Mutual Constitution Process

In the world today, there are numerous cultures, each with their own practices and selfways. Selfways are the traits and cultural participation patterns derived from a culture that define how a person should act in the world (Markus, Mullally & Kitayama, 1997). Selfways are a key example of how the people of the culture mold what the culture’s integral characteristics are, while the culture, itself, moulds the actions of the people of the culture. This process is called Mutual Constitution: the symbiotic relationship between a culture’s psychological processes and the individuals who reside in the culture forming a collective reality between the culture and participant within the culture (Fiske, Kitayama, Markus &Nisbett, 1998). The Mutual Constitution process is made up of five different steps that are nested within each other and create this collective reality together: cultural practice and ideas, institutions in the culture that reflect integral ideas, everyday experiences in the culture, psychological processes and finally, the action or behavior which is shaped by the other four steps. A culture that has not been studied at-length is the Jewish culture. One major tendency of members of the Jewish cultural community is the tendency to vote more liberally. Jewish law, the Talmud, as well as the cultural idea of Tzedakah have cultivated this behavior. The institution of Jewish law, the notion of Tzedakah and the general cultural idea of equality mutually constitute the Jewish behavioral practice of leaning more to the left on political issues.

The process of Mutual Constitution starts with overarching historical ideas of a core cultural idea or the notion of “good” or “moral” person in the cultural context. In the Jewish c...

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