The need for separation or individuation is held to be a prime motive in Western psychology. Varied accounts of the meaning of selfhood in Japan indicate that separation may be much less importantor as important-for understanding the construction of self-identity in that culture. We focus here on personal distinctiveness, one vehicle for separation from others. We propose that the desire for distinctiveness is not absent or negligible in Japan, but is subject to more constrained expression than in the West. The results of two studies comparing Japanese and Canadian students suggest that Japanese are less desirous of standing out for their own sake and more likely to experience this form of distinctiveness as aversive. The results also suggest that although Japanese and Canadians derive positive distinctiveness from much the same sources, Japanese are less gratified by this type of experience.Since antiquity, social motivation has been understood as a dialectic of separation and attachment. In Plato's Symposium, Aristophanes recounts how Zeus punished primeval humans by splitting them into separate halves. The result was love, a yearning for completion by

Personal identity involves continuity of the inner or private self—the intimately familiar me—across time and place. Is this continuity experienced to a similar extent across cultures? East Asian cultures place greater moral emphasis than do Western cultures on the contextual adjustment of personal behavior. This adjustive focus translates into greater variation in the outwardly presented self across contexts, raising the question of whether the inner self is also experienced as less continuous or unchanging by East Asians. To examine this issue and its implications, we asked Canadian, Chinese, and Japanese students to answer a set of questions about the inner self and its behavioral expression. Their responses confirmed a weaker sense of continuity amongthe Chinese and Japanese but also revealed that socially appropriate expression of the innerself is valued and sought in all three countries. In addition, East Asians claimed to experience self-expression in fewer activity domains than did Canadians.