18. Culture II - Unpacking cultural differences Flashcards
(7 cards)
Who came up with self-construal theory?
Markus and Kitayama
Self-Construal Theory
‘Western’ vs ‘non-Western’ cultures (Markus and Kitayama)
- Independent self-construal: we form our sense of self independently of social context
- Interdependent self-construal: we form our sense of self trough social context
How do self-construals affect people?
- They affect our cognition, emotion, and motivation (Markus and Kitayama)
- Interdependent self-construal is associated with embarrassability (Singelis and Sharkey, 1995) (Asian-Americans more likely to have interdependent self-construal)
How do we measure self-construals and how do they fit into factors?
Factor models
- No support for two-factor model (Vignoles & 72 co-authors, 2016) -> independent and interdependent way of being are therefore NOT the factors
- Strong support for seven-factor model (Vignoles & 72 co-authors, 2016) -> domains of functioning (of which there are independent and interdependent responses to the domain) are the factors
Adjusting the theory
(Cross, Hardin, & Gercek-Swing, 2011; Levine et al., 2003)
- Cultural context -> self-construal -> cognition, emotion and motivation
Changes to:
- Cultural context -> implicit cultural mandate -> cognition, emotion and motivation -> self-construal
- Cultural context -> implicit cultural mandate -> self construal
Other-construals:
Dispositionism
In West behaviour is attributed to dispositions
- AKA Correspondence bias / fundamental attribution error
- Evidence: (Ross, 1977) (assumes this to be universal human nature)
In East Asia behaviour is attributed to situation/context
- Evidence: (Miller, 1984; Morris & Peng, 1994)
Why do East Asians and Westerners think differently about dispositionism?
- East Asians use holistic thinking: “attending to the entire field and assigning causality to it”
- Westerners use analytic thinking
