Culture and basic psychological processes--toward a system view of culture: comment on Oyserman et al. (2002)

D. Oyserman, H. M. Coon, and M. Kemmelmeier (2002) provide a most comprehensive review of empirical studies that used attitudinal surveys to capture cultural variations in individualism and collectivism. In the present article, the author suggests that the cross-cultural validity of attitudinal surveys can no longer be taken for granted. Moreover, the meta-theory underlying this literature (called the entity view of culture) is called into question. The author presents an alternative meta-theory (called the system view of culture) and discusses its implications for future work in cultural and cross-cultural psychology.     

Using individualism and collectivism to compare cultures--a critique of the validity and measurement of the constructs: comment on Oyserman et al. (2002)

Analyzing national and ethnic differences in individualism and collectivism, D. Oyserman, H. M. Coon, and M. Kemmelmeier (2002) showed that small differences in scales or samples produce markedly divergent results, challenging the validity of these constructs. The author examines the following limitations of research on individualism and collectivism: It treats nations as cultures and culture as a continuous quantitative variable; conflates all kinds of social relations and distinct types of autonomy; ignores contextual specificity in norms and values; measures culture as the personal preferences and behavior reports of individuals; rarely establishes the external validity of the measures used; assumes cultural invariance in the meaning of self-reports and anchoring and interpretation of scales; and reduces culture to explicit, abstract verbal knowledge.     

Bringing culture to basic psychological theory--beyond individualism and collectivism: comment on Oyserman et al. (2002)

D. Oyserman, H. M. Coon, and M. Kemmelmeir (2002) offered a comprehensive literature review on individualism and collectivism that forwards valuable suggestions for ways to enhance future research conducted within this framework. The author argues that although their criticisms of much contemporary social psychological research on individualism and collectivism are valid, even more fundamental problems need to be recognized as characterizing work within this tradition, such as the insufficiently subtle nature of the views held of culture, the limited attention given to meanings, and the downplaying of contextual variation. The author suggests adopting more nuanced and process-oriented conceptions of culture and more contextually grounded views of its impact on psychological functioning as a way of realizing the promise of cultural psychology to broaden and provide insight into basic psychological theory.     

Reclaiming the individual from Hofstede's ecological analysis--a 20-year odyssey: comment on Oyserman et al. (2002)

D. Oyserman, H. M. Coon, and M. Kemmelmeier (2002) challenge the stereotype that European Americans are more individualistic and less collectivistic than persons from most other ethnic groups. The author contends that this stereotype took firm empirical root with G. Hofstede's (1980) monumental publication identifying the United States as the most individualistic of his then 40 nations. This empirical designation arose because of challengeable decisions Hofstede made about the analysis of his data and the labeling of his dimensions. The conflation of concepts under the rubric of cultural individualism plus psychologists' unwarranted psychologizing of the construct then combined with Hofstede's empirical location of America to set a 20-year agenda for data collection. Oyserman et al. disentangle and organize this mass of studies, enabling the discipline of cross-cultural psychology to forge ahead in more productive directions, less reliant on previous assumptions and measures.     

The Worldview Dimensions of Individualism and Collectivism: Implications for Counseling

A recent article, “Rethinking Individualism and Collectivism: Evaluation of Theoretical Assumptions and Meta‐Analyses” (D. Oyserman, H. M. Coon, & M. Kemmelmeier, 2002), revealed that 170 studies have been conducted on the worldview dimensions of individualism and collectivism. The authors' analyses of the studies provided empirical support for the theoretical notion posited by numerous multicultural counseling scholars, which outlines the importance of understanding worldview for competent practice. This article reviews the results of the authors' analyses and discusses the implications for counseling.     

Gender comparisons in the private, collective, and allocentric selves

Researchers (e.g., M. B. Brewer & W. Gardner, 1996; H. C. Triandis, D. K. S. Chan, D. P. S. Bhawuk, S. Iwao, & J. P. B. Sinha, 1995) have suggested expansion of the standard model of individualism-collectivism to include people's close personal relationships in addition to their identification with in-groups. There has been considerable discussion of the hypothesis that women are more collective, interdependent, relational, and allocentric than men (e.g., S. E. Cross & L. Madson, 1997; Y. Kashima et al., 1995). In the present study, the authors used the Twenty Statements Test (M. H. Kuhn & T. McPartland, 1954) to examine gender differences in the self-concept by assessing the accessibility of private, collective, and allocentric self-cognitions. The U.S. women described themselves with more allocentric and more collective self-cognitions than did the U.S. men. Discussion focuses on the implications of those data for interpretation of other gender differences as well as for traditional models of individualism-collectivism.     

Gender Comparisons in the Private,Collective, and Allocentric Selves

Abstract

Researchers (e.g., M. B. Brewer & W. Gardner, 1996; H. C. Triandis, D. K. S. Chan, D. P. S. Bhawuk, S. Iwao, & J. P. B. Sinha, 1995) have suggested expansion of the standard model of individualism-collectivism to include people's close personal relationships in addition to their identification with in-groups. There has been considerable discussion of the hypothesis that women are more collective, interdependent, relational, and allocentric than men (e.g., S. E. Cross & L. Madson, 1997; Y. Kashima et al., 1995). In the present study, the authors used the Twenty Statements Test (M. H. Kuhn & T. McPartland, 1954) to examine gender differences in the self-concept by assessing the accessibility of private, collective, and allocentric self-cognitions. The U.S. women described themselves with more allocentric and more collective self-cognitions than did the U.S. men. Discussion focuses on the implications of those data for interpretation of other gender differences as well as for traditional models of individualism-collectivism.     

The horizontal and vertical attributes of individualism and collectivism in a Spanish population

The authors examined the dimensionality and factorial structure of individualism and collectivism in Spanish participants (N = 526). A series of confirmatory factor analyses were performed on responses to the 32-item individualism-collectivism measure reported by T. M. Singelis, H. C. Triandis, D. S. Bhawuk, and M. Gelfand (1995). Consistent with earlier data, the best fitting model was multidimensional: a vertical versus a horizontal attribute crossed with individualism and collectivism dimensions. Whereas the overall fit of the data to a LISREL model was moderate, additional self-report data on respondents' interpersonal experiences supported the construct validity of the 4 factors. The authors suggest that the additional complexity is useful in explaining Spanish social behavior.     

自我对跨期决策的影响——基于个人-集体主义文化视角

跨期决策是指发生在不同时期的收益和成本的权衡决策。已有研究发现, 决策者的自我意识对跨期决策有着重要影响, 个人?集体主义文化在自我形成中起着重要作用, 但当文化因素被纳入自我对跨期决策影响的研究中时, 三者间的关系显得模糊不清。为了从已有文献中厘清三者间的理论关系, 我们基于个人?集体主义文化视角, 综述了自我对跨期决策影响的相关研究：介绍了跨期决策的相关概念及理论, 详细阐述了跨期决策中的两种自我理论(多重自我模型和自我连续性模型), 探讨了个人?集体主义文化对自我的影响, 并简要介绍了个人主义与集体主义文化下人们的跨期决策偏好差异及其心理机制。最后, 分别从研究内容、研究方法与实际应用三个方面, 提出了将个人?集体主义文化这一因素纳入自我对跨期决策影响过程、系统地考虑三者间关系的研究构想, 以期为未来研究提供新的思路, 深化人们对跨期决策机制的理解。     

Individualism and Collectivism

Psychologists have long portrayed the mind “as a machine or computer that is the same in all times and places, while only the raw materials processed by the machinery or the data in the computer vary” (Fiske, Kitayama, Markus, & Nisbett, 1998, p. 918). This state of affairs changed dramatically over the last decade and a rapidly growing body of experimental research documents profound cultural differences in basic psychological processes. To date, much of this work has addressed the influence of individualism or collectivism, often framed in terms of independent vs. interdependent self‐construals (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; for a comprehensive review, see Oyserman, Coon, & Kemmelmeier, 2002). Other dimensions of culture, which figured prominently in Hofstede's (1980) groundbreaking analysis, received less attention. In this issue's Research Dialogue, Shavitt, Lalwani, Zhang, and Torelli (2006) draw attention to one of these dimensions, namely the distinction between horizontal and vertical cultural orientations, which value equality or emphasize hierarchy, respectively. They review the importance of this distinction for understanding personal values, advertising and consumer persuasion, self‐presentational patterns, and gender differences, noting that the influence of horizontal/vertical orientations is often obscured by their conflation with differences in individualism and collectivism. Commentaries by Aaker (2006), Meyers‐Levy (2006), and Oyserman (2006) elaborate on their analysis and suggest additional avenues for future research. In combination, this set of papers makes a compelling case for extending the analysis of cultural differences in cognition, emotion, motivation, and behavior beyond the individualism/collectivism distinction that has captured the lion's share of recent attention.     

The Essentialized Self: Implications for Motivation and Self‐Regulation

Persuasion attempts are more likely to stick and less likely to be counterargued if they fit the ways people naturally make sense of themselves and their world. One way to do that is to yoke persuasion to the social categories people experience as “true” and “natural.” Gelman and Echelbarger's (2019) integrative review of essentialism outlines the emergence of essentialism in children's reasoning. Connecting their discussion with identity‐based motivation theory (D. Oyserman, 2015) and a culture‐as‐situated cognition (D. Oyserman, 2017) perspective, this commentary addresses how an essentialized self can facilitate or impair motivation and self‐regulation and potentiate or undermine persuasive efforts.     

Deciding between accounts of the selection task: A reply to Oaksford (2002)

In this paper we report on our attempts to fit the optimal data selection (ODS) model (Oaksford & Chater, 1994; Oaksford, Chater, & Larkin, 2000) to the selection task data reported in Feeney and Handley (2000) and Handley, Feeney, and Harper (2002). Although Oaksford (2002b) reports good fits to the data described in Feeney and Handley (2000), the model does not adequately capture the data described in Handley et al. (2002). Furthermore, across all six of the experiments modelled here, the ODS model does not predict participants' behaviour at the level of selection rates for individual cards. Finally, when people's probability estimates are used in the modelling exercise, the model adequately captures only 1 out of 18 conditions described in Handley et al. We discuss the implications of these results for models of the selection task and claim that they support deductive, rather than probabilistic, accounts of the task.     

Single versus multiple systems of category learning: Reply to Nosofsky and Kruschke (2002)

Nosofsky and Kruschke (2002) argued that the singlesystem ALCOVE model (Kruschke, 1992) can account for the dual-task category learning data reported by Waldron and Ashby (2001). In our reply, we argue that Nosofsky and Kruschke overstated the ability of ALCOVE to account for the Waldron and Ashby results. In fact, ALCOVE has difficulty with these data, and we show that the only versions of ALCOVE that actually fit the Waldron and Ashby accuracy data make incorrect predictions about other previously unreported features of that experiment. We also show that the dual-system COVIS model (Ashby, Alfonso-Reese, Turken, & Waldron, 1998) naturally predicts these results.     

Measuring culture outside the head: a meta-analysis of individualism-collectivism in cultural products

Although cultural psychology is the study of how sociocultural environments and psychological processes coconstruct each other, the field has traditionally emphasized measures of the psychological over the sociocultural. Here, the authors call attention to a growing trend of measuring the sociocultural environment. They present a quantitative review of studies that measure cultural differences in "cultural products": tangible, public representations of culture such as advertising or popular texts. They found that cultural products that come from Western cultures (mostly the United States) are more individualistic, and less collectivistic, than cultural products that come from collectivistic cultures (including Korea, Japan, China, and Mexico). The effect sizes for cultural products were larger than self-report effect sizes for this dimension (reported in Oyserman, Coon, & Kemmelmeier, 2002). In addition to presenting this evidence, the authors highlight the importance of studying the dynamic relationships between sociocultural environments and psyches.     

Inertial Eigenvectors Play a Role in Proprioception: Comment on Craig and Bourdin (2002)

Craig and Bourdin (2002) called into question the role of the limbs' inertial eigenvectors in perceiving limb position. In this commentary we respond to some of the issues Craig and Bourdin raised with respect to previous studies that established a role for the limbs' inertial eigenvectors in proprioception. We then discuss some conceptual and methodological features of Craig and Bourdin's work. The discussion is focused on 2 primary points: (a) Some of Craig and Bourdin's experimental conditions required participants to produce very large shoulder angles, which could have lessened the role of the inertial eigenvectors; and (b) excluding those extreme conditions, their data actually appear to support the inertial eigenvector hypothesis, rather than contradict it.     

I Am My Brother's (and Sister's) Keeper: Jewish Values and the Counseling Process

The author writes a rejoinder to M. S. Kiselica's (2003) article “Anti‐Semitism and Insensitivity Toward Jews by the Counseling Profession: A Gentile's View on the Problem and His Hope for Reconciliation—A Response to Weinrach (2002),” which is part of a dialogue in the fall 2003 Journal of Counseling & Development on anti‐Semitism in the counseling profession. M. S. Kiselica supports the notion that Jewish concerns are inextricable from multicultural counseling. The author has asserted that there has been a critical mass of anti‐Semitic behavior within the counseling profession, including the American Counseling Association, for more than 3 decades. The author's perspective may be viewed as an application of the Torah's dictum “I am my brother's [and sister's] keeper.” The author also argues that while culture may influence behavior, it does not determine it exclusively.     

Autonomic and eyeblink conditioning are closely related to contingency awareness: reply to Wiens and Ohman (2002) and Manns et al. (2002)

S. Wiens and A. Ohman (2002) disputed the conclusion that Pavlovian conditioning is strongly related to contingency awareness (P. F. Lovibond & D. R. Shanks, 2002) on the basis that an inappropriate definition of awareness was used. J. R. Manns, R. E. Clark, and L. R. Squire (2002) contended that delay eyeblink conditioning is independent of awareness. The authors of the present article consider these arguments, highlight several problems in the new studies described by the commentators, and conclude that there is still little evidence for unconscious conditioning in either subliminal autonomic conditioning or eyeblink conditioning. The most parsimonious account of existing data is that a single learning process gives rise to both awareness and conditioned responding. Further progress in evaluating the possibility of unconscious conditioning would be facilitated by the development of more completely specified and testable dual-process models.