LIT-1703: Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation

Markus, H. R. & Kitayama, S. (1991). Psychological Review, 98(2), 224–253.

Read in full in NOTE-1275, from the published APA scan posted by Markus on her own website (hazelmarkus.com/research).

Why this is here

The cultural-psychology form of the owner’s observation that collectivist attitudes reflect a self that includes others (CLAIM-491).

Status	Active — read in full 2026-10-29 (NOTE-1275) from the published APA scan posted by Markus on her own website (hazelmarkus.com/research); worth reading as the classic statement that cultures construe the self as more or less inclusive of others. For the owner's thesis (CLAIM-491) it supports the premise, a self that includes others, and names the thesis's middle term, "an alternative to selfishness … besides selflessness" (p. 247). It does not support the step to self-interest: the authors deny merging and allow "genuine, other-oriented, altruistic" motives. The evidence is mostly cross-national contrasts, often second-hand or unpublished, with culture standing in for an unmeasured construal.
Tags	self, altruism, social-identity
Cited as “grounds” by	CLAIM-491 — No action is selfless in the sense of aiming at a good that is no self's: what is called selflessness, collectivist or altruistic, is concern for the good of a self extended to include others or a group, so collectivism is self-interest on a larger self-identity
Cited as “paper” by	NOTE-1275 — Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation