the self in western thoughts

1. The self in
Western and
Oriental/Eastern
Thought
LESSON 4

3. If someone ask you to finish the sentence,
“ I am _______________________,” what sorts of things would you
include in your responses?
Would you focus on your personality traits? Your job title? Or your
relationship with others?
Psychologists have found that a person’s cultural background can
affect how a person sees himself or herself.

4. Fiske, Kitayama, Markus, and Nisbett (1998)
- Reported that people are shaped by their culture, and their culture is also
shaped by them.
Richard Shweder *(1991)
- One of the major proponents of cultural psychology
- “ Cultural traditions and social practices regulates, express, and the transform
the human psyche, resulting less in psychic unity for humankind than in ethnic
divergences in mind, self, and emotion”
An individual thinks, feels, and behaves similarly as that of the members of his
or her community. However, each community has its own standards,
expectations, and rules that shape its members. These differences are the
reason people are markedly divergent. This divergence is evident in the eastern
and western concepts of ”self”

5. Western
Concept of Self
The western tradition is generally
acknowledge to be “imbued with a style
of thinking based on dichotomy and
binary opposition” (Carr and Zanetti,
2000; Singhal 2000)
There is an essential distinction
between the notion of thinking subject (
an observer) that stands in natural
opposition to observable reality
(Singhal, 2000)

6. Four Categories
on how the term
“self” is used in
contemporary
western discussion
(Frank Johnson,
1989)
1. Analytical
- By analytic, Johnson meant the “tendency to see reality as
an aggregate of part”
- The “self” is an observer separate and distinct from
external objects (Me versus other)