Western thought that emphasizes individuals detached of context, versus East Asian thought that emphasizes relationships and contexts:
Most Americans over a certain age well remember their primer, called Dick and Jane. Dick and Jane and their dog, Spot, were quite the active individualists. The first page of an early edition from the 1930s (the primer was widely used until the 1960s) depicts a little boy running across a lawn. The first sentences are “See Dick run. See Dick play. See Dick run and play.” This would seem the most natural sort of basic information to convey about kids—to the Western mentality. But the first page of the Chinese primer of the same era shows a little boy sitting on the shoulders of a bigger boy. “Big brother takes care of little brother. Big brother loves little brother. Little brother loves big brother.” It is not individual action but relationships between people that seem important to convey in a child’s first encounter with the printed word. [...]
“Tell me about yourself” seems a straightforward enough question to ask of someone, but the kind of answer you get very much depends on what society you ask it in. North Americans will tell you about their personality traits (“friendly, hard-working”), role categories (“teacher,” “I work for a company that makes microchips”), and activities (“I go camping a lot”). Americans don’t condition their self-descriptions much on context. The Chinese, Japanese, and Korean self, on the other hand, very much depends on context (“I am serious at work”; “I am fun-loving with my friends”). A study asking Japanese and Americans to describe themselves either in particular contexts or without specifying a particular kind of situation showed that Japanese found it very difficult to describe themselves without specifying a particular kind of situation—at work, at home, with friends, etc. Americans, in contrast, tended to be stumped when the investigator specified a context—“I am what I am.” When describing themselves, Asians make reference to social roles (“I am Joan’s friend”) to a much greater extent than Americans do. Another study found that twice as many Japanese as American self-descriptions referred to other people (“I cook dinner with my sister”).
The idea of a contextual personality is probably connected to collectivism, and vice-versa. The words “individualism” and “collectivism” bother me for reasons I have trouble pinning down. “Context-dependent personality” and “context-independent personality” do not bother me in the same way.
Western thought that emphasizes individuals detached of context, versus East Asian thought that emphasizes relationships and contexts:
The idea of a contextual personality is probably connected to collectivism, and vice-versa. The words “individualism” and “collectivism” bother me for reasons I have trouble pinning down. “Context-dependent personality” and “context-independent personality” do not bother me in the same way.
I will wager that is because individualism and collectivism are intended to be context-independent category words.