From Psycho-Analysis to Culture-Analysis

Differentiation of self and trait anxiety: A cross‐cultural perspective

“…Cultural contexts represent "templates" through which we construct and understand the world (Dwairy, 2015). Hofstede defined culture as "the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from others" (Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov, 2010, p. 22).…”

“…Researchers (e.g., Dwairy, 2015) have argued that people in collectivist groups may direct their energy to attaining group goals rather than personal ones. Personality in these cultures cannot be examined solely through intra-psychic factors (self, ego, needs, morality), but also through social factors (norms, values, roles, authority).…”

“…Arab society is undergoing change, moving from a collectivist toward an individualist society, and most Arab Muslims and Christians living in Israel are considered bicultural (Dwairy, 2015). This is a stage of transition between tradition and modernity, where an effort is made to imitate Western norms without really incorporating them.…”

“…Cultural differences are likely to affect one's ability to deal with stress, and people from individualist backgrounds report lower levels of somatic symptoms and anxiety than those from collectivist cultures (Dwairy, 2015;Peleg & Rahal, 2012). Therefore, we aimed to investigate this issue among four cultural groups-Germans and Italians (Europeans living in South Tyrol), Jews and Arabs (Israelis)-in terms of their levels of differentiation of self, trait anxiety and somatic symptoms.…”

“…Our first hypothesis was that European participants (Italians and Germans) would report higher levels of differentiation of self than Israeli participants. Countries in West Europe are considered individualist, while Middle East countries are perceived as more collectivist, and people from more interdependent cultures are likely to have fused relationships, less autonomy (Dwairy, 2015) and lower differentiation of self (Peleg & Zoabi, 2014). Nonetheless, there are cultural differences within each country: Jews and Germans belong to a more individualist culture than Arabs and Italians.…”