“Who am I?”: The cultural psychology of the conceptual self

Pg 90 – “In the United States, the self, particularly in middle-class and educated contexts, is often understood and presumably experienced as abstract, bounded, private, and separated from others and the social context. In contrast, in Japan, the self is most typically understood as flexible, open, situation- specific, and configured by a constant referencing of the self to the situational setting or context (Ames, Dissanayake, & Kasulis, 1994; Geertz, 1975; Kitayama, Markus, Matsumoto, & Norasakkunkit, 1997; Markus & Kitayama, 1991).”

~ I think the change we’re having in thinking of identities is us thinking more like the Japanese form of idenity.

Pg 91 – “The self is acquired through social interaction and is a product of particular sociocultural environments (Cooley, 1902; Mead, 1934; see Markus&Cross, 1990, for a review).”

~ I think this is how identities are formed. So maybe the “self” they are referring to is like the global self.

Pg 91 – “In Western cultures, particularly in the United States, the self is viewed as a more-or-less integrated whole composed of abilities, values, personality attributes, preferences, feeling states, and attitudes (Geertz, 1975; Markus & Kitayama, 1991).”

~ Agreed.

Pg 91 – “Most theories also assume that the self-concept is dynamic; at any given moment, a subset of an individual’s collection of self-representations, the working self-concept, or the conceptual self of the moment, is activated (Markus & Kunda, 1986).”

~ This is how I think of identity, not self-concept.

Pg 92 – “First, the cultural context influences the universe of self-conceptions from which the working self-concept is drawn.”

~ This is what most of the research I have read so far is saying.

Pg 92 – “Second, culture influences the degree of variation in the working self-concept across situations.”

~ Again, this is what most of the research I have read is saying, just not this bluntly.

Kanagawa, C., Cross, S. E., Markus, H. R. (2001). “Who am I?”: The cultural psychology of the conceptual self. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27(90). Retrieved December 3, 2008 from Sage Publications database.