Globalizing Cultural Psychology: Varieties of Interdependence Across Four Regions of the World

在日益全球化的世界里，了解其他文化群体很重要。这样的理解将有助于和平解决世界冲突，谈判商业交易，促进群体互动。西方人认为自己是独立的代理人，他们的价值观是个人主义的。相比之下，一些非西方群体，如亚洲的人，可能还有阿拉伯地区、非洲和拉丁美洲的人，经常认为自己在群体和关系中与他人相互依存。他们往往更具集体主义色彩。这个项目调查了不同的非西方群体如何通过利用不同的策略达到这种有价值的状态来发展他们相互依赖的文化风格。例如，假设东亚人通过避免与他人发生冲突并在其群体内实现社会和谐来实现相互依存。另一方面，阿拉伯人民通过自信地解决与他人的冲突和保护自己的群体来做到这一点。通过研究多个文化群体，我们或许能够更多地了解非西方文化和西方文化。因此，这个项目可以学习西方人通常是如何坚持自己，以表达他们的个性，以便他们可以感觉到更多的尊重和独立。为了检验这一框架，将进行六项研究，以确定相互依赖-独立结构中涉及的细微差别。这些研究将评估相互依赖与独立的三个核心特征，包括个人目标相对于社会目标作为幸福预测因子的首要地位，分析性与整体性关注，以及分析性与整体性社会认知。这项研究还将评估理论上产生不同风格相互依赖的三对附属特征。特别是，使用谦逊与断言，情感压抑与表达，辩证与逻辑推理，都可以产生不同类型的相互依赖。这些战略往往产生于文化的生态背景。例如，人口稠密、商业更发达的城市应该会产生更多的争辩相互依赖，而语言更多样化的地区应该会产生更多的情感表达。这些辅助特征将在南亚、中亚、东亚以及整个中东、非洲、西欧、拉丁美洲的16个文化群体中进行衡量，并将这些群体与北美的群体进行对比。预计这两个群体在实现其期望的独立和相互依存的文化状态所使用的战略方面将会有很大的分歧。还预测，西部地区将与非西部地区在核心特征上有所不同，而非西部地区将在次要特征上表现得相对更多。实验测试将包括启动操作，旨在产生独立或相互依赖，以测试它们后来对辅助特征的影响。结果将阐明文化群体如何利用社会互动方式来产生独立性和相互依赖。这个项目将促进我们对跨文化互动的理解，并提供对人类心理的更全面的看法。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

In the increasingly global world, it is important to understand other cultural groups. Such understanding will be helpful in peacefully addressing world conflicts, negotiating business deals, and facilitating group interactions. Westerners see themselves as independent agents, and they are individualistic in value. In contrast, some non-Western groups, such as people in Asia, and possibly those in Arab regions, Africa, and Latin America, often see themselves as interdependent with others in their groups and relations. They tend to be more collectivistic. This project investigates the ways that different non-Western groups develop their cultural styles of interdependence by utilizing different strategies of attaining this valued state. It is hypothesized, for example, that East Asians achieve interdependence by avoiding conflicts with others and attain social harmony within their groups. Arab people, on the other hand, do so by self-assertively resolving conflicts with others and by protecting their groups. By studying multiple cultural groups, we may be able to learn more about non-Western and Western cultures. Thus, this project can learn how Westerners typically assert themselves to express their individuality so that they can feel more esteemed and independent. To test this framework, six studies will be conducted to identify the nuances involved in the interdependence-independence construct. The studies will assess three core features of interdependence vs. independence, including the primacy of personal versus social goals as predictors of happiness, analytic versus holistic attention, and analytic versus holistic social cognition. The research will also assess three pairs of subsidiary features that theoretically produce different styles of interdependence. In particular, the use of self-effacement vs. assertion, emotional suppression vs. expression, and dialectic vs. logical reasoning, can all produce different types of interdependence. Those strategies often arise from the ecological context of the cultures. Highly populated cites with greater commerce, for example, should produce more argumentative interdependence whereas more linguistically diverse areas should produce more emotional expressivity. The subsidiary features will be measured across a set of 16 cultural groups from South Asia, Central Asia, East Asia, and across the Middle East, Africa, Western Europe, Latin America, and those groups will be contrasted to groups in North America. It is expected that there will be a broad divergence between the groups regarding the strategies they use to achieve their desired cultural state of independence and interdependence. It is also predicted that the West will differ from the non-West in core features while the non-West will be characterized relatively more in subsidiary features. Experimental tests will include priming manipulations designed to produce independence or interdependence to test their later effects on the subsidiary features. Results will shed light on how cultural groups utilize social interaction styles to produce independence and interdependence. This project will facilitate our understanding of intercultural interactions and provide a more comprehensive view of human psychology.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.