Varieties of interdependence and the emergence of the Modern West: Toward the globalizing of psychology.

Abstract

Cultural psychology-the research field focusing on the mutual constitution of culture and the mind-has made great strides by documenting robust cultural variations in how people think, feel, and act. The cumulative evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that Westerners are independent, whereas those in the rest of the world are interdependent. Although this research traditionally examined North Americans and East Asians, recent research has extended this literature to other non-Western regions. We review this emerging research and describe four distinct forms of interdependence in four non-Western cultural zones. Specifically, interdependence is promoted through (a) conflict avoidance (dominant in much of East Asia), (b) selfassertion for ingroup protection (dominant in Arab regions), (c) expression of emotions that promote interpersonal resonance (dominant in Latin America), and (d) argumentation for conflict resolution (dominant in South Asia). Furthermore, we propose that the Modern West adopted the existing signature features of interdependence in the neighboring cultural zones (notably, self-assertion, emotional expression, and argumentation) and redefined the psychological function and social meaning of these features; instead of promoting interdependence, they became means to achieve independence. This theoretical integration suggests that cultural variation in basic psychological processes emerged over the last several 1,000 years under the influence of ecology, migration, and intergroup relations. The current effort underscores the need to globalize psychological science.

Neither Eastern nor Western: Patterns of Independence and Interdependence in Mediterranean Societies

“…Instead, we found that participants from the Mediterranean region were on average relatively independent in their social orientation and self-construal, on some measures even more so than participants from Anglo-Western societies; however, they also showed stronger interdependence on measures that highlighted the connectedness between individuals and their groups (e.g., ingroup closeness, connection to others, commitment to others) as well as the relationality between objects and perspective taking (thematic categorization, third-person perspective taking). Thus, our results support calls for a more differentiated, rather than binary, view of global cultural diversity (e.g., Clancy & Davis, 2019;Ghai, 2021;Kitayama et al, 2022;Krys et al, 2022;Syed & Kathawalla, 2022;Vignoles, 2018).…”

“…Just as cultural psychology's interest in East Asian societies since the 1980's led to major theoretical advances in rejecting incorrect universalist assumptions in the behavioral sciences, the current focus on broadening the cultural database beyond Anglo-Western and East Asian samples is leading researchers to modify previous binary and unidimensional models of cultural variation. Our findings add weight to emerging arguments that independence and interdependence are not monolithic constructs, but are better viewed as umbrella terms for a range of cultural dimensions and characteristics (e.g., Kitayama et al, 2022;Vignoles et al, 2016). A notable further advance is in unpackaging the dichotomy of analytic versus holistic cognition, which similarly developed initially from East-West comparative studies (Nisbett et al, 2001).…”

“…Henrich et al, 2010). However, most studies to date have still focused on comparing participants from only two world regions -East Asia and the West -prompting calls to move beyond binary "West-versus-the-Rest" models of culture and towards developing a more globally representative approach to the behavioral sciences that pays adequate attention to human cultural diversity within and across world regions (e.g., Clancy & Davis, 2019;Ghai, 2021;Kitayama et al, 2022;Krys et al, 2022;Syed & Kathawalla, 2022;Vignoles, 2018). This requires examining the prevailing patterns of cultural orientation in world regions beyond the East-West dichotomy.…”

Enculturating the Science of International Development: Beyond the WEIRD Independent Paradigm

“…For instance, in East Asia “saving face”—that is, particular sensitivity to the eyes of others and avoidance of public humiliation—is a primary motivational goal. In this context, interdependent agency manifests as “self-effacing interdependence” where people are driven to maintain social harmony through humility, deference, and responsiveness to group goals (Kitayama et al, 2022). However, in honor cultures in the Middle East, interdependent agency manifests as “self-assertive interdependence” in which primary motivational goals are to meet norms of appropriate behavior, reciprocity, and protection of one’s in-group, particularly through self-assertiveness and sanctioning of norm deviance (San Martin et al, 2018).…”

Dimensions of Wisdom Perception Across Twelve Countries on Five Continents

“…Based on prior cross-cultural research (Inglehart, 1997;Kitayama et al, 2022), we grouped our samples into 8 cultural regions. Participants compared ten human targets (including themselves) by their likeliness to act in a certain way in a difficult life situation (e.g., "think logically," "care for others' feelings;" see Fig.…”