ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how psychology research findings manifest across cultures and through various domains of the epicurean experience, including food aesthetics and food nostalgia. Because cross-cultural comparisons can be controversial, it discusses the complexities, limitations, and benefits of this novel view on the Asian epicurean experience. The Asian epicurean experience is revealed to embrace a different form of epicurean wellbeing, one that is shaped by a more collectivistic and interdependent self-identity. For the individualism-collectivism paradigm, East Asian countries including China, Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asian countries score higher on collectivism and lower on individualism, while Western cultures including those in North America and Western Europe score the opposite, higher on individualism and lower on collectivism. The implications for theories that challenge a universal view of the human psyche can be far reaching. Individualism-collectivism research has led to findings of cultural differences in family structures.
