Contribution
It gives psychology a second model of the self beside the one it had assumed was universal. The paper draws on anthropology and cross-cultural psychology to define an interdependent construal of the self against the independent one. It argues that whenever cognition, emotion or motivation involves the self, the process will differ with the construal. It then reviews evidence for each of the three. Its claim is that the construals are “even more powerful than previously imagined” (abstract). They are offered as a way to reconcile findings that fail to replicate across cultures.
Key insight
The difference between the two selves lies in “the role that is assigned to the other in self-definition” (p. 245). Others matter to both. For the independent self they are standards for comparison and sources of reflected appraisal. For the interdependent self “others are included within the boundaries of the self because relations with others in specific contexts are the defining features of the self” (pp. 245–246). The authors spell out what follows. The individual is, in Lebra’s word, “a fraction” that becomes whole in its proper place in a social unit (p. 246). Fitting in is rewarding in itself. Self-esteem rests on restraint and adjustment, not on standing out. The authors present this as a third option: “there is an alternative to selfishness (which implies the exclusion of others) besides selflessness (which is to imply the exclusion of the self or self-sacrifice): There is a self defined in relationship to others” (p. 247).
Assumptions
- The self as a schema. Construals are “among the most general and overarching schemata of the individual’s self-system” (p. 230), after Markus and Wurf (1987). They organize processing, affect regulation and motivation.
- Culture as the carrier of construal. National or ethnic background stands in for the construal in almost every study reviewed. The authors grant that individuals vary within a culture and that “not all people who are part of an independent culture will thus characterize themselves as independent” (p. 230, note 3).
- Some of the self is universal. A physical or ecological self, and some sense of a private inner self, are assumed everywhere (p. 225, after Hallowell, Neisser).
- The contrast is drawn from ethnography. The definition of the interdependent self rests on Japanese theorists (Lebra, Hamaguchi, Doi, Kondo) and anthropological accounts, not on a measure.
Key results
- The two construals (pp. 226–229, Figure 1, Table 1).
- Figure 1 draws each self as a circle with smaller circles for mother, father, sibling, friend and co-worker. The independent self overlaps them a little; its salient elements (Xs) lie outside the overlaps. The interdependent self overlaps them more, and its salient elements lie in the overlaps: “the self-in-relation to specific others in particular contexts” (p. 227).
- Table 1: independent selves are separate from context, bounded and stable. Their tasks are to be unique, express themselves and “promote own goals”. Interdependent selves are connected, flexible and variable. Their tasks are to belong, occupy their proper place and “promote others’ goals”.
- Not merging. An interdependent view “does not result in a merging of self and other” and does not mean people lack agency; control is turned inward, on the desires that could disturb harmony (p. 228).
- What happens to others’ goals (p. 229). Relationships become “ends in and of themselves”. Then two cases. “In some cases, the goals of others may become so focal in consciousness that the goals of others may be experienced as personal goals.” In others, one’s own goals stay distinct, and meeting another’s is “a necessary requirement” for meeting one’s own; people “actively work to fulfill the others’ goals while passively monitoring the reciprocal contributions”. Cooperation is “exercised only when there is a reasonable assurance of the ‘good-intentions’ of others”. Attention to others is “highly selective”, mostly for in-group members of common fate. The in-group’s boundary “may tend to be narrower” for interdependent selves (citing Triandis 1989).
- Cognition (pp. 231–235).
- Similarity judgements (Kitayama et al. 1990, unpublished): Americans judged self less similar to other than other to self, the usual finding. Indian students showed a reversal that was not significant (Figure 2).
- Person description: 46% of American descriptions were context-free against 20% of Indian ones (Shweder and Bourne 1984). In explaining a motorcycle accident, Americans gave 36% dispositional and 17% contextual attributions; Indians 15% and 32% (J. G. Miller 1984).
- Self-description (Cousins 1989): on the Twenty Statements Test Japanese students gave fewer trait descriptions than Americans. Told a context (“me at home”), they gave more, and Americans hedged (Figure 3).
- Counterfactuals: 97% of Americans and 55% of Taiwanese and 65% of Hong Kong respondents gave the “theoretical” answer to one of Bloom’s items. The authors read it as pragmatics, not inability.
- Emotion (pp. 235–239).
- Ego-focused emotions (anger, frustration, pride) have the individual’s attributes as referent; other-focused ones (sympathy, communion, shame) have another person.
- Japanese infants resumed moving toward a toy 48 s after a mother’s angry voice, American infants 18 s (Miyake et al. 1986). Japanese respondents reported anger mostly with strangers, Americans with close others (Matsumoto et al. 1988).
- Kitayama and Markus (1990, unpublished): a multidimensional scaling of 20 Japanese emotion terms found, besides activation and pleasantness, a third dimension of interpersonal engagement. A frequency study of 15 emotions in five types confirmed the structure (Tables 2 and 3). Ego- focused positive and negative correlated .70. Other-focused positive correlated with ego-focused at −.05 and −.18. Experiencing ego-focused emotions increased with eight independent-construal items. All three other-focused types increased with eight interdependent-construal items (“Are you the kind of person who never forgets a favor provided by others?”). No sample size is given.
- Motivation (pp. 239–245).
- Achievement can be “socially oriented”, aimed at meeting family’s and others’ expectations (Yang; Bond 1986). About 80% of Japanese prefer a fatherlike manager (Hayashi 1988).
- Dissonance: 44% of Japanese and 2% of Americans rated as best a father who privately opposed a daughter’s marriage but publicly approved it (Iwao 1988, via Triandis).
- Self-enhancement: American students put on average 30% of peers above themselves; Japanese about 50% (Markus and Kitayama, in press). Takata (1987) found a self-effacing bias in Japanese social comparison. Japanese children blamed lack of effort for poor performance (5.6 of 10 points, against 1.98 for Americans; Hess et al. 1986).
- Self-esteem, self-affirmation and self-verification are predicted to run through public roles and relationships. “Other enhancement could be more instrumental to self-enhancement” in reciprocal relationships (p. 242). A threat to such a self is “a disruption of, or a disconnection from” the relations it is part of (p. 246).
- On altruism (p. 248). Collectivists said visiting a friend in hospital would be enjoyable even in private; individualists said so only in public (Bontempo, Lobel and Triandis 1989, unpublished). The authors suggest that other-focused emotions “can motivate genuine, other-oriented, altruistic behaviors, without any conscious, or even unconscious, calculation of individual payoff”.
Claims
| id | claim | strength | support |
|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | Cultures differ systematically in construing the self as independent or interdependent | moderate as description: convergent ethnography and cross-national contrasts; construal itself is rarely measured | pp. 224–229, all sections |
| C2 | For the interdependent self, others (relations with specific others in context) are included within the self’s boundaries, without merging | conceptual; the paper’s definition, not a finding | pp. 227–228, 245–246 |
| C3 | Interdependent selves hold more, and more contextual, knowledge of others and of themselves | weak to moderate: one nonsignificant reversal, description and attribution studies mostly from India | pp. 231–234 |
| C4 | Ego-focused emotions are expressed and perhaps felt less, other-focused ones more, by interdependent selves | moderate in Japan: one unpublished scaling and frequency study with an individual-level construal measure; cross-national contrasts otherwise | pp. 235–239 |
| C5 | Achievement and self-related motives take an other-directed form; self-enhancement may be largely Western | moderate for the modesty findings in Japan; the rest is proposed | pp. 239–245 |
| C6 | There is a third option between selfishness and selflessness, a self defined in relationship to others | conceptual, from feminist theory and the review | p. 247 |
| C7 | Other-focused emotions may motivate altruism without calculation of individual payoff | speculative: one unpublished study, offered as a possibility | p. 248 |
Concepts
- independent construal of the self: the self as bounded, unique and organized by its inner attributes, which it seeks to express.
- interdependent construal of the self: the self as part of encompassing relationships, defined by relations with specific others in particular contexts; “the self-in-relation-to-other” is focal.
- ego-focused emotions: emotions whose primary referent is one’s own attributes (anger, frustration, pride).
- other-focused emotions: emotions whose primary referent is another person (sympathy, communion, shame, amae, oime).
- socially oriented achievement motivation: striving to meet the expectations of significant others, which may lapse once the goal is met (after Yang).
- secondary control: accommodating oneself to existing realities rather than changing them (after Weisz et al. 1984).
Connections
- Brewer’s levels of the self (NOTE-1290). Brewer counts this paper among the dichotomies her tripartite model replaces. What Markus and Kitayama describe is mostly her relational self: specific, non-interchangeable others, and an in-group of family and work group. It is her relational collectivism, not group-based collectivism.
- Self-categorization theory (THEORY-1114). Not engaged. The paper cites Tajfel (1984) once and lists “personal identity versus social identity” (after Cheek and Hogan) among related distinctions (pp. 246–247). Its interdependent self varies across situations, as a self-category does, but by relationship, not by comparative context.
- Self-verification. The paper predicts that interdependent selves verify “the more public qualities of the self” (p. 245) and are threatened by the disruption of relations. Swann et al.’s fused participants (NOTE-1256) defended a self-concept by acting for a group. That is the same pattern at the group level.
- Aron et al. (LIT-1706) and Cialdini et al. (LIT-1728). The overlapping circles of Figure 1 anticipate the inclusion-of-other-in- self picture. But the paper denies “merging”, and its overlap is of self-representations with relationships, not of self with other.
- The record’s use. QUESTION-300 and CLAIM-491 cite it for “selves construed interdependently”. The SEP entry (NOTE-1274) cites it as evidence that self-concepts vary across cultures.
Bearing on the record
- The owner’s thesis (CLAIM-491). The claim holds this work as a
ground “until 2027-04-29”, to be asked again once it is read. Read, it
still grounds the thesis’s premise and does not ground its conclusion.
These are inferences; the paper is not about egoism.
- It supports the premise in the authors’ own words. Others are “included within the boundaries of the self” (p. 245), and some people experience others’ goals “as personal goals” (p. 229). The record’s other sources on inclusive selves are unavailable or read at second hand, so this is its most direct statement.
- It names the thesis’s middle position. “There is an alternative to selfishness … besides selflessness” (p. 247) is the owner’s denial that the choice is between those two. The authors reach it from the same picture of a self defined by others.
- It does not take the step to self-interest. The authors call the resulting action possibly “genuine, other-oriented, altruistic”, without “calculation of individual payoff” (p. 248). Their third option is a third kind of self, not self-interest on a larger one. On Stich’s division (NOTE-1282) they hold the redescription reading. The thesis has content there only with CLAIM-492’s independent criterion.
- Its self is not larger, but differently made. What the interdependent self includes is relations and roles, not others’ welfare as such. It is “a fraction” made whole in a unit, not a self grown to contain the unit. Its in-group may be narrower than an independent self’s. “Collectivism is self-interest on a larger self-identity” fits this picture badly where “larger” means size. It fits better where it means a self that has others among its parts.
- It splits collectivist motive in two (p. 229). In one case others’ goals become one’s own, which is the thesis. In the other, meeting them is a condition of meeting one’s own, under watched reciprocity. That is ordinary self-interest with no extended self, closer to Sugden’s cooperation for mutual benefit (NOTE-1288). The paper does not say which is commoner.
- Verdict. The thesis holds once this is read, with its ground narrowed. The paper supports “selves that include others” and the rejection of the selfish/selfless dichotomy. It is not evidence that collectivist action is self-interested. The authors would read it the other way.
- The triviality objection (CLAIM-492). The paper offers two measures of construal that could serve as criteria. They are the similarity asymmetry (a cognitive sign, like those in NOTE-1276) and Kitayama and Markus’s eight interdependence items. The first gave only a nonsignificant reversal. The second asks about valuing favours and harmony, which is close to caring. Elsewhere culture stands in for construal. The authors also warn that introspective reports of concern for others may not track culture at all: Triandis et al. (1988) found that collectivists did not report more of it (p. 248). So the paper does not supply a criterion that separates from caring.
- Batson’s objection (CLAIM-494). Indirectly. The authors’ denial of merging, and their altruistic reading of other-focused emotions, put them closer to Batson than to Cialdini. The paper does not test empathy and merging against each other.
- Self-categorization and the “we” (THEORY-1114, THEORY-1115, TERM-096). The interdependent self is personalized and relational. It keeps agency and particular others, as León’s we-identity does, and does not depersonalize. It concerns relationships, not a group entity or a category.
- A dated note is proposed for CLAIM-491 (section 3). The inactive-ok comment holding LIT-1703 until 2027-04-29 can drop it once this NOTE is filed.
- No THEORY filed. The construal distinction is cited where the thesis uses it; the later literature testing it is not held.
- No ML instruction.
Limitations
- A review, with thin primary evidence. Several central studies are unpublished or in press: Kitayama et al. 1990, Kitayama and Markus 1990, Markus and Kitayama in press, Bontempo et al. 1989. Others are cited at second hand (Iwao via Triandis; Bloom via Moser). No sample sizes or test statistics are given for the authors’ own studies.
- Culture as proxy. Construal is inferred from nationality in almost every study. Japanese, Chinese and Indian samples stand in for “interdependent” interchangeably. Only the Kitayama and Markus emotion study measures construal in individuals.
- The independent self is American. The authors grant it may be most characteristic of “White, middle-class men with a Western European ethnic background” (p. 225).
- Self-report and translation. The authors themselves doubt introspective reports and translated scales across cultures (p. 248).
- Typos and slips.
- “The most significant differences between these two construals is” (p. 245).
- “conformity to particular others with whom the other is interdependent”, for “the self” (p. 247).
- Succorance is glossed as the need “to seek aid, projection, or sympathy”, for “protection” (p. 240).
- The block quotation introduced as Kiefer (1976) is credited to “R. J. Smith, 1985, p. 28” (p. 240).
- “the level of various motives are” (p. 240).
- “Ukta Eskimos” for Briggs’s Utku (p. 236); “Reisman” for Riesman (p. 246).
Open questions
- Is the interdependent self’s concern for others’ goals mostly the first kind (goals taken as one’s own) or the second (reciprocity under monitoring)? The thesis needs the first, and only the first is an extended self.
- Does the cultural difference survive individual-level measurement? The later literature that tests the construals, by scales, by priming and by meta-analysis, is not held in the record.
- Would a measured interdependent construal predict helping when empathic concern is held fixed? That would bear on CLAIM-494 and CLAIM-492 at once.