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The What, How, Why, and Where of Self-Construal

Susan E. Cross, Erin E. Hardin and Berna Gercek-Swing
Pers Soc Psychol Rev 2011 15: 142 originally published online 17 August 2010
DOI: 10.1177/1088868310373752

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 Personality and Social Psychology Review

The What, How, Why, and 15(2) 142­–179

© 2011 by the Society for Personality
and Social Psychology, Inc.
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DOI: 10.1177/1088868310373752
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Susan E. Cross1, Erin E. Hardin2, and Berna Gercek-Swing1

Abstract
Since the publication of Markus and Kitayama’s pivotal article on culture and the self, the concepts of independent, relational,
and interdependent self-construal have become important constructs in cultural psychology and research on the self. The authors
review the history of these constructs, their measurement and manipulation, and their roles in cognition, emotion, motiva-
tion, and social behavior. They make suggestions for future research and point to problems still to be sorted out. Researchers
interested in these constructs have many opportunities to make important contributions to the literature in a variety of fields,
including health psychology, education, counseling, and international relations.

Keywords
culture, ethnicity, self, identity, social cognition

When research on the self burst onto the social psychological
scene more than three decades ago, it reflected the cultural
assumptions and beliefs of the researchers’ backgrounds.
These researchers were largely from European, Canadian,
and European American backgrounds, and they assumed that
the self was autonomous, independent of the influence of
others, bounded, unique, integrated, and fundamentally prior
to society and social relationships (Geertz, 1975). In the inter-
vening decades, both the researchers studying the self and the
assumptions about the self have become more culturally
diverse. This diversity has resulted in the articulation and
development of the concept of self-construal. First coined by
Markus and Kitayama (1991), research on self-construal has
come to have a prominent place among influential concepts
in psychology, especially in regard to research on self-related
concepts and processes, social cognition, close relationships,
and cultural psychology.
This article reviews the existing research on self-construal
and its role in cognition, emotion, motivation, and social
behavior. Our overarching goal is to provide a guidebook for
researchers—an integrated look at where research and theory
on self-construal are after 20 years and where we believe they
are going and need to go. To achieve this goal, we first address
the What is it? question with a brief review of the history of
this construct and its development since the original statement
by Markus and Kitayama (1991). Second, we address How is
it investigated? with a review of the most common measure-
ment tools and manipulations. Third, we address the question,
Why is self-construal important? by detailing the accumulated
evidence regarding its role in psychological processes. Through-
out, we also seek to point out gaps, problems, or inconsistencies
in the research record to explore Where to from here? with
the hopes that researchers will continue to further refine the
methods used to investigate this topic and further explore the
implications of self-construal for human behavior.
What Is Self-Construal?
Psychological researchers have long been interested in the
existence and implications of multiple representations of the
self. William James (1890), for example, distinguished the
material, social, and spiritual selves. One of the most produc-
tive distinctions has been made between private and public
selves (Baumeister, 1986; Greenwald & Pratkanis, 1984).
This distinction between inner, unobservable selves and the
outer selves we portray to others provided a useful conceptual
framework for understanding a range of representations of the
self and their implications for cognition, affect, and behavior.
Not surprisingly, however, this early work did not explicitly
consider the ways in which culture shapes the development
and expression of these different types of self. In one of the
earliest efforts to do so, Triandis (1989) elaborated on the
distinctions among the private, public, and collective selves
(cf. Greenwald & Pratkanis, 1984) and argued that cultural
differences reliably lead to differential expression or sampling
1
Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA
2
Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA
Corresponding Author:
Susan E. Cross, Iowa State University, Department of Psychology,
W117 Lagomarcino Hall, Ames, IA 50011
Email: scross@iastate.edu

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Cross et al. 143
of these three selves. Around the same time, Markus and
Kitayama (1991) similarly reviewed research that showed that
members of European or American and Asian cultures con-
structed differing self-views. As they illustrated, Western
cultures prioritize the individual over the group, and individuals
seek independence, autonomy, and separateness from others.
In East Asian cultures, the group is prioritized over the indi-
vidual, and individuals seek to fit into the group and maintain
harmony in the group. Although other researchers had broached
the issue of the self as critical in understanding cultural dif-
ferences, Triandis (1989) and Markus and Kitayama’s (1991)
articles were the first to make this argument clearly and to
make it accessible to a wide audience.
Markus and Kitayama (1991) coined the term self-construal
in describing the ways that Americans and Japanese define
and make meaning of the self. To construe means to “show or
explain the meaning or intention of” (Random House Diction-
ary, 1980); thus, self-construal refers to how individuals define
and make meaning of the self. Markus and Kitayama identified
two such self-construals, independent and interdependent.
Although they noted that these are only two of many possible
self-construals, the term self-construal has become virtually
synonymous with independence and interdependence; thus,
self-construal is typically defined as how individuals see the
self in relation to others.
Markus and Kitayama (1991) proposed that Europeans and
Americans construe the self as fundamentally individual and
separate from others, and they labeled this the independent
self-construal (IndSC). For persons with high IndSC, the ques-
tion, “Who am I?” is likely to be answered with reference to
internal traits that are stable across situations (e.g., outgoing,
shy, intelligent, ambitious) or that set one apart from others
(e.g., especially creative, a straight-A student). Demonstrating
one’s uniqueness is an important basis of self-esteem. Being
“the same person” across situations and communicating assert-
ively are considered signs of maturity. Interpersonal relation-
ships are, of course, important to those with an IndSC, but
significant others are typically important foremost for how
they benefit the individual (e.g., for the support or esteem they
provide to the independent individual). Furthermore, others are
a source of social comparison for confirming one’s uniqueness
(compared to my friends, I am more creative) and internal
traits (I demonstrate my compassion in my relationships with
my family).
In contrast, Markus and Kitayama (1991) pointed out that
the Japanese tend to construe the self as fundamentally con-
nected to others and defined by relationships with others, which
they labeled the interdependent self-construal (InterSC). For
persons with high InterSC, the question, “Who am I?” is likely
to be answered with reference to important relationships (e.g.,
daughter, friend, coworker) or group memberships (fraternity
member, Asian American). Demonstrating one’s ability to fit
into the group is an important basis of self-esteem. Changing
one’s behavior to respond to the demands of different situations
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and regulating emotional expression to maintain group har-
mony are considered signs of maturity. Interpersonal relation-
ships are of utmost importance to those with an InterSC, with
the individual concerned primarily with how he or she benefits
the group. Others become a source of definition for the self
(I am a responsible student and an impulsive friend), and social
comparison is used to determine whether one is fulfilling obli-
gations within those relationships.
Markus and Kitayama (1991) and others (e.g., Singelis,
1994; Triandis, 1989) have argued that individuals possess
both IndSC and InterSC but that cultural context typically
promotes the development of one or the other self-construal
more strongly. As noted above, the United States and Japan
are generally considered prototypical cultures that promote
development of IndSC and InterSC, respectively, with IndSC
tending to be more well elaborated and salient in Western
countries and InterSC tending to be more well elaborated and
salient in non-Western countries, including parts of Asia,
Africa, and Central and South America. Not surprisingly then,
IndSC and InterSC are typically identified as corresponding
to individualist and collectivist cultures. However, Markus
and Kitayama never make this connection explicitly.
Nonetheless, the connection between IndSC and individual-
ism and between InterSC and collectivism is clear—so clear,
in fact, that it can be difficult to distinguish between self-
construal and individualism–collectivism (IND-COL). Con-
ceptually, IND-COL is a dimension used to describe cultures,
whereas self-construal describes individuals. IND-COL, then,
is not an individual differences variable, whereas self-construal
is. This distinction is complicated by the fact that where a
country falls on the IND-COL dimension is typically deter-
mined by the average responses of individuals on self-report
surveys. Indeed, many self-report measures of IND-COL and
self-construal share items. Despite these measurement prob-
lems, the conceptual distinction remains: IND-COL describes
cultures; self-construal describes individuals. Sports analogies
are helpful in understanding this distinction. We might refer to
a football team as having a good defense, whereas we describe
the individual members of the defense as quick, agile, and ath-
letic. Without these individual traits of quickness, agility, and
athleticism, the team could not have a strong defense, just as
a culture can not be individualistic if the majority of its mem-
bers are not independent. Similarly, the individual members
of the football team vary in the degree to which they possess
these traits, just as individuals within a culture vary in the
degree to which they espouse an independent versus interde-
pendent self-construal.
A strong defense in football requires more than just skilled
players; it also requires strategies and game plans that go
beyond the individual players’ abilities. Similarly, self-construal
is only one of several components that distinguish individual-
istic and collectivistic cultures. For example, Triandis (1995)
identified three additional attributes that distinguish individu-
alistic and collectivist cultures: (a) variation in structure of goals
144 Personality and Social Psychology Review 15(2)
(in-group focused vs. individual focused), (b) behavior as a
function of social norm versus individual attitudes, and (c) a
focus on the needs of the in-group versus social exchanges.
These attributes may in some ways be related to self-construal
(e.g., variation in goals may derive from variation in self-
construal), but in this article, we will define self-construal as
one component of IND-COL. Unfortunately, the two terms are
often confused or used interchangeably. Where relevant, we
comment on this confusion and strive to articulate the source
of the confusion and clarify the important differences.
Tripartite Self-Construal: Relational–Interdependent
and Collective–Interdependent Self-Construals
The distinctions made by Markus and Kitayama (1991) and
Triandis (1989) began to stimulate investigation into other vari-
eties of self-construal. Triandis described private, public, and
collective selves, but this tripartite distinction has unfortunately
received relatively little empirical attention. Instead, researchers
have focused more attention on self-construal based on close
relationships as a third dimension of self-construal (Brewer &
Gardner, 1996; Y. Kashima et al., 1995). Y. Kashima and his
colleagues (1995) were the first to demonstrate that independent,
collective, and relational views of the self were empirically
separable. In addition, they argued that whereas individualism
and collectivism differentiated Western from East Asian cultural
groups, across cultures men and women were best differentiated
on the relatedness dimension.
In a separate line of research, Cross and Madson (1997; Cross,
Bacon, & Morris, 2000) argued that gender differences in behavior
among Western participants could also be explained by differences
in self-construal. Integrating research by gender theorists (e.g.,
Gilligan, 1982; Jordan & Surrey, 1986; Stewart & Lykes, 1985)
with the newer work on culture and self, they suggested that
women in Western societies were more likely than men to construct
self-views that incorporated close relationships with other people.
Men, on the other hand, were more likely to conceive of themselves
as independent or separate from their close relationships (but for
a different perspective on gender differences in self-construal, see
Baumeister & Sommer, 1997; Gabriel & Gardner, 1999). Their
article went on to detail how these differences in self-construals
could explain many observed gender differences in cognition,
motivation, emotion, and social behavior.
Although Cross and Madson (1997) used the term inter-
dependent self-construal to refer to ways in which women in
the West may define themselves in terms of close relationships,
they acknowledged that the form of interdependence experi-
enced by Western women could be quite different from the
group-oriented interdependence of East Asians. As they wrote
then, “[F]or U.S. adults, a self-construal based on relationships
with others may be more likely to focus on individual relation-
ships (e.g., with one’s spouse, close friends, siblings) than on
group memberships or social roles” (p. 8). In later work, Cross
and her colleagues (2000), referred to this as the
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relational–interdependent self-construal (often shortened to
relational self-construal [RelSC]). They defined RelSC as the
extent to which people define themselves in terms of close
relationships and differentiated it from the group-centered
collective–interdependent self-construal described by Markus
and Kitayama (1991; often measured by the Singelis, 1994,
Interdependent Self-Construal Scale).
RelSC, therefore, is a general individual difference construct
and is distinct from other similar-sounding constructs that focus
on specific close relationships. For example, the Inclusion of
Other in the Self scale (Aron, Aron, Tudor, & Nelson, 1991) taps
commitment to a specific relationship rather than a general ori-
entation to represent oneself in terms of close relationships (as
does the Relational-Interdependent Self-construal Scale [RISC]).
Andersen’s (Andersen & Chen, 2002) theory of relational selves
also focuses on specific relationships and on individuals’ distinc-
tive and persistent ways of interacting in particular relationships.
For instance, Leigh’s interactions with her peers may be marked
by confidence and positive emotions, but the particular relational
self (in Andersen’s terms) that has been created in her interactions
with her overbearing older brother may be uniquely marked by
resentment and anger. RelSC, instead, is conceived as a relatively
global dimension that captures the extent to which people con-
ceptualize themselves as defined by their close relationships.
Several researchers have sought to differentiate RelSC and
collective–interdependent self-construal. For example, Gabriel
and Gardner (1999; also see Baumeister & Sommer, 1997)
investigated the hypothesis that American men and women
differ in the extent to which they are characterized by these
two forms of InterSC. Using a variety of methods, they found
that American women were more likely than men to character-
ize themselves in relational terms but men were more likely
than women to describe themselves in terms of larger, group
collectives. Thus, InterSC may be considered to have two com-
ponents: a relational component (RelSC) and a collective or
group-oriented component (Coll-InterSC).
Unfortunately this distinction is rarely observed by research-
ers; many times, the term interdependent self-construal is used
without regard to whether close relationships or group member-
ships are the focus of attention. This is understandable, given the
history of the concept of InterSC. With a focus on East–West
differences, Triandis (1995) and Markus and Kitayama (1991)
defined collectivism and InterSC in terms of close relationships
and important in-groups, including families and work groups
(thus, they grouped together relational and group-oriented com-
ponents of self-construal). More recently, Yuki, Maddux, Brewer,
and Takemura (2005) showed that East Asian in-groups tend to
be based on relational ties whereas Western groups are based on
categorical distinctions between in-groups and out-groups. Thus,
they suggest that InterSC among East Asians primarily focuses
on close relationships (and so emphasizes the RelSC) whereas
InterSC among European Americans primarily focuses on groups
and collectives (and so emphasizes Coll-InterSC). Building on
this work and taking the perspective of social identity theory,
Cross et al. 145
Brewer and Chen (2007) argued that collectivism is best under-
stood as membership in large shared social categories (e.g., eth-
nicity, nationality) rather than in groups of relationship
connections, and they showed that most measures of collectivism
or InterSC focus on interpersonal relationships. As this debate
illustrates, there is significant confusion over the boundaries
between RelSC and Coll-InterSC. We view InterSC as a super-
ordinate category, with RelSC and Coll-InterSC as subcompo-
nents within this larger category. In many cases researchers have
used InterSC to refer to both relational and collective orientations;
we have chosen to adopt the researchers’ usage in these cases
except where one or the other subcomponents is made explicit.
Despite these distinctions, most research continues to focus on
the more general consequences of InterSC and IndSC articulated
by Markus and Kitayama (1991). In the next section, we briefly
review their hypotheses.
Hypothesized Consequences of Cultural
Differences in Self-Construal
Markus and Kitayama (1991) offered detailed discussions of
the implications of self-construal for cognition, emotion, and
motivation, reviewing cross-cultural literature that supported
their hypotheses. Of course, such literature did not directly
measure self-construal, so Markus and Kitayama relied on the
assumption that Japanese people were more likely to have an
InterSC, whereas those from Western cultures were more likely
to have an IndSC (cf. Matsumoto, 1999). Markus and Kita-
yama demonstrated that a broad range of cultural differences
in cognition, emotion, and motivation could be explained
by invoking cultural differences in self-construal. We briefly
review their hypotheses concerning the effects of self-construal
on cognition, emotion, and motivation.
Effects of self-construal on cognition. Given that those with an
InterSC define the self in relation to others and are motivated
to fit in to the current social context, Markus and Kitayama
(1991) argued that interdependent individuals are more likely
to pay attention to others and to social context, resulting in
three primary effects on cognition. First, individuals with an
InterSC are likely to know more about, and thus to have more
elaborate cognitive representations of, others than are those
with an IndSC. Second, individuals with an InterSC are more
likely to have cognitive representations of the self that incor-
porate a social context than are independent individuals.
Finally, Markus and Kitayama (1991) argued that self-con-
strual also affects cognitive processes that appear to be non-
social, such as counterfactual thinking or reasoning about
abstract concepts. They argued that interdependent individuals
are more likely to consider their role in the relationship
between themselves and the interviewer and thus to respond
to apparently abstract questions differently than an indepen-
dent individual who is much less, if at all, concerned with how
his or her answer will be construed.
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Effects on emotion. Arguing that most emotions implicate the
self, Markus and Kitayama (1991) hypothesized that “emo-
tional experience should vary systematically with the construal
of the self” (p. 235). More specifically, emotional experience
should vary in two ways. First, the same emotion may be elic-
ited by different conditions for IndSC and InterSC. Second,
people with IndSC versus InterSC will express and experience
different emotions. Markus and Kitayama (1991) distinguished
between so-called ego-focused emotions (e.g., anger, pride)
and other-focused emotions (e.g., shame). They hypothesized
that those with an IndSC are more likely to express and to
experience ego-focused emotions, whereas those with an
InterSC are more likely to express and to experience other-
focused emotions. Relatedly, Markus and Kitayama hypoth-
esized that people with differing self-construals would express
and/or experience the same emotions with differing intensity.
For example, not only are interdependent individuals expected
to experience anger less often than independent individuals,
but they are expected to experience anger less intensely when
they do experience it.
Effects on motivation. Markus and Kitayama (1991) offered
several hypotheses regarding the effects of self-construal on
the types of goals individuals are motivated to pursue. The
most intuitive of these is that individuals with an InterSC are
more likely to be motivated by socially oriented goals. Impor-
tantly, it is not that these individuals have a higher need for
affiliation, per se, but rather that they are more likely to be
motivated to fulfill their roles within important relationships.
Second, Markus and Kitayama argued that agency, or a sense
of personal control and efficacy, is experienced differently,
depending on one’s self-construal. Specifically,
for those with independent selves, agency will be
experienced as an effort to express one’s internal
needs, rights, and capacities and to withstand undue
social pressure, whereas among those with interde-
pendent selves, agency will be experienced as an effort
to be receptive to others, to adjust to their needs and
demands, and to restrain one’s own inner needs or
desires. (p. 240)
In other words, independent and interdependent individuals
both experience a sense of being active agents in pursuit of
their goals, but these specific goals differ depending on one’s
self-construal (cf. Kağitçibaşi, 2005).
Third, Markus and Kitayama (1991) argued that motives
such as self-enhancement take on different meanings when the
self that is being enhanced is independent versus interdepen-
dent. For example, given an InterSC, self-esteem is based on
one’s ability to fit in, whereas for those with an IndSC, self-
esteem is based on one’s ability to be unique. Thus, to enhance
the IndSC, one is motivated to demonstrate uniqueness, result-
ing in self-serving biases, which are much less common among
146 Personality and Social Psychology Review 15(2)
those with an InterSC. These differences in the self and bases
for self-esteem also mean that different motives will be expe-
rienced as more or less positive or desirable, depending on
self-construal. For example, the so-called need for abasement
may be desirable for those with an InterSC but considered
almost pathological for those with an IndSC.
Finally, given that a sign of maturity for those with an
InterSC is the ability to refrain from expressing private attitudes
and feelings to maintain social harmony, counterattitudinal
behavior is not likely to create dissonance-related distress
among those with an InterSC. In other words, those with an
InterSC are much less likely to be motivated to reduce cogni-
tive dissonance than are those with an IndSC.
In the remainder of this article, we examine the ways
that researchers have responded to and elaborated on the
original Markus and Kitayama (1991) theses. Because of
space limitations, we focus on research that employs either
measures or manipulations of self-construal. Unfortunately,
therefore, a thorough description of research that uses cul-
ture as a proxy for self-construal must be saved for another
time. We begin first with a review of the most frequently
used means of measuring and manipulating self-construal,
followed by a review of the research examining the role of
self-construal in cognition, emotion, motivation, and social
behavior.
How Is Self-Construal Studied?
Approaches to Measuring and
Manipulating Self-Construal
Measuring Independent and Interdependent
Self-Construal
Likert-type scales. The majority of research on self-construal
has relied on self-report measures with Likert-type scales.
Measures of IND-COL, sociotropy–autonomy, allocentrism,
and other related constructs are sometimes used as proxy
measures of self-construal. However, several measures have
been designed specifically to measure IndSC and InterSC as
individual-differences variables as defined by Markus and
Kitayama (1991). The first and most common of these is the
Self-Construal Scale (SCS; Singelis, 1994). The SCS provides
separate scores for IndSC and InterSC, consistent with theo-
retical predictions that the two self-construals are orthogonal
dimensions rather than opposite ends of a single continuum
(Singelis, 1994). An initial 45-item pool included original items
and modified items drawn from existing measures of related
constructs. Exploratory principal components analysis, fol-
lowed by confirmatory factor analyses, in multiethnic Hawaiian
samples resulted in two 12-item scales. Scores on the items
demonstrated the expected between-group differences, with
Asian Americans being more interdependent and less indepen-
dent than European Americans. Furthermore, InterSC scores
predicted participants’ tendency to make situational attributions
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for behaviors described in short vignettes, supporting the pre-
dictive validity of the SCS. However, the interitem reliabilities
of the two scales tend to be adequate at best. Singelis (1994)
reported Cronbach’s alpha reliabilities of .73 and .74 for the
IndSC scale and .69 and .70 for the InterSC scale. Most pub-
lished research using these scales report comparable reli-
abilities, although they have been found to be even lower
(e.g., α = .58 and .53 on the InterSC and InterSC scales,
respectively, among undergraduates in Hong Kong; Singelis,
Bond, Sharkey, & Lai, 1999).
Additional items have been added to the SCS, resulting in
various versions being used in the literature, including IndSC
scales with 13 (Singelis et al., 1999), 14 (Trafimow & Finlay,
1996), 15 (Hardin, Leong, & Osipow, 2001), and 16 items (Kwan,
Bond, & Singelis, 1997) and InterSC scales with 14 (e.g.,
Yamada & Singelis, 1999) and 15 items (e.g., Hardin et al.,
2001; Kwan et al., 1997). The 12- and 15-item versions appear
to be most common. In addition, some authors have created
a unidimensional self-construal score by reverse scoring
the InterSC items (e.g., Aaker, 2000; Pöhlmann & Hannover,
2006); however, such unidimensional scores are clearly con-
trary to the intended use of the SCS and theoretical understand-
ing of the nature of self-construal (Singelis, 1994). Although
most items have good face validity, several have been ques-
tioned (e.g., “I value being in good health above everything”;
Hardin, Leong, & Bhagwat, 2004; Levine et al., 2003). The
SCS has been used in hundreds of studies and translated into
numerous languages, including Chinese (Aaker & Schmitt,
2001), Japanese (Ozawa, Crosby, & Crosby, 1996), Greek
(Nezlek, Kafetsios, & Smith, 2008), Thai (Polyorat & Alden,
2005), Arabic, and Hebrew (Kurman, 2001).
A second self-report measure of self-construal is that devel-
oped by Gudykunst et al. (1996). As with the SCS (Singelis,
1994) a large item pool was drawn from existing measures
(including the SCS) and supplemented with original items. Data
from four countries (United States, Japan, Korea, and Australia)
were submitted to a principal components analysis, after stan-
dardizing item responses within culture. On one of the two
factors, 29 items had acceptably high loadings, resulting in a
14-item IndSC scale and a 15-item InterSC scale. A total of
3 (6) items on the IndSC (InterSC) scale also appear on the
Singelis scales. Cronbach’s alpha reliabilities were adequate
to good, ranging from .80 (United States) to .85 (Korea) on
the IndSC scale and from .73 (Korea) to .83 (Australia) on
the InterSC scale. Although the four cultural groups did not
differ as might be expected in mean scores on the IndSC and
InterSC scales, self-construal did predict high and low context
communication as expected.
Hackman, Ellis, Johnson, and Staley (1999) further tested
and refined the Gudykunst et al. (1996) scales. Using confir-
matory factor analysis (CFA) with a large sample of under-
graduates drawn from three countries (the United States,
New Zealand, and Kyrgyzstan), Hackman et al. were unable
to get the hypothesized two-factor model to adequately fit the
Cross et al. 147
data, despite numerous data-driven modifications to the model.
However, when the IndSC and InterSC items were factor ana-
lyzed separately, two well-fitting one-factor solutions were
derived after dropping several items from each scale and allow-
ing pairs of error variances among some items to covary. These
analyses resulted in an 11-item IndSC scale and a 12-item
InterSC scale. Cronbach’s alpha reliabilities were adequate to
good, ranging from .89 (United States) to .77 (Kyrgyzstan) on
the IndSC scale and from .86 (New Zealand) to .78 (Kyrgyzstan)
on the InterSC scale. Moreover, the 11-item IndSC scale dem-
onstrated measurement invariance (i.e., invariant factor load-
ings) across all three cultures; two items on the InterSC scale
were not invariant in the Kyrgyzstan sample. Collapsing across
the three samples, both scales demonstrated measurement
invariance between genders.
A third Likert-type measure of self-construal was developed
by Leung and Kim in 1997 and described in an unpublished
manuscript (cited in Levine et al., 2003); not surprisingly, there-
fore, it has been used less in the literature than the other two
measures. It consists of two 15-item scales, with the majority of
items (11 independent and 9 interdependent) appearing on at
least one of the other two scales (see Levine et al., 2003, for a
list of items appearing on all three measures). Other less fre-
quently used measures have been developed by Oyserman
(1993), Kağitçibaşi (2007), and E. S. Kashima and Hardie (2000).
Twenty Statements Test as a measure of self-construal. The Twenty
Statements Test (TST; Kuhn & McPartland, 1954) has also
been used as a self-report measure of self-construal (e.g.,
Agrawal & Maheswaran, 2005; Somech, 2000). On the TST,
participants are asked to complete 20 sentence stems that
begin, “I am . . .” Responses to these statements may then be
coded by the researcher as either independent (e.g., “I am
intelligent”; “I am shy”), relational (e.g., “I am Bob’s girl-
friend”; “I am a mother”), or interdependent (e.g., “I am on
the soccer team”; “I am African American”). The number of
independent, relational, and interdependent statements gener-
ated may then be used as self-construal scores. Unfortunately,
authors rarely provide detailed descriptions of their coding
schemes, and researchers may define RelSC and InterSC quite
differently. As a result, it is sometimes difficult to compare
the findings from different researchers using the TST. Fur-
thermore, the TST does not assess the importance of self-views
to the individual. Members of East Asian societies often belong
to fewer groups compared to members of Western societies,
but these groups are arguably more important, stable, and
self-defining for East Asians (Triandis, 1989).
Self-report measures of self-construal: Two or more factors?
Given that Markus and Kitayama’s (1991) self-construal
theory posits two dimensions of self-construal, IndSC and
InterSC, all three Likert-type measures described above were
explicitly designed to measure only these two factors. Neither
Singelis (1994) nor Gudykunst et al. (1996) considered more
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than two factors during development of their self-construal
scales. However, there is considerable evidence that this simple
two-factor structure does not provide a good fit to the data
from any of the scales (Hardin, 2006; Hardin et al., 2004;
Levine et al., 2003). In fact, the results of a CFA led Singelis
(1994) to note that for the SCS, “Though clearly superior to
the one-factor model, the two-factor model seems only ade-
quate” (p. 586). The two-factor model was found to be a poor
fit to responses on (a) the Leung and Kim (1997) scale in
samples of college students from the United States (mainland
and Hawaii), Japan, and South Korea (Levine et al., 2003),
(b) the Gudykunst et al. (1996) scale among college students
in Hawaii (Levine et al., 2003), and (c) Singelis’s (1994) SCS
among college students in South Korea, Japan (Levine et al.,
2003), and the mainland United States (Hardin, 2006; Hardin
et al., 2004; Levine et al., 2003).
More recent research suggests that despite being designed
to measure self-construal in terms of independence and inter-
dependence, these measures actually have a multidimensional
structure. Content analyses of the TST (Somech, 2000) and
factor analyses of the Leung and Kim (1997) scale (Levine
et al., 2003) and the Singelis (1994) scale (Guo, Schwartz, &
McCabe, 2008; Hardin, 2006; Hardin et al., 2004; Sato &
McCann, 1998) all show that multidimensional structures fit
the data better than a simple two-factor structure. For example,
Hardin et al. (2004) identified a higher order factor structure
underlying items on the SCS, with four independence factors
(Autonomy/Assertiveness, Individualism, Behavioral Consis-
tency, and Primacy of Self) and two interdependent factors
(Esteem for Group and Relational Interdependence). Note that
the two interdependence factors identified in the SCS items
map closely onto the RelSC–Coll-InterSC distinction discussed
above. Importantly, this higher order multifactor structure rep-
licated to samples of Asian American (Hardin et al., 2004),
European American (Hardin, 2006; Hardin et al., 2004),
African American, and Latino/a (Hardin, 2006) students.
Measuring such specific aspects of IndSC and InterSC does
seem to be useful. For example, Somech (2000) found that
although kibbutz members were generally more interdependent
and less independent than urban residents in Israel, the kibbutzim
endorsed some aspects of IndSC more than the urban residents,
who endorsed some aspects of InterSC more than the kibbutzim.
Cultural differences in in-group favoritism were better explained
by the degree to which participants emphasized personal or in-
group interests than by broader measures of self-construal or
IND-COL (Y.-R. Chen, Brockner, & Katz, 1998). Hardin (2006)
also found that more than 50% more variance in social anxiety
could be accounted for by aspects of independence and interde-
pendence than by the broader dimensions.
Based on this evidence that existing measures of self-
construal have a multidimensional structure and that these
specific aspects of independence and interdependence are
useful predictors of between-group differences and other psy-
chological phenomena, there is a clear need for a psychometrically
148 Personality and Social Psychology Review 15(2)
sound measure of multidimensional self-construal. Hardin,
Cross, and Hoang (2009) have begun development of such a
measure.
Implicit measures of self-construal. Recently, Kitayama and his
colleagues have used several different measures of basic psy-
chological tendencies as implicit measures of self-construal.
Kitayama, Mesquita, and Karasawa (2006) were apparently
the first to suggest that measures of psychological processes
thought to reliably be related to IndSC and InterSC might
be used as implicit measures of self-construal. They suggested
that measures of the tendency to experience socially engaging
emotions (e.g., guilt, relatedness) versus socially disengaging
emotions (e.g., anger, pride) might be useful as implicit mea-
sures of self-construal (see the section below on self-construal
and affect for more on the distinction between socially engag-
ing and disengaging emotions). Later, Kitayama, Park, Sevincer,
Karasawa, and Uskul (2009) used such a measure as one of
five implicit measures of self-construal. The others were ten-
dency to make situational versus dispositional attributions, use
of holistic versus focused attention, relational versus individual
correlates of happiness, and symbolic self-inflation. As expected,
participants from the United States scored significantly more
independently (i.e., reported more socially disengaging emo-
tions, made more situational attributions, used more focused
attention, demonstrated stronger personal correlates of happi-
ness, and demonstrated a larger inflated self) than participants
from Japan; moreover, participants from two Western European
countries (the United Kingdom and Germany) did not differ
from each other and scored between the U.S. and Japanese
participants on all five measures. Despite this consistent pattern
of results, the five implicit measures were uncorrelated with
each other across all four groups, a point to which we return
at the end of the article. In addition, scores on an explicit measure
of self-construal, Singelis’s (1994) SCS, were also uncorrelated
with all five implicit measures, across all four groups. This lack
of convergence between the explicit SCS measure and the
implicit measures is consistent with other research that shows
that implicit and explicit measures sometimes do not correlate
(e.g., Bosson, Swann, & Pennebaker, 2000; Greenwald &
Farnham, 2000).
Measuring Relational–Interdependent Self-Construal
Soon after making the argument that gender differences among
Western populations could be explained in terms of a RelSC,
Cross and her colleagues created a measure of this relational
form of self-construal (termed the Relational-Interdependent
Self-construal Scale; Cross et al., 2000). This measure focuses
on the degree to which the individual defines the self in terms
of close relationships. A sample item is “My close relationships
are an important reflection of who I am.” Its explicit focus on
the individual’s self-definition distinguishes it from more gen-
eral measures of communal orientation (e.g., the measure by
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Clark, Oullette, Powell, & Milberg, 1987, which focuses on
a desire for reciprocity and equity in close relationships), trait-
oriented measures of communion or expressivity (Spence,
Helmreich, & Stapp, 1974), and a measure of the emotional
consequences of investment in close relationships used by
Y. Kashima et al. (1995).
Research examining the psychometric properties of the
RISC scale among North American college students (N =
4,228; reported in Cross et al., 2000) revealed that it has good
internal reliability (Cronbach’s alphas generally range from
.85 to .90) and good stability over a 2-month period (test–retest
reliability is .76). Among these North American samples,
women usually score higher than men (ds range from –.17 to
–.57). This measure correlates moderately positively with
other measures of relatedness (e.g., the Communal Orientation
scale, r = .41, and the Singelis InterSC Scale, r = .41) but does
not correlate with measures of independence (e.g., the Singelis
IndSC Scale, r = .08). The RISC scale generally is unrelated
to well-being measures such as Satisfaction with Life (r = .07;
Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985) and the Rosenberg
(1965) Self-Esteem Scale (r = .01). Examination of the incre-
mental utility of the RISC scale showed that it predicted a
significant proportion of variance in scores on broad measures
of attitudes toward relationships and group memberships,
controlling for other related measures (Cross et al., 2000).
Thus, the RISC scale taps self-definition in a unique fashion
that is not tapped by other measures of relatedness, expres-
sivity, or communalism.
Although Cross and Madson (1997) argued that women in
the United States are more likely to construct a RelSC than are
men, RelSC is characterized by the degree to which one includes
others in the self or defines the self in terms of close relation-
ships, not the degree to which individuals endorse gender-
stereotyped attributes. In fact, Cross and her colleagues (2000)
were wary of making cross-cultural claims about gender dif-
ferences in their measure of the RelSC because they recognized
that cultures may vary widely in their construction of gender-
related norms. Unfortunately, others have at times assumed that
culturally based stereotypes of men and women are equivalent
to IndSC and RelSC, respectively (e.g., Guimond, Chatard,
Martinot, Crisp, & Redersdorff, 2006). For example, Guimond
et al. (2006) define IndSC with items that were found to be
central to the stereotype of men in France: lazy, coarse, boastful,
and selfish. Although these authors argue that this set of attri-
butes is consistent with the masculine gender role of dominance
and power, their argument is based on the mistaken assumption
that IndSC is defined by the male gender role and that RelSC
is defined by the female gender role. This confounding of cul-
tural gender stereotyping and self-construal impedes progress;
cultural stereotypes may vary widely, but definitions of IndSC,
InterSC, and RelSC are anchored in a theoretical focus on the
relation of self to others. This theoretical focus on self–other
relations that defines self-construal is independent of a particular
culture’s understanding of gender.
Cross et al. 149
Measuring Collective–Interdependent Self-Construal
Although the RelSC is defined in terms of significant dyadic
relationships, the Coll-InterSC is defined in terms of significant
group memberships. Brewer and Chen (2007) demonstrated
that although most existing measures of collectivism and of
interdependence assess both types of interdependence, relation-
ally oriented items are more than twice as common. Brewer
and Chen argued that cross-cultural researchers need to clearly
delineate between these two types of interdependence, as they
have very different implications and predict different outcomes.
For example, although past research has noted that men tend to
score lower than women on measures of interdependence (see
Cross & Madson, 1997), Gabriel and Gardner (1999) demon-
strated that distinguishing between RelSC and Coll-InterSC
yields more nuanced findings: Men score lower than women in
terms of RelSC but higher than women in terms of
collective–InterSC.
The measure used in Gabriel and Gardner (1999) study,
the Collective Interdependent Self-Construal Scale (CISC),
was, until recently, the only measure specifically designed to
assess collective or group InterSC. Gabriel and Gardner cre-
ated the CISC by modifying the RISC (Cross et al., 2000) to
replace references to relationship partners with references to
group memberships (e.g., “When I think of myself, I often
think of groups I belong to as well” instead of “When I think
of myself, I often think of my close friends of family as well”).
In a sample of college students, the CISC showed excellent
interitem reliability (α = .90), was uncorrelated with scores
on the RISC (r = .07), and was correlated with a measure of
masculinity (r = .25).
More recently, Harb and Smith (2008) created the Six-Fold
Self-Construal Scale that integrates Brewer’s work on the
personal, relational, and group selves (Brewer & Chen, 2007;
Brewer & Gardner, 1996) with Singelis’s work on vertical
and horizontal IND-COL (Singelis, Triandis, Bhawuk, &
Gelfand, 1995). The scale assesses the horizontal and vertical
collective self-construal as well as the horizontal and vertical
RelSC, the personal self-construal, and a humanity-bound
self-construal. Each of the six dimensions comprises five items
(e.g., “I feel I have a strong relationship with _______”) that
are rated on a 7-point Likert-type scale. The horizontal collec-
tive dimension referred to “students at my university,” whereas
the vertical collective dimension refers to “my social group-
ing.” In samples of college students from the United Kingdom,
Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, reliabilities on all six dimensions
were adequate to good, ranging from .68 on the personal self
dimension (Jordan) to .92 on the vertical collective dimension
(the United Kingdom). Most reliabilities were in the mid-.80s.
As might be expected, the Arab samples tended to score higher
than the U.K. sample on the collective self-construals, whereas
the U.K. sample tended to score higher than the other samples
on the RelSCs. In light of Brewer and Chen’s (2007) call for
researchers to distinguish between the relational and collective
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(or group) interdependence, new measures such as this are
likely to be of increasing utility.
Between- and Within-Group Differences in
Self-Construal
These measures have facilitated the explosion in research on
self-construal by allowing researchers explicitly to measure
IndSC and InterSC and to test their relations to a range of other
cognitive, affective, and behavioral variables (which we review
more thoroughly below). The development of these measures
has also allowed researchers to explore between- and within-
group differences in self-construal. To the surprise of many,
however, the results from such research tend to be inconsistent,
often showing that individuals from different countries do not
demonstrate the expected differences in self-construal. After
reviewing the literature, Matsumoto (1999) concluded that
North Americans do not have higher IndSCs than East Asians,
who do not have higher InterSCs than North Americans. A
later meta-analysis (Levine et al., 2003) also found that East
Asians do not have a higher InterSC than North Americans,
nor do East Asians have a higher InterSC than IndSC. Both
reviews find examples not only of an absence of difference
(e.g., North Americans and Japanese having equally high Ind-
SCs; Krull et al., 1999; Sato & Cameron, 1999) but of theoreti-
cally incongruent differences, such as North Americans having
a higher InterSC than Japanese (Kleinknecht, Dinnel,
Kleinknecht, Hiruma, & Hirada, 1997; Sato & Cameron, 1999;
for a review, see Oyserman, Coon, & Kemmelmeier, 2002).
More recent research continues to find such anomalies using
these measures (Kitayama et al., 2009). Matsumoto concludes
that the theory of self-construal itself is fundamentally flawed:
Culture does not reliably predict self-construal in the ways
predicted by theory.
Other authors have been less quick to attribute the mixed
results in the literature to flawed theory without first considering
other possibilities. One of these is that scores on self-construal
measures are affected by situational priming, such that uncon-
trolled aspects of the research environment inadvertently acti-
vate one or the other self-construal (Levine et al., 2003). Across
three studies using the Leung and Kim (1997) scales, however,
there was no evidence that situational priming affected either
InterSC or InterSC scores among North Americans.
Levine et al. (2003) interpreted these results as supporting
another explanation for the mixed results in the literature: that
measures of self-construal are fundamentally flawed. These
authors argued that because the InterSC is defined as a situation-
ally determined, and therefore variable, sense of self, interde-
pendence scale scores should be sensitive to priming. In failing
to find such priming effects, they concluded that the InterSC
scale lacks construct validity. Other authors, however, have
argued that although we would expect a high InterSC indi-
vidual’s sense of self and concomitant cognitions, emotions,
or behaviors to vary based on the situation, we would not expect
150 Personality and Social Psychology Review 15(2)
his or her fundamental level of InterSC to be variable (Gudykunst
& Lee, 2003; M.-S. Kim & Raja, 2003). Thus, these authors
contend, the failure of priming to induce changes in self-construal
scale scores is actually evidence for the construct validity of
these scales.
Other contextual factors may, in fact, explain the failure to
find predicted between-group differences, however. Heine,
Lehman, Peng, and Greenholtz (2002) demonstrated that so-
called reference group effects inherent in the Likert-type scales
used by common self-report measures of self-construal can
account for much of the data. Just as a 5’9” man would rate
himself somewhat tall if he lived in a culture where the average
male height was 5’8” but short if in a culture where the average
height was 6’, a moderately interdependent individual might
rate himself or herself quite differently in terms of interde-
pendence depending on his or her reference group. If North
Americans use other (presumably highly independent, on aver-
age) North Americans as their reference group, they will have
a lower IndSC score than if they use Japanese as their referent
group, who are presumably perceived to be less independent.
Heine et al. (2002) argued that because measures of self-
construal do not specify a reference group, participants are
likely to use their own cultural group as their referent. Indeed,
across two studies with bicultural Canadian and Japanese par-
ticipants, such reference group effects were found in scores on
Singelis’s (1994) SCS. When participants were given no explicit
instructions regarding reference groups (i.e., the standard self-
construal scale instructions were used), expected between-group
differences were weak or absent. When participants were explic-
itly asked to use their own group as a reference, differences
opposite to that predicted by theory were found: Canadians had
significantly higher InterSC scores than the Japanese. However,
when participants were explicitly asked to use the other group
as their reference, expected between-group differences were
found: Bicultural Canadians comparing themselves to “most
Japanese” perceived themselves as significantly more indepen-
dent and less interdependent than bicultural Japanese who were
comparing themselves to “most North Americans,” which is
exactly what self-construal theory would predict.
Furthermore, because individuals within the same country
are likely to share a common cultural standard of reference,
reference-group effects should be attenuated or absent when
self-construal scale scores are compared for different ethnic
groups within the same country (e.g., Asian Americans com-
pared to European Americans), allowing expected between-
group differences more readily to emerge (Heine et al., 2002).
Indeed, Levine et al. (2003) noted that most studies that use
multiethnic samples within the same country yielded results
consistent with the predictions of self-construal theory. Finally,
we would expect such reference-group effects to affect explicit,
self-report measures of self-construal, but not more implicit
measures. Indeed, Kitayama et al. (2009) found that North
Americans, Western Europeans, and Japanese differed in the
expected directions on all five of their implicit measures of
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self-construal, despite demonstrating unexpected patterns on
the explicit measure (Singelis’s, 1994, SCS).
One other methodological issue also accounts for the con-
flicting data on between- and within-group differences in self-
construal: problems with the content of existing self-report
measures (Noguchi, 2007). Hardin et al. (2004) noted that
the items on Singelis’s (1994) SCS do not capture several
important aspects of IndSC (e.g., the importance of one’s
private thoughts and feelings or the role of others in social
comparison) or InterSC (e.g., a preference for communicating
indirectly). Noguchi argued more specifically that (a) existing
measures fail to adequately assess the extent to which indi-
viduals rely on and are sensitive to external versus internal
information and (b) this is precisely the domain in which cul-
tural differences should be most likely to emerge. Thus,
researchers have failed to find expected cross-cultural differ-
ences in self-construal because they have failed to measure
specific aspects of self-construal most likely to differ cross-
culturally. To test this hypothesis, Noguchi constructed a new
measure with items specifically designed to tap into the extent
to which one considers others’ viewpoints (i.e., the extent to
which one relies on external versus internal information).
Across several studies, Noguchi found that Japanese students
did score higher on this other-focused factor whereas American
students scored higher on a self-focused factor. Interestingly,
Americans consistently scored higher on a helping-others
factor, providing further evidence for the importance of both
the specific content of items on self-construal scales and mea-
suring self-construal multidimensionally.
Manipulations of Self-Construal
The development of priming manipulations took research on
self-construal into a new era. This development allows research-
ers to move from reliance on culture as a proxy for self-con-
strual or on explicit self-report measures to experimental
manipulations of these constructs. As a result, researchers can
more confidently examine causal hypotheses and within-
culture consequences of activation of the three different com-
ponents of self-construal (Oyserman & Lee, 2008). The premise
in this work is that all persons, no matter their cultural back-
ground, construct independent, relational, and collective–inter-
dependent self-construals. Cultural practices and affordances,
however, result in variability in the elaboration and accessibil-
ity of independent, relational, or interdependent self-knowl-
edge. Priming techniques can make the self-knowledge
associated with one or another of these self-construals tem-
porarily accessible; thus, priming can be used to experimen-
tally examine the effects of IndSC, RelSC, and InterSC on
behavior. In this section, we describe the primary ways that
self-construal has been manipulated and some of the issues
surrounding these manipulations.
The first studies to manipulate IndSC and InterSC were
conducted by Trafimow, Triandis, and Goto (1991). They
Cross et al. 151
examined the effects of two different manipulations with U.S.
college students. In the first technique, participants are asked
to think about what makes them different from their family
and friends (IndSC prime) or what makes them similar to their
family and friends (InterSC prime; we refer to this as the simi-
lar/different prime technique). In the second technique, par-
ticipants read a story about a ruler selecting a general to send
to war based on either individualistic concerns (how it would
increase the ruler’s status, prestige) or collective concerns
(because he was a member of the ruler’s family). They exam-
ined the effects of these manipulations on open-ended responses
to the “Who am I?” test (Kuhn & McPartland, 1954). The
proportions of two kinds of statements were analyzed: private
or idiocentric self-views (deriving from the IndSC) and col-
lective self-views (deriving from the InterSC). A third cat-
egory, which they termed allocentric responses, referred to
aspects of “interdependence, friendship, responsiveness to
others, and sensitivity to the viewpoints of others” (p. 650).
Because these relational responses were not relevant to their
hypotheses, they were eliminated from the analyses. As
expected, participants exposed to the IndSC primes described
themselves using more individual, private terms than did those
exposed to the InterSC primes, whereas those exposed to the
InterSC primes reported more collective and group-oriented
responses than did those exposed to the IndSC primes (also see
Ybarra & Trafimow, 1998, Study 3). Examination of a small
group of Asian Americans in their sample revealed a very
similar pattern of responses to the primes.
Unfortunately, these studies did not include a neutral or
no-prime control condition, which would help disentangle the
direction of the effects in these studies. Given that one would
expect European American participants to describe themselves
using primarily personal, individual descriptors, it is unclear
from these results whether the proportions of the two types of
self-statements were increased or decreased by the manipula-
tions relative to a control condition.
A few years later, Brewer and Gardner (1996) and Gardner,
Gabriel, and Lee (1999) introduced a third approach to manipu-
lating self-construal. In this technique, participants read a story
about going on a trip to the city and circle either singular pronouns
(I, me, mine; IndSC prime) or plural pronouns (we, our, us;
InterSC prime). Control conditions included a similar task in
which third-person pronouns (they, them) or impersonal pronouns
(it) were circled. The first series of studies by Brewer and Gardner
(1996) focused on aspects of the interdependent (we) self and
compared the effects of the we circling task to the control tasks.
They hypothesized that when the InterSC (we-us) is primed,
others are included in the self, resulting in an increased perception
of similarity to others. Using a reaction time task, Brewer and
Gardner found that we primed participants made judgments of
similarity more quickly than those in the they prime condition.
A subsequent study revealed that InterSC-primed participants
endorsed collectivist values and obligations to help more than
did IndSC-primed participants (Gardner et al., 1999).
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These differences were mediated by differences in TST responses;
participants primed with InterSC tended to describe themselves
in terms of their relationships and group memberships more than
did the IndSC-primed participants; TST responses in turn pre-
dicted responses to the values and helping measures.
Until recently, it was unclear whether these common
InterSC priming techniques made RelSC or group-oriented,
Coll-InterSC accessible (or perhaps a combination of the two;
Oyserman & Lee, 2008). Brewer and Gardner (1996) attempted
to tease apart these two dimensions in studies that contrasted
a large group collective to the small group implied in the trip
to the city task, but they were only partly successful. In their
meta-analysis of IND-COL priming manipulations, Oyserman
and Lee (2008) categorize the original Brewer and Gardner
(1996) pronoun circling task as a relational collectivism
manipulation, but they categorize the Sumerian ruler story
manipulation as a mixture of relational and group-level collectiv-
ism. Unfortunately, they provide little explanation for the basis
of these decisions, and little empirical evidence is available to
guide such decisions. In short, there has been much ambiguity
remaining about which domain of the InterSC is primed by these
commonly used primes—the RelSC or the Coll-InterSC.
Recently, however, Stapel and van der Zee (2006) modified
the Brewer and Gardner (1996) manipulation to make these
distinctions more clear. For RelSC, they modified the paragraph
about the trip to the city to start with sentences that clearly focus
on a dyad (“I am with you. We are together, the two of us.”).
For the Coll-InterSC, they began the paragraph with sentences
that focus on being part of a group (“We are a group of people.”).
Manipulation checks documented that the IndSC, RelSC, and
Coll-InterSC manipulations had the intended effects on the
degree to which participants valued being an independent,
unique person, being in close relationships, or being part of
a group. Using this new method, researchers will be better able
to develop and test theories that distinguish the role and func-
tion of RelSC and Coll-InterSC in behavior.
Several other priming tasks have also been used successfully
in other studies. For example, Utz (2004) asked participants to
write about a typical day in the life of a student from a first-
person singular perspective or from a third-person singular
perspective. She found this manipulation interacted with chronic
social value orientation to predict cooperative behavior. Stapel
and Koomen (2001) primed IndSC and InterSC by having par-
ticipants write a story about themselves, describing either “Who
I am” using the words I, me, myself, and mine in each sentence
or “Who we are” using the words we, our, ourselves, and ours
(see Wang and Ross, 2005, for a similar task). Others have used
a scrambled sentence task with words such as I, me, mine,
unique, different, and independence to prime IndSC and we,
our, us, cooperative, share, and similar to prime InterSC (Briley
& Wyer, 2001; Kühnen & Hannover, 2000; Utz, 2004).
Several cautions are in order for the researcher interested
in priming self-construal. First, the degree to which manipula-
tions prime the self-construal versus other dimensions of
152 Personality and Social Psychology Review 15(2)
culture or of individualism and collectivism (IND-COL) is
often unclear. For example, some studies use bilingual par-
ticipants and manipulate the language used in the study (Kem-
melmeier & Cheng, 2004; Ross, Xun, & Wilson, 2002;
Trafimow, Silverman, Fan, & Law, 1997) or manipulate cul-
tural icons (Y.-Y. Hong, Morris, Chiu, & Benet-Martinez,
2000). These approaches likely activate the associated self-
construal (e.g., InterSC when Chinese language or icons are
used) but also likely activate many other dimensions of IND-
COL that are unrelated to self-construal. For example, Oyser-
man and Lee (2008) conclude that languages vary in the degree
to which they are focused on abstract versus concrete ways of
thinking, which could in turn influence a variety of cognitive
tasks. In addition, some manipulations (e.g., language or cul-
tural icons) likely activate other aspects of a specific culture
that are unrelated to self-construal. Because of these concerns,
studies that manipulate the language used by participants as
a proxy for variation in self-construal have been excluded
from our review of the literature. More importantly, research-
ers should be cognizant of the many ways that people from
different cultures differ from each other and should not pre-
sume that priming different self-construals in members of
one cultural group is equivalent to using members of different
cultural groups. It is a gross understatement to say that observ-
ing the behavior of an American student who has been exposed
to one of the InterSC tasks described above is not the same
as observing a Japanese or Chinese student. If, however, self-
construal is the mechanism hypothesized to explain cultural
differences in behavior, this approach would shed light on
this causal process in ways that measures do not.
Which of the manipulations described above is most effec-
tive in producing differences in self-construal? A meta-analysis
of the consequences of priming manipulations by Oyserman
and Lee (2008) helps answer this question. They examined the
effects of priming tasks on self-concept-related outcomes (e.g.,
the TST and responses to the Singelis SCS measure). Their
results show that the strongest effects were found using the
similar/different task (d = .44, n = 4), followed by the Sumerian
warrior task (d = .37, n = 6). Other manipulations (e.g., the
pronoun circling task) had smaller effects (d < .29) on self-
concept-related outcome measures (also see Lalwani & Shavitt,
2009, for a comparison of the effects of different manipulations
on responses to the TST). Oyserman and Lee’s meta-analysis
also revealed that the different priming approaches differen-
tially affected other types of behavior. For example, the similar/
different task had the strongest effects on relationality tasks
(e.g., liking for another participant), and the pronoun circling
task had the strongest effects on cognitive tasks (e.g., perfor-
mance on the Embedded Figures task). This suggests that the
different priming techniques may activate somewhat different
cognitive processes and that researchers should choose their
approaches carefully in light of the outcomes in question.
Priming is sometimes a delicate task, and Kühnen and
Hannover (2000) caution against the use of very transparent
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or obvious priming manipulations. When participants are
exposed to a very explicit priming task (Moskowitz & Roman,
1992) or when they are reminded of a previous task meant
to prime a construct (Strack, Schwarz, Bless, Kubler, & Wanke,
1993), their judgments contrast with the direction of the expected
prime (termed a correction contrast). To examine this effect
in the self-construal domain, Kühnen and Hannover created
a scrambled sentence task in which the four-word sentences
focused on either IndSC (“I like being unique”) or InterSC
(“I support my team”). Each scrambled sentence also included
one additional word that was related to the type of prime—
either a word reflecting independence (assertive) or a word
reflecting interdependence (help). The authors varied the
salience of the IndSC or InterSC prime by having participants
write down either the unscrambled sentence (the “overt” prime)
or the unnecessary word (the “subtle” prime). When participants
were exposed to the subtle primes, the IndSC prime led to less
perceived similarity to a target person than the InterSC prime,
as would be expected. But the opposite occurred when they
were primed with the overt IndSC prime: Participants viewed
themselves as more similar to the target person than when
primed with the InterSC prime. The effects in the explicit prime
condition may be a consequence of the correction effect sug-
gested by others (Strack et al., 1993), or it may be because of
a rebalancing of the need for uniqueness and relatedness, as
suggested by Brewer’s (1991) optimal distinctiveness theory.
Whatever the explanation, this research provides a note of
caution to researchers that very strong, explicit manipulations
of self-construal may have unintended consequences.
Finally, researchers should ask themselves, “How might
chronic individual differences interact with priming manipula-
tions to affect outcomes?” Relatively little research has focused
on the interaction of individual differences and priming manipu-
lations within cultural groups (but see Utz, 2004). Gardner and
her colleagues (1999) found that priming the culturally nondomi-
nant dimension of self-construal (e.g., InterSC for European
Americans and IndSC for East Asians) resulted in greater dif-
ferences relative to a no-prime condition than priming the
culturally dominant self-construal. The work by Gardner et al.
(1999) also points to our final point about priming manipula-
tions: Relatively few studies have used these priming techniques
with non-Western samples. The Oyserman and Lee (2008) meta-
analysis of IND-COL priming studies compared the effects of
these oft-used priming techniques for participants from Europe
or European American backgrounds and Asian backgrounds.
Very few studies have used Asian samples (or samples from
Africa or Latin America, for that matter), but Oyserman and
Lee’s results indicate that the effects of the Sumerian Warrior
and the similar/different priming tasks are similar for East Asians
and European Americans for most tasks (see their Table 6).
More studies are needed to assess the effectiveness of the pronoun
circling task for Asian samples (see, e.g., Oyserman, Sorenson,
Reber, & Chen, 2009). As Kitayama, Duffy, and Uchida (2007)
suggest, if the self of East Asians is understood to be
Cross et al. 153
chronically intertwined with others, priming I may activate
we as well, resulting in weaker priming effects among East
Asians than has been observed among Westerners.
Summary and future directions for measures and
manipulations
The methods of measuring or manipulating IndSC, RelSC, and
Coll-InterSC are continuing to evolve. New measurement
approaches are focusing on clarifying specific facets of each of
these self-views (Hardin et al., 2009) and on developing implicit
measures of IndSC and InterSC (Kitayama et al., 2009). Implicit
measures of RelSC are still lacking, however. One starting place
for the development of an implicit measure of RelSC is the indi-
vidual versus relational version of the IAT used by Cross, Morris,
and Gore (2002, Study 1). Undoubtedly, however, creating an
implicit measure valid for multiple cultures is a daunting task.
Several new manipulations of self-construal have been
reported in the past decade, but researchers frequently fail to
include control conditions. Researchers seeking to use these
manipulations should attempt to specifically define the dimen-
sion of self-construal of interest and think carefully about the
implied focus of the priming manipulation (e.g., relational or
collective–interdependent self-construal). The newly developed
manipulations that differentiate these two dimensions will
enhance researchers’ ability to untangle their effects on behavior.
Finally, the great majority of these approaches have been devel-
oped in the West by Western researchers with Western assump-
tions about the person. Although cultural psychology has begun
to shine a light on these assumptions and biases, many of these
methods may nonetheless reflect cultural assumptions about
the person, about ways of thinking and knowing, and about
relationships. Focused attempts to consider these constructs
from non-Western perspectives and to devise methods to assess
or manipulate them that are free from Western biases are the
next steps in exploring how variation in self-construal influences
behavior. In the next section, we review research that has exam-
ined the role of self-construal in cognition, emotion, motivation,
and social interaction.
How Do Self-Construals
Shape Behavior?
For more than three decades, researchers have demonstrated the
central importance of the self in information processing, affect
regulation, motivation, and social behavior (for reviews, see Bau-
meister, 1998; Leary & Tangney, 2003; Markus & Wurf, 1987).
Most of this work, however, was based on Western samples and
assumed an IndSC. If the self is defined interdependently, many
of these self-related processes may vary. Although Markus and
Kitayama (1991) and Triandis (1989) focused on the role of dif-
fering views of the self in explaining cultural differences in behav-
ior, researchers soon found that variation in self-construal was
also a useful tool for investigating within-culture processes
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(particularly in Western societies). Figure 1 depicts the ways that
IndSC, Coll-InterSC, and RelSC are thought to influence cogni-
tion, affect, motivation, and, through them, social behavior.
Although we strive to distinguish Coll-InterSC and RelSC in the
figure, many research findings cannot be easily categorized into
one or the other of these components of InterSC. In those cases,
the figure includes consequences of InterSC with Coll-InterSC.
In this section, we review research in each of these domains in
which self-construal is measured or manipulated using the most
common approaches described above.
Self-Construal Influences on Cognition
Markus and Kitayama (1991) argued that individuals with high
InterSC should be especially likely to pay attention to others and
the social context of interaction, resulting in very elaborate cogni-
tive representations of others and self-representations that include
social contexts. Since their formulation, researchers have focused
on two primary ways that variation in self-construal affects cogni-
tion: differences in attention to the context or relationships and
different information processing styles. In the following sections,
we review the existing research on each of these processes,
describing their influences on self-views, social cognition, and
nonsocial cognition.
Context sensitivity versus insensitivity and self-descriptions. Much
of the early research that followed the initial publication of
Markus and Kitayama’s (1991) and Triandis’s (1989) articles
focused on examining the hypothesis that persons with high
InterSC were more likely to describe themselves in terms of
their social contexts, including close relationships, group
memberships, and social identities. As Markus and Kitayama
hypothesized, people from collectivist cultures report more
social, collective, or group-oriented self-descriptions than do
people from individualistic cultures (Bond & Cheung, 1983;
Cousins, 1989; Kanagawa, Cross, & Markus, 2001; Rhee,
Uleman, Lee, & Roman, 1995; Shweder & Bourne, 1984). In
addition, manipulations of IndSC and InterSC generally result
in the corresponding differences in self-descriptions on the
TST (Oyserman & Lee, 2008).
Perhaps more importantly, IndSC and InterSC are hypoth-
esized to influence the variability of self-descriptions across
situations. If people with high InterSC are sensitive to situ-
ational or relational context, then they should tend to describe
themselves differently in different situations. Evidence to sup-
port this hypothesis is mixed. Cross-cultural studies that use
country as a proxy for self-construal do find that East Asian
participants’ self-descriptions depend on situational context
more than did those of American participants (Cousins, 1989;
Kanagawa et al., 2001; Rhee et al., 1995; Suh, 2002).
The existing evidence, however, does not clearly support
the association between self-concept variability across situa-
tions and measures of self-construal. The clearest support comes
from a study in which self-construal was manipulated using
154 Personality and Social Psychology Review 15(2)

COGNITIVE CONSEQUENCES

• Low context sensitivity

• Differentiation, separation, and
contrast

AFFECTIVE CONSEQUENCES
INTERPERSONAL BEHAVIOR
• Prefer socially disengaging
emotions • Self promoting
INDEPENDENT • Well-being based on emotional • Prefer direct communication
SELF-CONSTRUAL experiences and high self-esteem • Willing to confront or use dominating
• Self-consistency promotes well- strategies
being

MOTIVATIONAL CONSEQUENCES

• Individualistic values
• Self-enhancement
• Promotion focused
• Value primary control strategies

COGNITIVE CONSEQUENCES

• High context-sensitivity
• Connection and assimilation

AFFECTIVE CONSEQUENCES SOCIAL BEHAVIOR

• Group oriented
• Well-being based on adherence to
COLLECTIVE- • Prefer indirect
social norms and harmony with
INTERDEPENDENT others communication
• Avoid confrontation; use
SELF-CONSTRUAL • Prefer socially engaging emotions
cooperative strategies in
interactions
• Likely to imitate and seek
MOTIVATIONAL CONSEQUENCES proximity to others

• Value group harmony

• Self-criticism
• Prevention focused
• Value secondary control strategies

COGNITIVE CONSEQUENCES

• High relationship sensitivity

• Assimilation to others and focus on
similarity with close others

SOCIAL BEHAVIOR
AFFECTIVE CONSEQUENCES
• Relationship-promoting
RELATIONAL SELF- • Well-being based on quality of close • Adjust to partner
CONSTRUAL relationships • Focus on joint gains for relationship

MOTIVATIONAL CONSEQUENCES

• Value warm relationships

• Other-enhancement
• Pursue relational goals

Figure 1. Components of self-construal and their influence on cognition, affect, motivation, and social behavior
Note: Research findings that cannot easily be categorized as relational–interdependent or collective–interdependent were included with collective–
interdependent self-construal.

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Cross et al. 155
the similar/different manipulation. Participants described them-
selves as more context dependent in the InterSC priming condi-
tion than did participants in the IndSC priming condition
(Kühnen, Hannover, & Schubert, 2001). Studies that measure
self-construal are less clear, however. For example, a multi-
country study revealed that self-concept consistency was posi-
tively related to IndSC but not to InterSC (Church et al., 2008).
Another multicountry study discovered that RelSC predicted
contextualized self-description differently for Japanese and
Korean participants and was not associated with contextualized
self-description for participants with European backgrounds
(Y. Kashima et al., 2004). In three studies reported by Cross,
Gore, and Morris (2003), RelSC (measured by the Cross et al.,
2000, RISC scale) generally was not associated with self-
concept variability across important relationships (rs ranged
from .04 to .14; also see Locke & Christensen, 2007).
Although recent studies have continued to explore cultural
differences in self-concept stability within and across relation-
ship contexts (see English & Chen, 2007), there is little evidence
of self-construal as a mediator of these cultural differences. In
part, this may be because of the methods used to assess variation
in the self-concept across situations. Most often, these methods
request the participants to describe themselves in different situ-
ations (e.g., at home, at school, or with friends) or in different
relationships (e.g., with family, with specific friends). Partici-
pants from Western cultural backgrounds may feel a press to
describe themselves consistently across contexts. The Kühnen
et al. (2001) study described above, which manipulated self-
construal, assessed context-sensitive self-concept with three
items from the SCS (e.g., “I act the same no matter who I am
with”). Studies that use experience sampling methods, in which
participants describe themselves using handheld computers
when alerted, may more accurately tap the degree to which
self-construal predicts the extent to which people think about
themselves differently in different situations.
Context-sensitive social cognition. A variety of social-cognitive
tasks have also been linked to variation in self-construal. In
studies in which self-construals were primed, Haberstroh,
Oyserman, Schwarz, Kühnen, and Ji (2002) showed that
InterSC-primed Western participants were more likely than
IndSC-primed participants to take a target person’s prior knowl-
edge into account and avoided providing redundant informa-
tion. Similarly, InterSC-primed participants who prepared to
engage in a debate with an opponent listed more of the oppo-
nent’s possible arguments in the debate and indicated a greater
willingness to listen to the opponent’s position compared to
IndSC-primed participants (Gardner & Le, 2000, reported in
Gardner & Seeley, 2001). People whose InterSC is chronically
activated (or primed in an experiment) tend to give more
weight to others’ views or subjective norms about their goals
and behaviors than do people with high IndSC, whose per-
sonal attitudes are more likely to direct behavior (Torelli, 2006;
Trafimow & Finlay, 1996; Ybarra & Trafimow, 1998).
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Given that InterSC is associated with context-sensitive
cognition, how might it affect memory? In one study, both
European American and Asian or Asian American participants
were primed with IndSC or InterSC and asked to recall their
earliest memories (Wang & Ross, 2005). The IndSC-primed
participants tended to describe more individual-focused mem-
ories, whereas the InterSC-primed participants tended to
describe more group- focused memories and memories that
focused on social interaction.
If people with high InterSC are especially likely to attend
to the context when thinking about themselves and others, then
they should also tend to consider situational factors when mak-
ing attributions for others’ behavior. In fact, cultural variation
in situational versus dispositional attributions was the focus
of some of the earliest research by cultural social psychologists
(e.g., Miller, 1984; Morris & Peng, 1994). In general, these
studies revealed that East Asian participants are more likely
to attribute others’ behavior to situations than are European
Americans. Singelis (1994), in his original publication describ-
ing the SCS, reported that measures on the InterSC subscale
were positively associated with situational attributions, control-
ling for participants’ cultural background. Surprisingly, how-
ever, other researchers have seldom attempted to link attribution
processes to differences in self-construal. One exception is the
work by Oishi, Wyer, and Colcombe (2000), who found that
subliminal priming with interdependence-related concepts led
to lower levels of dispositional attributions for another person’s
negative behaviors compared to priming with independence-
related concepts (but see Krull et al., 1999).
Finally, if persons with a high InterSC pay attention to and
remember information about social contexts, then they should
have a rich and easily accessible store of interpersonal knowl-
edge (as suggested by Markus & Kitayama, 1991). For exam-
ple, Markus and Kitayama suggest that the asymmetric results
of self-to-other versus other-to-self comparisons (as originally
shown in Holyoak & Gordon, 1983) are because of IndSC, in
which unique aspects of the self are privileged over other
information. They provided evidence that this asymmetry was
absent among Japanese participants, presumably because of
the greater knowledge of others accessible in the InterSC.
Kühnen and Haberstroh (2004) tested this hypothesis in a
study in which self-construal was manipulated using the pro-
noun search task (Gardner et al., 1999). They found the typical
asymmetry among German participants in the IndSC-prime
condition but no asymmetry in the InterSC-prime condition.
Relational self-construal and relationship sensitivity. In research
that focused specifically on RelSC, Cross and her colleagues
(2002) argued that if the RelSC is a central framework for
defining the self, then it should influence information process-
ing without conscious control. In a series of studies using
North American participants, they examined the role of RelSC
in a variety of implicit cognitive processes that centered on
relationship-oriented material. For example, they found that
156 Personality and Social Psychology Review 15(2)
participants who scored high on the RISC scale remembered
more relationship-related information about a target person
(Study 3) and organized information about others in terms of
their relationships (Study 4). In addition, persons with high
RelSC were more likely to respond positively to relationship-
oriented terms in an IAT task (Greenwald, McGee, & Schwartz,
1998) and were more likely to have dense associative networks
for relationship–oriented terms, compared to lows on their
RISC scale (Study 2). In short, persons with chronically high
RelSC are “tuned” to pay attention to and organize their worlds
in terms of relationships.
When others are connected to the self and viewed as self-
defining, a person will tend to consider the other person’s
interests and take the other’s perspective in social interaction
and decision making. Cross and her colleagues (2000) found
that students with high RelSC were more likely to consider
the needs and wishes of friends and family members when
making decisions about how to spend their summer than were
low RelSC students. Likewise, Gore and Cross (2006) found
that North Americans with high RelSC tended to include other
people in their rationale for pursuing important goals. Among
new college roommates, those with high RelSC were better
able to predict their roommate’s responses to a set of questions
about values and beliefs than were low relationals, indicating
better memory for the roommate’s revelations about themselves
(Cross & Morris, 2003). Thus, RelSC is associated with atten-
tion to, consideration of, and memory for relational contexts,
especially important or close relationships.
Context-sensitive nonsocial cognition. Researchers have paid sub-
stantial attention to the roles of self-construal and context-
sensitivity for nonsocial events. Kühnen et al. (2001) found
when IndSC was primed, German and American participants
were quicker to find geometric figures that had been drawn
within more complex geometric designs (the Embedded Figures
Test; Witkin & Berry 1969). In contrast, InterSC-primed par-
ticipants performed better than IndSC-primed participants on
a task that was especially sensitive to context-dependent think-
ing (also see Konrath, Bushman, & Grove, 2009). Others have
demonstrated similar effects among Western participants using
a modified Stroop task and a cognitive switching task (Han-
nover, Pohlman, & Springer, 2005). Likewise, InterSC-primed
North American participants were more sensitive to contextual
information presented in a causal reasoning induction task than
were IndSC-primed participants (K. Kim, Grimm, & Markman,
2007; also see Haberstroh et al., 2002).
Much of the early work linking self-construal to context-
dependent thinking was limited to Western European or North
American participants. More recently, Oyserman and her col-
leagues showed that priming the InterSC promotes better
memory for the location of objects in an array among both
European American participants (Kühnen & Oyserman, 2002)
and East Asian participants (Oyserman et al., 2009). Further-
more, when the demands of a task matched the self-construal
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prime (i.e., a task that requires one to ignore the context per-
formed by a IndSC-primed participant), performance on the
task was enhanced among both Western and East Asian par-
ticipants (Oyserman et al., 2009).
Finally, considerable research has demonstrated significant
cultural differences in attention to the context versus attention
to the focal objects in a display (Masuda & Nisbett, 2001;
Morris & Peng, 1994; Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan,
2001). Can these differences be accounted for by differences
in self-construal? This question was addressed in an innovative
study that examined neural responses to target objects or to
novel contextual stimuli among European American and Asian
American participants (Lewis, Goto, & Kong, 2008). The
Event Related Potentials (ERP) data revealed the expected
cultural differences in attention to the focal object or the con-
text; this, in turn, was mediated by scores on the Singelis
(1994) InterSC scale. In another study, priming IndSC and
InterSC in Chinese participants resulted in neural activity that
reflected cultural differences in cognition. Z. Lin, Lin, and
Han (2008) found that priming IndSC resulted in increased
focus on local targets in a compound letter task (i.e., the small
letters that make up larger letters), whereas an InterSC prime
resulted in increased focus on the global target (i.e., the larger
letter), as evidenced by neural activity in the extrastriate cor-
tex (which is related to visual perceptual processing; also see
Z. Lin & Han, 2009). These and other recent studies of neural
activity (e.g., Hedden, Ketay, Aron, Markus, & Gabrieli, 2008)
provide provocative evidence that self-construal underlies
important cultural differences in cognition.
Connecting and assimilating versus differentiating and contrasting.
Markus and Kitayama (1991) argued that people with a high
IndSC will strive to differentiate themselves from others, whereas
people with a high InterSC will seek to connect to others. Since
then, considerable research has focused on this effect for the
self and social judgments; research on nonsocial judgments
is just beginning to emerge.
Connecting versus differentiating in self- and social judgments.
Social comparison processes have been thoroughly explored
in social psychology research, but it entered a new era with
the finding that self-construal moderated social comparisons
processes. As Stapel and Koomen (2001) demonstrated, when
the IndSC is activated, contrast or differentiation from the
comparison target occurs. When the InterSC is activated,
people tend to assimilate or view themselves as similar to the
comparison target (also see Kemmelmeier & Oyserman, 2001;
Kühnen & Haberstroh, 2004; Kühnen & Hannover, 2000;
Stapel & van der Zee, 2006)
Behavioral evidence for assimilation versus contrast effects
of self-construal on behavior was demonstrated in a study of
the effects of priming a negatively stereotyped group on test
performance (Bry, Follenfant, & Meyer, 2008). When exposed
to the stereotype of dumb blondes, French students performed
Cross et al. 157
worse on a general knowledge test if the InterSC was salient
than if it was not (and worse than participants in a control
condition), suggesting that the InterSC-primed participants
had connected themselves with the dumb blonde stereotype.
A contrast effect among IndSC-primed participants was dem-
onstrated in Study 2: Participants exposed to the dumb blonde
stereotype performed better than participants in the control
condition when the IndSC was made salient (for related
research, see Blanton & Stapel, 2008; Keller & Molix, 2008;
Sui & Han, 2007).
Cross and her colleagues (2002) hypothesized that persons
with high RelSC will also strive for connections with relation-
ship partners and so will tend to see similarities between them-
selves and close others. North American participants rated the
descriptiveness of multiple traits, values, and abilities for them-
selves and a same-sex friend. An indirect measure of similarity
was calculated by computing intraclass correlations for each
person’s pair of ratings in each domain (traits, values, and
abilities). In regression analyses that controlled for self-esteem,
RISC scale scores significantly predicted each type of simi-
larity. In short, both RelSC and InterSC promote ways of think-
ing that enhance connections, similarity or assimilation in social
comparison. IndSC promotes differentiation, contrast, and
cognitive separation from others.
Connecting versus differentiating in nonsocial cognition. The
tendency to engage in differentiation versus assimilation may
also apply to other domains of cognition. To date, however,
few people have investigated this hypothesis in nonsocial
domains. One study extended this line of reasoning to the
generation of novel ideas. When IndSC was primed, people
tended to generate more unusual examples of categories (e.g.,
clothing or furniture) compared to control conditions or
InterSC-priming conditions (Wiekens & Stapel, 2008). In
another study, Oyserman and her colleagues (2009) argued
that the completion of multiple-choice tests, such as GRE tests
that require students to select the correct antonym for a word
or to complete analogies, requires a differentiation mind-set
(i.e., the ability to separate the correct answer from the rest).
They found that InterSC-primed participants performed worse
on these tasks than IndSC-primed or control participants.
These studies suggest that many of the academic tasks valued
in Western cultural contexts, such as creativity, finding novel
solutions to a problem, and completion of multiple-choice-type
tasks, are related to IndSC and that exploration of other
learning- and education-related topics may profit from con-
sideration of the role of self-construal.
Summary and recommendations for future research. As Markus and
Kitayama (1991) predicted, variation in self-construal is related
to a variety of cognitive processes. In particular, researchers have
focused on the role of self-construal in context-dependent or –
independent cognition and on cognitive tendencies to differentiate
or to connect information. Most of the research on cognitive
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processes has understandably focused on self and social judg-
ments, but work exploring the effects of self-construal on non-
social cognitive processes is expanding and suggests promising
avenues for new research. For example, spatial judgments
(Krishna, Zhou, & Zhang, 2008) and aesthetic preferences
(Zhang, Feick, & Price, 2006) are influenced by self-construal
priming. As suggested above, researchers interested in learning
styles, creativity, and other dimensions of education may find
consideration of self-construals useful in their work.
Some processes linked to the self-construal by Markus and
Kitayama (1991), however, have not received much attention
by self-construal researchers. For example, they suggest that
differences in self-construal may be the source of observed
cultural differences in counterfactual thinking and categoriza-
tion. To our knowledge, researchers have not (successfully)
investigated these hypotheses with measures or manipulations
of self-construal (but see interesting cross-cultural findings
for categorization by Ji, Zhang, & Nisbett, 2004). Furthermore,
although scant research exists on the relations between self-
construal and attribution, these studies suggest that manipula-
tions of self-construal may provide important insights into
attribution-related processes.
New evidence linking self-construal to variation in neural
activity is exciting and provocative. Although examination of
neural activity cannot replace studies of cognitive behavior,
they provide support for the contention that culture’s effects
on the individual are more than skin deep.
Self-Construal Influences Affect
Despite strong interest in cultural differences in emotion, little
research has actually measured self-construal to investigate
directly how independence and interdependence relate to vari-
ous affective consequences. The few studies that have directly
measured self-construal tend to find that, in a variety of sam-
ples, IndSC is associated with greater subjective happiness
(Elliott & Coker, 2008) as well as decreased depression (e.g.,
B. T. Lam, 2005; Okazaki, 1997; Sato & McCann, 1998),
unhappiness (Y. Kim, Kasser, & Lee, 2003), general anxiety
(e.g., Hardin, Varghese, Tran, & Carlson, 2006; Y. Kim, Kasser,
& Lee, 2003; Xie, Leong, & Feng, 2008), and social anxiety
(Hardin et al., 2006; J. J. Hong & Woody, 2007; Okazaki,
1997; Xie et al., 2008), whereas InterSC is often associated
with increased levels of these negative affects (Hardin et al.,
2006; Okazaki, 1997; Sato & McCann, 1998).
Such results, of course, beg the question of why self-construal
is related to affect in these ways. Kitayama, Karasawa, and
Mesquita (2004) laid out a dual process model of emotion in
which cultural presses to be either independent or interdepen-
dent result in distal and proximal cultural affordances that
encourage the development of culturally consistent affective
experience and expression. More specifically, they argue that
IndSC is related to a tendency to experience and express
socially disengaging emotions such as anger or pride, whereas
158 Personality and Social Psychology Review 15(2)
InterSC is related to a tendency to experience socially engag-
ing emotions, such as guilt or relatedness. Although not specifi-
cally mentioned by Kitayama et al., social anxiety would be
another socially engaging emotion because it refers to feelings
of nervousness that occur in the context of social relationships.
It is not surprising that individuals high in InterSC, for whom
interpersonal relationships are central to definitions of the
self, would express more concern about appropriate behavior
in social contexts. Interestingly, IndSC is often found to be a
better predictor of social anxiety than InterSC; this appears to
be particularly true for European Americans as opposed to East
Asians (Xie et al., 2008).
But what of the relation of self-construal to other types of
negative affect, such as unhappiness and depression? Kita-
yama, Karasawa, and Mesquita (2004) explicitly identify
these emotions as neither engaging nor disengaging, and thus
we might expect them to be unrelated to self-construal. It is
likely that the observed relations are largely artifactual,
explained by the high correlations between social anxiety
and other types of negative affect. Okazaki (1997) demon-
strated that once social anxiety is controlled, neither IndSC
nor InterSC is related to depression. Furthermore, ethnic
group differences in depression disappeared when social anxi-
ety was controlled. Thus, the common finding that Asian
Americans self-report higher levels of depression than Euro-
pean Americans (e.g., Aldwin & Greenberger, 1987; Kuo,
1984) is likely, at least in part, because of the fact that Asian
Americans self-report higher levels of social anxiety than
European Americans, which in turn is at least in part because
of the greater interdependence and lower independence com-
mon among Asian Americans (Okazaki, 1997).
Such failure to control for social anxiety may account for
other findings that, on the surface, appear to contradict predic-
tions of self-construal theory. For example, given that interde-
pendence is culturally consistent with collectivist values, we
might expect InterSC to be associated with positive outcomes
in collectivist cultures. To be sure, some evidence does support
this hypothesis: InterSC was associated with greater life sat-
isfaction among college students in Hong Kong but was unre-
lated to life satisfaction among college students in the United
States (Kwan et al., 1997). Surprisingly, then, greater relative
InterSC predicted greater unhappiness and less happiness in
South Koreans but was unrelated to unhappiness among stu-
dents in the United States (Y. Kim, Kasset, & Lee, 2003). If
the measures of happiness and unhappiness used in this study
are highly correlated with social anxiety, the apparently incon-
sistent finding that InterSC predicts unhappiness in South Korea
may simply be an artifact of InterSC predicting social anxiety.
These results, however, must be interpreted with caution. First,
InterSC scores were subtracted from IndSC scores to create a
unidimensional self-construal score that reflected an individ-
ual’s relative level of interdependence. As discussed previously,
such unidimensional scores are inconsistent with both theory
and intended use of most self-construal scales. In addition,
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although the correlation between self-construal and unhappi-
ness was statistically significant among the South Korean
sample (r = –.15) but not in the U.S. sample (r = –.10), the
relative magnitude of the correlations was not compared sta-
tistically to determine if the relation is actually stronger for
the South Koreans than for the Americans.
In addition to these relations being at least partly artifactual,
it is likely that other variables mediate these relations. For
example, InterSC is also associated with maladaptive perfec-
tionism, probably because of the emphasis on being a good
group member; however, after controlling for maladaptive
perfectionism, InterSC no longer predicted depressive symp-
toms (Yoon & Lau, 2008). Thus, it is not that being interde-
pendent is inherently depressing but rather that being
interdependent is associated with other variables, some of
which may in turn be associated with negative affect. Just as
independence may manifest in some individuals as an unhealthy
disconnection from others, interdependence may manifest in
some individuals as an unhealthy overdependence on others
that leads to maladaptive perfectionism, among other things.
Perhaps more likely, existing measures of self-construal may
be incapable of adequately distinguishing independence from
social isolation and interdependence from dependence.
Given the importance of interpersonal relationships to those
with an InterSC and the importance of internal, private self-
evaluations to those with an IndSC, several researchers have
argued—and demonstrated—that life satisfaction is predicted
by different variables, depending on self-construal. Large
multinational studies have found that life satisfaction is pre-
dicted by emotions (an internal, private experience) in individu-
alistic cultures but by adherence to social norms in collectivist
cultures (Schimmack, Radhakrishnan, Oishi, Dzokoto, & Ahadi,
2002; Suh, Diener, Oishi, & Triandis, 1998). However, because
neither of these studies directly measured self-construal, the
hypothesis that self-construal accounted for this difference
remained speculative until a recent study provided direct sup-
port (Suh, Diener, & Updegraff, 2008). Suh et al. showed that
for individuals who were relatively higher in independence
than interdependence, life satisfaction was predicted only by
emotions (i.e., the balance of positive and negative affect) and
not by the extent to which the individuals felt significant others
would evaluate the participants’ lives positively. For those
with relatively stronger InterSC, however, both these social
appraisals and emotion predicted life satisfaction.
Such findings are consistent with those of Kwan et al.
(1997), who found that in both Hong Kong and the United
States relationship harmony fully mediates the relation between
interdependence and life satisfaction, whereas global self-
esteem fully mediates the relation between independence and
life satisfaction. In a multiethnic U.S. sample, self-esteem also
mediated the relation between independence and life satisfac-
tion (measured in terms of positive and negative affect),
although relationship harmony did not mediate the relation
between interdependence and life satisfaction (Reid, 2004).
Cross et al. 159
Similarly, B. T. Lam (2005) found that self-esteem fully medi-
ates the relation between independence and depression in a
sample of Vietnamese American adolescents: Those with greater
independence tended to have more positive self-appraisals, which
resulted in fewer depressive symptoms. Contrary to past research
(e.g., Kwan et al., 1997; Okazaki, 1997; Sato & McCann, 1998),
however, interdependence was also associated with greater global
self-esteem and less depression and self-esteem also fully medi-
ated the relation between interdependence and depression. This
is likely because of the more bicultural nature of Lam’s adoles-
cent sample. Unlike the other samples, which used college stu-
dents (Kwan et al., 1997; Okazaki, 1997; Sato & McCann, 1998),
Lam’s participants were adolescents in junior high and high
school who were still living at home with their parents. Given
that a majority of Lam’s participants (87%) reported Vietnamese
was the primary language spoken at home, it appears these par-
ticipants largely were living with ethnically enculturated families;
thus, Lam argued that higher levels of interdependence reflected
an important cultural consistency with the participants’ home
environments, which in turn was associated with greater self-
esteem and less depression.
Indeed, B. T. Lam (2005) found that different factors pre-
dicted self-esteem for adolescents high in IndSC versus high
in InterSC. Based on arguments similar to those of Kwan
et al. (1997), Lam argued that family cohesion should be more
important to the self-esteem of high InterSC adolescents.
Given that these adolescents’ peer groups are more likely to
reflect dominant cultural values, peer support should be more
important to the self-esteem of high IndSC adolescents. As
predicted, family cohesion fully mediated the relation between
interdependence and global self-esteem, whereas peer support
partially mediated the relation between independence and
self-esteem.
Together, these studies (Kwan et al., 1997; B. T. Lam, 2005;
Suh et al., 2008) demonstrate that IndSC and, in some samples,
InterSC predict life satisfaction at least in part through their
relation with self-appraisals such as global self-esteem and
affect. Furthermore, interdependence predicts life satisfaction
through its relation with interpersonal constructs such as rela-
tionship harmony, family cohesion, and social appraisals.
By simply measuring self-construal, however, none of these
studies demonstrates that self-construal causes these differences
in the bases of life satisfaction; however, Suh et al. (2008) con-
ducted a second study that does. They primed either an IndSC
or an InterSC and obtained the same results: Life satisfaction
was predicted by both social appraisal and emotion for those
primed with InterSC, but life satisfaction was predicted only
by emotion for those primed with IndSC. Moreover, the same
pattern emerged whether self-construal was manipulated in the
United States or in Korea, providing strong evidence that self-
construal causes differences in the bases of life satisfaction.
Although most of the studies cited above examined inde-
pendence and interdependence as orthogonal constructs, none
of the research considered interactions between IndSC and
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InterSC. One study that has done so examined the roles of
self-construal and family cohesion in predicting mental distress
among Asian American high school students (Liu & Goto,
2007). The authors found that increasing interdependence was
associated more strongly with increasing distress among those
adolescents low in independence; although increasing inter-
dependence was also associated with increasing distress for
those high in independence, the relationship was weaker. Impor-
tantly, family cohesion mediated this effect, with adolescents
high in both independence and interdependence reporting more
family cohesion than adolescents high in interdependence but
low in independence. For these latter adolescents low in inde-
pendence, increasing interdependence was actually associated
with decreasing family cohesion. Although acculturation of
adolescents and their parents was not measured, these findings
were attributed to higher independence representing a more
bicultural identity on the part of adolescents, which buffered
the negative effects of acculturative conflict between parents
and adolescents. These results highlight the need for researchers
not only to consider IndSC and InterSC as orthogonal constructs
but also to consider interactions between them.
Relational self-construal and affect. RelSC and well-being are
associated under some conditions. One of these is the type of
well-being considered. Although RelSC is not associated with
general psychological well-being (defined in terms of life sat-
isfaction, depressive symptoms, perceived stress, positive and
negative affect) among predominantly European American
college students (Cross, Gore, & Morris, 2003, Studies 1
and 3), RelSC is associated with greater relational well-being
(defined in terms of positive relations with others and aspects
of collective self-esteem; Cross et al., 2003, Study 2). Sample
also affects whether relations between well-being and RelSC
are found. Berkel and Constantine (2005) argued that a need
for affiliation may be stronger and more beneficial to women
of color in predominantly White environments; therefore, they
hypothesized that RelSC would predict life satisfaction among
these women of color. Indeed, in their sample of African
American and Asian American women recruited from a pre-
dominantly White university, greater RelSC predicted greater
life satisfaction, even after controlling for relationship har-
mony and family conflict.
Some researchers are also examining whether different factors
predict well-being for those with a more RelSC. Unfortunately,
much of this research relies on gender as a proxy for RelSC
rather than measuring it directly. However, this research does
tend to support the hypothesis that positive interpersonal rela-
tionships are more predictive of life satisfaction for those with
a more relational InterSC. For example, women show greater
decrements in daily life satisfaction than men when they feel
misunderstood in interpersonal interactions (Lun, Kesebir, &
Oishi, 2008), and women’s life satisfaction (measured in terms
of positive and negative affect) was predicted by relationship
harmony, whereas men’s life satisfaction was not (Reid, 2004).
160 Personality and Social Psychology Review 15(2)
Summary and recommendations for future research. As evi-
denced by the relative brevity of the preceding section, sur-
prisingly little research has been conducted that has actually
measured self-construal in investigating the relations between
self-construal and affect. The little research that has been done
has tended to focus on whether one type of self-construal is
more strongly associated with particular types of affect than
another type of self-construal and whether different variables
mediate the relation between one type of self-construal and
affect as compared to another type of self-construal. Markus
and Kitayama’s (1991) specific predictions about self-construal
and affect (i.e., that the same emotion is elicited by different
conditions depending on self-construal, that different emotions
are experienced by independent and interdependent people and
to different degrees) have received support. For example, the
same construct of life satisfaction is elicited by different con-
ditions depending on self-construal: by internal experiences,
such as emotion or positive self-esteem, for those with a more
IndSC, and by relationship variables, such as relationship
harmony or social appraisal, for those with a more InterSC
(Kwan et al., 1997; B. T. Lam, 2005; Suh et al., 2008).
Apart from the research reviewed here, however, most of
the research relevant to these predictions has relied on either
proxies of self-construal (e.g., culture of origin; Cole, Bruschi,
& Tamang, 2002; Kitayama et al., 2006) or measures of IND-
COL (e.g., Fischer, Manstead, & Rodriguez Mosquera, 1999).
Although generally consistent with predictions, such research
fails to explicitly link observed differences to self-construal.
In addition, more research like that of Suh et al. (2008) that
actually manipulates self-construal is needed. Demonstrating,
for example, that priming an IndSC leads participants to expe-
rience a socially disengaging emotion (e.g., anger) whereas
priming an InterSC leads participants to experience a socially
engaging emotion (e.g., shame) in response to the same stimu-
lus would provide compelling evidence that self-construal
causes differences in emotional experience.
In addition, work such as that by Liu and Goto (2007) raises
important questions about how IndSC and InterSC interact in
predicting affective experiences. Are such interactions found
only among bicultural participants, such as Liu and Goto’s
Asian American high school students, for whom being high
in both independence and interdependence reflects an impor-
tant adaptation to living in two cultures, or are similar interac-
tions found among monocultural individuals? We know that
individuals high in independence and relatively low in inter-
dependence experience life satisfaction as a result of internal
experiences such as affect or self-esteem; is the same true for
individuals high in both independence and interdependence?
Moreover, who is more likely to chronically experience high
IndSC and InterSC, and under what conditions might others
demonstrate both types of self-construal?
Finally, recent work on specific aspects of IndSC and InterSC
raises new questions. For example, Hardin (2006) found that
although InterSC was uncorrelated with social anxiety among
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Asian Americans, a specific aspect of InterSC, relational inter-
dependence (as captured by Singelis’s, 1994, SCS), was associ-
ated with social anxiety. Moreover, some aspects of IndSC
(autonomy/assertiveness and behavioral consistency), but not
others (individualism and primacy of self), were associated
with social anxiety. For European Americans, only autonomy/
assertiveness predicted social anxiety. Thus, Markus and
Kitayama’s (1991) prediction that the same emotion is elicited
by different conditions depending on self-construal may be
more nuanced. Does social appraisal predict life satisfaction
equally well for those high in the relational interdependence
component of InterSC as for those high in the esteem for group
component? Or do different types of social appraisal predict
life satisfaction, with positive appraisals from significant others
being more relevant for those high in the relational interdepen-
dence component whereas positive appraisals from one’s group
are more relevant for those high in the collective interdepen-
dence or esteem for group components? Turning to another of
Markus and Kitayama’s predictions, that high IndSC and high
InterSC individuals experience different emotions, are certain
emotions more tied to some aspects of self-construal than oth-
ers? As noted above, research that examines the consequences
of experimentally manipulating these aspects of self-construal
would provide the most compelling evidence for the role of
dimensions of self-construal in affective experience.
Self-Construal Influences Motivation and
Self-Regulation
According to Markus and Kitayama’s (1991) conceptualization,
people with high InterSC are expected to have a greater number
of social motives compared to those with high IndSC. Indeed,
these social motives are an integral part of the definition of
InterSC. The independent self is motivated to be autonomous
and agentic. In contrast, being a part of social groups and
maintaining harmonious relationships with important others
are of great importance to the interdependent self. Recently,
Wiekens and Stapel (2008) provided relevant evidence. Using
Brewer and Gardner’s (1996) method, they primed either the
IndSC or the InterSC of their participants. Participants whose
IndSC was primed reported higher levels of motivation to be
independent, different, and alone compared to participants
whose InterSC was primed. Those who received the InterSC
prime reported higher levels of motivation to be accepted, to
conform, and to be together than those who received the IndSC
prime (also see Verplanken, Trafimow, Khusid, Holland, &
Steentjes, 2009). Other studies have shown that measures of
IndSC are positively related to the importance of individual
goals and to status and achievement motivations and are nega-
tively related to affiliation motivation (Brutus & Greguras,
2008; van Horen, Pöhlmann, Koeppen, & Hannover, 2008).
In contrast, InterSC is positively related to the importance of
social goals (van Horen et al., 2008). Likewise, when facing
a serious illness, people with high interdependent self-views
Cross et al. 161
(as measured by the E. S. Kashima & Hardie, 2000, scale)
had more social concerns (e.g., being a burden on people close
to me), whereas people with high independent self-views
expressed more individual concerns (e.g., not being able to
rely on myself; Uskul & Hynie, 2007).
Second, agency for IndSC and InterSC results from differ-
ent motivational sources. For IndSC, personal goals, desires,
and abilities become the fuel for action, whereas for InterSC
coordination of the goals, desires, and needs of relational oth-
ers with those of the self are the primary sources of motivation
(Kitayama & Uchida, 2005; Markus & Kitayama, 2004). In
Markus and Kitayama’s (2004) conceptualization, what differs
is not the content of the needs, goals, and motivations but the
processes that put these into action. For instance, two students
who have the goal of achieving in school might have different
motivational processes underlying this goal. One of these
students, who has high IndSC, might see school success as a
way of actualizing himself or herself, and the other student,
who has high InterSC, might be motivated to be successful to
better realize his or her obligations to her family and to the
society. Here, self-actualization can be considered a personal
reason for goal pursuit, whereas fulfilling the wishes of one’s
family can be considered a relational reason. It is important
to note, however, that personal and relational aspects of a goal
are different than its autonomous and controlled aspects (Deci
& Ryan, 2000). That is, a person may be intrinsically motivated
to pursue a relational goal if the goal is autonomous (“I am
pursuing this because it is important to someone who is impor-
tant to me”) rather than controlled (“I am pursuing this goal
because other people expect me to”). Likewise, someone may
be unmotivated to pursue a personal goal if the goal is con-
trolled (“I am pursuing this because the situation demands it”)
rather than autonomous (“I am pursuing this because I really
believe it is an important goal to have”).
In two longitudinal studies conducted with North American
participants, Gore and Cross (2006) examined the relation
between self-construal and relational versus personal reasons
for pursuing goals. Their results showed that people with
higher RelSC had more relational-autonomous reasons for
their goals compared to those with lower RelSC (as assessed
by the RISC scale; Cross et al., 2000). They found that both
personal-autonomous and relational-autonomous reasons for
goals affected perceived progress and effort toward achieving
the goal. A cross-cultural replication of this study obtained
similar results among American and Japanese samples (Gore,
Cross, & Kanagawa, 2009). These studies demonstrate the
link between RelSC and forms of interdependent agency, as
proposed by Markus and Kitayama (2004).
A third and very important implication of different self-
construal concerns self-related motives. Motives that are
directly related to the self (i.e., self-motives) are expected to
be experienced very differently by people with differing self-
construals. These self-motives can be described as directed at
establishing a particular self-representation (see Leary, 2007).
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Markus and Kitayama (1991) speculated on the implications
of different self-systems for self-enhancement and self-
consistency self-motives. Although considerable research has
examined differences in consistency motives for Westerners
and East Asians (with a focus on cognitive dissonance pro-
cesses; see Heine & Lehman, 1997; Hoshino-Browne et al.,
2005; Kitayama, Snibbe, Markus, & Suzuki, 2004), to our
knowledge no studies have used measures or manipulations
of self-construal. Below, we focus on self-enhancement because
it has been the focus of significant cross-cultural and self-
construal research and has prompted a lively debate.
Self-enhancement. Self-enhancement, which is motivated by
the need to see oneself with positive regard and to protect the
self from negative information, has long been considered to
be one of the basic tendencies of the self. Biases related to
self-enhancement are viewed as conducive to having a healthy
and well-adjusted self (Taylor & Brown, 1988).
According to Heine, Lehman, Markus, and Kitayama
(1999), however, self-enhancement motivation is mostly a
result of the IndSC. From the point of view of IndSC, behavior
is directed by the internal characteristics of the unique indi-
vidual. Thus, enhancing positive internal attributes and seeing
oneself with positive regard are beneficial. The InterSC, on
the other hand, is not as separated from the surrounding group
as the IndSC. Maintaining personal relationships, pursuing
group harmony, and being willing to sacrifice one’s own needs
are expected. Given the InterSC, self-enhancement may elicit
jealousy or envy from others and so could be detrimental for
basic social needs such as maintaining harmonious relation-
ships. Thus, persons with a high InterSC would not be highly
motivated to see themselves in a positive light. Much research
on self-enhancement has relied on group comparisons using
IND-COL of the given culture as a proxy measure for the
prevalent self-construal of the cultural group under investiga-
tion. This line of research has provided valuable evidence for
this perspective with a wide range self-enhancing behaviors
(e.g., Chang & Asakawa, 2003; Heine, Kitayama, & Lehman,
2001; Heine & Lehman, 1995; Heine, Takata, & Lehman, 2000;
Kitayama, Markus, Matsumoto, & Norasakkunkit, 1997).
Others, however, have claimed that self-enhancement is a
universal motive, and they have argued the self-enhancement
will occur in different domains depending on the salient dimen-
sion of self-construal. For example, Sedikides, Gaertner, and
Toguchi (2003, Study 2) conducted a study where they employed
the better-than-average method to observe group differences.
Participants rated themselves relative to a hypothetical group
member on two sets of behaviors and traits that were differen-
tially meaningful for IndSC and InterSC. The two groups did
not differ from each other on overall self-enhancement, but par-
ticipants high on IndSC (as measured by Singelis’s, 1994, scale)
self-enhanced on the independence-related measure, whereas
participants high on InterSC self-enhanced on the interdepen-
dence-related measure. The measure of self-enhancement used
162 Personality and Social Psychology Review 15(2)
in the Sedikides et al. studies and in similar research by Kurman
(2001), the better-than-average method, has been criticized on
multiple grounds (Heine & Hamamura, 2007). In this approach,
participants are asked to compare themselves to an average per-
son on specific characteristics, traits, and abilities on which most
people consider themselves better than most others. In a given
population, if most people consider themselves better than most
others, this would be a statistical impossibility, and so it is con-
sidered a bias (Alicke, 1985). Any given individual, on the other
hand, can be objectively better than most other people. Correlat-
ing self-construal scores of individual participants with their
standing on the better-than-average measure is therefore not
appropriate for assessing self-enhancement bias at the individual
level.
A second problem with this measure concerns the process
of making comparisons with an average other. It has been
argued that when people are asked to compare themselves to
an average other, they engage in absolute rather than relative
evaluations of themselves (Klar & Giladi, 1999). In fact, when
people are evaluating any randomly selected target, they tend
to evaluate it as better than average. Because most people have
a favorable absolute evaluation of themselves, it appears that
most people have a bias in comparative measures (for further
criticism of this method, see Klar & Giladi, 1997).
Other studies have approached the role of self-construal in
self-enhancement from different theoretical perspectives. For
example, Gardner, Gabriel, and Hochschild (2002) examined
this issue from the perspective of Tesser’s (1980) self-evaluation
maintenance (SEM) model. SEM predicts that people reflect
on the success of close others when the success is in a self-
irrelevant domain, and this in turn boosts self-esteem. When the
success of the close other is in a self-relevant domain, this
results in comparison and thus a reduction in self-esteem.
These effects are reversed when the social other is not a close
person. Gardner et al. (2002) manipulated the self-construal
of their participants to see if the above predictions hold true
when InterSC is activated. Consistent with the predictions of
SEM theory, participants in the IndSC prime condition evalu-
ated their friend as more successful than a stranger in a self-
irrelevant domain and as less successful in a self-relevant
domain. Participants in the InterSC prime condition evaluated
their friend as more successful than a stranger in both the self-
relevant and self-irrelevant domains. This shows that for people
with an InterSC, comparing oneself to a close other is not a
source of threat but instead is an opportunity to bask in the
reflected glory of the relational other (also see Cheng & Lam,
2007). Similarly, people exposed to upward and downward
social comparisons respond differently depending on their primed
self-construal. When InterSC is primed (compared to IndSC),
people experience less positive affect after exposure to a down-
ward comparison target and less negative affect after exposure
to an upward comparison target (White, Lehman, & Cohen,
2006). In short, priming the InterSC seems to create a sense
of having a bond with the target, resulting in stronger empathic
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responses rather than contrasting (i.e., self-enhancing) affec-
tive responses.
Self-regulation. Self-regulation can be defined broadly as the
exercise of control over oneself to attain desired end states
(Schmeichel & Baumeister, 2004). It is an essential element
in any goal-directed behavior, and as such it is extremely
relevant for the dynamic relations between motivation and
self-construal. Most self-construal research in this area has
centered on the topic of regulatory focus. Yet there has been
some research attention to differences of the direction of con-
trol and self-regulatory strength across the two primary self-
construals. In this section, we briefly summarize this line of
research.
According to Higgins (1996, 1997) there are two basic self-
regulatory foci: a promotion focus, which is characterized by
a motivation to approach desired end states, and a prevention
focus, which is characterized by a motivation to avoid undesired
end states. Regulatory focus has important consequences for
behavior. For instance, prevention focus is shown to increase
speed of braking in an accident-prone simulated traffic condi-
tion, which points to risk avoidance (Werth & Forster, 2007).
Although these regulatory foci can be situationally induced by
various priming techniques (e.g., Shah, Higgins, & Friedman,
1998), individuals differ in their chronic levels of prevention
and promotion focus. Chronic self-regulatory foci have roots
in early socialization practices, where parental emphasis on
positive outcomes by rewarding desired behavior fosters pro-
motion focus and parental emphasis on negative outcomes by
punishing undesired behavior fosters prevention focus in the
child (Higgins & Silberman, 1998).
Parental practices are one antecedent of chronic regulatory
focus. Another antecedent could be self-construal. Maintaining
relational harmony, fitting into one’s proper roles in the society,
and living up to the standards of significant others are essential
for people with high InterSC. This requires self-monitoring
and sensitivity to self-relevant information that could signal
success or failure in the fulfillment of obligations. Hence,
InterSC may support a prevention self-regulatory focus. People
with high IndSC, on the other hand, are socialized to be self-
actualized individuals who pursue personal aspirations. Unlike
people with InterSC, who act with a concern for not harming
significant relationships, those with IndSC are motivated to
be positively distinct persons with achievements. Hence, IndSC
may support a promotion focus.
Lee, Aaker, and Gardner (2000) tested these assumptions
using a sample of participants with chronic IndSC versus
InterSC (as measured by the Singelis SCS) as well as a sample
of participants whose self-construal was experimentally primed.
They utilized specific scenarios that provided the same informa-
tion, except for a difference in framing. Half of the scenarios
were presented in terms of gains (gain-framed information),
and the other half were presented in terms of losses (loss-framed
information). Results showed that participants with high InterSC
Cross et al. 163
evaluated loss-framed information as more important than the
gain-framed information, and participants with high IndSC
evaluated gain-framed information as more important than the
loss-framed information (also see Aaker & Lee, 2001). More
recently, Hamilton and Biehal (2005) provided additional sup-
port for these effects of self-construal on financial risk taking.
Participants were primed with either IndSC or InterSC and
asked to allocate a hypothetical budget across several funds that
varied in their gain and risk levels. They found that the IndSC-
primed participants allocated the budget so as to maximize gain
and took greater risks, whereas the InterSC-primed participants
allocated the budget so as to minimize losses and risk. Moreover,
the relation between self-construal prime and risk taking was
completely mediated by a measure of promotion and prevention
orientation.
Zhang and Mittal (2007) tested a similar hypothesis about
regulatory focus using a different experimental paradigm. They
reasoned that people with a promotion focus would find enriched
options more attractive but that people with a prevention focus
would prefer impoverished options. Enriched options have high
attribute scatter with extreme values. Impoverished options have
values clustered toward the average. Suppose that you are a home
buyer and the four important criteria are the size of the rooms
and the deck and the condition of the kitchen and bathrooms.
Suppose further that you have two options from which to choose.
The first house, which represents the enriched option, has huge
rooms and a fabulous kitchen with state-of-the-art appliances.
But the deck is very small and the bathrooms are not in good
shape. The second house, which represents the impoverished
option, is average on all four criteria: average-sized rooms and
deck and kitchen and bathrooms in acceptable condition.
In a series of cross-cultural studies with Chinese and
American samples, Zhang and Mittal (2007) found that par-
ticipants with high InterSC (as measured by Trafimow et al.’s,
1991, scale) evaluated impoverished options as more attractive
than enriched options. Participants with high IndSC, however,
evaluated enriched options as more attractive than impover-
ished options. Moreover, self-construal completely mediated
the relation between culture and option evaluations. In addi-
tion, they employed a questionnaire measure of regulatory
focus in a separate study and successfully showed that the
relation of self-construal (as measured by Singelis’s, 1994,
scale) with option evaluations was mediated by regulatory
focus. This lends strong support to the argument that different
self-systems afford different regulatory foci.
Regulatory focus is only one aspect of the motivational
components of self-regulation. Another important aspect is the
direction of control. Challenged by a stressful situation, people
can cope with it in two different ways. They can either direct
their control efforts to the environment to change it to fit their
personal needs (primary control) or direct control toward them-
selves through altering feelings and cognitions to adjust to the
objective environment (secondary control; Weisz, Rothbaum,
& Blackburn, 1984).
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People who construe themselves in relation to others are
hypothesized to prefer secondary control over primary control
(Morling, Kitayama, & Miyamoto, 2002; Weisz et al., 1984).
Therefore, one would expect people with high InterSC to
engage in secondary control when faced with stressors. Indeed,
A. G. Lam and Zane (2004) showed in a cross-cultural study
that this assumption was correct. At the group level, Asian
participants scored higher than Americans on a self-report
measure of secondary control and American participants in
turn, scored higher than Asians on primary control. At the indi-
vidual level, IndSC was positively related to primary control,
whereas InterSC was related to secondary control. Moreover,
culture’s influence on direction of control was mediated by
self-construals.
These results point to the willingness of persons with high
InterSC to adjust themselves to fit into a situation or harmonize
with others. As a result, people with chronically high InterSC
may develop strong self-control strategies over time. This idea
of increasing one’s ability to exert self-control is consistent
with recent research on self-regulation. According to Baumeister
and his colleagues, self-regulatory strength is comparable to
the strength of a muscle: Like the use of a muscle, use of one’s
store of self-regulatory resources will eventual lead to temporary
exhaustion, termed “ego-depletion” (Baumeister & Vohs, 2003;
Schmeichel & Baumeister, 2004). Although it may be exhausted,
the strength of this “muscle” can also be improved by chronic
use. For this reason, one would expect people with high InterSC,
who are accustomed to adjusting to situations, to experience less
ego-depletion after a self-regulatory task, compared to others.
Seeley and Gardner (2003) tested this hypothesis in a
study in which participants engaged in a self-regulation task
(suppressing any thoughts of a “white bear” for 5 min) followed
by another task that also required considerable self-control
(squeezing a handgrip exerciser). In line with the hypothesis,
participants with high InterSC persisted on the second task
longer than participants with high IndSC, indicating lower
levels of regulatory depletion among the former group. Simi-
larly, regulatory depletion was more pronounced for Americans
compared to Asians. This study provides initial behavioral
evidence that self-construal is related to differences in self-
regulation, but much more research is needed to uncover the
particular types of situations and specific self-regulation tasks
that may be influenced by variation in self-construal.
Summary and recommendations for future research. Most of
Markus and Kitayama’s (1991) predictions concerning the
relations between motivation and self-construal have found
empirical support. First, self-construal research showed that
social motives are an integral part of the definition for InterSC.
Evidence for the importance of social motives for people with
InterSC comes both from studies that manipulated self-
construals (e.g., Wiekens & Stapel, 2008) and from studies
that measured participants’ existing self-construals (e.g., Brutus
& Greguras, 2008; van Horen et al., 2008).
164 Personality and Social Psychology Review 15(2)
Markus and Kitayama’s (1991) second proposal—that
agency differs for IndSC and InterSC—also has received
empirical support. Specifically, for people with high IndSC,
personal concerns such as self-actualization are important in
goal pursuit. For people with high InterSC, however, relational
concerns are important sources of motivation. For people with
high RelSC, relational reasons are very influential in goal
pursuits in the long run, and they serve as intrinsic sources of
motivation (Gore & Cross, 2006; Gore et al., 2009). These
initial findings point to the importance of considering prevail-
ing theories of motivation and agency from the perspective
of variation in self-construal. For example, although self-
determination theory posits that relatedness is one of three pri-
mary motives for all people (the others being competence and
autonomy), it has received far less attention than the other two.
This may in part be because of the assumptions of the self as
independent and separate from others that pervade the environ-
ment of Western researchers and the populations they study.
Other forms of social motivation, such as motivations that focus
on one’s reputation in the community (as are represented in the
concepts of face or honor), also may be linked to variation in
self-construal.
Among all of the proposals of Markus and Kitayama (1991),
the one that has prompted the liveliest debate was that self-
motives such as self-enhancement would take on different
meanings given different self-systems. In their view, self-
enhancement motivation is mostly a result of the IndSC, which
promotes evaluating oneself positively. For the InterSC, how-
ever, the need to be a good group member requires self-
improvement and a self-critical attitude. Although considerable
cross-cultural research has lent support for these predictions
(e.g., Heine et al., 2000; Heine, Kitayama, & Lehman, 2001;
Heine, Kitayama, Lehman, et al., 2001; Kitayama et al., 1997),
some researchers have argued that people with high InterSC
also engage in self-enhancement, but only in ways mean-
ingfully related to their self-construal (e.g., Kurman, 2001;
Sedikides et al., 2003). Others, in contrast, have proposed that
self-enhancement motivation is not related to self-construal
at all. In a series of studies by Thomsen, Sidanius, and Fiske’s
(2007), self-enhancement was not related to self-construal
but to the endorsement of interpersonal leveling beliefs. In
sum, although there is controversy, the existing evidence
mostly supports the proposal of Markus and Kitayama (1991)
that self-enhancement takes on different meanings for differ-
ent self-systems.
Self-regulation has been another topic that has attracted
considerable research attention. In general, self-construal stud-
ies concerning regulatory focus, direction of control, and self-
regulatory strength are generally in line with the predictions
derived from Markus and Kitayama’s (1991) theorizing.
InterSC supports prevention focus, whereas IndSC supports
promotion focus (Lee et al., 2000; Zhang & Mittal, 2007).
Concerning direction of control, IndSC is positively related
to primary control and InterSC is related to secondary control
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(A. G. Lam & Zane, 2004). And finally, research on self-
regulatory strength points out that people with high InterSC
experience less regulatory depletion compared to people with
high IndSC in some situations (Seeley & Gardner, 2003). This
research on the role of self-construal in self-regulation is pre-
liminary but promising, and it may be beneficial in numerous
domains.
To date, although considerable attention has been paid to
cognitive approaches to the issue of consistency (as described
above), no one has examined the role of self-construal in dis-
sonance processes. Cross-cultural research has made great
strides in showing how dissonance processes vary for people
from East Asian versus Western backgrounds (Hoshino-Browne
et al., 2005; Kitayama, Snibbe, et al., 2004). To be brief, West-
ern participants tend to seek consistency within themselves,
whereas East Asians tend to seek consistency with others’ views
and expectations. Unfortunately, most research in this area uses
culture as a proxy for self-construal and has not used explicit
measures or manipulations of self-construal (but see Pöhlmann,
Carranza, Hannover, & Iyengar, 2007, for a closely related study).
Considering the importance of self-consistency as a self-motive
and the range of cross-cultural findings on this topic, examina-
tion of the hypothesized role of (measured or manipulated)
self-construal in this process will be an informative next step.
Because of its influence on motivation and self-regulation,
the possible applications of self-construal theory are almost
countless. Researchers in applied disciplines have begun to
examine its importance in a variety of domains. Links have
been made to the fields of leisure studies (Walker, Deng, &
Dieser, 2005), eating disorders (Green, Scott, DeVilder, Zeiger,
& Darr, 2006), health (Lun et al., 2008; Uskul & Hynie, 2007),
counseling (Yeh & Arora, 2003), consumer behavior (Zhang
& Shrum, 2009), and business management (Gelfand, Major,
Raver, Nishii, & O’Brien, 2006; see next section). We suspect
that further applications in education, vocational psychology,
and marital and family therapy—to name just a few—are not
far behind.
Self-Construal Shapes Interpersonal Behavior
How does variation in self-construal shape interaction with
other people? Although Markus and Kitayama (1991) did not
address social behavior specifically, there are many obvious
applications of their thesis to social interaction. People with
high InterSC should seek to maintain connectedness and har-
mony in relationships, whereas those with high IndSC should
seek to maintain individuality and separateness from others
(Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Pursuit of these goals may be
relatively automatic or nonconscious when the associated
self-construal is chronically or temporarily activated. For
example, people who have chronically high InterSC (or who
are exposed to an InterSC prime) tend to sit closer to another
person in a lab situation than do those with a primed IndSC
or chronically high IndSC (Holland, Roeder, van Baaren,
Cross et al. 165
Brandt, & Hannover, 2004). Similarly, priming the InterSC
results in a greater likelihood of imitating the behavior of another
person, compared to priming the IndSC or a control condition
(van Baaren, Maddux, Chartrand, de Bouter, & van Knippen-
berg, 2003). Why might imitation be important in the develop-
ment or maintenance of social relationships? Imitation may
create a sense of interpersonal similarity or synchrony, which
then greases the wheels of interpersonal interaction. In general,
people who are mimicked by an interaction partner tend to like
that partner, to have greater rapport with the partner, and to
engage in more prosocial behavior (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999;
van Baaren, Holland, Steenaert, & van Knippenberg, 2003;
see Chartrand, Maddox, & Lakin, 2005, for a review). The
association between self-construal and mimicry is bidirec-
tional: People who are imitated by others also come to
describe themselves more interdependently than do people
who are not mimicked (as measured by responses to the TST;
Ashton-James, van Baaren, Chartrand, Decety, & Karremans,
2007). Furthermore, when participants were unobtrusively
imitated by another person, they were more likely to describe
themselves as interdependent with others (relative to non-
mimicked participants), which in turn predicted their willing-
ness to help a third party (Ashton-James et al., 2007).
Self-construal also influences self-presentation; IndSC prim-
ing increases self-enhancing forms of self-presentation,
whereas InterSC priming increases self-presentations of
social appropriateness (Lalwani & Shavitt, 2009).
People with chronically high InterSC also behave in a more
other-oriented fashion, compared to those with a high IndSC.
For example, when exposed to scenarios that pitted the indi-
vidual’s self-interest against the interest of an important in-
group, InterSC-primed European American and Asian American
participants were more likely than IndSC-primed participants
to choose the group’s welfare over their own (Gardner, Gabriel,
& Dean, 2004). Similarly, when given power to distribute
tasks to themselves and to another participant, highly relational
participants distributed the tasks less selfishly than did lows on
this dimension (S. Chen, Lee-Chai, & Bargh, 2001).
Self-construal and close relationships. These studies of proxim-
ity, mimicry, and other-oriented behavior utilized laboratory
procedures in which participants interacted with strangers.
Thus, they provide compelling confirmation that the InterSC
promotes positive relational behavior even when there is no
prior relationship between the partners. When there is an
ongoing relationship or the possibility of continuing interac-
tion, however, individuals with high RelSC should be espe-
cially likely to engage in a variety of behaviors that promote
closeness and harmony in the relationship. Cross and her
colleagues (Cross et al., 2003; Cross & Morris, 2003; Gore,
Cross, & Morris, 2006) have investigated how North Ameri-
cans with varying levels of RelSC (as measured by the RISC
scale, Cross et al., 2000) interact with strangers who were
assigned to be their roommates. The roommate situation
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provides an excellent opportunity to examine relationship
processes among previously unacquainted persons who have
not self-selected to live together.
Cross and her colleagues hypothesized that persons with
high RelSC will seek to make the most of the situation and will
strive to develop a close relationship with the partner. If a close
friendship is not possible with the new roommate, the very
relational person will nonetheless seek to have a harmonious,
relatively conflict-free relationship. One way to promote a rela-
tionship with a new partner is to share openly one’s own interests,
goals, values, and beliefs and to attend closely to and respond
sensitively to the self-disclosures of one’s partner. Gore et al.
(2006, Study 2) found that participants’ degree of chronically
activated RelSC had both direct and indirect effects on their
own and their roommates’ closeness and commitment to the
relationship. Both high RelSC individuals and their roommates
reported enhanced relationship quality after 1 month. This effect
was mediated by perceptions of one’s own and one’s partner’s
emotional disclosure and perceptions that one’s partner responded
sensitively to one’s own disclosures. In short, because high
RelSC participants disclosed openly and responded sensitively
to their roommates, they created a supportive environment
for the development of a close relationship (for other studies
of self-construal and self-disclosure, see Cross et al., 2000,
Study 3; Morry, 2005; Terzino & Cross, 2009).
When a person pays close attention to his or her relationship
partner’s self-revelations, that person should be able to predict
the partner’s responses to a variety of situations. Cross and
Morris (2003) found that participants with high RelSC were
better able to predict their roommate’s responses to a values
measure. This association was strongest in relationships that
were relatively distant and weaker in relationship in which the
two roommates were very close. Cross and Morris (2003) sug-
gested that in very close relationships, the relationship itself
motivates the participants to attend to each others’ cares and
concerns and thereby enhances agreement on this task. In more
distant relationships, the person with high RelSC may pay
close attention to the partner as a strategy for avoiding conflict
or in hopes that a deeper relationship is still possible. In their
second study, Cross and Morris found evidence for the latter
goal: Participants with high RelSC had overly optimistic views
of their roommate’s feelings of closeness in the relationship.
Such optimism can foster continued efforts to work at the
relationship in hopes of greater intimacy eventually. Indeed,
other studies suggest that persons with high RelSC or InterSC
report closer relationships and more social support than lows
(Cross et al., 2000), and they are more likely to include others
in the self (Cross et al., 2000; Vorauer & Cameron, 2002).
Furthermore, persons with high RelSC are less likely than
others to view conflict with friends and close others as a zero-
sum game, in which one person wins and the other loses. Gore
and Cross (in press) asked participants to imagine themselves
in a variety of situations in which they were resolving a conflict
with a friend, roommate, or another close other. The results
166 Personality and Social Psychology Review 15(2)
revealed zero-sum thinking among those with low RelSC but
not among those with high RelSC. For the low RelSC partici-
pants, decisions that benefitted the partner were perceived as
costly to the self. For the participants with high RelSC, there
was typically no relation between evaluations of the outcome
of a decision for oneself and for the relationship partner. In a
third study, where participants were asked to recall a conflict
situation, high RelSC participants indicated regret over making
a self-serving decision. In other words, persons with high
RelSC do not perceive a trade-off between acting in their own
interests and acting in the interests of close others. Instead,
consistent with the notion that the other is part of the self, they
perceive decisions that benefit the relationship as ultimately
benefitting the self as well.
Friendships and roommates are important parts of people’s
lives, but romantic relationships receive much more attention
from researchers. To date, however, researchers have paid little
attention to the role of variation in self-construal in romantic
relationships. Given the strong association of gender with
RelSC (Cross et al., 2000), one might expect that self-construal
plays a significant role in many aspects of relationship devel-
opment and maintenance. Sinclair and Fehr (2005) examined
the association between self-construal and responses to
dissatisfaction in romantic relationships. When measured
(Study 1) or primed (Study 2), IndSC was positively associ-
ated with the preference to use the active, constructive strat-
egy of voice when one is dissatisfied with the relationship.
Measured (Study 1) and primed (Study 2) InterSC was posi-
tively associated with the passive, constructive strategy of
loyalty, in which the person waits for things to improve (also
see Yum, 2004). These findings are consistent with other
research that suggests that IndSC is associated with a promo-
tion focus and InterSC is associated with a prevention focus
(Lee et al., 2000) and with other studies showing that indi-
viduals with high InterSC avoid dominating forms of conflict
resolution (see below).
In what other ways might self-construal influence relation-
ship development and maintenance? Persons with high RelSC
may be more likely than others to make situational (rather
than dispositional) attributions for a partner’s bad behavior,
which are associated with relationship satisfaction (Bradbury
& Fincham, 1990). High RelSC persons tend to perceive them-
selves as more similar to their partner than low relationals,
which can also help maintain relationships (Byrne & Blaylock,
1963; Cross et al., 2002). When a relationship is threatened,
highly relational participants may be more likely to engage
in prorelationship behavior rather than withdraw (Lydon,
Menzies-Toman, Burton, & Bell, 2008). If InterSC is associated
with perceiving the self as malleable (as cross-cultural research
suggests; Heine, Kitayama, Lehman, et al., 2001), then highly
interdependent persons may tend to adjust to their relationship
partners to maintain harmony in the relationship (Morling et al.,
2002). In short, a focus on variation in self-construal may help
researchers better understand a wide variety of relationship
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processes. Perhaps Sinclair and Fehr (2005) said it best when
they closed their article with this statement: “[I]t may even be
the case that self-construal is the fundamental, distal factor that
drives many of the other self-related processes that have been
examined in the close relationships literature” (p. 303).
Self-construal and communication processes. When people’s self-
construals focus them on interdependence versus independence,
their characteristic ways of communicating will reflect these
orientations. As Singelis and Brown (1995) describe, the focus
on harmonious relationships and the definition of the self
in terms of close relationships and in-groups among those
with high RelSC or Coll-InterSC should result in a preference
for indirect communication, sensitivity to the context in social
interaction, attention to others’ thoughts and feelings, and non-
confrontational conflict resolution styles. In short, the goal of
communication, given RelSC or Coll-InterSC, is the mainte-
nance of harmonious relationships with close others and in-
group members. In contrast, for individuals with high IndSC,
the goal of communication is to express the person’s unique
goals, wishes, thoughts, feelings, and abilities. As a result, IndSC
should be associated with direct communication styles, little
attention to contextual aspects of social interaction, attention
to one’s own thoughts and feelings during social interaction,
and willingness to engage in confrontational dispute resolu-
tion styles.
Researchers have made several inroads into investigating
these theoretical consequences of self-construal for commu-
nication processes. For example, InterSC is positively related
to concern for a conversation partners’ feelings and possible
negative evaluation of the self (Gudykunst et al., 1996; M.-S.
Kim, Sharkey, & Singelis, 1994; Mandel, 2003), a desire to
avoid arguments (M. Kim, Aune, Hunter, Kim, & Kim, 2001),
and the use of cooperative strategies in group discussions
(Oetzel, 1998). IndSC is positively related to a concern for
clarity or directness in communication (Gudykunst et al., 1996;
M.-S. Kim et al., 1994); open and expressive communication
(Gudykunst et al., 1996); and the use of assertive or dominat-
ing strategies in group discussions (Oetzel, 1998; also see
Bresnahan, Ohashi, Liu, Nebashi, & Liao, 1999). In addition,
IndSC is associated with approval of others’ positive self-
presentations, but InterSC is associated with approval of oth-
ers’ negative self-presentations and approval of others when
they attribute their own success to the help of others (Ellis &
Wittenbaum, 2000; J. Kim, Kim, Kam, & Shin, 2003).
Differing self-construals should also engender different
reactions to conflict, especially conflict with meaningful others
(e.g., friends, relatives, or coworkers). One conceptualization
of conflict strategies draws on conceptions of face and facework
(Ting-Toomey, 1988). Facework is the strategies one uses to
protect, challenge, or defend one’s own or another’s “claimed
sense of positive image in the context of social interaction” (or
face; Oetzel et al., 2001, p. 235). In a study that included
participants from China, Germany, Japan, and the United
Cross et al. 167
States, Oetzel and his colleagues (2001) asked participants to
recall a conflict and to rate their experience in that conflict
with respect to several facework strategies. IndSC (as measured
by the Gudykunst et al., 1996, measure) was strongly associ-
ated with facework strategies that defended one’s own face.
InterSC was strongly associated with strategies that reflected
concern for the other’s face and mutual face concerns, such as
problem solving, apologizing, and giving in to the other person.
InterSC was negatively related to dominating strategies in
the interaction (also see Oetzel & Ting-Toomey, 2003; Ting-
Toomey, Oetzel, & Yee-Jung, 2001).
Unfortunately, most of these studies of self-construal and
communication employ cross-sectional designs and use only
self-report data. New strides in understanding how variation
in self-construal relates to communication processes may be
made by using experimental paradigms that manipulate self-
construal and employ behavioral measures of direct or indirect
communication strategies. A good example of an experimental
approach is found in a recent study by Seeley Howard, Gardner,
and Thompson (2007). Three studies showed that the behavior
of InterSC-primed participants who had high power in a nego-
tiation depended on the situational context. When negotiating
with a lower power individual, high-power and InterSC-primed
participants were more generous and more likely to reach a
settlement with their lower power opponent than were IndSC-
primed participants (Study 1). In a second study, power and
self-construal were again manipulated but participants engaged
in either a negotiation with one other person or a team negotia-
tion, in which teams of three participants negotiated with each
other. Interestingly, when negotiating with a group, high power
InterSC-primed participants were less generous than the high-
power IndSC-primed participants. Negotiating individually
or as a group did not affect the final settlement amounts decided
by high-power IndSC-primed participants. These studies sug-
gest that persons with high InterSC have a sense of responsi-
bility or attachment to other persons in the negotiation but
that the attachment depends on the context. When negotiating
individually with a lower status target, the high-power and
high-InterSC negotiator will behave benevolently. But when
negotiating as part of a team, their loyalties and attachments
lie with the other team members. Their commitment is to pursue
the interests of the team, resulting in less generous settlements
with the opposing party.
This work highlights the potential importance of self-
construal to organizational psychology and leadership (van
Knippenberg, van Knippenberg, De Cremer, & Hogg, 2004).
A few researchers have begun to consider the role of self-
construal in topics of organizational justice. For example,
Brockner, De Cremer, van den Bos, and Chen (2005) argued
that because procedural fairness communicates that individu-
als are respected and valued in the organization, it therefore
reflects the importance of relational values. Consequently,
people who tend to define themselves in terms of their relation-
ships may be especially sensitive to procedural fairness in
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organizations. Across three studies, Brockner and his colleagues
found that perceptions of procedural fairness (e.g., the degree
to which one has a voice in decisions or the fairness of inter-
personal treatment) were more strongly related to a variety of
outcomes (e.g., cooperation, positive affect, and desire to inter-
act with the other party) for people who had high InterSC than
for lows on this dimension (also see Brockner, Chen, Mannix,
Leung, & Skarlicki, 2000; Gollwitzer & Bücklein, 2007;
Holmvall & Bobocel, 2008). Research focused on equity in
social exchange revealed that responses to inequitable treatment
depended on the participants’ RelSC and their relationship with
the other person: Persons with high RelSC were less likely
than lows to respond negatively when a close other had treated
them unfairly (Y. Chen, Chen, & Portnoy, 2009, Study 2) but
were more likely to respond negatively when a person who
was not close treated them badly (Holmvall & Sidhu, 2007).
Others have found that the degree to which the three dimen-
sions of self-construal (IndSC, RelSC, and InterSC) moderate
the association between procedural justice and work-related
outcomes differs depending on the specific forms of procedural
justice under investigation (Johnson, Selenta, & Lord, 2006).
Summary and recommendations for future research. Surprisingly
little research has focused on the effects of differing self-
construals for social behavior, close relationships, and other
phenomena related to interactions with others or with groups.
Consistent with expectations, InterSC is associated with a vari-
ety of processes that serve to enhance or maintain relationships,
including mimicry, prosocial behavior, and indirect, noncon-
frontational communication strategies. Cross and her col-
leagues have examined the role of RelSC in a variety of
relationship-related processes, but many more processes may
be fruitfully explored from the perspective of variation in self-
construal. For example, many gender differences in behavior
and relationship processes have been observed, and these dif-
ferences may be in part a function of gender differences in
self-construal (Cross & Madson, 1997; Kiecolt-Glaser & Newton,
2001). When the mechanisms that explain gender differences
in behavior are identified (e.g., differences in self-construal),
researchers are better able to stipulate the conditions under
which those behaviors are most likely to be expressed, ways
that the behaviors may be modified, and other factors that
may maintain or bolster the behaviors. Consider the finding
that many couples differ in their expectation of closeness or
intimacy in the marriage, with women desiring more close-
ness and communication of love and affection than men (see
Eldridge & Christensen, 2002, for a review). If these differ-
ences derive from different self-construals, then both research-
ers and therapists have a theoretically rich starting point for
further investigation into the cognitive, affective, and moti-
vational foundations of differences in communication, conflict,
and marital satisfaction.
Cross-cultural studies have observed cultural differences
in a variety of social phenomena, such as conformity (H. Kim
168 Personality and Social Psychology Review 15(2)
& Markus, 1999), trust (Yamagishi & Yamagishi, 1994), and
social loafing (Earley, 1993). To date, these studies have not
been followed up by additional work aimed at identifying the
mechanisms responsible for these differences. For example,
one would expect that participants with high InterSC would
be more likely to conform to the behavior of in-group members
than would those with high IndSC.
There are also promising avenues for further research into
the consequences of different self-construals for social behav-
ior in other settings, such as the workplace. Many aspects of
organizational behavior, such as citizenship behaviors, job
withdrawal, and leadership styles, may be linked to differences
in self-construals (e.g., Gahan & Abeysekera, 2009; Gelfand
et al., 2006). Ultimately, whether a person considers himself
or herself to be independent of others or fundamentally inter-
dependent with others in a situation can importantly affect
other social behaviors, such as conformity, compliance, aggres-
sion, altruism, cooperation, and persuasion.
Where to From Here?
Self-construal was initially proposed as a means of understand-
ing cultural differences in behavior (Markus & Kitayama, 1991;
Triandis, 1989). Today, however, researchers also recognize
the potential role of within-culture variation in self-construal
for explaining many psychological phenomena (e.g., Cross &
Madson, 1997). We suspect that these dual goals—understanding
cultural differences and within-culture processes—will continue
to motivate considerable research in the near term. To further
these goals, we next turn to theoretical, conceptual, and meth-
odological issues that sometimes thwart this work.
As we mentioned in the section on Between- and Within-
Group Differences in Self-Construal, there are times when
measures of self-construal fail to demonstrate the expected
cultural patterns of differences (Oyserman et al., 2002). There
are also many times measures of self-construal fail to mediate
cultural differences in specific behaviors (Kitayama et al.,
2009). We are confident that a great many studies have been
relegated to the file drawer because manipulations of self-
construal fail to produce the expected effects on behavior. In
an innovative study, Kitayama and his colleagues presented
an argument for why explicit measures of self-construal may
fail to predict cultural differences in behaviors that have been
linked theoretically to the self. They observed the expected
differences in American, Western European, and Japanese
participants’ performance on several tasks (e.g., dispositional
attribution, focused vs. holistic attention, and preference for
disengaging or socially engaging emotions), but there was no
systematic association between performance on these tasks
and Singelis’s (1994) measure of IndSC and InterSC. Moreover,
there was little to no association of the tasks with each other.
In other words, people who described themselves as high in
IndSC were no more likely than those low on this dimension
to engage in dispositional attribution, to focus on the target
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rather than the context in an attention task, or to prefer disen-
gaging to socially engaging emotions. Moreover, individuals
who tended to engage in one of these IndSC-related tasks were
not necessarily likely to engage in other IndSC-related tasks.
Kitayama and his colleagues (2009), along with Y. Kashima
(2009), offer helpful insight into these sorts of apparent anoma-
lies in cross-cultural data. First, Kitayama et al. remind us
of Simpson’s paradox: the observation that constructs that are
related at the societal level (e.g., InterSC and context-sensitive
thinking) may not necessarily be related at the individual level
(also see Oyserman & Uskul, 2008; van de Vijver, van Hemert,
& Poortinga, 2008). They also contend that cultural mandates
to be independent or interdependent may be enacted through
any of several different cultural tasks. For example, two
Americans, who both strive to be independent, may go about
that by focusing on different dimensions of independence. Ed
demonstrates his independence by focusing on his uniqueness
and differentiating himself from others, whereas Valerie dem-
onstrates her independence by aggressively pursuing her
personal goals. Moreover, each cultural task is associated with
specific psychological tendencies (e.g., using focused vs. holis-
tic attention or making dispositional vs. situational attribu-
tions). Just as different individuals use different cultural tasks
to fulfill their culture’s mandate, different cultural tasks are
associated with different sets of psychological tendencies. Thus,
within an individual, there may be relatively little association
among different culture-related processes.
Second, Kitayama et al. (2009) observe that these cultural
mandates begin to influence children from birth and the vari-
ous psychological tendencies and cultural tasks used to comply
with the cultural mandate become habitual, automatic, or rote.
Explicit views of the self, as tapped by measures of self-
construal, develop in adolescence, and they may not be linked
conceptually to these automatic, habitual, or overlearned tasks.
Thus, Americans and East Asians may perform very differently
on a variety of culture-linked tasks (as they did in Kitayama
et al.’s, 2009, study), but performance on these tasks may not
require the activation of the associated self-construal. Kashima
(2009) also notes that culturally based processes are typically
learned and become automatized in specific situations and
activities; some behaviors are strongly driven by the norms of
particular contexts rather than by personal beliefs or self-views
(Zou et al., 2009). Thus, attempts to elicit cultural tasks and
behaviors (i.e., through priming) may not be effective if the
attempt does not tap the appropriate context or if the behavior
is strongly driven by situational factors.
Third, explicit measures of self-construal appear to assess
Kitayama et al.’s cultural tasks (e.g., being unique or self-effacing)
rather than the accompanying psychological tendencies (e.g.,
preferring engaged or disengaged emotions). Indeed, many of
the specific dimensions of self-construal identified by Hardin et
al. (2004) as underlying items on Singelis’s (1994) SCS (e.g.,
primacy of self) map directly onto Kitayama et al.’s cultural tasks.
Given that Kitayama et al. (2009) argue explicitly that different
Cross et al. 169
cultural tasks are associated with different psychological tenden-
cies, we would expect weak correlations, at best, between broad
measures of cultural tasks (e.g., explicit measures such as the
Singelis SCS scales) and the specific measures of psychological
tendencies. Instead, specific psychological tendencies (e.g., cul-
tural differences in dispositional attribution) may be better
explained by domain- specific measures (e.g., beliefs in attitude–
behavior consistency; see Y. Kashima, Siegal, Tanaka, & Kashima,
1992). Likewise, Kashima (2009) argues that the commonly used
priming tasks induce specific ways of thinking or feeling that are
associated with particular behaviors but not with others. The
reason that the pronoun circling priming task promotes attention
to the target rather than the context (as in the Kühnen et al., 2001,
studies), he contends, is that thinking about oneself as an indi-
vidual prompts analytical processing of information among Eng-
lish speakers. Thinking about oneself as “we,” in contrast, may
hinder analytical thinking. Cultural differences in processes that
are unrelated to analytical thinking, however, may not be influ-
enced by “I” versus “we” primes (see Oyserman & Lee’s, 2008,
review for the effects of different types of primes on cognitive
and other outcomes). In short, when researchers seek to demon-
strate that a particular cultural difference in behavior is associated
with self-construals, they would be wise to focus on the specific
dimension of IndSC, RelSC, or InterSC that accounts for the
behavior and to consider the specific contexts in which the behav-
ior develops.
These issues raise the question of whether self-construal
is best understood as the cause of a variety of behaviors or
is better viewed as a way to interpret cultural differences in
behavior. Kashima (2009) offers a compelling argument for
self-construal as an interpretive tool rather than a causal con-
struct (and he acknowledges as well that an interpretive tool
can be a causal mechanism). In our view, this is similar to
saying that extraversion does not cause talkativeness so much
as it is a way to interpret or describe that behavior. Yet just
as measures of extraversion have been productively used to
predict a wide variety of behaviors, so also many of the studies
reviewed here suggest that measures of self-construal are use-
ful tools in the exploration of within-culture patterns of behav-
ior. Likewise, priming techniques help researchers begin to
approximate the ways that self-construal influences thinking
and feeling. As better measures of self-construal are developed
and as priming techniques become more specific, some of
these apparent anomalies may be resolved.
Researchers may best avoid dead ends and detours along
their routes if they are careful about how they describe their
work and recall how they got where they are now. Authors have
at times referred to the pronoun circling task or other common
priming tasks as “cultural priming.” This term is most appro-
priately applied to the cultural icons task devised by Y.-Y. Hong
and her colleagues (2000) and perhaps to studies that use lan-
guage as a prime with bicultural participants. For other primes,
however, particular perceptions of the self (as an individual or
as a member of a group, or as similar to or different from others)
Downloaded from psr.sagepub.com at West Uni from Timisoara on December 2, 2012
or ways of thinking (or mind-sets; Oyserman et al., 2009) are
primed, not cultures. The danger in calling these latter proce-
dures cultural priming is that it equates culture with self-con-
strual or mind-set and ignores the fact that these are just two of
the many ways culture shapes individual behavior. Moreover,
the distinction made by Kitayama et al. (2009) among very
basic cognitive and affective processes (their psychological
tendencies), complex behavioral goals (their cultural tasks),
and the cultural mandates of individualistic and collectivist
societies reminds us that the global concept of culture cannot
be adequately represented by a very specific way of thinking.
In our view, equating culture with self-construal or mind-set
(or equating self-construal with a specific psychological ten-
dency) can lead outsiders to view social or personality psycholo-
gists engaged in cultural psychology as naïve, uninformed, and
overly narrow in our interests.
In addition, cross-cultural researchers should remember that
our understanding of self-construal has developed out of com-
parisons between Europeans or Americans and East Asians. Con-
sequently, they may not apply as well to Africans or Latin
Americans. Research in these understudied regions will help us
identify the culture-based assumptions that are largely implicit in
this work. For example, we wonder whether InterSC and holistic
thinking are associated as strongly in Africa as in East Asia. Latin
Americans are typically more expressive and emotive than East
Asians; thus, the associations between InterSC and emotional
expression may be very different in Latin American cultures than
in East Asian societies. Similarly, InterSC is positively associated
with the self-criticism and social isolation dimensions of the self-
compassion scale in Taiwan (which has a Confucian heritage) but
negatively associated with these dimensions in Thailand (which
has a strong Buddhist heritage; Neff, Pisitsungkagarn, & Hsieh,
2008). Just as English is spoken and written differently in the
United States and the United Kingdom, so also people in Africa,
Latin America, or Middle Eastern societies may express IndSC,
RelSC, and Coll-InterSC with somewhat different “dialects.”
Self-construals represent how people view themselves with
respect to other people—as separate, independent, and autono-
mous; as related to individual friends, family, and coworkers;
or as part of larger social groups. This conceptualization has
generated considerable research and fruitful theories. Unfor-
tunately, not all that research could be reviewed here, but we
have attempted to provide an overview of those efforts and a
snapshot of the current status of these constructs. We hope this
serves as a useful tour book for researchers exploring this new
and promising terrain of the self.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Kari Terzino, Tsui-Feng Wu, and Meng Zhang,
who offered helpful comments on this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interests with respect
to the authorship and/or publication of this article.
170 Personality and Social Psychology Review 15(2)
Financial Disclosure/Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for
the authorship, and/or publication of this article: This article was
completed while the first and third authors were supported by
National Science Foundation Grant BCS0646360.
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