A cultural psychological analysis of the interplay between culture and individuals.

Hamamura, Takeshi

A keen international traveler observed that customers at a Starbucks store in Seattle tended to order different kinds of drinks: among the ten customers she observed, eight different drinks were ordered. The same traveler made a different observation at a Starbucks store in Seoul, where among the ten customers she observed (This anecdote was adapted from Kim and Markus [1999].), only three different kinds of drinks were ordered. Like other global franchises, service and offerings at Starbucks stores are highly standardized worldwide: the stores have similar decorations, the drinks are prepared according to a standard manual, baristas and cashiers wear similar outfits, and they cater to customers who share similar demographics. All these similarities make the observation about differences that much more intriguing. The keen traveler wondered why the American customers' orders were more diverse than the Korean customers' orders.

Of course, this is just a single, unscientific anecdote based on ten customers at two different Starbucks stores, and it would be wrong to make too much out of it. However, suppose that this particular pattern actually extended beyond these particular Starbucks stores and depicted something larger about the behavioral tendencies of Americans and Koreans. That is, suppose that under many circumstances of choice making (e.g., choosing which clothes to wear, car to drive, school to attend, neighborhood to live in, etc.), Americans express preferences that are more different from one another, whereas Koreans express preferences that are more similar to one another. To the extent that there is such a difference, how do we best understand it? There could be a number of approaches. One approach that is increasingly influential in behavioral science is to locate such differences in the patterns of culture.

Culture and Individuals: Psychological Approach

Humans are cultural animals. Culture--defined as a collection of socially transmitted beliefs, values, and practices--socializes children, shapes the sense of what is right and wrong, and provides a sense of meaning (Heine, 2007). Humans worldwide are all similar in that our minds have evolved to function as a cultural animal: infants are equipped with the mental machinery to acquire any human culture. However, patterns of culture are vastly varied worldwide for ecological, historical, and sociopolitical reasons (D. Cohen, 2001; Hamamura, in press). For example, cultures of East Asian societies that share the heritage of Confucianism differ systematically from cultures that do not share such a heritage. Similarly, cultures of Western societies that share the heritage of ancient Greek philosophy and Christianity differ systematically from cultures that do not share such a heritage. Because humans are cultural animals and culture shapes our minds, differences in the patterns of culture also implicate differences in mental processes of individuals participating in that culture: our ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving are profoundly cultural. In the past, some researchers in behavioral science embraced the role of culture (for example, see Bond, 1988). However, this research did not really take off until a few decades ago, when a series of truly groundbreaking studies, some of which are reviewed below, persuaded more psychologists to take the role of culture seriously. Since then, this research has flourished.

Research in this area advanced with much focus on comparisons between cultures in East Asia (China, Korea, and Japan) and the West (countries in North America and Western Europe). In particular, this research has focused most intensively on the different ways in which individuals maintain relationships with the people around them.

On the one hand, in many societies in North America and Western Europe, the interests of individuals in many facets of life are frequently placed ahead of the interests of others or society. This emphasis on individuality can be seen in cultural documents and practices. For example, in American society, individual rights and freedom are central themes in important historical documents such as the Declaration of Independence. Socialization at home and at school focuses on cultivating children's uniqueness and individuality (Stevenson & Stigler, 1992). Popular culture also adores individuality. For example, one theme frequented by popular American movies is an initially struggling individual eventually prevailing against social convention. Triandis (1995) referred to the patterns of culture that prioritize individuality over society as individualism. On the other hand, in many societies in East Asia and other parts of the world, in many facets of life interests of collectives take precedence over the interests of individuals. In East Asian societies, this phenomenon is epitomized by the ideal of social harmony, often traced to the heritage of Confucianism. Socialization tends to focus on observing hierarchical social orders and traditions. In popular culture, a theme of individuals sacrificing for the sake of the group is frequented. Triandis (1995) referred to these patterns of culture as collectivism.

Overview

Individualistic and collectivistic patterns of culture implicate different mental processes. Empirical evidence that demonstrates these differences has accumulated. In contemporary research, the dimension of individualism-collectivism is used most intensively in comparisons of "East Asians" (Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and also North Americans with Chinese, Korean, and Japanese cultural heritage) and "North Americans" (Americans and Canadians with European cultural heritage). This framework is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the framework has been enormously fruitful in discovering influence of culture on mental processes. In fact, findings accumulated from this research implicate even some of the most basic mental processes, the kinds of processes that psychologists had long regarded as universal (Heine, 2007; Kitayama & Cohen, 2007). On the other hand, the field of cultural psychology dominated by this framework has long overlooked individual differences. That is, not only this framework lumps Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, and North Americans with Asian cultural heritage together under one consideration, but it also overlooks enormous amount of variations across individuals in China, Korea, Japan, etc. This is a limitation, particularly because there is a tremendous amount of variation across individuals in the ways in which they internalize culture (Leung & Cohen, 2011). Integrating these two perspectives--differences across cultural groups and differences across individuals participating the same culture--turns out to be a challenge, and currently only a small number of papers have examined this issue relative to the wealth of research examining influence of culture cross-nationally.

The current paper reviews these developments. The first section reviews influence of culture on mental processes. In particular, the review focuses on two such processes: cultural influences on the sense of self and on the understanding of the world around us. The second section reviews recent attempts to understand differences across individuals participating in the same culture.

Cultural Influences on the Sense of Self

The sense of self is very personal: it develops through our lifelong personal experiences and guides our behaviors by informing the sense of what is right and wrong, and what is important and unimportant. In fact, the sense of self is arguably the most idiosyncratic and most personal of all mental processes. Nevertheless, as humans are cultural beings, the sense of self also develops through culture, and the processes of the self could not be fully understood without considering the role of culture. Indeed, research reveals that the sense of self varies between individualistic and collectivistic cultures (Markus & Kitayama, 1991).

On the one hand, in individualistic societies, the self is regarded as unitary and stable across situations and is independent from social context: the sense of self is complete on its own and is defined through its own attributes that do not vary across contexts. On the other hand, in collectivistic societies, the self is regarded as flexible and variable across situations and is embedded in social context: the sense of self is defined through and dependent on surrounding social relationships that vary from one social situation to another.

This difference manifests in a number of different ways. In one of the earlier tests of this distinction, Cousins (1989) administered the Twenty Statement Test (TST), in which American and Japanese college students generated twenty sentences that started with "I am...." In this study, American participants were more likely to describe themselves using abstract attributes that are dispositional in nature and stable across situations (e.g., "shy," "outgoing," and "honest"). In contrast, Japanese participants were much more likely to describe themselves by referencing social roles and group memberships, attributes that are more social in nature (e.g., "a college student" and "a daughter"). This finding confirms that Americans tend to view the self as a unitary entity that is stable across social situations, whereas Japanese tend to view the self as embedded within social relationships and as context-dependent.

Extending this research, Kanagawa, Cross, and Markus (2001) examined the influence of different social situations on the sense of self. Participants in this study, recruited in Japan and the U.S., were randomly assigned to write the TST in one of four different social situations: (1) alone in a research booth; (2) with a peer; (3) with a professor; or (4) in a group. To the extent that Americans' sense of self is unitary and stable across social contexts, their self-concept should be relatively uninfluenced by these situations. In contrast, as Japanese's sense of self is embedded within social networks and is context-dependent, the situations should exert relatively greater influence on their self-concept. Findings from this research supported the predictions in that the social contexts had relatively greater influence on Japanese participants in that their descriptions of the self were more variable across situations than American participants' self-descriptions.

These differences are found in small children as well. Wang (2004) compared the contents of autobiographical memories (e.g., memories of the last birthday, last time parents scolded them, most recent fun event, etc.) among American and Chinese children ages 3 to 8 years old. This study found that the memories of American children tended to include more contents narrated from their own perspective (e.g., their emotions, opinions, etc.) and more descriptions of the self as a unique and stable being. In contrast, memories of Chinese children tended to include more contents narrated from the perspective of others (e.g., an event seen from the perspective of an observer) and more descriptions of the self as a social being, frequently referring to social categories and relationships. Interestingly, observations of parent-child interactions suggest that American and Chinese parents help to shape these memories in their children (Wang, 2004). On the one hand, American parents were more likely to encourage children to reflect on their experiences in order to form a coherent and cognitively and emotionally elaborated story about the self. In contrast, Chinese parents were more likely to encourage children to reflect on their experiences in order to facilitate the learning of social rules. In sum, the sense of self begins to diverge between cultures from an early age. The sense of self as a unique and socially independent entity in individualistic societies and as a socially interdependent entity in collectivistic societies is fostered through socialization processes and continues into adulthood.

Differences in the sense of self have implications on social behaviors. The sense of self is integral to social behaviors: it shapes the sense of what is right from wrong and what is important from unimportant, which in turn shapes social behaviors. For example, Kim and Markus (1999) investigated mental processes involved in choice making. The framework of socially independent and interdependent self predicts that whereas pursuit of autonomy and uniqueness is relatively more important concern for independent sense of the self, pursuit of interpersonal harmony and fitting- in with others is relatively more important concern for interdependent sense of the self. A series of experiments examined these predictions. In one such experiment, researchers presented a set of five pens consisting of two colors (e.g., two blue pens and three red pens) to travelers at the San Francisco International Airport as a gift for filling out a short survey. The participants' choices of pen color varied systematically as a function of their cultural upbringing. European-American travelers tended to choose the blue pen (74%), as there were less of that color, whereas Asian travelers were much less likely to choose the blue pen (24%) and were more likely to choose a red pen.

The same pattern was observed in selecting objects that were highly abstract. When a group of European- and Asian-American high school students were shown a series of pictures in which several small abstract objects that had the same shape were grouped together to form a pattern, with the exception of a few objects that had a different orientation, thus deviating from the overall pattern. Participants indicated how much they liked each object. The study found that liking unique objects was relatively more pronounced among European-American participants compared to Asian-American participants who, in turn, liked common objects relatively more than unique objects. In sum, this research shows that the observations by the keen international traveler mentioned earlier are in fact generalized behavioral tendencies of Koreans and Americans. On the one hand, Koreans' participation in a collectivistic culture fosters a preference for "fitting-in" (i.e., choosing a pen that is more common in color, or liking an object based on its similarity with others). On the other hand, Americans' participation in an individualistic culture fosters a preference for "standing-out" (i.e., choosing a pen that is less common in color, or liking an object based on its dissimilarity with others).

Different senses of the self across cultures give rise to different senses of what is important and unimportant for one's well-being: whereas the socially interdependent self should be more gratified by success in conducting social obligations relative to personal success, the opposite pattern is predicted for the socially independent self. Research supports this rationale. In one study, Iyengar and Lepper (1999) instructed groups of Asian- and European-American children to solve a puzzle that was selected either by themselves or for them by close others (e.g., their mother or classmates). The children's performance on the puzzle task was then measured. The pattern diverged between the two groups. On the one hand, European-American children were motivated the most when they solved a puzzle that was self-chosen relative to solving a puzzle chosen by others (even though there was no difference in the puzzle itself). The self-selected puzzle was reported to be more enjoyable, and the performance of the task had a better outcome. On the other hand, Asian-American children were motivated the most when they worked on a puzzle that was chosen by a close other relative to a self-selected puzzle; the children also enjoyed the other-selected puzzle more and performed better on it relative to the self-selected puzzle. Hence, this study indicates that whereas decisions made by the self are more relevant for the goals and motivations of the socially independent self, decisions made by others, which presumably affirms the sense of social interdependence, are more relevant for the goals and motivations of the socially interdependent self.

Similar patterns have been observed among adults as well. Oishi and Diener (2001) found that whereas European-American participants experienced greater satisfaction with life when they pursued goals that were personal in nature (i.e., doing something for fun and excitement), the pursuit of these goals did not contribute to life satisfaction among Asian-American participants. Instead, their life satisfaction was enhanced when they pursued goals that were relational in nature (e.g., doing something to please parents and friends). Kwan, Bond, and Singelis (1997) reported similar findings in an investigation of the determinants of life satisfaction among Chinese and American participants. In this study, college students recruited in Hong Kong and the U.S. completed measures of their self-esteem, interpersonal harmony, and life satisfaction. This study confirmed that whereas both self-esteem and interpersonal harmony were predictive of life satisfaction in both societies, cultures differed in terms of their relative importance in that social harmony was more predictive of life satisfaction among Chinese participants compared to American participants.

In sum, research reviewed in this section illustrates the profound ways in which people's sense of self is cultural. As the sense of self is integral for the sense of what is right and wrong, and what is important and unimportant, cultural differences in the self also implicate differences in social behaviors, for example by shaping different preferences for choice and different sets of goals and values important for the pursuit of happiness.

Culture Influences How We Understand the World

The ways in which we understand the world is another crucial determinant of social behavior. Processes of social cognition, or the ways in which people attend to, perceive, think, and understand their social environment, are basic building blocks of our functioning in social environment, and they have been studied extensively in psychology. These processes, in turn, have long been regarded as universal and essentially the same around the world. As reviewed below, however, recent research has challenged this view, showing a profound influence of culture on these processes. Consider the following:

On November 1, 1991, Gang Lu, a graduate student of physics at the University of Iowa who failed to win a prestigious dissertation award and could not secure an academic job, killed four faculty members including his adviser and the department chair, who awarded the prize to Gang Lu's rival, as well as his classmate before killing himself (Mann, 1992).

How do we best understand Gang Lu's behavior, his motivation, and the factors that led to this horrific event? On the one hand, one may seek answers in his internal processes (e.g., his personality characteristics, temperament, long-standing values, attitudes, habit, pathology, etc.). On the other hand, others may seek answers in processes that are more environmental in nature (e.g., stress at the workplace, homesickness, relationship with the supervisor, etc.). Although any comprehensive explanations would require both of these perspectives, one tendency (or bias) that many individuals exhibit in explaining this particular event, or any social behaviors more generally, is to focus excessively on internal characteristics relative to environmental characteristics. This tendency is known as the fundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977). In fact, when a group of American students was presented with a list of possible causes of Lu's murders, these participants regarded internal factors as much more important and as the relevant cause of the event than environmental factors (Morris & Peng, 1994).

However, the same study conducted among Chinese students showed a different pattern. In particular, among Chinese participants, the fundamental attribution error was not found, and the role of internal factors was downplayed relative to the environmental factors as an explanation for Gang Lu's murders (Morris & Peng, 1994). This pattern was found not just in college students' analysis of the murders, but in the newspaper coverage of the event as well. Morris and Peng (1994) retrieved all the newspaper reports of the case that appeared in the New York Times and World Journal, the leading Chinese language paper in the U.S. Each report was coded to discover whether the murders were attributed to internal or environmental characteristics. This analysis revealed that whereas American reports were more likely to attribute the murders to Lu's internal factors (e.g., "very bad temper," "personal belief that guns were an important means to redress grievances," and "darkly disturbed man who drove himself to success and destruction"), Chinese reports were much more likely to attribute the murders to environmental factors (e.g., "rivalry with slain student," "isolation from Chinese community," and "murders can be traced to the availability of guns"). These studies suggest cultural differences in attribution: whereas Americans are more likely to seek an explanation to some internal characteristics (i.e., fundamental attribution error), Chinese are more likely to focus on the role of environmental characteristics in explaining a social behavior. Nonetheless, these findings are limited in that the perpetrator in the case was Chinese, which might have confounded the findings.

In order to rule out this possibility, Morris and Peng (1994) examined whether cultures also differ in explaining a basic and abstract kind of social behavior. In this study, American and Chinese high school students were shown cartoons of a group of fish, in which one fish was of a different color (blue) from the others (green), swimming in a lake. The cartoons showed the blue fish swimming on a path that deviated from the others. Students were asked to respond to questions asking the extent to which the blue fish's movement reflected its internal factor ("To what extent do the blue fish's movements seem influenced by internal factors?") and its external factor ("To what extent do the blue fish's movements seem influenced by the other fish?") In this study, American students exhibited the fundamental attribution error and were more likely to say the fish's movement was influenced more by internal factors than external factors. In contrast, the opposite pattern was found among Chinese participants: relative to American participants, Chinese participants were more likely to say that the fish's movement was influenced more by external factors than internal factors. In sum, this research revealed that the processes individuals use to explain a social behavior are more cultural than previously recognized. The tendency to explain social behaviors via internal factors did not extend to Chinese, as well as Koreans and Japanese (Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, 2001), who are more likely to seek an explanation in factors that are external in nature.

Nisbett and colleagues (Nisbett, 2003; Nisbett, et al., 2001) maintain that the difference in attribution style is one of many symptoms of Western and East Asian habits of thought. Under this framework, the cognitive processes prevalent in Western individualistic societies are characterized as analytic, focusing on the attributes of an object that is de-contextualized from the environment and using them as the basis for explaining behaviors. In the examples above, American participants focused on the internal attributes of Gang Lu, separating him from his social context, and they used his internal processes as a basis of explaining his behavior. On the other hand, the cognitive processes prevalent in East Asian collectivistic societies are characterized as holistic, focusing on the relationships between the object and its context, and they use these relationships as the basis for explaining behaviors. In the examples above, Chinese participants focused on the social relationships and the environment in which Gang Lu belonged, and viewed these factors as the basis for explaining his behavior. This distinction has been demonstrated in a number of different ways (Nisbett, 2003; Nisbett, et al., 2001). Here, a review of a small subset of this literature is in order.

One way in which analytic and holistic thinkers differ is how they categorize objects (Ji, Zhang, & Nisbett, 2004; Norenzayan, Smith, Kim, & Nisbett, 2002). Suppose that one is presented with a list of objects, such as carrot-rabbit-eggplant or seagull-squirrel-tree. There are at least two ways to categorize these objects. One approach is to focus on the taxonomy and group objects that share perceptual similarities. Hence, carrot and eggplant are grouped together as belonging to the category of vegetable, whereas seagull and squirrel would be grouped together as belonging to the category of animal. The alternative approach is to focus on the functional relationship and group objects that have a relationship with one another. Hence, rabbit and carrot are grouped together (rabbit eats carrot) and squirrel is grouped with tree (squirrel lives in tree). The distinction between analytic and holistic processing suggests a different tendency toward taxonomic and relational categorization. On the one hand, as analytic thinkers would focus on the attributes of the object that are de-contextualized from the environment and use that information as a basis of classification, they should be relatively more inclined toward taxonomic categorization. On the other hand, as holistic thinkers would focus on the relationships among objects and use that information as a basis for categorization, they should be relatively more inclined toward relational categorization.

This rationale has been borne out empirically. In one study, participants from Peking University and the University of Michigan were instructed to categorize a list of words (such as the ones above). As predicted, Chinese participants were more likely to categorize objects relationally, whereas European-American participants were more likely to categorize them taxonomically (Ji, et al., 2004). Interestingly, this study also varied the language of test materials among Beijing participants: for half of the participants, the study was conducted in Mandarin, whereas for the other half, it was conducted in English. This procedure yielded the effect that was parallel to the effect of culture. That is, Chinese participants working in English were more likely to categorize objects taxonomically (though to a lesser extent compared to European-American participants) compared to Chinese participants working on the same task in Mandarin (Ji, et al., 2004). This finding suggests that both modes of thinking are available in the mind of Chinese. That is, although Chinese may be chronically inclined to process information in their natural environment holistically (e.g., responding in Mandarin), the mode of thinking switched when the situation called for it (e.g., responding in English, which would presumably also mentally activate other attributes of Western cultures), and they came to process information analytically.

In turn, this suggests that cultural differences in the mode of thinking reflect differences in social situations that surround Westerners and East Asians. That is, although Chinese are relatively more holistic because social situations that surround them necessitate careful attention to intertwined relationships among objects, when presented with different types of social situations that afford a greater focus on the object itself (i.e., situations that are more common in individualistic societies), this would call for more analytic processing of information. In fact, studies show that when participants, regardless of their nationality or cultural background, are reminded of the former type of social situations, their mode of thinking becomes relatively more holistic, whereas when they are presented with the latter type of social situations, their mode of thinking becomes relatively more analytic (Oyserman & Lee, 2008). This finding has an important implication in considering the nature of the relationship between culture and individuals, which will be elaborated on later.

Aside from categorization, analytic and holistic thinkers also differ in their systems of attention and perception. In a study conducted by Masuda, Ellsworth, Mesquita, Leu, Tanida, and Van De Veerdonk (2008), participants in Japan and the U.S. were presented with a series of cartoons that showed a group of children. In half of the cartoons, the emotion expressed by the child in the middle was congruent with the emotion expressed by the surrounding children (e.g., a happy child is surrounded by other happy children), whereas in the other cartoons, the expressed emotions were incongruent between the child in the center and the surrounding children (e.g., a happy child is surrounded by sad children). Participants in this experiment were asked to rate the intensity of emotion expressed by the child in the center. The distinction between analytic and holistic processing would suggest a different effect of the congruency on the ratings. On the one hand, to the extent that analytic thinkers would focus on the child in the middle, analyze the facial expression, and evaluate the child's emotion independently of the context, their ratings should be relatively uninfluenced by the congruency (e.g., even when other children seem sad, that should not influence the evaluation of emotion expressed by the target child). In contrast, to the extent that holistic thinkers would attend to the relationships between the child in the middle and the surrounding children, the congruency (or lack of congruency) should greatly influence the ratings. For example, when the target child who seems happy is surrounded by others appearing sad, the incongruence should decrease the perception of happiness expressed by the target child. Findings supported these predictions: the ratings of Japanese participants were relatively more influenced by the congruency relative to the ratings by American participants.

In another study, Masuda, et al. (2008) examined these differences through participants' eye movements. Japanese and American participants wore a device that allowed tracking of their eye movement while they viewed and evaluated the facial expressions in the cartoons. The study analyzed how participants allocated their gaze for the first 3 seconds after each cartoon was presented. The study revealed a pattern of convergence and divergence between cultures. First, Japanese and American participants showed a similar tendency in the first second of the presentation in that participants from both groups focused exclusively on the child in the center, and nearly 100% of their gaze was allocated to this target. However, the pattern diverged in the subsequent seconds. In the second and third seconds, whereas Japanese participants allocated a greater proportion of their gaze to the surrounding children compared to the first second, American participants kept their attention on the target child and did not allocate much of their eye gaze to the surrounding children. In sum, these findings suggest cultural differences in the attention to contextual information. Contextual information is relatively more attention grabbing for holistic thinkers than for analytic thinkers. Holistic thinkers allocated a greater proportion of their eye gaze to contextual information, and their perception was more influenced by the contextual information. Analytic thinkers, in contrast, kept their attention on the central object, and their perceptions were relatively uninfluenced by the information presented in the periphery.

Research reviewed in this section reveals the influence of culture on the ways in which people understand their social environment. Contrary to the long-lasting belief in behavioral science, this research suggests that even some of the most basic processes of social cognition, such as processes of attention, perception, and categorization, are profoundly cultural.

Culture and Individuals: What Is Personal about a Person's Social Behavior?

Research reviewed here suggests that much of our mental processes are cultural: even the most basic processes, once regarded as invariant across cultures, such as the sense of self or the ways in which we understand the world, vary across cultures. Nevertheless, even viewed under these findings, there is a sense that social behaviors are deeply personal. As mentioned earlier on, the comparative perspective traditionally employed by cultural psychologists, "East Asians" compared against "North Americans," is double-edged and overlooks differences across individuals within each cultural group. Technically, descriptions of the socially independent versus the interdependent self or analytic versus holistic thinking describe differences in the central tendencies (i.e., group average), and such a description, by definition, does not extend to every individual living in Western or East Asian societies. That is, a non-trivial proportion of Americans embody a socially interdependent self and holistic thinking, and a non-trivial proportion of Chinese embody a socially independent self and analytic thinking. This consideration, in turn, solicits a question regarding the nature of the relationship between culture and individuality. Specifically, how do we best understand the idiosyncrasy among individuals participating in the same culture? As mentioned earlier, research examining this issue is relatively new and findings are scarce compared to research examining cultural influence through cross-national comparisons. Here, two emerging approaches are reviewed.

The first approach is to seek a narrower and more refined conceptualization of culture to analyze variations among members of the same cultural group ("East Asians" or "Westerners") (A. Cohen, 2009). For example, some research has examined regional variations in the patterns of culture: through a series of studies, Kitayama et al (2006) demonstrated that Japanese living in northern island of Hokkaido are relatively more individualistic (possess more independent sense of the self and more inclined toward analytic processing) compared to those living elsewhere in Japan. This is one example of a refined conceptualization of culture (e.g., anchored to differences in regional characteristics) affording a better understanding of differences among individuals participating in the same cultural tradition (i.e., East Asian collectivism).

Another example of research examining more refined understanding of culture in research on social class. Differences in social class not only implicates differences in the amount and quality of available resources, but also it implicates differences in the system of meaning: members of different social classes "come to see the world differently--to develop different conceptions of social reality, different aspirations and hopes and fears, different conceptions of the desirable" (p. 48, Kohn, 1979). Interestingly, research reveals that one useful way to capture the influence of social class on mental processes is to adapt the dimension of individualism-collectivism. Specifically, research has revealed relatively individualistic mental processes among individuals of higher social class background and relatively collectivistic mental processes among those of lower social class background. For example, in one such study, Snibbe and Markus (2005) asked working-class and middle-class American participants to evaluate a pen that was either self-chosen or chosen by an experimenter and to indicate their liking of the pen. The finding diverged across social classes: whereas participants from a middle-class background preferred the self-selected pen to the other-selected pen, such a preference was not found among participants from a working-class background. This study suggests that the expression of one's choice was a relatively more important concern for middle-class Americans. The relationship between social class and individualism- collectivism extends to East Asian societies as well. Hamamura, Xu, and Du (2011) administered measures of individualistic and collectivistic mental processes to a large number of adolescents representing different social classes in Hangzhou. This study found that adolescents from a higher social class background tended to have a more socially independent sense of self and were more inclined toward analytic processing (e.g., explaining a social behavior via internal factors, and less context sensitive). In contrast, adolescents from a lower social class background had a more socially interdependent sense of self and were more inclined toward holistic processing (e.g., explaining a social behavior via external factors, and more context sensitive).

In sum, one way to understand the idiosyncrasy within the same cultural group is to seek and obtain more refined conceptualization of culture, such as cultures shaped through regional characteristics or social class.

The second approach to understanding the idiosyncrasy within the same national culture is to focus on the dynamic relationship between culture and individuals. Studies reviewed thus far suggest a relatively static relationship between culture and the mind: each individual, through years of socialization, develops a mental model of his or her culture, which influences the sense of self, understanding of the world, and social behaviors. Although this conceptualization of culture has been productive, recent research suggests that the relationship between culture and individuals can also be dynamic. This section reviews two such examples.

One example of the dynamic relationship is a study asking American and Chinese participants to explain a social behavior under either a time pressure or no time pressure (Chiu, Morris, Hong, & Menon, 2000). Participants of this study in the time pressure condition exhibited a familiar pattern in that American participants were more likely to attribute the social behavior to internal factors, whereas Chinese participants were more likely to attribute the social behavior to external factors. However, this pattern was not found among those in the no time pressure condition: American and Chinese participants did not differ in their indications toward internal versus external attributions. Chiu and colleagues argue that the finding reflects the fact that culture provides a coherent system of meaning on which individuals are particularly likely to depend when the situations do not allow a careful deliberation. Participants in the time pressure condition were unable to engage in careful processing of all relevant information and instead looked for a quick answer that was readily available to them (i.e., attribute a social behavior to an internal cause or to an external cause for Americans and Chinese, respectively). In sum, this study illustrates that the extent to which individuals are "cultural" in their mental processes depends on contextual characteristics such as time pressure.

Another example of the dynamic relationship between culture and the mind is found in research suggesting that individuals have mental models of multiple cultures in their mind and flexibly switch between them depending on the context. A study mentioned earlier, in which Chinese participants performed a categorization task either in Mandarin or in English, is an example of this: whereas Chinese participants applied holistic processing when working in Mandarin, they applied analytic processing when working in English (Ji, et al., 2004). Presumably, Chinese participants working in English construed their environment differently and inferred the need for analytic processing--the social context was viewed through a "Western lens" when working in English.

Similarly, in another study, university students in Hong Kong were shown a series of pictures showing symbols either of American culture (e.g., the national flag, Marilyn Monroe, Superman, and the White House) or of Chinese culture (e.g., the national flag, a Chinese opera singer, Stone monkey, and the Great Wall). The rationale behind this experiment was that the pictures of American or Chinese symbols would influence how the participants construed the situation and consequently shaped their mental processes. Supporting this rationale, the study found that whereas those participants who saw American pictures were more likely to attribute a social behavior to internal factors, suggesting that they inferred the appropriateness of analytic processing in the context, those who saw Chinese pictures were more likely to attribute a social behavior to external factors, suggesting that they inferred the appropriateness of holistic processing in the context (Hong, Morris, Chiu, & Benet-Martinez, 2000). Similar findings have been reported elsewhere, including cultures that are less multicultural than Hong Kong (for a review, see Oyserman & Lee, 2008).

In sum, these findings suggest that although societies around the world vary in their orientation toward individualism and collectivism, individuals across cultures have mental models of both individualistic (or "Western") and collectivistic (or "East Asian") cultures, and which cultural mindset guides their behaviors is determined by a particular context, and more specifically, how individuals construe the context. People are not robots mindlessly following cultural normative (Cohen & Leung, 2010). An interdependent self and holistic processing may be salient in the minds of many Chinese when their context (e.g., surrounded by Chinese cultural symbols, speaking Mandarin, or working under time pressure) cues the appropriateness of the Chinese mindset. Nonetheless, when embedded in different types of context where such cues are absent, the "Chinese mindset" would not become salient. From this perspective, the key to understanding the idiosyncrasy of cultural behaviors is in the context that surrounds individuals: the symbolic and linguistic landscape and its psychological representation.

In the field of cultural psychology, the issue of the idiosyncrasy of cultural behavior has long been overlooked. However, this is changing, and research efforts on the issue of idiosyncrasy have been intensifying in recent years (Kitayama, Park, Sevincer, Karasawa, & Uskul, 2009; Na, Grossmann, Varnum, Kitayama, Gonzalez, & Nisbett, 2010). For example, Kitayama and colleagues (2009) measured several tasks that are theoretically related to individualism- collectivism (e.g., self concept, attribution style, and sensitivity to contextual information) in four countries (U.S., U.K., Germany, and Japan). As expected, different tasks of individualism-collectivism converged in revealing the cross-national differences: in all tasks, American participants were most individualistic, Japanese participants were most collectivistic, and British and German participants were individualistic but to a lesser extent compared to American participants. At the individual level, however, these tasks were uncorrelated with one another: a person's inclination toward holistic information processing, for example, was unrelated to her interdependent sense of the self. Faced with this surprising pattern of finding, Kitayama and colleagues (2009) suggested the role of individualism and collectivism as the unifying theme of a cultural syndrome. Within each culture, according to this theory, various psychological processes are used in an idiosyncratic fashion to strive toward individualism or collectivism. For example, to reach toward the goal of collectivism, some individuals may adopt interdependent self-concept, some may seek to fit-in with others, and yet others may seek contextual processing of social information. In sum, this research highlights the idiosyncrasy in culturally shaped mental processes.

As reviewed here, research on idiosyncrasy in cultural behavior is currently only at its beginning stage. Nonetheless, available findings make it clear that this development would afford a clearer understanding of the intricate relationship between culture and individuals in the near future.

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Takeshi Hamamura

The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Correspondence to:

Takeshi Hamamura

Department of Psychology

The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Shatin, NT, Hong Kong

Email: hamamura.takeshi@gmail.com