ABSTRACT
Over the last two decades, substantial progress has been made on cultural differences and similarities in a variety of psychological processes (Kitayama and Uskul 2011; Markus and Kitayama 1991, 2010). We now know that many aspects of cognition (e.g. Nisbett et al. 2001), emotion (e.g. Mesquita and Leu 2007; Tsai 2007), and motivation (e.g. Heine and Hamamura 2007) show considerable variations across cultures. This is the case especially when comparisons are drawn globally between Western cultures (North American middle-class cultures in particular) and Eastern cultures (East Asian cultures in particular). Initially, much of this work focused on student populations at relatively elite universities in North America and East Asia. More recent work, however, has validated conclusions from this work with non-student adult
populations (e.g. Kitayama et al. 2010b; Kitayama et al. 2012; Park et al. 2012). Furthermore, researchers have begun to illuminate some significant within-culture variations by examining social structural or ecological factors including social class and educational attainment (Stephens et al. 2007), residential mobility (Oishi 2010), relational stability (Yuki et al. 2005), historical risk of parasite infection (Fincher et al. 2008), and voluntary settlement (Kitayama et al. 2006a). Further, the dimension of tightness (vs. looseness) of cultural rules and norms has been suggested as correlated with and, yet, distinct from individualism vs. collectivism or independence vs. interdependence – the dimensions that have been used typically to understand the existing cultural variations in psychological processes (Gelfand et al. 2011). This emerging literature is reviewed elsewhere (Kitayama and Uskul 2011). The aim of the present chapter is to provide an updated review of empirical evidence on the
cultural variations in cognitive, emotional, and motivational processes. In so doing, our intent is to situate the empirical evidence within a broader theoretical framework of culture and the self (e.g. Markus and Kitayama 1991), with a sharpened focus placed on implications for consumer psychology and consumer behavior.
