How Do Cultural Worlds Shape Selves and Relationships?

Agency, obligation, social position and the situations in which a self takes shape.

Level: Intermediate
Reading load: 8 core readings in 5 units
Prerequisites: The Culture & Psychology foundation, or familiarity with culture as meanings, practices and institutions. Basic understanding of samples, correlations and experiments. The comparison-methods syllabus offers useful preparation for interpreting self-report measures.
Last reviewed: September 2026

Introduction

To be a self is also to live among claims upon the self. A person may choose freely and feel deeply responsible for family; speak differently with a friend and a teacher; find an ambition welcomed by one institution and misunderstood by another. These possibilities invite us to examine how cultural worlds give agency and relationships their forms and meanings.

This path begins with models of personhood and a distinction between acting by choice and being distant from other people. A large comparative study then complicates the familiar contrast between independence and interdependence. Studies of choice and relationships with people regarded as enemies investigate the meanings of obligations and relationships; university research examines whose motives institutions recognize. The final unit considers self-description and everyday situations as ways to study cultural processes in action.

The eight works include conceptual arguments and several kinds of empirical design. Vignoles and colleagues’ multidimensional study is the most demanding: the aim is to understand how its model changes the question, without needing to reproduce the statistical analyses. Across the path, keep cultural models, personal experiences, reported responses and observed behavior distinct. By the end, you should be able to explain an account of how cultural settings shape people's possibilities for action, identify evidence that could revise it, and design a comparison that respects variation within as well as between communities.

Unit 1 of 5

What does it mean to be a self?

Begin with the relationship between cultural worlds and personal experience. Markus and Kitayama offer a reciprocal framework; Kagitcibasi then separates agency from interpersonal distance. Consider which distinctions explain an observation and which might obscure it.

Reading
1 of 8
Cultures and Selves: A Cycle of Mutual Constitution
Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (2010). Cultures and selves: A cycle of mutual constitution. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5(4), 420–430. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691610375557
Foundational argument · Major synthesis · Moderate · Full work: 11 pages
Follow how practices and institutions make particular ways of acting intelligible, and how people participate in sustaining or changing them.
Why you’re reading it. Establish a framework for explaining personhood rather than assigning people to cultural types.
A question to consider. A family praises both initiative and responsibility to relatives. How could you investigate the practices that give those ideals meaning?
Reading
2 of 8
Autonomy and Relatedness in Cultural Context
Kagitcibasi, C. (2005). Autonomy and relatedness in cultural context: Implications for self and family. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 36(4), 403–422. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022105275959
Foundational argument · Major synthesis · Moderate · Full work: 20 pages
Use the separation of agency and interpersonal distance to reconsider apparent conflicts between autonomy and belonging.
Why you’re reading it. Refine the opening framework before interpreting cultural comparisons.
A question to consider. Someone freely chooses to care for an older relative. What additional evidence would distinguish autonomy, closeness and external control in that decision?

Unit 2 of 5

How many ways are there to be independent or interdependent?

Broad models can guide inquiry while concealing important combinations. Vignoles and colleagues investigate multiple dimensions across diverse samples. Use the measurement decisions to ask what a richer description adds and what it still leaves unexplored.

Reading
3 of 8
Beyond the ‘East–West’ Dichotomy: Global Variation in Cultural Models of Selfhood
Vignoles, V. L., Owe, E., Becker, M., Smith, P. B., Easterbrook, M. J., Brown, R., González, R., Didier, N., Carrasco, D., Cadena, M. P., Lay, S., Schwartz, S. J., Des Rosiers, S. E., Villamar, J. A., Gavreliuc, A., Zinkeng, M., Kreuzbauer, R., Baguma, P., Martin, M., …, Bond, M. H. (2016). Beyond the ‘east–west’ dichotomy: Global variation in cultural models of selfhood. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145(8), 966–1000. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000175
Landmark empirical study · Critical reappraisal · Methodological contribution · Challenging · Full work: 35 pages
Distinguish the model’s individual and cultural levels and the different forms of independence it separates.
Why you’re reading it. Test whether a two-category account can describe combinations such as self-reliance alongside strong connection.
A question to consider. Which measured dimensions would help describe the family-care decision, and what locally meaningful experience might still be missing from the questionnaire?

Unit 3 of 5

How do relationships organize choice and obligation?

Obligation can be experienced as a chosen commitment, and enduring relationships can involve risk as well as support. Miller and colleagues examine the interpretation of duty; Adams asks how expectations of enemies become understandable in different relational worlds. Assess each claim through the outcome actually measured.

Reading
4 of 8
Culture and the Role of Choice in Agency
Miller, J. G., Das, R., & Chakravarthy, S. (2011). Culture and the role of choice in agency. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(1), 46–61. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023330
Methodological contribution · Critical reappraisal · Moderate · Full work: 16 pages
Compare remembered incidents with standardized situations when evaluating the relationship between obligation and choice.
Why you’re reading it. Investigate agency through the meaning of an action in a relationship.
A question to consider. Two people provide the same help, but only one calls it a duty. What evidence would show whether their experiences of choice actually differ?
Reading
5 of 8
The Cultural Grounding of Personal Relationship: Enemyship
Adams, G. (2005). The cultural grounding of personal relationship: Enemyship in North American and West African worlds. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88(6), 948–968. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.88.6.948
Critical reappraisal · Methodological contribution · Moderate · Full work: 21 pages
Keep reports of enemies separate from observed harm and from experimentally altered word accessibility.
Why you’re reading it. Extend the account of relationships beyond an assumption that interdependence always means harmony.
A question to consider. A participant says close connections create both security and vulnerability. How could interviews and observations investigate that account without treating it as a national trait?

Unit 5 of 5

How can we study cultural processes in everyday situations?

Finish by treating situations as part of the explanation. Kanagawa and colleagues vary the setting for self-description. Morling and colleagues turn recalled experiences into materials that other participants interpret. Together they raise a further question: what would connect a response in one setting with a longer history of participation?

Reading
7 of 8
“Who Am I?” The Cultural Psychology of the Conceptual Self
Kanagawa, C., Cross, S. E., & Markus, H. R. (2001). “Who am I?” The cultural psychology of the conceptual self. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27(1), 90–103. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167201271008
Methodological contribution · Moderate · Full work: 14 pages
Follow which aspects of self-description vary across conditions, keeping the between-participant design visible.
Why you’re reading it. Make immediate context part of the inquiry into selfhood.
A question to consider. Someone describes themselves as ambitious to a tutor and dependable to a sibling. How could you distinguish accessible self-knowledge, audience expectations and enduring change?
Reading
8 of 8
Cultural Practices of Influence and Adjustment
Morling, B., Kitayama, S., & Miyamoto, Y. (2002). Cultural practices emphasize influence in the United States and adjustment in Japan. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(3), 311–323. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167202286003
Methodological contribution · Moderate · Full work: 13 pages
Distinguish the origin of a described situation from the background of the person rating it.
Why you’re reading it. Bring the path back to the practices through which ways of acting may become familiar.
A question to consider. How would you extend this design to investigate whether recurring family decisions cultivate influence, adjustment or both over time?

Scope and omissions

The path concerns cultural models of personhood, agency and relationships. It is not a comprehensive account of identity, personality or relationship development. Several influential works rely on university samples, and the US–Japan comparison remains prominent despite inclusion of Turkish family theory, Indian studies, Ghanaian relational research and a wider comparative project. These are situated contributions rather than representatives of entire populations. Indigenous accounts, gender and sexuality, disability, labor, colonial histories and change across the life course require fuller treatment than this selection provides. Context sensitivity here concerns reported or elicited responses; migration and acculturation, long-term cultural change, and the origins of institutions are separate questions. No framework should be used to infer an individual’s motives from nationality or social class.

Synthesis

The self takes different forms in relation to others, and those relations resist a single scale from independence to dependence. Agency can coexist with closeness; obligation can be chosen and meaningful; relationships can offer support and expose people to constraint or risk. Institutions recognize some motives more readily than others, while immediate situations help shape what people express about themselves.

These are claims at different levels, supported by different kinds of evidence. A conceptual distinction opens a possibility; a questionnaire model describes patterns in its items; an interview illuminates meanings; an experiment tests a change under specified conditions. None alone supplies a complete cultural history of a person. The strongest explanation connects evidence across these levels while identifying what remains uncertain.

Return to a decision about caring for a relative, choosing a course or accepting a job. Describe the available options and constraints, the relationships involved, and the institutional expectations. Offer two explanations of what the decision means to the person. Specify evidence that could distinguish them, including whose perspective would shape the research question. Then explain what a national or class average would leave unknown.

For a closer examination of measurement and comparative inference, use How Can We Compare Psychological Processes Across Cultures?. For the broader study of self-knowledge and social judgment, continue with How Do We Understand Ourselves and Other People?.

To investigate how cultural experience bears on attention, knowledge, language and interaction, continue with How Does Culture Shape Perception, Thought and Communication?. Compare broad explanatory models with the tasks and everyday practices used to study them.