Cultural factors are what influences self concepts, in this case individualism and collectivism illustrates this, where for example in Japan the saying "the nail that stands out gets pounded down" and in the United States the saying "squeaky wheel gets the grease". This shows to an extent that in Japan, children are raised to the expectations of the social society. Japan is a country of conformity and thinking as a group. In this culture, someone who is too different, opinionated, or outspoken might be viewed as a selfish show off and potentially a threat to the rest of the group. This also happens with school students. The system does its best to bring up the underachievers, but at the same time, they discourage the exceptional students from being "too smart" or at least showing off about it. If you get to full of yourself, society has ways to bring you down a peg or two. In the States however, it is said that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. The society and history of the States was formed by people who stood out, who left the familiar, unwilling to merely endure, determined to change their lives – to overcome. Standing out, individuality is still valued. In conclusion, the study implies that individualism is more of a western orientation, while eastern countries tend to lean more towards connectedness. Markus and Kitayama show the contrast of the two cultures demonstrating both individualism and collectivism, and how collectivism in culture leads more to conformity.
The second study is the Heine & Lehman study. The aim was to see if there were any differences in self-serving and group-serving biases between Canadians and Japanese students. In the study of Heine & Lehman, Chinese-born students were randomly assigned to participate in either Chinese or English. Serving as controls, Canadian-born participants of either European or Chinese descent participated in English. The effects of the language manipulation paralleled findings in previous studies comparing East Asians to North Americans. Participants responding in Chinese reported more collective self-statements in open-ended self-descriptions, lower self-esteem, and more agreement with Chinese cultural views than did the remaining groups. In their self-descriptions, participants writing in Chinese provided similar numbers of favorable and unfavorable self-statements. The other groups reported more favorable self-statements. Participants reporting in Chinese indicated similar levels of positive and negative mood. The remaining groups reported more positive mood. They found support for their hypotheses that the Japanese would show less self-serving bias and less group serving bias than Canadians.The results suggest that East-Asian and Western identities may be stored in separate knowledge structures in bicultural individuals, with each structure activated by its associated language.
In the Geert Hofstede classic study carried out in 1980. Hofstede asked employees of the multinational company named IMB to fill in surveys about morals in the work place. He then analyzed the content focusing on the key differences. His research looked at the forty most represented countries in the surveys. The trends he noticed he called ‘dimensions’. Hofstede realized that it is important to understand the cultural differences between cultures. An example he gave was the difference between businesses in the Middle Eastern countries in comparison to Western countries. The intention of having a business meeting is to come to some form of agreement after the negotiations take place, in the western culture shaking hands is seen to be the beginning of a partnership, however shaking hands in Middle Eastern cultures symbolizes the beginning of the serious negotiations. The differences in cultures can led to misunderstandings and problems in the long term.
However, one has to be careful with applying the idea of dimensions .It should not be assumed that two members from different cultures must be different or a singular member of a culture will always demonstrate dimensions with the norm of that culture. The concept simply allows psychologists to generalize in order to discuss the role culture plays in behaviour.
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mandy0120 (student)
