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

在日益全球化的世界里，了解其他文化群体是很重要的。这样的理解将有助于和平地解决世界冲突，谈判商业交易，促进群体互动。西方人认为自己是独立的主体，他们的价值观是个人主义的。相比之下，一些非西方群体，比如亚洲人，可能还有阿拉伯地区、非洲和拉丁美洲的人，往往认为自己在群体和关系中是相互依存的。他们更倾向于集体主义。这个项目调查了不同的非西方群体通过使用不同的策略来达到这种有价值的状态，从而发展他们相互依存的文化风格的方式。例如，有一种假设认为，东亚人通过避免与他人发生冲突而实现相互依存，并在群体内实现社会和谐。另一方面，阿拉伯人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。通过对多元文化群体的研究，我们可以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，表达自己的个性，让自己更受尊重和独立。为了测试这个框架，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，包括作为幸福预测因素的个人目标与社会目标的首要地位，分析性与整体性的注意，以及分析性与整体性的社会认知。该研究还将评估三对附属特征，它们在理论上产生了不同的相互依赖风格。特别是，使用自我淡化vs.断言，情绪压抑vs.表达，辩证法vs.逻辑推理，都可以产生不同类型的相互依赖。这些策略通常源于文化的生态背景。例如，人口密集、商业规模更大的城市应该产生更多的争论性相互依赖，而语言更多样化的地区应该产生更多的情感表达。这些附属特征将在来自南亚、中亚、东亚以及中东、非洲、西欧、拉丁美洲的16个文化群体中进行测量，并将这些群体与北美的群体进行对比。预计各群体之间在实现其期望的独立和相互依存的文化状态所采用的策略方面将存在广泛的分歧。并预测西方与非西方在核心特征上的区别，非西方在附属特征上的区别将相对更多。实验测试将包括旨在产生独立性或相互依赖性的启动操作，以测试其对附属特征的后续影响。结果将揭示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性。这个项目将促进我们对跨文化互动的理解，并提供一个更全面的人类心理学观点。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.