Social Self Essay

Social psychologists, such as Hazel, Kitayama, Triandis, and Brewer to name a few, have been working on the subject of culture and social self since the early ninety’s. Through individual studies, they have found relationships between the origin of ones’ culture and their sense of self. In order to analyze their work, some definitions will have to be discussed in order to make for a better understanding of the relationship between culture and the social self.
Different cultures perceive and interpret the world around them in different ways and they fall into two separate categories, independent construal of self and interdependent construal of self. Depending on which of the categories one was born in, they will socialize differently and

The three different aspects of self, include the private, public, and collective self. The private self includes anything that the person defines themselves personally as such as “I am an extrovert or I am shy”. The public self includes traits that others generalize about that particular person such as “she is dynamic or he is unique”. The collective self includes thoughts about a certain person that is coming from a certain group such as “they think I am an exciting person or they think I am a good motivator”. These three different perceptions about self are then influenced by the three different cultural variation situations (Triandis,

She proposed that “individuals avoid self-construals that are either too personalized or too inclusive and instead define themselves in terms of distinctive category memberships.” In her studies, she posited that “social identity derives from a fundamental tension between human need for validation and similarity to others and a countervailing need for uniqueness and individuation.” (Brewer, 1991). Executed on the UCLA campus, she termed that “Group identities allow us to be the same and different at the same time”. Her studies applied more to group think instead of individualism and collectivism research but it still had implications that people will seek for balance and try not to be too independent, although they are in an independent