This study investigated whether self-concepts that arise from participation in interdependent cultural contexts, in this case the self-concepts of Japanese students, will be relatively more sensitive to situational variation than will self-concepts that arise in independent cultural contexts, in this case the self-concepts of U.S. college students. The self-concepts of 128 Japanese and 133 U.S. women were assessed in one of four distinct social situations: in a group, with a faculty member, with a peer, and alone in a research booth. Furthermore, the authors examined the hypothesis that Japanese self-concepts would differ from American self-concepts in valence, reflecting normative and desirable tendencies toward self-criticism. American and Japanese participants differed in the content, number, and range of self-descriptions. As predicted, the situation had a greater influence on the self-descriptions of the Japanese participants than on the Americans' self-descriptions, and the self-descriptions of the Japanese were more negative. "Just be yourself" is the recommendation given to many Americans who ask advice on how to behave in an unfamiliar situation. Notably, many Japanese are also given apparently similar advice: "Behave just the way you are." These two imperatives might well be translated into each other but do they mean the same thing? Studies in cultural anthropology and more recently in cultural psychology suggest that the instruction to "be yourself" or to "behave just the way you are" may have very different meanings in the United States and Japan because these cultures collectively construct individuals in different ways and because individuals in these cultures tend to construct themselves in different ways. In other words, the referents for the words you or yourself may not be the same in the two cultures. In the United States, the self, particularly in middle-class and educated contexts, is often understood and presumably experienced as abstract, bounded, private, and separated from others and the social context. In contrast, in Japan, the self is most typically understood as flexible, open, situation-specific, and configured by a constant referencing of the self to the situational setting or context (Ames,

Building on Hofstede's finding that individualism and social hierarchy are incompatible at the societal level, the authors examined the relationship between individualism-collectivism and orientations toward authority at the individual level. In Study 1, authoritarianism was related to three measures of collectivism but unrelated to three measures of individualism in a U.S. sample (N = 382). Study 2 used Triandis's horizontalvertical individualism-collectivism framework in samples from Bulgaria,

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We hypothesized that children in collectivist and individualist cultures (cf. Hofstede, 1980) would differ in the decision rules used for the distribution of rewards between a majority and minority in the group. A decision game was developed for classroom administration in primary schools. Twelve-year-old children in Osaka, Japan, and Adelaide, Australia, were assigned randomly to a large group or to a small group in the classroom. They were told that only one group-large group or small groupcould obtain chocolate rewards on each trial. The children were asked to indicate how many chances (out of 6 trials) each group should have to obtain the rewards. We hypothesized that in Japan, a collectivist culture, children in both groups would adopt an "equal-say" (i.e., 3:3) rule. In contrast, it was expected that in Australia, an individualist culture, children would follow self-interest and favor their own group. Findings consistent with the cross-cultural hypothesis were obtained.

Culture plays a crucial role in motivation. Personally autonomous reasons (PARs) for goals reflect the needs, desires, and commitment for oneself, whereas relationally autonomous reasons (RARs) for goals reflect the needs within close relationships. It was hypothesized that PARs are the better predictor of well-being for Americans, while RARs are the better predictor of well-being for Japanese. Onehundred and seventy American and 219 Japanese university students completed well-being questionnaires and rated seven goals on several attributes. The results confirmed that RARs were a better predictor of well-being for Japanese than for Americans, but PARs predicted well-being for both groups. Implications for theories of goal motivation are discussed.

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