situations are relatively conducive to self-criticism and Japanese people are relatively likely to engage in self-criticism. Implications are discussed for the collective construction of psychological processes implicated in the self and, more generally, for the mutual constitution of culture and the self.

Emotion and culture : empirical studies of mutual influence

Introduction to Cultural Psychology and Emotion Research, Shinobu Kitayama and Hazel Rose Markus Sense, Culture and Sensibility, Phoebe C. Ellsworth The Social Roles and Functions of Emotion, Nico H. Frijda and Batja Mesquita The Cultural Construction of Self and Emotion - Implications for Social Behaviour, Hazel Rose Markus and Shinobu Kitayama Emotion, Language and Cultural Scripts, Anna Wierzbicka Cognitive Sciences Contributions to Culture and Emotion, Michael I. Posner et al Affecting Culture - Emotion and Morality in Everyday Life, Geoffrey M. White Kalis Tongue - Cultural Psychology and the Power of Shame in Orissa, India, Usha Menon and Richard A. Shweder Major Cultural Syndromes and Emotion, Harry C. Triandis Culture, Emotion and Psychopathology, Janis H. Jenkins The Cultural Shaping of Emotion - a Conceptual Framework.

Culture, Emotion, and Well-being: Good Feelings in Japan and the United States

We tested the hypothesis that “good feelings”—the central element of subjective well-being—are associated with interdependence and interpersonal engagement of the self in Japan, but with independence and interpersonal disengagement of the self in the United States. Japanese and American college students (total N = 913) reported how frequently they experienced various emotional states in daily life. In support of the hypothesis, the reported frequency of general positive emotions (e.g. calm, elated) was most closely associated with the reported frequency of interpersonally engaged positive emotions (e.g. friendly feelings) in Japan, but with the reported frequency of interpersonally disengaged positive emotions (e.g. pride) in the United States. Further, for Americans the reported frequency of experience was considerably higher for positive emotions than for negative emotions, but for Japanese it was higher for engaged emotions than for disengaged emotions. Implications for cultural constructions of emotion in general and subjective well-being in particular are discussed.

Perceiving an Object and Its Context in Different Cultures A Cultural Look at New Look

In two studies, a newly devised test (framed-line test) was used to examine the hypothesis that individuals engaging in Asian cultures are more capable of incorporating contextual information and those engaging in North American cultures are more capable of ignoring contextual information. On each trial, participants were presented with a square frame, within which was printed a vertical line. Participants were then shown another square frame of the same or different size and asked to draw a line that was identical to the first line in either absolute length (absolute task) or proportion to the height of the surrounding frame (relative task). The results supported the hypothesis: Whereas Japanese were more accurate in the relative task, Americans were more accurate in the absolute task. Moreover, when engaging in another culture, individuals tended to show the cognitive characteristic common in the host culture.

The Cultural Psychology of Personality

Research in cultural psychology suggests that person is a social and collective construction made possible through an individuals participation in the practices and meanings of a given cultural context. This perspective can make a contribution to some contemporary controversies in personality. In the current article, it is argued that although most conceptions of personality in academic psychology are rooted in a model of the person as independent, in many Asian cultures, personality is constructed on the basis of an alternative model of the person as interdependent. In these cultures, then, personality is experienced and understood as behavior that is characteristic of the person in relationship with others in particular social contexts. Some initial evidence is reviewed and questions for future research are suggested.

Cultures and Selves: A Cycle of Mutual Constitution

The study of culture and self casts psychology’s understanding of the self, identity, or agency as central to the analysis and interpretation of behavior and demonstrates that cultures and selves define and build upon each other in an ongoing cycle of mutual constitution. In a selective review of theoretical and empirical work, we define self and what the self does, define culture and how it constitutes the self (and vice versa), define independence and interdependence and determine how they shape psychological functioning, and examine the continuing challenges and controversies in the study of culture and self. We propose that a self is the “me” at the center of experience—a continually developing sense of awareness and agency that guides actions and takes shape as the individual, both brain and body, becomes attuned to various environments. Selves incorporate the patterning of their various environments and thus confer particular and culture-specific form and function to the psychological processes they organize (e.g., attention, perception, cognition, emotion, motivation, interpersonal relationship, group). In turn, as selves engage with their sociocultural contexts, they reinforce and sometimes change the ideas, practices, and institutions of these environments.

A Collective Fear of the Collective: Implications for Selves and Theories of Selves

Drawing on recent analyses of the self in many cultures, the authors suggest that the cultural ideal of independence of the self from the collective has dominated European-American social psychological theorizing. As a consequence, the existence of considerable interdependence between the self and the collective has been relatively neglected in current conceptual analysis. The authors (a) argue that a groups cultural ideal of the relation between the self and the collective is pervasive because it is rooted in institutions, practices, and scripts, not just in ideas and values; (b) show how a given cultural ideal whether it is independence or interdependence, can shape the individuals experience and expression of the self; and (c) discuss how a comparative approach may enrich and expand current theory and research on the interdependence between the self and the collective.

Cultural Affordances and Emotional Experience: Socially Engaging and Disengaging Emotions in Japan and the United States

The authors hypothesized that whereas Japanese culture encourages socially engaging emotions (e.g., friendly feelings and guilt), North American culture fosters socially disengaging emotions (e.g., pride and anger). In two cross-cultural studies, the authors measured engaging and disengaging emotions repeatedly over different social situations and found support for this hypothesis. As predicted, Japanese showed a pervasive tendency to reportedly experience engaging emotions more strongly than they experienced disengaging emotions, but Americans showed a reversed tendency. Moreover, as also predicted, Japanese subjective well-being (i.e., the experience of general positive feelings) was more closely associated with the experience of engaging positive emotions than with that of disengaging emotions. Americans tended to show the reversed pattern. The established cultural differences in the patterns of emotion suggest the consistent and systematic cultural shaping of emotion over time.