People in different cultures have strikingly different construals of the self, of others, and of the interdependence of the 2. These construals can influence, and in many cases determine, the very nature of individual experience, including cognition, emotion, and motivation. Many Asian cultures have distinct conceptions of individuality that insist on the fundamental relatedness of individuals to each other. The emphasis is on attending to others, fitting in, and harmonious interdependence with them. American culture neither assumes nor values such an overt connectedness among individuals. In contrast, individuals seek to maintain their independence from others by attending to the self and by discovering and expressing their unique inner attributes. As proposed herein, these construals are even more powerful than previously imagined. Theories of the self from both psychology and anthropology are integrated to define in detail the difference between a construal of the self as independent and a construal of the self as interdependent. Each of these divergent construals should have a set of specific consequences for cognition, emotion, and motivation; these consequences are proposed and relevant empirical literature is reviewed. Focusing on differences in self-construals enables apparently inconsistent empirical findings to be reconciled, and raises questions about what have been thought to be culture-free aspects of cognition, emotion, and motivation.

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Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation.

The capacity to exercise control over the nature and quality of one's life is the essence of humanness. Human agency is characterized by a number of core features that operate through phenomenal and functional consciousness. These include the temporal extension of agency through intentionality and forethought, self-regulation by self-reactive influence, and self-reflectiveness about one's capabilities, quality of functioning, and the meaning and purpose of one's life pursuits. Personal agency operates within a broad network of sociostructural influences. In these agentic transactions, people are producers as well as products of social systems. Social cognitive theory distinguishes among three modes of agency: direct personal agency, proxy agency that relies on others to act on one's behest to secure desired outcomes, and collective agency exercised through socially coordinative and interdependent effort. Growing transnational embeddedness and interdependence are placing a premium on collective efficacy to exercise control over personal destinies and national life.

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Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective

Meanwhile, the authors' antidote to the American sicknessa quest for democratic community that draws on our diverse civic and religious traditionshas contributed to a vigorous scholarly and popular debate. Attention has been focused on forms of social organization, be it civil society, democratic communitarianism, or associative democracy, that can humanize the market and the administrative state. In their new Introduction the authors relate the argument of their book both to the current realities of American society and to the growing debate about the country's future. With this new edition one of the most influential books of recent times takes on a new immediacy.\

Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life

This article presents an agentic theory of human development, adaptation, and change. The evolutionary emergence of advanced symbolizing capacity enabled humans to transcend the dictates of their immediate environment and made them unique in their power to shape their life circumstances and the courses their lives take. In this conception, people are contributors to their life circumstances, not just products of them. Social cognitive theory rejects a duality between human agency and social structure. People create social systems, and these systems, in turn, organize and influence people's lives. This article discusses the core properties of human agency, the different forms it takes, its ontological and epistemological status, its development and role in causal structures, its growing primacy in the coevolution process, and its influential exercise at individual and collective levels across diverse spheres of life and cultural systems.

Toward a Psychology of Human Agency

▪ Abstract The capacity to exercise control over the nature and quality of one's life is the essence of humanness. Human agency is characterized by a number of core features that operate through phenomenal and functional consciousness. These include the temporal extension of agency through intentionality and forethought, self-regulation by self-reactive influence, and self-reflectiveness about one's capabilities, quality of functioning, and the meaning and purpose of one's life pursuits. Personal agency operates within a broad network of sociostructural influences. In these agentic transactions, people are producers as well as products of social systems. Social cognitive theory distinguishes among three modes of agency: direct personal agency, proxy agency that relies on others to act on one's behest to secure desired outcomes, and collective agency exercised through socially coordinative and interdependent effort. Growing transnational embeddedness and interdependence are placing a premium on collective ...

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Social Cognitive Theory: An Agentic Perspective

In this study, we examined the degree of cultural similarity and specificity in emotional experience by asking subjects in the United States and Japan to report their experiences and reactions concerning seven different emotions. The data used for this study were part of a larger cross-cultural study of emotion antecedents and reactions involving more than 2,000 subjects in 27 countries (Wallbott & Scherer, 1986). The American-Japanese comparison is a particularly interesting one, given theoretical and anecdotal evidence suggesting differences in emotion processes between the two cultures, especially concerning the "inscrutability" of the Japanese. Data were gathered specifically to test the component-process model of emotion. The data yielded a high degree of cultural agreement concerning many aspects of the antecedent/evaluation process, replicating the general findings from all 27 cultures, and suggesting a large degree of universality in emotional experience. There were cultural differences as well, w...

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Antecedents of and Reactions to Emotions in the United States and Japan

We argue that culture is not a rigid or static entity. Instead, it is dynamic, in constant flux across individuals within cultures, and across time. In this article, we use the dimension of individ...

Changing Patterns of Individualism and Collectivism in the United States and Japan

Emotional experience in cultural context: A comparison between Europe, Japan, and the United States.

Several studies have already documented how Americans and Japanese differ in both the expression and perception of facial expressions of emotion in general, and of smiles in particular. These cultural differences can be linked to differences in cultural display and decoding rules (Ekman, 1972; and Buck, 1984, respectively). The existence of these types of rules suggests that people of different cultures may hold different assumptions about social-personality characteristics, on the basis of smiling versus non-smiling faces. We suggest that Americans have come to associate more positive characteristics to smiling faces than do the Japanese. We tested this possibility by presenting American and Japanese judges with smiles or neutral faces (i.e., faces with no muscle movement) depicted by both Caucasian and Japanese male and female posers. The judges made scalar ratings of each face they viewed on four different dimensions. The findings did indicate that Americans and Japanese differed in their judgments, but not on all dimensions.

American-japanese cultural differences in attributions of personality based on smiles

In two studies, we examined the cross-cultural validity of the dimensional structures with which postures are judged. In Study 1, 686 Japanese subjects rated 40 posture expressions on sixteen 5-point semantic differential scale items. Subjects inferred an encoder's attitude towards oneself (i.e., the decoding subject) in hypothetical dyadic situations. A principal-component factor analysis yielded evidence for three independent dimensions resembling those proposed by Schlosberg (1954), Osgood (1966), and Williams and Sundene (1965). These three factors were named self-fulfillment, interpersonal positiveness, and interpersonal consciousness. In Study 2, 336 Japanese students again rated the 40 posture expressions on the sixteen 5-point differential items, but an attempt was made to control for the status of the hypothetical encoder. The results of this study essentially replicated those of Study 1. One interesting finding was that although we found the same factors as those found in studies conducted in the West, the order of the factors in our studies was the reverse of the order found in these previous studies. The findings are discussed in terms of proposed cultural differences in the maintenance of human relations.

Tsutomu Kudoh

Papers

Antecedents of and Reactions to Emotions in the United States and Japan

Changing Patterns of Individualism and Collectivism in the United States and Japan

Emotional experience in cultural context: A comparison between Europe, Japan, and the United States.

American-japanese cultural differences in attributions of personality based on smiles

Cross-cultural examination of the semantic dimensions of body postures.