Cultural Differences in Self and the Impact of Personal and Social Influences

Historically, there have been two research traditions in the study of influence: one focusing on the effects of personal information and the other dealing with the effects of social information. Influence based on personal information refers to people being affected by their observations of what they have said and done in the past. Influence based on social information refers to people being affected by their observations of others’ attitudes and behaviors. This chapter considers how the impact of these two forms of influence varies across cultures.