affect how personalities develop. Rather, psychologists have come to see that
people and their personalities exist within a cultural context.
Perhaps the most important distinction cross-cultural researchers make
is between individualistic cultures and collectivist cultures (Triandis, 1989,
2001). Individualistic cultures , which include most Northern European coun-
tries and the United States, place great emphasis on individual needs and
accomplishments. People in these cultures like to think of themselves as inde-
pendent and unique. In contrast, people in collectivist cultures are more con-
cerned about belonging to a larger group, such as a family, tribe, or nation.
These people are more interested in cooperation than competition. They ob-
tain satisfaction when the group does well rather than from individual accom-plishments. Many Asian, African, Central American, and South American
countries fit the collectivist culture description. Consequently, concepts com-
monly studied by Western personality psychologists often take on very differ-ent meanings when people from collectivist cultures are studied. For example,
research reviewed in Chapter 12 suggests that the Western notion of self-
esteem is based on assumptions about personal goals and feelings of unique-ness that may not make sense to citizens of other countries (Markus &
Kitayama, 1991).
Moreover, the kinds of behaviors examined in personality research can
take on different meanings depending on the culture. For example, for manyyears personality psychologists have been concerned with achievement behav-
ior. Traditionally, this means trying to predict who will get ahead in academic
or business situations. However, this definition of achievement and success is
not shared universally (Salili, 1994). In some collectivist cultures, success means
cooperation and group accomplishments. Personal recognition may even be
frowned upon by people living in these cultures. Similarly, we need to consider
the culture a person comes from when identifying and treating psychological dis-
orders (Draguns, 2008; Fischer, Jome, & Atkinson, 1998; Lewis-Fernandez &Kleinman, 1994; Pedersen, 2008). For example, behavior that suggests exces-
sive dependency or an exaggerated sense of self in one culture might reflect
good adjustment in another.
Thus it is worth remembering that most of the theories and much of the
research covered in this book are based on observations in individualistic cul-tures. In fact, most of the research was conducted in the United States, thecountry that was found in one study to be the most individualistic of 41 na-
tions examined (Suh, Diener, Oishi, & Triandis, 1998). This does not mean
the research findings should be dismissed. Rather, we should keep in mindthat whether a particular description applies to people in all cultures remains
an open question. In some cases, such as the research on dream content pre-
sented in Chapter 4 and the studies on marriage patterns presented in Chapter 10,investigators find nearly identical results across very different cultural groups.
In other cases, such as in the self-esteem and achievement examples, they find im-
portant differences among cultures. Identifying the cultural limitations or univer-sality of various phenomena provides additional insight into the nature of the
concepts we study.Personality and Culture 11